The air in the VIP corridor of the underground market grew unnaturally thick.
Lu Chen stopped mid-step. The shadows of the Shadow Sword Pavilion usually provided perfect cover, especially with his Void Sword Intent masking his spiritual signature. Yet, blocking his path was a figure in pristine white robes, untouched by the grime of the black market.
Ye Xiyue.
The Saintess of the Fallen Moon Palace didn't draw her blade. She didn't need to. Her 'Heart of the Sword' resonated with the surrounding space, causing the very air to hum with a crystalline purity. Her pale, ethereal eyes locked onto Lu Chen's disguised face, but he knew she wasn't looking at his physical features. She was staring straight into his Dantian.
"You do not exist," Ye Xiyue whispered, her voice like chiming glass. "Where the Heavens weave the threads of destiny, there is only a gaping maw when I look at you. An abyss."
Lu Chen's fingers subtly curled, a sliver of invisible, matter-erasing Void Sword Intent condensing at his fingertips. "Are you here to execute the Heavens' will, Saintess?"
To his surprise, Ye Xiyue stepped aside. The oppressive, pure sword pressure vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"The Heavens are blind in this era," she said softly, her gaze shifting down the corridor toward the VIP auction hall's exit. "Xue Ming of the Iron Blood Hall just purchased the 'Blood-Marrow Vajra Core' inside. His providence is burning like a corrupt sun. He plans to massacre a village of mortals on his way back to test its power. If the void wishes to swallow him... the moon will look away."
Before Lu Chen could respond, she dissolved into a flurry of silver petals, fading into the ambient spiritual energy.
Lu Chen exhaled, dispersing the Void Intent. Ye Xiyue was a dangerous enigma, but right now, she had just handed him an opening.
He turned his focus inward. The Luck-Binding Mirror in his mind's eye was already vibrating, drawn to the sheer density of the fortune moving toward the city's outskirts. Xue Ming's Heavenly Opportunity was ripe.
***
The Jagged Throat Canyon lay twenty miles east of Cloud Edge City. It was a desolate stretch of road flanked by towering, razor-sharp cliffs, perpetually shrouded in gray mist.
Xue Ming hovered three feet above the ground, his hands clasped behind his back. He was a young man with crimson hair and a violently arrogant sneer. The oppressive aura of an Early Golden Core cultivator radiated from him, heavy enough to crack the stone beneath his feet. Behind him trailed four Foundation Establishment guards, panting as they struggled to keep up with their young master's spiritual pressure.
"Fools," Xue Ming scoffed, tossing a thumb-sized, blood-red pill into the air and catching it. "The Azure Cloud Sect thought they could outbid me for the Blood-Marrow Vajra Core. With this, my Iron Blood Avatar will reach the ninth echelon. I am destined for the Sovereign realm!"
"Your destiny ends in this canyon."
The voice was flat, devoid of emotion or spiritual inflection.
Xue Ming stopped. His guards immediately drew their sabers, eyes darting through the mist.
From the gray fog, Lu Chen stepped forward. He wore a plain black robe and a featureless bamboo hat. In his hand rested a simple iron sword. To Xue Ming's senses, the man blocking his path was merely at the Early Foundation Establishment stage.
Xue Ming threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing like thunder. "An Early Foundation ant? Has the world gone mad? Even a rogue dog should know to cower when a Golden Core dragon passes!"
Lu Chen didn't speak. In his vision, the world lost its color, shifting into the monochrome realm of the Luck-Binding Mirror.
Xue Ming was a beacon. A massive pillar of crimson-gold Qi Yun erupted from the young master's head, thick and pulsating with the favor of the Heavens. It was the providence of a man meant to conquer provinces. By contrast, Lu Chen had no pillar. He was a walking void.
"Kill him and feed his spiritual root to my hounds," Xue Ming ordered casually, turning his back.
The four guards lunged.
Lu Chen didn't blink. He took a single step forward, his iron sword sweeping out in a casual arc.
Void Sword Intent.
There was no flash of light, no explosive clash of spiritual energy. The air simply warped. As the four guards crossed into a ten-foot radius of Lu Chen, their bodies met the invisible wave of the Void. Their sabers turned to dust. Their armor dissolved. Flesh, bone, and spiritual energy were silently erased from existence.
They didn't even have time to scream. Four piles of gray ash fluttered to the stone path.
Xue Ming spun around, his arrogant sneer freezing into a mask of shock. "What... what demonic art is that?!"
"It's called consequence," Lu Chen said, continuing his slow walk forward.
"Arrogant worm!" Xue Ming roared. His Early Golden Core cultivation exploded. The mist was violently blown away by a shockwave of blood-red spiritual energy. A massive, ten-foot-tall phantom of a multi-armed demon materialized behind him—the Iron Blood Avatar.
"Die! Iron Blood Mountain Cleaver!"
Xue Ming raised both hands, and the demonic avatar mimicked the motion, manifesting a massive halberd of condensed blood energy. The sheer pressure locked the space around Lu Chen, preventing any evasion. The attack possessed the power to cleave the entire canyon in two.
Against a Golden Core strike, an Early Foundation Establishment cultivator would be atomized.
But Lu Chen did not raise his sword to block. Instead, his eyes flashed with an eerie, abyssal light.
Luck-Binding Mirror: Blindness!
Lu Chen forcefully projected the power of the mirror outward, not to steal Xue Ming's Qi Yun, but to sever its connection to the Heavens. For a single, terrifying microsecond, Xue Ming's blinding crimson-gold pillar of luck was covered in an absolute, suffocating darkness.
Providence dictated probability. A Golden Core master executing a familiar technique had a 99.99% chance of success. But when the Heavens looked away, when luck was blinded, reality inverted.
As Xue Ming brought his hands down to unleash the cataclysmic strike, a microscopic impurity within the Blood-Marrow Vajra Core he had just ingested reacted violently with his Dantian. A perfectly aligned spiritual ley line beneath the canyon suddenly shifted, creating a vacuum of spiritual energy right where Xue Ming was drawing power.
CRACK.
The sound was deafening.
Xue Ming's Iron Blood Avatar didn't swing the halberd. Instead, the construct violently imploded. The massive reservoir of blood energy, having nowhere to go and destabilized by the sudden Dantian blockage, rebounded entirely into Xue Ming's body.
"GAAAH!" Xue Ming shrieked, his eyes rolling back in his head. Blood burst from his pores, his ears, and his eyes. He collapsed to his knees, his meridians instantly shredded by his own ultimate technique. His Golden Core, the very foundation of his immortality, fractured into a dozen pieces.
He fell forward, coughing up chunks of blackened blood, his cultivation utterly crippled in a fraction of a second.
"My... my core..." Xue Ming wheezed, staring at his trembling, blood-soaked hands in sheer disbelief. "Why... how...?"
Lu Chen stood over him, looking down with eyes as cold as the Abyss of Despair.
"The Heavens favored you," Lu Chen said quietly. "But the Heavens aren't here right now."
Lu Chen swung his iron sword. A silent ripple of Void Sword Intent passed through Xue Ming's neck. The young master's head slid off his shoulders, his face frozen in an expression of absolute terror and confusion.
Immediately, the Luck-Binding Mirror in Lu Chen's Dantian spun like a starved beast.
The massive, unmoored crimson-gold Qi Yun of a Golden Core cultivator exploded outward from Xue Ming's corpse. Before it could dissipate back into the world, the mirror generated an overwhelming suction. The providence was violently dragged into Lu Chen's body.
Lu Chen threw his head back as a roaring inferno of stolen destiny flooded his Dantian.
His Spirit-rank Void Root devoured the Golden Core luck, using it as a crucible to expand and solidify. The bottleneck of the Early Foundation Establishment stage shattered like fragile glass.
Boom!
His aura spiked. Mid Foundation Establishment. The stolen Qi Yun violently reconstructed his meridians, widening them, reinforcing his bones with a crimson sheen, and deepening the abyss within his Dantian.
Lu Chen exhaled a breath of turbid, grayish air. The power coursing through him was intoxicating. He bent down and casually slid the spatial ring off Xue Ming's severed finger.
With a flick of his consciousness, he broke Xue Ming's fading spiritual imprint on the ring and scanned its contents. Mountains of spirit stones, blood-jade slips, and the coveted Blood-Marrow Vajra Core sat within.
But nested in the very center of the ring's space was an item Lu Chen hadn't anticipated.
It was a communication jade slip, glowing with a brilliant, sickeningly familiar azure light.
The moment Lu Chen's divine sense brushed against the slip to inspect it, the jade shattered. It hadn't just been a communication device; it was a proximity trigger.
A projection of golden light erupted from the shattered shards, illuminating the misty canyon. The light coalesced into the phantom visage of a handsome young man with eyes full of supreme arrogance.
Fang Tianyou.
Lu Chen's heart stopped. His grip on the iron sword tightened until his knuckles turned white.
The phantom projection of the Azure Cloud Sect's 'Chosen One' spoke, its voice dripping with impatience. "Xue Ming. Have you secured the Blood-Marrow Core as tribute for my advancement? If the Iron Blood Hall wishes for my sect's protection, you will—"
The phantom suddenly paused. The eyes of the projection snapped toward Lu Chen, widening in profound shock.
Though it was just a projection, it possessed a sliver of Fang Tianyou's true divine sense. And within Lu Chen's Dantian, the Void Root—forged from the ashes of his original, stolen Innate Spirit Root—twitched.
Fang Tianyou's phantom leaned forward, his handsome face twisting into an expression of greedy realization.
"Xue Ming is dead..." Fang Tianyou whispered, his eyes locking onto Lu Chen's disguised form. "But... how is this possible? I feel the resonance. My Spirit Root... it recognizes you. Who are you? Where did you get that aura?!"
Before Lu Chen could destroy the projection, a deafening thunderclap echoed from the western horizon. A terrifying, overwhelming surge of Azure Cloud Sword Intent began to tear across the sky, locking onto the exact coordinates of the Jagged Throat Canyon.
Fang Tianyou was coming. And he was bringing the fury of the Heavens with him.
Lu Chen's eyes narrowed, the Void Intent wrapping around his body like a shroud. The hunt had escalated.