Deep beneath the thunder-wreathed fortress of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, in a chamber carved from the living rock, the air was cold, damp, and thick with the metallic scent of fear. This was a place of secrets, a forgotten dungeon where the clan's enemies were brought to be broken. Tonight, it had a new, and very important, guest.
Elder Gu Chen of the Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect hung from the ceiling, his powerful, Spirit Douluo body suspended by heavy, spirit-suppressing iron chains. His elegant elder's robes were in tatters, his skin a canvas of angry, red welts and deep, oozing cuts. He had been unconscious when they brought him here. He was not unconscious now.
Before him, arranged in a semi-circle of pure, overwhelming power, were his captors.
Yu Yuanzhen sat on a simple, stone throne, his golden eyes blazing with a cold, analytical light. He was flanked by his four newly ascended Titled Douluo brothers, their auras a crackling, violent storm of draconic power.
To their side stood the contingent from the Clear Sky Sect. Tang Xiao, his handsome, sorrowful face a mask of stone. And beside him, the grim, powerful figures of Tang Ming and Tang Haien.
Tang Hao was not present. His identity was still a secret that could not be revealed, even to the lowest echelons of their new allies.
"Gu Chen," Yu Yuanzhen began, his voice a low, resonant boom that seemed to make the very stones of the chamber tremble. "You are a man of honor. A respected elder of a great sect. This… is not a position that befits you. But you have left us no choice."
He leaned forward, his gaze direct and piercing. "We require information. Secrets that your sect has been hoarding. Tell us what we wish to know, and I promise you, your death will be a quick, and painless, one. Resist… and you will learn the true meaning of the word 'pain'."
Gu Chen, his body aching, his spirit power a flickering, pathetic candle against the suffocating pressure of the spirit-suppressing chains, just looked at them. And he began to laugh.
It was not a laugh of fear. It was a laugh of pure, unadulterated, and utterly defiant contempt.
"You… you dare?!" he roared, his voice a raw, ragged sound. "The great Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, and the noble, 'unbending' Clear Sky Sect… reduced to a pack of back-alley thugs and kidnappers? Your ancestors must be weeping in their graves!"
He spat a wad of bloody saliva onto the stone floor. "You want our secrets? Then come and take them! But I will tell you nothing! The Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect does not bow to traitors and cowards!"
Yu Yuanzhen's face, which had been a mask of cold, regal authority, did not change. But a dangerous, almost imperceptible, flicker of violet lightning danced in his golden eyes.
He did not speak. He simply nodded. To his younger brother, Yu Luomian.
Yu Luomian stepped forward, a slow, predatory smile on his face. He cracked his massive knuckles, the sound like a volley of cannon fire in the silent chamber. "I was hoping he would be stubborn," he growled, his voice a low, guttural sound of pure, sadistic glee.
He did not use a weapon. He did not use a spirit ability. He simply… released his aura.
The full, unrestrained, and overwhelming pressure of a newly ascended, and incredibly powerful, Titled Douluo slammed down on Gu Chen. It was not a physical blow. It was a spiritual one. It was the feeling of a mountain being dropped on his soul.
Gu Chen gritted his teeth, a low, agonized groan escaping his lips. He was a Level 87 Spirit Douluo. He was a powerful, respected expert. But against the raw, untamed power of a Titled Douluo, in his weakened, spirit-suppressed state, he was nothing.
The spiritual pressure was just the beginning. The torture that followed was a slow, methodical, and beautifully, terrifyingly scientific process.
Yu Luomian was a brute, yes. But he was a brute with a Titled Douluo's control. He did not break bones. He did not cause massive, life-threatening injuries. He inflicted pain. Pure, unadulterated, and exquisitely precise pain.
He would use the crackling, draconic lightning that now danced at his fingertips to deliver small, controlled jolts of electricity to Gu Chen's nerve endings. Not enough to cause him to pass out. Just enough to make him scream.
The elders of the Clear Sky Sect, for their part, were artists of a different, more primal, kind. They brought out their forging tools. Small, intricately designed hammers and tongs, their surfaces heated to a dull, cherry-red in a portable, spirit-powered forge.
They did not strike him. They did not brand him. They simply… touched him. The searing, white-hot metal would press against his skin for a single, agonizing second, the smell of burning flesh a sickening, sweet aroma in the cold, damp air.
For three long, agonizing hours, Gu Chen resisted. He screamed. He cursed. He bit his own tongue until it was a bloody, shredded mess to keep from passing out. But he did not speak. His pride, the fierce, unyielding pride of the Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect, was a fortress that would not fall.
But every fortress has a weakness.
It was Yu Yuanzhen who finally, with a bored, almost offhand gesture, ended the first phase of the interrogation. He produced a small, elegant jade vial from his storage tool.
"Enough," he said, his voice a low, dismissive sound. "He is a strong one. His will is… impressive. But a strong will can be… softened."
He handed the vial to one of his other brothers. "This," he explained, his voice a calm, clinical lecture, "is the venom of a Forty-One-thousand-year-old Lightning-Vein Centipede. It is not a lethal poison. It is a neurotoxin. It does not attack the body. It attacks the mind. It breaks down the barriers between the conscious and the subconscious. It makes a man… talkative."
They forced the vial into Gu Chen's mouth, the strange, metallic-tasting liquid a cold, terrifying presence on his raw, bloody tongue.
He tried to spit it out. But it was too late.
The effect was not immediate. For a full ten minutes, nothing happened. And then, he began to feel it.
A strange, warm, and deeply unsettling tingling sensation that started at the base of his skull and slowly, inexorably, spread through his entire body. The pain from his wounds did not disappear, but it became… distant. A dull, throbbing echo.
And his mind… his mind, which had been a fortress of pure, defiant rage, began to… unravel. The walls of his will, which he had held up with such a fierce, desperate strength, began to crumble. Thoughts, memories, secrets he had held for decades, began to bubble to the surface, a chaotic, uncontrollable tide.
"Now," Yu Yuanzhen's voice was a low, hypnotic purr that seemed to come from a great, great distance. "Let us begin again. Tell us… of the pills."
Gu Chen's head lolled to the side, his eyes unfocused, a thin trickle of drool running from the corner of his mouth. He began to speak, his voice a low, slurred, and almost childishly happy murmur.
"The pills…" he said, a faint, blissful smile on his swollen, bruised lips. "So many pills… they are a miracle…"
He began to describe them, his words a jumbled, chaotic stream of consciousness. He spoke of the Spirit Ascension Pills, of the way they could grant a clean, side-effect-free level-up to a young, promising disciple. He spoke of the Heavenly Water Pills, of how they could wash away the impurities of a Spirit King, paving a smooth, golden road to the rank of a Spirit Emperor.
He spoke of the elemental pills. The Magma Spirit Pellets that could turn a common fire spirit into a creature of molten fury. The Tidal Spirit Pearls that could grant a water spirit the power of the deep, crushing ocean.
And he spoke of the most miraculous, most world-shaking pills of them all. The pills that could not just enhance a spirit, but evolve it.
The ten powerful men who stood in that dark, silent chamber listened, and their own minds, the minds of the most powerful, most respected experts in the world, were a silent, screaming vortex of pure, unadulterated, and almost religiously profound greed.
"Who?" Yu Yuanzhen's voice was a sharp, urgent hiss. "Who makes these pills? Who is the alchemist?"
Gu Chen's blissful, vacant smile faltered for a fraction of a second. A flicker of his old, ingrained loyalty, of his sect's most closely guarded secret, tried to assert itself. But the poison was too strong.
"The… the Breaking Clan…" he mumbled, his voice a low, almost inaudible whisper. "They… they are the ones who send them… from their new home… in the Star Luo Empire…"
The name dropped into the silent chamber like a bomb.
Tang Xiao's face, which had been a mask of stone, turned to a grim, icy landscape of pure, unadulterated fury. The Breaking Clan. His clan's clan. The traitors who had abandoned them, who had spat on the legacy of their ancestors. And now… now they were the source of their rival's new, world-shaking power.
He looked at Yu Yuanzhen, his sorrowful eyes now burning with a cold, hard fire. "The Breaking Clan," he said, his voice a low, final, and non-negotiable command, "is a matter for my Clear Sky Sect to handle. We will reclaim what is ours. We will bring them back under our control. And we will take their secrets."
Yu Yuanzhen looked at him, at the raw, possessive fury in his eyes, and a slow, cautious smile touched his lips. "Of course, Tang Xiao," he said, his voice a smooth, agreeable melody. "They were your people, after all. It is only right that you be the one to… discipline them."
He paused, a flicker of something, a hint of a cold, hard, and deeply pragmatic warning, in his golden eyes. "But you will, of course," he added, his voice a low, promising murmur, "be generous enough to share the fruits of your… discipline… with your new allies, will you not?"
Tang Xiao met his gaze, and a silent, unbreakable pact was sealed between the two great, and now terrifyingly ambitious, leaders. "You have my word," he said simply.
With the matter of the pills settled, a new, even more pressing question hung in the air. Yu Yuanzhen's gaze, which had been fixed on Tang Xiao with a look of shrewd, calculating satisfaction, now returned to the broken, mumbling figure of Gu Chen.
"Now," he said, his voice a low, purring sound that was somehow more menacing than his earlier roars. "Let us move on from simple alchemy. Tell us of the spirit tools. Tell us… of the weapons."
Gu Chen, lost in his own, private world of blissful, poison-induced confusion, just giggled. It was a soft, gurgling sound, disturbingly childish coming from the throat of a powerful, battle-scarred warrior. "So many… toys…" he mumbled, his head lolling to the side. "So many beautiful, wonderful toys… Pretty lights…"
He began to describe them, his words a chaotic, disjointed, and utterly terrifying tapestry of a new, technological world that was being born in secret. His mind, fractured by the neurotoxin, was no longer a linear storyteller. It was a shattered mirror, reflecting a hundred different memories at once.
"The city… it sings at night now," he began, his voice taking on a tone of childlike wonder. "Not with crickets. With light. Little suns on tall poles. They just… turn on. All at once. No one has to light them. The Sect Master said it was for… safety. For prosperity. Makes the streets so bright…"
Tang Xiao and Tang Haien exchanged a look. They had seen the glowing night lamps. They were impressive, yes, but hardly a military secret.
"We know about the lamps, you old fool," Tang Haien growled, his patience already wearing thin. "Tell us about the things that matter!"
Gu Chen flinched at the harsh tone, a flicker of his old, proud self momentarily surfacing. But the poison was too strong. His mind simply drifted to another, more pleasant memory.
"The carriages…" he murmured, a faint, nostalgic smile on his lips. "They glide. No horses. Just a quiet… hum. I rode in one once. With Elder Feng. We were going to the Jade Forest Pavilion for a banquet. The seats… they were so soft. Like sitting on a cloud. And the wine… the wine was from the southern provinces…"
"Focus!" Yu Luomian's voice was a sharp, brutal crack. He delivered a short, sharp jolt of lightning to one of the chains, making Gu Chen's body convulse, a pained grunt escaping his lips.
"The… the music…" Gu Chen stammered, his mind now latching onto the memory of that banquet. "It was beautiful. Elder Quan played his zither spirit. A song of… of falling leaves. And then… then he stopped. But the music… it didn't. It kept playing. From a box. A little black box on the table."
He looked at them, his eyes wide with a genuine, profound bewilderment, as if he were still trying to comprehend the miracle he had witnessed. "The Sect Master called it a 'Speaker'. He said… he said it could steal a song from the air. And keep it forever. You can listen to it again. And again. And again…"
The powerful, grizzled warriors who stood in that dark, silent chamber just stared. Their minds, which could comprehend the complex, esoteric laws of spirit power and the brutal, simple logic of combat, could not even begin to process such a concept. To capture a sound? To hold it? It was a thing of magic, of gods.
'Impossible,' Tang Xiao thought, his own mind, the mind of a master blacksmith, reeling. 'To replicate a physical object is one thing. But to replicate a transient thing, a sound, a melody… what kind of principle is that? What kind of technology?'
"And the camps…" Gu Chen's mind drifted again, to a different memory. A memory of a young, promising disciple, a boy from one of the subsidiary clans, preparing for his first solo hunt in the Sunset Forest. "Little Feng… he was so proud. He had one of the new kits. A little box, no bigger than a brick. He pressed a button, and… poof!"
He made a soft, explosive sound with his lips. "A tent. A full-sized tent. With a bed. And a little glowing stone that made it warm inside. And a shield. A little blue shield, like a bubble. He said… he said it could stop a twenty-thousand-year-old beast. And it hid him. Made him invisible. He was so happy. So safe…"
The elders of the Clear Sky Sect, who had spent fourteen long, hard years living in the cold, spartan conditions of their mountain exile, sleeping on hard rock and dry grass, looked at each other. Their eyes were filled with a mixture of disbelief and a deep, profound, and almost comically intense envy.
"And then… then we flew," Gu Chen whispered, his voice a hushed, reverent sound. He was remembering the day Ning Fengzhi had unveiled his greatest, most world-shaking creation to his most trusted elders.
He was remembering the feeling of the wind in his hair, of the ground falling away beneath him.
"No wings. No spirit ability. Just… a tool. A beautiful, silver thing that you wear on your back. It hums. And then… you just… fly. As fast as a Spirit King. As high as the clouds. The Sect Master said… he said it was a gift. A gift to make us all… equal to the heavens."
The Titled Douluos of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, who had spent their entire lives bound to the earth, whose greatest, most frustrating limitation was their own, ground-based nature, just stared. The look on their proud, arrogant faces was one of pure, unadulterated, and almost religiously profound desire.
To fly. To be free of the earth. It was a dream they had never even dared to dream. And now, this clan of merchants, of jewelers, they had turned that dream into a simple, wearable tool.
"And the weapons…" Gu Chen's voice dropped, his tone shifting, the blissful, childish wonder replaced by a new, more somber, and far more terrifying respect. "So many beautiful, deadly weapons…"
He began to describe them, his words a slow, steady, and utterly chilling catalog of a new kind of warfare.
He spoke of the amplification-type tools. "I saw one of the young disciples, a boy from the Strength Clan, testing one. A pair of simple, iron bracers. He was a Spirit Ancestor, Level 43. He punched a testing stone, and his power reading was… six thousand kilograms. And then, he put on the bracers. He activated them. And he punched the stone again. The reading… it was twelve thousand. It just… doubled his strength. Like that."
He spoke of the elemental pendants. "Elder Feng… his spirit is a common Flame-Tailed Fox. A decent fire spirit, but nothing special. But the Sect Master gave him a pendant. A small, ruby-red thing. And when he wears it, when he channels his spirit power through it… his flames… they are no longer red. They are… a deep, menacing purple. They burn hotter. They are harder to extinguish. It is as if his spirit itself has… evolved."
He then moved on to the direct, offensive weapons. His voice dropped to a whisper, as if he were afraid of the very words he was speaking.
"The… the 'Light Ray Emitter'…" he stammered, his mind struggling to recall the strange, foreign name. "It is a small, handheld thing. Like a short, black metal tube. I saw… I saw the Sect Master demonstrate it himself. He pointed it at a practice target, a shield forged from thousand-year-old Deep Sea Mithril, with a Level 70 Spirit Saint's defensive aura layered over it. He pressed a button. And a thin, brilliant beam of white light shot out. It did not explode. It did not make a sound. It just… passed through."
He looked at them, his eyes wide with a remembered, terrified awe. "It passed through the aura, through the mithril, as if they were not even there. It left a small, perfectly round hole, no bigger than a finger. And the edges of the hole… they were glowing. Molten."
The Titled Douluos, the men whose entire lives had been dedicated to the art of breaking through an opponent's defenses, just stared. A weapon that could ignore a Spirit Saint's aura? It was a concept that was so alien, so terrifying, that it was a thing of nightmares.
And finally, he spoke of the things that he himself had only ever seen from a distance, the things that were kept in the deepest, most secret, and most heavily guarded vaults of the sect's armory.
He spoke of… explosives.
"The… the 'Thunder Orbs'…" he whispered, his voice a trembling, fearful sound. "They are small. The size of a fist. Made of a strange, black metal. I saw one of the armory masters testing one. He threw it into an empty training field. And the explosion… it was not just fire. It was… lightning. A storm of it. The ground for a hundred meters was just… gone. A smoking, blackened crater. The power… it was equal to that of a Spirit Emperor's eighth spirit ring ability."
He was not finished.
"And there are… there are others," he mumbled, his voice now a barely audible whisper. "Larger ones. The ones they call the 'Mountain Breakers'. I have never seen one used. But I have heard the whispers. I have heard the armory masters talking. They say… they say a single one… could wipe out a small mountain."
He finished speaking, and the silence that followed was a profound, deafening thing.
The ten most powerful men of the two greatest attack-type sects in the world just stood there, their faces a mask of pure, unadulterated, and utterly, completely, and soul-shatteringly profound terror.
The Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect, the clan of merchants, of jewelers, of support-type spirit masters… they were not just a wealthy, influential power anymore.
They were a technological superpower. They were a military force whose true, hidden strength was so immense, so profound, that it was a thing of nightmares. Their own power, their own legacy, their own hammers and dragons… they felt… obsolete.
"Who?" Yu Yuanzhen's voice was a choked, broken whisper, a sound of pure dread. "Who is the one who is creating these things? What is his name? Where is he?"
Gu Chen just shook his head, a slow, lazy motion, a blissful, vacant smile on his face. "Don't know…" he mumbled. "No one knows… it's a secret… a big, big secret…"
He giggled again, the sound a soft, gurgling punctuation to their shared, dawning horror.
"The plans… the designs… they all come from the Sect Master… from Ning Fengzhi himself… he is a genius… a true, beautiful… genius…"
The name dropped into the silent, terrified chamber like a final, devastating bomb. Ning Fengzhi. The smiling, diplomatic merchant. The man they had all underestimated.
The man who was now, without a doubt, the single most powerful, and most dangerous, man in the world.
~~
A/N: Check out my other novels like "Douluo Dalu: Time Travel", "Harem Master: Seduction System" and the "Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist" and I hope you like this story and those stories as well.
Check out more chapters on my P.atreon. The P.atreon will have 20+ Chapters ahead for this story. I hope you like it.
The link of p.atreon is: bit.ly/evildragon