The dust of the collapsed Serpent's Nest Pavilion didn't settle; it drifted in the unnatural wind created by the rift in the sky. The silence that followed the strike of [Ruination's Edge] was not the absence of sound, but the presence of a heavy, suffocating shock.
Within minutes, the air began to hum with the arrival of powerful entities.
The first to arrive was Elder Wei Long, the master of internal security. He materialized from a shadow, his eyes widening as he looked at the abyss that now divided the residence's grounds.
He was followed closely by Elder Feng and Elder Zhao Tie, their auras flaring due to their defensive instinct. Then came the scholars—the keepers of the family's martial history—their robes fluttering as they scrambled to comprehend the spiritual signature lingering in the air.
Finally, the siblings arrived. Yin Hua landed with a flourish of poisonous Qi, her face twisted in confusion. Yin Jian followed, his face still bruised and his spirit still fragile, looking around with a sneer that quickly turned into a mask of dread. Yin Xue and Yin Yue arrived last, their blue and sun-gold auras illuminating the settling haze.
At the center of the devastation, the Matriarch, Yin Mei, descended from the sky. She didn't land; she hovered a few inches above the cracked marble, her violet robes shimmering like a bruise against the morning light. She stared at the sky—the blue rift in the clouds was still visible, a literal wound in the heavens—and then at the fissure at her feet.
From the jagged debris of the once-opulent pavilion, a figure emerged. Yin Shen stepped over a shattered sandalwood beam, his midnight-blue robes dusted with pulverized stone and iron. He looked remarkably calm, his silver hair catching the light as he wiped a smudge of soot from his cheek.
"Yin Shen!" Elder Feng boomed, his voice a mixture of awe and concern.
He stepped forward, his heavy earth-Qi stabilizing the ground near the fissure. "In the name of the ancestors, what has happened here? We felt a shockwave that nearly unseated the formations of the Inner Estate! Was there an attack? An assassination attempt?"
Yin Shen paused, looking at the ruins of his short-lived luxury. He turned his golden eyes toward his uncle, his expression almost apologetic. "No attack, Uncle. I was simply trying to unleash the Martial Arts Technique I learned this morning. I... may have underestimated the recoil of the weapon."
A sharp, shrill laugh cut through the air. Yin Hua stepped forward, her crimson lips curled in a mocking sneer. "A technique? You? Yin Shen, stop playing the fool. To split the heavens and crack the earth of the Serpent's Nest requires the power of a Foundation Establishment expert at the very least. What pathetic technique could a loser like you have possibly learned in a single morning that would cause such a mess? Did you stumble upon an old explosive talisman and trip over it?"
"I learned [Ruination's Edge]." Yin Shen revealed, his gaze locked onto her with cold indifference.
The name hit the plaza like a physical blow.
The mockery on Yin Hua's face vanished, replaced by a sudden, rigid stillness. Elder Zhao Tie's hand tightened on his staff so hard the wood groaned. The scholars, who had been busy taking notes on the structural damage, stopped their brushes in mid-air.
"Ruination's Edge?" Yin Yue shrieked, her pigtails practically standing on end. She sprinted forward, ignoring the guards. "Shen-er! I gave you that scroll only yesterday! It was for your birthday, and I clearly remember telling you that it would take you years to even understand the first chant! How—how could you have learned it in a single day?!"
Yin Xue stepped up beside her sister, her icy blue eyes narrowed.
She looked at the perfectly clean cut in the Black-Steel Guardian dummy, then at the rift in the sky. "The records state that even our Eldest Brother, Yin Long, attempted to master this art for three months before abandoning it. He said the 'Concept of Ruination' was too volatile for a human Dantian to govern. How were you able to even activate the first move, Yin Shen?"
Behind them, the scholars had begun to argue in low, frantic tones.
"Impossible!" one old scholar whispered, his fingers trembling as he pointed at the sky. "Ruination's Edge is a 'Destructive Sword' type. It is based on the paradox of entropy! To learn it requires a soul that can withstand the weight of the Void!"
"He's a martial prodigy," another whispered back, his face pale. "No, he's more than that. To grasp the fundamental aspects of an Earth-Rank destructive art in hours? That isn't talent; that's a divine anomaly."
The Elders were no less stunned. Wei Long and Zhao Tie exchanged a look of profound unease. If Yin Shen could wield the "Edge of Ruination," the political landscape of the Yin Family wasn't just shifting—it was being demolished.
"SILENCE."
Matriarch Yin Mei's voice wasn't loud, but it drained the air from the courtyard. She floated closer to Yin Shen, her violet eyes searching his golden ones.
She could feel it now—the residual, destructive Qi clinging to his robes. It wasn't the jagged energy of a demonic art; it was the cold, absolute weight of a mastered concept.
"The destruction I see here..." Yin Mei began, her voice echoing with a terrifying clarity. "A rift in the heavens and a fissure in the earth. To achieve this with a High-Mortal Rank technique—which Ruination's Edge is classified as at its base—is impossible for a practitioner at the Entry Level. Even an Accomplished Master would only be able to cleave a building."
She leaned in, her spiritual pressure beginning to rise, testing the air around him. "Tell me, Yin Shen. What proficiency have you reached in this art? Be truthful. A lie here will be your undoing."
Yin Shen stood his ground, his Absolute Domination passive acting as a buffer against the Matriarch's pressure. He didn't blink. He didn't hesitate.
"The proficiency is already at the Unity level," he stated calmly.
The world seemed to stop spinning.
The silence that followed was so absolute it felt like a physical weight. It was the pin-drop silence of a crowd that had just witnessed a miracle they didn't want to believe.
Elder Feng looked baffled, his mouth hanging open slightly.
The scholars looked as though the blood had been drained from their bodies, several of them had to lean against each other for support.
Yin Jian stared at Yin Shen with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred, his fists clenching until his knuckles turned white.
Yin Hua's face was a mask of disbelief, her eyes darting between the rift and her brother as if she were waiting for the illusion to shatter.
Yin Xue looked as if she had seen a ghost—a ghost of a power she couldn't comprehend.
And Yin Yue? The energetic fifth sister looked like she was genuinely about to pass out, her eyes rolling back slightly before Xiao Mei caught her.
Unity Proficiency.
In the history of the Yin Family, achieving Unity in any technique usually took decades of dedicated practice, meditation, and a life-or-death struggle.
To achieve Unity in a "Destructive Type" technique—the most difficult category in existence—in a single morning was a feat that defied every known law of cultivation. It meant that Yin Shen didn't just know the moves; he had become one with the concept of Ruination itself.
Matriarch Yin Mei looked shocked. For the first time in nearly a century of life, her stoic facade cracked. Her eyes widened, and a flicker of something—fear? Or perhaps a dark, predatory pride?—flashed in her violet irises. She looked at the ruins of the Serpent's Nest, then back at her son.
She realized that the "re-examination" in two days was no longer a test to see if Yin Shen was a genius. It was a test to see if the family could survive him.
"Unity..." she whispered, the word sounding alien in her mouth.
She pulled herself together with an effort that was visible in the tightening of her jaw. She turned her gaze to the gathered crowd, her voice returning to its iron-cold resonance.
"Disperse," she commanded. "All of you. This incident is to be struck from the records of the guards. Scholars, you will not speak of the 'Unity' state outside of this courtyard. To the world, the Serpent's Nest was damaged by a formation malfunction. Do I make myself clear?"
The Elders bowed, their faces grim. The scholars hurried to collect their brushes, their minds still reeling from the data they had just witnessed.
Yin Mei turned to Elder Wei Long. "Wei Long, the Serpent's Nest is uninhabitable. Appoint Yin Shen to the Hidden Dragon Faculty. It is a residence equal to the Serpent's Nest, but further removed from the central thoroughfares. I want him in a place where his... 'practice'... does not level the entire Inner Estate before the ceremony."
She then turned back to Yin Shen. She didn't praise him. She didn't smile. She simply looked at him as if he were a weapon she had accidentally unsheathed and now had to figure out how to aim.
"Two days, Yin Shen," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that only he could hear. "The ancestors will see your performance. I only hope for your sake that your soul is as strong as your sword, because if you cannot govern the Ruination you have invited into your heart... it will consume you long before the Stone ever has the chance."
She turned and vanished into a violet blur, heading back toward the Obsidian Hall.
As the crowd began to clear, Yin Shen stood alone amidst the ruins of the pavilion.
He looked at the fissure at his feet, then at the Hidden Dragon Faculty on the map in his mind. He was moving again—deeper into the shadows, and closer to the heart of the family's power.
"Unity level," he murmured, his golden eyes flashing with a sharp, destructive light. "And they're terrified."
He looked at the status screen in his mind. He had 20 System Points left.
---
The morning of the Major Awakening did not break with the warmth of the sun; it began with a heavy, grey solemnity that draped over the Yin Estate like a burial shroud.
The air was thick, charged with static electricity, as if the world itself was holding its breath in anticipation of the verdict that would be delivered deep beneath the earth.
In the master suite of the Hidden Dragon Faculty, Yin Shen stood before a full-length mirror of polished silver. The reflection staring back at him was no longer the boy who had scavenged for scraps in the Desolate Courtyard.
He adjusted the collar of his inner robe—a garment of midnight-black star-silk given to him by Yin Xue. It was cool to the touch, woven with subtle frost-formation threads that helped stabilize body temperature against high-intensity Qi fluctuations.
Over this, he donned a magnificent, floor-length overcoat. This was the gift from Yin Yue. It was a deep, abyss-black fabric, heavy and imposing, but embroidered along the hem and sleeves were roaring golden dragons.
The thread used for the embroidery was spun from the mane of a Golden Sun-Lion, radiating a faint, warm energy that countered the cold of the inner robe.
Together, the garments symbolized the duality of his support system: the Ice Queen's protection and the Fifth Mistress's radiant pride.
"Two days," Yin Shen whispered to the reflection. His golden eyes, now sharpened by the Unity Proficiency of his martial arts and the Level 4 Eye of Insight, seemed to burn with an internal fire. "The time for hiding is over."
A heavy, resonant knock echoed through the faculty. It wasn't the frantic pounding of a servant or the arrogant kick of a sibling. It was a rhythmic, metal-on-metal sound that demanded absolute reverence.
Yin Shen opened the doors.
Waiting in the courtyard were twelve figures clad in armor made of ancient, rusted bronze. They wore full helms that obscured their faces, leaving only darkness where eyes should be. They carried no weapons, yet their very presence warped the light around them.
These were the Honorary Guards of the Ancestral Vault. They answered to no living Elder, not even fully to the Matriarch. They served only the will of the Ancestors and the sanctity of the Bloodline.
"Candidate Yin Shen," the lead guard intoned, his voice resembling grinding stones. "The Hour of the Zenith approaches. The Vault is open. The Ancestors wait."
Yin Shen nodded. He stepped out, his golden-dragon coat billowing behind him like a banner of war. He didn't need to speak. He simply fell into step amidst the formation, allowing the silent sentinels to escort him toward the heart of the family's power.
The procession moved through the Inner Estate, bypassing the training grounds and the gardens. They marched straight to the Grand Hall of Obsidian. Usually, this hall was a place of politics and noise, but today, it was empty of petitioners.
Waiting at the far end, standing before the Silver Serpent Throne, was Matriarch Yin Mei and the remaining four Elders: Feng, Zhao, Han, and Wei. Behind them, the massive stone wall behind the throne—usually a solid slab of reliefs depicting the family history—had split open.
A dark, spiraling staircase—lit only by floating orbs of pale-blue spirit fire—descended into the bowels of the mountain upon which the estate was built.
"You have arrived," Yin Mei said. Her voice was devoid of the cold calculation she usually wore. Today, she wore the heavy ceremonial robes of the High Priestess of the Lineage.
Her expression was solemn, her violet eyes scanning Yin Shen's attire with a flicker of approval. "You look like a son of the Yin."
"I am ready, Matriarch." Yin Shen replied, his voice steady.
"Then we descend." Elder Feng commanded, gesturing to the open passage.
The journey down was a walk through time. The walls were lined with the skulls of spirit beasts slain by the family over the last millennium. The air grew colder, drier, and exponentially heavier. With every hundred steps, the atmospheric pressure increased, a natural defense mechanism to keep the unworthy out.
Finally, the stairs ended as they stepped into a colossal cavern that defied architectural logic.
The Ancestral Vault.
It was a natural geode the size of a city, its walls lined with massive crystals that pulsed with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like light. In the center of the cavern stood a raised dais made of white bone. And upon that dais rested the object of everyone's fear and reverence.
The Major Awakening Stone.
It was a slab of True Primordial Obsidian, standing ten meters tall. Unlike the Minor Stone, this one didn't look polished. It looked raw, jagged, and ancient, as if a piece of the night sky had been ripped down and stabbed into the earth. It absorbed the light around it, creating a localized void in the center of the room.
Surrounding the dais were the spectators. This was not a public viewing. Only the bloodline mattered here.
Yin Jian stood near a pillar, his face pale and sweaty, his eyes darting nervously between the stone and the shadows of the ceiling. Yin Hua stood with her arms crossed, her usual arrogance replaced by a tense rigidity.
Yin Xue and Yin Yue stood together, their expressions a mixture of hope and terrifying anxiety. The Merchant Lords and high-ranking scholars lined the periphery, silent as graves.
But the true audience was not on the floor.
As Yin Shen stepped onto the bone dais, he felt it. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his Chaos Meridian began to vibrate violently.
He looked up.
The ceiling of the cavern was hidden in shadow, but within that darkness, dozens of ethereal, star-like eyes were open.
The Ascended Ones.
These were the ancestors who had broken through the Dao Manifestation Realm and ascended to a higher plane of existence. They were no longer flesh and blood, but spiritual entities that watched over their descendants.
Their gazes were heavy—so heavy that the air around Yin Shen was distorted. It felt as though mountains were being placed on his shoulders, testing his knees, testing his spine.
They were judging him. They were testing his soul.
Yin Shen didn't bow. He didn't cower. He activated [Absolute Domination] internally, not to suppress others, but to reinforce his own existence. He wrapped his soul in the sovereignty of a King and looked up at the darkness, meeting the gaze of the "Gods" with a defiant, golden stare.
'Look all you want,' he thought, his will projecting upward like a spear. 'But do not expect me to kneel.'
A ripple seemed to pass through the darkness above. The crushing pressure eased slightly, replaced by a sensation of intense, ancient curiosity.
"The ritual begins!" Yin Mei's voice boomed, echoing off the crystal walls.
She stepped onto the dais, holding a ceremonial dagger made of meteoric iron. "Yin Shen. You stand before the True Primordial Obsidian. This stone does not merely measure your capacity; it measures your destiny. It looks into the river of time and pulls out the truth of your potential. If you are a demon, it will consume you. If you are a dragon, it will sing for you."
She handed him the dagger. "Blood for the Stone."
Yin Shen took the blade. He walked to the jagged face of the monolith. Up close, the silence of the stone was deafening. It felt like standing at the edge of a black hole.
He didn't hesitate. He slashed his palm, a deep, clean cut.
He pressed his bleeding hand against the cold, rough surface of the True Primordial Obsidian.
The entire cavern went silent. Even the rhythmic pulsing of the crystals in the walls seemed to stop.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Nothing happened. The stone remained dark, inert, and silent.
A murmur began to rise from the back of the room. Yin Jian let out a shaky breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "It... it failed? Is he... is he nothing?"
Yin Hua narrowed her eyes. "No reaction? Even a Low Grade vein gets a flicker. Is he truly devoid of destiny?"
Yin Xue gripped Yue's hand, her knuckles turning white. "Wait," she whispered. "Look at the air."
The air around the stone wasn't still. It was warping. The light was bending toward the monolith, sucked in by a sudden, terrifying increase in gravity.
Then, it began.
HMMMMMMMMMMMM—
A low-frequency vibration started deep within the earth, shaking the teeth of every person in the vault. The Ancestors in the ceiling suddenly flared brighter, their ethereal eyes widening in the spiritual spectrum.
CRACK.
A sound like the breaking of a world's spine echoed.
From the point where Yin Shen's hand touched the stone, a light erupted. It wasn't the gold of a Master, nor the violet of a Supreme. It wasn't even the crimson of an Eternal.
It was a Deep, Abyssal Purple.
A beam of this dark, majestic light shot straight up from the stone, piercing through the darkness of the ceiling, seemingly bypassing the rock and shooting into the cosmos itself. The beam didn't just illuminate the room; it rewrote the atmosphere.
And then, the vision came.
It didn't appear on a screen. It manifested directly in the minds of everyone present—the Matriarch, the Elders, the siblings, and even the Ascended Ancestors watching from above.
[The Soul Vision]
The cavern dissolved. The floor, the walls, the faces of the family—all of it melted away.
They were floating in the Boundless Void. There were no stars here, no galaxies. Only an endless, suffocating darkness that smelled of ancient dust and forgotten eras.
Then, a light appeared in the distance.
It grew rapidly, expanding until it dominated the entire field of vision. It was a Blazing Sun, but it was unlike any star in the mortal universe. It was colossal—a hyper-giant that dwarfed countless universes combined.
Its flames were not orange or yellow; they were a chaotic mix of violet, gold, and silver.
As the vision zoomed in, the spectators realized with horror that the sun wasn't just burning fuel. It was burning reality.
Timelines, visible as shimmering threads of light, were being pulled into the sun's gravity well and melted down into raw energy. Space itself was cracking around the star, the fabric of the dimension peeling away like burnt paper.
The heat was palpable. Even in the vision, the Elders felt their souls searing. Yin Jian fell to his knees, screaming silently as his mind struggled to comprehend the scale of the destruction. Yin Mei stood frozen, her Soul Transformation cultivation feeling like a speck of dust before this cosmic furnace.
But the sun... was not the terrifying part.
Behind the sun, looming in the deep abyss of the background, something opened.
It was an eye.
A pair of Obsidian Eyes, feminine in shape but cosmic in scale, opened in the darkness beyond the blazing star. They were so large that the universe-melting sun looked like a mere pupil within them.
The stare was indifferent. It was ancient. It was a stare that pierced through the layers of the vision, through the stone, and straight into the souls of the Yin Family.
It was the gaze of an Entity that viewed "Gods" the way humans viewed bacteria.
High above in the Ancestral Vault, the spiritual projection of the Ascended Ancestors recoiled. Their ethereal forms flickered violently, terrified.
They, who had ascended to higher realms, who thought they understood the Dao, realized in that moment that they knew nothing. They were looking at a power that predated the concept of "cultivation" itself.
The feminine gaze shifted slightly, focusing on the tiny, silver-haired figure of Yin Shen standing at the base of the sun in the vision.
A whisper echoed through the minds of everyone present—a voice that sounded like the friction of galaxies grinding together.
"Found... you."
[End of Vision]
SNAP.
Reality crashed back into the Ancestral Vault with the force of a hammer blow. The Deep Purple beam vanished instantly. The darkness of the Void retreated, replaced by the crystal-lined walls of the cavern.
But the silence that remained was absolute.
Yin Shen stood with his hand still on the stone, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon. He withdrew his hand slowly.
The True Primordial Obsidian, which had stood for ten thousand years, was now smoking, steam rising from its surface as if it had been superheated.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Yin Jian was curled in a fetal position on the floor, weeping silently from the sheer existential terror of the vision.
Yin Hua was staring at Yin Shen with a look of pure, unadulterated horror, her hands clutching her chest.
Yin Xue and Yin Yue were holding each other, their faces pale, their minds struggling to process the image of the "Obsidian Gaze."
Even Matriarch Yin Mei was trembling. She gripped her ceremonial dagger so hard that blood ran down her hand, but she didn't seem to notice. She looked at her son—the "Trash" she had ignored—and saw the shadow of that Blazing Sun behind him.
The Ancestors in the ceiling had gone silent. They had closed their eyes, retreating from the connection, terrified that if they looked too long, the Entity from the Abyss would look back.
Yin Shen turned slowly to face the assembly. His golden eyes were calm, but deep within them, the chaotic violet light of the vision lingered.
"The Stone has spoken," Yin Shen said, his voice breaking the silence like a thunderclap.
He looked at the trembling Council, at the terrified siblings, and finally at his mother.
"Well?" he asked, a faint, chilling smile touching his lips. "Am I a demon, Matriarch? Or am I simply... something else?"
---