Chapter 34 - My First Core
The ghosts poured into the mountain.
We could not fight ten thousand souls.
So I tried something worse.
I cultivated them.
Not their souls.
Their failure.
Every Heavenbreaker had died refusing the same system that now lived inside me.
Ashen Reversal responded.
The battlefield became a storm of black light.
[Foundation layers expanding.]
[4: Loss]
[5: Choice]
[6: Debt]
[7: Witness]
My Foundation reached completion.
Then cracked.
Mira shouted my name.
Inside my dantian, the seven layers collapsed around the lock fragment.
A core formed.
Not Golden Core.
Black.
Marked by a thin blue fracture.
[Unknown Core created.]
[Please classify.]
The system wanted a name.
For once, I gave it one.
"Free Core."
[FREE CORE registered.]
Power surged through me.
Qi Gathering and Foundation stages folded behind me in one brutal leap, not because I skipped them, but because I had been building them sideways for weeks.
I opened my eyes.
The ghosts stopped.
They looked at me.
Not controlled.
Listening.
I bowed.
"I won't use you."
Lyra's smile vanished.
"Then you waste them."
"They're dead. They've been used enough."
I opened my core.
The contracts burned.
Ten thousand ghosts became free.
The sky turned black.
May you like
Because Heaven had noticed.
