LightReader

Chapter 9 - Chapter 9 – Twin Cores, Twin Fangs

Shen Zian knelt beside a still pond as moonlight filtered through the treetops, reflecting his warped reflection across the water's surface.

His eyes, once bright and clear, now shimmered with gold and streaks of eerie pale blue. His skin was still human—mostly—but qi pulsed faintly beneath it like submerged fire. His right arm, the one bearing the Flamebrand, now held the residual outline of Bai Juren's legacy mark.

Not even the Shen Clan's ancient techniques had ever mentioned corpse flame fusion with beast qi. He wasn't walking a known path anymore.

He was forging a new one—step by violent step.

Zian rolled his shoulder and activated the newly etched Beast-Fused Binding technique. Instantly, the tattoo-like lines down his arm began to pulse. With a breath, he called forth the remains of the boar-beast core stored within his beast core's sub-layer.

Qi surged down his right arm.

Bones cracked and reknit. His skin took on a grayish sheen, and new muscle cords bulged beneath. His fingers hardened into talon-like tips—thicker and heavier than before.

For ten breaths, the strength of the boar surged through him—temporary, volatile, but real.

When he deactivated the technique, his arm returned to its normal form, but the power echoed through his marrow.

"It works," he whispered.

A second core could now be channeled, not just absorbed.

It gave him options.

Combat flexibility.

And possibly—a future.

That future, however, was about to be tested.

As he stood, a ripple of qi echoed from the north. Fast, sharp, purposeful. Not a beast.

A cultivator.

Zian turned just as a figure burst through the underbrush and landed on the rocks ten meters away.

A woman. Late teens. Short-cut black hair, dark robes with slashed sleeves, and twin crescent-shaped daggers across her back. Her eyes were gray—a cultivator of wind aspect qi, by the way the leaves trembled around her.

But her aura—

It pulsed strangely. Like two signatures layered atop each other.

Zian's beast core reacted instantly, stirring with recognition.

Twin-core? he thought. No… twin types of qi. Internal conflict.

She was injured, but not from battle. Her inner qi flow was unstable—two aspects clashing within.

She eyed him warily. "You're not from the Iron Fang Sect."

Zian didn't answer. "You're bleeding qi. Your cores are misaligned."

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Who are you to tell me anything?"

Zian tilted his head. "Someone who knows how to fix it."

She blinked. "...What?"

He stepped forward, carefully. "I walk a hybrid path. My core has fused incompatible aspects—flame, earth, wind, and something else. I've had to stabilize them using corpse qi as a medium."

Her eyes widened at the mention.

"Corpse cultivator?"

She reached for her daggers, but Zian didn't move. "Relax. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't be talking."

The woman hesitated.

She studied him. The faint glow of the corpse flame, the strange stability in his aura, the layered qi signatures that somehow didn't tear each other apart.

Her arms slowly dropped.

"...I'm Mei Xuan," she said at last. "I was part of the Twin Fang Sect, but I refused the forced merger technique they tried to force on me. They implanted a second qi seed during unconscious training. Now it's eating away at me."

Zian nodded.

A forced dual-core.

In most sects, it was forbidden—unless the subject had rare compatibility. Two cores fighting inside one body often led to qi implosion. The process was meant to enhance potential—but at the cost of one's life span or soul.

"I can slow it," he said. "But you'll owe me."

She studied him a moment longer.

Then—wordlessly—she knelt.

Zian sat behind her and pressed a hand to her back. Through his palm, he channeled corpse flame—not as an attack, but as a buffer, weaving its chill between the two raging qi cores inside her dantian. Wind and lightning qi snarled at each other like beasts in a cage, but with his guidance, the corpse flame stilled the edges.

Not balanced… but no longer tearing.

Mei Xuan exhaled shakily. "That… helped."

He nodded. "It'll buy you time."

Then she surprised him.

"Take me with you."

He blinked.

"I can fight," she said quickly. "I can scout. I know sect routes and smuggling paths through the south valleys. You need allies if you're traveling these wilds."

Zian didn't respond at first.

He didn't trust easily. But something about her reminded him of himself—cornered by fate, abandoned by power-hungry clans, forced into unnatural paths just to survive.

He finally nodded.

"One condition," he said. "If you try to betray me, I'll burn your dantian from the inside."

She gave a lopsided grin. "That's fair."

Far to the east, in a lavish pavilion built atop a floating cliff, a gathering of young elites sipped wine and traded rumors.

At the center, Shen Liang sat calmly as a jade scroll was unfurled before him.

"Reports confirm that Shen Zian is alive," said a robed elder beside him. "And he has… changed."

Liang smiled.

"Let him change," he said. "The more powerful he becomes, the better he'll serve as my final stepping stone."

He stood and drew a long, narrow sword.

Its blade hummed with spiritual resonance.

"I'll be the one to end him," Shen Liang said.

"And then I'll inherit both our fates."

More Chapters