The Weight of a Millennium
The information bloomed in Yao Xuan's mind, not as cold data, but as intuitive understanding—the birthright of his evolved spirit.
First Soul Skill: Ancestral Dragon Sky-Rending Claw (Millennium)
Effect: Channels soul power and the primal authority of the Ancestral Dragon into a devastating claw strike. Power, force, and armor-shattering penetration are massively amplified.
Millennium Trait – Absolute Penetration: For a cost in soul power, the strike can ignore a portion of the target's physical and spiritual defenses. The stouter the defense, the greater the cost.
Millennium Trait – Phantom Strike: Can now manifest the claw's energy as a ranged projectile, though with reduced potency and without the Penetration effect.
Second Soul Skill: Ancestral Dragon Overlord Body (Millennium)
Effect: Ignites soul power to enter a state of draconic supremacy. Health, soul power reserves, and overall vitality surge.
Millennium Enhancement: Attack, Defense, and Health multipliers increase to 3.5x. Agility and Soul Power multipliers rise to 2.5x. Resistance to mental, elemental, and status afflictions is significantly bolstered.
Millennium Efficiency: The skill's soul power consumption is optimized; potency increases without a corresponding cost increase, even achieving a slight reduction.
A quiet, fierce satisfaction settled in Yao Xuan's chest. This was a qualitative leap. Before, with his century-grade skills, he could challenge a low-tier Soul Elder. Now, even without invoking the specialized power of the Ancestral Dragon's Right Claw, his baseline rivaled a mid-tier Soul Elder. With the Right Claw activated, he brushed against the threshold of a high-tier Soul Elder's might.
The strategic implications were profound. The Phantom Strike gave him an answer to ranged foes and flying adversaries. The Absolute Penetration meant that raw, tank-like defenses would no longer be an insurmountable wall. He was becoming a truly versatile combatant.
Yet, his mind, ever analytical, tempered the excitement. A Soul King represented a fundamental leap—a doubling or tripling of power at the very least. Even with these new skills and the impending 20% bloodline breakthrough, facing a genuine Soul King, especially one adorned with even a single piece of battle armor, would be a formidable, likely losing, prospect. True parity with the elite of that realm would likely require his own ascension to Soul Elder rank. It was a clear-eyed assessment, not discouragement, but a map of the mountain still to climb.
The afternoon passed in a blur of Wu Changkong's lectures on the migratory patterns of Skyfrost Rocs and the symbiotic relationship between Gloom Moss and Shadowstalker Vines. Yao Xuan listened, but part of his mind was rehearsing the new feel of his power, the imagined weight of a millennium behind his fist.
That night, after completing his customary rotation of the Creation Soul Forging Technique, which left his spiritual sea humming with crisp, clear energy, he retreated inward.
The familiar void of the mental arena materialized. Across from him, the illusion of Wu Changkong coalesced, his white robes pristine, the Heavenly Frost Sword a sliver of condensed winter in his hand. The chill of his aura was palpable, a dry, sharp cold that promised swift extinction.
"Begin."
The illusion moved, a blur of icy intent. The Heavenly Frost Sword left a trail of crystalline frost in the air as it lanced toward Yao Xuan's heart.
Yao Xuan didn't retreat. He met the advance.
"Ancestral Dragon, possess me!"
"Ancestral Dragon Overlord Body!"
"Ancestral Dragon's Right Claw!"
Transformation cascaded over him in an instant. Scales sheathed his body, glowing with an inner, nine-colored light. His frame thrummed with amplified power, and his right arm expanded into a weapon of legend. He pushed off with a force that would have shattered stone, meeting the sword's path not with evasion, but with interception.
CLANG! BOOM! CRACK!
The first exchange was a thunderclap. Icy blue sword energy met nine-colored dragon force in a violent discharge of light and shockwaves. Where before, Yao Xuan would have been forced back, straining under the superior cultivation, now he held his ground. The Millennium Overlord Body anchored him. The Millennium Sky-Rending Claw, sheathed around his transformed right claw, met the Heavenly Frost Sword's edge and did not yield.
They became a storm of motion. Dozens of blows were exchanged in seconds. Yao Xuan was a hurricane of golden scales and tearing light; the illusion was a blizzard of precise, deadly frost. Sword beams meant to cripple shattered against Yao Xuan's enhanced defenses or were cleaved apart by claws that carried the concept of rending.
Yao Xuan felt the difference. The "Absolute Penetration" effect wasn't a blunt force; it was a focused principle. When he willed it, spending a deliberate stream of his soul power, his claw strikes seemed to phase through the densest layers of the illusion's defensive sword energy, forcing it to expend vastly more power to reconstitute its guard or bodily deflect the attack. It was an economy of force—Yao Xuan spent a little to make the illusion spend a lot.
The battle became a war of attrition, and here, Yao Xuan's foundational advantages shone. The Ancestral Dragon's innate vitality, combined with the efficient burn of the Millennium Overlord Body, meant his soul power depleted at a slower, steadier rate. The Wu Changkong illusion, for all its technical prowess, was a construct with finite energy. Its movements began to lag, the frost on its sword growing thinner, its transitions a hair less seamless.
Seizing an opening created by a slightly slow parry, Yao Xuan roared. He didn't close the distance. Instead, he pulled his right claw back and then thrust it forward.
"Sky-Rending Claw: Phantom Strike!"
A semi-solid projection of a nine-colored dragon's claw, the size of a wagon wheel, tore through the intervening space. The illusion, committed to its defense, swung its sword. The phantom claw shattered against the blade in a spray of brilliant light, but the impact drove the illusion back a step, its balance compromised.
That was all Yao Xuan needed. He used the Ancestral Dragon Shattering Void Step, appearing at the illusion's flank as it recovered. His real, transformed claw, burning with the full cost of "Absolute Penetration," descended in a final, merciless arc.
The illusion's hurried block was imperfect. The Heavenly Frost Sword's aura flickered. The dragon claw sheared through the remaining frost and connected with the illusion's core.
SHATTER.
The figure of Wu Changkong dissolved into a shower of fading blue and white motes.
Silence returned to the simulated space. Yao Xuan stood breathing deeply, his transformed body slowly reverting. The victory was clear. Against a mid-stage Soul Elder illusion—a representation of Wu Changkong holding back nothing at that tier—he had prevailed. Before the evolution, this would have been a desperate, likely losing struggle. Now, it was hard-fought but decisive.
"Powerful," he murmured to the empty void, the word heavy with meaning. This was the weight of a millennium, the authority of an epoch condensed into a soul ring.
He didn't stop. With a thought, the space reset. A fresh Wu Changkong illusion materialized. Yao Xuan's energy was restored. Another battle began. Then another. He tested the limits of the Phantom Strike's range, calibrated the soul power cost of the Absolute Penetration against different defensive postures, and learned to weave the enhanced stats of the Overlord Body into his most fluid combinations.
He fought until a familiar, deep fatigue began to gnaw at the edges of his consciousness—the drain on his mental energy from maintaining the high-stakes simulation. When it dipped near twenty percent, he reluctantly disengaged.
Consciousness returned to the quiet of his dorm room. The phantom chill of the Heavenly Frost Sword was gone, replaced by the mundane sounds of the academy at night. He lay back, body humming with the afterglow of exertion and triumph, mind already turning over the lessons learned. The path was clear, every step forward hard-won and real. Outside his window, the moon was a sharp sliver of silver, a reminder of the other, equally profound journey that awaited him in the coming winter quiet—a journey not of combat, but of understanding, promised by a pair of silver eyes and a library of ancient truths.