The VIP negotiation room existed in a different world than the streets below.
Walls of polished spirit wood gleamed in the soft light of formation-powered lanterns. The air was thick with the scent of sandalwood incense imported from the southern kingdoms, and the tea set on the low table between Feng Chen and Manager Shen was carved from single pieces of jade, each cup worth more than a servant's yearly wages.
Manager Shen poured with the practiced grace of a man who had conducted ten thousand such negotiations, but his hands trembled ever so slightly as he filled Feng Chen's cup. The boy—no, the *alchemist*—sat across from him in blood-stained rags, his posture relaxed but his eyes utterly cold.
"The honored guest's technique must be truly profound," Manager Shen began, his tone carefully neutral. "To achieve such purity in a Blood-Qi Pill... this humble one has only seen such quality once, at the Grand Alchemy Conference in the Imperial Capital. Might I inquire which venerable master—"
"No," Feng Chen said.
The single word hung in the air like a blade. Manager Shen's mouth clicked shut, and he nodded quickly, understanding flooding his expression. There were some secrets one did not pry into, not if one valued their life and business.
"Of course, of course. This old fool spoke out of turn." He cleared his throat and shifted to safer ground. "You mentioned selling four of the Perfect Grade pills. The market rate for such treasures is... variable, but I can offer ten thousand Spirit Stones per pill. Additionally, we can provide a Purple-Gold Card, which grants you access to all Myriad-Treasure Pavilion branches across the eastern provinces and—"
"Acceptable," Feng Chen interrupted. "But I want something else as well."
Manager Shen leaned forward slightly, his merchant's instincts awakening. "Name it, honored guest. If it is within this pavilion's power—"
"Your unidentified artifacts. Ancient remnants. Items you've acquired but cannot appraise." Feng Chen's gaze never wavered. "I want to see them."
For a moment, Manager Shen simply stared. Then understanding dawned, and with it, a flash of almost painful hope. "You—the honored guest has skill in artifact appraisal as well? We do indeed have a collection of... questionable items. Pieces acquired from tomb excavations, battlefield salvage, items brought in by treasure hunters who died before revealing their origins. Most are likely worthless, but if the honored guest believes he can identify anything of value..."
He trailed off, leaving the implication hanging. If Feng Chen could identify treasures among the trash, the pavilion would owe him a debt of gratitude that could be worth more than gold.
"Show me," Feng Chen said.
---
The Warehouse of Forgotten Dreams was less a warehouse and more a mausoleum for failed ambitions.
Located in the pavilion's basement, accessed through a series of formation-locked doors, it was a vast chamber filled with shelves and crates and barrels of items that had defeated the expertise of the pavilion's appraisers. Dust covered everything in a thick blanket, and the air smelled of old metal and older regrets.
Manager Shen led Feng Chen through the rows with an apologetic air. "We've brought in specialists from three provinces to examine these pieces. Most are simply well-made mundane items, their spiritual properties eroded by time. Some may have once been treasures but are now too damaged to—"
Feng Chen had stopped walking.
His eyes, overlaid with the Crucible's analytical vision, swept across the warehouse in layered perception. Most of what he saw confirmed Manager Shen's assessment—broken swords with shattered formations, cracked pills whose medicinal properties had degraded to poison, artifacts whose cores had been extracted long ago.
But there, in the far corner, buried under a pile of rusted farming implements...
*Heat*.
Not physical warmth, but something deeper. A signature of potential energy so dense that it created a gravitational well in the spiritual landscape, pulling at the ambient Qi like a black hole pulls at light.
Feng Chen walked toward it, ignoring Manager Shen's continued explanation. He pushed aside a broken spear, a cracked meditation cushion, and three baskets of unidentifiable debris until he could see the source.
A cauldron.
It was perhaps two feet tall, three-legged in the ancient style, cast from metal so black it seemed to drink the light around it. Every surface was covered in soot and what appeared to be centuries of accumulated bird droppings. One leg had a visible crack running halfway up its length. To any normal observer, it was trash—a failed casting, perhaps, or a mundane cooking pot that had been mistaken for something valuable.
But to the Crucible's vision, it *blazed*.
**[ PRIMORDIAL ARTIFACT DETECTED ]**
**[ ANALYZING... ]**
**[ IDENTIFICATION: EARTH-CORE DRAGON CAULDRON ]**
**[ STATUS: SEALED (93% POWER SUPPRESSED) ]**
**[ PROPERTIES: INDESTRUCTIBLE. IMMUNE TO TEMPERATURES BELOW HEAVENLY FLAME. CAPABLE OF REFINING MATERIALS AT CONCEPTUAL LEVEL. ]**
**[ ASSESSMENT: PRICELESS ]**
Feng Chen reached out and grasped the cauldron's rim.
It was *heavy*. Not just physically heavy—though it must have weighed close to two hundred pounds—but heavy in a way that defied conventional physics. It felt like trying to lift a piece of the earth itself, as though the cauldron was anchored to the fundamental structure of reality.
"Ah, that old thing," Manager Shen said, having noticed Feng Chen's interest. "We acquired it from a tomb excavation twenty years ago. The appraisers determined it was a failed casting—the metal is completely inert, no spiritual flow whatsoever. We've kept it because the metal itself might be valuable, but no one's been able to identify the alloy, and it's too heavy to melt down easily. If the honored guest wants it, we can sell it for scrap metal prices. Say... fifty Spirit Stones?"
Feng Chen almost laughed. Fifty Spirit Stones for an artifact that could probably survive the heat of a collapsing star.
"I'll take it," he said.
The transaction was completed within minutes. Manager Shen, clearly pleased to be rid of a piece of worthless junk while simultaneously earning the favor of a mysterious alchemist, practically beamed as he arranged for the cauldron to be cleaned and delivered to whatever address Feng Chen specified.
Feng Chen gave him the name of a small inn on the city's outskirts and departed the Myriad-Treasure Pavilion as the moon reached its zenith, forty thousand Spirit Stones richer and carrying a treasure that would make emperors weep with envy.
Behind him, he left a trail of shocked whispers and growing legends about the blood-soaked alchemist who had humiliated a Lin Clan Inner Disciple and bought a fortune in ancient trash.
And in the Lin Clan Main Hall, those whispers were about to become screams.
---
The Lin Clan Main Hall was built to intimidate.
Pillars of red jade rose forty feet to support a ceiling painted with scenes of legendary ancestors slaying demons and ascending to heaven. The floor was polished obsidian, reflecting the light of a thousand spirit lanterns. At the hall's far end, elevated on a dais of white marble, sat Feng Wuji.
He was a man in his forties, handsome in a sharp-edged way, with the kind of features that suggested intelligence and ruthlessness in equal measure. His robes were the deep crimson of a Clan Elder, embroidered with golden phoenixes. His cultivation, Spirit Opening Realm Layer 5, radiated from him like heat from a forge.
And his face, as he listened to the report, was a mask of barely controlled fury.
"Shattered knees," he repeated, his voice dangerously soft. "Lin Hu—a Body Tempering Layer 6 Inner Disciple—had his knees *shattered* by a crippled servant boy who should be dead in a ditch."
The messenger, a lower-ranked outer disciple, prostrated himself on the obsidian floor. "Yes, Honored Elder. The witnesses say... they say the servant didn't even touch Lin Hu. The pressure of his aura alone was enough to—"
"Enough." Feng Wuji rose from his seat, his hands clasped behind his back. He began to pace, his mind working through the implications. "A cripple with no cultivation foundation suddenly possesses combat strength and perfect-grade alchemy. There is only one explanation."
His son, Feng Tian, stood to the side of the hall, his face twisted with hatred. The young genius—the one who had stolen Feng Chen's Heavenly Marrow Bone—spoke through clenched teeth. "A secret inheritance. He must have found an ancient cave or a hidden master's dwelling in the forest."
"Precisely." Feng Wuji's eyes glittered with avarice and calculation. "Whatever he found, it transformed him from trash to treasure. That power, that knowledge—it should be *ours*. It is wasted on a servant who doesn't even understand what he possesses."
He turned to face a group of five men who had been standing in the shadows at the hall's periphery. They wore dark gray robes with red trim, and each one radiated the brutal, efficient aura of professional killers. The Blood-Stained Squad, the Lin Clan's enforcers for tasks too dirty for official disciples to handle.
Their leader, a scarred man named Guo Han, stepped forward and bowed. "You have orders, Elder Feng?"
"Find Feng Chen. Capture him alive if possible." Feng Wuji's smile was a thing of ice and malice. "I want to know where he found his inheritance. I want to know what techniques he's learned. And if he proves... uncooperative... well. There are formations that can extract memories from a dying brain. One way or another, his secrets will be mine."
"And if he resists?" Guo Han asked, his hand drifting to the sword at his waist.
Feng Wuji's expression didn't change. "Then break him. Shatter his limbs. Cripple his cultivation. Just keep his brain intact. Everything else is negotiable."
The Blood-Stained Squad bowed as one and departed into the night, five shadows moving with lethal purpose toward the Hundred Beast Forest.
Behind them, Feng Wuji returned to his seat and poured himself a cup of wine, already imagining the power that would soon be his.
---
The Shadow Panther moved like liquid death.
It was midnight in the deepest part of the Hundred Beast Forest, where even the moonlight seemed reluctant to penetrate the canopy. Feng Chen had been hunting for six hours straight, pushing himself to the edge of exhaustion, driving toward the threshold that the Crucible had set.
Forty-nine beasts had fallen. He needed one more.
The Panther was Rank 2—a full realm above Feng Chen's current cultivation. It was the size of a horse, its fur so black that it seemed to be cut from the fabric of night itself, and its eyes burned with spiritual intelligence that spoke of centuries of cultivation.
It attacked from the shadows with no warning.
One moment, Feng Chen was walking through a clearing. The next, the Panther was *there*, materializing from darkness like a nightmare taking physical form. Its claws, wreathed in shadows that could cut through steel, slashed toward Feng Chen's throat with enough force to decapitate an ox.
Feng Chen's hand came up.
Not to block. Not to dodge. His fingers extended, rigid as sword blades, and the Shattering Sword Intent *ignited*.
The air between his hand and the Panther's claws didn't just distort—it *tore*. Space itself fractured along invisible fault lines, and when Feng Chen's fingers met the beast's attack, the shadows wreathing the claws simply *shattered*, breaking apart like glass struck by a hammer.
The Panther's eyes widened in shock.
Feng Chen's fingers drove forward, empowered by the Dragon-Elephant Art and guided by the Shattering Intent, and punched through the beast's skull as though it were made of wet paper. Bone fragmented. Brain matter vaporized from the heat of concentrated Qi. The Rank 2 Spirit Beast, which should have been able to slaughter a dozen Body Tempering cultivators, died without making a sound.
**[ SPIRIT BEAST SLAIN: SHADOW PANTHER (RANK 2) ]**
**[ BEAST BLOOD ESSENCE COLLECTED ]**
**[ PROGRESS: 50/100 ]**
**[ MILESTONE ACHIEVED ]**
**[ INITIATING TIER 0 EVOLUTION: SOVEREIGN SENSES ]**
The Crucible *pulsed*.
Feng Chen's vision went white. He felt something in his brain—not pain, but *expansion*, as though his consciousness was being forcibly enlarged to accommodate new dimensions of perception. Neural pathways that had never existed before were being written into existence, carved into his gray matter by forces that operated at the level of fundamental reality.
The world came back into focus, and it was *different*.
His awareness expanded outward in a perfect sphere, one hundred meters in every direction. He could *feel* everything within that radius—the heartbeats of sleeping birds, the flow of sap through tree roots, the scurrying of insects through leaf litter. But more than that, he could sense *intent*, the spiritual signatures of living things colored by their emotional states and hostile impulses.
And at the edge of his new perception, approaching through the forest with weapons drawn and murder in their hearts—
Five human signatures. Each one blazing with the focused aggression of predators stalking prey.
**[ HOSTILE ENTITIES DETECTED ]**
**[ COUNT: 5 ]**
**[ AVERAGE CULTIVATION: BODY TEMPERING LAYER 7-8 ]**
**[ ASSESSMENT: LETHAL INTENT CONFIRMED ]**
Feng Chen's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.
He dragged the Shadow Panther's corpse to a small clearing and built a fire. As the flames rose, he began the process of extracting the beast's heart—a valuable alchemical ingredient—working with deliberate slowness.
The five signatures drew closer. Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty.
They thought they were hidden. Feng Chen could sense the spiritual fluctuations of Void-Hidden Talismans, low-grade artifacts that bent light and muffled sound to create the illusion of invisibility. To a normal cultivator, the approaching killers would have been completely undetectable.
To Sovereign Senses, they might as well have been carrying torches and ringing bells.
Twenty meters.
Guo Han stepped out of the shadows, his Void-Hidden Talisman deactivating in a shimmer of dispersing energy. He was flanked by his four subordinates, all with weapons drawn, all with the cold eyes of men who had killed many times before.
"Feng Chen," Guo Han said, his voice carrying the lazy confidence of a cat addressing a cornered mouse. "I'm impressed you made it this far into the forest. Most servants would have died on the first day."
Feng Chen didn't look up from the Panther's heart, which he was carefully separating from the surrounding tissue.
"But this is where your little adventure ends," Guo Han continued. He drew his sword—a genuine spirit-forged blade worth a small fortune—and let its edge catch the firelight. "Elder Feng Wuji has questions about where you found your inheritance. You're going to answer those questions. The only choice you have is whether you answer them with your tongue... or whether we extract the answers from your screaming brain after we've flayed the skin from your body."
The other enforcers chuckled darkly, spreading out to cut off any potential escape routes.
"So here's the offer," Guo Han said, taking another step forward. "Hand over whatever treasures you're carrying—starting with that black cauldron I heard about—and I'll make your death quick. You'll barely feel it. Refuse, and... well. We have three days to get back to the clan. That's a lot of time for creativity."
Feng Chen finally looked up.
His eyes, reflecting the firelight, held absolutely no fear. No desperation. Just cold, analytical assessment, like a butcher examining cuts of meat.
"I needed the blood of one hundred beasts," he said, his voice carrying that same heavy weight that made the air feel denser. "I didn't know the Crucible counted dogs as beasts, too."
The clearing went silent.
Guo Han's smile faded. "What did you just—"
Feng Chen stood, and his aura *erupted*.
---
**[ Sovereign Status ]**
**Host:** Feng Chen
**Realm:** Body Tempering (Layer 6)
**Physique Progress:** 51/100 (Sovereign Senses UNLOCKED)
**New Tool:** Earth-Core Dragon Cauldron (Sealed)
**Technique Mastery:** Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art (5% - Strength of 5 Junior Elephants)
**Sovereign Senses:** 100-meter radius (Detects Hidden Intent)
**Current Target:** 5 "Two-legged Beasts" (Enforcers)