Chapter 5: The Architect's Domain and the Siege of Shadows
The defeat of the two Elders sent shockwaves through the Li Clan that were more devastating than any physical earthquake. For the first time in three hundred years, the clan's ancestral halls were filled with an icy, suffocating dread. In the grand central pavilion, Patriarch Li Zhan sat upon his throne of dragon-bone, his knuckles white as he gripped the armrests. Beside him, the broken swords of the defeated Elders lay as a testament to a power they could not comprehend.
"A glitch," Li Zhan hissed, his voice echoing through the silent hall. "A mistake that should have been erased eighteen years ago has become a cancer upon our Dao. If this Li Ming is not dismantled now, the very foundations of the Stormwind Empire will crumble."
While the clan prepared their legions, high atop the Hidden Dragon Mountain, Li Ming was not waiting for death. He was busy rewriting the rules of the battlefield.
He stood at the highest peak, The Nullifier planted firmly in the earth. The Blue Dragon tattoo on his chest was no longer just a mark; it had expanded, its glowing azure lines tracing intricate circuits down his arms and legs. His vision was no longer limited to what was in front of him. Through the [Supreme Dragon Blueprint], he could feel every vibration in the mountain's tectonic plates, every flow of Qi in the atmosphere, and every "bug" in the local reality.
[System Notification: Evolution at 60%.]
[New Module Active: 'Architect's Domain' (Initial Phase).]
[Objective: Establish a Localized Reality Grid to protect the mountain.]
"This world is a chaotic mess of unoptimized laws," Li Ming murmured, his eyes glowing with a cold, silver light. "It's time to install a new operating system."
He closed his eyes and began the process of "Mapping." He didn't just want a defensive barrier like the traditional sects; he wanted a zone where he was the supreme administrator. He began to broadcast a pulse of Creation Essence from his Grey Core. The pulse rippled outward, invisible to the naked eye but transformative to the spiritual world.
Every tree, every stone, and every stream within a five-mile radius was suddenly "tagged" by the system. Li Ming began to rewrite their properties. He made the air thicker, increasing the "atmospheric friction" for anyone carrying traditional Qi. He altered the gravity in specific patches, creating "Sinkholes of Logic" where intruders would find their movements reversed or halted.
[Domain Scripting: 45%... 70%... 95%...]
[Success. The 'Zero-Zone' is now online.]
As the sun began to set, the first wave of the Li Clan's retribution arrived. But this was not a small party; it was the "Black Hawk Enforcers," a private army of fifty elite cultivators, led by the Clan's Great Elder, Li Fengyun—a master who had touched the threshold of the Core Formation realm.
They approached the mountain on a massive war-junk, a flying vessel powered by hundreds of high-grade spirit stones. The ship's cannons, designed to breach city walls, were aimed directly at the cave entrance.
"Fire!" Li Fengyun commanded, his voice a thunderous roar.
Three massive spheres of concentrated fire-Qi shot toward the mountain. Each one was capable of incinerating an entire forest. But as the projectiles crossed the invisible boundary of Li Ming's Domain, something impossible happened.
The fire didn't explode. It didn't even slow down. Instead, the spheres began to lose their color, turning a dull, pixelated grey. By the time they reached the mountainside, they didn't hit with a bang—they simply dissolved into a shower of harmless ash.
"What?! The cannons failed?" Li Fengyun stood at the prow of the ship, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Fire again! Full power!"
But before they could reload, Li Ming's voice echoed throughout the valley, appearing to come from the very air itself. "You are trespassing in a restricted zone. Your 'permissions' have been revoked."
Li Ming, standing miles away at the peak, made a swiping motion with his hand.
[Executing Command: 'Gravity Inversion'.]
Suddenly, the massive war-junk lurched. The cultivators on board screamed as the gravity beneath their feet shifted ninety degrees. Men were thrown against the bulkheads, and the ship's engines began to groan under the strain of a law they weren't built to handle.
"Get off the ship! Engage the target directly!" Li Fengyun shouted, leaping into the air. He summoned his primary weapon—the "Sky-Render Halberd"—and channeled his immense Qi to stabilize himself. The other enforcers followed, fifty men descending like a swarm of angry hornets.
But the moment they landed on the mountain slopes, they realized they were in a nightmare.
"My Qi... I can't circulate it!" one enforcer cried out.
"The ground! It's soft like water!" another screamed as he sank into solid rock up to his knees.
Li Ming watched them through his holographic interface. To him, they looked like clumsy actors on a stage he controlled. He decided it was time to test the 'Offensive Sub-routines' of his new spear.
He vanished from the peak, his body deconstructing into grey particles and reassembling instantly in the middle of the enforcer ranks.
*Clang!*
The Nullifier met Li Fengyun's halberd. The shockwave of the collision cleared the mist for miles, but the result was shocking. The Sky-Render Halberd, a treasure of the Li Clan, began to crack. Not from force, but because the spear was "deleting" the metallic bonds of the weapon.
"You... you are not a man," Li Fengyun wheezed, his arms trembling as he tried to hold back the obsidian spear. "You are a demon from the void!"
"No," Li Ming replied, his face inches from the Elder's. "I am the Architect. And your clan is nothing but a redundant piece of code that needs to be purged."
Li Ming twisted the spear and whispered: "Execute: System Crash."
A massive wave of grey energy erupted from the point of contact. It wasn't an explosion of heat or light, but a silent ripple that passed through every enforcer on the mountain. In that instant, every one of them felt their connection to the world's Qi severed. Their techniques flickered out like dying lamps. Their flying swords fell from the sky, useless pieces of metal.
Li Fengyun fell to his knees, his halberd crumbling into dust in his hands. He looked up at Li Ming, who stood before him like a god from a future age.
"Go back to Li Zhan," Li Ming said, his voice cold and final. "Tell him the siege is over. The Hidden Dragon Mountain is no longer part of his world. And tell him... the 'Broken Vessel' is coming to claim the throne he never deserved."
Li Ming didn't kill them. He didn't need to. He had stripped them of the only thing they valued—their power. He watched as the once-proud enforcers crawled and stumbled away, their spirits broken more than their bodies.
[Energy Levels: 55%. Combat Data Analysis: Successful.]
[Evolution Progress: 85%.]
[Warning: High-Level entity detected approaching from the Imperial Capital. Status: Unknown.]
Li Ming looked toward the distant horizon, toward the capital where the true masters of the continent resided. The Li Clan was just the first layer. The real masters of the old Dao were finally waking up.
"Let them come," Li Ming said, his spear glowing with an intense, haunting blue light. "The world needs a complete reboot."
He turned back toward his c
ave, his silhouette fading into the grey mist of his perfect, invincible domain.