chapter 1 Chloe Ling

Skynet Sect.
Clutching the newly obtained Inner Sect Disciple Token, Titus Xenos, filled with excitement, made his way to Mysterious Wind Cliff, gently touching the Gathering Spirit Pill in his pocket.
This was a hard-earned Spirit Pill, intended as a gift for junior Cloe Lynch.
“How much longer before he gets here?” a hoarse male voice emanated from a corner.
“About half a quarter,” replied a seductive female voice.
Titus paused in his tracks.
Wasn’t that Cloe’s voice?
And why was there another man’s voice?
Because they were a bit far apart, the conversation couldn't be heard very clearly. Titus turned to the other side and, as he got closer, the voices became clearer.
“Time is still early, shall we...”
“Don’t move around, okay...”
“What are you afraid of? Turn around quickly...”
"Why are you so impatient...
Their heavy breathing mixed with indistinct murmurs.
Titus felt like he’d been struck by lightning. His pure and fairy-like Cloe was not the woman he thought she was.
"Splat!"
His foot kicked a stone in shock.
“Who’s there?” A tall and robust man emerged from the shadows, surprised to see Titus.
Junior Cloe Lynch, hastily adjusting her clothes, also appeared, her cheeks still flushed. Upon seeing Titus, she stuttered, “Why... why are you here so early?”
This was the woman he loved...
Titus instinctively clenched his fist tightly, and due to the excessive force, the veins on his hand became visible.
“It seems I arrived too early and interrupted you. Cloe, I never thought that you would be such a person. From this moment on, let’s pretend we never met,” Titus said through clenched teeth and turned to leave.
“Attack him!” Cloe signaled to the young man.
The young man, faster and more ruthless, broke Titus’s knee with a kick.
Crack!
With his right knee shattered and caught off guard, Titus fell to the ground in agony. But compared to the pain in his body, Titus’s heart ached even more.
“Break his other limbs and shatter his Sea of Qi,” Cloe commanded again.
Titus couldn’t believe her cruelty. He felt like he had plunged into an icy abyss. Unable to defend himself, his limbs were broken, and his Sea of Qi destroyed, leaving him powerless.
“Why would you do this to me...” Titus gritted his teeth and endured the intense pain, glaring at Cloe.
“Why?”
“Do you think I spent half a year with you because I liked you? You’re just an Outer Sect disciple, while I am a core disciple. I would never fall for someone like you,” after straightening out her clothes, Cloe squatted halfway down and stared at Titus.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I was with you only for your Martial Spirit seed.”
"Your Martial Spirit seed has reached the seventh grade, which is quite rare. Fortunately, your Martial Spirit seed hasn't awakened yet, so it will become nourishment for my sixth-grade Martial Spirit Lightning Beast, allowing it to break through to the next grade,"
“I’ve been feeding you Spirit Refining Powder every month. After six months, your Martial Spirit seed finally materialized. Now is the perfect time to harvest it.”
“Oh, and by the way, not Cloe Lynch. I am Chloe Lynch...”
With those words, intense pain shot through Titus’s abdomen as his Martial Spirit seed was forcibly extracted.
The moment his Martial Spirit seed was taken, Titus, with the last of his strength, tumbled off the cliff behind him.
“He jumped off the cliff,” the young man noted.
“No matter. Mysterious Wind Cliff is a thousand feet high. He’s as good as dead. You can join him,” Chloe suddenly impaled the young man’s chest with her sword.
“Why...” the young man stared at Chloe in disbelief.
“Dead men tell no tales, and you’ve outlived your usefulness,” Chloe said coldly, pushing him over the edge.
...
On the cloud boat bound for expulsion.
In the cabin, many Outer Sect disciples with missing limbs sat in despair. Sect disciple conflicts were brutal, with any slight mistake leading to elimination.
At the end of each month, the eliminated disciples were sent back to their hometowns.
In a corner sat a grey-clothed youth, his eyes lifeless, face pale, and limbs bandaged.
“Isn’t that Titus Xenos from the Heavenly Ultimate Hall?”
“That’s definitely him.”
“Titus was just selected for the Inner Sect three days ago. How could he be expelled?” the cabin buzzed with whispers.
Heavenly Ultimate Hall, ranked fourth among the eight Outer Sect halls, housed about thirty thousand disciples. Titus was among the top five.
Three days ago, he had topped the Inner Sect selection of Heavenly Ultimate Hall, becoming an Inner Sect disciple.
At that time, many had envied him, wishing they were in his place.
They originally thought that after Titus joined the Inner Sect, he would rise swiftly. However, in just a few days, he was expelled along with the others, which was truly unexpected.
Generally, disciples who made it to the Inner Sect were rarely expelled.
After all, rising above thirty thousand peers to become a top disciple was no small feat.
The expelled disciples discussed amongst themselves, but Titus remained indifferent, as if deaf to their chatter.
Titus was not dead.
He had survived fall from Mysterious Wind Cliff, thanks to an updraft that cushioned his descent.
But with his limbs broken and Sea of Qi shattered...
Severely injured, he was discovered and sent back on the expulsion cloud boat by Skynet Sect’s external affairs steward.
The cloud boat was set to depart in one hour. The disciples inside the cabin, having accepted their fate of being sent back, started to engage in idle chit-chat.
“Do you guys know about our Skynet Sect’s core disciple, Chloe?” a man in yellow robes initiated.
“Nonsense! Everyone knows Chloe?”
“What about her? Any rumors?”
The male disciples immediately perked up. Chloe was not only the most stunning beauty of the Skynet Sect but also a genius disciple. While others went through rigorous selection to become Inner Sect disciples of Skynet Sect, she was directly appointed and became a core disciple in less than a year.
Beauty combined with talent; she attracted countless admirers.
Any rumors about Chloe stirred the interest of many disciples, not just the males but also a portion of the females.
“There’s news that two days ago, Chloe awakened a seventh-grade Lightning Beast Martial Spirit. The Sect Master Willow even came out of seclusion, possibly to take Chloe as a direct disciple,” the man in yellow said.
“Really?”
“A seventh-grade Lightning Beast Martial Spirit? Are you sure?”
“Of course, it’s true. This news came from a steward, and I heard it myself. There’s no way it’s false,” the man in yellow confidently declared.
“A seventh-grade Lightning Beast Martial Spirit... I wonder how powerful it is. I don’t even need a seventh-grade one; a third grade would be enough for me. No, even a second-grade would do,” someone said enviously.
“You’re dreaming. Martial Spirits aren’t that easy to awaken.”
“If Martial Spirits were so easy to awaken, we would all have them by now,” the others shook their heads in agreement. The chance of awakening a Martial Spirit was a mere one in a thousand.
Martial Spirits were said to be remnants left by the gods in the human body, only awakenable through Martial Cultivation.
But the probability was exceedingly low, with only one in a thousand Martial Cultivators awakening a Martial Spirit.
A Martial Spirit could enhance the speed of cultivation and augment strength, even granting unique abilities.
Martial Cultivators with Martial Spirits were often much stronger than those without.
Most Outer Sect disciples had only seen first or second-grade Martial Spirits. Third-grade ones were rare, and fifth or sixth-grade ones were even rarer.
As for seventh-grade...
For Outer Sect disciples, which was the stuff of legends.
While the Outer Sect disciples were deep in discussion, no one noticed Titus in the corner.
Titus was seething with anger, his body trembling violently, veins bulging on his arms as his fingers dug into the ground.
Chloe Lynch!
He gritted his teeth at the thought of her.
The swelling of his organs, his swollen limbs, his shattered Sea of Qi, and the broken Martial Spirit seed...
All of this, everything, was bestowed by Chloe.
“Chloe Lynch, you wretch! I devoted myself to you, yet you used me as a furnace, taking my Martial Spirit seed to strengthen your own, ruining my Sea of Qi foundation...” Titus’s fingernails broke as he dug into the wooden floor, bleeding.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the agony of being ruined.
Titus had thought about seeking justice but decided against it.
The incident occurred outside the sect, and without witnesses or evidence, no one would believe him. Plus, if Chloe learned he was still alive, she would surely finish him off.
“Chloe! If I could cultivate again, I swear to make you pay dearly for what you did...” Titus growled through clenched teeth.
Boom!
A loud noise jolted him, and a vortex-like black hole appeared before him, its ancient patterns intertwining, exuding an aura of antiquity.
Titus noticed the surrounding disciples didn’t react; they couldn’t see the black hole.
Suddenly, a misty figure burst out, striking Titus’s forehead.
A soul...
Pain surged through Titus’s head, and his consciousness began to fade, his vision blurring. The soul was attempting to seize his body.
A fiery rage ignited in Titus.
First, Chloe had taken his Martial Spirit seed, and now, as he lay ruined, this entity sought to take his body.
“You won’t take my body!”
Titus bit down, maintaining his consciousness as the soul eroded it.
Driven by a strong will to survive, he endured for a full quarter. The intense pain in his head gradually subsided, and his soul emitted cries of sorrow and resistance. It clearly hadn’t expected Titus to withstand it for a full quarter, gradually draining its strength.
“Haha...you try to take my body, but you die instead...”
Titus laughed, but as the soul cracked, fragments of memory flooded into his mind.
Stunned, he realized, “I’ve just ground down the soul of the Venerable Clowde, one of The Six Venerables of the Nine Heavens Divine Realm...”