Boss-Tier Gene Armament, A Massive Upgrade
Inside the Shiman Tower.
The voice from above announced the start of the Elite Trial.
A stone figure appeared before Lu Yuan on the pale, ashen ground — but unlike the gray-white stone men from the regular trials, this one was dark gray.
The dark gray stone man brought both fists together against its chest with a resonant crack, let out a roar, and drove one foot into the earth.
*BOOM!*
The ground shook. It lunged straight at him.
Lu Yuan raised his greatsword to meet it.
The fist wind howled past his face, tossing his hair. Steel met stone — and with a thunderous crack, fractures split across the stone man's fist, its body hurled backward by the impact.
He let out a quiet breath of relief. *Fast* — significantly faster than the gray-white stone men from the regular trials, roughly equivalent to a warrior at 50% tempering. But the damage it dealt him was limited.
With Black Iron Body active, the dark gray stone man's blows couldn't breach his defense at all.
He confirmed what he needed to know, then advanced without sparing a thought for his own protection. A relentless cascade of slashes — and the stone man's head shattered.
"Elite Trial Level 1 cleared. Reward: 10 drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew."
Ten times the reward of ordinary Level 1. He absorbed all ten drops. His tempering reached 41%.
*If Level 1 gives this much, Level 2 must give even more.*
"Challenger XI9201, do you wish to proceed to Elite Trial Level 2? Declining will result in being expelled from Shiman Tower."
"Proceed."
Just as he'd expected: Elite Level 2 spawned ten dark gray stone men.
Ten combined were more dangerous than a hundred gray-white stone men. The spirit power cost to kill them was substantial. Whenever his reserves ran low, he absorbed Spirit Crystals to replenish. He burned one drop of Moonstone Spirit Dew to hold himself at peak condition.
*Where would a Trainee-rank Gene Warrior come by this much spirit power?*
He let his defense carry the blows entirely and poured everything into offense — sword flashing, one stone man down after another.
After an unknown stretch of time, the last one fell.
"Elite Trial Level 2 cleared. Reward: 100 drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew, 1 drop of Moonstone Spirit Essence."
A field of Moonstone Spirit Dew drops materialized — and at the very center, a single silver liquid drop unlike the rest.
"Hm? Something different?"
Lu Yuan plucked it from the air. Information flooded into his mind from the Origin Domain.
**Moonstone Spirit Essence:** Distilled and refined from Moonstone Spirit Dew. Its properties are broadly similar — it improves cultivation, heals injuries, and with sustained use, further strengthens defense — but its potency is one hundred times greater. Its healing effect surpasses even a superior treatment serum.
*One hundred times.*
He turned the drop over in his thoughts. *If I take a critical wound someday, this could be the difference between surviving and not.*
He stored it carefully without consuming it, then absorbed the hundred drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew. His tempering climbed to 48%.
"Challenger XI9201, do you wish to proceed to Elite Trial Level 3?"
"Proceed."
One hundred dark gray stone men appeared on the pale ground before him.
Lu Yuan's expression tightened. *Even a warrior with an elite-rank gene encoded and tempering at 100% would go weak in the knees here.*
The stone men beat their fists against their chests in unison, roared, and charged. The floor thrummed under their collective weight.
He fought. There was no strategy — just the same relentless rhythm as the day he'd fallen into the ant nest, sword rising and falling until the motion became mechanical, almost mindless. Spirit Crystals fed his reserves whenever they ran dry.
As the battle wore on, his tempering climbed under the sustained pressure, and the cumulative effect of all the Moonstone Spirit Dew he'd absorbed kept reinforcing his natural resilience. By the later stages, with Black Iron Body running at full, the dark gray stone men could no longer breach his defense at all.
Still — a hundred of them in sustained combat left him genuinely hurt. Despite his formidable defenses, the relentless pounding had accumulated into real injury by the time the last one fell. He used his one stored drop of Moonstone Spirit Essence to bring himself back to full condition.
"Elite Trial Level 3 cleared. Reward: 1,000 drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew, 10 drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence."
*Ten drops?*
His eyes lit up.
He absorbed the thousand drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew without hesitation: one drop, ten drops, twenty drops...
The effect was striking — and it was more than a cultivation increase. After absorbing over a thousand drops, he could feel it clearly: his body had changed at a fundamental level. Muscles, bones, skin — all tougher, denser, more resilient than before. His defense had strengthened by nearly ten percent. His strength and speed had measurably improved as well.
*This isn't from tempering my Gene Chain. This is additional — stacked on top.*
He exhaled. All of it from Moonstone Spirit Dew alone.
After Level 3, he expected either an end to the trials or a dramatic escalation into something new. What came instead was simply: Elite Level 4.
He accepted immediately.
The trial began.
One thousand dark gray stone men surged toward him. The entire chamber vibrated under the impact of their steps.
One involuntary thought crossed his mind: *Am I going to get trampled to death?*
Even warriors with elite-rank genes at full 100% tempering would have buckled at the sight of a thousand of these creatures bearing down on them at once.
He had no such option. He fought.
Sword rising and falling, Spirit Crystals absorbed in bursts to keep his spirit power flowing, combat stretching on until he'd lost any sense of time. This was exactly how the ant nest had felt — swinging until thought dropped away and only the motion remained. He was aware, distantly, that he was accumulating injuries. He was also aware that he was still standing, still cutting, still advancing through the horde one stroke at a time.
After what felt like an age, the last dark gray stone man crumpled under a single blow.
"Elite Trial Level 4 cleared. Reward: 100 drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence, Gene Armament: Moonstone."
He gathered the rewards into his hands.
One hundred silver drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence floated before him — and alongside them, a single moon-white stone carved in the shape of a crescent. Its surface pulsed with a deep cyan light.
His eyes went straight to that glow the moment it appeared. His expression froze.
*Cyan.*
Elite-rank Gene Armaments glowed green. Boss-tier Gene Armaments glowed cyan.
"...Cyan. That's a *boss-tier* Gene Armament?!"
He stared. He couldn't quite believe it. He had hunted tens of thousands of beasts in this dungeon and never acquired a second elite-rank armament after the Beetle Claw. Elite-rank armaments were already extraordinarily rare and precious — the greatsword in his hand was proof of that, still superbly useful even now, with his tempering past 40%.
And here, dropped by a trial in a ruin that no one outside had even expected to contain an Elite Trial, was a Gene Armament a full tier above that.
Absurd. Completely absurd.
The Origin Domain transmitted the information directly into his mind.
**Moonstone:** An emblem-type Gene Armament. It needs only to be absorbed into the Gene Chain — no manifestation required for its effects to take hold.
*Effect:* Comprehensive enhancement of physical constitution. Muscles, bones, and skin all become harder, stronger, and more resilient.
*Special ability — Moonstone Guardian:* A Guardian-type ability that blocks spiritual attacks, protecting the owner's mind.
Lu Yuan read it twice.
The full-body physical enhancement alone was enough to send a thrill through him. But a boss-tier Gene Armament's special ability being a Guardian-type skill that protected against spiritual attacks?
He paused on that.
*...Trainee-rank Gene Warriors don't use spiritual attacks.* He turned the thought over carefully. *I probably won't need that protection against anything I face right now.*
A pity. But later was another matter entirely. The ability to protect his mind from spiritual assault was exactly the kind of thing that would matter as enemies grew stronger.
He reached out with his intent and tried to absorb the Moonstone into his Gene Chain.
The moment he attempted it, a sharp, stinging resistance flooded through his body. He stopped immediately.
"So this is boss-tier equipment." He turned the crescent stone over in his fingers, expression somewhere between impressed and frustrated. "The physical requirements really are that steep. I'm nearly at 50% tempering and I still can't activate it."
He stored it with care, then turned his gaze to the hundred silver drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence still floating before him.
A smile broke across his face.
*Absorb them all.*
He began: one drop, ten drops, twenty drops...
The spirit power within each drop of Moonstone Spirit Essence was a hundredfold that of Moonstone Spirit Dew. As he absorbed them, dense, boundless waves of power surged through him and slammed into his Gene Chain, driving the tempering forward at a rate he could visibly feel.
50%. 55%. 60%...
Even accounting for the fact that he had encoded an elite-rank Transcendent Gene — which demanded several times more spirit power to temper than a common gene — the sheer volume of energy still drove his tempering all the way to 74%.
The Gene Chain inside him blazed brilliantly within the white mist of his inner world, more luminous than it had ever been.
At the seventy-first drop, a tight, swelling fullness spread through every part of him. He stopped at once. His body had reached its limit; even Moonstone Spirit Essence's remarkably gentle spirit power could not be absorbed without end.
He stood there for a moment.
Seventy-one drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence. Equivalent to 7,100 drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew — or roughly the spirit power contained in over seven thousand Spirit Crystals. Using Spirit Crystals alone, absorbing that much would have taken him ten days.
It had taken minutes.
As his tempering rose, vast power surged and rolled through him. Muscles, bones, skin — all denser and stronger than before. And that was on top of the physical nourishment from the thousand-plus drops of Moonstone Spirit Dew he had absorbed across the four trial levels, which had already raised his defense by nearly ten percent and improved his strength and speed as a separate effect entirely.
*This is not from tempering my Gene Chain. This is additional.*
The surprise had come too fast. For a moment, he genuinely wondered if he was dreaming.
He exhaled, long and slow. "Still need to keep training. But at least I still have the rest of the Moonstone Spirit Essence."