The silent shockwave of Senior Brother Ye’s destruction echoed across the Great Void Sect for weeks.
No inner-sect elder dared file a protest. The duel scroll signed in blood at the Zenith Arena was binding, and Adam’s casual display of boundary-breaking power had branded Ghost-Sword Peak a restricted danger zone.
At eleven that night, deep within the subterranean cavern beneath his hall, Adam sat cross-legged over the quartz array platform.
Floating around him in a tight, spinning halo were his newly acquired assets: eight thousand low-tier spirit stones from the Void-Star Pavilion’s midnight sales, ten thousand more from Sun-Fire Peak’s seized treasury, and a hundred rare, high-purity cultivation pills.
At the center of the array, the Heaven-Grade Spirit-Gathering Array shimmered in gold light, drawing every particle of ambient spirit energy within fifty miles down into the cavern.
It had taken thirty days to reach this night, and the stones were the least of it.
Sun-Fire Peak’s treasury had held what no market on the Southern Continent sold: a fist-sized core of Nine-Tribulation Thunder-Iron, the thunder-attribute tempering source Ye’s family had been saving for his own breakthrough. The peak’s three medicinal gardens, now Ghost-Sword Peak’s, had supplied the herbs. For twenty-two days the Nine-Dragon Flame Furnace had burned without pause, and from the recipe buried in his God-Grade Alchemy Mastery, Adam had refined a single dark-gold pill.
The Nine-Turn Core-Condensing Elixir lay in his palm. The thunder-iron floated at the heart of the halo, crackling with silver arcs.
[Requirements for Nine-Turn Condensation: Nine-Turn Core-Condensing Elixir: owned. Thunder-attribute tempering source: owned. Foundation consolidation: 30 / 30 days.]
Adam swallowed the elixir, closed his eyes, and activated his inner furnace.
"Refine."
BOOM!
The eighteen thousand spirit stones exploded at once. A river of liquid silver spirit energy erupted into the air and swirled into an energy tornado that plunged into the crown of Adam’s head.
At the same time, the Nine-Dragon Flame Furnace manifested in his soul, burning the incoming energy down to its purest essence. The thunder-iron shattered, and arcs of silver lightning lashed through the tornado to temper it.
Inside his dantian, the trembling golden seed of his unformed core began to spin at tremendous speed. The liquid energy and lightning coated it layer by layer, compressing it from the size of a marble down to a dense, microscopic point before it burst outward in a flash of golden light.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Adam’s spine straightened like an unbending sword. His bones hummed like struck bronze, and his skin took on a pristine, jade-like translucence.
The boundary of his Perfected Foundation dissolved.
In its place, a solid, flawless Golden Core, embossed with nine intricate dragon runes, one for each Turn, settled at the center of his dantian. Its steady gravitational pull made the surrounding quartz cavern tremble.
Ding!
[Congratulations to the Host!]
[Cultivation Realm Breakthrough Achieved: Full Golden Core Realm (1st Layer)!]
[System Reward Unlocked: Void-Traversing Token & Realm Map for the Imperial Dynasties!]
Adam opened his eyes. Twin beams of silver sword-light pierced fifty feet into the granite bedrock before vanishing.
He flexed his fingers. The Qi surging through his meridians was several times denser than before. With a single thought, he could now open the full Ten-Thousand Blade Dominion across a hundred-foot radius and turn everything within range into a kill zone.
"Full Golden Core," Adam murmured, pulling his hood forward. "Now let’s see what it can actually do."
High above the cavern, on the Zenith Sanctuary, a cup of tea stopped halfway to the Sect Master’s lips. He set it down very carefully and turned toward Ghost-Sword Peak.