Lin Tianren approached the formation's edge carefully, studying the dormant secondary channel the system had identified before committing to anything further.
Can I control the amount I feed into it? he asked silently.
[Possible]
[Risk of Formation Instability: 74.3%]
He weighed that against the alternative. A controlled, partial contribution risked destabilizing something already holding forty-seven lives in delicate balance. A full, uncontrolled transfer guaranteed the regression the system had already warned him about. Neither option was clean, but one of them at least gave him room to adjust as he went.
"I'll take the risk," he said, more to himself than to anyone listening. "Slow and adjustable is still better than blind."
The entity's voice cut through his focus before he'd fully committed. You misunderstand the formation.
"Then explain it properly."
If you take their place, you won't simply feed the formation. A pause, weighted with something that felt almost like anticipation. You will enter the test.
Lin Tianren went still. "What test?"
The entity didn't elaborate further, and he understood, standing at the formation's edge with forty-seven lives hanging in the balance, that he wasn't going to get a fuller answer before he committed either way.
He pressed his palm against the secondary channel anyway.
Energy poured out of him the moment contact settled, and his Dragon Heart Core answered almost instantly, resonance building through his chest in a rhythm that had nothing gentle left in it.
[Bloodline Resonance Increasing]
Then, a beat later, the calculation shifted entirely.
[Alternative Energy Source Detected]
[Sovereign Dragon Resonance Can Reduce Required Energy Consumption]
He felt the difference immediately, the projected cost easing as his own bloodline stepped in to carry a portion of the load his cultivation alone would have had to absorb outright. Not free. Considerably less devastating than the full thirty-one percent the system had originally projected, though the effort still burned through him in a way that made his vision swim at the edges.
The change in the chamber came almost immediately. Villagers' breathing deepened around him, the shallow, barely-there rhythm strengthening into something closer to genuine sleep than suspended half-death. The threads connecting them to the formation's center thinned visibly, some flickering weaker with every passing second. A few of the suspended figures stirred, eyelids fluttering toward consciousness for the first time since Lin Tianren had entered the chamber.
Then, without warning, one of them simply vanished.
Not weakened, not drained further. Gone entirely, the thread that had connected him snapping into nothing, the space where his suspended body had hung a moment ago now empty air.
"Where did he go?" Lin Tianren demanded, his focus nearly breaking under the shock of it.
The price has already been paid, the entity said, unbothered.
The words settled into him with a chill that had nothing to do with the chamber's temperature. Whatever this formation actually did, it wasn't simply extracting energy the way he'd assumed. Something else was happening underneath the mechanism entirely, something the "price" phrasing suggested was intentional rather than incidental.
The fox reacted before he could process the implication fully, its disguise breaking properly for the first time since they'd entered the chamber — not a brief flicker this time, but a genuine, sustained release of aura, golden light and nine faint tails visible clearly enough that Gu Chen and Xia Qing both went rigid at the sight of it.
The entity's voice shifted immediately, something close to recognition threading through it.
Nine-tailed sovereign.
Lin Tianren froze, the formation's energy demand momentarily forgotten. "You know her?"
The entity didn't answer that directly either, though the quality of its attention had clearly changed, settling on the fox with an interest that felt considerably older than anything it had directed at him so far.
A connection worth remembering, it said, offering nothing further. But not mine to explain.
The fox's golden eyes stayed fixed on the darkness where the entity's presence seemed to originate, its tension unmistakable, its silence somehow carrying more weight than an answer would have.
"You said I didn't awaken you by coming here," Lin Tianren said, pushing past the unresolved mystery for now, energy still flowing steady through the channel beneath his palm. "Then why now? Why tonight?"
I did not awaken because you came here, the entity confirmed. I awakened because your bloodline reached the required threshold.
"Required for what?"
Several seconds of silence stretched through the chamber, long enough that he wondered if the entity intended to answer at all.
To open the door.
Nothing further followed the statement. No location, no explanation of whose door, or what waited behind it, or why a sovereign dragon's bloodline specifically was the key it had apparently been designed to recognize.
The formation's remaining threads continued thinning around him, villagers stirring further toward consciousness one by one, and as the chamber's ambient light shifted with the change, something on the far wall behind the sealed core finally became visible through the retreating darkness.
An enormous dragon-shaped seal, carved into stone that dwarfed even the pillar above, its lines glowing faintly gold in response to the same resonance still building through Lin Tianren's own blood.
The system flared with something he hadn't felt from it before — not simple warning, but genuine alarm.
[Critical Discovery]
[Sovereign Dragon Seal Detected]
[Seal Recognition: Host-Compatible]
[Warning: Opening This Seal May Alter the Dimensional Boundary Between the Mortal and Immortal Realms]
Lin Tianren stared at the seal, the scale of it settling into him slowly, considerably heavier than anything he'd braced for walking into this chamber tonight.
The entity's voice returned one final time, quiet and almost satisfied.
Now you understand, it said, why I needed your blood.