Dawn bled through the polarized window of Xiang ZhiHun's Sky University dorm, painting sterile synth-steel and smooth polymer surfaces in hues of bruised violet and molten gold. The scent of recycled air, faintly tinged with ozone from the building's filtration systems, was abruptly cut by a sharper, crisper tang – the unique signature of supercooled celestial energy lingering from ZhiHun's skin and hair. He stirred, blinking away the vestiges of dreams filled with swirling nebulae and the phantom shriek of the Skyrender Talon he'd slain. His bright hazel eyes, flecked with residual gold, snapped fully awake, reflecting the soft glow of the constellation projection lazily drifting across his ceiling.
He pushed himself up, the smooth sheets whispering. His lean frame, corded with wiry muscle honed by celestial exertion, moved with a fluid grace that belied the power coiled within. His flame-red hair, usually wild, was slightly subdued, though strands still crackled with static defiance. The defining feature, however, was the amethyst crystal embedded in his forehead. It pulsed with a soft, internal light, warm against his skin – a constant lodestone to the Star Soul Gen that defined him. He wore simple black sleep pants, the faint scent of his own exertion – warm salt, clean ozone, and the crisp, high-altitude chill of distant starlight – clinging to him.
A glance at the chrono-holo projected above his desk: 0500 Standard. Early, even for Sky University. The memory of the Talon's claws, the terrifying spatial shear, the desperate forging of his new arm… it all fueled a restless energy. He needed to push further. To understand the echoes of that fight, the spatial resonance he'd felt as he severed its essence.
Showered and clad in reinforced grey training fatigues that bore faint scorch marks near the cuffs, ZhiHun secured the Skyrender Talon scales he'd harvested into a small, insulated pouch. Their faint thrum against his hip was a reminder and a challenge. He then retrieved the most crucial tool: his Rift Key. It wasn't ornate, just a palm-sized disc of dark, non-reflective alloy etched with impossibly complex, faintly glowing silver circuitry. It felt cool and heavy, humming with contained spatial potential. Issued to advanced students like him who hadn't yet begun formal study of the fundamental laws (Reality, Space, Time), it allowed controlled access to pre-designated training dimensions – unstable pockets of reality calibrated for high-intensity Gen exertion. The Kun Mountains pocket was his crucible of choice.
Holding the Rift Key aloft, ZhiHun focused his will, channeling a trickle of Star Soul energy into it. Mutation Technique: Spatial Anchor Activation Void Step Initiation! The circuitry flared blinding silver. The air before him ripped with a sound like tearing silk mixed with grinding crystal. A vertical seam of iridescent light appeared, widening rapidly into a jagged portal. Beyond the shimmering curtain, the familiar, wind-scoured obsidian ridges and impossibly high peaks of the Kun Mountains pocket dimension resolved. The scent hit him instantly through the rift: thin, biting air tasting of ancient stone, distant snowfields, and the sharp, metallic tang of high-altitude void. He stepped through, the portal snapping shut behind him with a final crack-hiss, leaving only the sterile dorm air behind.
The Kun Mountains welcomed him with a buffeting gale that whipped his crimson hair into a frenzy. He stood on a familiar, isolated plateau, the obsidian rock beneath his boots cold and unyielding. Distant avalanches rumbled like celestial drums. He stretched, feeling the Chainbound Phase mastery thrumming in his core, the Stellar Dominion Field a subtle pressure ready to bloom around him, the Skyrender Talons cool and potent on his forearms. He began a sequence of fluid movements, Mutation Technique: Starlight Blade ——Nebula Edge! A sword of condensed violet starlight, humming with gravitational shear, materialized in his grasp, leaving faint afterimages as he practiced precise, devastating cuts through the thin air. Then, Mutation Technique: Resonant Chord——Spatial Tremor!He slammed a fist downwards, not striking rock, but compressing the air itself. A localized shockwave crunched outwards, shattering a nearby boulder into gravel without touching it.
He was mid-sequence, the Nebula Edge a blur of violet light, when he felt it.
A presence. Overwhelming. Wrong.
It wasn't the familiar, predatory fury of the Cerulean Claw Beasts or the ancient sovereignty of the Flame Wolf Emperor. This was… sharper. Colder. A pressure that warped the very space around it, carrying the acrid bite of superheated metal and the sterile chill of deep void. It radiated an aura of absolute, effortless superiority.
ZhiHun spun, Nebula Edge held defensively, his Star Soul crystal flaring warm on his brow. Thirty yards away, standing casually on a needle-like spire of obsidian, was a figure.
Humanoid.
Tall, easily seven feet, impossibly slender yet radiating contained, terrifying power. Its skin was the colour of storm-laden twilight – deep, iridescent grey shot through with veins of shimmering, unstable violet energy. It wore no clothing, its form seemingly sculpted from the same material as the mountains. But its features… they were a chilling mockery of humanity. Sharp, crystalline cheekbones, no nose, just smooth planes. Its eyes were vertical slits of pure, blazing white light, devoid of pupils, radiating intense focus and spatial awareness.
Most jarring were the wings. Not feathered, but two vast, sweeping arcs of solidified white light, folded elegantly against its back. They crackled faintly with contained spatial distortion, humming with latent power. And its hands… they ended in claws. Not short talons, but elongated, crystalline shards of obsidian-dark material, each easily a foot long, humming with the same spatial shear ZhiHun remembered from the Skyrender Talon he'd killed. They looked capable of parting reality itself.
A Skyrender Talon… in human form? The thought was absurd, terrifying. This entity radiated power far beyond the Embodiment Stage beast he'd faced. It felt… Final Breath adjacent. Ancient. Its aura screamed fire and space, intertwined and mastered.
The entity hadn't moved. It simply observed him, its white-light eyes unblinking, its expression unreadable. The sheer disregard in its posture, the utter confidence that ZhiHun posed no threat, ignited a spark of defiance in the Star Soul Scion. He needed to gauge this threat. Now.
Channeling his Chainbound mastery and the raw speed of the Star Soul, ZhiHun acted. He didn't telegraph. He simply moved. Mutation Technique: Stellar Lance——Shooting Star Barrage! He didn't form one spear; he condensed a dozen in a microsecond. Pinpoints of violet light flared around him, then coalesced into screaming javelins of pure stellar energy. But this wasn't the scattered barrage he'd used before. He focused them, pouring his will into speed and precision. They didn't just shoot; they vanished, becoming blurs of violet light faster than the eye could track, streaking towards the humanoid Talon from multiple angles with hypersonic fury, tearing the thin air with sonic booms that echoed like thunderclaps.
The entity didn't flinch. It didn't dodge. One crystalline hand moved – a motion so fast it was barely a flicker, leaving afterimages of displaced light. Mutation Technique: Void Grasp!The air around the streaking stellar lances warped. Space seemed to fold, to pocket itself. The dozen spears, moments from impact, simply… stopped. Frozen in mid-air, trapped within shimmering spheres of distorted space that hummed with containment energy. The Talon tilted its head infinitesimally, observing the trapped energy with detached curiosity. Then, with a negligent flick of its wrist, the containment spheres dissolved. The stellar lances winked out of existence without a sound, absorbed by the void.
ZhiHun's blood ran cold. That wasn't just power; it was absolute spatial control. He couldn't afford hesitation. Mutation Technique: Starlight Blade——Nebula Shear! Fueled by desperation and the memory of his victory, he poured spatial understanding stolen from the beast into his blade. The Nebula Edge flared blinding violet, its edge shimmering with amplified gravitational distortion capable of severing molecular bonds and spatial connections. He blurred forward, using the Dominion Field subtly to enhance his speed, aiming a diagonal slash that would cleave the entity from shoulder to hip.
His blade met… nothing.
The Talon simply wasn't there. It didn't move aside; it ceased occupying that specific point in space. ZhiHun felt the displacement, a chilling vacuum where the entity had been. Then, a presence behindhim. He started to turn, Starlight Blade whipping around in a defensive arc.
Too late.
The Talon placed its palm lightly against ZhiHun's back. There was no build-up, no visible energy discharge. Just Mutation Technique: Spatial Displacement Palm! A wave of pure, focused spatial force, compressed and accelerated to impossible levels, slammed into him.
It felt like being hit by a mountain moving at light speed. Air exploded from ZhiHun's lungs in a pained gasp. His reinforced fatigues shredded instantly across his back. He was catapulted forward like a discarded doll, crossing the fifty yards to the sheer obsidian cliff face in less than a heartbeat. The impact was catastrophic. CRUNCH-BOOOOOM! The cliff face shattered. Dust and razor-sharp obsidian shrapnel exploded outwards. ZhiHun cratered into the rock, embedded several feet deep, stars exploding behind his eyes, blood flooding his mouth, the coppery tang sharp and immediate. Pain lanced through every bone, his new celestial arm flaring with agony. His Starlight Blade dissipated, the Nebula Shear technique snuffed out. The Dominion Field flickered and died.
Groaning, spitting blood, ZhiHun pried himself from the crater, shards of obsidian clattering to the ground. He looked up, expecting the Talon to be upon him, those crystalline claws poised for the kill.
It wasn't.
The entity was already walking away. Calmly. Deliberately. Its white-light wings folded neatly, its long claws hanging loosely at its sides. It didn't glance back. It simply traversed the plateau, heading towards a distant, mist-shrouded peak, as if swatting an irritating insect was the most mundane task imaginable. The scent of ozone and void faded slightly as it moved.
Rage, cold and starlit, surged through ZhiHun, momentarily overriding the pain. This dismissal was worse than death. He pushed himself fully upright, his Star Soul crystal blazing like a miniature sun on his forehead. Mutation Pose: Descending Star SovereignThe transformation was instantaneous, fueled by fury and defiance. His flame-red hair bled into shimmering, liquid starlight purple, crackling with contained energy. He floated six feet off the shattered ground. His hazel eyes vanished, replaced by blazing orbs of pure, glowing amethyst light that cast long violet shadows. The crystal on his forehead pulsed, veins of violet light spreading across his skin like luminous constellations. The Stellar Dominion Field snapped back into existence, stronger, a ten-yard radius of swirling nebula and subtly warped reality around him. Power radiated from him, potent and dangerous.
He locked his blazing amethyst gaze onto the retreating back of the Skyrender Talon humanoid. He poured every ounce of his will, his spatial awareness, his Chainbound mastery into a single point. His eyes flickered violently – amethyst, then crimson fury, then settling back into intense, focused violet. He understood the spatial displacement it had used.
Mutation Technique: Stellar Transposition Sovereign's Step! He didn't run. He didn't fly. He simply ceased occupying his current space and reappeared directly behind the walking Talon, within his Dominion Field. The transition was silent, instantaneous. He held the reformed Nebula Edge low and ready, its spatial shear humming.
He stood there, poised, the Dominion Field amplifying his presence, the Nebula Edge a lethal promise. He waited for the entity to turn, to acknowledge the threat at its back.
It didn't stop walking.
ZhiHun frowned, his amethyst eyes narrowing. The entity… felt different now. Less dense. Less real. He lunged, the Nebula Edge flashing in a horizontal sweep meant to sever its spine.
The blade passed through it like smoke.
The figure shimmered, distorted, then dissolved into a cascade of fading violet and white light motes, leaving behind no scent, no residual energy, nothing but empty air. ZhiHun stumbled, the Nebula Edge cutting only mountain wind. Confusion warred with the fading adrenaline. A clone? An illusion? But the power… the spatial control… it had felt devastatingly real.
His Dominion Field tingled, drawn to a point on the obsidian floor where the entity had first stood. There, etched into the rock with impossible precision, glowing with faint cosmic energy, was a complex sigil. It wasn't like any Gen technique seal he knew. It was angular, intricate, composed of interlocking geometric shapes that seemed to fold in on themselves, humming with spatial resonance and a faint echo of that white-fire power. A Cosmic Seal.
Cautiously, ZhiHun approached. He knelt, the Descending Star Sovereign Pose still active, bathing the seal in violet light. He reached out, his celestial arm radiating controlled warmth. His fingertip brushed the glowing lines.
The moment he made contact, knowledge exploded into his mind. Not words, but pure understanding – compressed starlight, spatial coordinates, energy matrices. It was the schematic, the fundamental blueprint, for what the entity had used: a stable, self-sustaining projection imbued with a fraction of its spatial and fiery power. A technique born of the Skyrender Talon's essence, refined to an art form by this ascended entity. Starlight Clone.
The seal flared once, blindingly bright, then vanished, its energy absorbed directly into the crystal on ZhiHun's forehead. The crystal pulsed, hotter than before, humming with a new frequency. The knowledge settled within him, clear and ready.
ZhiHun rose, the Descending Star Sovereign Pose fading, his hair returning to crimson, his eyes to hazel, though they now held a profound, newly acquired depth. He stared at the spot where the seal had been, then at his own hands. A slow, fierce smile touched his lips, tasting of blood and ozone and boundless possibility.
He focused inward, channeling the new understanding, pouring Star Soul energy through the pattern imprinted in his mind and crystal. Mutation Technique: Starlight Clone!
Violet starlight erupted beside him, condensing rapidly. Within seconds, an exact duplicate of Xiang ZhiHun stood on the obsidian plateau. It shimmered faintly, composed of solidified nebula energy, its eyes glowing amethyst light identical to his Embodiment Pose. It held a spectral version of the Nebula Edge, humming with contained stellar power. It didn't speak, but ZhiHun felt its presence, an extension of his will, ready to act. It radiated his aura – ozone, celestial cold, the crisp scent of a high-altitude night.
The clone met his gaze, a silent acknowledgment passing between them. ZhiHun looked from his spectral double to the distant peak where the true Skyrender Talon entity had been heading. The dismissal still stung, but it was overshadowed by the fierce satisfaction of this hard-won prize. The Kun Mountains had offered another brutal lesson, but this time, he hadn't just survived.
He'd stolen a fragment of the storm.
"Not bad," Xiang ZhiHun murmured to the empty air, the starlight clone standing silently vigilant beside him, a perfect echo of his own newfound power. The climb continued, but now, he wouldn't be climbing alone.