58: Institutional seats

Qingyun Sect, Forbidden Ground in the back mountains.

The stone door, heavy as a mountain, slowly closed, cutting off the last light and sound from the outside.

Inside the secret chamber, pure dead silence descended.

Lu Yuan sat cross-legged in the center of the cold stone platform, his breathing steady, his heart like an ancient well undisturbed by ripples.

He was not in a hurry to begin.

He simply allowed himself to be immersed in this absolute darkness and quiet, honing his mind to unprecedented clarity.

A moment later, Lu Yuan slowly opened his palm.

A nine-colored leaf, swirling with light, floated silently above his palm.

It was not a physical entity, but more like a confined, concentrated glow of life, with nine colors flowing and interchanging within it, as if containing the rise and fall of a world.

A single true leaf of the nine revolutions soul returning grass.

Without hesitation, Lu Yuan opened his mouth and gently inhaled it into his abdomen.

Boom!

There was no sharp pain.

A warm torrent washed over his Dao Foundation, bringing the first creative spring rain.

His already dilapidated Dao Foundation, riddled with spiderweb-like cracks, groaned under the overwhelming force of this power.

And then, the crisp sound of new life.

Cracks were rapidly filled and reshaped, becoming tougher and wider than ever before.

His Meridians, once dry riverbeds, transformed into surging rivers.

His Dantian, once a broken pottery bowl, became a perfectly round jade.

Flawless.

An unprecedented sense of Perfection and power filled Lu Yuan's limbs and bones.

The time had come.

With a thought, all of Lu Yuan's Spiritual Qi roared and converged, compressing towards the center of his Dantian.

Core Formation officially began.

Qi liquified, and liquid solidified.

The air in the secret chamber began to thicken, and the runes on the walls, stimulated by the immense Spiritual Pressure, flickered erratically.

Just as that point of spiritual light was about to condense into the shape of a pill.

A sudden change occurred.

Lu Yuan's vision was no longer dark.

Faces, both familiar and strange, appeared.

Li Mo, the fellow disciple he had set up and then killed, with his resentful and unwilling gaze before his death.

Medicine Obsessive Liu Xuan, whom he had shorted, his desperate and bewildered roar as his cultivation plummeted.

Qian Wuya, who had bought a poisoned pill for his offspring, his family eventually ruined, his furious curse.

And many, many more... All the "targets" that had been erased as "costs" on his path of transactions now transformed into the most real grievances, into ferocious Heart Demons, pouncing on his Dao Heart from all directions.

"Give me back my life!"

"You devil!"

Lu Yuan's Dao Heart was absolute rationality.

The impact of these emotions, to him, was nothing more than meaningless noise.

However, these grievances themselves dripped into the sea of Karma between him and the heavens.

They attracted real trouble.

A will, billions of times more terrifying than a Heart Demon, descended.

It was cold, vast, ruthless, devoid of any emotion.

The automatic backlash of Heavenly Dao rules.

It could not comprehend Lu Yuan's existence, but it could clearly perceive that he was an anomaly who constantly generated "bad debts" by exploiting loopholes in the rules.

Crack.

A shackle, formed by pure black Karma, appeared out of thin air in Lu Yuan's Dantian, locking the nascent Golden Core that was about to form.

The shackle tightened relentlessly.

It sought to completely crush his Dao path, his future, his very existence.

Lu Yuan's Physical Body began to crack, and blood seeped from his seven orifices.

But his eyes, in the midst of extreme crisis, lit up with dazzling golden light.

His brain was operating at a speed beyond its limits.

This was the Heavenly Dao's reckoning with him.

It was also... an opportunity for a transaction.

The interface of the Great Dao Options Exchange unfurled with a roar in the deepest part of Lu Yuan's consciousness.

His recently qualified "Market Maker" authority glowed with scorching light.

An idea, utterly insane yet logically perfectly closed, took shape.

Since the Heavenly Dao believes I will fail.

Then I will... short myself.

His thoughts raced.

"Utilize 'Market Maker' authority to create a new contract."

"Underlying: Lu Yuan's Core Formation failure."

"Contract Type: Put Option."

"Issuer: Lu Yuan."

Lines of cold text generated in his mind.

Immediately after, Lu Yuan made a move that any Cultivator would find incomprehensible.

He called up all his karma points.

That was his entire fortune, obtained after his audacious gamble in the Burial God Abyss.

Then, he invested it all.

"Buyer: Lu Yuan."

"Buy contract: 'Lu Yuan's Core Formation Failure' Put Option."

"Quantity: All."

"Confirm transaction."

Buzz—

When the transaction was successful.

That ruthless, ever-tightening Karmic shackle from the Heavenly Dao suddenly paused.

A logical contradiction, incomprehensible to the Heavenly Dao's rules, appeared in its judgment.

This anomaly had placed all his bets on his own failure.

From a Karmic perspective, his "failure" trend had already reached its peak.

The rules had been deceived.

That terrifying pressure, capable of crushing a Nascent Soul, loosened for a fleeting ten-thousandth of a second.

Now!

Lu Yuan's eyes were blood-red, and his Divine Soul let out a silent roar.

He poured all his will, all his Spiritual Qi, all his desire for life, into the pill seed bound by the shackle.

"Condense!"

Bang!

The Karmic shackle shattered into pieces.

A brilliant golden pill, spinning, floated in the center of his Dantian, radiating light.

It was only the size of a Dragon's eye, but its surface was not smooth and round.

It was covered with countless mysterious golden patterns.

These patterns, rising and falling, crisscrossing, were like the K-line charts he was all too familiar with, recording the rise and fall, success and failure of all things.

The unique karma dao pill, never before seen in this world, was formed.

Vast magical power, far exceeding that of ordinary Golden Core Cultivators, swept through his entire body.

Lu Yuan felt that with just a thought, he could manipulate the Karmic threads of all things within a hundred zhang around him.

At the same time.

On the interface of the Great Dao Options Exchange, a frantic stream of new information surged.

"Congratulations, your cultivation has advanced to the Golden Core Realm, and your Dao Foundation has been perfectly reshaped."

"Congratulations, you have completed the astonishing transaction 'Shorting the Heavenly Tribulation', and your accumulated profits have met the conditions for seat promotion."

A cold voice echoed in his mind.

"Transaction seat promoted to — 'Institutional Seat'!".

"New authority unlocked: Contract Creation."

The moment the karma dao pill completely stabilized, Lu Yuan's mind trembled violently.

He felt that his Golden Core resonated, albeit faintly, with a vast and cold entity in a distant, unimaginably deep space, an entity equally imbued with the aura of "rules" and "transactions."

As if a sleeping jailer had heard the familiar clinking of keys outside the cage.