The sterile chill of the reflection cell clung to Qing KunJue like a second skin as the heavy alloy door hissed open. Officer Bo Ren, his bark-like features impassive, merely gestured with a nod. KunJue stepped out, the air in the secure corridor tasting of recycled sterility and faint ozone, a stark contrast to the electric storm simmering beneath his own skin. His sapphire eyes, cold and focused as glacial ice, scanned the empty passage. No guards escorted him; Principal Qin Jiang's silent message was clear: You are released, but you are watched.
He walked with measured, deliberate steps. The rhythmic click of his boots on the polished ferrocrete floor echoed in the silence. The crushing weight of the Dragon's potential, the icy certainty forged in Jun MuoLan's blood, thrummed within him. His name still blazed on the Mutation Tower – a beacon, a challenge, a testament. He felt no remorse, only the sharpening focus of a blade honed for a singular purpose: ascension. Obstacles were to be removed. Sentiment was a shackle.
Exiting the administrative block, KunJue emerged onto Sky University's main thoroughfare, "The Celestial Way." The transition was jarring. Sterility gave way to controlled chaos. The broad avenue pulsed with life beneath the perpetual, smog-filtered twilight of DanNuan City. Hover-vehicles hummed along designated energy lanes, their repulsors casting soft blue glows on the polished black road surface. Towering structures flanked the Way – a fusion of resilient alloys and shimmering light-emitting crystal facades. Holographic advertisements flickered high above, projecting shimmering images of Famed warriors demonstrating Legend Poses, sleek gen-tech augmentation suites, and serene landscapes promising retreats from the city's relentless energy. The air itself vibrated with a low thrum – the combined heartbeat of the city and the Mutation Energy humming through its veins. Scents layered thickly: hot metal from the vehicles, ozone from energy conduits, the greasy aroma of street vendors frying spirit-beast skewers on corner grills, and the ever-present, slightly acrid tang of the city's atmospheric processors fighting the smog. Students in university fatigues mingled with civilians in vibrant synth-silk robes, their conversations a low buzz punctuated by the sharp chime of personal comms and the distant wail of security sirens. Above it all, the Mutation Tower loomed, its vast holographic face scrolling names, its internal luminescence a constant, watchful presence.
KunJue moved through the throng like a shark through warm water. His presence, even suppressed, created a subtle ripple. Eyes flickered towards him – some wide with awe at the Azure Dragon scion, others narrowed with apprehension, remembering the Tower's recent grim news. He ignored them all, his gaze fixed ahead, the path back to his temporary quarters clear in his mind. He needed solitude, needed to refine the chaotic newborn Dragon energy buzzing alongside his Chainbound Ice.
He had just turned onto a slightly less crowded arterial lane, "Starlit Promenade," lined with glowing crystalline trees whose leaves pulsed with soft internal light, when the sky screamed.
A sonic boom shattered the ambient hum, rolling over the city like thunder. Civilians cried out, clapping hands over ears. Hover-vehicles wobbled in their lanes. KunJue's head snapped up, sapphire eyes narrowing against the sudden pressure wave.
A streak of blinding, molten gold tore through the smoggy twilight, descending like a vengeful comet. It wasn't graceful; it was a controlled crash, fueled by fury. It impacted the ferrocrete avenue twenty yards ahead with a devastating KRA-KOOOM!
The ground buckled. A radial wave of force erupted, shattering the glowing crystalline trees like glass, hurling parked hover-bikes aside like toys, and sending pedestrians stumbling back with cries of alarm. Dust and debris plumed into the air, thick with the acrid stench of superheated concrete and ozone.
From the heart of the crater, wreathed in shimmering heat haze and swirling dust, a figure straightened.
Jun Feng.
He was taller than his dead brother, broader across the shoulders, radiating a palpable aura of predatory dominance that made the air crackle. His hair was a shock of wild, sun-bleached gold, cropped short and severe. His face was a mask of cold, incandescent fury – sharp, hawkish features carved from granite, dominated by eyes that burned with the intense, unforgiving yellow-gold of a raptor's gaze. They held no grief, only a terrifying, focused promise of retribution. He wore no uniform, only reinforced combat fatigues the colour of desert sand, molded to his powerful frame. Golden energy, thick and viscous like molten metal, crackled around his clenched fists and shoulders, coalescing into flickering, insubstantial pinions of pure light – the manifestation of his Golden Roc gen at the Breakthrough Stage. The scent rolling off him was aggression incarnate: hot sand under a merciless sun, the sharp tang of ozone from his power, and beneath it, the iron-rich, coppery scent of barely contained violence. He smelled like a desert storm given sentient, lethal form.
His molten gold eyes locked onto KunJue with unerring precision, cutting through the settling dust. The sheer pressure of his presence, honed by years beyond his brother's Groundtouch fumbling, pressed down like physical weight. The ambient sounds of the city – the sirens starting to wail closer, the panicked shouts – seemed to fade into a dull roar behind the intensity of his focus.
"Qing KunJue," Jun Feng's voice was a low, grating rasp, like stone grinding on stone, yet it carried effortlessly over the chaos. It wasn't a shout; it was a death sentence delivered with chilling calm. "Scion of Azure Lightning. Tower's newest spark." He took a step forward, the ferrocrete cracking under his boot. The golden pinions at his shoulders flared brighter. "You took something of mine. Something flawed, perhaps... but mine."
KunJue stood his ground, his own sapphire eyes meeting the molten gold fury without flinching. The cold core within him hardened further. "He challenged. He lost." His voice was flat, devoid of inflection, the sound of ice scraping stone. "Get out of my way, Jun Feng."
A humorless, predatory smile split Jun Feng's face, revealing sharp, white teeth. "Oh, I'm not here to block your path, Dragon whelp." He raised a hand, golden energy swirling densely around it, forming claws of solidified light. "I'm here to collect the bloodprice. Yours."
He didn't roar. He moved.
Breakthrough Stage Roc speed was a blur. One moment he was twenty yards away, the next he was there, a golden comet of lethal intent. The air screamed as he lashed out. "Mutation Technique: Roc's Sky-Rending Talon!"
A massive, three-clawed projection of solidified golden energy, radiating searing heat and hypersonic speed, ripped towards KunJue's chest. It wasn't a wild blast; it was precision incarnate, aimed to eviscerate.
KunJue reacted with Chainbound-honed speed and the Dragon's raw instinct. Ice surged. "Mutation Technique: Glacial Aegis!" A thick, multi-layered shield of jagged, supercooled ice erupted before him, radiating intense cold that misted the air instantly.
The Sky-Rending Talon struck.
SHATTER-CRACK-BOOM!
The impact was catastrophic. KunJue's formidable Glacial Aegis, which had easily deflected lesser attacks, exploded outwards in a devastating shower of razor-sharp ice shrapnel. The force of the blow slammed through the shattered defense, a concussive hammer blow that connected squarely with KunJue's crossed forearms. Bone-jarring pain lanced up his arms. He was flung backwards like a ragdoll, skidding painfully across the ruined ferrocrete, tasting copper as blood filled his mouth from bitten lips. His arms throbbed, numb and aching. Jun Feng hadn't even broken stride.
"Pathetic," Jun Feng hissed, already closing the distance with terrifying speed, golden pinions leaving afterimages. "Chainbound Ice and a spark of Dragon arrogance? That's what snuffed MuoLan? A fluke." He gestured, not at KunJue, but at the street itself. "Mutation Technique: Sunscorch Barrage!" Dozens of fist-sized orbs of condensed solar fury, blindingly bright and radiating furnace heat, materialized around him and streaked down, carpet-bombing the area where KunJue struggled to rise.
KunJue rolled desperately, summoning frost to harden the ground beneath him into slick ice, trying to slide away. "Mutation Technique: Frost Glide!" Explosions of superheated plasma erupted all around him, showering him with molten debris and scalding steam. The smell of burning ozone and scorched earth was overwhelming. One orb detonated too close. The concussive force lifted him, slamming him into the twisted wreckage of a vendor stall, splintering synth-wood and spilling exotic fruits that sizzled where they touched the superheated ground. Agony bloomed across his ribs. He gasped, struggling to draw breath through the pain and the suffocating heat radiating from Jun Feng.
Jun Feng landed lightly a few yards away, golden eyes blazing with contempt. "Where is the Dragon's fury now, Qing? Where is the ice-cold killer?" He raised a hand, golden energy coalescing into a long, wicked blade of solidified sunlight. "This ends now. For MuoLan."
He lunged, the Sunblade aimed not just to kill, but to bisect. KunJue saw death approaching, faster than thought, hotter than a forge. He tried to summon ice, tried to channel the chaotic Dragon lightning, but the pain, the overwhelming pressure of Jun Feng's Breakthrough power, the sheer speed – it was too much. His defenses were shattered, his body battered. The cold calculation faltered for a split second, replaced by the primal instinct of a cornered beast facing annihilation. This wasn't a challenge he could meet with Chainbound control. He needed the storm. He needed the Dragon.
In that final, desperate fraction of a second, as the Sunblade descended, Qing KunJue didn't think. He roared.
It wasn't a human sound. It was the guttural bellow of thunder given voice, the fury of a leviathan breaking the surface. Raw Azure Dragon power, no longer chaotic sparks but a torrent unleashed by desperation and survival instinct, erupted from his core.
"MUTATION TECHNIQUE: AZURE DRAGON ASCENDANT!"
The transformation was instantaneous and brutal. Azure scales, shimmering with iridescent cyan and deep sapphire light, rippled across his exposed skin – face, neck, hands. Twin horns, spiraling like obsidian lightning rods tipped with crackling cyan energy, burst from his temples. His sapphire eyes blazed molten gold, slitted vertically, radiating ancient, predatory intelligence and feral wrath. The air around him crackled with released power, ozone thick and sharp, drowning out the city's smells. A visible wave of draconic pressure radiated outwards, causing the nearby wreckage to tremble.
But it was the Mutation Technique that saved him. As the Sunblade struck, it met not flesh, but coalescing storm. A colossal, serpentine dragon, woven from crackling cyan lightning and swirling cyan mist, exploded into being around KunJue. It coiled protectively, its scales pulsing with inner light, claws jagged shards of pure lightning. The Sunblade struck the manifestation's flank.
KRA-ZZZZAAAAPPP!
Lightning met sunlight in a blinding, deafening detonation of opposing energies. The force of the clash hurled Jun Feng back a step, his golden aura flaring in surprise. KunJue, shielded within the heart of the manifestation, felt the impact resonate through his newly scaled form, but it didn't penetrate.
He didn't attack. He didn't have the control, nor the strength after Jun Feng's onslaught. The Pose and was fueled by pure survival instinct and the Dragon's newborn fury, a desperate, unstable surge. His body screamed in protest, the earlier injuries amplified by the transformation's strain. He saw Jun Feng recovering, molten gold eyes narrowing with renewed, deadly focus. The Roc user gathered his power, clearly readying a finishing blow that could shatter even this desperate defense.
Retreat. Now.
The cold, calculating part of his mind, momentarily overwhelmed, reasserted itself through the draconic fury. Survival was paramount. Ascension required living through this humiliation.
With a final, guttural snarl that shook the air, KunJue willed the manifestation not to fight, but to flee. The colossal serpentine dragon of lightning and mist coiled tighter around him, then, with a sound like tearing sky-silk, launched itself upwards, not at Jun Feng, but towards the smog-choked heavens. KunJue rode within its ephemeral form, a passenger clinging to the storm he had summoned.
Jun Feng's enraged bellow followed him, a sound like an eagle denied its kill, mingling with the wailing sirens and the crackle of the ascending dragon. "COWARD! THE HUNT IS ON, QING! THERE IS NO SKY HIGH ENOUGH!"
But KunJue was already gone, vanishing into the bruised twilight aboard a serpent of his own storm, the golden glare of Jun Feng and the accusing glow of the Mutation Tower shrinking below. The icy fire in his molten gold eyes burned brighter than ever, not with fear, but with a terrifying, crystalline resolve. The bloodprice had been demanded. He had paid in pain and retreat. Next time, the debt would be settled in full. The Dragon had tasted flight, tasted its true power, however briefly. The climb had just become a war.