Chapter 2: The Lowest Rank and the Highest Error
The sky didn't just turn dark. It ceased to exist.
One moment, the Neo-Shanghai Awakening Plaza was bathed in the warm, artificial sunlight of the dome generators. The next, the heavens above the stadium had been replaced by a churning, impossible phenomenon that defied the laws of physics.
On the left side of the sky, space collapsed into a singular point of absolute nothingness. It was a black so profound it hurt to look at—a hunger that seemed to drink the light from the air itself. It was the visual representation of Silence.
On the right side, a blinding radiance erupted. It wasn't fire; it was the concept of Dawn weaponized. Golden ribbons of plasma swirled violently, birthing miniature suns that flickered and died in milliseconds, only to be reborn brighter than before.
Between these two impossible forces—the Alpha and the Omega—stood Jiang Chen.
He was still on his knees, his hands clutching the cold obsidian of the Awakening Monolith. But he wasn't trembling anymore.
The agonizing pain that had plagued him since birth—the grinding of his brittle bones, the searing heat of his nerves—had vanished. In its place was a sensation of fullness. It felt as if he had been holding his breath for eighteen years, and for the first time, he was finally inhaling.
[CRITICAL ALERT]
[Grandmist Sovereign Body: ACTIVATED.]
[Status: Starving.]
[Feeding Protocol Initiated.]
The notification burned in gold across his retina. Jiang Chen gasped as two torrents of energy—one freezing cold like liquid nitrogen, the other hot like molten gold—slammed into his back.
They didn't kill him. They completed him.
The VIP Skybox
"Patriarch! Look at the readings!"
In the glass-walled observation deck, chaos had erupted. The frantic shout came from the Head Array Master of the Jiang Clan, a man who usually remained calm even during S-Rank dungeon breaks. Now, his face was the color of ash.
Jiang Wu, the SS-Rank God of War, had stopped walking away. He stood frozen, his back to the window, his shoulders tense. He could feel it. Every cell in his body, honed by decades of fighting catastrophic monsters, was screaming at him to run.
Slowly, Jiang Wu turned around.
The stadium below was in pandemonium. The energy barriers—Class-A forcefields designed to contain nuclear blasts—were shattering like cheap glass. The fifty thousand spectators were pressed flat against their seats, pinned by a spiritual pressure so dense it was practically solid.
But Jiang Wu didn't look at the crowd. He looked at the Monolith.
Behind his "crippled" son, two shadows were rising.
"The mana density..." the Array Master stammered, his tablet exploding in a shower of sparks. "It's... it's unreadable. The scanners are maxing out at EX-Rank and then crashing. Patriarch, is this... is this a Dungeon Break? Right in the city center?"
"No," Jiang Wu whispered, his golden eyes narrowing. "It's not a Break."
He watched as the black void coalesced into a serpentine shape that spanned the heavens, and the golden light hardened into wings that dripped with liquid fire.
"It's a Summoning."
The Arena Floor
Luo Tian was on the ground.
The arrogance of the A-Rank genius was gone. He was curled into a fetal ball, clutching his head, blood trickling from his ears. The "Dragon Fear" emanating from the black void wasn't just physical pressure; it was a psychological attack. It forced the brain to comprehend its own insignificance.
'I am an ant,' Luo Tian's mind screamed over and over. 'I am dust. I am nothing.'
He looked up through tear-filled eyes, trying to see what monster had descended to kill them all. What he saw broke his reality.
Jiang Chen.
The useless, broken Glass Prince was standing up. He wasn't being crushed. He wasn't bleeding. He was standing in the eye of the storm, his black hair floating upward as if underwater, his clothes fluttering in a wind that didn't exist.
Above him, the two entities fully manifested.
To his left, the Abyssal Eclipse Dragon. It was colossal, its body a winding river of obsidian scales that seemed to absorb the world around it. It had no visible eyes, only sockets of purple fire that looked like dying nebulas. Its mere presence caused the marble floor of the arena to age and crumble into dust.
To his right, the Celestial Solar Phoenix. It was a creature of terrifying beauty, its plumage made of shifting light frequencies. Six wings spread out, shielding the stadium from the vacuum of space. Where its feathers shed light, flowers bloomed instantly on the concrete before burning to ash from the intensity.
They were gods. Ancient, incomprehensible gods.
And they were looking down at Jiang Chen.
[System Notification]
[Bonding Process: 15%...]
[WARNING: Summoned Entities are rejecting the contract.]
[Reason: Host Rank (Mortal) is too low for Entity Rank (Universal Origin).]
Jiang Chen heard a voice in his head. It wasn't the robotic system voice. It was a woman's voice—cold, imperious, and dripping with centuries of disdain.
"A mortal?"
The voice echoed like ice cracking in a deep canyon. It came from the Dragon. "I was sleeping in the Void beyond the Edge. Who dares disturb my slumber with a summoning circle made of mud?"
"Sister, calm yourself," a second voice chimed in. This one was warm, melodious, but filled with an overwhelming arrogance. "Though I agree... this is insulting. I was in the middle of nesting on a Supernova. Why have I been pulled to this backwater rock?"
The Phoenix turned its massive, radiant head toward the Dragon. "And why am I stuck with you, you gloomy worm?"
"Watch your tongue, glorified chicken," the Dragon hissed. "Or I will extinguish your little fire."
The pressure in the stadium spiked. The sky groaned. The clash between their conflicting auras began to tear spiderweb cracks in the fabric of space.
Jiang Chen felt his knees buckle. He realized with a jolt of horror that his own Summons were about to destroy the planet just by bickering. They didn't even care about him. To them, he was just an ant that had accidentally dialed the wrong number.
[Bonding FAILED.]
[Entities preparing to depart.]
[Warning: Forced departure will detonate the Host's soul.]
Jiang Chen gritted his teeth. 'I didn't survive eighteen years of torture just to die because my pets are snobs.'
He closed his eyes and focused on the burning sensation in his gut—the Grandmist Physique. It was hungry. It wanted to dominate.
"Hey," Jiang Chen said.
His voice was quiet, but amplified by the System, it cut through the mental chatter of the two goddesses like a thunderclap.
"Shut up."
Silence descended.
The massive Dragon lowered its head, bringing its snout within inches of Jiang Chen. The sheer size of it was paralyzing; a single tooth was larger than Jiang Chen's entire body.
"Did the ant speak?" the Dragon mused, sounding genuinely amused. "Did you tell the End of All Things to shut up?"
"I did," Jiang Chen looked straight into the purple fire of its eyes. "Because you're annoying me."
[System Error: Host Authority Override.]
[Grandmist Sovereign Aura: RELEASED.]
Jiang Chen didn't control it. His body acted on instinct. A pulse of energy—neither black nor gold, but a Primordial Purple—exploded from his chest.
It wasn't a blast of force. It was a ripple of Law.
The Grandmist was the origin of the universe. It was the canvas upon which the Dragon and Phoenix were painted. When the purple aura hit them, the two massive entities froze.
They felt it. The suppression. The hierarchy.
"This aura..." The Phoenix shrieked, her voice losing its arrogance and filling with shock. "The Origin Breath? Impossible! The Origin vanished eons ago!"
"Hongmeng..." The Dragon recoiled, its shadows trembling. "You possess the Hongmeng Physique? You are... the Sovereign?"
[System Override Success.]
[Forcing Contract.]
[Activating Trait: 100x Bloodline Evolution.]
"I don't care what you were before," Jiang Chen said, his voice echoing with a strange, metallic distortion. He raised both hands. "You are in my house now. Down."
The purple light intensified, wrapping around the two colossal beasts like chains.
[Evolution Triggered.]
[Abyssal Dragon -> Primordial Abyssal Eclipse Dragon (Tier: Origin)]
[Solar Phoenix -> Primordial Celestial Solar Phoenix (Tier: Origin)]
A feedback loop opened. The energy poured from the beasts into Jiang Chen, and from Jiang Chen back into the beasts.
The massive, sky-shattering forms began to shrink. The darkness swirled, condensing. The fire spiraled inward. The fifty-meter-tall monsters compressed rapidly, folding into human shapes.
A blinding flash of white light engulfed the arena.
When the light faded, the monsters were gone.
Standing in front of Jiang Chen were two women.
On his left stood a woman of devastating, cold beauty. She wore robes that looked like woven midnight. Her skin was pale as moonlight, her eyes deep purple, and a pair of small, curved black horns poked through her long, raven hair. This was Mo You.
On his right stood a woman who radiated light. She wore white and gold armor, her hair a flowing cascade of blonde and red. Her eyes were molten gold, and her presence felt like a warm summer day. This was Feng Xi.
They looked at their own hands, then at Jiang Chen. The shock on their faces was palpable. They felt the evolution in their blood. Their limits had been broken. The Grandmist energy had pushed them beyond the peak of the Universe.
They knelt.
It wasn't forced by the system. It was instinct.
"Greetings, My Lord," Mo You whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"We greet the Sovereign," Feng Xi added, bowing her head.
The pressure vanished. The sun returned. The barrier flicker-faded back into existence.
The stadium was dead silent. Fifty thousand people were staring, mouths open, brains unable to process what they had just seen. One moment, the apocalypse. The next, the class cripple was standing there with two women who looked like they had stepped out of a mythology book.
Jiang Chen took a deep breath. He felt... incredible. Strong. Unbreakable.
The System text floated in front of him, finally settling.
[Integration Complete.]
[Current Host Rank: A (Concealed as Rank C)]
[Warning: High-Tier Entities detected nearby. Concealment Protocol Active.]
The referee, a B-Rank veteran who had wet himself during the pressure wave, crawled forward, his microphone shaking in his hand.
"S-Student Jiang...?" he squeaked. "What... what is your Summon?"
Jiang Chen looked at the referee, then up at the VIP box where his father was staring down with an expression of utter bewilderment.
He looked at Mo You and Feng Xi.
"Conceal your auras," he mentally commanded. "To the level of a normal beast."
Mo You scoffed, but she obeyed. She suppressed her world-ending vibe until she felt like a standard C-Rank shadow elemental. Feng Xi did the same, dimming her light to that of a fire bird.
Jiang Chen turned to the referee and shrugged, putting on his best innocent face.
"I don't know," Jiang Chen lied smoothly. "I think the machine malfunctioned. It said C-Rank, right? These are just... Spirit Guardians. Are we done? I'm tired."
The crowd blinked. The terror began to fade, replaced by confusion. Had it been a malfunction? A visual glitch? After all, the readings said C-Rank. And the monsters were gone, replaced by... human-shaped spirits?
"Just... C-Rank?" someone muttered. "But the pressure..."
"It must have been the machine exploding!" another shouted, desperate for a logical explanation. "Look at the Monolith! It's cracked! The feedback loop must have created a hallucination!"
"Yeah! There's no way the cripple summoned a god. Look at him, he's barely standing!"
The denial was swift. People believed what they wanted to believe. They couldn't accept that the trash had become a god, so they convinced themselves it was a pyrotechnic failure.
But up in the VIP box, Jiang Wu gripped the railing until the steel twisted under his fingers. He had seen the eyes of that Dragon. He had felt the ancient fear.
'That was no hallucination,' the Warlord thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. 'My son... what are you?'
Down on the stage, Jiang Chen turned to walk away. Luo Tian was still on the ground, shivering.
Jiang Chen paused and looked down at the "genius."
"You said you were going to break my bones, Luo Tian?" Jiang Chen whispered, his voice cold.
Luo Tian flinched, scrambling backward like a crab. "S-Stay away! You... you freak!"
Jiang Chen smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"I'll be waiting," he said.
He walked toward the exit tunnel, Mo You and Feng Xi flanking him like royal guards. As he entered the shadows of the tunnel, away from the cameras, Jiang Chen finally let out the breath he was holding.
"Okay," he whispered to his two new companions. "Now... explain to me exactly what you two are, before I have a heart attack."
Mo You looked at him, her purple eyes narrowing. "You commanded us to kneel, Sovereign. Do not ruin the moment by acting like a frightened child."
Feng Xi giggled, the sound like wind chimes. "Oh, I think I'm going to like this little Master. He has potential. But first... Master, I am starving. Do you have any stars to eat? Or perhaps a small moon?"
Jiang Chen stumbled. "Stars? We eat rice here."
"Rice?" Mo You looked disgusted. "How barbaric."
Jiang Chen massaged his temples. He had power. He had health. He had the Alpha and the Omega.
And he had a feeling his life was about to get very, very complicated.