Dragonblood Chaos Heir

Chapter 20: Beneath the Burning Earth

The servant's passage was a throat of darkness and clinging smoke, a forgotten vein in the dying body of the Lin compound. Lin Feng moved through it with the silence of a final breath, Frost Desire a cold comfort against his back. The roar of the fire was a muffled thunder here, the heat a suffocating blanket. His stolen treasures—the seal, the letters, the memory-sliver, the portrait—were a desperate weight against his chest, the only anchors to a past being actively erased above.

Nanny Ling’s words echoed. The undercroft.

It made a terrible sense. While the symbolic heart of the clan burned above, Tian would have secured the literal heart, the remaining spirit stones, the true valuables, the things that couldn't be explained away by fire. And perhaps, in that damp, secret dark, he sought to hide from the message scrawled on his gates, from the eyes of the ghost he'd created.

The passage ended at a heavy, iron-banded door leading to the kitchen yards. Lin Feng paused, listening. Through the door, he heard the chaos of evacuation—shouts, the crash of falling crockery, the weeping of servants. He wouldn't go that way.

Instead, he turned to a section of the stone wall that felt… older. The mortar here was different, a darker mix. This was part of the original foundation. He placed his palms flat against the cool stone and sent out a delicate pulse of chaotic sense, not to consume, but to feel. He sought the hollow echo of space, the subtle draft of moving air.

There. A slight depression in the spiritual "texture" of the wall, about three feet to his left and at knee-height. An old air shaft, or a drainage flush, long bricked over. He focused the Chaos-Stealing Palm into a needle-fine point and pushed. The ancient mortar, already weakened by centuries of damp, dissolved without a sound. A fist-sized hole appeared, exhaling a breath of air that was cold, dank, and carried the scent of wet stone and something else, ozone, and a faint, cloying sweetness he recognized: the residue of high-grade spirit stones.

He enlarged the hole just enough to slip through, then sealed it behind him with a handful of rubble and a quick application of chaotic energy to fuse it crudely shut. He was now in a narrow, sloping channel of fitted stone, slick with algae. A utility tunnel from a bygone era, leading down.

He followed it, descending into the earth as the compound burned above. The temperature dropped sharply. The sounds of fire faded, replaced by the drip of water and the thrum of his own heartbeat. His energy-sight painted the tunnel in pulses of deep blue and black—water energy and ancient, dormant stone.

After fifty yards, the tunnel ended at another wall, but this one had a rusted iron grate. Beyond it was darkness, but his senses screamed of concentrated power. He gripped the grate. The metal was cold and brittle with age. A surge of chaotic qi, sharp and focused, shattered the rust-sealed hinges. The grate fell inward with a dull, echoing clang.

Lin Feng dropped into the undercroft.

It was a cavernous space, the ceiling supported by thick, rough-hewn pillars. The air was frigid and still, thick with the dust of ages and the palpable hum of dense spiritual energy. Stacked against the far wall were crates and chests, many of them open. The glow of spirit stones, hundreds, maybe thousands, of mid and even high-grade, spilled out, painting the cavern in pools of soft jade, amber, and sapphire light. This was the Lin Clan's true, hidden reserve, the wealth Tian had been siphoning and consolidating.

But Lin Feng’s attention was not on the wealth.

In the center of the cavern, sitting on a simple stone chair that looked like a forgotten piece of rubble, was Elder Tian.

He was illuminated by a single, ghostly white lantern that cast long, dancing shadows. He was no longer the weak wreck from the gates. He was worse. He was focused, but his focus had the brittle, glassy intensity of a man clinging to the edge of a cliff with bleeding fingers. In his hands, he cradled an object: a small, ornate bronze crucible, filled with a bubbling, mercury-like liquid that shone with its own sickly silver light.

On a low stone table before him were arrayed strange tools: crystal scalpels, vials of iridescent powder, and a large, open folio filled with complex, unnerving diagrams that seemed to shift when looked at directly. The pages were made of a pale, fibrous material that made Lin Feng’s skin crawl—Dragonhide Parchment.

"The debt…" Tian muttered to himself, his voice a dry rasp, his eyes fixed on the bubbling crucible. "The blood calls for a debt… but I can reverse the call. I can transmute the legacy. The Scripture says… the blood of the heir can unlock the seal… but with the right catalyst, the right sacrifice… the power can be redirected."

Lin Feng stepped out of the shadows, his footsteps silent on the dusty stone. "Looking for a way to steal what isn't yours, uncle? Some habits die hard."

Tian’s head snapped up. His eyes, bloodshot and desperate, locked onto Lin Feng. There was no surprise. Only a feverish, horrifying recognition. "You. You came. Of course you came. The blood calls to blood. Even tainted, chaotic blood."

He stood, setting the ordeal down carefully. His aura, once the deep, solid brown of a mountain, was now a sputtering, unstable mess—the 9th Layer Qi Condensation foundation cracked and leaking from their battle and his own spiraling madness. But it was mixed with something new, something sharp and metallic and wrong.

"You've been reading, I see," Lin Feng said, his gaze flicking to the Dragonhide folio. "My mother's notes? Or the ravings you found after you murdered my father?"

"It is the Dragon Transmutation Rite!" Tian hissed, a fanatical light in his eyes. "A branch of the lost Scripture! Your mother, the foolish woman, hid it! She thought to keep the power pure for her precious son. But power is a tool! It belongs to the one with the will to wield it! I have the catalyst!" He gestured to the ordeal. "Moontear Mercury, distilled for a year! I have the sacrifice!" He pointed a shaking finger at Lin Feng. "The heir's heart's blood! And I have the WILL!"

He was utterly, terrifyingly sane in his insanity. He hadn't hidden down here just to protect treasure. He had come to perform a blasphemous ritual, to try and wrench the Dragon Emperor's legacy from Lin Feng's blood and graft it onto his own broken foundation.

"Your will is built on sand, uncle," Lin Feng said, slowly drawing Frost Desire. The sigh of the scabbard was a death knell in the cold cavern. "And the mountain is gone."

"NO!" Tian shrieked, his composure shattering. He snatched up a crystal scalpel from the table. "I will not be dust! I am ELDER TIAN! I BUILT THIS FROM NOTHING!"

He lunged, not with a cultivator's technique, but with the frantic, clumsy stab of a madman. The scalpel gleamed, charged not with earth qi, but with the sharp, invasive energy of the Moontear Mercury, a substance that could cut through spiritual defenses and poison the soul.

Lin Feng parried with Frost Desire. The midnight blade met the crystal scalpel.

SCREEE—

The sound was like ice shattering on a cosmic scale. The scalpel didn't break; it vaporized where it touched the devouring black metal, the Mercury energy within it screaming as it was unmade. The backlash of nullified energy shot up Tian's arm. He screamed, dropping the hilt, his hand turning black and withered as if aged a thousand years in an instant.

He stumbled back, clutching his ruined hand, his face a mask of agony and dawning, absolute horror. He looked from his dead hand to Frost Desire, to Lin Feng's cold, pitiless eyes.

"The sword… it's not just a weapon… it's the key…" he gasped. "The Blood Seal's anchor…"

"Yes," Lin Feng said, taking a step forward. The vortex in his core churned, hungry for the end of this. "And you just tried to pick the lock with a poisoned hairpin."

Tian's madness boiled over into pure, survivalist frenzy. He wasn't a warrior. He was a cornered rat. He threw himself not at Lin Feng, but at the stone table. He swept his good arm across it, sending vials and tools clattering. He seized the bronze ordeal, the Moontear Mercury sloshing wildly.

"IF I CAN'T HAVE IT, NO ONE WILL!" he screamed, and hurled the crucible, not at Lin Feng, but at the stacked crates of spirit stones.

Time seemed to slow.

Lin Feng saw the arc of the ordeal, the deadly mercury about to splash across hundreds of concentrated spirit stones. The resulting chain reaction wouldn't be an explosion of fire, but a spiritual detonation—a blast of corrupted, volatile energy that would vaporize the undercroft, likely collapse the burning compound above, and send a wave of soul-poisoning energy through the city's foundations. Tens of thousands would die.

Instinct, not thought, took over.

He couldn't stop the ordeal. He couldn't deflect it.

So he intercepted it.

He dropped Frost Desire. He used the Nine Phantom Steps not to dodge, but to place himself between the flying crucible and the spirit stones. He spread his arms wide, and he unleashed the Chaos Dantian not to consume, but to CONTAIN.

As the crucible struck his chest, shattering, the Moontear Mercury, a substance designed to corrupt spiritual matter, splashed directly onto him, soaking into his robes, his skin.

Agony. An agony different from the mountain's crush. This was a million needles of icy fire drilling into his meridians, seeking to poison his qi, unravel his dantian, turn his very soul to toxic sludge. It was the perfect counter to a chaotic, devouring power, a corruption that sought to corrupt the corruptor.

Lin Feng gritted his teeth, a silent scream locked in his throat. He hit the ground on his knees, the world dissolving into a kaleidoscope of silver pain. The Chaos Dantian roared in defiance, spinning into a frenzied maelstrom. It began to fight the Mercury, not by consuming it gracefully, but by drowning it. It pulled at the surrounding energy—the dense, stable power of the spirit stones in the crates behind him, the ancient earth energy of the cavern walls, even the lingering, madness-tainted aura of Elder Tian himself.

It was a desperate, greedy gambit. He was forcing the vortex to process the ultimate poison by flooding it with an overdose of pure power, hoping to dilute and overcome the corruption through sheer, catastrophic volume.

His body became the battleground. Silver twigs of Mercury corruption snaked under his skin, met by raging tides of chaotic energy pulling in spirit stone essence. His meridians swelled, threatening to burst. His bones hummed. His vision went white.

Elder Tian watched, his mouth hanging open, his plan culminating in a spectacle he couldn't comprehend. The heir was on his knees, wreathed in a storm of conflicting energies—silver poison, multi-colored spirit essence, and the deep, swirling black of chaos.

And then, a sound. From Lin Feng’s robe, where the jade tear pendant and the broken engagement jade rested against his heart, a soft, clear chime rang out, cutting through the spiritual maelstrom.

A gentle, sorrowful, yet immutably pure wave of wood-attribute energy—his grandmother's calming legacy, his mother's enduring love—washed through him. It was a drop of clarity in the hurricane. It didn't fight the chaos or the poison. It simply soothed the vessel.

For one critical second, it stabilized him.

And in that second, the Chaos Dantian achieved a brutal, unstable equilibrium. It didn't purify the Moontear Mercury. It understand it. The silver poison was forcibly woven into the fabric of the chaos, becoming another aspect of its devouring, corruptive nature. The vortex swelled, darker, more dangerous, now tinged with a lethal, mercurial shine.

The storm of absorbed spirit stone energy settled, forcefully integrated. His meridians, pushed beyond any sane limit, didn't break. They re-forged, becoming channels of resilient, chaotic crystal, capable of bearing energies that would vaporize a normal cultivator.

Lin Feng slowly, slowly, raised his head.

He stood up.

Smoke, not from fire, but from expended spiritual energy, rose from his body. His eyes opened. The swirling chaos within them was now shot through with dangerous, quick-silver streaks. His aura, when he let it brush the cavern, was no longer just hungry. It was toxic. It was gutsy. It promised not just annihilation, but a corruption of the very essence of what it touched.

He had not reached the 4th Layer of Body Tempering.

He had ascended into something else:Chaos Tempering, Mercurial Phase.

Elder Tian stumbled back, tripping over the stone chair and falling to the ground. He stared up at the transformed being that had been his nephew. All madness, all ambition, drained from him, leaving only the empty, echoing vessel of his failure and terror.

Lin Feng looked down at his uncle. He picked up Frost Desire. The sword's black blade now reflected the silvery streaks in his eyes.

"You tried to poison the well," Lin Feng said, his voice echoing with multiple layers, as if the Dragon Emperor and the Abyss itself were speaking through him. "You only made it thirstier."

He took a step toward the broken man.

The debt, here in the deep dark beneath the burning earth, was finally due.