Chapter 2: The Dragon Empress
Pain was usually a warning. A signal from the body that something was wrong. But for Lin Yun, as consciousness slowly clawed its way back into his mind, pain was a reassurance.
Pain meant he was alive.
He felt as though his body had been dismantled, bone by bone, and stitched back together with rusty wire. A scorching heat coursed through his veins, warring with a deep, hollow coldness in his lower abdomen where his Dantian used to be.
My Dantian...
The memory crashed into him like a landslide. The celebration. The gift. The smile on Master Gu Cang's face. The hand tearing into his stomach. The fall.
"Gu Cang!"
Lin Yun gasped, bolting upright. Or at least, he tried to.
An invisible force, heavy as a mountain range, slammed him back down against the stone. It wasn't physical weight; it was pure, unadulterated spiritual pressure. It crushed the air from his lungs and pinned his soul to the floor.
"Be still, little human. Your bones are knitting, but they are still fragile as dry twigs."
The voice was melodious, rich, and terrifyingly calm. It echoed not from a specific direction, but from the very air around him.
Lin Yun forced his eyes open.
He was lying on a slab of smooth, warm obsidian. The cave was immense, its ceiling lost in shadows high above. Phosphorescent moss glowing with a faint blue light clung to the walls, providing the only illumination. But the source of the pressure and the heat came from the center of the cavern.
There, coiled atop a mountain of shimmering gold, rare spirit stones, and ancient artifacts, lay a creature of myths.
It was a Dragon.
Its scales were the color of the midnight sky, absorbing the dim light rather than reflecting it. Veins of molten gold ran between the scales, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat. It was colossal, its head alone the size of a carriage.
Those vertical golden pupils were fixed on him.
Lin Yun felt a primal fear, an instinctual urge to grovel that was hardwired into every human being. This was a predator at the top of the food chain. A Primordial Beast.
"You... you saved me?" Lin Yun wheezed, the words scraping his dry throat.
The dragon exhaled, two plumes of white steam shooting from its nostrils. The steam smelled of sulfur and ancient medicinal herbs.
"Saved? Perhaps," the dragon mused. "Or perhaps I simply delayed your rotting. You fell into my garden. I do not like the smell of corpses where I sleep."
The massive head lowered, bringing one giant, golden eye within inches of Lin Yun. The pupil constricted, focusing on him with an intensity that made his skin crawl.
"But you are interesting," the dragon continued. "Your body is broken. Your Dantian is shattered beyond repair. Your meridians are severed. Yet... there is a residue in your blood. The scent of the Void Splitting Heavenly Tiger. And beneath that... a hatred so pure it tastes like fine wine."
Lin Yun clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into his palms.
"Hatred is all I have left."
"Is it?"
The dragon pulled back. Suddenly, the massive beast began to glow. A blinding white light erupted from its scales, illuminating the entire cavern. The massive silhouette began to shrink, condense, and reshape.
The overwhelming pressure didn't vanish, but it changed. It became sharper, more refined.
When the light faded, the dragon was gone.
Standing in its place was a woman.
She appeared to be in her early twenties, though her eyes held the weariness of eons. She wore robes of deep midnight blue that seemed to be woven from the night sky itself. Her hair was a cascade of silver, flowing down to her ankles, unadorned by any pin or tie. Her skin was pale as moonlight, contrasting sharply with her lips, which were as red as blood.
She was beautiful, but it was a dangerous, untouchable beauty. Like a sword made of ice.
She walked toward the stone slab, her bare feet not making a sound on the rough floor.
"I am Long Xi," she said, looking down at him. "The humans of your era likely call me the Primordial Dragon Empress, though I doubt many remember my name. I have been sleeping here for three thousand years."
Lin Yun's eyes widened. Three thousand years? The Spirit Beast Sect has only existed for five hundred!
"Senior Long," Lin Yun tried to bow, but his body screamed in protest.
"Save your etiquette." Long Xi waved her hand dismissively. She sat on the edge of the obsidian slab, crossing her legs. "Tell me, boy. Who tore the core from your gut? It was a clumsy job. A butcher's work."
Lin Yun stared at the ceiling, the image of Gu Cang's greedy face burning in his mind.
"My Master. Gu Cang. He raised me for fifteen years, treated me like a son. It was all to make me a vessel. To filter the core's energy so he could take it for himself."
Long Xi threw her head back and laughed. It was a cold, bell-like sound.
"Humans. They never change. They speak of righteousness and dao, yet they are more vicious than any beast in the forest. A beast kills to eat. A human kills for greed."
She looked back at him, her expression sobering.
"So, you were a vessel. And now you are a broken pot. What will you do now, little vessel? If I let you leave this cave, the wolves will eat you within the hour. You have no cultivation."
"I will crawl," Lin Yun rasped, his eyes burning with a terrifying light. "If I have to crawl back up that mountain, I will do it. I will find a way to kill him. Even if I have to bite his throat out with my teeth."
Long Xi studied him for a long moment. She saw the madness in his eyes. It was the same madness she had felt a long time ago.
"You have no Dantian," she stated plainly. "In the world of cultivation, you are a cripple. You cannot store Qi. You cannot use martial arts. You are less than a mortal."
"There must be a way," Lin Yun gritted his teeth. "There are legends, pills that regrow Dantians..."
"Fairy tales for desperate fools," Long Xi cut him off brutally. "A shattered Dantian is a shattered soul container. It cannot be regrown."
Lin Yun felt the hope drain out of him. He closed his eyes, a single tear leaking out.
So, it was truly over.
"However," Long Xi's voice took on a silky, dangerous edge, "who says you need a Dantian to cultivate?"
Lin Yun's eyes snapped open.
"What?"
Long Xi stood up and paced around the slab.
"Humans cultivate by trapping nature's energy in a container, the Dantian. Beasts do not do this. We are the container. Our flesh, our blood, our bones, every part of us is saturated with power. We do not store the energy; we fuse with it."
She stopped and pointed a slender finger at his chest.
"The Void Splitting Heavenly Tiger core merged with you. Your master ripped the solid core out, yes. But the essence, the primal law of the beast, it had already seeped into your marrow. That is why you survived the fall."
She leaned in close, her golden eyes glowing.
"I can help you, Lin Yun. I can give you the power to crush your master, to burn your sect to the ground, to stand above the heavens. But the price is high."
Lin Yun didn't hesitate.
"Name it. My soul? My life? Take it."
"I don't want your life. I want an ally," Long Xi said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I have been trapped in this valley for three millennia by a seal placed by the Celestial Immortals. I cannot leave this mountain range. I need an agent. Someone who can walk the world, grow strong, and eventually break my chains."
She extended her hand. Her palm glowed with a complex, bloody rune.
"But the path I offer is the Ancient Path of Beast Sovereignty. It is a forbidden technique from my era. You will not cultivate Qi like a human. You will hunt beasts. You will devour their essence. You will forge their souls into your body. You will not have one core. You will have thousands."
"It is agonizing," she warned. "Turning a human body into a beast's vessel will feel like being burned alive every single day. If your will falters for even a second, the beast souls will consume your mind and you will become a mindless monster. I will have to put you down myself."
Lin Yun looked at her hand.
He thought of the look in Gu Cang's eyes. The feeling of being tossed away like garbage. The humiliation.
Pain? What was pain compared to the emptiness he felt right now?
He struggled to lift his arm. His bones creaked, but he forced his hand upward.
"I am already dead," Lin Yun said, his voice steady. "The disciple Lin Yun died on that altar. Whatever I become now belongs to the path of vengeance."
He slapped his bloody hand into hers.
BOOM!
A shockwave of energy exploded from their joined hands.
Lin Yun felt a burning sensation rush up his arm, searing into his chest. He screamed as a golden rune, a dragon coiled around a sword, branded itself directly onto his heart.
Long Xi smiled, a fierce, predatory grin that showed off slightly elongated canines.
"Good. The contract is sealed. Your life is linked to mine. If you die, I lose my chance at freedom. So I will not let you die easily."
She stepped back and waved her hand. The pile of treasures in the center of the room shifted. A small, black cauldron flew through the air and landed with a heavy thud beside the slab.
"The Heavenly Beast Core your master stole was a Wood and Lightning attribute core. Powerful, yes. But to walk the Ancient Path, you need a foundation that can hold the heavens."
She sliced her own finger with a nail. A single drop of blood, gold and heavy as mercury, welled up.
"Open your mouth."
Lin Yun obeyed.
The drop of Dragon Blood fell onto his tongue.
It didn't taste like blood. It tasted like lava.
Lin Yun's back arched off the stone slab. His eyes rolled back into his head. The drop of blood exploded in his stomach, rushing through his destroyed meridians not like a gentle stream, but like a rampaging river of magma.
"The First Step," Long Xi's voice echoed from far away, "is to destroy the human frailty. I will reforge your bones with Dragon Marrow. Endure it, Lin Yun. If you pass out, the energy will kill you."
"AGHHHHHH!"
Lin Yun's scream filled the cave. His skin turned purple, then black, cracking open as old, dead blood was pushed out by the new, golden tinged blood forming in his marrow.
His shattered dantian dissolved completely, replaced by a swirling vortex of golden darkness. This was not a container. It was a hunger. A black hole waiting to be fed.
Long Xi watched him convulse, her expression unreadable.
"Do not disappoint me, my little Sovereign," she whispered into the darkness. "The world has forgotten the terror of the Ancient Beasts. It is time we reminded them."
Outside the cave, the moon rose high over the Ten Thousand Beast Mountain Range. In the Spirit Beast Sect, a celebration was underway for the Sect Master's successful breakthrough.
They did not know that deep in the abyss below, a monster was being born.