Grandmaster Wei knelt on the polished jade floor of his private study, clutching the delicate porcelain bowl. Inside was the mixture of White Lotus Seed and Mountain Dew Sap, prepared according to the infant Lin Tian's precise instructions. The final, critical ingredient-the Imperial Dew scraped from the highest rooftop tiles-was dissolving on the surface.
Wei was a man of the Soul Transformation realm, yet his life had been a decades-long lie, his pride crippled by the Shadow-Plumage Stagnation. He drank the solution without hesitation.
The effect was not medicinal; it was elemental. The high-purity ingredients, guided by the precise ratio Lin Tian provided, acted like an overwhelming solvent. Wei felt a searing heat flood his Sea of Consciousness, melting the thick, black blockage that had encased his spiritual core for three decades.
Wei cried out, a mixture of pain and ecstatic disbelief. His cultivation-stagnant at Stage 4-surged violently, not breaking through the stage, but perfecting the purity of his existing Qi. He felt his head clear for the first time since he was a young man. The ceiling of his progression had shattered.
He slammed his head against the floor again and again. "Divine Master! You saved me! I am reborn! Command me, and I will be your sword and shield!"
Lin Tian, sitting patiently in his custom carrier, accepted the groveling. The System confirmed the stability of his new puppet.
[New Loyalty Status: Grandmaster Wei. Cultivation Status: Soul Transformation Stage 4 (Perfected). Status: Absolute Devotion.]
Lin Tian then used subtle Qi Manipulation-a technique far beyond a Core Formation master-to send a complex, silent mental command directly to Wei. He needed resources and security.
The Imperial Herb Garden. The Royal Treasury. Secure access, permanent and unquestioned.
Wei's eyes snapped up, understanding the command perfectly. "It is done, Master! The General's manor will receive the highest protective array, and the Imperial Seal of Access will be yours. No one will question the Divine Child's need for medicine!"
Wei, now utterly devoted, rose and began the intricate political work required. Lin Tian had effectively placed his own agent, a powerful, perfectly loyal cultivator, at the Emperor's right hand.
With his security guaranteed, Lin Tian's focus shifted inward. General Lin Zhao and Lian Hua assumed the infant was merely resting or playing, happily leaving him in the solitude of the Imperial Library's private wing-now his personal training ground.
The Imperial Capital was the most spiritually dense location in the kingdom, built upon a massive, subterranean Earth Spirit Dragon Vein. Lin Tian began cultivating the Heaven-Shaking Soul Transformation Sutra.
The process of forming the Nascent Soul was the ultimate goal of the Mortal Realm. A normal cultivator spent years cautiously guiding their Qi into the nascent Soul. Lin Tian compressed his Divine Golden Core reserves, flooding his Sea of Consciousness with absolute purity.
The System managed the process with hyper-efficiency.
[Cultivation Phase: Soul Transformation Stage 1 (Preparation). Core Compression Status: 99.99%]
[Note: Ambient Qi absorption rate is exceeding 1,000% of standard maximum due to Divine Golden Core resonance.]
The Imperial Library, typically a serene reservoir of spiritual energy, began to sing. Dust motes and ancient papers began to vibrate. The sheer, terrifying vacuum created by Lin Tian's absorption pulled every wisp of ambient spiritual energy-and soon, energy from the capital itself-directly into his infant body.
The sound was inaudible to Lian Hua, but cultivators noticed. The Imperial Palace guards felt an unexplained fatigue. The Imperial Herb Garden withered slightly, and the normally robust scent of spiritual herbs became faint. All the excess spiritual energy of the capital was being silently funneled into one nine-month-old child.
Lin Tian pushed past Stage 1, then 2, with the speed of a comet. The pure Heaven-Shaking Sutra eradicated all bottlenecks.
Deep beneath the Imperial Palace, in a silent, perfectly sealed Isolation Chamber, sat the Imperial Elder, Long Wei. He was the true power behind the Emperor's throne, a legendary figure whose cultivation had stalled decades ago at the Soul Transformation Peak (Stage 9). He hadn't moved in fifty years, dedicated to achieving the Ascension Tribulation.
Long Wei was a master of the kingdom's spiritual stability. His every breath was tuned to the rhythm of the Earth Spirit Dragon Vein.
Suddenly, the Elder's eyes snapped open-eyes that glowed with a faint, ancient light.
"The Dragon... it is agitated," he whispered, his voice dry as parchment.
The Earth Spirit Dragon Vein-the source of the capital's power and the Elder's stability-was reversing its flow. Instead of feeding spiritual energy into the capital, the vein was being violently drained toward a single, infinitesimally small source.
Elder Long Wei was horrified. This was not a power drain; this was a spiritual siphon of a purity he had never encountered, not even among the oldest texts of the Vault of Ten Thousand Dao.
He consulted his inner Dao. The disturbance was centered directly beneath the Imperial Library.
"Such purity... such greed..." The Elder rose, his fifty years of stillness shattered. "If this entity is left unchecked, it will drain the Azure Cloud World dry before the next moon. It must be investigated. It must be contained."
A figure of terrifying power, easily a match for Grandmaster Wei and General Lin combined, slipped out of the Isolation Chamber. The highest power of the Mortal Realm was now focused entirely on the source of the spiritual anomaly: the Imperial Library and the crib within it.
Lin Tian's ambition, fueled by his Divine Core, had finally caught the attention of the Imperial Apex.