Elder Gan had barely finished announcing the rankings when the Clan Master rose from his seat.
The murmuring crowd went silent immediately.
Dugu Han stood there for a moment, letting the weight of his presence settle over the gathering grounds. When he spoke, his voice carried effortlessly across the courtyard, "Before we conclude today's glorious gathering, I have an announcement."
Long Chen's exhausted mind barely registered the words. His body screamed for rest. Every muscle ached, his qi reserves sat at maybe ten percent. The soul attack from Lian had left his consciousness feeling like frayed rope.
He just wanted to sleep.
"The Immortal Sword Sect's entrance examination," the Clan Master continued, "has been extended by four days. It will now take place in one week instead of three days."
That got people's attention. Whispers rippled through the stands.
"Furthermore," Dugu Han's expression shifted slightly, "it will no longer be an individual sect recruitment. The examination has been changed to a joint assessment."
The whispers grew to raised voices, shouts from every angle.
"Joint?"
"Which sects?"
"How many?"
The Clan Master raised a hand. Silence fell again. "Five major sects will be participating. The Immortal Sword Sect, the Azure Bodhi Monastery, the Crimson Flame Palace, the Thousand Beast Valley, and the Glacial Moon Pavilion."
Long Chen's tired mind processed that slowly. Five sects. That meant five times the competition. Five times the pressure.
'Great,' he thought distantly. 'Just what I needed.'
"This is an unprecedented opportunity," the Clan Master said, his eyes sweeping across the crowd. "To be selected by any of these sects would bring honor to our clan. To be selected by multiple sects..." He smiled faintly. "That would be legendary."
His gaze lingered on Dugu Jian for a moment. Then, briefly, on Long Chen.
"The examination will test combat ability, cultivation talent, comprehension, and character. Prepare well. You have one week."
He sat down and the gathering was dismissed.
The crowd erupted into chaos. Disciples clustered together immediately, voices overlapping in excited speculation. Servants rushed to spread the news to those who hadn't attended. Even the elders talked amongst themselves in hushed, urgent tones.
But underneath all the noise about the examination, another conversation was happening.
"Did you see Long Chen's technique?"
"That attack could've killed Foundation Establishment cultivators."
"And his martial spirit—whatever that was—it felt like the sky was falling."
"Two geniuses in one generation. Jian with his Sword Intent and Long Chen with... whatever he is."
"The clan's fortune is rising."
Long Chen heard fragments of it as he walked through the dispersing crowd. People stared. Some with awe, some with envy. A few with barely concealed hatred.
He ignored them all.
Zhang Wei's broken body had already been carried away. Dugu Shenlie was probably in the medical pavilion, screaming as healers tried to salvage what was left of his shattered cultivation.
Long Chen felt nothing about that, just exhaustion.
By the time he reached his quarters, his legs were barely holding him upright. He pushed the door open, stumbled inside, and collapsed onto the straw mat without bothering to remove Demon Dweller or Dragonfang.
The world went dark before his head hit the pillow.
The dream started without warning.
One moment, he was having a blissful sleep. Next, Long Chen found himself in the middle of a battlefield.
Corpses stretched in every direction. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. Bodies, some humans, some of different races piled so high in some places they formed hills of rotting flesh and shattered armor. The sky above was black, choked with smoke that smelled like burning hair and copper.
Blood soaked the ground. Not puddles, an ocean of it. Red and sticky and still warm.
Long Chen's breath caught. 'Where—'
Then he saw it.
In the distance, rising from the center of the carnage, was a sword.
It was massive. Easily a hundred meters tall, maybe more, its blade buried deep in the earth. The metal gleamed dull silver, covered in dried blood that looked centuries old.
And surrounding it, coiling around the blade like a living thing, was black mist.
It pulsed, breathed and moved with intention.
Long Chen took a step back instinctively, his heart hammered in his chest. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get away, to wake up—
The killing intent hit him like a physical blow.
It crashed over him in waves, suffocating and absolute. The intent to kill. To slaughter. To destroy everything that lived and breathed. It pressed against his mind, his soul, his very existence.
His vision blurred. Red crept in from the edges.
'No. No, this isn't—'
The mist around the sword thickened. Condensed. Shapes formed within it—faces twisted in agony, hands reaching out, mouths open in silent screams.
Long Chen's hands trembled. His breathing turned ragged. The killing intent burrowed deeper, sinking into his thoughts like poison.
Kill.
The word echoed in his skull.
Kill them all.
Everyone.
Everything.
Paint the world red.
Long Chen's eyes burned. His vision shifted, colors draining away until everything looked gray except for one thing.
Blood. Blood was still red, vibrant. Beautiful.
His fingers twitched toward Demon Dweller's hilt. But he could not find it by his side
Then the sword spoke.
**"RELEASE ME!"**
The roar shook the entire battlefield. Corpses rattled. The ground cracked. The black mist exploded outward in all directions, and from within it, something emerged.
A claw.
It was massive. Formed entirely from condensed killing intent and writhing darkness. It stretched toward Long Chen, fingers as long as tree trunks, nails like blades.
Long Chen couldn't move. His body was frozen. The killing intent had sunk too deep. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs wouldn't obey.
The claw reached for him.
Ten meters away.
Five.
Three.
Its fingers opened, ready to grab him, to pull him into that black mist, to drown him in centuries of accumulated slaughter—
Golden light exploded behind Long Chen.
A roar answered the sword's command. It didn't sound human or anything mortal.
The Celestial Dragon martial spirit manifested.
This time, it wasn't just a silhouette. It was real. Fully formed. Scales that glittered like stars covered its massive body. Eyes that burned gold, ancient and furious.
It was huge. Almost as large as the sword itself.
The dragon's roar shook the dreamscape harder than the sword's command had. The sound carried weight, authority, the fury of something that had ruled the heavens long before mortals learned to hold weapons.
The claw stopped.
Just stopped. Frozen mid-reach.
The dragon coiled around Long Chen, its massive body forming a barrier between him and the sword. Golden light pushed back the black mist, burning it away like fog under sunlight.
The killing intent shattered.
The pressure lifted.
Long Chen gasped, air rushing back into his lungs.
The sword's presence recoiled, the black mist retreating, pulling back toward the blade. For just a moment, he thought he saw something within the darkness. Eyes. Red and hateful.
Then the dragon roared again.
The entire dream cracked. Fissures spread across the battlefield like breaking glass. The sky split. The corpses dissolved. And the sword began to fade.
**"This prison... cannot... hold me... forever..."**
The voice was distant now. Weak.
The dream shattered completely.
Long Chen's eyes snapped open.
He shot upright, gasping, drenched in cold sweat. His heart hammered so hard he thought his ribs might crack. His hands shook violently.
The room spun for a moment before settling. He was in his quarters. The same small space. The cracked window showing pale morning light.
He was back.
Long Chen's hand went immediately to Demon Dweller's hilt.
The sword was still there, wrapped in its frayed sheath, hanging at his waist. He hadn't removed it before passing out.
He stared at it for a long moment. The cursed blade. Seven masters dead. And every single one of them had probably had dreams like that.
'The sword,' he thought, his breathing still ragged. 'That wasn't just a nightmare. That was real. Or... something in between.'
His dragon bloodline had protected him. Shattered the dream before it could consume him completely. But the killing intent he'd felt... that had been genuine. Ancient. Accumulated over centuries.
'Demon Dweller isn't just cursed. There's something sealed inside it.'
He looked down at his hands. They were still shaking.
For a moment—just a moment—when the killing intent had peaked, he'd wanted to draw the blade. He'd wanted to kill. The urge had been so strong it had felt natural and he enjoyed that sensation.
That terrified him more than the dream itself.
Long Chen forced himself to stand. His body still ached, but the sleep had helped. His qi reserves had recovered to maybe forty percent. Not great, but functional.
He walked to the small basin in the corner and splashed cold water on his face. The shock of it helped clear his head.
'Paranoia,' he told himself, though he didn't believe it. 'Just stress from the gathering. The soul attack probably scrambled my brain a bit.'
But even as he thought it, he knew that wasn't the whole truth.
Something in Demon Dweller was waking up. And his dragon bloodline was the only thing keeping it contained.
'I need to get stronger. Fast.'
The sect examination was in one week. Joint recruitment meant the competition would be brutal. Five major sects watching. Hundreds of geniuses from across the region competing for limited spots.
And Long Chen had just painted a massive target on his back by demonstrating Sword Aura and revealing his martial spirit at the gathering.
People would come for him. Rivals. Enemies. Maybe even assassins if Shenlie's family decided to retaliate.
He couldn't afford to waste time.
Long Chen looked at the rewards he'd received from the gathering. They sat on the small table near his mat—five Foundation Establishment Pills in a jade bottle, a token granting access to the third floor of the Martial Pavilion, and a jade slip with his week-long pass to the Spirit Spring.
The Spirit Spring was the clan's most valuable cultivation resource. A natural formation where spiritual energy pooled so densely it turned liquid. One week of cultivation there was worth months of normal practice.
The Foundation Establishment Pills would help him break through when he reached the peak of Qi Gathering Realm. Each pill was worth a fortune—enough to buy a small estate in the mortal world.
And the Martial Pavilion's third floor held King-ranked techniques. Far beyond anything he'd had access to before.
'One week,' Long Chen thought, gripping the jade slip. 'Seven days to prepare for whatever's coming.'
The dream still lingered at the edges of his mind. The black mist, the killing intent. The voice promising it couldn't be held forever.
But he pushed it down, burying it. There would be time to worry about cursed swords later.
Right now, he had work to do.
The sect examination was in one week. Joint recruitment meant the competition would be brutal. Five major sects watching. Hundreds of geniuses from across the region competing for limited spots.
He couldn't afford to waste a single moment of his rewards.
Long Chen strapped Demon Dweller properly to his waist, checked that Dragonfang was secure on his back, and grabbed the jade bottle containing the pills.
He had preparations to make.