The steel was cold. Ice-cold. It rested against Lu Chen's throat, right over his pulse.
Ye Xiyue stood before him in the center of his new quarters, the moonlight casting her face in pale marble. Her eyes held no warmth, only a terrifying, predatory clarity.
"Drop the act," Ye Xiyue whispered. Her sword, a sliver of condensed moonlight, bit into his skin. A bead of warm blood trickled down his collar. "The tournament was a farce. Gu Yan didn't trip. You did something to him. I can see the rot beneath your stolen gold."
Lu Chen stared back. The Luck-Binding Mirror thrummed in his dantian, eager to rip the staggering providence from the Saintess. He didn't flinch. Instead, he forced Gu Yan's freshly plundered golden luck up to the surface, cloaking his Void Root in a blinding, counterfeit light.
"I don't know what you mean, Saintess," Lu Chen rasped. "I won by sheer fortune."
She pressed the blade deeper. "Fortune doesn't swallow light. What are you?"
Before Lu Chen could transfer a speck of localized misfortune to force her back, a heavy bronze bell tolled across Cloud Peak. Dong. Dong. Dong.
The resonance vibrated through the floorboards. It was the summons for the Spirit Spring—a mandatory initiation for newly promoted Inner Disciples.
Lu Chen offered a bloody, crooked smile. "Unless you plan to murder an Inner Disciple on his first night, Saintess, I have an appointment."
Ye Xiyue's jaw tightened. She sensed the golden luck swirling around him, thick and radiant, yet her instincts screamed it was a mask. She pulled the blade back a fraction of an inch.
"The Void leaves a scent," she said softly, stepping back into the shadows. "I will find it."
She vanished out the window, leaving only the sharp smell of frost and ozone. Lu Chen exhaled, wiping the blood from his neck. His eyes turned pitch black for a fraction of a second. Keep pushing me, Saintess. We'll see who eats who.
He turned and walked out the door.
***
The summit of Cloud Peak was drowning in mist. The Spirit Spring wasn't a bath; it was a natural crater bleeding liquid World Essence straight from the mountain's primary ley line. The water glowed a vibrant, toxic blue. The air smelled of crushed mint and raw lightning.
Nine other newly promoted disciples stood at the edge, their eyes wide with hunger. Most were lackeys from elite families, fast-tracked into Fang Tianyou's faction. They glared at Lu Chen as he approached, clearly disgusted that an "average" talent had lucked his way into their ranks.
An elder in grey robes stood by a brass sundial. He struck a wooden block.
"One hour," the elder barked. "Enter the water. Absorb what you can to solidify your Foundation. Do not force the intake, or your meridians will rupture."
The elite disciples scrambled in, violently claiming the center where the essence bubbled thickest. Lu Chen ignored them. He slid into the shallow edge at the back.
The water scalded his skin like boiling oil. Pure, unrefined energy violently burrowed into his pores.
Lu Chen closed his eyes. The other disciples immediately began cycling the Azure Cloud sect's standard Qi methods, their breathing falling into a rhythmic harmony. Lu Chen didn't bother. The sect's methods were garbage.
He called upon the Luck-Binding Mirror.
Behind his closed eyelids, the world shifted into negative colors. Above the nine disciples, thick, radiant ropes of golden Qi Yun materialized, connecting their bodies to the glowing depths of the Spirit Spring. The pool was a massive battery, and they were plugging in, drawing its lifeblood.
Lu Chen sneered. Mine.
He activated the Mirror's Plunder function. The dark, cracked surface of the artifact in his mind tilted toward the center of the pool. A terrifying gravitational pull awakened within his Void Root.
Instantly, the golden threads connecting the other disciples to the spring violently snapped.
They whipped through the water and reattached to Lu Chen.
He wasn't just drinking from his side of the pool. He was siphoning the essence *through* their destinies, stealing their allocated 'fortune' of the spring.
Pain tore through his veins. The liquid essence flooded his body in an unstoppable tidal wave. He bypassed Early Foundation Establishment in seconds. The energy hit him like a physical hammer. Lu Chen clamped his jaw shut, tasting copper as his capillaries burst and rapidly healed under the deluge of pure power.
Mid-Foundation Establishment.
The black void in his dantian swallowed the liquid light, compressing it into a flawless, obsidian platform.
Around him, the water began to lose its vibrant glow.
"What's happening?" a disciple in the center gasped, his face suddenly pale.
"I can't feel the essence!" another groaned, clutching his chest. "My Qi... it's flowing backward!"
They thrashed in the water, trying to pull the energy back. They couldn't. Lu Chen was an abyss, and they were standing on the edge. He was actively leeching their personal vitality through the stolen connections.
Lu Chen pushed harder. The Mirror spun wildly.
Late Foundation Establishment.
His bones cracked, reforming denser, harder. His Void Sword Intent howled through his meridians, sharpening until it felt capable of slicing reality itself. The pool turned a dull, lifeless grey. He drained every drop of spiritual value from the water, stripping the ley line bare.
Peak Foundation Establishment.
The elder struck the wooden block. Crack.
"Time!"
The disciples dragged themselves out of the pool. They looked like corpses. Sunken eyes, trembling hands, lips blue with cold. They hadn't gained a single drop of cultivation; they had lost months of accumulated Qi.
Lu Chen climbed out last. He instantly suppressed his booming aura, hunching his shoulders. He coughed weakly, shivering and wrapping his arms around himself, playing the victim perfectly.
"The spring..." the elder muttered, dropping his wooden block in shock as he stared at the murky, dead puddle. "The ley line... it's empty. This is impossible. I must report this!"
Before the elder could take a single step, the mountain violently violently shook.
A deafening shockwave ripped across Cloud Peak. A pillar of blinding golden light erupted from the central peak—Fang Tianyou's sanctum. The sky warped as dense clouds of Heavenly Tribulation gathered.
Fang Tianyou was attempting a major breakthrough.
But the golden pillar flickered. It stuttered, choking like a starved fire.
Lu Chen looked up, his heart turning cold. He recognized that specific resonance. It was his stolen Innate Spirit Root. Fang Tianyou had relied on the sect's main ley line to fuel the stolen root's massive appetite. But Lu Chen had just drained the tributary dry.
A voice, laced with raw fury and terrifying Golden Core pressure, blasted across the peaks, shattering the windows of nearby pavilions.
"Who dared sever the Ley Line?!"
A massive, golden eye formed of pure Sword Intent manifested in the storm clouds. It swept over the shivering disciples at the dead spring, bypassing them instantly.
Then, it stopped.
The golden eye locked dead onto Lu Chen.
The sheer, oppressive pressure cracked the stone beneath Lu Chen's feet. The stolen root inside Fang Tianyou was starving, and it had just sensed the terrifying, familiar void of its original master.