The following days blurred into a monochrome nightmare for Long Chen.
He was moved from his spacious, sunlit courtyard near the clan's training grounds to a small, damp side-room adjacent to the seldom-used back annex of the Ancestral Hall. The message was clear: out of sight, out of mind. His father fought the Elder Council daily, arguing for resources, for healers from the city, for another attempt with a different spirit stone. Each time, he was met with stony faces and cold logic.
"Clan Head, the cost of a High-Grade Meridian Mending Pill is five hundred spirit stones. The yield from our spirit herb garden for a year," Elder Long Kuan, the stern steward of resources, stated flatly. "To spend it on a… prognosis that even Physician Wu declared 'irreversibly severed'… it is not stewardship. It is sentimentality. Sentimentality bleeds a clan dry."
Long Zhan's fists would clench, his broad shoulders trembling with suppressed rage and helplessness. Long Chen, lying on his thin pallet, would watch from the doorway, a knot of shame and fury tightening in his own gut. He was the cause of his father's humiliation.
His body, once a well-tuned instrument capable of lifting thousand-pound cauldrons, now felt like a sack of brittle bones wrapped in leaden flesh. The path of his shattered meridians ached with a constant, dull throb, a phantom pain of lost potential. Attempting to circulate even the faintest wisp of energy, as he tried desperately on the second day, resulted in a spike of agony so sharp he blacked out.
The world outside his room was worse.
On the third day, he ventured to the communal dining hall for the first time. The cacophony of conversation died the moment he shuffled in. Dozens of eyes, once filled with respect or envy, now held pity, scorn, or outright mockery. He was no longer "Young Master Long Chen," but "the Cripple," "the Cursed One."
He kept his head down, focusing on the rough wooden grain of the empty table before him. The chatter resumed, but louder, as if to emphasize his exclusion.
"…heard the Dragon Resonance Stone actually cracked internally. Rejected his impure blood."
"Serves him right, always acting so high and mighty. Thought he was better than everyone."
"Long Hao is the future now. Already at Body Tempering 8th Layer. He'll form a proper Qi Condensation star, you'll see."
The words were arrows, each finding its mark. Long Chen's knuckles whitened on the cheap ceramic bowl. Before he could get his meager portion of plain rice and boiled vegetables, a shadow fell over him.
"Well, well. If it isn't our former genius. Slumming it with the real disciples now?"
Long Chen didn't need to look up to know the sneering voice belonged to Long Hu, Long Hao's chief lackey and cousin, a burly youth at Body Tempering 6th Layer.
"Move, Cripple. This table's for cultivators with a future," Long Hu said, shoving Long Chen's shoulder.
The shove wasn't heavy, but to Long Chen's weakened body, it was like being hit by a sack of rocks. He stumbled off the bench, crashing to the floor. His bowl skittered away, rice scattering across the dusty stones. A wave of laughter erupted from Long Hu's circle.
Heat flooded Long Chen's face—a mix of humiliation and raw, unadulterated anger. He pushed himself up, his body screaming in protest. He met Long Hu's gloating gaze. There was a time he could have flattened Long Hu with a finger. Now, the brute's crude aura felt like a physical pressure.
"Pick it up," Long Hu jerked his chin at the spilled food. "Waste not, want not. Even you should know that now."
For a second, Long Chen considered lunging. But the agonizing throb in his dantian was a cruel reminder. He was powerless. Every instinct screamed for retaliation, but survival, a new and bitter instinct, screamed louder. Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, he knelt, ignoring the jeers, and began gathering the cold, dirtied rice grains with trembling hands.
That night, back in his cold room, the humiliation burned hotter than any physical pain. He stared at his hands in the moonlight filtering through the single, grimy window. They were the same hands that had once channeled dragon-strength. Now they shook picking up rice.
Is this it? The thought was a poison. A life of scorn, cleaning floors, waiting to die forgotten?
He closed his eyes, and against the darkness, he saw not the mocking faces of Long Hu, but the chaotic, multi-colored light from the altar. It had destroyed him. But in his deepest meditation, in the quietest corner of his ruined soul, he could sometimes feel that faint, alien warmth where the light had touched. It didn't heal. It just… was. A speck of something indestructible in a field of ruin.
A resolve, cold and hard as the floor beneath him, began to form. He would not beg. He would not fade away. If the heavens had broken him, he would learn to live in the cracks. If his dragon was dead, he would crawl on his belly like a worm, but he would keep moving.
The next morning, when the stern-faced Elder in charge of menial tasks assigned him to clean the Ancestral Hall and its surrounding courtyards—a duty reserved for the lowest servants or those being punished—Long Chen simply nodded. He accepted the coarse broom and bucket without a word.
As he swept the endless dust from the silent Ancestral Hall, his eyes lingered on the now-benign altar. The place of his destruction. He didn't feel fear looking at it. He felt a strange, grim curiosity. That light had come from beneath the stone, from the clan's very foundations.
What secret had he, the "genius," accidentally triggered? And what did it leave behind, sleeping in the ashes of his blood?
He didn't know. But as he swept, each stroke of the broom became a silent vow. He would find out. Or he would die trying. The weight of scorn was heavy, but it was forging a new spine within him—one not of jade, but of stubborn, unyielding iron.
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