Chapter 87: The Scripture of Nine Heavens Dragon Ascension

Life in the village settled into a strange, quiet rhythm over the following days.

Most mornings, I woke before the sun had fully risen, slipping out to the edge of the settlement where the trees thinned out into open ground, far enough from prying eyes that I could train without worrying about a stray fireball or a chunk of frozen earth startling the villagers. It wasn’t the kind of training ground I was used to back home, no proper arena, no sparring partner skilled enough to actually push me, but it was better than nothing.

The first thing I tried, every single morning without fail, was Soulfire.

I’d sit cross-legged on the ground, close my eyes, and reach inward, searching for that same warm, azure flame I’d felt deep in my soul during the fight with the Dreadlord, and again, briefly, against the fortress captain. I knew it was there. I could feel its presence sitting quietly at the very center of me, like a candle burning behind a locked door.

The problem was, I had absolutely no idea how to actually open that door on command.

Every attempt followed roughly the same pattern. I’d focus, reaching for the flame the same way I reached for my mana, and almost immediately, a sharp, stabbing pain would flare up behind my eyes, forcing me to pull back before the headache could drop me to my knees entirely.

’It’s not mana. That much I’m sure of. Trying to pull it the same way I pull mana just doesn’t work.’

I experimented with different approaches. Breathing exercises borrowed from my usual cultivation method. Clearing my mind entirely, the way I did when entering my inner sanctum. Even, on one particularly frustrating morning, simply yelling at it internally, demanding it cooperate, which predictably accomplished absolutely nothing except making me feel like an idiot sitting alone on a rock.

Every single time, the same sharp headache shut me down before I could get anywhere close to actually summoning it properly.

’Fine. If Soulfire doesn’t want to cooperate yet, I’ll focus on something that will.’

So I shifted my attention toward the one thing that had actually, properly unlocked after my awakening.

The Nine Heavens Dragon Ascension Scripture.

I remembered receiving it years ago as a Karma reward, remembered the overwhelming flood of information crashing into my mind, and remembered, with no small amount of frustration, discovering afterward that the entire technique had been completely locked, sealed away behind some mysterious condition I had no way of understanding at the time.

That condition, apparently, had been my bloodline awakening.

Now, whenever I slipped into my inner sanctum to cultivate, I could actually feel the technique waiting there for me, no longer a locked door, but something closer to a long, winding staircase stretching up into darkness, each step representing a deeper layer of mastery I had yet to climb.

The first time I properly focused on it, really focused, letting my consciousness sink entirely into the technique rather than just skimming the surface of it, something strange happened.

Images flickered through my mind. Not my own memories, but something borrowed, distant, and faded, like watching an old film reel playing out behind my closed eyes. I saw flashes of a massive, ancient dragon coiled around a mountain peak, its scales the exact same shade of azure as the flame burning in my soul. I saw it diving through storm clouds, breathing frost that froze entire rivers solid in seconds. I saw it locked in combat against something equally massive and terrifying, something I couldn’t quite make out clearly enough to properly identify.

’Whose memories are these? The ancestor’s? Or something even older than that?’

The visions faded as quickly as they’d come, leaving behind only a lingering, half-formed understanding of the technique itself, settling into my mind the way instinct settles into muscle memory after years of repetitive training.

I learned, slowly, that the Nine Heavens Dragon Ascension Scripture wasn’t a single technique at all, but a staircase of nine separate stages, each one called an Ascension, each one building on everything that came before it. The First Ascension, the one I’d already unlocked without fully understanding during the fight, focused entirely on durability. Hardening the body, layer by layer, reinforcing it until ordinary weapons and weaker spells could no longer find a way through.

The Second Ascension, from what fragments I could piece together, seemed to focus on infusing the blood with dragon power. The Third, apparently, dealt with Mana circulation which becomes vastly superior. Beyond that, the visions grew hazier, harder to interpret clearly, as though the technique itself refused to reveal anything beyond what I’d already earned the right to see.

’Nine stages. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of the very first one.’

I sat with that realization for a long moment, turning it over carefully. Back at the fortress, I’d activated the First Ascension almost entirely on instinct, desperation forcing it out of me without any real understanding of what I was actually doing. The frost that had spread across my skin, the increased durability that let me take hits that should have shattered bone, all of it had been raw, uncontrolled power, burning through my limited reserves far faster than it should have.

’If I want to actually master this properly, I can’t keep relying on instinct and desperation. I need to understand it. Build it up properly, the same way I built up everything else.’

So that became my new focus.

Every morning, after giving up on Soulfire for the day, I’d settle into a proper meditative stance, slip into my inner sanctum, and work specifically on the First Ascension, trying to recreate that same hardening effect deliberately, calmly, rather than as some desperate last resort.

The first few attempts were genuinely pathetic.

I’d manage to summon a faint, barely noticeable layer of frost across my forearm, holding it for maybe three or four seconds before my concentration broke and the effect dissolved entirely, leaving me gasping slightly from the mental strain of maintaining it.

"You’re doing that weird frosty thing on your arm again," Mira said one afternoon, plopping down beside me on the rocky outcropping I’d claimed as my personal training spot, watching with open curiosity as I attempted, for probably the fifteenth time that day, to extend the effect across my entire hand.

"Looks like you’re just really cold."

I shot her a brief, unamused glance before returning my focus to the task at hand. The frost flickered weakly across my knuckles, held for a count of five this time, a small improvement, and then dissolved.

"I am trying to Progress..."

"If you say so."

Despite the slow, frustrating pace, I kept at it, day after day, pushing a little further each time. By the end of the first week, I could maintain the frost layer across my entire hand for nearly thirty seconds without losing concentration. By the start of the second week, I’d expanded it to cover my entire forearm, the durability noticeably increasing alongside it, enough that when Mira, out of pure curiosity, decided to test it by smacking my arm with a stick, the wood actually cracked slightly on impact instead of just bouncing off harmlessly.

"Ow, okay, that actually hurt my hand," she said, shaking her stinging palm with an offended expression, as though my arm had somehow personally wronged her. "Warn a girl next time."

"You’re the one who decided to hit me with a stick."

"For experimenting."

I rolled my eyes but couldn’t quite hide the small, satisfied smile tugging at my lips. It wasn’t much, not yet, nowhere close to the full-body hardening I’d managed unconsciously during the desperate fights, but it was real, measurable progress, built through actual understanding rather than blind instinct.

’If I want to climb all nine stages eventually, I have to properly master this first one. No shortcuts. No relying on desperation to force my way through it.’

I thought about the vision of the ancient dragon again, the sheer, overwhelming power radiating from it even through fragmented memories centuries old.

’Whoever you were, whatever you went through to create this technique, I’m going to figure it out properly. Every single stage of it.’

With that thought settling firmly in my mind, I closed my eyes again, sinking back into my inner sanctum, and continued the slow, steady work of building myself, piece by piece, into whatever I needed to become to actually survive everything still waiting for me beyond this quiet little village.

...

[A/N: Target For this Week!

>Reach→100+ GT (2-Extra Chapter)

>Magic Castle→ (3-Extra Chapter+Fav. Character’s POV)

>Space Craft→ (7-Extra Chapter+Fav. Ch. POV)

>Gachapon→ (10-Extra Chapter)+Fav. Ch. POV]