The blaring alarm array of the Ancestral Gate did not just stop; it was choked into silence, its spiritual matrix reversed by a single, surgical application of pure, focused Will. The sudden quiet in the cavern was a deafening admission of guilt, a thunderous declaration of Lian Chen's true, monstrous capability. He had not just stolen from the sect; he had seized control of its most ancient, powerful defenses.
Lian Chen stood untethered from the black jade Seal, his body a vessel of calm, cold power. The chaotic roar of the Mountain Core Array still filled the air, but to his new Stage 6: Focus consciousness, it was no longer a storm; it was a symphony of raw energy, and he was its conductor. He had survived the breakthrough, but the price was exposure.
He did not need to wait for a messenger. He could feel them coming.
His new awareness, fused with the ambient Qi of the cavern, projected his senses far beyond the stone walls. He felt the disturbance on Azure Peak long before it arrived: five distinct, intersecting spiritual signatures, moving with terrifying speed and disciplined unity. They were not the chaotic, individualistic auras of common disciples. These were blades, honed and identical, a steel wall of spiritual pressure designed to suppress, contain, and capture.
The Black Sword Enforcement Squad. The Sect Master's personal hounds, disciples who had failed to ascend to the True Spirit Realm (Stage 10) but had perfected their Nascent Soul (Stage 5) cultivation into a ruthless, cooperative hunting pack.
Lian Chen knew he had no chance in a direct confrontation. He was Stage 6: Spirit Refinement, a realm of consciousness, but they were five Stage 5: Nascent Soul (Spirit Sovereigns), masters of raw, overwhelming spiritual power and physical combat. His purity was a scalpel; they were a storm of sledgehammers.
He was trapped. The only exit was the corridor they were currently descending.
But the corridor was not the only way out.
A cold, insane brilliance sparked in Lian Chen's mind. He had been assigned to guard the Ancestral Gate. He would honor that duty. He would use the gate not as a barrier, but as a key.
The heavy, spiritual clang of magnetic-soled boots echoed in the corridor. The five figures stopped just outside the shimmering, chaotic barrier of the cavern. Their leader, Captain Feng, stepped forward. His face was severe, his eyes holding no malice, only the cold, impersonal focus of a man performing a necessary, unpleasant task. His Nascent Soul aura pulsed, projecting an immense, crushing gravity.
"Lian Chen," Feng's voice boomed, cutting through the roar of the array. "By order of the Sect Master and Elder Lin, you are under arrest for high treason and systemic spiritual theft. You will surrender your Dantian for sealing and come with us immediately."
Lian Chen turned slowly. He let his face resume the mask of the exhausted, confused cripple, though his eyes held the new, unsettling void of his perfected Focus.
"Captain," Lian Chen's voice was hoarse. "There must be a mistake. I have done nothing but guard the Seal, as ordered."
Captain Feng did not sigh, did not show any impatience. He simply held up a small, black jade token—an Elder-level bypass key. "The deception is over, Disciple. Your anomaly was detected. We have been ordered to retrieve you, intact if possible. Do not resist."
He pressed the token to the barrier. The shimmering wall of chaotic mist hissed and parted, opening a stable, circular entrance into the cavern. The five Black Sword disciples entered, fanning out in a perfect, encircling formation, their hands already resting on the hilts of their suppression swords—weapons designed not to cut flesh, but to sever spiritual connections.
The air became impossModels.
Lian Chen was surrounded. Captain Feng stood at the apex, his eyes locked on Lian Chen. "Your cultivation is an anomaly. We know you are not a simple Stage 3. But you cannot fight five Spirit Sovereigns. Surrender now."
"You are right, Captain," Lian Chen said, his voice suddenly losing all trace of its feigned weakness. It became as clear, cold, and precise as his new spiritual state. "I cannot fight you."
Captain Feng tensed. "Then you will come quietly."
"No," Lian Chen said, and he turned his back on them, walking calmly toward the massive, black jade Seal. "You will not allow me to leave. Therefore, I must use the only other exit."
Feng's eyes widened in horror as he realized the terrifying, suicidal implication. "He's going for the Core! He means to destroy the array! Seize him! Do not let him touch the Seal!"
The five Black Sword disciples exploded into motion. They did not use their swords; they unleashed their ultimate capture technique: the Five-Point Soul-Locking Chain. Five streams of pure, golden Nascent Soul energy erupted from their palms, weaving into an inescapable net of spiritual law designed to paralyze a cultivator's soul and body instantly.
But they were too late.
Lian Chen placed his hands flat against the cold, black jade of the Ancestral Gate. He did not brace for impact. He did not prepare a defense. He closed his eyes and poured his entire Stage 6: Focus into the ancient, complex matrix of the Seal itself.
He was no longer a simple guardian. He was no longer a silent thief. He was now an array master, his mind a surgical tool, and this gate was his instrument.
The Black Sword disciples were masters of spiritual combat, but they were entirely unprepared for what Lian Chen did next. He did not attack them. He attacked the environment.
With his Focus state, he found the primary spiritual conduit that channeled the Mountain Core Array's chaotic energy into the Seal's filtration matrix. He didn't try to stop it. He simply unhooked it.
He used his Will as a key, turning a lock that had not been touched in a thousand years. He commanded the array: Divert.
The effect was instantaneous and apocalyptic.
The roaring, chaotic, high-purity Mountain Core Qi—a torrent of raw, unfiltered spiritual energy that the Seal was barely containing—was suddenly diverted from its intended path. A geyser of pure, white-hot chaotic essence exploded outward from the Seal, not as an attack, but as a raw, environmental flood.
The cavern, already saturated with dangerous mist, became a pressurized container of spiritual death.
"Shields! Full power! It's the raw Core flow!" Captain Feng roared, his professional calm shattering into raw panic.
The five Nascent Soul experts, masters of refined spiritual energy, were suddenly drowning in an ocean of pure, unrefined chaos. The chaotic Qi was not an attack; it was anti-cultivation. It was spiritual glass, razor wind, a storm of unbeing that sought to shred any ordered, refined energy it touched.
The Black Sword disciples' golden spiritual shields flared to life, but the chaotic Qi slammed into them with the force of a supernova. The shields fizzled, cracked, and hissed, the refined Nascent Soul energy corroding on contact, as if being submerged in divine acid.
"It's eating our shields! We can't hold this for long!" one disciple screamed, his face pale as his spiritual energy drained at a catastrophic rate.
"He's using the array as a weapon! He's a monster!"
Captain Feng ignored them, his eyes fixed on Lian Chen, who stood calmly at the eye of the storm. The chaotic Qi, which was lethally toxic to them, flowed around Lian Chen like water around a stone, recognizing the Transcendent Purity of his core and the Obsidian Bead as its master. He was immune to the very weapon he had unleashed.
"He isn't just shielding himself," Feng breathed, a terrible realization dawning. "He isn't trying to escape past us. He's... he's picking the lock."
While the Black Sword Squad was pinned, fighting for their lives against the environmental deluge, Lian Chen was dedicating his entire, multi-layered consciousness to the Ancestral Gate's primary locking mechanism. His Focus was no longer a blunt instrument; it was a divine scalpel, tracing the thousands of ancient, interwoven spiritual runes that formed the Seal.
He had memorized the Resource Pavilion's array. This was infinitely more complex, but the principle was the same. It was not a door; it was a song. And he had just found the note that would unravel it.
He projected his Focus into a single, ancient rune at the very center of the Seal. He did not push it. He resonated with it, feeding it a single, perfect pulse of his own impossible purity.
A sound that had not been heard in millennia echoed through the cavern, a high-pitched, grinding shriek that cut through the roar of the chaos. It was the sound of ancient, divine machinery yielding.
The Five-Point Soul-Locking Chain finally reached him, the golden energy net cutting through the chaos, its power nearly spent. It wrapped around his shoulders, the paralyzing law of the Nascent Soul realm attempting to seize his core.
But it found nothing to seize.
Lian Chen's core, a vortex of pure Spirit Refinement energy, was no longer on the same dimensional plane as their Stage 5 attack. The chains passed through his spiritual signature as if it were a ghost. He was there, but his essence was already transcendent.
"He nullified the Soul-Lock!" Captain Feng screamed, his terror absolute. "He's not Nascent Soul... He's not even a cultivator... What is he?"
With a groan that shook the foundations of Azure Peak, the massive, solid black jade Ancestral Gate—a door that was meant to be opened only by the Sect Master and three True Elders working in unison—slid open a crack.
Behind it was not a tunnel. It was an abyss. A blinding, silent, terrifying ocean of pure, white-hot spiritual light. It was the Mountain Core Array itself, the exposed, beating heart of the entire sect, a place of such concentrated, raw power that it would vaporize a True Immortal instantly.
Lian Chen turned, his face calm, his eyes holding the cold, vacant light of the Core itself. He looked at the five horrified Black Sword disciples, who were now struggling to even breathe in the storm of chaos he had unleashed.
He gave Captain Feng a single, imperceptible nod. A gesture not of respect, but of finality.
Then, he stepped backward and fell into the abyss.
The moment his body crossed the threshold, the Ancestral Gate slammed shut with the force of a mountain collapsing. The internal locking mechanism, its resonant frequency lost, re-engaged its primary defensive protocol. The chaotic Qi flooding the cavern instantly vanished, sucked back into the filtration matrix.
Silence.
The cavern was still, the air thin and sharp. The alarms were dead. The chaotic storm was gone. The only sound was the harsh, ragged breathing of the five Black Sword disciples, their spiritual reserves almost completely depleted, their golden chains lying inert on the floor.
Captain Feng staggered forward, his hand tracing the sealed, cold surface of the black jade gate. He had failed.
He activated his communication talisman, his voice trembling for the first time in his career. "Elder Lin... he... he's gone."
"Dead?" Elder Lin's voice was a razor of cold dread from the talisman.
"Worse, Elder," Feng reported, his voice hollow. "He wasn't running from us. He was running to the Core. He... he opened the Gate. He went inside."
The silence on the other end of the talisman was absolute. Elder Lin knew, as did every high-ranking member of the sect, that nothing could survive the raw, unfiltered power of the Mountain Core. Lian Chen had not just escaped; he had committed the most spectacular, terrifying suicide in the history of the Qingyun Sect, taking the secret of his impossible power with him.
Or so they thought.
Miles away, deep within the churning, white-hot heart of the Mountain Core Array, Lian Chen floated, his body unharmed, his eyes closed. The Obsidian Bead was pulsing with ecstatic, ravenous hunger. The chaotic, lethal energy of the core—enough to vaporize a Stage 15: Eternal Flame Realm master—was flowing into him, not as an attack, but as a long-awaited feast.
He was no longer a guardian, no longer a thief. He was home.