My name is Long Chen. In the Azure Sky Sect, that name had the exact same pronunciation as another word. Trash.
I was born with meridians that were obstructed, a curse in a world where martial arts abilities controlled everything. They said my talent was so mediocre, even a pig could learn faster than me. And they probably were right. I was just an outer disciple, doing the worst work, getting the worst materials, and living in the worst crumbling hut. It was a dog's life. But I had a purpose for enduring it all.
Her name was Su Mei.
She was beautiful, as a newly bloomed lotus flower. We were born in the same village before entering the sect together. She promised me. She took an oath that she would wait for me, that we would be together forever. That oath, it was the sole light in my darkness. A light that was going to be snuffed out.
"Long Chen, you piece of trash! Come here!"
It was a voice of arrogance, of disdain. Wei Kun's voice. He was an inner disciple, gifted, handsome, and cruel. And he was right next to Su Mei. His arm around her waist, his hand on her hip in a motion that made my blood boil.
I walked towards them, my fists curled so hard my knuckles hurt. My heart was aching. "Su Mei. what's this?"
Su Mei would not even look my direction. Her lovely face, once so gentle, was now a cold mask. "Long Chen, let us be done with this. We are from two different worlds. Brother Wei is a dragon among men, and you. you are but a worm. I will not waste my life on garbage like you."
Hahaha.
A smile escaped my lips. It was a stifled, agonized sound. A smile of a man who had lost everything. The world started spinning around me. Her words were like a thousand stuck needles into my heart.
Wei Kun sneered, his sculpted face twisting into a coarse mask. "Hahaha! Did everyone hear that, everyone? Trash is laughing! Does he believe this is funny? A worm like him has the audacity to dream up a phoenix like Junior Sister Su? You ought to be standing in front of a mirror!"
His underlings all started laughing too. "Hahaha!" "What a clown!" "He really doesn't know his place!"
I gazed at Su Mei, my eyes begging for an answer, for some glimmer of the girl I had known. "Was everything a lie? Everything you said?"
She finally looked at me, her eyes filled with pity. The type of pity you feel for a stray dog. "I was young and foolish. I have grown up, Long Chen. You must too. Let go."
Let go? How do you let go? It was everything I had.
"You shameful bitch!" I thundered, the words clawing their way from my throat. All rationality was gone from me. I had only a massive, animal-like rage. "And you, Wei Kun! You steal my woman from me! I'll kill you!"
I charged forward. It was a stupid thing to do. I had reached the first level of the Body Refining realm, one that children could also access. He was at the ninth level, just one step away from the Qi Condensation realm. A sect genius.
He didn't move. He simply waved his finger.
A. blast of air, a whisper of energy, hit my chest. it felt like a mountain had collapsed on me. I slammed back, spitting blood from my lips, and landed with a thud on the floor. The world was blurry. My ribs were broken. Every breath was agony.
Wei Kun stepped over on purpose, his foot landing hard on my chest. I could hear my bones snapping. "Kill you? You? Hahaha! A dog barks at a dragon? Su Mei is my woman now. Tonight, I will enjoy her body, and nights after tonight. And there's nothing you can do about it?"
He looked at Su Mei, and she blushed slightly on her cheeks, a mix of shame and excitement. My heart shattered into pieces.
"You." I coughed up blood once more, my vision fading to black.
"This is so boring," Wei Kun grumbled, opening his mouth wide in a yawn. He looked around. We stood right at the edge of a cliff. A very famous cliff. The Demon-Sealing Abyss. A field of death, an endless chasm from which no man had ever returned. There were legends it led directly into the underworld itself.
A hard smile crossed his face. "Because you're so determined to be rubbish, why don't you go to the biggest trash heap in the universe?"
He kicked at my battered body. I rolled like a rag doll, unable to move, my power sapped. I rolled over the very edge.
The last thing I remembered was Su Mei's scornful face and Wei Kun's triumphant sneer.
And then, nothing but the howling of the wind.
My body fell, gathered momentum in the endless blackness. Agony filled every part of my body. My bones were broken, organs ruptured. I was going to die. I could feel it. This would be Long Chen's demise, the waste of the Azure Sky Sect. My whole life flashed before my eyes. My parents' faces, hard times in the sect, and Su Mei's smile. That beautiful, fake smile.
"Wuwuw."
A scream of silence in my heart. I didn't want to die. I wanted revenge! I wanted them to pay! I wanted to stand at the top of the world and get them to regret that they ever did this day.
If there are gods. if there are devils. give me my chance! I'll sell my soul! Just give me the power to make them suffer!
My consciousness was fading. The darkness was surrounding me. And then. thud.
It was not the crashing blow I expected. I dropped onto something. soft. Like an enormous moss bed. The blow did push the last puff of air out of my lungs, and then blackness.".
I don't know how long I was out. It could have been hours or it could have been days. When I came around, the very first thing I knew was. no pain.
I sat up, confused. I looked at my body. My clothes were torn and bloody, but my skin underneath was flawless. All of my broken bones were healed. My internal injuries were gone. I felt. stronger. Stronger than I had ever been in my life.
I stood in a vast cavern. Strange, luminescent plants cast a gentle, ethereal light. The air was thick with a form of energy that made my body hum with joy. It was spiritual Qi, but so clean, so dense, it was almost liquid. At the center of the cavern stood a skeleton.
It sat in the lotus position on a throne made of black jade. The skeleton itself wasn't white, but shining, crystalline gold. It radiated an aura of gargantuan power and timelessness, an aura that forced me to kneel down and worship it. Even dead, you could see that this beast was a great ruler when it was alive.
I walked towards it, drawn by an unseen power. When I stood before the throne, one beam of light issued from the skeleton's forehead and shot straight into mine.
"BOOM!"
My head exploded. Knowledge, pictures, memories not my own filled my head. I was looking at stars being born and dying. I was looking at dragons as large as galaxies. I saw a man, whose face I couldn't see, battling single-handedly an army of gods and demons, his strength shaking the entire universe. I knew his name. The Celestial Primordial Dragon Sovereign. The strongest immortal ever to live.
He had been in a post-apocalyptic fight and passed away here, his body destroyed, but his part of his heritage remained, and it awaited a chosen person.
Then something else happened to me in my own flesh. A powerful, ancient bloodline deep within me that I did not know that I had was awakened by the Sovereign's heritage. It was the Primordial Dragon Bloodline!
At the same time, the constitution of my body also changed. My bones changed to jade color, my blood to gold, and my skin turned as hard as that of a dragon scale. The inheritance had activated my first physique: Celestial Primordial Dragon Body! It made me extremely powerful, resilient, and with an logic-defying healing ability. That was why I was healed.
But that wasn't it. There was a second wave of energy, this one soft and fragrant, that awakened something else within me. It felt. strange. It made me feel warm that spread to my lower areas. A new body of knowledge entered my mind. The Myriad Flowers Dao Physique.
A body that made me a natural furnace for double cultivation. It gave me an unstoppable charm to women with rare physiques or lineage. Cultivating with them, merging our Yin and Yang, would not just greatly enhance their own cultivation speed and comprehension but also mine. It was a body meant for cultivating a vast harem.
Before I could even take this disconcerting information in, something else happened. A small, unobtrusive black bead that was being clutched in the skeletal hand somehow sprang up and went zooming towards me, jabbing my chest, right above my heart. It was also warm.
A voice, as melodious as a silver bell, suddenly echoed inside of my head.
"Hee hee, after ten million years, at last someone has come! And he has the Primordial Dragon Bloodline! The heavens have not abandoned us!"
There was a beautiful woman standing before me. She was about sixteen or seventeen years old. She wore a foggy white dress that did a very poor job of concealing the perfect, seductive lines of her body. Her skin was as pale as snow, her hair as bright as the moonlight, and her eyes as violet crystals with some wizdom and playfulness in them. She was the prettiest creature I had ever seen. Su Mei was as a firefly compared to the moon that she was.
My face turned red. I could not help glancing at the two proud humps on her chest, trying their best to hide from the foggy dress.
She noticed my glance and burst out laughing, her chest quivering in a way that left my throat dry. "Little brother, is this the first time you laid eyes on an attractive fairy like me? You can look at me, I don't mind."
I turned away hastily, my face burning. "Who. who are you?"
"I am Xue'er. I am the artifact spirit of the Primal Chaos Bead, the strongest divine artifact in the world," she declared proudly puffing up her chest. "And you, Long Chen, are now my new master."
Master? Primal Chaos Bead? My head was reeling.
Xue'er seemed to know what was happening inside my head. "Do not worry, I shall explain. The skeleton belonged to the Celestial Primordial Dragon Sovereign. He was my previous master. He left his inheritance to someone from his bloodline, and that will be you. The bead belongs to you now. It is a world in itself, time that can flow hundreds of times faster inside. You could plant spiritual herbs, practice alchemy, and nurture inside. It's the most supreme cultivation treasure you'll ever desire!"
She hovered above me, examining my body. "Oh my! Not only do you have the Celestial Primordial Dragon Body, but the Myriad Flowers Dao Physique too! Hahaha! Master was a single old guy, but you, master, you are destined to have a household full of beauties! Any female you bring in will be an elite furnace to cultivate in, and you'll be the best medicine for her! Your journey will never be lonely!"
My cheeks blushed as red as a tomato. This fairy was too presumptuous with her words.
But then, the thought of Wei Kun and Su Mei crossed my mind. The shame, the hurt, the rage. everything came flooding back. My fists curled.
The jestful look on Xue'er's face turned grave. "I have watched your memories. Those two little ants hurted my master? Unforgivable."
"Ants?" I scoffed. "To me, they are mountains that I will never be able to climb."
Xue'er laughed. "Foolish master. You possess the inheritance of the strongest immortal, the best divine treasure, and two heaven-defying bodies. And you possess me! What is a little Azure Sky Sect? What is a paltry Wei Kun? Later on, you will be crushing so-called geniuses like him to death with one finger! They are not even worthy of being a stepping stone for you!"
Her words were so confident that they ignited a spark in my heart. She was correct. I was no longer trash Long Chen, but the Dragon Sovereign's successor!
I glanced at my hands. I could sense the power coursing through me. The spiritual Qi in the cave was being sucked into my body at a ridiculous rate. My cultivation level, which had remained at the first level of Body Refining for years, was skyrocketing.
Second level. Third level. Fourth level!
Within seconds, I broke through three levels! This rate was unprecedented!
Xue'er smiled. "This is nothing. Celestial Primordial Dragon Body is the best body to practice cultivation in the whole world. Once you start cultivating with the Sovereign's cultivation technique, the 'Primordial Dragon God Scripture', your speed will make all the geniuses of this world cry with desperation."
A burning desire for power, for revenge, ran in my veins. I kneeled down and kowtowed three times to the golden skeleton. "Senior Sovereign, thank you so much for this gift. This junior, Long Chen, vows with his life that he will not dishonor your name! I shall propagate your name to the heavens above!"
As if responding, the golden skeleton crumbled into dust after fulfilling its function.
I stood up, my eyes shining with a light that was new. A harsh, intent light.
"Wei Kun. Su Mei. wait and see. I, Long Chen, have returned from the underworld. The day I break out of this place will be the day your fright begins!"