The walkway suspended over the abyss wasn't made of stone. It was bone—massive, fused vertebrae of some leviathan that had died before the mountain was named.
Yang Yi walked across it. The heat radiating from the colossal heart below wasn't just temperature; it was pressure. It pushed against his eardrums, a subsonic throb that synced with the Dragon Transformation Token at his hip.
Thump... Thump...
Every beat sent a pulse of crimson light racing up the crystal tubes, feeding the floating paradise above.
"Don't touch the tubes directly," Elder Mo called out, leaning on the railing behind them. His blind eyes tracked the flow of energy. "That's raw, unfiltered Yang essence. It will vaporize your arm before your brain registers the burn."
Yang Yi stopped at the primary junction. A massive crystal collar diverted the flow into three main arteries.
"The aorta," Lin whispered. She stood ten feet back, her ice aura flaring just to keep her skin from blistering. "If we break this, the backlash..."
"The backlash goes up," Yang Yi said. He looked at the ceiling, where the tubes disappeared into the rock. "Gravity pulls the liquid down, but the pressure pushes it up. We need to cap it."
He turned to Zhang.
"The charges."
Zhang unslung his pack. He pulled out the modified Basilisk acid grenades, now wrapped in clay and studded with iron shrapnel. His hands shook slightly. Even with his metal skin, the sheer scale of the power in this room terrified him.
"Where do you want them, Boss?"
"On the collar. Weak points. The joints."
Zhang moved to work, packing the clay explosives around the base of the crystal tubes.
Yang Yi looked at the pods attached to the heart. Hundreds of withered figures, trapped in a nightmare sleep, filtering the poison so the elites could cultivate in purity.
He saw a face he recognized. A boy from the entrance exam two years ago. He had been full of hope. Now he was a husk, his skin translucent, veins pulsing with red light.
"Mercy," Yang Yi muttered.
He raised the Thunder Drake sword.
"Mo. How do we stop the heart without killing the host?"
"You don't," Mo cackled softly. "The heart is the mountain. You stop it, the mountain dies. The arrays collapse. The floating islands fall out of the sky."
"I don't want to destroy the sect," Yang Yi said, testing the edge of his blade against his thumb. "I want to evict the tenants."
Zhang finished setting the charges. He scrambled back, trailing a fuse line made of oil-soaked rope.
"Ready!"
Yang Yi nodded to Lin.
"Freeze the collar. Make it brittle."
Lin stepped forward. She placed her hands on the air, pushing her cultivation to the limit.
"Absolute Zero."
A beam of white cold struck the crystal collar. The heat of the chamber fought it, steam exploding in hissing clouds. But Lin pushed harder, her hair turning white, frost creeping up her arms.
The red liquid inside the tubes slowed. The crystal groaned, contracting. Spiderweb cracks appeared on the surface.
"Now!" Yang Yi roared.
He channeled his chaotic Chimera qi into the Thunder Drake sword. The red lightning arc'd, hungry and violent.
He swung.
Strike of the Chimera.
The blade hit the frozen crystal.
CRACK.
The sound was like a glacier calving. The crystal collar shattered.
At the same moment, Zhang lit the fuse.
BOOM.
The acid grenades detonated. The shrapnel chewed through the weakened structure.
The arteries severed.
It wasn't a leak. It was a geyser.
Liquid red light erupted from the break. The pressure was immense. It sprayed upward, hitting the ceiling and raining down like napalm.
"Back!" Mo shouted, his voice cutting through the roar.
They scrambled back along the bone walkway.
The energy didn't just fall. It flooded the chamber. The tubes leading up to the surface went dark, drained of their flow.
But the heart kept beating. It pumped more fluid into the broken junction. The chamber began to fill with a glowing, red fog.
Yang Yi stopped at the door. He looked back.
The liquid light splashed over the pods.
For a second, he thought they would burn.
But the energy was raw. Unfiltered.
The husks in the pods twitched. Eyes snapped open. Hundreds of them. Not the eyes of cultivators, but the eyes of addicts receiving a massive, fatal overdose.
They screamed. A chorus of agony and power that shook the obsidian walls.
"They're waking up," Lin gasped, horror in her voice. "But their minds are gone."
"Leave them," Mo ordered, pulling at Yang Yi's sleeve. "The chamber is sealing. The failsafes are engaging."
The massive bronze door began to grind shut. The dragon carving writhed, sensing the breach.
Yang Yi stepped out.
The door slammed shut, sealing the scream and the red light behind feet of metal.
The mine shaft shook. Dust rained from the ceiling.
"It's done," Yang Yi said, breathing hard. The air in the tunnel felt suddenly cold, bereft of the heart's leakage.
"The flow is cut," Mo agreed, leaning against the wall, a cruel smile on his face. "Now watch the lights go out."
The Inner Sect. The Azure Cloud Pavilion.
Elder Zhou sat in his meditation chamber, floating on a cushion of pure qi. He inhaled, drawing in the ambient energy from the array.
It tasted sweet. Pure.
Then, it stopped.
It didn't fade. It vanished. Like a candle snuffed in a vacuum.
Elder Zhou opened his eyes. He fell three feet, hitting the floor hard.
"What?"
The lights in the pavilion flickered and died. The glowing runes on the walls dimmed to gray stone.
He rushed to the balcony.
Below him, the Outer Sect was dark as usual. But above...
The floating islands were drifting. Without the updraft of the Dragon Heart's energy, the levitation arrays were failing.
Panic erupted across the mountain. Screams. Shouts. Cultivators on flying swords dipped and wavered as the atmospheric qi density plummeted.
"The source!" someone screamed. "The source has gone dry!"
Elder Zhou looked down. Not at the islands, but at the foot of the mountain.
At the Dregs.
A single pillar of red light shot up from a ventilation shaft in Block 9. It pierced the smog, a defiant, middle finger of energy.
"They didn't break it," Zhou whispered, his face turning pale. "They stole it."
The Dregs. Block 9.
The ground rumbled.
The ventilation shaft Yang Yi had used to escape the boiler room—the one connected to the deep mines—suddenly roared.
A jet of red steam shot into the sky.
It wasn't smoke. It was the vented pressure from the heart chamber, redirected by the explosion.
It rained down on Block 9.
But it wasn't burning. It was cooling as it fell, turning into a fine, red mist.
Disciples in the streets looked up. The mist touched their skin.
Fatigue vanished. Old injuries throbbed and healed. Qi reserves refilled instantly.
"It's... it's pure essence!" a Centipede thug shouted, licking the rain from his lips.
Yang Yi stepped out of the mine lift. He walked into the square, bathed in the red rain.
His gray scales soaked up the energy. The hunger in his gut settled, purring.
He looked up at the darkened peak of the Inner Sect.
"They have the height," Yang Yi announced to the gathering Pack. "But we have the heat."
Iron Hand Zhang held out his hands. The metal skin on his arms glowed cherry red, absorbing the fallout. "Boss... I feel strong. Like I could punch through a mountain."
"Hold that thought," Yang Yi said.
He walked to the center of the square. He stabbed the Thunder Drake sword into the mud.
The blade acted as a lightning rod. It drew the ambient red mist, grounding it. The mud around the sword dried, cracked, and turned into red crystal.
"We just declared war," Yang Yi said. "The Elders will come. Not with rules, but with armies."
He turned to Mo.
"How long do we have?"
Mo sat on a crate, turning his face to the red rain. "The levitation arrays have reserve power for three days. They won't risk a full assault until they stabilize the islands. If the islands fall, the sect is destroyed."
"Three days," Yang Yi nodded.
He looked at Lin.
"Liu Feng needs to ramp up production. I want every man in the Dregs armed with acid and shields. And I want the miners to dig."
"Dig where?" Lin asked.
"Up," Yang Yi pointed to the sky. "We cut their legs. Now we go for the throat."
He turned to the darkness of the alleys.
"And send a message to the other blocks. The Rat, the Ox, the Tiger sectors. Tell them the tax collectors are gone. Tell them the energy is free in Block 9. Tell them if they want to live, they join the Pack."
"You're building an army of trash," Mo chuckled.
"No," Yang Yi said, his golden eyes burning. "I'm building a landslide."
Day 1 of the Siege.
The migration began at dawn.
They came from the sewers, from the slums, from the forgotten corners of the Outer Sect. Disciples who had been starving for years saw the red pillar of light and smelled the energy.
They flooded Block 9.
Yang Yi didn't turn them away. He processed them.
"Can you fight?" Zhang would ask at the gate.
"No."
"Can you dig?"
"Yes."
"Grab a shovel. Line B."
The population of Block 9 tripled in twenty-four hours. The ravine was filled with tents. The forge fires burned non-stop, fueled by the limitless energy venting from the mine shaft.
Yang Yi stood in his command hut, watching the chaos.
His body was changing again. The constant exposure to the raw Heart energy was accelerating the assimilation. The gray scales were thickening, becoming darker. His height had increased by two inches. His density was becoming a problem; he had to walk carefully to avoid crushing the floorboards.
"You need to vent," Mo said. The old man was meditating in the corner, surrounded by a circle of ancient scrolls he had pulled from his robes.
"I'm fine."
"You're leaking killing intent like a broken pipe. The Chimera is gorging itself. You need to focus the energy, or you'll explode."
Mo tossed a scroll to him.
The Void-Iron Body.
"It's a defensive technique," Mo said. "Uses density to create gravity fields. Perfect for someone who weighs as much as a statue."
Yang Yi opened the scroll. It was complex. Mathematical.
"I don't have time to study."
"You have nothing but time until the islands stabilize. Learn it. Or the first Elder who lands here will turn you into a paperweight."
Yang Yi sat down. He forced his mind to focus.
The Wolf wanted to hunt. The Rat wanted to hoard the people. The Basilisk wanted to sleep in the red rain.
Cage them, Yang Yi thought.
He visualized the Thunder Drake sword. A lightning rod in his mind. He anchored the beast instincts to the sword.
He began to read.
Day 2.
The first probe arrived.
Not an army. A single assassin.
A Shadow Dancer from the Inner Sect. He slipped past the Centipede perimeter at midnight. He moved like smoke, silencing the guards with needles to the brain before they could scream.
He reached the command hut.
He slipped through the window.
He saw Yang Yi sleeping on the mat.
The assassin smiled. He raised a dagger coated in Spirit-Severing poison.
He struck.
CLANG.
The dagger didn't hit flesh. It stopped an inch from Yang Yi's chest.
It hung in the air, vibrating.
Yang Yi opened his gold eyes.
"Gravity," he whispered.
The Void-Iron Body technique. He had increased the density of the air around his skin to the point where it became a solid wall.
The assassin's eyes widened. He tried to pull the dagger back.
He couldn't. The gravity field held it.
Yang Yi sat up. The motion was slow, heavy.
"You're in my orbit."
He reached out.
The assassin tried to use a smoke bomb. He threw it.
The smoke didn't expand. It fell straight to the floor, crushed by the intense gravity in the room.
Yang Yi grabbed the assassin's wrist.
"Who sent you?"
The assassin bit down on a pill in his tooth. Suicide.
Yang Yi didn't let him die. He squeezed the wrist.
CRUNCH.
Pain overrode the suicide command. The assassin screamed, spitting out the pill.
"The... The Thunder Sect!" the assassin gasped. "They want the sword!"
"Tell them," Yang Yi said, twisting the broken arm, "that if they want it, they have to come down to the mud and take it."
He threw the assassin out the window.
The man flew, hitting the mud outside with a wet thud.
Yang Yi stood up. He felt the gravity field ripple around him, distorting the light.
"It works," he muttered.
Day 3.
The sky cleared.
The floating islands stopped drifting. The Inner Sect had stabilized the arrays using their reserve stockpiles.
The silence ended.
War drums echoed from the peak.
Yang Yi walked out into the square. The Pack was assembled. Five hundred men and women. Armed with scrap metal, acid grenades, and despair turned into rage.
Above them, the clouds parted.
A fleet of flying ships descended. Not the small skiffs used for transport. War barges. Armored in gold, bristling with ballistae and cannons.
On the lead ship, a man in purple robes stood on the prow. An Elder.
His voice boomed like thunder.
"Outer Disciples! You have harbored a traitor and stolen the sect's lifeblood. Surrender the insurgent Yang Yi, or be purged!"
The Pack looked at the ships. Then they looked at Yang Yi.
Yang Yi didn't look at the ships. He looked at the ground. At the red crystal formation around his sword.
He pulled the sword free.
Red lightning crackled, mixing with the gravity field.
"Purge?" Yang Yi laughed. It was a deep, subsonic rumble that shook the teeth of everyone in the square.
He pointed the sword at the lead ship.
"Zhang! The battery!"
Zhang and ten men ran to a covered wagon. They whipped off the tarp.
It wasn't a ballista.
It was a massive, jury-rigged cannon made from the severed crystal tubing of the mine, reinforced with iron bands. It was loaded with a canister of pure, unstable Basilisk acid and powered by a cluster of Explosive Blood Pills.
"Fire!"
Zhang slammed a hammer onto the firing pin.
BOOM.
The cannon roared. The recoil drove the wheels two feet into the ground.
A glob of glowing green sludge the size of a barrel shot into the sky.
It hit the lead ship's energy shield.
The shield was designed to stop qi attacks. It wasn't designed to stop chemical corrosion.
The acid splashed. It ate through the shield in seconds. It hit the gold hull.
The wood dissolved. The metal melted.
The ship groaned. The front half sheared off.
Disciples screamed as they fell from the sky.
"Welcome to the Dregs!" Yang Yi roared. "Here, we play dirty!"
The siege had officially begun.