Elder Shen Yao looked like a man who had aged a decade in three days.
He stood at the entrance to Feng Chen's courtyard—the gates had been repaired overnight by nervous servants—and his hands trembled slightly as he clutched a jade scroll. His eyes were bloodshot, his normally immaculate robes wrinkled, and when he spoke, his voice carried the exhaustion of someone who had spent the previous night in emergency council meetings with people who wanted him dead.
"Honored Guest," he began, then seemed to reconsider the formality. "Feng Chen. We need to talk. Now."
Feng Chen sat by his cauldron, refining a batch of Spirit-Cleansing Pills with mechanical precision. He didn't look up. "Then talk."
Shen Yao stepped into the courtyard and closed the gates behind him, as though the thin wood could somehow contain the storm that was building. "The Great Elder is furious. Gongsun Ce—the Sect's most senior Core Formation expert—is demanding your head on a spike. The incident with the Sword Spirit has created a faction crisis. Half the Inner Elders want you expelled or executed. The other half..." He laughed bitterly. "The other half are terrified of what you might do if we try."
"And the Sect Master?" Feng Chen asked, his tone utterly unconcerned.
"The Sect Master is trying to maintain balance. But even he has limits." Shen Yao pulled a spirit wine flask from his robes and took a long drink—a breach of protocol that spoke to his stress level. "Gongsun Ce's grandson has returned from the Eastern Campaigns. Gongsun Long—a True Disciple, Spirit Opening Layer 6, one of the Sect's ten greatest talents. He was supposed to use the Dragon-Marrow Spring next month to break through to Foundation Establishment."
Feng Chen's hands finally paused in their work. "Was supposed to?"
"The Sect Master has declared an Open Competition for access to the Spring. To appease both factions. You and Gongsun Long will both be permitted to attempt the Nine Dragon Gates trial. Whoever succeeds gets priority access to the marrow." Shen Yao's voice was pleading now. "It's a face-saving measure. Gongsun Long is a monster—he's been refining his body with beast blood for a decade. No one below Foundation Establishment has ever matched his physical strength. If you simply concede, let him have this one thing, the political tension will ease and—"
"No."
The single word landed like a boulder dropped into still water.
Shen Yao blinked. "I... what?"
Feng Chen returned to his pill refinement, the Yin-Shadow Flames dancing between his fingers. "I do not compete for what is already mine. The Dragon-Marrow Spring is a resource I require for my next advancement. I will take it. Tell your True Disciple to bring a bigger towel, for I intend to drink the spring dry."
For a long moment, Shen Yao simply stared, his mind struggling to process the sheer audacity. Then he laughed—a sound that was equal parts hysteria and despair. "You're going to get us all killed. You know that, right? When Gongsun Ce loses his mind and tries to raze this entire peak, I hope you'll spare a thought for the poor elder who tried to keep you alive."
He turned to leave, then paused at the gates. "The trial is tomorrow at dawn. The Nine Dragon Gates guard the Forbidden Spring. It's a test of physical endurance and spiritual willpower. Gongsun Long has been preparing for this for years. You... you should at least try not to die in the first three gates."
Feng Chen smiled but said nothing.
---
The entrance to the Forbidden Spring existed in a valley that defied natural geography.
Nine massive stone arches rose from the earth in a perfectly straight line, each one fifty feet tall and carved from a single piece of black jade so dark it seemed to drink light. The arches were shaped like dragon's maws—upper and lower jaws opened wide, creating a passage that looked like walking into the throat of an ancient beast.
And from each arch radiated *pressure*.
Not spiritual pressure in the conventional sense, but something older, more primal. Dragon Pressure—the accumulated majesty of creatures that had ruled the primordial world before humans learned to cultivate. It manifested as a thick, visible fog that clung to the ground and smelled of ancient scales and predatory musk, like standing downwind from a reptile the size of a mountain.
The valley was packed with spectators.
Hundreds of disciples lined the ridges overlooking the gates, and dozens of elders occupied raised platforms that gave them clear sightlines. This was not just a trial—it was political theater, a chance for the factions to watch their champions clash.
At the valley floor, before the first gate, two figures stood apart.
Gongsun Long was a titan among men. Seven feet tall, with muscles that looked like they'd been carved from granite by an obsessive sculptor. His skin had a bronze sheen that spoke of body-tempering techniques taken to inhuman extremes, and his eyes burned with the focused intensity of someone who had spent a decade preparing for this exact moment. He wore minimal clothing—just loose pants and a weapons harness that held his Tiger-Crushing Halberd, a spirit weapon that radiated enough killing intent to make weaker cultivators step back.
He looked at Feng Chen and sneered.
Feng Chen stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his posture relaxed, his expression utterly serene. He had changed his blood-stained rags for simple black robes—not sect colors, just plain fabric—and he carried no weapons. To the watching crowd, he looked like a scholar who had wandered into a warrior's arena by mistake.
"The beggar actually came," Gongsun Long's voice boomed across the valley. "I expected you to flee in the night. Wise men know when they're outmatched."
Feng Chen glanced at him with the kind of mild interest one might give to an insect buzzing near one's tea. "Are we starting, or do you need more time to convince yourself you're relevant?"
Gongsun Long's face flushed red. "I'll break you in the first gate. Watch and learn what real strength looks like."
He stepped forward into the first Dragon Gate.
The fog thickened immediately, wrapping around him like solid bands. His body tensed as the pressure descended—fifty thousand catties of force pressing down from above, trying to drive him to his knees. The watching disciples gasped as the ground beneath his feet *cracked*, spider-web fractures spreading across the stone.
But Gongsun Long's body blazed with bronze light. His body-refining cultivation activated, and a massive spectral tiger materialized around him—the manifestation of his personal totem, a Bronze Tiger that had devoured countless spirit beasts. With a roar that shook the valley, he *pushed* back against the pressure and walked forward.
Five steps. Ten. Twenty.
He emerged from the first gate drenched in sweat but triumphant. The crowd erupted in cheers.
He passed through the second gate with similar effort, the pressure now at one hundred thousand catties. His Bronze Tiger roared continuously, burning through spiritual energy to maintain the resistance.
By the seventh gate, Gongsun Long was breathing like a bellows, his bronze skin beginning to crack under the strain. The pressure had reached three hundred fifty thousand catties—enough to flatten a small building. But he pushed through, emerging on the other side with blood trickling from his nose and ears.
The crowd was on their feet, chanting his name. No disciple below Foundation Establishment had ever reached the seventh gate. This was legendary.
Gongsun Long turned to look back at Feng Chen, who hadn't moved, and grinned through the blood. "Your turn, beggar! Let's see if you can even make it past the third!"
Feng Chen sighed quietly and began walking.
He didn't activate any visible technique. Didn't manifest a totem or flood the area with spiritual pressure. He simply walked, hands still clasped behind his back, his posture as straight as a spear.
The first gate's pressure descended on him like a collapsing mountain.
Feng Chen's next step cracked the stone beneath his feet with a sound like thunder. But his body didn't bend. Didn't slow. The Sovereign Origin Body—Tier 1, forged from the blood of a hundred beasts, refined beyond mortal limits—accepted the pressure and *distributed* it through his entire structure so efficiently that no single point bore catastrophic load.
He walked through the first gate as though it were an open doorway.
The crowd's cheering faltered, replaced by confused murmurs.
The second gate. One hundred thousand catties.
Feng Chen's footsteps began to leave *impressions* in the solid stone—not cracks, but actual footprints pressed into rock as though it were wet clay. Yet his spine remained perfectly vertical, his breathing even and controlled.
Third gate. Fourth gate. Fifth gate.
By the sixth gate, when the pressure reached three hundred thousand catties, something impossible began to happen.
The dragon statues carved into the arch—ancient stone guardians that had stood unmoved for ten thousand years—began to shift. Their massive heads, each one the size of a house, slowly tilted downward.
They were *bowing*.
The Sovereign Origin Body resonated with something primordial in the dragon carvings. Not fear, but recognition—the acknowledgment of a principle that transcended the individual power levels, a fundamental superiority of existence that made even the carved representations of ancient beasts lower their heads.
The valley fell completely silent.
Feng Chen walked through the seventh gate without breaking stride.
Through the eighth.
At the ninth and final gate, where the pressure reached four hundred fifty thousand catties—enough force to compress iron into diamond—Feng Chen paused for the first time.
Not because he struggled with the weight.
But because he wanted to savor the moment.
He looked back at Gongsun Long, who stood frozen at the seventh gate's exit, his face the color of old parchment, his Bronze Tiger totem flickering and unstable.
"You were saying something about real strength?" Feng Chen asked mildly.
Then he walked through the ninth gate, and the dragon statues on either side of it bowed so low their carved snouts touched the ground.
Beyond the gates lay the Dragon-Marrow Spring.
---
The pool was perhaps thirty feet across, carved from natural stone over untold millennia by the slow drip of concentrated spiritual energy from the earth's deepest veins.
But it was the *contents* that stole the breath.
Dragon Marrow—liquid destiny made manifest. It was golden but not like sunlight; more like molten metal, viscous and heavy, moving with currents that defied physics. The surface didn't ripple—it *pulsed*, as though the pool itself was alive, breathing, waiting. The scent was overwhelming: ancient blood, primal ozone, and underneath it all, a smell like lightning striking stone.
Each drop of this substance could extend a mortal's life by years. A cupful could heal injuries that would cripple Foundation Establishment experts. And submersion in the pool, full integration of its power, could transform a cultivator's foundation so profoundly that they could skip minor realms entirely.
Gongsun Long was already in the pool.
He had arrived moments before Feng Chen, had thrown himself into the marrow with desperate hunger, and was now sitting cross-legged in the shallows, his body shaking as he tried to absorb the overwhelming energy. Golden light leaked from his pores, his Bronze Tiger totem manifesting around him in partial, flickering form.
He looked up as Feng Chen's shadow fell across him.
"Get out," Gongsun Long snarled, his voice distorted by the power flooding his system. "This pool is mine by right of—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
His Tiger-Crushing Halberd, which he had planted in the stone beside the pool, suddenly began to *vibrate*. Not with power, but with something that looked disturbingly like *fear*. The spirit weapon's edge, which had been razor-sharp and gleaming, began to pit and rust, corrosion spreading across the metal like a disease.
Feng Chen had activated his Sword Domain.
The five percent mastery of Shattering Sword Intent created a sphere of influence ten meters in radius, and within that sphere, his understanding of weapons and destruction reigned supreme. The halberd, recognizing a superior principle, began to break itself down in submission.
"No—NO!" Gongsun Long surged from the pool, grabbed his halberd, and thrust it toward Feng Chen's chest with enough force to punch through stone. "I won't let you—"
Feng Chen caught the halberd's shaft with one hand.
His fingers, empowered by fifteen percent mastery of the Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art, closed around the spirit-forged metal like a vise. The Shattering Intent poured into the weapon through the point of contact, finding every microscopic flaw in its structure, every weak point in its formations.
Feng Chen *squeezed*.
The sound that followed was like a mountain range collapsing. The halberd didn't bend or crack—it *imploded*, its shaft compressing and fragmenting simultaneously, the spirit formations carved into its surface overloading and burning out in cascades of sparks. Within three seconds, a weapon that had been worth a fortune was reduced to twisted scrap metal and powder.
Gongsun Long stared at his empty hands, his mind unable to process what had just happened.
Feng Chen stepped past him and walked to the center of the pool.
"Your vessel was too small to contain what the spring offers," he said quietly. "I suggest you leave before you drown in power you're not qualified to wield."
He sat cross-legged in the deepest part of the pool, the golden marrow rising to his chest, and activated the Myriad-Dao Divine Crucible.
The world *screamed*.
Every drop of Dragon Marrow in the pool suddenly reversed its natural flow. Instead of slowly seeping into Feng Chen's skin through gradual absorption, it was *yanked* into his pores like liquid needles being pulled by invisible strings. The Crucible's hunger, unleashed on this concentrated source of primordial power, created a vortex that began to *drain* the pool.
The golden level dropped visibly—six inches, a foot, two feet.
**[ PRIMORDIAL DRAGON MARROW DETECTED ]**
**[ PURITY: EXCEPTIONAL ]**
**[ ESTIMATED AGE: 100,000+ YEARS ]**
**[ INITIATING MASS INTEGRATION... ]**
Feng Chen's body became a furnace. The marrow didn't just enter his meridians—it *invaded* them, forcing its way through every channel, flooding his dantian, saturating his bones and muscles and organs with power that would have killed a lesser cultivator instantly.
But the Crucible *refined* it as it entered, burning away impurities, compressing the essence, forcing it to submit to Feng Chen's will rather than overwhelming him with its raw strength.
His Spirit Sea exploded in size. Twelve thousand meters became thirteen thousand. Fourteen thousand. Fifteen thousand. The golden ocean in his Sea of Consciousness began to *boil*, waves crashing against invisible shores with enough force to shatter mountains if manifested in the physical world.
**[ BREAKTHROUGH ACHIEVED ]**
**[ SPIRIT OPENING LAYER 3 - EARLY STAGE ]**
But the transformation didn't stop there.
The concentrated dragon essence within the marrow resonated with the Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art, recognizing a kindred principle. The technique, which had been dormant at Volume 1, suddenly *evolved*.
In Feng Chen's mind, a massive scroll unfurled—golden characters burning themselves into his consciousness, each one a complete martial technique, each sentence a lifetime of understanding compressed into pure knowledge.
**[ IMMEMORIAL DRAGON-ELEPHANT ART: VOLUME 2 UNLOCKED ]**
**[ THE STRENGTH OF A HUNDRED DRAGONS ]**
**[ NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: DRAGON-ELEPHANT ROAR ]**
Power flooded his throat, his lungs, his vocal cords. He could feel it—a vibration that had nothing to do with normal sound, a frequency that resonated with the fundamental structure of spiritual energy itself. When he breathed, the water around him *rippled* in perfect geometric patterns, concentric circles expanding outward in mathematically precise formation.
The Dragon-Elephant Roar. A sonic attack that could shatter the souls of those with weaker foundations, that could paralyze enemies through pure existential terror, that carried the combined majesty of the two primordial beasts whose strength he had claimed.
Feng Chen opened his eyes.
The Dragon-Marrow Spring was half-empty, its golden contents reduced to a muddy residue. Gongsun Long lay unconscious on the shore, his cultivation destabilized by the sudden withdrawal of power he'd been trying to absorb. His Bronze Tiger totem had dissipated entirely.
And standing at the pool's edge, face purple with rage, was Great Elder Gongsun Ce.
The old man was trembling with barely controlled fury, his Core Formation Peak cultivation radiating outward in waves that made the air shimmer. Behind him stood a dozen Inner Elders, their hands on their weapons, their expressions ranging from shock to fear to vindictive satisfaction depending on which faction they belonged to.
"You," Gongsun Ce's voice was a whisper that somehow carried more menace than a shout, "have destroyed my grandson's future. Have stolen the Sect's most precious resource. Have violated every rule of—"
Feng Chen stood from the depleted pool.
Water cascaded off his body, but the droplets weren't ordinary liquid—they glowed with residual golden light, each one carrying enough spiritual energy to be worth a small fortune. His eyes, when he looked at the Great Elder, held a new quality—a faint vertical slit in each pupil, the draconic inheritance from the marrow manifesting in his very gaze.
"Your grandson was too weak to drink," Feng Chen said, his voice carrying that oppressive weight that made breathing difficult. "Don't blame the water for the flaws of the vessel."
He walked toward them, naked and unconcerned, each step leaving footprints that *steamed* on the stone.
Gongsun Ce's hand went to his sword.
But before he could draw it, a new voice cut through the tension.
"Enough."
The Sect Master materialized between them, his white robes somehow pristine despite the violence in the air. He looked at Feng Chen, then at Gongsun Ce, and his expression was utterly neutral.
"The trial was declared open. Feng Chen succeeded where Gongsun Long did not. By the Sect's own laws, he has claim to the spring's resources." His gaze fixed on Gongsun Ce. "Would you violate our sacred traditions because the outcome displeases you, Great Elder?"
It was a masterful political move—framing any attack on Feng Chen as an attack on the Sect's integrity itself.
Gongsun Ce's face went from purple to nearly black, but he could not argue with the logic. Slowly, his hand released his sword hilt.
"This is not over," he said quietly, looking at Feng Chen with eyes that promised murder. "The Sect has rules against students harming each other. But accidents happen in the outer world. Remember that, *Guest*."
He gathered his unconscious grandson and departed, half the Inner Elders following in his wake.
Feng Chen watched them go with complete indifference.
The Sect Master lingered for a moment, studying Feng Chen with those ancient eyes. "You're making powerful enemies very quickly. I hope whatever you're building is worth the price you'll eventually pay."
"It will be," Feng Chen said simply.
The Sect Master nodded slowly and departed, leaving Feng Chen alone with the ruined spring and the distant sound of his own heartbeat—now carrying a draconic resonance that made the very stones tremble.
---
**[ Sovereign Status ]**
**Host:** Feng Chen
**Realm:** Spirit Opening (Layer 3 - Early Stage)
**Spirit Sea:** 15,000 Meters (Golden Radiance)
**Concept:** Shattering Sword Intent (5% - Sword Domain Active)
**Technique:** Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art (Volume 2 - 1% Mastery)
**Current Power:** Strength of 100 Dragons (Physical) / Dragon-Elephant Roar (Sonic)
**Inventory:** Empty (Consumed Dragon Marrow)
**Next Goal:** Reach Spirit Opening Layer 6 (Requirement: Obtain a "Star-Core" from the Meteorite Fall event)
**Status:** "The dragon's blood flows in mortal veins. The path continues. Heaven trembles."