When Jiang Chen returned to Desolate Cloud Peak, the atmosphere was peaceful. In fact, it was disgustingly peaceful.
Ye Kai was sleeping in the courtyard, using a two-ton boulder as a pillow, drooling onto the moss. Su Ling was hiding high in a withered pine tree, reading a book titled 101 Ways to Fake Your Own Death.
Wei Wu was sitting by the cliff edge, looking poetic as the wind ruffled his hair. Even Bob the Ghost was floating in the new spirit-wood hot tub, making bubbling noises and wearing a towel on his head, which defied physics as he had no head.
They looked like a happy, dysfunctional family on vacation.
Jiang Chen smiled. It was the warm, gentle smile of a butcher sharpening his knife while watching the lambs graze.
"Everyone," Jiang Chen whispered.
His voice wasn't loud. It was barely a breath. But he infused a thread of his newly acquired Spirit Severing pressure into that whisper.
Boom!
The air pressure on the peak instantly multiplied by ten. The gravity shifted violently.
Ye Kai's boulder pillow cracked in half with a deafening crunch. Su Ling fell out of the tree like a ripe apple. Wei Wu's walking stick snapped in his hand. Bob shrieked and dove underwater, turning into a blue puddle of ectoplasm.
"Assembly!" Jiang Chen clapped his hands, the sound cracking like a whip. "Courtyard. Now."
Three disciples and one wet ghost scrambled to the center of the courtyard. They stood in a crooked line, trembling. Yesterday, their Master felt like a mysterious mortal. Today, he felt like a natural disaster compressed into human shape.
"Master," Ye Kai gulped, dusting off rock fragments. "Did... did we do something wrong?"
"No," Jiang Chen paced back and forth, his silver gloves glinting in the sunlight. "You did nothing wrong. That is the problem. You are doing nothing."
He stopped and pierced them with his gaze.
"I just had a meeting with the Sect Leader. In three months, there is an Internal Sect Competition. The winners go to the Alliance Summit. The losers go home."
Jiang Chen snapped his fan open.
"The elite disciples of the other peaks are at the Golden Core Realm. You are only at the Foundation Establishment Realm. You are trash."
Su Ling trembled. "But Master, the gap is too big..."
"Correct," Jiang Chen nodded. "But you are my trash. And I have designed a curriculum to turn you into monsters. It is called Scientific Cultivation."
He pointed to a whiteboard Bob had brought out.
"Phase One is Conditioning. Phase Two is Theory. Phase Three is Evolution."
For the next week, Desolate Cloud Peak became a living hell. The training wasn't random torture; it was highly specific conditioning designed to break their limits.
Jiang Chen started with Ye Kai.
"Ye Kai," Jiang Chen said, looking up at the giant. "Your new technique requires you to compress infinite mass into a single point. You are too sloppy."
Jiang Chen released a jar of Fire-Stinger Hornets. These were supersonic insects with stings that felt like magma.
"Catch them," Jiang Chen ordered. "But do not crush them. You must use your five-thousand-pound Titan Gauntlets to pinch a supersonic insect without killing it. This teaches you Force Convergence."
For days, Ye Kai screamed as he was stung. He danced around the courtyard, a giant man waving wrecking balls at tiny specks of light.
But slowly, his movements changed. He stopped swinging wildly. He learned to stop his massive momentum instantly, focusing all kinetic energy into his fingertips.
Then there was Su Ling.
Jiang Chen blindfolded her and ordered Bob to attack her from random angles.
"Don't just block," Jiang Chen shouted as Su Ling flailed. "Predict! Saturate the zone! Your new technique requires you to process the battlefield without eyes. If you don't know where he is, block everywhere at once!"
Su Ling learned to stop panicking and start calculating. She learned to deploy arrays not by sight, but by sensing the flow of air and intent.
Finally, Wei Wu.
Jiang Chen put him standing under the freezing waterfall. He threw stones at him, commanding him not to block, but to cut the path the stone traveled.
"Find the Line," Jiang Chen shouted over the roar of the water. "Don't cut the stone. Cut the concept of its trajectory!"
Wei Wu stood in the freezing water for seven days, learning to ignore the noise and focus on the single, absolute line of death.
On the seventh day, a rat entered the maze.
Zhao Feng, an Elite Disciple of the Sword Burial Peak and a Golden Core Level 3 expert, sneaked in to scout the peak.
He triggered a trap and ended up in the courtyard, furious and humiliated.
"I am a Golden Core Elite!" Zhao Feng roared, unleashing his pressure. "Die, trash!"
He thrust his High-Grade Spirit Sword at Ye Kai's throat. A sonic boom echoed through the clearing.
Ye Kai didn't flinch. To his eyes, which had been trained by supersonic hornets, the sword was slow.
He didn't smash it. He caught it.
His fingers, conditioned to hold delicate insects with massive weight, clamped onto the blade.
Snap.
The sword shattered.
Zhao Feng panicked. He tried to retreat, but Su Ling threw a handful of flags without looking. She didn't aim at him; she aimed at his escape routes.
"Zone Locked!" she screamed.
Trapped and disarmed, Zhao Feng felt a cold chill. Wei Wu appeared behind him. The blind boy didn't swing. He simply placed a twig against Zhao Feng's jugular.
"The Line is cut," Wei Wu whispered.
Zhao Feng, a Golden Core expert, wet his pants and fled, screaming about monsters.
Jiang Chen watched the spy flee and clapped slowly. "Excellent. You passed the physical conditioning."
He sat on his throne. "Now, it is time for the Theory. The training you just did was to prepare your bodies for these."
He pulled out three manuals he had written. They were scribbled on cheap paper, but the intent within them was heavy.
He tossed the first manual to Ye Kai. The cover read: The Atomic Collapse Fist.
"Ye Kai," Jiang Chen explained. "Catching the hornet taught you to stop momentum. This manual teaches you to invert it. You don't punch outward; you collapse the space between your knuckles. It creates a localized black hole."
Ye Kai opened the book. The diagrams showed Qi flowing in a spiral, compressing into a singularity.
"I get it," Ye Kai's eyes widened. "I don't hit them. I implode them."
A mechanical voice rang in Jiang Chen's mind.
System Alert: Investment Detected. Item: Atomic Collapse Fist. Cashback Triggered: 100x!
Reward: The World-Ending Purgatory Fist (Divine Tier).
Jiang Chen felt his arm turn hot as the knowledge of a punch capable of shattering dimensions flooded his mind. He grinned.
He handed a scroll to Su Ling next. The cover read: The Infinite Talisman Gatling Theory.
"Su Ling," Jiang Chen said. "Blindfolding you taught you to sense the whole zone. This manual teaches you to fill it. You don't place arrays on the ground anymore. You print them on paper slips and throw them. One slip is a bullet. Ten thousand slips is a rainstorm."
Su Ling opened the scroll. It was filled with calculations on aerodynamics and Qi density.
"So... I can suppress an entire army alone?" Su Ling adjusted her glasses, a maniacal grin forming.
System Alert: Investment Detected. Cashback Triggered: 50x!
Reward: The Heavenly Algorithm of Creation (Saint Tier).
Jiang Chen's eyes flashed. He could suddenly see the code of the universe. He could rewrite the laws of the battlefield with a thought.
Finally, he handed a single page to Wei Wu. The page read: The Linear Death.
"Wei Wu," Jiang Chen said. "The waterfall taught you to see the Line. This manual teaches you to traverse it. This is not a sword technique. It is a movement technique. You draw, you kill, you sheathe. One cut. Zero resistance."
Wei Wu touched the paper. "I understand."
System Alert: Investment Detected. Cashback Triggered: 200x!
Reward: The Chaos Sword God's Scripture (Divine Tier).
A silver sword formed in Jiang Chen's soul. He felt invincible. He had gained the Sword Dao of a God.
Jiang Chen stood up, radiating the aura of a grandmaster.
"You have the physical conditioning. You have the theoretical manuals. You are now lethal weapons. But a weapon needs a battery."
He pointed to the glowing pit of the Dragon Vein nearby. The golden liquid bubbled with immense power.
"You are all stuck at Foundation Establishment Level 9. The Spy was Golden Core Level 3. The Sons are Golden Core Level 9. The gap is still there."
"Jump in the pit," Jiang Chen commanded. "Absorb the Dragon Qi. Use your new techniques to crush the bottleneck. Do not come out until you have formed a Golden Core."
Ye Kai looked at the bubbling gold liquid hesitantly. "Master, breaking through inside a Dragon Vein... won't the Heavenly Tribulation be angry?"
"Angry?" Jiang Chen laughed, adjusting his silver gloves. "The Heavens will be furious. Three Golden Core tribulations at once? It will be a storm the Sect has never seen."
Jiang Chen activated his Emperor Aura. For twenty seconds, he looked like a God descending upon the mortal realm.
"But don't worry. If the Heavens get in my way... I will punch the Heavens."
The disciples looked at their Master. They looked at their manuals. They nodded.
"For the Peak! For the Master!"
With a splash, the three of them jumped into the golden geyser.
Instantly, the sky turned black. Purple lightning coiled like dragons in the clouds above Desolate Cloud Peak. The pressure was suffocating.
Jiang Chen looked up at the apocalypse forming above his head.
"System," he grinned. "Queue the boss music."