All Chapters of The Ascension of the suppressed Dragon : Chapter 21
- Chapter 30
41 chapters
chapter 21:the silence of the abyss
The branding iron was inches from my eyes, the white-hot rune glowing like a dying star. I could feel the heat blistering the air, but I didn't blink. I didn't even breathe. Zhaoyang’s face was a mask of ecstatic cruelty, the look of a man who thought he finally held the leash of a god. "Say goodbye to those eyes, Feng," he hissed. "You won't need them where you're going." He lunged. He shoved the glowing metal straight into my face with every ounce of his Core Formation strength. The iron didn't hit bone. It didn't sizzle against flesh. It passed straight through my skull as if I were made of mountain mist. The white-hot metal slid through the space where my brain should have been and struck the stone wall behind me with a shower of sparks. Zhaoyang stumbled, his momentum carrying him forward. "What? No! I felt the impact! I saw it touch you!" "You saw what I wanted you to see," I said. My voice didn't come from my throat. It vibrated out of the shadows in the corners of t
chapter 22:shadows of the ghost mountain
The cold wind of the high spires whipped at my tattered robes, but the air felt thin, wrong. Suddenly, a sharp, white-hot agony pierced my chest—not from my own wounds, but from the soul-bond. "Master..." I choked out. The connection to Yue Xuān, usually a calm river of ancient wisdom, was screaming. It was the sound of a forest being uprooted, a mountain being ground to dust. He was in trouble. No, he was dying. I didn't hesitate. I didn't look back at the smoking crater where the Academy’s "justice" used to be. I reached into the air, my fingers hooking into the fabric of reality. "Void Path: Infinite Fold!" The world snapped. The Academy, the spires, and the screams of the disciples vanished, replaced by the scent of pine and burning medicinal herbs. I wasn't in the city anymore. I was at the mouth of the Ghost Mountain valley. But the sanctuary was gone. The mist that usually protected the valley was being torn apart by columns of golden, imperial fire. The thatched-roof h
chapter 23: the sovereign's inheritance
The green spear hissed, a jagged tooth of vibrating wind keeping my Master’s lifeblood from erupting. The valley was a graveyard of smoke and the severed heads of the Shadow Guards. Ling Zhaoyang stood across from me, his white robes fluttering in the heat of the burning medical huts. He looked at me with the eyes of a man who thought he had already won. "You're a glitch in the system, Feng," Zhaoyang sneered, his fingers twitching toward the detonator seal on the spear. "A mistake that refuses to stay buried. But look at you now—paralyzed by a dying old man." "Let him go," I said. My voice was a low, guttural vibration that made the stone beneath my feet crack. "The debt is between us. Don't involve him." "Involve him? He's the one who hid the 'Key' for ten years!" Zhaoyang laughed, and the sound was like glass grinding on bone. "He’s an accomplice to treason against the Ling Clan. He’s lucky I haven't peeled his soul yet." I stepped forward, but the spear in Yue Xuān’s chest fl
chapter 24:The first harvest
The golden lightning descended like the hammer of a god, wide as the valley itself and burning with the concentrated arrogance of a thousand years of tyranny. I stood over the cooling body of Yue Xuān, the Sovereign Ring heavy on my finger and the Heart of the Void screaming in my chest. "The Throne does not permit a Sovereign of Nothing!" the voice of the Emperor boomed from the clouds, shaking the foundations of the Ghost Mountain. I didn't run. I didn't hide. I looked up at the descending pillar of white-hot light and raised the hand wearing the black iron band. "The Throne is a chair for a man who forgot how to bleed," I said. "And the Void... it doesn't need permission." I twisted the Sovereign Ring. Clack. The sound of the mechanism was louder than the thunder. The golden lightning didn't strike me. It hit an invisible wall of absolute zero three feet above my head. The light shattered into harmless sparks, diverted by a spatial fold that sent the energy into the bed
chapter 25:Architect of the secret realm
The world didn't just fade; it folded. One moment I was standing in the ash of Ghost Mountain, and the next, the oxygen in my lungs tasted of cold ozone and ancient dust. I stood in the center of the Sovereign Ring’s "Void Prison," but it wasn't a cage anymore. It was a canvas. "So, this is the inheritance," I whispered, my voice echoing infinitely. The realm was a vast, featureless expanse of shifting gray fog and obsidian ground. Fifty blue-white sparks—the souls of the Shadow Guards I had just harvested—floated in a neat, clinical row like lanterns in a graveyard. "You took your time getting here, boy." I spun around. The fog behind me was receding, revealing a structure that shouldn't have been there. It was a massive, weathered pagoda of white jade and black basalt, its architecture predating the current Empire by a thousand years. Above the entrance, a sign hummed with a resonance that made my own blood vibrate. The Ancestral Hall of the True Line. "Who's there?" I demande
chapter 26 :the elderly ghost's gambit
The frost-wraith’s scream was still ringing in my ears as I stepped through a spatial fold, leaving the freezing purple skies of the Northern Tundra behind. I had the resources—the ancient ores and the marrow of frost-beasts now fueling the Ring’s inner forge. But an army needs a stage. It was time to stop hiding in the snow and start bleeding the Empire’s economy dry. "Void Mirage: Veil of the Sunken Epoch," I whispered. The black, swirling energy of the Sovereign Ring wrapped around me, reshaping my form. My tall frame hunched into a crooked curve; my skin withered into a map of deep wrinkles and age spots. My hair bleached into a brittle, yellowish white. I wasn't the Lord of the Hidden Void anymore. I was a decrepit, eighty-year-old alchemist who looked like he had one foot in the grave. I stood before the towering obsidian gates of the Great Eastern Auction House, the wealthiest trade hub in the Empire. Two guards in brass armor crossed their halberds. "Move along, old man,"
chapter 27: bidding on Death
"He’s back," Han whispered behind the heavy vault doors, but I was already gone, the wheels of my carriage rattling against the cobblestones of the Eastern District. The name on the pill was a hook in a fish's mouth, and I was about to yank the line. The Private Summit was held in the "Sky-Loft," a room suspended by gravity arrays five hundred feet above the Auction House floor. The air was thin, expensive, and choked with the scent of burning ambergris. As I shuffled in, still draped in my "Decrepit Alchemist" mirage, the heavy oak doors groaned shut behind me. Three factions sat at the triangular obsidian table. To the left, the Jade Palace emissaries, draped in silks that cost more than a village. To the right, the Imperial Treasury’s representative, a man with a face like a ledger book. And directly in front of me, his eyes bloodshot and his aura trembling with suppressed rage, was Ling Zhaoyang. "You're late, old man," Zhaoyang barked, slamming his fist on the table. "We’ve be
chapter 28:the slow bleed
I stepped out of the spatial ripple and onto the obsidian balcony of my Secret Realm, the cold ozone of the Sovereign Ring washing away the stench of the Auction House. Below me, the silver rivers of Qi flowed through the canyons I had carved, but my mind was still in that Sky-Loft, watching Ling Zhaoyang clutch the wooden box like it was his own newborn soul. "You look pleased with yourself, boy," Ling Jian’s voice boomed. The First Sovereign materialized beside me, his translucent robes flickering with the resonance of the Ring. "You sold a piece of our legacy to a traitor for a pile of gold and some dirt deeds." "I didn't sell him a legacy," I said, leaning against the black diamond railing. "I sold him a timer." Ling Yan joined us, her lightning bow slung over her shoulder. "The pill. I felt the malice in its composition when you forged it in the Northern forge. It isn’t just a shortcut, is it?" "It’s a masterpiece of deception," I replied, a cold smile tugging at my lips. "T
chapter 29:the spy's dilemma
"The bleed has begun," I whispered to the empty air of my Secret Realm, the silver rivers pulsing with the newfound power of my resurrected soldiers. I stepped back through the spatial rift, returning to the physical world—a temporary hideout in the derelict "Shadow Quarter" of the capital. It was a crumbling tea house, forgotten by the city guards and shielded by a localized Void veil. I barely had time to settle into a chair before the air in the room shifted. A faint scent of jasmine and ozone drifted through the cracked window. Snap. The spatial residue I’d left behind—a microscopic trail from the Auction House—had been tripped. "You're getting sloppy, Ling Feng," a voice whispered from the doorway. I didn't turn. I didn't reach for the Ring. I simply leaned back, watching the shadow of a woman stretch across the floorboards. Lin Mengyao stepped out of the darkness, her blue robes tattered at the hem, her eyes sharp and predatory. She held a jade compass that was spinning wi
chapter 30:pledges in the dark
The tea house groaned as the temperature plummeted, the frost-mist outside clawing at the windowpanes like the fingers of a dying god. Lin Mengyao stood before me, her revelation hanging in the frozen air between us. My father’s death, the Ling Clan’s bankruptcy, the "miracle" pill—it was all a stage play directed by the Sect Leader. And I was his unwitting lead actor. "He needs my Heart to finish the ritual?" I repeated, the words tasting like ash. "He thinks he can use the Void to pay for a new throne?" "He doesn't think it, Feng. He knows it," Mengyao whispered, her breath hitching. "The North isn't just an invading army. It’s the price he’s paying." I didn't answer her. I lunged. In a blur of shadow, I slammed her against the rotting timber of the tea house wall. My hand clamped around her throat—not enough to crush her windpipe, but enough to feel the frantic, rabbit-thrum of her pulse. The Sovereign Ring on my finger hummed with a predatory violet light, the cold iron bitin