Chapter 11: The Gates of Nine Heavens
The Secret Realm of Nine Heavens opened at the first light of dawn.
Four massive gates of ancient bronze rose from the earth at the four cardinal points of Qingyun City, each carved with the sigil of its ruling sect. Between them, the air tore like wet paper, revealing a jagged wound in the world: swirling chaos, fragments of floating continents, storms of raw spiritual energy that could flay a Core Formation cultivator to bone in heartbeats.
Ten thousand geniuses gathered in the central plaza—some arrogant, some terrified, all trying not to look at the boy standing alone in the front row.
Lin Qiu wore the same gray wanderer's cloak Su Ling had given him. No sect robes. No treasures. Bare feet on cold stone.
The four sect leaders stood on a floating dais above the gates.
Lei Wujing spoke first, voice carrying without effort.
"The rules are ancient and unbreakable. Enter the realm. Survive thirty days. Gather heavenly tokens scattered across the nine shattered heavens. The more tokens, the higher your rank. The top hundred may choose any sect. The top ten will be fought over. The first… will dictate terms."
His stormglass eyes fixed on Lin Qiu.
"Kill if you must. Die if you dare. The realm does not care."
The other sect leaders added their own warnings—poisonous smiles from the Jade Lotus matriarch, cold calculations from Burning Skyreach, a hungry grin from Blood Flame's valley master.
Then the gates opened fully.
A wind smelling of blood and lightning howled out.
The geniuses surged forward.
Lin Qiu did not move.
Su Ling, standing with the observers outside the gate, gripped her sword hilt until her knuckles whitened.
"Go," she whispered. "Before they all target you at once."
Lin Qiu glanced back once. His tricolored eyes softened for a fraction of a heartbeat.
Then he stepped through the gate.
The world inverted.
He landed on a cracked plain of black glass under a sky with three suns—red, white, violet. In the distance, floating islands drifted like broken teeth. Rivers of liquid fire fell upward into storm clouds that rained swords.
The first heavenly token hovered above a stone altar a thousand paces away, glowing gold.
Around it, thirty cultivators had already gathered—members of an alliance formed specifically to hunt him. Leading them was Zhao Wuhen, nineteenth prince of the Great Qian imperial family, early Foundation Establishment peak, wielding a golden spear said to be forged from a dragon's spine.
They saw him at the same moment.
Zhao Wuhen smiled like a cat finding a wounded bird.
"Lin Qiu. The bounty on your head will buy me a Nascent Soul pill."
The alliance fanned out, formations snapping into place. Arrays flared. Treasures hummed.
Lin Qiu tilted his head.
"You're in my way," he said.
Zhao Wuhen laughed. "Kill him. Take the heart intact—"
Lin Qiu raised one finger.
Thunder answered.
Not from the sky.
From everywhere.
The tricolored sphere in his dantian spun once, lazily.
A perfect circle of annihilation—violet, silver, black—expanded from his feet.
Everything it touched simply ceased.
Formations shattered. Treasures melted. Cultivators had time for half a scream before they became ash statues that crumbled in the wind.
Thirty heartbeats.
Thirty piles of ash.
The golden token drifted down gently into Lin Qiu's waiting palm.
He closed his fist around it.
Somewhere in the observer stands outside the realm, viewing mirrors relayed the scene to the sect leaders.
The Jade Lotus matriarch went pale.
Burning Skyreach's elder adjusted his calculations and frowned.
Blood Flame's valley master leaned forward, eyes shining.
Lei Wujing just smiled, small and proud.
Lin Qiu looked up at the three suns.
"One," he said to the empty plain.
Then he walked deeper into the realm.
Over the next three days, the Secret Realm of Nine Heavens learned a new law.
Wherever Lin Qiu went, tokens vanished.
He did not hunt people. He hunted tokens.
Anyone who tried to stop him became fertilizer.
On the fourth day he reached the Second Heaven—a frozen tundra where wind blades cut to the soul.
A pack of ice direwolves the size of houses guarded a silver token on a glacier.
Lin Qiu walked straight through them.
The wolves lunged.
He exhaled.
His breath became a violet dragon that coiled around the pack, freezing them mid-leap into statues of amethyst lightning.
The silver token floated to his hand.
On the sixth day, in the Third Heaven's sea of clouds, he met the first real resistance.
A joint force of fifty elites—ten from each of the other three sects, led by Burning Skyreach's top genius, a puppet master named Gu Xian with seven Foundation Establishment puppets equivalent to late-stage experts.
They ambushed him on a floating bridge of cloudstone.
Gu Xian's puppets moved like ghosts, chains of array fire linking them into an unbreakable formation.
"Target acquired," Gu Xian said coldly. "Dissect and contain."
Lin Qiu stopped in the center of the bridge.
"You're using numbers," he observed. "Because alone, you know you'd die."
Gu Xian's eyes narrowed. "Arrogance."
Lin Qiu smiled.
"Let me show you what real arrogance looks like."
He took one step forward.
The bridge exploded.
Not from attack.
From pressure.
The tricolored sphere in his dantian released a single pulse.
Every puppet froze, arrays overloading. Chains snapped. Gu Xian vomited blood as his spiritual connections shattered.
Lin Qiu walked past him, plucking the bronze token from the air.
Gu Xian collapsed to his knees.
"How…" he rasped.
Lin Qiu didn't look back.
"I haven't even started warming up."
By the tenth day, the realm was quiet.
No one dared approach the areas where violet lightning had been sighted.
The leaderboard projected outside the gates showed a name that had pulled so far ahead it broke the viewing mirrors.
1. Lin Qiu – 147 heavenly tokens
2. Blood Flame Holy Son – 41
3. Jade Lotus Saintess – 38
...
10. Zhao Wuhen – 22 (deceased)
Whispers turned to silence.
On the fifteenth day, Lin Qiu reached the entrance to the Ninth Heaven—a gate of pure tribulation lightning, guarded by a true Nascent Soul remnant will shaped like a nine-headed thunder dragon.
To enter, one had to defeat it.
No one ever had.
Lin Qiu stood before it.
The dragon opened nine pairs of eyes.
"Child who swallowed my kin's heart," it rumbled. "You reek of endings."
Lin Qiu rolled his shoulders.
"I've come for the final token."
The dragon laughed, a sound like continents cracking.
"Then come. Let me see if you are thunder… or just noise."
They fought.
The battle shattered three floating islands.
The dragon used arts that had ended eras.
Lin Qiu answered with everything he had learned, everything he had become.
At the end he stood atop the dragon's broken skull, one foot on its central head, hand raised.
A single tricolored bolt fell from his palm and ended the remnant.
The gate opened.
Lin Qiu stepped through.
Behind him, the Eighth Heaven began to collapse, unable to contain what had just awakened fully.
Outside the realm, the sect leaders watched the leaderboard flicker.
Lin Qiu's token count stopped at 999.
Then jumped to 1,000.
The final heavenly token—the one no one had ever claimed.
The realm began to eject survivors.
Geniuses tumbled out of the gates, wounded, broken, alive only because Lin Qiu had ignored them.
Last of all, thirty days early, the central chaos tear widened.
Lin Qiu walked out.
Unscathed. Cloak spotless. One thousand tokens orbiting him like obedient stars.
He stopped in front of the dais.
The four sect leaders looked down at him.
Lei Wujing spoke first, voice soft.
"Name your terms, successor."
Lin Qiu looked at each sect in turn.
Jade Lotus lowered their eyes.
Burning Skyreach bowed their heads.
Blood Flame knelt.
Only Violet Heaven remained standing.
Lin Qiu smiled.
"I will join Violet Heaven Palace," he said. "But not as a disciple."
He raised his hand.
The one thousand tokens fused into a single crown of tricolored lightning that settled on his brow.
"As Thunder Monarch."
Thunder roared across the continent, shaking immortal caves that had been sealed for ten thousand years.
Ancient voices woke in the void and whispered one word:
Finally.
Lin Qiu looked toward the distant horizon, where greater storms waited.
The boy from Cloud's Rest was gone.
Something else had taken his place.
And the heavens, for the first time in an age, felt fear.
To be continued…