All Chapters of Dragonblood Chaos Heir : Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
26 chapters
Chapter 11: Whispers in the Stone Dragon Inn
Three days after the desolation of the Muddy Leaf Road, Verdant Cloud City hummed with a different kind of energy. A current of low, anxious tension threaded through the usual bustle of commerce and gossip. It was a feeling that lived in the sidelong glances between merchants, the hushed conversations in tavern corners, and the extra vigilance of the city watch.At the heart of this unease, in the trade district's most venerable and discreet establishment, the Stone Dragon Inn, a private meeting was unfolding that would determine the city's immediate future.The inn's finest room was sealed behind doors of aged ironwood, with silencing arrays humming faintly in the walls. The air was thick with the scent of expensive sandalwood incense and unspoken threat. Seated around a hexagonal table of polished gloomwood were three men who represented the shifting tectonic plates of power.At the head, radiating a calm, poisonous authority, was Elder Tian. He no longer wore mourning grey. His rob
Chapter 12: The Net and the Shadow
Dawn over the Blackroot Woods was not a brightening, but a leaching of darkness into a monochrome grey. Mist clung to the gnarled trunks and dripped from the needled leaves of the gloom-pines, muting sound and limiting sight to a dozen yards. It was the perfect canvas for a hunt, and for being hunted.At the forest’s main entry point, the mood was grimly purposeful. Sixty men stood in ordered ranks, their breath pluming in the chill air. Thirty were Lin Clan enforcers in dark green, their auras a unified, disciplined thrum of earth and wood energy. Twenty were Deng Clan trackers and bruisers, leaner, harder, their earth-attribute qi jagged and aggressive. The final ten were City Guard auxiliaries in burnished leather, their presence a stamp of official sanction.At their head, mounted on a Spirit-Break Stallion whose hooves crackled with subdued lightning, was Elder Tian. He wore functional but ornate platy armor over his green robes, a heavy, single-edged dao sword at his hip. His fa
Chapter 13: Echo of the Primordial Roar
The red flare-arrow, a bloom of bloody light against the iron-grey sky, was a punctuation mark in the silent grammar of the hunt. It didn't just signal contact; it screamed failure, fear, loss.In the heart of the advancing central force, Elder Tian reined his stallion to a sharp halt. The beast snorted, its lightning-charged hooves stamping the loam. Tian's face, already carved from cold stone, seemed to freeze entirely. That was Lu's flare. The western pincer was breaking.Before he could issue an order, a second flare—this one a sickly, corroded green—arced into the sky from the eastern quadrant, far to their left and behind their current position. Hou's signal. Not for contact, but for a change in prey direction. The ghost was mobile, unpredictable, and it had just outmaneuvered them."He's not running to the ravine," Hou's voice came, calm but laced with a new, grim tension as he and his two best trackers materialized from the mist like ghosts themselves. "He's hunting us. He hit
Chapter 14: Chaos Meets Mountain
The world narrowed to the wall of living earth and the calm eye of the storm standing before it.Elder Tian's Mountain-Crushing Blade wasn't just a technique; it was a declaration. It was the culmination of decades of disciplined cultivation, the unshakable belief that the earth was solid, that power was mass, that order prevailed. It was the mountain itself given motion, and it scorned tricks, shadows, and devouring ghosts.Lin Feng saw it not as a threat, but as a banquet.The Chaos Dantian within him didn't spin. It detonated. The vortex became a starving, whirling singularity, its hunger no longer a pull but a scream that echoed in the silent chambers of his soul. The Dragon Emperor's legacy, born from chaos and defiance, recognized a kindred, opposing force, stagnant, arrogant order, and rose to consume it.Lin Feng didn't assume a defensive stance. He spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the oncoming avalanche.His palms faced the surging tidal wave of rock and compacted qi.H
Chapter 14: Chaos Meets Mountain
The world narrowed to the wall of living earth and the calm eye of the storm standing before it.Elder Tian's Mountain-Crushing Blade wasn't just a technique; it was a declaration. It was the culmination of decades of disciplined cultivation, the unshakable belief that the earth was solid, that power was mass, that order prevailed. It was the mountain itself given motion, and it scorned tricks, shadows, and devouring ghosts.Lin Feng saw it not as a threat, but as a banquet.The Chaos Dantian within him didn't spin. It detonated. The vortex became a starving, whirling singularity, its hunger no longer a pull but a scream that echoed in the silent chambers of his soul. The Dragon Emperor's legacy, born from chaos and defiance, recognized a kindred, opposing force, stagnant, arrogant order, and rose to consume it.Lin Feng didn't assume a defensive stance. He spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the oncoming avalanche.His palms faced the surging tidal wave of rock and compacted qi.H
Chapter 15: Aftermath and Awakening
Silence, in the wake of cataclysm, has a different quality. It is not an absence of sound, but a presence—a heavy, ringing void that swallows echoes whole. The lightning-blasted clearing held such a silence. The wind had died. The mist clung to the edges like a shroud, afraid to enter.In the center of the devastation, two figures defined the new reality.Elder Tian stood frozen, a statue carved from shock and soul-deep terror. His fine armor was dusty, his dao sword lay discarded at his feet like a child's toy. His eyes, fixed on the spot where Lin Feng had fallen, saw nothing of the present. They were turned inward, watching the infinite fall of a dragon on a loop behind his eyelids. The Echo of the Ancient Roar had not just startled him; it had etched a crack in the foundation of his being. The unshakeable mountain of his ambition now felt like sand shifting over a bottomless pit. A low, continuous tremor ran through his frame.Twenty yards away, Lin Feng lay face-down in the fine,
Chapter 16: A Shadow at the City Gates
The walls of Verdant Cloud City had never felt so thin.News, in a city fueled by trade and gossip, travels in two ways: the official proclamation, clean and censored, and the undercurrent of rumor, murky and true. In the three days since the shattered hunting party stumbled back from the Blackroot Woods, both streams had become a flood.The official story, spread by a pale and clammy Master Wang, spoke of a "feral, high-level spirit beast" with "energy-draining properties" that had been encountered and "severely driven back" by the brave forces of the Lin and Deng clans, led personally by Elder Tian. There were "regrettable casualties," but the threat was "contained," and the city guard was "vigilant."No one believed it.The rumors told a different tale. They spoke of a ghost that ate earth and stone. Of a lone figure who turned the ground to dust and shattered a patriarch's mind with a scream only the soul could hear. They whispered of Lin Tao, broken-nosed and babbling, of elite e
Chapter 17: A Debt Called In
The side door to the South Gate guardhouse was unmarked, blackened oak set in a soot-stained stone wall. At the second bell after curfew, the artisan's quarter was a tomb of shutters and shadows. Lin Feng approached silently, a phantom in the deeper dark.He gave three sharp raps, paused, then two more, the signal the quartermaster had relayed.A slit at eye level slid open. A pair of suspicious eyes, bloodshot and weary, scanned him. The door creaked inward just enough to admit him, then shut with a solid thunk. He stood in a narrow, lamplit corridor that smelled of stale sweat, oiled leather, and a pervasive undercurrent of fear.Captain Li, the man from the gate, stood before him, out of his polished public armor. He wore a simple guard's tunic, his face looking older, more careworn in the flickering light. With him was a man Lin Feng hadn't expected: Master Wang, the City Lord's steward. The public servantlooked out of place, his fine silks seeming to shrink from the grime of the
Chapter 18: The Auction of Broken Things
The Gilded Cricket’s upper room became Lin Feng’s war room. He barred the door, not with the flimsy lock, but with a subtle weave of chaotic energy that would disintegrate any prying spiritual sense and warn him of any physical tamper. The strongbox of spirit stones sat open on the narrow bed, their soft, multi-hued glow the only light he allowed.One hundred and seventy-five mid-grade spirit stones. To a wandering hunter, it was impossible wealth. To a growing heir of chaos, it was fuel, leverage, and camouflage. He would not absorb them directly; their energy was too stable, too "civilized" for the Chaos Dantian’s current preference for wild, potent sources. They were currency. And currency bought things more valuable than power: information, influence, and masks.He spent the morning methodically planning. The city was a nervous animal, and he had just poked it. The official response would be a frenzy of activity around the false lair. The Deng would likely withdraw further. The Li
Chapter 19: Scorched Earth, Written in Ash
The night air over Verdant Cloud City, usually carrying the scents of spices and sewage, now tasted of pine resin, charred wood, and panic. The glow from the Lin compound painted the lower clouds a sickly orange, a false, feverish dawn in the southwest. Bells clanged from the city watchtowers, not the measured tones of curfew, but the frantic, overlapping cacophony of disaster.Lin Feng moved against the tide. While the wealthy from the auction fled toward their secured manors and the common folk peered from shutters, he was a shadow flowing toward the conflagration. He didn't run. He walked with purpose, the hood of his grey robes pulled up, his senses expanded to drink in the chaos.The fire was not his work. But the opportunity it presented was a gift, wrapped in flames and delivered by an unknown hand. He would not waste it.As he neared the clan district, the heat became a visible wall, and the crackle of burning timbers mixed with the shouts of guards and the desperate screams o