The sky didn't scream before it fell. It simply parted, sliced open by a silent, descending pressure that turned the smog into a vacuum.
Yang Yi sat on the roof of the captured Viper penthouse, his legs dangling over the edge. The stone-hard calcification in his shins made them heavy, anchoring him against the sudden downdraft. He felt it before he saw it—the pricking of his skin, the fine hairs on his arms standing up, the Wolf essence in his liver whimpering like a kicked dog.
"Incoming."
He didn't shout. He didn't need to. The air pressure did the talking for him.
A streak of azure light tore through the clouds. It wasn't a lightning bolt. It was a sword, twenty feet long, formed of pure, condensed qi.
It slammed into the courtyard below, right in the middle of the Pack's celebration.
BOOM.
The impact didn't scatter dirt; it vaporized it. The shockwave flattened the nearby shacks. Men who had been cheering moments ago were thrown like ragdolls against the stone walls of the alley. The bonfire was extinguished instantly, replaced by a crater of glowing, molten glass.
Silence swallowed the Dregs. A ringing, high-pitched silence that tasted of ozone and terror.
Yang Yi stood up. His joints clicked—a heavy, grinding sound of bone rubbing against calcified bone. He looked down into the crater.
A figure hovered above the destruction. He stood on a real sword, a sleek blade of frost-white steel. He wore the azure and white robes of the Inner Sect, pristine and untouched by the filth of the slums. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression one of mild boredom, as if he were inspecting a colony of ants.
"Filth," the newcomer said. His voice wasn't loud, yet it resonated in every ear, bypassing the eardrums to vibrate directly in the skull. "I was told a Seed had sprouted here. I see only weeds."
Lin scrambled onto the roof beside Yang Yi. She held a jar of healing salve, her face pale. She looked at the floating figure and froze.
"Core Disciple," she whispered, the words trembling. "That's the crest of the Azure Sky Hall. He's... he's Foundation Establishment stage. At least."
Yang Yi cracked his neck. The poison he had imbibed earlier—Liu Feng's suicide cocktail—ran cold in his veins, suppressing the fear response. His heart beat slowly, a rhythmic thud like a reptilian drum.
"He's not a god, Lin. He's just a man standing on a stick."
"He can kill us with a thought, Yang!"
"Then he should have thought harder."
Yang Yi stepped off the ledge.
He didn't use a technique to slow his fall. He dropped like a stone, the weight of his modified bones accelerating his descent. He landed in the courtyard, ten feet from the floating disciple.
CRASH.
The cobblestones shattered under his boots. Dust billowed up. Yang Yi straightened, dusting off his gray-skinned forearms. His vertical pupils locked onto the disciple's eyes.
The disciple drifted lower, stopping five feet above the ground. He looked at Yang Yi—at the gray skin, the unnatural stillness, the aura that smelled of sewer rot and apex predators.
"You," the disciple noted, a flicker of interest in his eyes. "You survived the pressure. And you smell... complicated."
"I took a bath." Yang Yi flexed his fingers. The fingernails were black, hard as iron. "You broke my street. Repairs are expensive."
The disciple laughed. It was a melodic, cruel sound. "I am Luo Bing. I don't pay for repairs. I pay for talent. The Elders sensed a disturbance. A fluctuation of beast qi and forbidden alchemy. They sent me to cull the herd."
Luo Bing raised a finger. The floating sword beneath him hummed.
"Survive three moves. If you live, you are a Seed. If you die, you are fertilizer."
He didn't wait for agreement. He flicked his finger.
First Move: Azure Rain.
The air above Yang Yi shimmered. Dozens of small, needle-like swords materialized from thin air. They weren't illusions; they were solidified qi, sharp enough to punch through steel plate.
They rained down.
"Shields!" Yang Yi roared.
He didn't dodge. He grabbed a heavy iron grate from a collapsed sewer drain nearby—a remnant of the earlier battle. He swung it overhead.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.
The qi needles hammered the grate. Sparks showered down. The iron bent, groaned, and began to shred.
Yang Yi felt the impact travel down his arms. His calcified bones held, but his muscles screamed. The sheer weight of the attack drove his feet into the mud, burying him to the ankles.
A needle punched through the grate. It struck his shoulder.
It didn't pierce. It glanced off his gray skin, leaving a white scratch. The Bone-Hardening Paste combined with the Wolf's Endurance created a natural armor that rivaled low-grade artifacts.
Luo Bing raised an eyebrow. "Hard skin. Crude, but effective. Let's try something sharper."
Second Move: Severing Wind.
He swept his hand horizontally. A crescent moon of wind qi slashed out. It was fast—too fast to block with the shredded grate.
Yang Yi dropped the iron. He dropped his body.
The wind blade sliced through the air where his chest had been. It continued behind him, slicing through three stone pillars supporting a tenement building. The building groaned and began to sag.
Yang Yi didn't stay on the defensive. The Wolf demanded a counterattack. The Rat saw the opening.
He exploded from his crouch. The Rat's Scuttle gave him a burst of erratic, explosive speed. He closed the distance in a blink.
He couldn't fly, but he could jump.
He launched himself at Luo Bing.
Luo Bing sneered. "Predictable."
He rose higher, drifting out of reach.
But Yang Yi wasn't aiming for the man. He was aiming for the sword.
He threw a handful of powder. It wasn't a weapon; it was the Explosive Blood Pill he had crushed into dust.
The red dust hit the energy field surrounding the flying sword.
BOOM.
The microscopic explosions destabilized the qi flow. The sword wobbled, dipping violently.
Luo Bing stumbled in the air, losing his perfect balance. "You dare—!"
Yang Yi landed back on the ground. He didn't wait. He grabbed a length of chain from a fallen Centipede thug.
He spun the chain.
"Get down here!"
He threw it. The chain wrapped around the tip of the wobbling sword.
Yang Yi pulled. He put his back into it, channeling the beast strength, the stone weight, the poison fury.
Luo Bing fought the pull, his face twisting in anger. "Filthy insect!"
He channeled his qi into the sword to shake off the chain.
Yang Yi grinned. His teeth were stained purple from the poison cocktail.
"Viper!" he yelled.
From the shadows of the ruined buildings, the Vipers emerged. They didn't attack directly. They blew their darts. Not at Luo Bing—his aura would deflect them—but at the chain.
The darts shattered on the metal links, coating the chain in green oil.
Yang Yi vibrated his qi. He sent a pulse up the chain. The oil vaporized into a cloud right under Luo Bing's nose.
It wasn't enough to kill a cultivator of his level, but the sudden cloud of neurotoxin forced him to hold his breath, breaking his concentration.
The sword dipped again.
Yang Yi hauled on the chain.
Luo Bing fell.
He didn't hit the ground; he recovered ten feet up, jumping off his sword to land gracefully on a rooftop. But he was grounded. His pristine boots touched the dirty tiles of the Outer Sect.
The flying sword remained trapped in Yang Yi's chain. Yang Yi slammed it into the mud, pinning it with his stone-heavy foot.
Luo Bing stared at his weapon, pinned in the filth. His face went from bored to murderous.
"You touched my blade with your sewer hands."
"I'll melt it down for scrap if you don't start talking sense," Yang Yi growled. He stood on the blade, feeling the hum of the high-grade steel vibrating through his boots.
Luo Bing's killing intent flared. The temperature in the courtyard dropped twenty degrees.
"Third Move," Luo Bing whispered. "Heart Piercer."
He didn't need the sword. He formed his hand into a blade. Pure, condensed energy gathered at his fingertips, shining like a miniature star.
This was it. A technique that ignored armor. It targeted the life force directly.
Yang Yi felt the threat. The Dragon Token at his hip burned hot, screaming danger. The Wolf wanted to run. The Rat wanted to burrow.
Yang Yi ignored them. He tapped into the cold, sluggish Venom Blood.
He reached into his tunic. He didn't pull a weapon. He pulled the Myriad Beast Assimilation Record.
He held it up, displaying the gray skin binding.
Luo Bing froze. The light at his fingertips wavered.
"That..." Luo Bing's eyes widened. "That's from the Forbidden Archive. The Skinner's Manual."
"I know," Yang Yi said. "And I know what happens if the Sect Elders find out a Core Disciple let a sewer rat steal it on his watch."
It was a gamble. A massive bluff. Yang Yi was betting that Luo Bing was responsible for the sector's security, or at least that the shame of losing such an item would be worse than the glory of killing a thief.
Luo Bing lowered his hand. The killing intent didn't vanish, but it changed flavor. From executioner to conspirator.
"You threaten me with your own death warrant?"
"I threaten you with mutual destruction," Yang Yi said. "You kill me, the book is found on my corpse. The Elders investigate. They ask how I got it. They look at the logs. They look at you."
Luo Bing stared at him. Seconds ticked by, heavy as lead.
Then, the disciple laughed. It was a cold, dry sound.
"Audacious. Stupid. But audacious."
He waved his hand. The flying sword under Yang Yi's foot pulsed, throwing Yang Yi off. It flew back to Luo Bing's side, hovering obediently.
"You passed the test. Not because of your strength—which is crude—but because of your gall."
Luo Bing stepped onto his sword. He rose into the air, looking down at the devastation.
"The Sect is hosting the Dragon's Crucible in one month. A tournament for the Outer Disciples. The winner gets entry to the Inner Sect."
He tossed a token down. It was made of blue jade, carved with a single sword.
Yang Yi caught it.
"Bring the book," Luo Bing said. "If you win, you return it to me personally, and I grant you protection. If you lose... well, I'll peel the skin from your bones myself."
"And if I don't show up?"
"Then I burn this entire sector to ash. Starting with your little girlfriend."
Luo Bing glanced at Lin, who was still crouching on the roof. Then, without another word, he shot into the sky, a streak of azure light vanishing into the clouds.
Yang Yi stood in the mud, clutching the jade token. The adrenaline crash hit him all at once. The Bone-Hardening Paste throbbed. The poison blood made his stomach cramp.
Iron Hand Zhang hobbled out from behind a pile of rubble. He looked at the crater, then at Yang Yi.
"You fought a Core Disciple. And he left."
"He didn't leave, Zhang. He invested."
Yang Yi turned to the gathered men. They were battered, bloody, pulled from the rubble of their homes. They looked at him not just with fear now, but with fanaticism. He had grounded a god.
"Clear the debris!" Yang Yi barked. "We have work to do. We build better walls. We forge better weapons."
He limped toward the command hut. Lin jumped down and intercepted him.
"You played with fire," she hissed, checking his eyes for signs of madness. "Blackmail? He'll kill you the moment he has the book."
"One month," Yang Yi said, leaning heavily on her shoulder. "We have one month to become strong enough that he can't kill us."
They entered the hut. Yang Yi collapsed onto his mat. The Myriad Beast Assimilation Record felt hot against his chest.
He opened it to a marked page. A diagram of a creature with scales of iron and blood of acid.
The Basilisk.
"Liu Feng," he called out, his voice rasping.
The alchemist appeared from the back room, looking terrified.
"Yes, Boss?"
"The poison I drank... it was a good start. But it's too passive."
Yang Yi tapped the diagram.
"I need to hunt. Find me the location of a Basilisk. The sewers... deep down... there has to be one."
Liu Feng turned pale. "A Basilisk turn things to stone with its gaze. You want to hunt that?"
"I don't want to hunt it," Yang Yi said, closing his eyes as the pain of his transformation took hold. "I want to become it."
The Dragon Transformation Token pulsed. It was hungry. The Sect wanted a dragon? He would give them a nightmare instead.
"Get out. Everyone."
The room cleared. Yang Yi lay alone in the dark. He could feel his body changing. The gray skin was spreading. His bones were knitting denser. He was losing his humanity, piece by piece, trading it for the strength to survive.
He looked at his hand. The fingers flexed, claws scraping the wood.
"One month," he whispered to the silence.
He closed his fist, crushing the jade token until it cracked.
"Let the games begin."