Mu Chen stood amidst the swirling mists of the valley, his eyes half-lidded and projecting a sense of deadpan indifference. As the young man in the golden, dragon-embroidered robes approached with such a familiar, respectful greeting, Mu Chen didn't show a flicker of recognition.
He didn't even shift his weight. To him, the sight of a prince was no more impressive than a particularly colorful beetle.
"Who are you?" Mu Chen asked, his voice flat and devoid of any social grace. "Do we actually know each other?"
To anyone else in this world the golden dragons embroidered robes were symbols of absolute authority and noble distinction. They were signs that marked the imperial family as beings set apart from common men.
But to Mu Chen, these details were invisible. He didn't care if there were four dragons, forty dragons, or four thousand dragons stitched into the silk. To him, a man in a golden robe was just a man who was a bit shiny.
Being addressed with such blunt, casual dismissiveness made Prince Lu Ming feel a sudden, scorching heat rise to his face. The valley, previously filled with the murmurs of cultivators, seemed to fall into an extra-heavy silence.
Lu Ming could feel the weight of hundreds of gazes on his back—eyes that seemed to be questioning what kind of prince you are? Even your kingdom people don't recognise you. He felt a sudden, desperate urge to find a hole in the earth and crawl into it.
Despite the stinging embarrassment, Lu Ming knew they had truly never met. He let out a dry, forced cough into his fist, trying to regain his composure before the watching eyes of the sect disciples.
"Brother Mu Chen, I am Lu Ming," the prince explained, forcing a polite smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I am the Prince of the Canglan Kingdom."
Mu Chen gave a short, perfunctory nod. He had heard the name, but he didn't see how that changed the fact that his walk was being interrupted.
From Mu Chen's shoulder, Xiao Diao let out a sharp, mocking yawn. The purplish mink stretched his tiny limbs, his golden eyes narrowing as he looked at the prince. "Alright, little brat, so what's going here? Why is everyone huddled around this crack in the ground?"
Lu Ming didn't take offense at being called a "little brat" by a creature the size of a squirrel. He had lived in the capital long enough to know that the "Devil" of the city gates and his beast companion were not to be trifled with. He adjusted his posture, his expression turning grave as he focused on the business at hand.
"Senior," Lu Ming addressed the mink, acknowledging the power behind the small frame. "We have received intelligence that this valley is the blooming site of the Dreamwake Fruit. It is a legendary spiritual treasure capable of forcing a Nascent Soul out of its dormant state within the Golden Core. For any cultivator stuck at the late Golden Core stage, it increases the chances of a successful breakthrough by nearly ninety percent."
Xiao Diao's whiskers twitched. A ninety percent chance of breakthrough was a statistic that would make even the any golden core cultivator go mad with greed.
"I never thought such a high-grade treasure would be found here," the mink remarked, his voice full of genuine surprise.
This place which was beneath Enlightenment Lake is a separate dimension that served as a cradle for the energy of a Heavenly Seal. In such a high-density environment, where primordial laws were still settling, the growth of a Dreamwake Fruit was rare, but not impossible.
One of the royal guards stepped closer to Lu Ming, whispering with a note of excitement. "Young Lord, it seems our luck is holding. None of the other imperial families or the high orthodox clans have made it this far into the fissure yet. If we move now, the prize is ours."
Xiao Diao's lips curved into a sharp, predatory grin as he scanned the perimeter. "Luck? There are still plenty of pests hiding in the corners, waiting to see if you'll do the hard work for them."
"Heh heh, this friend's pet has quite the keen perception," a mocking voice boomed from the mist ahead. "But unfortunately, this path is already spoken for. How about you lot leave on your own power before we break your legs and make you roll away from here?"
As the threat hung in the air, dozens of figures materialized from the dense mist surrounding the valley entrance. They moved with the practiced coordination of predators, subtly fanning out to encircle Mu Chen, Xiao Diao, and the Prince's entourage.
"I am Hua Yun of the Purple Sword Sect!" shouted a man in robes the color of dried blood, a slender sword humming with a low, hungry frequency at his hip.
"I am Mo Ling of the Cloud Sea Pavilion!" added a broader man in sea-blue garments, his aura rippling outward like an incoming tide.
The two figures stepped forward, their combined presence creating a localized storm of spiritual pressure. They were perfectly matched, both radiating the unmistakable, crushing weight of the Late Golden Core Realm. Prince Lu Ming took an involuntary step forward, his voice dropping to a low murmur meant only for Mu Chen and the mink.
"Purple Sword Sect and Cloud Sea Pavilion... they aren't from anywhere near Canglan. They've traveled thousands of miles for this fruit. I didn't expect the news to have traveled that far."
Prince Lu Ming's voice dropped to a barely audible murmur as he warned his companions that these two were from outside the Canglan Kingdom. He noted that the allure of the Dreamwake Fruit was apparently great enough to draw the attention of sects from thousands of miles away.
Mu Chen regarded the two sect geniuses with the hooded, lazy gaze of a predator that found its prey deeply uninteresting. He didn't even bother to take his hands out of his pockets.
He tilted his head slightly, his voice a bored drawl. "Just you two weaklings?"
He was not mocking them, he was just stating the fact.
The silence that followed was as brittle as thin ice. It lasted only a second before the two geniuses erupted.
"Presumptuous!"
"Arrogant brat!"
The two roared in unison, their faces darkening with a mixture of shock and incandescent rage. Razor-sharp auras erupted from their bodies, climbing and solidifying until the air itself grew heavy enough to make the weaker disciples choke. This was the true pressure of Late Golden Core masters—pure, dense, and terrifying.
"Boy, let me teach you a lesson!" Mo Ling's voice boomed like distant thunder. "There is always someone stronger than you in this world!"
"Demonic Sea Mountain!"
Mo Ling's hands blurred through a series of ancient seals, and the ground beneath him cracked as he devoured the spiritual energy of the earth.
"One Sword Cleave Earth!" Beside him, Hua Yun drew his sword in a single, blurring motion.
They moved in a terrible, destructive harmony. Spiritual energy surged through their meridians, visible as golden light bleeding through their skin—pure, dense, and almost liquid. The power didn't just radiate; it pooled in the atmosphere around them, turning the air thick and shimmering like molten metal. To the watching cultivators, it was as if two miniature suns had risen in the valley, their light not warm, but heavy with the gravity of condensed mountains.
A massive, black mountain peak wreathed in churning blue sea-force materialized in the air, its shadow alone flattening the grass into pulp. Beside it, Hua Yun's sword didn't just gleam—it hummed with the sound of ten thousand angry wasps. Sharpness itself became a visible distortion, reality recoiling from the edge of the blade as if it were a guillotine prepared for a cosmic execution.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The pressure detonated outward. Nearby cultivators in the early Golden Core stage were thrown backward like dead leaves in a hurricane, their spiritual energy in total disarray.
Those in the mid stage barely held their ground, teeth gritted, hands flashing as they circulated spiritual power to erect shimmering shields that crackled and groaned against the onslaught.
Ancient trees didn't just fall; they disintegrated into fine powder.
The earth beneath the two attackers sank, forming a deep crater where the stone liquefied under the pressure before re-solidifying into glass-smooth obsidian.
The combined attack descended. The Demonic Sea Mountain blotted out the sky, threatening to swallow Mu Chen whole, while the sword followed behind, its sharpness splitting the ground into a fissure that raced toward him with the speed of thought.
Mu Chen looked up. His expression never changed—that same lazy, half-interested gaze, as if he were watching rain fall on a window. He slowly raised a hand, extended a single finger, and made a casual swiping motion.
A single grain of sand lifted from the floor of the crater. It rose, unremarkable and brown, smaller than a mustard seed.
Then it moved.
The grain flipped the sea—literally. The solidified spiritual waters of Mo Ling's technique parted and inverted, crashing upward into the sky in a reverse waterfall that dissipated into scattered light. It toppled the mountain—the black peak, that condensed mass of Late Golden Core power, simply tipped over. its foundation was severed by a speck of earth no larger than a pinhead, and it crumbled into black dust that rained down upon the valley like ash.
The grain continued its path, piercing through the heart of Hua Yun's sword technique. The guillotine edge didn't just break; it shattered. Fragments of spiritual steel screamed as they dissolved into nothingness.
The grain of sand passed through the blade's heart, through the very concept of the attack, and returned to Mu Chen's palm.
He tossed the grain idly once, caught it, and smiled. "Catch this."
The grain split into two identical specks. They flew forward—not fast, but with an inevitability that suggested the distance between Mu Chen and the two geniuses no longer existed. Mo Ling and Hua Yun had no time to react, no time to scream, and no time to comprehend that the gap between them and this lazy youth was not a gap, but an unbridgeable chasm.
Thud. Thud.
Two foreheads snapped backward. Two bodies became streaks of light, golden auras trailing behind them like comets. The air screamed as they were catapulted through it, vanishing over the horizon in a fraction of a heartbeat.
The sound of the final impact arrived late, rolling across the valley like a delayed thunderclap. In the far distance, two mountain peaks erupted, twin plumes of dust and stone climbing into the clouds.
The impacts were so violent that the ground beneath the watching cultivators rippled like water. When the dust finally settled, two new valleys existed where peaks had once stood, and at their centers lay two human-shaped craters.
The nearby cultivators stood frozen, many of them having forgotten to breathe. They swallowed hard, their throats clicking dryly as the echoes of the destruction faded into a ringing silence.
Mu Chen casually dusted his hands together and let out a long, weary yawn. "Let's go," he said, turning his back on the devastation.
Xiao Diao chuckled, hopping back into his place. "They really did learn today that there is always someone standing above them."
As Mu Chen moved toward the valley entrance, the red-orange restriction net that had been sealing the passage simply dissolved into shimmering confetti. It wasn't a seal being broken; it felt more like a grand celebration laying out a path for his entry.
Mu Chen didn't even pause to look as he continued forward into the heart of the valley.
After a long, suffocating silence, the followers of Mo Ling and Hua Yun finally recovered from their terror. They let out panicked shouts for their senior brothers and flew toward the distant mountains, desperate to see if there was enough left of their leaders to bury.
The other cultivators gathered outside began to stir, their voices trembling with awe and fear.
"What was that?" one man whispered. "What kind of technique could do that? Was that a Heaven-Grade skill?"
"Is he already at the Nascent Soul Realm?" another wondered aloud, his voice shaking so much he could barely form the words. "Why is he so strong?"
"And did you see the restriction?" a third asked, pointing at the entrance. "How does a legendary restriction net just turn into confetti?"
The guards of Prince Lu Ming stood in a daze, eventually calling out to their young lord. Lu Ming himself remained frozen. He had heard the stories of Mu Chen's power, but witnessing it was something far more terrifying.
He realized then just how fragile the world's hierarchy truly was.
He eventually shook off the shock, his voice tight. "Let us go inside. Brother Mu has already cleared the way for us."
As the other cultivators attempted to follow, they found their knees buckling. Only now, in the quiet aftermath, did they realize just how deeply they had been shaken by what they had witnessed.