The morning after the spar, the Outer Sect didn't wake up to the usual rhythmic scratching of sweeping brooms. It woke up to a heavy, electric tension that crackled through the air like a storm about to break. The "Data Noise" (Whispered Gossip) was reaching a fever pitch.
"Did you see his hand? It didn't even touch Fang Wei, and the genius's arm nearly exploded."
"He must be using a demonic art (Malicious Script)."
"No, I heard he found the lost manual of the First Founder!"
Lu Chen sat in his shack, his legs crossed and his breathing synchronized with the humming energy in his chest. He wasn't meditating in the traditional sense; he was performing a [Background_System_Scan]. He knew he couldn't hide his growth anymore. He had signaled his presence to the entire network, and now the "Firewall" of the Sect's higher-ups was closing in to investigate the anomaly.
[ ALERT: MULTIPLE_HIGH-LEVEL_SIGNALS_APPROACHING. ]
[ THREAT_LEVEL: ELEVATED. ]
[ SOCIAL_ENGINEERING_PROTOCOL_RECOMMENDED. ]
"I know, AIDA," Lu Chen thought, his mind's eye watching three bright flares of energy descending from the Inner Peaks. "In any system, if you look like an error (Glitch), you get deleted. But if you look like a hidden feature (Dormant Talent), you get funded. It's time to rewrite the narrative."
***
Three Elders landed in the center of the Trash Dwellings, their white robes billowing with a spiritual pressure that forced the nearby disciples to their knees. These were the Auditors—the men responsible for ensuring no "corrupted" (Demonic) cultivators existed within the Cloud Fist Clan.
"Lu Chen! Step forward!" the lead Elder, a man named Elder Feng with eyes like cold iron, commanded.
Lu Chen walked out of his shack, his expression carefully neutral. He maintained a "UI Mask" of humble confusion, masking the sapphire-emerald glow of his Admin status deep within his pupils.
"Elder," Lu Chen bowed. "I know why you are here. You believe I have stolen power (Hacked the system). You think my sudden rise in strength (Latency reduction) is impossible."
"It is impossible," Elder Feng snapped, his spiritual sense lashing out to probe Lu Chen's body like a search algorithm. "Three days ago, your energy channels (Meridians) were as thin as silk, unable to hold even a drop of Qi. Now, you pulse with the power of a Stage 6 warrior. Explain this error, or be purged."
Lu Chen sighed, a sound full of manufactured exhaustion. He looked at the Elders as if he were revealing a secret he had carried for a lifetime.
"It wasn't a sudden change, Elder. It was a... sleeping state (Dormant Mode). When I was a child, I was struck by lightning near the Ancestral Graves. Everyone thought the strike broke me. But it seems it only locked away my potential (Encrypted my talent)."
He paused, letting the lie sink in. In a world of mysticism, "Lightning" and "Ancestors" were keywords that bypassed logical defenses.
"The fight with Disciple Liang... it acted as a trigger (Execution Command). It broke the lock on my body. I didn't find a treasure; I am the treasure. My body has been fixing itself (Defragmenting) for ten years in secret. Now, the process is finally finishing."
[ SOCIAL_ENGINEERING: SUCCESS_PROBABILITY_INCREASED_BY_42%. ]
[ NOTE: THEY_PREFER_MYSTICAL_MYTHS_OVER_TECHNICAL_TRUTHS. ]
The Elders looked at each other, their suspicion turning into a different kind of intensity—greed. A "Dormant Bloodline" was a known, albeit rare, phenomenon. It was a "Legacy Code" explanation they could accept. If Lu Chen was a "Blessed Child," then his growth wasn't a crime; it was a massive asset for the Sect's future.
"A dormant bloodline..." Elder Feng whispered, his spiritual pressure softening. "If this is true, your body is a gold mine of ancestral energy. Why did you not report this to the hall?"
"I didn't know if I would survive the awakening (System Boot)," Lu Chen said, his voice gaining a hard edge. "And now, to ensure I reach my full potential (Version 1.0) before the Inner Sect Trial, I need more than just air and water. I need resources."
***
The Elders, now blinded by the prospect of having a legendary genius under their wing, granted Lu Chen a [TEMPORARY_ACCESS_TOKEN]—a jade medallion that allowed him entry into the Sect's Spirit Stone Vault. They thought they were "Investing" in a future champion.
Lu Chen knew he was just getting his hands on a [MASSIVE_BATTERY_ARRAY].
As he walked toward the vault at the base of the main peak, followed by a small group of his "Network" of trash disciples, Fatty Han whispered, "Lu Chen, they actually believed you? Lightning? Ancestral Graves? That was incredible!"
"No, Han," Lu Chen said, his eyes scanning the stone corridor for spiritual traps. "I'm just an expert at making people see what they expect to see (User Interface Manipulation). They wanted a genius, so I gave them a legend. Now, get ready. We're about to cause a surge in demand (Buffer Overflow) that this vault's security can't handle."
The vault doors were made of Star-Iron, reinforced by a complex spiritual lock that required a specific Qi signature to open.
"AIDA, let's begin the collection. We aren't going to pick the lock manually. We're going to feed it so much 'Input' that the 'Logic' breaks."
Lu Chen placed his hand on the vault's lock—a shimmering array of geometric lines.
"AIDA, synchronize the disciples. Have them focus their breathing on the lock's resonance."
As the seven disciples behind him began their "Cloud-Link" breathing, Lu Chen acted as the conduit. He funneled their collective, unrefined energy into the lock, but he didn't try to match the signature. Instead, he forced the energy to loop back on itself, creating a massive pile-up of "Requests" within the array's logic.
[ INITIATING_BRUTE_FORCE_INPUT... ]
[ FEEDING_RECURSIVE_QI_LOOPS... ]
[ VAULT_SECURITY_LOAD: 99%... ]
[ STATUS: 'VAULT_CRASHED'. OPENING_DOORS. ]
The massive Star-Iron doors groaned and swung open, revealing rows upon rows of glowing blue Spirit Stones. To the disciples, it was a fortune that could buy a city. To Arthur, it was the raw fuel (Input Data) he needed to turn his Stage 6 body into a high-performance engine.
"Pack it up, boys," Lu Chen grinned, his eyes reflecting the blue light of the stones. "We have three days to rewrite the laws of physics in this Sect."
***
They spent the next twelve hours back in the Trash Dwellings, but the shacks had been transformed. Using the Spirit Stones, Lu Chen had drawn a massive, complex circuit (Formation Array) across the dirt floor.
"Every Spirit Stone is a battery (Data Packet)," Lu Chen explained to the wide-eyed disciples. "But if you eat them one by one, you waste most of the energy. We're going to consume them all at once, using a shared connection (Parallel Processing)."
He sat at the center of the array, the 50,000 Spirit Stones piled around him. The seven disciples sat at the "Bus" points he had designated.
"AIDA, initiate the [MASSIVE_DATA_INGESTION]. We are going to overclock my Dantian to the absolute limit."
[ WARNING: HARDWARE_STRESS_WILL_EXCEED_SAFETY_LIMITS. ]
[ RISK_OF_CORE_MELTDOWN: 34%. ]
"Push through it," Arthur commanded. "I need Stage 10 before the sun rises."
As the array activated, the Spirit Stones didn't just glow—they dissolved. A literal tide of blue energy flooded the room, so thick it looked like water. The disciples acted as "Cooling Fans," shunting the excess heat of the energy through their own bodies to keep Lu Chen from exploding.
Inside Lu Chen's Dantian, the "One Teaspoon" of capacity was being hammered.
[ LEVEL_UP: STAGE_7. ]
[ LEVEL_UP: STAGE_8. ]
His skin began to crack, glowing with the blue light of the stones. His bones hummed like tuning forks. He wasn't just cultivating; he was [HARD-CODING] strength into his very marrow.
[ LEVEL_UP: STAGE_9. ]
[ ALERT: DANTIAN_CAPACITY_REACHED. ]
[ INITIATING_BUFFER_OVERFLOW_PROTOCOL... ]
Instead of stopping, Lu Chen used the final 10,000 stones to "expand the partition." He forced his Dantian to grow, tearing the spiritual space open to hold more "Data" than any Stage 9 cultivator in history.
When the final stone turned to dust, a shockwave of energy blasted outward, leveling the shacks and sending the disciples flying.
Lu Chen stood in the center of the ruins. He didn't look like a scrawny orphan anymore. His body was lean, dense, and radiated a calm, terrifying authority. He moved his hand, and the air itself seemed to lag behind his movement.
[ STATUS: BODY_REFINING_STAGE_10 (MAX_LEVEL). ]
[ SYSTEM_OPTIMIZATION: 100%. ]
[ CURRENT_OBJECTIVE: 'THE_INNER_SECT_TRIAL'. ]
"Han," Lu Chen said, looking at the portly boy who was staring at him in awe. "Get the others. We're not just going to the trial to participate. We're going to perform a [FORCE_QUIT] on the entire Inner Sect hierarchy."