The main hall was silent save for the ragged breathing of Steward Luo Bo. The old man stared at the map, then at the young master, his mind struggling to reconcile the boy he had helped raise with the terrifying, calculating entity that now stood before him.
"Young Master... the Wang Family's spirit stone shop?" Luo Bo finally managed, his voice a dry rasp. "It is heavily guarded. Wang Jian himself, the shop's overseer, is at the eighth level of Pulse Condensation. He has four guards at the sixth level stationed there at all times. We... we cannot..."
"We?" Luo Zhen cut him off, his voice a low, chilling murmur. "There is no 'we' in this endeavor, old man. You will remain here. Your task is to ensure the clan does not collapse into panic. You will tell them their young master has gone to negotiate. You will believe it yourself."
Luo Bo wanted to protest, to fall to his knees and beg this possessed version of his young master to see reason. But the words died in his throat. The memory of Liu Yuan's lifeless, drained body being dragged away was burned into his retinas. The cold, ancient power in Luo Zhen's eyes brooked no dissent. This was not a negotiation. It was the receiving of a divine mandate.
"As you command, Young Master," Luo Bo whispered, bowing his head so low his forehead nearly touched his knees.
Luo Zhen's lips curled into a faint, predatory smile. "Good. Now, fetch me a cloak. A dark one. And a mask."
Minutes later, a figure clad in a tattered, hooded black cloak, a featureless wooden mask obscuring its face, slipped out of a side gate of the Luo compound. It moved not like a person, but like a shadow given intent, flowing through the darkest alleys of Floating Cloud City with an unnatural silence. The few night-dwellers—drunks, street sweepers, illicit lovers—felt a sudden, unexplainable chill and quickened their steps, unaware of the predator that had just glided past them.
Luo Zhen embraced the darkness. It was an old friend. His demonic senses, heightened by the Nine Profound Heavens Demonic Art, painted the world in a new palette. He could smell the fear of a rat cornered by a cat two streets over. He could hear the whispered secrets of a cheating spouse through a thick wall. He could see the faint flow of spiritual energy in the city's ley lines, weak and muddy, but a map nonetheless to the pockets of power.
The Wang Family's spirit stone shop was a two-story building of sturdy dark wood and iron reinforcements, a symbol of solid, mercantile power. A single lantern burned above its locked, iron-banded door. Luo Zhen didn't approach the front. He became a wisp of shadow, scaling the side of a neighboring building with preternatural agility, his movements silent and precise.
From the rooftop, he observed. Two guards patrolled the perimeter, their auras flickering at the sixth level of Pulse Condensation. Their movements were bored, routine. They saw their assignment as a formality; who would be foolish enough to rob the Wang Family?
Foolishness has nothing to do with it, Luo Zhen thought from his vantage point. This is simple hunger.
He waited. He was a master of time, having cultivated for millennia. A few minutes were nothing. He waited for the perfect moment when both guards were at the farthest points of their patrol, their backs turned.
Then, he dropped.
He landed between them without a sound. They didn't even have time to turn. Twin tendrils of black smoke, sharper than any blade, shot from his sleeves. They pierced the base of the guards' skulls, severing the brainstem instantly and cleanly. There was no scream, no struggle. Their bodies went rigid and then limp. Luo Zhen caught them before they could hit the ground, dragging their corpses into a deep shadow against the building's wall.
The demonic art stirred, hungry. He placed a hand on each corpse. The black smoke enveloped them. In seconds, the bodies desiccated, turning to dust that was carried away on the night breeze. Their energy, their life force, their modest cultivation—all of it was refined and absorbed.
It was a small appetizer. The main course was inside.
The back door was locked with a complex mechanical lock. Luo Zhen placed his palm against it. A pulse of pure, corrosive demonic energy shot through the metal. The internal mechanisms melted and fused together. A gentle push, and the door swung open silently.
Inside, the shop was dark and smelled of polished wood and the faint, ozone-like scent of spirit stones. Display cases lined the walls, holding stones of various grades, glowing with soft inner light. This was the public area. The real vault was downstairs.
He could feel the aura of the other two guards downstairs, their energy signatures lazy and unfocused. And he could feel a stronger, denser aura—Wang Jian, the eighth-level overseer, likely meditating in his office adjacent to the vault.
Luo Zhen moved like a ghost through the showroom. He found the reinforced door leading downstairs. It was locked from the inside. No matter. He closed his eyes, focusing his will. The shadows around the door deepened, coalescing. He was not just a cultivator; he was a master of laws, even in this weak body. He understood the nature of darkness, of space.
He stepped through the solid door.
It was not teleportation, but a momentary phasing, a manipulation of his own substance to match the void between molecules. It was a terrifyingly advanced technique, one that would have drained a normal cultivator of all their energy. For Luo Zhen, with the heaven-defying demonic art, it was merely taxing.
He emerged on the other side of the door, in a narrow stone corridor. The two guards playing dice on a small table at the end of the corridor looked up, their eyes widening in shock.
"Who—?!"
They never finished the question. Luo Zhen was upon them. His hands shot out, clamping onto their faces. The demonic art activated. Their screams were muffled by his palms as their cultivation bases were violently siphoned away. Their bodies withered, aged decades in seconds, and collapsed into piles of dust and bone.
The energy flooded into him, rich and satisfying. He felt his seventh-level cultivation solidify, edging towards the peak. These guards had been slightly stronger than the ones outside.
The door to the office flew open. Wang Jian stood there, his face a mask of fury and confusion. He was a burly man in his forties, his aura solid and earthy, indicative of a defensive cultivation style.
"What is the meaning of this?! Intruder! Die!" he roared, not waiting for an answer. He knew anyone who had made it this far was not here to talk.
He slammed his palms together. A visible shockwave of yellow energy, like a moving mountain, shot down the corridor towards Luo Zhen. It was the Earthen Bulwark Crush, a technique designed to pin and pulverize.
Luo Zhen didn't dodge. He met it head-on. He threw a simple, straight punch. There was no technique name, no fancy glow. Just pure, refined demonic power concentrated into his fist.
The black energy met the yellow shockwave.
There was a sound like shattering pottery. Wang Jian's eyes bulged as his powerful technique was utterly obliterated by the punch. The demonic energy didn't stop. It traveled down the corridor and struck him in the chest.
CRACK!
Wang Jian was thrown back into his office, crashing into his heavy oak desk and splintering it. He coughed, blood spraying from his lips. His sternum was fractured. He looked up at the masked figure walking slowly towards him, his terror now absolute.
"E-Eighth level? Who are you?!" he gasped. The punch had felt like it contained the weight of a true mountain, not the imitation his own technique offered.
Luo Zhen didn't answer. He stood over the fallen man. "The vault. Open it."
"Never! The Wang Family will hunt you to the ends of the earth!" Wang Jian spat, though his defiance was weakened by the blood bubbling in his throat.
"Then they will save me the trouble of hunting them," Luo Zhen said calmly. He placed a hand on Wang Jian's forehead.
The scream that followed was not one of physical pain, but of utter, soul-deep violation. Wang Jian felt his life's work, his hard-earned cultivation at the eighth level, being torn from the very root of his soul. It was an agony beyond description. He convulsed, his eyes rolling back into his head as the black smoke enveloped him.
Luo Zhen drank deeply. The energy was potent, vast compared to the others. The demonic art roared in triumph, refining the stolen power, forging his meridians into tougher, darker channels.
Pulse Condensation, Eighth Level!
The breakthrough was explosive. Power thrummed through every fiber of his being. When he was done, Wang Jian was a white-haired, skeletal wreck, barely clinging to life. Luo Zhen let him drop.
He found the keys on the man's belt and opened the heavy iron vault door.
The sight within made even his ancient heart quicken slightly. Stacked in neat rows were hundreds of low-grade spirit stones, dozens of medium-grade stones that glowed with a much brighter light, and even a small cache of five high-grade spirit stones that hummed with pure, dense energy. There were also vials of pills—Qi Gathering Pills, Meridian Cleansing Pills—of much higher quality than the dregs his own clan possessed.
It was a fortune. Enough to buy half of the Luo district.
Luo Zhen produced a large sack from a corner of the vault. He began filling it methodically. He took everything. Every stone, every pill. He left not a single speck of dust.
As he worked, he considered the scene. A robbed vault, dead guards, a crippled overseer. It would send a shockwave through the city. The Wang Family would be enraged, but also terrified. Who had the power to do this so cleanly? They would suspect the Liu Family, or perhaps the Su Family making a move. They would not suspect the pathetic Luo Clan.
It was the perfect smokescreen.
Sack filled and slung over his shoulder, he took one last look at the dying Wang Jian. "Tell your patriarch that the night has a new master. The interest on the debt owed to the Luo Clan is now paid in part. The principal remains."
He then phased back through the vault door and the outer door, leaving the scene of the crime silent and still, a tomb for Wang Jian's former strength.
The return journey to the Luo compound was just as silent. The sack, which would have been impossibly heavy for a normal man, was nothing to his newly strengthened eighth-level body.
He slipped back into the main hall where a pale and trembling Luo Bo was waiting.
"Young Master! You... you returned!" the old man gasped, his eyes fixated on the bulging sack.
Luo Zhen dropped the sack on the floor with a heavy thud that echoed in the hall. The sound of clinking spirit stones was like music.
"Hide this. Distribute it sparingly, only to those who prove their absolute loyalty. We are no longer poor." He then turned to leave. "I am going to cultivate. No one is to disturb me."
Back in the ancestral shrine, surrounded by the judgmental silence of his "ancestors," Luo Zhen emptied the sack. The energy radiating from the pile, especially the five high-grade spirit stones, was intoxicating.
He sat cross-legged and began. The Nine Profound Heavens Demonic Art whirred to life like a divine engine of consumption. The spirit stones dimmed, their energy screaming out in visible streams of light, pouring into his body. The pills dissolved into ash.
The energy was monumental. His meridians, already toughened, expanded violently. His dantian swelled, filling with a raging sea of pure demonic energy.
Pulse Condensation, Ninth Level!
The breakthrough was accompanied by a wave of pressure that made the ancestral tablets rattle on their shelves. He didn't stop. The energy from the high-grade stones was still flooding in, vast and seemingly endless. He pushed further, towards the bottleneck, the great wall that separated Pulse Condensation from the next major realm: the Foundation Establishment realm.
He could feel the barrier. It was thick, solid, a natural law that limited mortals. He gathered the colossal energy within him, focusing it into a single, devastating point.
Break! he commanded inwardly.
He slammed the concentrated power against the bottleneck.
The impact was seismic within his body. The shrine trembled. Cracks appeared in the floor beneath him. The barrier shook, strained, but held firm.
He gathered the energy again, more of it this time, refining it to a sharper, more destructive edge.
BREAK!
He struck again.
BOOM!
A silent explosion of power erupted from him. The barrier shattered like glass. The energy, now uncontained, flooded into a new, vast expanse within his dantian. It began to condense, to solidify, to form a foundation. But this was no ordinary foundation of spiritual energy.
It was a Demonic Foundation. A base of pure, obsidian-black energy, swirling with hints of bloody crimson. It was stable, immense, and infinitely hungry.
Foundation Establishment, First Level!
He had broken through a major realm in a single night. An feat that would be considered legend, myth, impossible.
He opened his eyes. The pile of resources was completely gone. The air in the shrine crackled with residual power. He felt... strong. Truly strong for the first time since his rebirth. He could crush the Liu Patriarch and the Wang Patriarch with a single hand now.
He stood up, his body having undergone another subtle transformation. He was slightly taller, his features sharper, more defined, his eyes even deeper pools of darkness with swirling crimson stars now visible in their depths. He was no longer a boy. He was a demonic sovereign in a youth's body.
He could feel the dawn approaching. The city would soon wake up to chaos. The Liu Family would be mourning the crippling of Liu Yuan and the death of their guards. The Wang Family would be in an uproar over the robbery.
And the Luo Clan... the Luo Clan would wake up to a new, terrifying reality.
He walked out of the shrine as the first rays of the sun painted the sky. The clansmen who were already awake, cleaning the courtyard as ordered, saw him emerge. They fell to their knees instantly, not out of loyalty, but out of sheer, primal terror. The aura he emitted now was not just powerful; it was oppressive, ancient, and evil.
He ignored them and walked to his sister's room. He opened the door without knocking.
Luo Qingwu was already awake, sitting on her bed. She had heard the commotion in the night, the whispers of the servants. She saw him standing in the doorway, backlit by the dawn. He was different. More. The blood was gone, but the feeling of immense, dangerous power radiating from him was even more intense.
"Brother..." she whispered, her voice small.
He tossed a medium-grade spirit stone onto her bed. It glowed with a soft, warm light. "Use this to cultivate. It will help your condition."
She stared at the spirit stone, a treasure she had only ever heard of. "Where did you...?"
"Debts are being paid," he said simply. "The world operates on a simple principle, little sister. The strong take what they want, and the weak suffer what they must. We will no longer be among the weak."
He turned to leave.
"Wait!" she called out. "What... what happened to you? You're not my brother. Not the brother I knew."
He paused at the door, half-turning. The crimson stars in his eyes seemed to glow in the dim room.
"The brother you knew was weak. He died so that something stronger could live," he said, his voice cold, yet for the first time, it held a sliver of something resembling... honesty. "That weakness died with him. All that remains is strength. And I will use that strength to make everything in this world... mine. Including you. Rest well. You are under my protection now."
He left, closing the door behind him, leaving Luo Qingwu alone with the glowing spirit stone and a heart full of a terrifying, thrilling confusion.
Down in the main hall, Luo Bo was waiting, wringing his hands. "Young Master! The Liu Patriarch... he is outside the main gate! He has brought twenty guards! And... and the City Lord's magistrate is with him! They are demanding justice for Liu Yuan and the dead guards!"
A slow, cruel smile spread across Luo Zhen's face. The first light of the new day was here. And with it, the first official delivery of his reign.
"Excellent," he murmured. "Let us go and greet our... guests."