Chapter 56: The Center of the Storm
Kian landed at the edge of the western market square and found the place packed.
Dozens of cultivators and mortals alike had gathered, their faces lit by a pulsing, golden-white glow that painted the rooftops in shifting light.
What was going on?
He pushed through the crowd, shoulders parting bodies, until he broke into the open center and saw the source of the commotion.
The sight stopped him stunned.
A youth knelt in the middle of the square.
Qi roared toward him from every direction, a visible river of silver light twisting through the air and diving into his dantian like water down a drain.
His eyes were closed, his expression slack with an enlightened bliss, and his shabby servant’s robes flapped wildly despite the dead-still night.
Kian felt the suction himself—a gentle tug at the qi around him, nothing dangerous, but unmistakable.
It was as if the city’s entire spiritual energy had chosen a single vessel and was moving towards it.
He grabbed the arm of a nearby man, a middle-aged cultivator with a dusty merchant’s robe.
"What’s happening? Who is that?"
The man didn’t look away from the youth. He said with clear awe: "No one knows his name. He’s a servant from the Jinguan Sect’s outer quarters—showed up an hour ago and collapsed tiredly. Then this started."
A woman beside him added, reverent and hushed, "It’s a Heavenly Qi Baptism. A phenomenon that only happens to chosen ones the heavens themselves favor. The luck of it... impossible."
She shook her head in envy.
’The Jinguan sect?’
Kian looked at the person in the middle again and this time, his system pinged clearly.
The golden text flared across his vision, tagging the kneeling youth with a name he recognized.
Su Chen.
’Su Chen? That guy is Su Chen?’
The same reincarnated Soul Lord from the earlier quest. Kian’s jaw tightened.
No wonder the system called him a Chosen One of Fortune!
Kian looked at the woman and asked: "What will happen if all this Qi moves into his body?"
The Qi swirling around Su Chen was dense enough to be visible, thick as honey, and it was pouring into a body that barely registered as a cultivator.
"He will break through to a really high level!"
A fortune-fed breakthrough, happening right in front of him.
"Wow! He just broke through to the Qi Building Stage 4!" Someone shouted, full of awe.
"Four stages in not even an hour! Unbelievable!"
The crowd murmured and pressed closer, some envious, others awed.
Kian stood still, watching the Qi drain from the air in visible spirals, and did the math. Was this the power of a Soul Lord?
Even reincarnated into a weak nobody, they wouldn’t sit still for long, huh?
Someone else said: "At this rate, he can become a Stage 9 Cultivator if this continues for a few more hours!"
Kian’s heart tightened.
That cannot be allowed!
Right then, the city guards arrived from all directions.
"Move away! Move away!"
Twelve men in lacquered black armor poured into the square from the western avenue, their boots striking the cobblestones in perfect unison.
Each carried a suppression talisman strapped to their vambrace—glowing faintly blue in the dark—and the crowd parted for them without being asked.
Their captain was a woman built like a siege tower, her face hidden behind a featureless steel mask.
She took one look at Su Chen kneeling in the center of the Qi vortex and raised her hand.
"Break the phenomenon. Now."
The guards moved as one body, fanning out to surround the youth.
Suppression talismans flared, their blue light snapping outward in a ring that pushed against the silver river of Qi trying to reach Su Chen’s dantian.
For a heartbeat, the flow stuttered.
Then a voice cut through the square like a blade.
"Why would you break the momentum of a young man? Why bully the juniors, Captain?"
The suppression was broken and the momentum of QI continued even stronger.
Three figures landed between the guards and Su Chen.
The crowd recognized their robes immediately—the pale blue and white of the Jinguan Sect’s inner disciples, trimmed with silver thread that marked them as ranked members.
The speaker was a young man with a sword already half-drawn, his eyes blazing.
Beside him stood a round-faced man whose cheerful expression didn’t match the killing intent rolling off him, and a thin, hollow-cheeked elder whose presence made the air feel heavier.
Kian leaned against a shuttered stall at the square’s edge and watched silently.
The captain felt like an incredibly dangerous presence to Kian. And the Jinguan Sect disciples were the same.
’They are all Stage 5 like me.’
Momentarily, they entered a standoff.
Kian’s gaze swept the square again, tracking the three Jinguan disciples protecting Su Chen.
’Oh? Interesting!’
The sword-wielder and the elder had their attention on the captain.
But the round-faced one stood with his weight shifted just a little too casually.
Kian’s eyes flashed as he noticed a discreet detail.
There, half-hidden by the hem of the fatty’s robe, the blue glow of a talisman could be seen pressed flat against the cobblestones beneath his left foot.
Kian immediately figured it out.
’He is not trying to protect Su Chen. He also wants to stop this phenomenon!’
It made sense.
Who would want a new powerhouse to erupt out of nowhere?
That would ruin so many people’s plans.
Not to mention that Jinguan Sect had probably offended Su Chen before his reincarnation.
So, not everyone in the sect would want to see him succeed.
’Let me help you!’
Kian’s Qi moved subtly through the air, but before he could move it far, it was broken by the Qi current around him.
’Annoying!’
With a thought, Kian’s eyes transformed into a blood red color.
Then, his Qi moved again, this time subtly avoiding the storm and heading straight towards the fatty.
If the surrounding Qi were not so chaotic, he might have noticed it, but now, he had no chance to notice it at all.
The Qi moved right into the talisman and activated it.