The dragon cut through the sky like a black comet, wings tearing clouds apart. Below them, the jungle stretched endlessly, a green sea rippling under sunlight. Aryan clung to the scales, his face wind-burnt but his spirit restless.
He turned to the boy sitting behind him, calm as a blade in its sheath.
"Zhang Xuan… teach me."
The boy blinked, his dark eyes narrowing slightly. "Teach you?"
Aryan nodded so fast it almost snapped his neck. "Yes! How to train properly. I don't wanna just be some idiot riding a dragon—" he flinched as the System coughed in his head,
System:
[Correction: You are the idiot riding a dragon.]
"SHUT UP!" Aryan barked at no one. Zhang Xuan frowned but continued listening.
Aryan forced his voice steady. "I mean… if I go to Nalanda with no skills, I'll be humiliated. I don't want to be just… lucky. I want to be strong."
Zhang Xuan's lips curved in something between a smirk and pity. "Strength isn't begged for. It's carved with blood. But…" He leaned forward, resting his hand lightly against Aryan's wrist. "You already carry chakra. You just don't know how to use it. Fine. I'll show you the basics."
Aryan's eyes lit up. "Really?!"
"Don't get excited," Zhang Xuan muttered. "You'll probably fail."
The dragon descended slightly at Zhang Xuan's order, gliding closer to the jungle canopy. Air grew thicker, carrying the scent of earth and wood. Zhang Xuan straightened his posture, closing his eyes.
"Listen carefully. In my homeland, we cultivate Chi — the breath of heaven and earth. It flows through meridians like rivers through land. To cultivate, you must inhale the Chi of the world, guide it into your dantian, then refine it into strength. Slowly. Patiently. Like sipping water through a straw."
Aryan copied him immediately, sitting cross-legged, squinting his eyes. "Okay… Chi… dantian… straw. Got it."
He inhaled.
Nothing.
Exhaled.
Nothing.
He peeked one eye open. "Uh… am I supposed to feel something?"
Zhang Xuan didn't even twitch. "Shut your mouth. Feel the flow. Stop thinking. The world doesn't answer impatience."
Aryan tried again. He held his breath so long his cheeks puffed red. "I think I'm doing it!"
System:
[Correction: You're doing constipation, not cultivation.]
Aryan nearly fell off the dragon. "I'M TRYING, OKAY?!"
Zhang Xuan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Unbelievable. Even a child in my sect could circulate Chi by now."
Aryan slumped forward, frustrated. "Why isn't it working for me? I'm not… broken, am I?"
System:
[Oh no, you're not broken. You're worse. You're overloaded.]
Aryan blinked. "Over…loaded?"
The System's tone shifted, quieter, almost smug.
System:
[Remember those inscriptions on your skin? The Sanskrit mantras that Scroll of Void Arts carved into you? You idiot… they're not decoration. They're amplifiers. You don't train like him. You don't sip Chi through a straw… You drink the entire river.]
Aryan's eyes widened. "Wait… you're saying my body is already wired differently?"
System:
[Exactly. You're a glitch. Zhang Xuan cultivates with discipline. You cultivate with chaos. He grows step by step. You… fall into abysses and climb out stronger. Stop copying him and start being the monster you are.]
The moment Aryan stopped trying to copy Zhang Xuan's method and focused inward, something stirred.
Aryan swallowed, staring at his hands. The inscriptions faintly shimmered under his skin, hidden but alive, like caged beasts waiting to be unleashed.
He clenched his fists.
"Then… I'll do it my way."
At first, it was just a tingle.
A warmth beneath Aryan's skin, like sunlight caught under his veins.
Then a faint burn licked across his skin — not pain, but heat, molten and heavy. He tugged at his robe's sleeve and froze.
Lines. Golden-red lines crawled up his arm, glowing like metal fresh from a forge. They weren't random. They weren't cracks.
They were inscriptions.
Sanskrit etched itself into him, flowing like rivers of light. Symbols alive, chanting silently, each syllable vibrating in his bones.
System:[Well, well. Sleeping beauty finally wakes up. Those scrolls in your cloak they are definitely a blessing for a idiot like you. They're carving your body into a scripture.]
The dragon rumbled beneath them, as if it already sensed what was coming.
Chaturtha Pāda – The Fourth Step.
Aryan gasped as his chest swelled, chakra surging like a river breaking a dam. His body trembled, his breath ragged, but the fire did not stop.
Another line etched itself onto his collarbone, flowing downward, branding his skin with light.
Pañchama Pāda – The Fifth Step.
The dragon flinched beneath them, its golden eyes widening. A pulse—wild, endless—was flooding out of the brat on its back. It had seen geniuses cultivate, prodigies consume nature's aura like thirsty sponges…
But this wasn't cultivation.
This was hunger.
Aryan's body demanded chakra — not in drops, not in streams, but in floods.
A cultivator at Stage 4 would normally drain the chakra within a radius of ten meters. Aryan's body pulled from a hundred.
The jungle below screamed.
Leaves shriveled into ash. Branches dried and cracked. Mighty trunks bent as their life-force was ripped away. Birds dropped lifeless from the sky, their natural energy stolen mid-flight. The lush green of Vaikunth Dham twisted into gray, trees blackening like corpses.
The dragon roared, its instincts howling. If it didn't act, even its own vast chakra would be dragged out, stolen into this child's body. With a violent snap of will, Taarask slammed seals over its own acupoints.
Its chest locked. Its meridians froze. Its own river of power turned inward, hidden and contained.
Yet still, the brat pulled.
System:
[Note: Normal geniuses sip tea. This brat is guzzling the entire ocean.]
Aryan's arms shook, inscriptions crawling up his shoulders now, glowing brighter. He screamed as the force poured through him, not just filling him, but rewriting him.
Ṣaṣṭha Pāda – The Sixth Step.
The air cracked. Sparks of golden fire danced off his skin. His hair whipped upward as if the world itself bent toward him.
Zhang Xuan's jaw went slack. He clutched the dragon's scales until his knuckles bled. "This… this isn't cultivation. He's devouring the land itself!"
Ganpat, clinging on for dear life, wheezed between coughs of dust. "Ha…! The jungle looks like me after a week in prison. Empty and dry!"
The dragon dared to glance back. What it saw chilled its ancient bones.
Behind them stretched a wasteland.
A hundred-meter scar of dead forest. Trees charred black. Flowers crumbled to ash. The very air seemed thinner, starved of life.
And at the center of it… a boy glowing with Sanskrit, his body a scripture of fire.
Saptama Pāda – The Seventh Step.
Aryan's aura detonated outward, a shockwave of power that nearly threw Zhang Xuan off the dragon's back. The inscriptions on his skin pulsed like beating hearts, each one alive, each one feeding him more.
System:
[Congratulations. You just became every farmer's nightmare. Radius: 100 meters. Effect: Insta-drought. Walking Chaos, achieved.]
Aryan stared at his glowing hands, horror mixing with awe. "I… I didn't mean to…"
The dragon growled low, half in fear, half in defiance. Even sealed, it could feel its master's pull threatening to strip it bare.
Ganpat laughed weakly, shaking his head. "Boy… you're not cultivating. You're rewriting the jungle."
The trees below stood black and broken. The air reeked of ash. The forest — once alive with green — now looked like it had aged a thousand years in seconds.
And Aryan, body blazing with molten Sanskrit, stood at the center of it all, glowing like a calamity birthed by the gods.
At first, the dragon thought it had survived the worst. Aryan's inscriptions had reached the Saptama Pāda — the Seventh Step. His glow softened for a heartbeat, as though his body was finally satisfied.
But then…
The boy's eyes rolled white, his chest heaved, and the Sanskrit on his skin burned brighter than ever.
"No," Zhang Xuan whispered, clutching the dragon's spine. His pulse spiked. "He's… he's still pulling?!"
The jungle trembled.
What had once been a radius of 100 meters stretched outward like ripples on a pond. First 500 meters. Then a full kilometer. Then three. Then five.
And everything within that circle began to die.
Birds screamed as they dropped mid-flight, their wings brittle as dry leaves.
Rivers dulled, their water turning sluggish, heavy, lifeless.
The very air grew thinner, like the breath was being stolen out of the world.
Trees collapsed one after another, their veins sucked dry, their trunks cracking into charcoal black. Whole groves withered in seconds, their leaves shriveling, roots curling like the earth itself was recoiling.
Ganpat gagged, covering his mouth with a sleeve. His old eyes bulged as he looked over the wasteland spreading below. "By the gods… this boy isn't cultivating—he's eating the world alive!"
The dragon roared in terror, its golden scales flashing as it tightened its seals, locking its acupoints even harder. Still, it could feel the monstrous pull licking at its edges, begging to devour its millennia of stored chakra. It snarled and glared back at Aryan, a silent vow: Not even my master will drink my life away.
Aryan, meanwhile, was barely aware of any of it. His body felt like a bottomless pit, a black hole where energy poured endlessly, endlessly, endlessly—until finally, something cracked.
BOOM.
A wave of pressure burst outward, flattening the last standing trees within that 5 km hellscape. Dust whirled, the sky itself darkened, and the inscriptions across Aryan's body pulsed one final time before dimming to a faint ember glow.
His chest heaved. His skin shimmered faintly like heated metal. Then, slowly, his breathing steadied.
The pull stopped.
The silence that followed was worse than the roar.
The jungle of Vaikunth Dham had been erased.
In its place lay a graveyard of ash and black wood.
Five kilometers of death, with only a dragon at its heart — and on its back, a boy glowing faintly like the spark of some forgotten god.
Aryan opened his eyes. They burned with golden flecks, but his expression…
He grinned, slumping back against the dragon's neck, dusting his robe like he had just finished a meal.
"Now that's what I call a feast."
Ganpat's jaw unhinged. He pointed at Aryan with trembling fingers. "A… a feast? Lad, you just committed deforestation on a holy scale! The monks are going to hunt us down with sticks!"
System:[Correction: You just absorbed enough chakra to equal a Chakra 3, Stage 3 cultivator. Congratulations, you are now officially a beast in human skin.]
Aryan blinked, then grinned. "Not bad."
The dragon's golden eyes narrowed. Even with its acupoints sealed, it could feel the tide raging in Aryan's body — a tide deeper than its own. For the first time in centuries, Taarask bowed its head willingly. In that child, it sensed not just a master… but a calamity worth following.
Behind Aryan, Zhang Xuan sat frozen. His fists dug into the dragon's scales until his nails broke skin. He had spent years clawing through despair, surviving only by skill and grit — and yet, this boy had devoured a five-kilometer jungle without blinking. His throat tightened. This brat isn't cultivating. He's… rewriting nature.
System:[Side note: Zhang Xuan is correct. This is no cultivation. This is apocalypse with extra steps.]
Aryan laughed nervously, brushing dust off his robe. "Relax, it's not like the world will notice."
But far away — in temples, courts, and caves — cultivators paused mid-breath. Monks dropped prayer beads. Generals halted in training. Even the winds stilled. A sudden emptiness had torn through the land, a void of natural chakra so wide it left every expert shivering.
Whispers rose. What monster has awakened?
behind Aryan, Zhang Xuan was unable to grasp this situation he thought to himself "I need to train more. I will not let this monster get ahead of me."
because of Aryan now Zhang Xuan has gotten more motivation to train harder, at least reach class, one stage nine level of his CHI cultivation if he wants to defeat this monster in the tournament of Martial arts to get inside university of Nalanda.
On the dragon's back, three figures clung to silence.
One old fool.
One lucky brat.
One cursed prodigy.
And above them, fate laughed — loud enough to shake the heavens.