The Shattered Vortex

Chapter 7 The Sovereign' Fracture

The collective breath of five thousand cultivators caught in their throats. On the central arena ring, the dust raised by Zhou Lifeng’s collapsed form swirled around Lu Chen’s bare, scarred ankles. He did not look like an Outer Disciple who had just won a promotion; he looked like an executioner waiting for the next neck.

Up on the gold-leafed dais, the invisible, hydrophobic shroud protecting Elder Zhao violently snapped. For three years, the elder had maintained the illusion of an untouchable deity, but the sheer audacity of Lu Chen’s declaration had shattered his composure.

"Impudent mongrel!" Elder Zhao’s voice was no longer a calm, rolling mountain—it was a thunderclap of pure, unadulterated fury. "You have practiced a forbidden demonic art, crippled a premier disciple of the inner peaks, and insulted the eldership. Today, the Vermilion Sect purges its rot!"

Zhao did not descend the marble stairs. To do so would acknowledge Lu Chen as a peer. Instead, he stepped directly off the high dais into the open air. The air pressure in the coliseum plummeted instantly. A suffocating, golden pressure—the manifestation of a mid-stage Core Formation Realm cultivator—bore down upon the stadium. Weak aspirants in the lower rows immediately fell to their knees, vomiting blood from the sheer weight of the atmosphere.

Deacon Meng scrambled backward on his hands and knees, dragging his precious iron ledger through the mud, desperate to escape the blast radius. "The elder is executing a mortal judgment!" he shrieked to no one in particular.

Lu Chen felt the golden pressure slam into his shoulders like a falling iron monument. His knees popped, the freshly knitted bone in his ribs groaning under the sudden, immense gravity. But where a normal Flesh Tempering cultivator would have been crushed into a paste of marrow and meat, Lu Chen’s internal structure defied the natural order.

Within his lower torso, the expanded Iron Qi Peak vortex whined like a spinning buzzsaw. The jagged, glass-like shards of his Qi didn't bend under Elder Zhao’s weight; they caught the incoming pressure and began to violently grind against it.

"You call it a purge, Zhao," Lu Chen growled, his head forcing its way up against the golden gravity, his pitch-black eyes locking onto the descending immortal. "I call it a debt collection."

Elder Zhao sneered as he hovered ten feet above the arena floor. He raised a single, unblemished hand, his fingers twisting into a complex hand seal. The ambient spiritual energy of the mountain rushed toward his palm, consolidating into a massive, solid spear of golden light—the Vermilion Sun Spear. It hummed with enough destructive energy to vaporize an entire fortress wall.

"Die with your mouth shut, beggar," Zhao cold-heartedly commanded, throwing his arm downward.

The spear of light shot forward, leaving a trail of scorched, melting marble in its wake. It was a strike meant to leave nothing behind but ash.

Lu Chen did not run. He knew his current physical speed could not outrun a Core Formation attack. He planted his heels into the cracked stone, drew both fists back to his ribs, and emptied the entirety of his jagged vortex into his forearms. The crackling, crimson aura around his skin turned so dense it looked like armor made of broken, bleeding crystals.

BOOM!

The collision generated a blinding flash of white and crimson light that temporarily blinded half the stadium. A massive shockwave ripped through the arena, tearing up the remaining marble tiles and reducing the fighting ring to a jagged, smoking crater.

When the light faded, a collective gasp echoed through the stands.

Lu Chen was still standing. His clothes were entirely gone from his forearms, his skin blackened and charred by the heat of the sun spear. Blood dripped steadily from his fingertips, forming small crimson puddles in the cracked stone. But his arms were not broken. He had taken a direct, lethal strike from a Core Formation Elder and remained upright.

Elder Zhao’s feet touched the ground, his face suddenly losing all its color. "How... how can an Iron Qi mortal withstand the judgment of a Core?"

"Because your core is built on the labor of the weak," Lu Chen rasped, spitting out a mouthful of dark, boiled blood. "And my foundation was built on the wreckage of my own life."

Before Zhao could form another hand seal, Lu Chen lunged. He didn't use a graceful martial movement; he threw his entire body forward like a thrown spear. The speed was so immense that his silhouette blurred into a red streak through the smoke.

He closed the ten-foot gap in a heartbeat. Elder Zhao, acting on centuries of combat instinct, threw up a defensive wall of golden, refined Qi.

But Lu Chen didn't punch the shield. He reached out with open palms, slapping his blood-soaked hands directly onto the golden barrier.

The Devouring Maw opened wide.

Screeech!

The sound of Lu Chen’s jagged Qi grinding against Elder Zhao’s golden defense was like iron shearing through sheet metal. The glass-shard vortex inside Lu Chen didn't just try to absorb the energy—it violently tore the golden shield into raw, jagged splinters and dragged them directly into his wide meridians.

"What are you doing?!" Elder Zhao panicked, feeling his own refined, hard-earned spiritual liquid being forcibly drained through his defensive barrier. He tried to sever the connection, but Lu Chen’s grip was an absolute vice. The vacuum from the Shattered Mirror Technique was unbreakable.

"You call it a broken foundation, Zhao," Lu Chen whispered, his voice sounding directly in the elder's ear over the roaring wind of the energy transfer. "I call it room to build a fortress."

The dense, golden Core Formation energy flooded into Lu Chen’s belly. It was hot, pure, and incredibly volatile. The shards of his vortex screamed as they met this superior energy, the extreme friction causing Lu Chen’s own internal pathways to fracture once more. Fresh blood leaked from his eyes and ears.

But he didn't care about the pain. He embraced the shattering.

He forced his vortex to grind the elder's golden energy into dust, using the immense fuel to expand his own core to a terrifying degree. The crimson cyclone inside him grew so violent that visible arcs of red lightning began to leak from his pores, striking the ground around them.

"Stop! Release me!" Elder Zhao screamed, his majestic, unblemished face suddenly aging, deep wrinkles forming around his eyes as his very life force was dragged into the beggar's maw. "Sect Master! Save me!"

The high, cloud-shrouded peaks remained silent. The supreme leadership of the sect was watching, evaluating, and realizing that Elder Zhao was no longer an asset—he was fuel.

With a final, catastrophic surge of willpower, Lu Chen completely drained the elder's defensive barrier, pulled his right fist back, and drove it straight into Elder Zhao's chest.

CRACK.

The punch didn't penetrate the flesh this time; instead, the jagged, peak-tier Qi vibrated directly through Zhao's ribs, striking the golden, spinning sphere inside the elder's dantian. The absolute, razor-sharp friction of the vortex energy collided with the solid core.

A sound like a breaking bell echoed through the coliseum.

Elder Zhao’s eyes went wide, his mouth opening in a silent scream as his Core—his centuries of cultivation—shattered into a thousand useless pieces inside his body. He collapsed into the mud, his hair turning completely white, his skin sagging into that of a withered, decrepit mortal.

Lu Chen stood over the ruined elder, his body covered in a mixture of his own blood and golden spiritual vapor. The jagged vortex inside his belly settled, now humming with a terrifying, golden-crimson resonance that hovered on the very precipice of a new realm.

He didn't look at the fallen old man. He turned his gaze toward the sky, looking at the grand, floating palaces of the Inner Sect Master.

The beggar had broken the gate. He had broken the elders. Now, the entire mountain belonged to the vortex.