They walked past the four armored guards. The heavy iron doors of the Gene Archive opened smoothly. They made no sound.
Jin stepped across the threshold. Luna followed closely behind him.
The interior of the massive grey cube was entirely different from the bright, loud academy grounds. It was cold. The air smelled like old paper, dry dust, and the sharp metallic scent of raw Aether. The silence in the building was heavy. It pressed against Jin's ears.
The Archive was not just a library. It was a massive, fortified vault of intellectual property.
Huge stacks of books reached up toward the dark stone ceiling. Some of the books looked incredibly ancient. They were bound in cracked, dried leather and the pale bones of dead beasts. Other books looked brand new. They had pristine covers that shimmered with faint, glowing energy.
Jin stopped near the entrance. He looked at a massive stone directory carved into the wall. He needed to understand the layout of the facility. A good manager does not wander aimlessly. He maps the floor plan.
The ground floor of the Archive was divided into six massive rooms. Wide stone archways marked the entrances to each section.
Jin read the carved text.
Room one was dedicated to combat martial arts. It held the manuals for striking, grappling, and weapon mastery. Jin ignored it. Martial arts were just software. Software was useless if the hardware was broken.
Room two held movement techniques. It contained the secrets of closing distance, dodging strikes, and escaping hostile territory. It was highly valuable for survival, but still secondary.
Room three was the industrial sector. It held the manuals for secondary occupations. It was filled with texts on alchemy, blacksmithing, array forging, and formation mastering. In the corporate world, this was the manufacturing and production division. It was the place where raw materials were turned into capital. Jin mentally marked its location. He would need it later.
Room five was the history room. It held the records of the Apex Empire and the surrounding continents. Room six was sealed behind a heavy metal gate. It was clearly restricted access. Only senior faculty and elite executives could enter.
Then, Jin looked at the carving for room four.
It was the Gene Legacy room.
This was the core. This was where the biological operating systems were kept. This was the target.
"This way," Jin ordered quietly.
He walked away from the directory. He crossed the polished stone floor and walked through the wide stone archway of the fourth room. Luna stayed right behind him. She looked nervously at the massive piles of books towering above them.
Room four was enormous. It was perfectly quiet. Thousands of thick books sat on endless rows of heavy black iron shelves.
But the books were not free to read. The Academy did not just leave its most valuable assets lying around for anyone to open.
Faint blue Aether formations wrapped tightly around every single cover. The energy looked like glowing, translucent chains. The books were completely locked. A student could not open the pages and steal the cultivation secrets. The physical books were secured down to the molecular level.
There was a system in place. Jin noticed it immediately.
Beneath each locked book, a small metal plaque was bolted to the iron shelf. The plaques provided a short, simple introduction to the legacy. They listed the name of the genetic path, the basic elemental affinity, and a brief summary of the power it granted.
It was a catalogue. The plaques gave just enough data for a student to make an informed choice.
A few dozen freshmen were already in the room. They walked slowly down the long aisles. They stared at the small metal plaques. They whispered to each other. They looked like terrified customers trying to buy a house with a handful of copper coins. They knew this single choice would dictate the rest of their lives.
Jin did not act like a terrified customer. He walked past the rows of shelves with a cold, calculating gaze.
He ignored the elemental legacies. He walked past the fire genes and the water genes. He ignored the physical enhancement paths. He did not look at the heavy armor legacies or the extreme speed enhancements.
They were all completely useless to him.
His analytical mind reviewed the medical data of his current body. The old Jin had a Null Gene. It was a genetic dead end. The royal doctors of the Apex Empire had tried to force high-tier beast cores into his system for years. The result was always the same. His body violently rejected the foreign energy. He coughed up blood. His veins ruptured.
If Jin picked up a standard fire legacy right now, his body would refuse to process the Aether. He would remain a Foundation Level 4 cripple forever.
He needed a workaround. He needed a legacy that bypassed the normal rules of biological absorption. He needed a hostile takeover.
He remembered the Dean's speech in the amphitheater. The half-step True Immortal had mentioned a specific path. The Devourer.
Jin left the long rows of iron shelves. He moved away from the other freshmen. He walked directly to the dead center of the massive room.
He found it.
A single, thick stone pedestal stood completely alone in the middle of the floor. It was separated from all the other shelves. A heavy glass case sat on top of the stone.
Inside the thick glass was a single, old book. It had a cracked, plain black cover. There were no glowing Aether chains wrapped around it. There were no magical runes flashing on its spine. It looked incredibly ordinary. It looked like a piece of trash left behind by a careless janitor.
But the placement proved its value. It was the centerpiece of the entire vault.
A heavy, gold-plated sign rested on the stone pedestal next to the glass case.
The heading on the gold plate was carved in sharp, aggressive letters. It read: Devourer Gene Legacy.
Jin stopped in front of the pedestal. He planted his heavy boots on the stone floor. He leaned forward. He read the rest of the text carved into the gold plate.
The text explained the core mechanics of the legacy. It was simple. It was brutal.
Normal cultivators followed a slow, tedious path. They sat in quiet rooms. They absorbed ambient Aether from the air. They slowly filtered that energy through their chosen legacy to mutate their bodies over decades or centuries. It was a slow, steady accumulation of wealth.
The Devourer path skipped that slow process entirely. It relied on absolute, violent assimilation.
The rules were clear. Every time the cultivator reached a major breakthrough in their realm, they unlocked a genetic slot in their body. Foundation was the first slot. Core Formation was the second slot. Nascent Soul was the third slot.
When a slot was open, the cultivator could choose a specific beast gene. They did not sit and meditate on the energy. They physically devoured the beast's core.
The Devourer legacy would forcefully break down the beast's core. It would strip the raw genetic code and aggressively merge it with the cultivator's human DNA.
The gold plate made a specific point. The user would remain completely human. They would not mutate into a monster. They would not grow thick, ugly scales or jagged horns like Kaelen or Vanya. The human form would stay intact. But the human body would gain the beast's core ability to use as its own.
The gold plate gave a direct example. If a student managed to kill a Lightning Python and devoured its gene, the student's human body would gain the power to generate, control, and project lightning.
It sounded like absolute, limitless power. It sounded like a cheat code for the universe.
But Jin did not smile. His eyes moved to the bottom half of the gold plate.
In business, a massive return on investment always carries a massive, hidden risk. The Academy was not hiding the risk. They carved it deeply into the gold in bright, blood-red letters.
It was a massive warning.
The drawback was genetic clash.
The human body is a fragile container. Genes are violent, territorial things. They want to dominate. If a student devoured too many different types of genes without finding a perfect biological balance, the internal genetics would go to war with each other.
If you put a fire beast gene and an ice beast gene into the same human container, they would not mix. They would fight.
The red warning was blunt. It did not use scientific jargon. It stated that if the genetics clashed, the cells would literally tear themselves apart from the inside. The cultivator's body would rapidly expand, boil, and explode. The user would turn into a pile of dead meat paste on the floor.
Jin stood perfectly still. He stared at the red letters. He processed the raw data.
It was an extreme risk. The failure rate was likely astronomical. If you made one bad choice. If you devoured one beast core that did not align perfectly with your previous choices. You died instantly. It was a game of biological Russian roulette.
That was why the Dean offered it for free. That was why this book sat alone in the center of the room. Most students were too terrified to even look at it. They preferred the safe, stable legacies provided by their own wealthy families. They wanted guaranteed, slow returns.
But Jin was not a normal student. Jin did not have a wealthy family backing him. He had a sister who poisoned him and a brother who wanted to turn him to ash. He had a Null Gene that made normal cultivation completely impossible.
A normal legacy was a guaranteed failure for him. The Devourer legacy offered a ninety-nine percent chance of exploding into meat paste, but it offered a one percent chance of absolute survival.
In the corporate world of a hostile takeover, you take the one percent chance.
Jin looked at the cracked black book inside the glass. The risk was acceptable. The contract was fair. He had no other options.
He raised his left arm. He prepared to use his Aether-band to claim the legacy. He was going to take it.