On the broken stones of Qingyang City's martial arena, Ling Xiao curled up and spat out his last mouthful of blood. His fiancee, Su Qingyue, flung the divorce letter in his face, her voice as cold as ice. “You haven't even reached the third level of Body Tempering. What makes you think you're worthy of marrying me?” The spiritual-energy palm print from a Su family elder still burned across his back, while laughter filled the arena: “Good-for-nothing,” “Divorce,” “The Ling family is finished.”
Three years ago, he had been the brightest genius in Qingyang City: at twelve, he reached the ninth level of Body Tempering; at fifteen, he broke into the Qi Gathering Realm. Even the Su family's eldest daughter had once held roses and said she would marry him. But now his father had been gravely injured in an ambush by the great elder, Ling Kun; the family’s resources had been seized, and his cultivation had been stuck at the third level of Body Tempering for three whole years. More devastatingly, the Ancestral Dragon bloodline within him had been mysteriously sealed. He could barely even absorb the most basic Body Tempering Pills. This body had long since been drained of every possibility.
He gripped the half of an Ancestral Dragon jade pendant at his waist, the one his mother had pressed into his hands on her deathbed. A golden light seemed to flow through the split in the red dragon coiled around the pendant. Three days ago, when Ling Feng humiliated him at the cold iron mine, the pendant had suddenly grown hot. This morning, when a Su family elder slapped his father, the pendant had even seeped a drop of blood. The pendant was no mere “keepsake.” It was the lock sealing his bloodline, and now that lock was about to open.
“Su Qingyue, you think I want you?” Ling Xiao wiped the blood from his mouth and crushed the pendant between his bloodstained fingers.
In an instant, a crimson-gold dragon shadow tore through the sky! The phantom of a nine-clawed Ancestral Dragon coiled above him, its golden scales turning everyone in the arena deathly pale. The Su family elder’s spiritual-energy palm print shattered to dust. Su Qingyue staggered backward, her eyes filled with terror. She had never seen Ling Xiao like this before. His eyes glowed crimson-gold, as if a dragon soul were surging within them.
