High above the arena, the woman in emerald robes—General Yan of the Imperial Guard—didn't move her hand to her sword because she was slow. She stayed her hand because the Imperial Siphon was singing a song of hunger she had heard once before.
Beside her, a shadowed figure whispered, "If the boy fails, Jian completes the ritual for the Master. If the boy wins, we have a new specimen for the Rift. Either way, General, the Empire gains a weapon. Do not interfere until the dust is settled."
Yan's knuckles whitened on her hilt. She realized then that the "safety" of the Academy was a curated illusion. The observers weren't there to protect the students; they were there to grade the harvest. Lin Wei wasn't fighting a rogue Elder; he was fighting a test designed by the very throne he was meant to serve.
The collision was not a sound, but a vacuum. When Lin Wei's violet-streaked form met Elder Jian's corrupted Core Formation aura, the air in the Great South Arena was instantly sucked out, leaving a terrifying, breathless silence. For a heartbeat, the two were locked in a stalemate—a mid-stage student holding back a late-stage master.
Elder Jian's face was no longer human. His skin had taken on the texture of wet parchment, stretched thin over pulsating, violet-black veins. "You think... a brat at the 5th Layer... can stop the Siphon?" he hissed, his voice a chorus of a thousand scratching needles.
"I'm not stopping the Siphon," Lin Wei gritted out, his boots melting the glass beneath him. "I'm becoming the drain."
"System! Every point I have—dump it into the Void Core. If he's feeding on the city, I'm going to feed on him!"
[Eternal Odyssey System]
Action: Converting 250 System Points into 'Void-Hunger' Overload. Remaining Balance: 0 Points. Warning: Your meridians are at 110% capacity. Physical rupture imminent.
Lin Wei didn't care. He opened the floodgates. The Absolute Equilibrium technique, which had spent weeks meticulously balancing his fire and ice, suddenly inverted. He forced the Phoenix Fire and the Absolute Ice to crash into each other within his chest at supersonic speeds.
The resulting violet explosion didn't go outward; it went inward.
A localized black hole formed in Lin Wei's palm. The metallic-green fog surrounding Elder Jian—the very essence of the corrupted Siphon—was suddenly yanked toward Lin Wei's hand. Jian's eyes widened, his 7-Star aura flickering as it was forcibly stripped from his body.
"Impossible!" Jian screamed, his thorny veins throbbing. "The Shadow is infinite!"
"Nothing is infinite," Lin Wei roared, his voice cracking with the strain. "Everything has a bottom. And you just found it."
On the high balcony, the Spirit Severing observers were finally moving. A woman in emerald robes, her presence like a sharpened blade, descended from the sky. "Cease this at once! The Arena is under Imperial Lockdown!"
She was too late.
Lin Wei's hand closed around Elder Jian's throat. The Void-Hunger reached its peak. In a blinding flash of purple light, the corrupted Core Formation energy was devoured. Jian didn't just die; he withered. The black veins retreated, and his body crumbled into a pile of grey ash that was instantly scattered by the Arena's wind.
The inverted runes on the ground snapped. The ribbons of light pulling from the students returned to their owners with a violent snap, sending hundreds of people gasping for air.
Lin Wei stood in the center of the glass crater, his breath coming in ragged, steaming plumes. One side of his face was covered in frost, the other glowing with a dying orange ember. He looked up at the Emerald-robed observer, his violet eyes fading back to their dual orange and blue.
[Main Quest: The Imperial Gambit — Target Neutralized.] [
Calculating Rewards...]
[1,000 System Points Awarded.]
[Foundation Establishment Breakthrough Initializing...]
The world began to tilt. The Spirit Severing woman landed five paces away, her hand on the hilt of a jade sword. "Who—or what—are you, boy?"
Lin Wei tried to answer, but his throat was a desert. His meridians were screaming as the reward began to force a transformation he wasn't ready for. The 5th Layer was gone. The 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th were being bypassed entirely as the System burned through the essence of a dead Core Formation Elder.
"I'm the jailer," Lin Wei managed to whisper before his knees finally gave out.
As he hit the glass, a massive pillar of violet light erupted from his body, shooting straight through the jade lid of the city and into the true sky above. Every cultivator in the Capital felt it—the birth of a Foundation Establishment realm expert that shouldn't exist.
Inside his mind, the final notification of the day flickered into view:
[System Shop: UNLOCKED.]
[New Item Available: 'Fragment of the First Key'.]
In the blackness of his mind, Lin Wei saw a memory that didn't belong to him. He saw his father, Lin Tian, standing before a roaring furnace in the North, holding the jade token with a look of profound grief.
"This is not a gift, Wei'er," his father's voice echoed from a decade ago. "It is the Seal of the Void. It was stolen from the Imperial Vault a thousand years ago to keep the Rift shut. They think we are a 'declining' clan, but we are the only thing keeping them from the dark. If the token ever turns purple... run. Not from the Shadow, but from the Emperor."
Lin Wei tried to reach out, but the image shattered into a thousand violet shards. He realized then that the "1-star talent" evaluation wasn't a mistake—it was a mask his father had placed on him to hide the Seal. The Empire wasn't looking for a hero; they were looking for their stolen key.
The Imperial Academy was no longer a school. It was a war zone. And Lin Wei, the 1-star loser, had just become the most wanted man in the Empire.