Xiao Yan lay on the cold stone floor for a long while before his breathing finally steadied. The joy in his features was almost impossible to contain. He shifted his slightly stiff legs, settled back into a cross-legged posture, and once again assumed the cultivation stance.
He let out a soft breath, half-closed his eyes, and gradually sank his awareness inward.
Inner vision — an auxiliary skill that only Dou Warriors could begin to master. The higher one's strength, the more thoroughly one could peer into the workings of the body.
His consciousness settled on the space beneath his navel, where a palm-sized vortex of milky white energy turned in a slow, steady orbit. Encircling the vortex's outer edge was a layer of gaseous energy resembling a nebula — luminous, pale, and faintly shimmering.
Xiao Yan regarded the tiny vortex with quiet satisfaction. Though its size was modest, the energy contained within was unquestionably ten times more potent than the ninth stage of Dou Qi he had wielded before.
The gap between a Dou Warrior and the ninth stage of Dou Qi was not a matter of degree — it was a difference in kind. Before reaching Dou Warrior, the energy a cultivator absorbed was called *Dou Qi*; only after crossing that threshold did one begin to draw upon true *Dou Qi* — the real thing.
The two terms were separated by a single word, yet the chasm between them was as vast as heaven and earth.
With his consciousness guiding the vortex, Xiao Yan gave a small mental command. A wisp of milky white Dou Qi separated smoothly from the mass and surged along the path his will indicated. He practiced this again and again, controlling the vortex's intake and output with increasing precision, until the movements felt as natural as flexing a muscle. Only then did he smile and release control, drawing his awareness back out of his body.
His tightly shut eyes snapped open. In the dark pupils, a milky white glow lingered for a full ten seconds before slowly fading away.
He exhaled a long, turbid breath, and the gray haze that left his lips carried with it a heaviness that had settled in his chest. With that single exhalation, his complexion brightened markedly, flushed with renewed vitality.
He rolled his neck. The sharp crack of bone against bone made him grin. Lifting his gaze, he looked to the cave entrance where Yao Lao hovered like a specter in the mist, and with a broad, triumphant smile, said: "I made it."
"Mm. You were fortunate — the vortex formed on your first attempt." Yao Lao gave a calm nod, his tone measured and matter-of-fact.
"Fortunate? That was pure skill, wasn't it?" Xiao Yan shrugged, but his expression quickly shifted to something sheepish. He extended a hand with an almost bashful air. "Master... now that I've reached the Dou Warrior level, shouldn't I be receiving my Dou Qi technique?"
Yao Lao rolled his eyes and drifted into the cave, settling down across from the boy. After a moment's thought, his expression grew somewhat solemn. "What sort of technique do you want?"
"Cough — well, that one. The one that's more bizarre than even a Heaven-tier technique. The one that... that can evolve." Xiao Yan scratched the back of his head, looking almost embarrassed.
Something unreadable flickered across Yao Lao's face. Then, to Xiao Yan's surprise, the old man fell silent.
"Master? What's wrong? You didn't — you weren't just teasing me about that technique, were you?" Xiao Yan's voice carried a note of unease.
"The technique can indeed evolve. I wasn't deceiving you about that," Yao Lao said quietly.
Relief and excitement surged across Xiao Yan's face. He rubbed his hands together, careful and tentative. "So... can I learn it?"
"This technique is extremely dangerous — that much is true, and so is its capacity for evolution," Yao Lao said after another long pause. He sighed. "But the risk... is staggeringly high."
Something in the old man's heavy, reluctant tone made Xiao Yan's stomach tighten. He slowly withdrew his hand. "How high?"
Yao Lao let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. "Since I first came into possession of this technique, I have never seen — nor heard of — anyone who has cultivated it to completion. So I cannot give you a definitive answer. But based on everything I know, accumulated over a lifetime of study... the probability of mastering this technique to its peak is... no greater than twenty percent."
"Twenty percent?" Xiao Yan's face stiffened. He managed a hollow laugh. "That — that can't really be this low, can it?"
Yao Lao nodded with a sigh, the bitterness in his voice unmistakable. "I'm afraid it truly is that low."
Xiao Yan rubbed his forehead, a helpless smile on his lips. Yet still, he could not quite bring himself to let go. The allure of a technique that could evolve into a Heaven-tier art was simply too great to abandon so easily.
"Master — could you at least tell me the basics of how it's cultivated?"
Yao Lao's dry, withered hands rubbed against each other. He hesitated for a long moment before speaking, his voice barely above a whisper. "The conditions for this technique's evolution are closely tied to what I mentioned the other day — the Heavenly Flame."
Xiao Yan narrowed his eyes. He said nothing, listening with every fiber of his being.
"Sigh... I came by this technique by chance — it was originally nameless, but I gave it a name of my own. I call it the Burning Decree." As he spoke, a complicated expression crossed Yao Lao's face. Whatever had happened in the process of obtaining this technique, it had clearly been far more difficult than he let on.
"The Burning Decree can indeed evolve. But its prerequisite for evolution requires a Heavenly Flame as its catalyst. Each stage of evolution demands that the practitioner *devour* a different Heavenly Flame." Yao Lao's voice had gone slightly hoarse. "Consider what that means. A Heavenly Flame is an entity of pure, catastrophic destruction — rare enough to appear once in a century. And even if you find one, who can guarantee they'll survive the process of devouring it? When I acquired this Bone-Chilling Ice Flame, I nearly burned to nothing myself..."
"What's truly terrifying is that the technique demands devouring not just one, but many different Heavenly Flames." His voice dropped lower. "Heavens — a single Heavenly Flame is enough to torment even a Dou Huang to the brink of death. I cannot imagine what would happen to a person carrying two or more Heavenly Flames within their body at the same time..."
Xiao Yan stared at Yao Lao's face, stricken and still. The idea of evolving by devouring Heavenly Flames — the sheer insanity of it — left him momentarily frozen.
*Who devours whom is anyone's guess. Whoever created this technique was almost certainly a madman.*
"Though the danger is extraordinary, I do not doubt the technique's potential," Yao Lao continued, his voice regaining some of its old steadiness. "If someone truly mastered the Burning Decree... on the entire Dou Qi continent, apart from those few whose names can be counted on one hand... I doubt anyone could stand against them."
Xiao Yan nodded in understanding, the gravity of those words settling into his bones. If someone could wield multiple Heavenly Flames with mastery — at that point, even a Dou Sheng would think twice before crossing them. *Assuming, of course, that the Heavenly Flames didn't devour me first.*
Yao Lao regarded Xiao Yan for a long, silent moment. Then, slowly, he asked: "Knowing all this... do you still wish to learn?"
Xiao Yan's body trembled, almost imperceptibly. He said nothing.