Forbidden Great Emperor | Xianxia, System, Fusion

Chapter 1 — A Calculated Beginning

BANG!

The wooden gate shuddered in its frame. Dust sifted from the lintel and drifted across the stone courtyard.

“Lu Chen! Open up!”

A second blow landed before the echo of the first had faded. The iron latch rattled, and somewhere beyond the wall a dog began barking.

Lu Chen looked down at the three Spirit Crystals resting in his palm.

“Ten days,” he murmured.

The landlord had given him ten more days before reclaiming the courtyard. Three low-rank Spirit Crystals would not buy another month. He had counted the stones so often that he knew their weight without looking.

Another kick struck the gate.

“Did you turn deaf, brat?”

Lu Chen closed his fingers around the crystals. He placed them in a small leather pouch, pulled the cord tight, and slipped it beneath his belt.

The courtyard was hardly worth defending. Its walls were old stone, its roof patched with mismatched clay tiles, and its narrow drainage channel clogged whenever the rain came hard. Yet it was the first place in this world where he had been able to sleep without keeping one eye open. He had no intention of letting three street thugs take it from him—or of dying over it.

He rose from the low wooden bench.

Beside it lay a worn iron saber and a scroll tied with fraying string. He took the saber, checked that its cracked leather grip would not turn in his hand, and fastened it at his waist. The scroll remained where it was.

“Last chance!” the man outside shouted. “Open the gate!”

Lu Chen crossed the courtyard and lifted the iron bar.

The gate opened inward with a long wooden groan.

Three men stood in the narrow dirt lane. The one in front was thick through the shoulders, with a dirty leather vest stretched over a wool shirt. A club reinforced with brass rings rested against his shoulder. Tobacco stained his crooked teeth, and his expression carried the easy confidence of a man accustomed to seeing others step aside.

Sun Tie.

The two men behind him carried short iron hatchets. One had a scar beneath his chin; the other kept his weapon low but close to his thigh. Their eyes moved past Lu Chen, taking in the courtyard, the bench, and the saber at his waist.

“Street f*e,” Sun Tie said. “Two low-rank Spirit Crystals. Pay now, and we leave you in peace.”

Lu Chen kept one hand on the gate. “The courtyard tax is one crystal a month. I paid it. My rent still has ten days.”

Sun Tie’s gaze slid over him. “You heard him?”

The scar-chinned man gave a short laugh. “He remembers the tax.”

“Good memory,” Sun Tie said. “A shame it won’t help him.”

The other henchman glanced toward the lane. A woman carrying a basket had slowed near the corner. When Sun Tie noticed her watching, he turned his head and spat onto the dirt. She lowered her eyes and continued on, her steps quicker than before.

Lu Chen saw the exchange. So did Sun Tie.

“The town official set the courtyard tax,” Lu Chen said. “He did not authorize you to collect another one.”

Sun Tie lowered the club from his shoulder. Its brass rings clicked together.

“The town official is ten miles away. The Black Iron Guards are here.”

“You call this protection?”

“I call it the price of living in this street.” Sun Tie stepped closer. “You gather herbs, sell them, and keep a roof over your head. We make sure no one takes it from you. That costs money.”

“You have never protected me.”

Sun Tie’s grin returned, but there was no humor in it. “Then today you’ll learn what happens when you refuse to pay.”

For six months Lu Chen had learned how this town worked. He had learned which herb sellers paid fairly, which merchants cheated their scales, and which alleys were best avoided after sunset. He had learned that the Black Iron Guards called their extortion a protection f*e, and that most people paid because a few crystals were cheaper than broken bones.

He had learned something else, too: a lone cultivator could not rely on the law arriving in time.

His gaze moved from Sun Tie’s club to the man’s feet. The captain stood with his left leg slightly stiff. His weight settled unevenly, and his left shoulder sat higher than the right. It might have been an old injury. It might simply have been a flaw in his stance.

Either way, Sun Tie was about to reach for him.

Lu Chen had no desire to draw his saber. Killing or maiming a gang captain in the middle of the day would bring the entire Black Iron Guards down on him. But allowing the man to take his last resources would leave him with no means to survive the next ten days.

There was no clean choice.

Sun Tie reached out with his left hand, aiming for Lu Chen’s collar. His right arm lifted the club, ready to bring it down if the younger man resisted.

The world seemed to narrow.

A pale silver light stirred at the edge of Lu Chen’s awareness. The familiar System panel unfolded silently in his mind.

[Martial Arts Deduction — Active]

No voice spoke. No command guided his hand. The System did not fight in his place. It merely brought the details of Sun Tie’s movement into sharp relief: the uneven step, the stiff knee, the shoulder that rose too early.

A flaw, exposed for an instant.

Lu Chen moved into it.

Rather than retreat from the reaching hand, he stepped close enough that Sun Tie’s club had no room to swing. His left foot slid behind the captain’s stiff knee. His right elbow drove beneath the raised arm, while his left hand caught the wrist and forced it down.

Sun Tie’s fingers brushed Lu Chen’s collar.

Then his balance broke.

CRACK!

The sound of the shoulder leaving its socket cut through the lane. Sun Tie’s face twisted. His club slipped from his hand and struck the dirt with a heavy thud.

“What—”

Lu Chen did not give him time to recover. He kept his foot behind the stiff knee and drove his right knee into Sun Tie’s sternum.

THUD!

The captain folded around the blow. His breath burst out in a harsh grunt, and he dropped to the ground, clutching his ruined shoulder. For a moment he tried to rise. His injured arm failed him, and he collapsed again, gasping through clenched teeth.

The two henchmen stared.

The scar-chinned man raised his hatchet halfway. His companion took one step forward, then stopped when Lu Chen turned toward him.

Lu Chen had not drawn his saber. He stood over Sun Tie with his hands empty, his breathing steady. The movement had been brief, but the choice behind it had not. He had taken the opening because he could not afford to lose his remaining crystals. Now he had to make sure the two men understood that the encounter was over.

“His pouch,” he said.

The scar-chinned man tightened his grip. “You broke our captain’s shoulder.”

“I noticed.”

“You think the Black Iron Guards will let this go?”

“No.” Lu Chen glanced at Sun Tie, who was struggling to pull air into his lungs. “That is why you should decide carefully what you do next.”

The second henchman looked down at his captain. Sun Tie tried to speak, but the words dissolved into a strangled groan. The man’s confidence had gone with the club that lay in the dirt.

“Take it,” the scar-chinned man muttered.

His companion hesitated.

“Take the pouch,” he repeated, more sharply this time.

The second man crouched, unclipped the leather pouch from Sun Tie’s belt, and tossed it toward Lu Chen. The pouch struck Lu Chen’s palm. He caught it, loosened the cord, and checked its contents.

Five low-rank Spirit Crystals and a handful of copper coins.

He counted the crystals once, then tied the pouch shut.

Sun Tie glared up at him, pain and humiliation twisting his face. “You… little…”

Lu Chen looked down at him. “If you come back, bring someone who knows how to stand properly.”

He did not raise his voice. He did not threaten to hunt down the gang or promise to kill every man who wore its mark. Such words would have been meaningless. The Black Iron Guards had more men than he could count, and their leader was said to be a cultivator. Lu Chen had given Sun Tie a reason to remember this courtyard. Whether that would be enough to keep him away was another matter.

The two henchmen lifted their captain. Sun Tie cried out when his injured shoulder shifted. They carried him toward the lane, one supporting his back and the other taking his weight beneath the good arm.

The woman with the basket was gone. A door across the lane closed quietly. Someone watched through a narrow gap in a shutter, then withdrew when Lu Chen glanced in that direction.

He pulled the gate shut.

The iron bar slid into its brackets with a dull clank.

Only then did he let out the breath he had been holding.

His hands did not shake. That did not mean he was untroubled. He had won a brief encounter against three men, but the Black Iron Guards were not finished simply because their captain had been carried away. Sun Tie would report what happened. His companions would describe the humiliation. Their leader might decide that an example had to be made.

Lu Chen returned to the bench and set the pouch on the weathered wood.

The morning chill had not lifted. Water still dripped from the clay tiles into the iron kettle beneath the eaves. He opened Sun Tie’s pouch and poured its contents beside his own three crystals.

Eight.

He arranged them in two rows and counted again.

Five taken from Sun Tie. Three that remained from his own savings.

Eight physical Spirit Crystals. Enough to buy supplies and perhaps a little time—but not enough to solve the problem that had kept him awake for weeks.

The scroll beside him rustled in the faint breeze.

Lu Chen picked it up and untied the string. The paper was yellowed and brittle at the edges. He had found it in the pack of a dead wanderer in the marsh, three months earlier. Most of the Basic Qi Circulation Technique was legible, but several lines were missing. The final portion had been torn away altogether.

He traced a finger over the surviving characters.

He had memorized every line he could read. He had tried to follow the breathing method until his chest ached and his limbs went numb. Yet without the missing passages, he could not determine how the technique was meant to guide Qi beyond the most basic circulation.

His cultivation had stopped at the fifth stage of the Body Forging Realm: Tendon Tempering.

He had strengthened his body through labor, practice, and the little guidance the incomplete scroll provided. His tendons were tougher than they had been when he first woke in this world. His grip no longer failed after a few hours of gathering herbs. But he had not opened a single meridian.

Beyond Body Forging lay Meridian Opening, where cultivators began to awaken the channels through which Qi could flow. After that came Qi Condensation, Core Foundation, Martial Domain, Void Piercing, Saint Ancestor, Sovereign Paragon, and, at the distant summit, Great Emperor.

People in the town spoke of those realms as if they were mountains visible beyond the horizon. Most would never climb far. Some spent their lives seeking a complete technique or enough resources to cross a single threshold.

Lu Chen rolled the scroll closed.

He had no sect, no master, and no family willing to support him. He had only a worn saber, a broken cultivation method, and the strange System that had accompanied him since his arrival in this world.

He turned his attention inward.

The pale silver panel appeared against the darkness of his consciousness.

[System Interface]

Martial Arts Deduction

• Martial Arts Fusion

• Martial Arts Enhancement

The three functions remained as silent as ever.

For six months he had studied the panel. It had no personality, no voice, and no concern for whether he was hungry or injured. It had not saved him when he first woke in the alley, bleeding and half-frozen. It had not given him a cultivation technique or placed treasures in his path.

It could only work with what he provided.

The System required a special resource: System Currency Units.

Lu Chen looked at the five crystals he had taken from Sun Tie. He had learned that ordinary Spirit Crystals could be offered to the System and converted into SCU. The conversion consumed the crystals completely. Once refined, they could no longer be used to buy food, medicine, or shelter.

He had tested the process before. He knew what it cost.

He also knew that five SCU would not make him powerful. It would merely give him a chance to use one of the System’s functions, provided he had something worth examining.

He placed the three crystals from his own savings back into their pouch.

Those were for survival.

The five taken from Sun Tie were different. They had been stolen from people who could afford to bully the weak. Lu Chen would rather turn them into an opportunity than carry them around until the gang came looking.

He brought the five stones together in his palm and focused on the System.

A faint warmth spread through his skin.

The crystals began to tremble. Their milky light dimmed, not all at once, but as though something unseen were drawing the essence from their depths. Fine cracks appeared across their surfaces. One after another, the stones crumbled into gray dust.

The silver panel brightened.

[System Interface]

Martial Arts Deduction — 0 SCU

• Martial Arts Fusion

• Martial Arts Enhancement

System Currency Units (SCU): 5

Lu Chen opened his hand. Gray powder clung to the lines of his palm. He brushed it away and studied the new balance.

Five SCU.

He had three physical Spirit Crystals remaining, and five units of System currency. The distinction mattered. One could keep him fed; the other could help him improve his martial path. Neither could be mistaken for the other.

He tied the remaining crystals securely inside his belt, rolled the incomplete scroll, and placed it in his pack.

The courtyard seemed smaller now.

Sun Tie’s men knew where he lived. The gang would not forget that one of its captains had been humiliated by a young cultivator with no backing. If they returned with more men, Lu Chen might not have the same advantage. If their leader came personally, the difference in strength could be far greater.

He looked toward the northern gate of Azure Stone Town.

Beyond it lay the road to Ghost Mist Ridge.

The ridge was a dangerous place. Beast tracks crossed its trails, and the mist gathered in ravines where sunlight rarely reached. Travelers spoke of old ruins buried beneath the stone and of strange sounds heard after nightfall. Most of those stories were exaggerated, but even the truthful ones were enough to keep ordinary merchants away.

Yet the wilderness offered something the town did not.

Possibility.

Lu Chen slung his pack over one shoulder and rested his hand briefly on the saber at his waist. He had spent six months surviving by gathering herbs and accepting whatever price the merchants offered. He had learned enough to know that remaining in Azure Stone Town would not lead him to a complete cultivation method.

He could not afford to wait for someone to hand him a path.

A cart rattled past the end of the lane. Its driver glanced at the closed courtyard gate, then quickly looked away. Lu Chen watched it disappear before stepping outside.

He locked the gate, though he knew the lock would not stop anyone determined to enter.

Then he turned north.

The three crystals at his belt were all that remained of his savings. Five SCU waited within the silent System. His cultivation was still only at the fifth stage of Body Forging, and his incomplete scroll offered no answer to the questions ahead.

It was not much to carry into the wilderness.

But it was what he had.

Lu Chen set out for Ghost Mist Ridge.

If he could not buy a path forward, he would find one beyond the town—and reach it before the Black Iron Guards came for him.