The silence of Cave #404 was heavy, oppressive, and smelled of ancient death. For Li Ye, it was a sanctuary.
He stripped naked, folding his new robes neatly on the only clean spot of the stone floor. His body was a tapestry of scars and lean muscle, illuminated by the sickly green glow of the miasma pool.
He sat cross-legged on the frozen stone bed. In front of him lay the jade bottle of Fire Spirit Pills and the black, heavy bulk of the Blood-Drinker Sword.
"Three days," Li Ye whispered into the darkness. "To bridge the gap between a servant and a god."
He opened the bottle. Five pills sat inside, glowing like embers. A normal Outer Disciple would take one pill a month, spending weeks carefully refining the volatile energy.
Li Ye tipped the bottle. He swallowed all five.
[SYSTEM WARNING] [ENERGY OVERLOAD DETECTED.] [ESTIMATED SURVIVAL RATE: 15%.] [ADVISORY: VOMIT IMMEDIATELY.]
"Override," Li Ye growled. "Process it."
BOOM.
It felt as if he had swallowed a grenade.
The pills dissolved instantly in his stomach, releasing a torrent of violent, scorching Fire Qi. It rushed into his meridians like molten lead, searing the delicate pathways.
"GAAAAH!"
Li Ye threw his head back, a silent scream tearing from his throat. His skin turned lobster-red. Steam began to rise from his pores, his sweat evaporating the moment it touched his skin.
This was the clash of elements. His foundation was built on Han Ruoxue's Ice Qi. The pills were Fire. Fire and Ice do not mix; they explode.
Inside his body, a war was raging. The Fire Qi tried to burn his meridians; the Ice Qi tried to freeze the invader. The resulting pressure expanded his energy channels to the breaking point.
Blood began to leak from his nose, his ears, and the corners of his eyes.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED: EMERGENCY REGULATION] [REDIRECTING ENERGY...] [FORCING FUSION.]
The System acted as a ruthless conductor. It grabbed the conflicting energies and smashed them together. It didn't care about Li Ye's pain; it only cared about the result.
Li Ye gritted his teeth so hard a molar cracked. He forced his mind to focus. He visualized the energy not as pain, but as fuel.
He grabbed the Blood-Drinker Sword lying across his lap.
"Drink!" he roared.
The sword sensing the chaotic, blood-rich Qi radiating from Li Ye, woke up. The black metal hummed. It didn't need to cut him; his pores were already bleeding from the internal pressure. The sword acted as a ground wire, sucking the excess, chaotic energy out of his body before it could detonate his heart.
[CYCLE ESTABLISHED] [PILLS -> BODY (DESTRUCTION/RECONSTRUCTION) -> SWORD (FILTRATION) -> RETURN TO DANTIAN.]
The sword drank the impure, violent blood, filtered the Qi, and fed a sliver of pure, refined darkness back into Li Ye.
Hour after hour, the cycle continued.
Li Ye's consciousness flickered in and out. He saw visions of his past life—the faces of men he had killed in boardrooms and back alleys. He saw the face of Han Ruoxue, looking at him with disdain. He saw Su Hong, laughing. He saw Wang Teng, his boot on Li Ye's neck.
"No," Li Ye hissed, his eyes snapping open. They were bloodshot, glowing with a feral light. "I am the one who steps."
CRACK.
A sound like a gunshot echoed inside his body. The bottleneck of Layer 5 shattered.
[BREAKTHROUGH SUCCESSFUL] [CURRENT RANK: BODY TEMPERING LAYER 6.]
But the energy from the five pills was nowhere near exhausted. The fire still raged.
"Again," Li Ye commanded his broken body. "Keep climbing."
Day 2: The Dance of Ghosts
The cave was a mess of slashed stone and dried blood.
Li Ye was moving. He was practicing the [Phantom Step].
His body was a blur. He moved from the entrance to the back of the cave in the blink of an eye, leaving afterimages that lingered for a second before fading.
But it wasn't enough. The System's simulation showed him losing to Wang Teng in 40% of scenarios. Wang Teng had the Golden Bell Shield technique—an impregnable defense. Speed was useless if you couldn't penetrate the armor.
Li Ye stopped, panting heavily. He looked at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
"Power," he panted. "I need weight."
He lifted the Blood-Drinker. The sword felt lighter now, bonded to his blood.
He began to swing.
1,000 swings. 2,000 swings.
He didn't use fancy techniques. He practiced a single, vertical chop. The "Executioner's Stroke."
He focused all his Qi, all his physical strength, into the tip of the blade.
SWISH. SWISH. SWISH.
His muscles screamed. The fibers tore and healed, tore and healed, growing denser, tighter. The Wind Essence from Lin Xiaoyue helped accelerate the swing, while the Ice Essence added a piercing chill.
By evening, his hands were raw meat wrapped around the shark-skin hilt. The sword was practically glued to him by dried blood.
He stood before a massive boulder the size of a carriage that had fallen from the ceiling years ago.
"Break," Li Ye whispered.
He vanished. He reappeared in front of the boulder. He swung.
BOOM!
The sword bit into the rock. It didn't slice through cleanly like a laser; it smashed through with sheer kinetic force. Rock dust exploded. A crack spider-webbed through the granite.
The sword was stuck halfway through.
Li Ye grinned, blood staining his teeth. "Deeper."
Day 3: The Silence Before the Storm
The screaming had stopped. The manic movement had ceased.
Li Ye sat by the green pool. The water was clear now. He had drained the miasma.
He was calm. Terrifyingly calm.
He checked his status.
[NAME: LI YE] [AGE: 17] [CULTIVATION: BODY TEMPERING LAYER 7 (EARLY STAGE)] [TECHNIQUES:]
FROST PALM (PROFICIENT)
PHANTOM STEP (MASTERY)
EXECUTIONER'S SLASH (CREATED) [WEAPON: BLOOD-DRINKER (BONDED - GRADE 1)] [SYSTEM STATUS: STABLE]
He had done the impossible. He had jumped two layers in three days. In the cultivation world, this was madness. It was unstable. His foundation was like a skyscraper built on dynamite.
But it would hold long enough to kill Wang Teng.
He stood up and walked to the pool. He washed the blood and filth from his body. His skin was pale, almost translucent, but beneath it, his muscles looked like twisted steel cables.
He dressed in the white robes of an Outer Disciple—the ones Su Hong had given him. He tied his hair back with a strip of black cloth.
He strapped the Blood-Drinker to his back. The sword was quiet, satiated for now, sleeping in its scabbard.
He walked out of the cave.
The sun was just cresting the mountains. The sky was a bruised purple, bleeding into gold.
Far above, the war drums of the Sect began to beat.
DOOM. DOOM. DOOM.
The Monthly Tournament had begun.
The Arena of Ascendance
The Outer Sect Arena was a colossal amphitheater carved into the mountain's bowl. It could seat ten thousand disciples. Today, it was full.
Flags snapped in the wind. The banners of the various factions—the Tiger Faction, the Phoenix Alliance, the Iron Fist Brotherhood—hung from the stands.
In the center of the arena were ten raised stone platforms. These were the "Stages of the Dragon."
The rules were simple: King of the Hill. Anyone could challenge the person on the stage. If you held the stage until sunset, or defeated ten challengers in a row, you entered the Top 10.
Deaths were "accidental but expected."
Li Ye stood at the very back of the crowd, in the shadows of the entry tunnel. He watched the spectacle.
He saw Wang Teng. The Young Master sat on a throne-like chair in the VIP box of the Tiger Faction, surrounded by sycophants. He looked bored, peeling a grape. He radiated an aura of golden power—Peak Layer 9.
Beside him stood a mountain of a man with skin that looked like bronze. The Iron-Skin Bull.
He saw Han Ruoxue. She was in the Phoenix Alliance section. She looked pale, her usual icy demeanor cracked by a subtle nervousness. She scanned the crowd repeatedly, as if looking for a ghost.
He saw Su Hong. She was on the podium with the other Deacons and Elders, wearing her formal crimson robes, looking regal and bored. But her eyes kept flicking to the entrance tunnel.
And he saw Lin Xiaoyue. She stood near the edge of the arena, alone. She looked healthier, her color returned, but her expression was conflicted.
"Let the games begin," an Elder announced, his voice amplified by magic.
Disciples roared. Bodies flew onto the stages. The sound of steel clashing and bones breaking filled the air immediately.
Li Ye didn't move. He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Let the trash take itself out."
He watched a disciple on Stage 4 get decapitated by a spinning axe. The crowd cheered for the blood.
A group of Tiger Faction disciples near the tunnel noticed him.
"Hey! Look who it is!" "The Waste showed up!" "Li Ye! Did you come to clean the latrines?"
They laughed, surrounding him. There were five of them. Layer 4 and 5s.
"Get lost," Li Ye said, not looking at them. His eyes were fixed on Wang Teng.
"You're arrogant for a dead man," the leader of the group sneered. He reached out to shove Li Ye.
Li Ye didn't use a technique. He didn't use the sword. He simply backhanded the man.
SMACK.
It sounded like a whip crack. The disciple's head snapped back. Teeth flew into the air. He spun twice and hit the ground, unconscious.
The other four froze.
"I said," Li Ye turned his gaze to them, his eyes devoid of humanity, "get lost."
They scrambled away, terrified.
The commotion drew attention. A few people in the stands turned. Su Hong saw him. A slow smile spread across her red lips.
Wang Teng saw him. The Young Master stopped eating his grape. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
"So, the rat crawled out of the sewer," Wang Teng sneered. He gestured to the bronze giant beside him. "Bull. Go down there. Break every bone in his body. Slowly."
The Iron-Skin Bull grinned, revealing a mouth full of metal teeth. "With pleasure, Young Master."
The giant leaped from the VIP box. He fell fifty feet, landing in the center of the arena with a crater-forming impact. Dust billowed.
The fighting on the nearby stages stopped.
The Bull stood up, shaking the dust off. He pointed a massive finger at the tunnel entrance.
"LI YE!" The Bull bellowed, his voice shaking the stands. "GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!"
The crowd went silent. A direct challenge from the Iron-Skin Bull? Against a nobody?
Li Ye pushed off the wall. He adjusted his sleeves.
He walked out of the shadows and into the sunlight.
He didn't run. He walked. One step at a time, calm, measured, inevitable.
He walked past the stunned crowd, past the other stages, and climbed the steps to the central platform where the Bull waited.
"You're big," Li Ye said, looking up at the giant.
"And you're small," the Bull laughed. He flexed, his skin turning a metallic dark gold. [Iron Skin Technique: Invulnerable].
"I'm going to rip your head off and—"
"Start," the Elder referee signaled.
The Bull charged. He was like a runaway train. The ground shook.
Li Ye stood still. His hand drifted over his shoulder, grasping the hilt of the Blood-Drinker.
The crowd screamed. He's going to die! He's not moving!
Han Ruoxue covered her mouth. Su Hong leaned forward, gripping the railing.
The Bull was five feet away. Three feet.
Li Ye's eyes flashed blue.
[PHANTOM STEP] [EXECUTIONER'S SLASH]
SHIIIING.
A black arc of light, thin as a hair but heavy as a mountain, flashed across the arena.
Li Ye appeared behind the Bull, his sword already sheathed.
The Bull took two more steps, then stopped. "You... missed..." the Bull grunted, turning around.
"Did I?" Li Ye asked, not looking back.
A thin red line appeared on the Bull's metallic waist. Then, a fountain of blood.
The Bull's upper body slowly, horrifyingly, slid off his lower body. The two halves hit the ground with a wet thud.
Silence.
Ten thousand people held their breath.
Li Ye turned to the VIP box. He looked straight at Wang Teng.
"Send the next dog," Li Ye said, his voice cutting through the silence. "I'm still hungry."