When both he and Xiao Yan began cultivating Dou Qi at the age of four, the difference between them was immediately obvious.
It took Xiao Yan an entire three days just to sense the Dou Qi in the air and begin absorbing it into his body. Xiao Yanchen, however, needed only a single day.
Within three days, he had already stepped into the 1st Stage Dou Zhi Qi realm.
And in merely one month, he advanced from the early stage of 1st Stage Dou Zhi Qi to its peak.
His terrifying cultivation speed shocked even the elders of the clan. Xiao Yanchen believed that with his powerful soul force and monstrous talent, he no longer needed to wait for Xiao Yan to rise in the future. He thought he could walk his own path… perhaps even become a Dou Di before Xiao Yan himself.
For the first time, he truly felt that his destiny belonged to him.
But reality was cruel.
When he attempted to break through from the Peak of 1st Stage Dou Zhi Qi into the 2nd Stage, he encountered an invisible barrier.
No matter how much Dou Qi he absorbed, his cultivation refused to advance.
It was as if an unseen chain locked his realm in place.
Nearly an entire three months passed before he finally broke through into the 2nd Stage Dou Zhi Qi realm.
Yet once the barrier shattered, his cultivation speed once again became monstrous. In only one month, he advanced from the early 2nd Stage to the peak of the 2nd Stage.
And then…
Another barrier appeared.
Again, he was trapped for nearly a year before entering the 3rd Stage.
The same pattern repeated over and over throughout his childhood.
Every breakthrough came in two parts:
First, a terrifyingly fast rise through the stage itself.
Then, a seemingly impossible wall before the next realm.
By the age of thirteen, Xiao Yanchen had finally reached the 9th Stage Dou Zhi Qi realm.
Among the younger generation of the clan, this was already considered excellent talent. More importantly, after years of suffering through these bottlenecks, he had grown accustomed to enduring them.
However, everything changed after reaching the peak of the 9th Stage.
This time, the barrier was completely different.
In the past, no matter how difficult the bottleneck was, he could eventually break through after about a year.
But now…
Even after two years, he still could not step into the Dou Zhe realm.
This was the first time fear appeared in his heart.
Had his talent reached its limit?
Was there something wrong with his body?
Or was Heaven itself preventing him from advancing?
The uncertainty slowly turned into depression.
Still, Xiao Yanchen refused to give up.
Every single day, he meditated and attempted to break through the barrier between Dou Zhi Qi and Dou Zhe. At least twice every month, he would gather his Dou Qi and launch an assault toward the bottleneck.
And every single time…
He failed.
Yet during those repeated failures, he noticed something strange.
Although his Dou Qi cultivation remained stuck at the 9th Stage, his physical body continued to grow stronger at an absurd rate.
After one year trapped at the 9th Stage, his physical strength alone allowed him to hunt and kill Rank 1 Magical Beasts with ease.
By the second year, his body had become even more terrifying.
Despite still being only a 9th Stage Dou Zhi Qi practitioner, the raw strength of his body had already surpassed the physical toughness of ordinary Dou Shi experts.
With nothing but brute force and battle experience, he could fight evenly against Rank 2 Magical Beasts and even kill weaker ones.
Unknown to Xiao Yanchen…
The barrier imprisoning him was not suppressing his talent.
It was tempering his body into something far beyond the limits of ordinary cultivators.
During the two years Xiao Yanchen remained trapped at the 9th Stage Dou Zhi Qi realm, it was not only his physical strength that continued to grow.
His Spiritual Strength was also increasing at a terrifying rate.
Without even realizing it, his soul had already reached the level comparable to a 3rd-Rank Alchemist.
This became one of his greatest sources of confidence.
And pride.
Yet despite possessing strength far beyond his cultivation realm, Xiao Yanchen never dared to reveal his true abilities.
Because he understood one thing clearly:
The moment the Hall of Souls or the Hun Clan noticed someone with abnormal soul talent, danger would immediately follow.
So for the past two years, he had kept a low profile.
He hunted Magical Beasts deep within the mountains, cultivated in silence, and avoided attracting attention whenever possible.
Unfortunately, accidents could never be completely avoided.
Four months ago, after killing a Rank 2 Magical Beast comparable to a Dou Shi expert, a mercenary group attempted to rob and kill him.
Luckily, the group consisted of only four low-level Dou Zhe fighters.
Inside the forest, Xiao Yanchen swiftly killed three of them.
However, the last mercenary managed to escape while Xiao Yanchen was finishing off the others.
Left with no choice, Xiao Yanchen chased him all the way near the city entrance before finally catching and killing him.
Although he concealed most of his strength during the fight, several people still witnessed him killing a Dou Zhe while supposedly being only at the 9th Stage Dou Zhi Qi realm.
As a result, his reputation quietly spread through Wu Tan City.
"The Combat Genius of the Xiao Clan."
"A monster capable of killing Dou Zhe while still a Dou Zhi Qi practitioner."
Fortunately, nobody knew the truth.
If word spread that he could already hunt Rank 2 Magical Beasts head-on, countless forces would begin investigating him.
Compared to that possibility, his current reputation was still acceptable.
Even so, Xiao Yanchen never relaxed.
Technically, he did not even need to struggle this hard.
In the future, his blood brother Xiao Yan would eventually become a Dou Di and revive the Xiao Clan's Dou Di bloodline. Once that happened, members of the clan would receive enormous benefits from the awakened bloodline power, allowing their cultivation to soar.
Reaching the Dou Sheng realm would no longer be impossible.
But Xiao Yanchen refused to place his fate in another person's hands.
He wanted to control his own destiny.
Moreover, because he possessed memories from another life and knew far too much about the future, he also understood something terrifying:
His existence itself might already be creating butterfly effects.
The future he remembered might not remain unchanged forever.
Therefore, he had to become strong as quickly as possible.
As these thoughts flashed through his mind, Xiao Yanchen suddenly felt the familiar Dou Zhe barrier trembling once more.
His eyes immediately sharpened.
Without hesitation, he sat down in a meditative posture and began another breakthrough attempt.
Soon, Dou Qi from the surroundings surged toward him.
But this time…
Something felt different.
Normally, the Dou Qi he absorbed would strengthen his body before crashing against the bottleneck.
However, this time, after entering his body, the energy was strangely drawn toward his heart.
More specifically—
Toward a mysterious acupuncture point hidden near his heart.
Xiao Yanchen instantly realized something abnormal was happening.
Still, he continued absorbing Dou Qi.
Bit by bit, the Dou Zhe barrier began loosening.
Hours passed.
Sweat covered his body.
The barrier cracked repeatedly under the impact of his Dou Qi.
Then suddenly—
Boom!
A thunderous explosion echoed inside his mind.
The final layer of the Dou Zhe barrier shattered completely.
He had officially stepped into the Dou Zhe realm.
Yet Xiao Yanchen did not dare relax.
Immediately, he mobilized all the Dou Qi within his body and began refining the surrounding energy into true Dou Qi.
For ordinary cultivators, this process was extremely painful.
But thanks to his terrifying physique, already comparable to a Dou Shi expert, Xiao Yanchen endured the violent collision of energies with gritted teeth and unwavering focus.
Because he had not consumed a Qi Gathering Pill, he had to complete the entire Dou Qi compression process using only the natural energy in the surroundings.
Fortunately, his powerful Spiritual Strength allowed him to control the process with astonishing precision.
Gradually, the gaseous Dou Qi inside his body compressed further and further.
Then finally—
A vortex formed within his dantian.
The moment it appeared, Xiao Yanchen's expression drastically changed.
The vortex was far too powerful.
Like a starving beast, it疯狂ly devoured the surrounding Dou Qi and forcefully refined it into pure energy.
For a brief moment, even Xiao Yanchen nearly lost control over the Dou Qi inside his body.
Cold sweat poured down his face.
Had his Spiritual Strength been any weaker, his breakthrough might have failed instantly.
Still, he quickly stabilized himself and used his Spiritual Strength to inspect his dantian.
And what he saw shocked him completely.
The vortex inside his dantian was abnormal.
A normal Dou Zhe vortex should absorb and refine all incoming Dou Qi.
But his vortex only absorbed a small portion of the energy.
The vast majority of the refined Dou Qi was being forcibly redirected toward the mysterious acupuncture point near his heart.
"This… shouldn't be possible…"
Xiao Yanchen's heart trembled.
Yet he did not dare interfere.
He could instinctively sense that forcibly stopping the process would severely damage his foundation and possibly cripple his cultivation forever.
So he could only watch helplessly as enormous amounts of pure energy poured into the strange point near his heart.
The amount of energy absorbed was so vast that it was enough to support a breakthrough into the Dou Shi realm.
Yet despite absorbing such terrifying power, his body felt only slightly uncomfortable.
No signs of exploding.
No loss of control.
It was as though his body had been prepared for this long ago.
Several more hours passed before the vortex within his dantian finally stabilized completely.
The violent absorption of Dou Qi gradually stopped.
At last, Xiao Yanchen let out a long breath of relief.
But just as he was about to relax—
A powerful pulling force suddenly erupted from the mysterious point near his heart.
Before he could react, his consciousness was violently dragged inside.
Darkness swallowed his vision instantly.