The damp, glass-strewn subterranean corridors of the Midnight Crown Hotel quickly faded into the distance.
Moving with his newly mastered Phantom Step technique, Grant Cross cut through the morning traffic of the central commercial district like an invisible gust of wind.
To the ordinary citizens walking the sidewalks, he was nothing more than a faint blur passing between the towering neon high-rises.
He didn’t slow his blistering pace until he reached the eastern edge of the metropolitan skyline, standing before the entrance of the Aegis Horizon Tower.
The Aegis Horizon was a premier, automated residential fortress.
It was a place designed specifically for top-tier corporate CEOs and reclusive high-level martial artists who required absolute, untraceable security away from the prying eyes of the city’s corrupt sects.
Grant walked into the private glass elevator bank, pulled out his matte-black titanium card, and swiped it against the biometric scanner.
« SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: SECURE TRANSITION ACTIVE »
• Location Identified: Aegis Horizon Penthouse (Floor 88)
• Security Level: Maximum Automated S-Tier (Zero human staff, fully encrypted biometric entry)
• Transaction Value: $12,000,000.00 (Instant Full Purchase)
• Remaining Financial Core Reserve: $384,000,000.00
The private elevator shot upward, smooth and dead silent, arriving at the topmost floor within seconds.
The doors opened directly into a sprawling, modern minimalist penthouse.
Floor-to-ceiling reinforced smart-glass windows overlooked the entire expanse of the city, offering a sprawling panoramic view of the harbor docks where Grant had spent five long years sweating blood.
Grant walked to the center of the polished slate floor and sat down cross-legged.
He willed his consciousness inward, tapping directly into his soul-bound storage dimension.
“Extract the Heaven-Grade Dragon Spirit Herb,” Grant commanded silently.
A subtle ripple distorted the air right in front of his chest.
In a brilliant flash of crystalline light, the velvet display case materialized out of the Spatial Vault.
The golden, pulsating energy of the five-leafed root immediately flooded the luxury room, the intense draconic aroma causing the penthouse’s automated air-filtration units to hum aggressively as they tried to process the dense cosmic mist.
Grant snapped the silver latches open, lifted the glowing, scale-patterned root, and placed it directly into his mouth.
« SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: HERBAL REFINEMENT REFRESHED »
• Item Consumed: Heaven-Grade Dragon Spirit Herb (94.5% Purity)
• Core Status: Processing raw unrefined cosmic essence…
• Warning: External atmospheric pressure will fluctuate drastically during refinement sequence.
The moment the herb dissolved on his tongue, a tidal wave of burning, concentrated primordial energy exploded down Grant’s throat.
It felt like swallowing a bucket of liquid sun.
The raw energy rushed into his main pathways, surging through his limbs like a raging golden river.
For an ordinary Stage 3 martial artist, absorbing a Heaven-grade resource this rapidly would cause their internal pathways to instantly rupture and turn their body to ash.
But Grant possessed the Primordial Dragon Core.
Inside his chest, the broken fragments of his original core—now fully re-forged and expanded—began to spin like a miniature golden galaxy.
The core acted as a massive gravitational sink, greedily pulling in the wild, unrefined herbal energy and smoothing it out into pure, dense Primordial Dragon Qi.
BOOM!
A massive, invisible shockwave of thermal energy erupted from Grant’s cross-legged form.
The sheer atmospheric back-pressure caused the reinforced smart-glass windows of the penthouse to crack and craze, webbed lines expanding across the glass pane.
The temperature inside the room skyrocketed, the air shimmering with visible heat distortions.
« SYSTEM PROGRESS LOG: EVOLUTION SEQUENCING »
• Primordial Dragon Qi Gained: +1,500 Units
• Total Dragon Qi: 2,000 / 2,000 (Maximum Threshold Met)
• Experience Points Accumulated: +900 EXP
• Current Experience Progress: 1,100 / 2,000 → 2,000 / 2,000
• Status: Stage 3 Iron Body has reached absolute saturation limit.
Advancing host to the final boundary line of Tier 1.
The golden draconic circles within Grant’s eyes flared with a blinding, incandescent radiance that illuminated the entire room.
His bones let out a series of sharp, rapid popping sounds, like firecrackers exploding in a vacuum, as his skeletal structure reinforced itself to bear the massive surge of power.
His skin pulsed with a temporary layer of metallic golden scales that hardened before melting seamlessly back into his flesh.
The chronic fatigue, the final lingering trace of the obsidian spike’s curse, was utterly incinerated by the pure dragon fire.
Ding!
« SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: CORE BOUNDARY BREACHED »
• Host Cultivation Realm: Tier 1: Iron Body (Stage 4 – Peak Master Boundary)
• Combat Strength: 2,500 → 3,700 (Average Human Baseline: 10)
• Core Attributes Fully Maximized:
• Agility: 155 → 240
• Endurance: 230 → 350
• Defensive Evolution: Dragon Scale Armor passive has upgraded to Tier 2 Immunity.
(Immune to all mental, physical, and elemental attacks below the Astral Vein realm).
Grant slowly opened his eyes, the brilliant golden glow in his pupils gradually receding back into a deep, intense black.
He stood up from the floor, testing the unnatural lightness in his limbs.
At 3,700 Combat Strength, his physical output had completely broken past the standard limitations of a Tier 1 human.
With a strength attribute of 310, he no longer needed to swing a sword to kill an opponent; a simple flick of his finger could generate enough localized wind pressure to pierce through military-grade armor plate.
He walked over to the cracked smart-glass window, looking down at the sprawling neon city below him.
His phone suddenly buzzed on the nearby marble counter.
It was a secure, automated encrypted text message routed through his master vault loop.
It contained a single news brief flashing across the city’s private underworld network:
[URGENT: Grand Ancestor of the Cross Clan breaks ten-year seclusion.
True hidden masters of the Iron Shroud Sect mobilize three elite Stage 9 Elders to locate the harbor variable.]
A cold, deadly smile spread across Grant’s sharp face as he closed the message.
They were deploying their ultimate assets, thinking they were hunting a vulnerable stray who had stumbled upon a treasure.
They had no idea they were marching straight into the jaws of a fully awakened dragon.
“Three Stage 9 Elders,” Grant whispered, his voice causing the remaining intact glass fixtures in the room to vibrate with a low hum.
He willed the pitch-black Obsidian Dragon Blade into his right hand, the dark steel absorbing the ambient neon light from the windows.
“Let them come together.
It saves me the trouble of hunting them down one by one.”
Stage 4 Peak Master Boundary reached!
Grant’s combat power has skyrocketed to a massive 3,700 points, and his passive defenses have upgraded to Tier 2 Immunity!
The main Cross Clan and the top elders of the Iron Shroud Sect are officially uniting to hunt him down in the next chapter.
Can their combined Stage 9 forces even scratch Grant’s new armor?