Theo stared at the text hovering in his vision.
A Special Feedback Reward?
The system had already casually tossed him 5,000 credits just for feeding Liana a bowl of terrible, watery gruel.
What kind of payout came from fundamentally altering a Reborn Empress’s mindset and reigniting her ambition to conquer the world?
[Claim Special Reward: Primordial Abyssal Meridian Network.]
[Description: An ancient, foundational architecture that devours ambient energy and assimilates all elemental affinities without rejection. It is the perfect vessel, completely immune to spiritual bottlenecks and impurities.]
Claim it, Theo thought, bracing himself for the impact.
He didn’t get a dramatic explosion of light or a surge of pain. Instead, all sound simply vanished.
The snores of the exhausted slaves, the dripping of condensation from the ceiling, the rustle of straw... it all faded into absolute silence.
Theo felt his consciousness plummet.
He was falling into a lightless, bottomless ocean.
The pressure was unimaginable, crushing his mortal bones to dust, only to rebuild them a second later from something infinitely denser.
He felt disconnected from his body, suspended in a void where time didn’t exist.
It was a terrifying sensation, yet paradoxically, it felt incredibly peaceful.
He was a single drop of water merging with an endless, primordial sea...
A few feet away, Liana didn’t notice Theo’s internal cosmic shift. Her focus was locked onto the cracked basin in front of her.
The glowing golden water wasn’t just soaking into her bruised wrists; it was actively burrowing into her flesh!
It felt like she was submerging her hands in molten iron, but it was a magnificent, welcoming pain.
The , toxic blockages in her arms were melting away under the golden heat.
She could feel her dormant spiritual roots twitching, gasping for air after being suffocated for so long. The energy rushed up her arms, knitting her shattered meridians back together with a forceful, tyrannical grace.
She exhaled a long breath, lifting her hands.
Liana looked up.
Theo was slumped against the wooden support beam of the barracks, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling.
Liana narrowed her eyes. The meager, dirty spiritual energy floating in the damp slave barracks was being pulled toward him, spiraling into his skin like water draining into a whirlpool.
He was passively absorbing the world’s energy in his sleep. Without a cultivation technique. Without drawing array formations.
Who exactly is this boy? she wondered.
When Theo opened his eyes the next morning, the world felt different. The dust motes floating in the shafts of morning light seemed slower, their trajectories sharper. He could feel the pulse of the earth beneath the stone floor.
He immediately called up his interface.
[Name: Theo]
[Age: 16]
[Structure: Primordial Abyssal Meridians / Minor Purity Water Body]
[Destiny: ???]
Theo chuckled softly, dismissing the screen.
From a Gray destiny to a bunch of question marks? That was definitely an upgrade!
...
Over the next two days, the grueling routine in the slave camp continued.
Theo went to the mines, slipping away into the deep tunnels to hunt. He absorbed a few Cave Centipedes and Shadow Rats, gaining minor boosts to his agility and a situational ’Wall Crawl’ skill, but nothing game-changing.
He also decided to test his Investment Skill on the other slaves. He bought a few cheap stamina pills from the System Shop and slipped them to some of the sicklier miners.
[Investment successful. Reward: 15 Credits.] [Investment successful. Reward: 10 Credits.]
It was spare change. The system’s 10x Savior multiplier clearly only cared about high-tier targets with massive destinies.
Normal people yielded normal, pathetic returns. Quality over quantity was the name of the game.
But his primary investment was already paying massive dividends...
By the dawn of the third day, Liana looked like an entirely different person. The sickly pallor of her skin had vanished, replaced by a radiant, porcelain glow.
Even dressed in filthy slave rags, she radiated an aura of untouchable authority that made the other slaves instinctively give her a wide berth.
As Theo handed her a piece of hardtack for breakfast, she took it firmly.
"My meridians are cleared," Liana stated. "The poison is eradicated."
"Glad to hear it," Theo smiled, taking a bite of his own stale bread.
Liana held his gaze. "Thank you."
Theo paused mid-chew. The arrogant Reborn Empress just said thank you?
"Don’t mention it," Theo winked, recovering quickly. "Just remember my favor when you’re sitting on a throne somewhere."
She didn’t respond, but the sharp gleam in her eyes told him she wouldn’t forget.
That afternoon, the regular mining schedule was abruptly canceled.
Armored guards poured into the barracks, cracking their whips against the walls. "Up! Everyone on your feet! Form up in the main courtyard! Move!"
Theo and Liana were herded outside alongside hundreds of other slaves. They were marched away from the mining sector and through the pathways of the Silent Thunder Sect, eventually arriving at a massive open-air plaza.
At the center of the plaza stood a towering slab of obsidian, polished to a mirror shine.
A sect deacon stood beside the stone with a bored, irritated expression.
"Listen up, scum!" the deacon’s voice, amplified by his inner energy, rolled across the plaza like thunder. "Today is the sect’s biannual intake assessment. The rules are simple. You step up, and you place your hand on the Testing Stone. If it stays dark, you are sent back to the mines to dig until your lungs give out."
He paused, a cruel smile touching his lips. "But, if the stone glows, it means you possess spiritual roots. Your slave collar will be struck off, and you will be permitted to join the outer sect as a disciple."
A ripple of hope swept through the crowd.
The rumor the old man had mentioned on the wagon was true. It was a one-in-a-million chance to escape a lifetime of torment!
"Form a single line!" the guards barked, shoving the slaves into place.
A scrawny boy touched the stone. Nothing. "Next!" A muscular man touched it. Nothing. "Next!"
A young girl touched it, and a pathetic flicker of white light appeared deep within the obsidian.
"Low-grade mortal roots," the deacon sighed, waving his hand. "Take her collar off. Send her to the laundry division."
Out of the first two hundred slaves, only four produced a reaction, and none of them were impressive enough to earn more than a grunt from the deacon.
The vast majority of mortals were simply meant to be ordinary...
Theo stood near the back of the line, his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t even need to activate his Destiny’s Eye to know these people were going to fail.
"Hey," Theo nudged Liana, who was standing right in front of him. "Nervous?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "A dragon does not feel nervous when asked to prove it can breathe fire."
Theo snorted a laugh. "Fair enough. Go show them."
"You, girl! Step up!" a guard snapped, pointing the butt of his spear at Liana.
As Liana stepped out of the crowd and walked toward the obsidian slab, a strange hush fell over the plaza.
She was wearing clothes made of literal garbage, her hair was unstyled, and her ankles were still bound by a heavy iron chain that scraped across the floor.
Yet, she walked with the posture of a monarch ascending the steps of her royal court.
The oppressive weight of her presence made several armed guards unconsciously step back to give her room.
The deacon narrowed his eyes, sensing something unusual about the girl’s demeanor, but his arrogance quickly won out. "Place your hand on the stone. Quickly now, don’t waste my time."
Liana stopped in front of the black slab, her expression unreadable as she raised her hand.
Theo leaned forward, a grin spreading across his face.
Liana pressed her palm flat against the obsidian.
A deafening crack echoed across the plaza as a pillar of blinding, blood-red light erupted from the obsidian slab, shooting hundreds of feet into the cloudless sky.
The explosive force of the spiritual energy radiating from the stone generated a shockwave that knocked the nearby guards right off their feet and sent weapons clattering across the plaza.
The deacon let out a shriek, stumbling backward and falling hard onto his backside. His jaw hung open, his eyes bulging out of his skull.
The red light was so intense it dyed the entire plaza crimson.
It was a roaring inferno of supreme talent, angry and tyrannical, overwhelming the testing array’s capacity to contain it!
"C-Crimson... Supreme Sovereign Grade!" the deacon stammered, his voice cracking. "H-How is this possible?!"
The slaves, the guards, the distant sect disciples who had stopped to watch... everyone was frozen in disbelief.
In the long history of the Silent Thunder Sect, a blue glow was considered a generational genius.
A purple glow was the stuff of myths and legends, the kind of talent that founded empires!
Crimson didn’t even exist in their records.
Standing at the epicenter of the blinding red storm, her hair whipping around her face, Liana lowered her hand.
Back in the crowd, Theo couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
The Reborn Empress was finally off her leash. And he was the one holding the keys to her loyalty!