The thunder of the skeletal dragon's arrival reverberated through the clearing like an earthquake. Qiang Ming had just absorbed the final vestiges of the Fire Lions' spirit energy when the earth shuddered beneath his feet. He spun, hammer in hand, as the ground split in concentric cracks, each fissure filled with swirling black mist. Through the ragged trunks of great redwoods—already splintered into kindling by his previous assaults—he glimpsed the guardian's massive form.
It stood thirty feet tall, every bone carved with runes of ancient power. Its skull, crowned with jagged horns, twisted to regard Qiang Ming with hollow, glowing sockets. From its spine to the tips of its fractured wingbones, foul black smoke seeped in steady streams, drifting like angry spirits in the moonlit glade. This was no mere beast—it was a lich of bone and will, a spirit wielding death itself as a weapon.
Qiang Ming's breath caught. Months of furious training, every brutal encounter in Slaughter Barony, had led to this moment. He steadied his stance, toes sinking into the moss and fallen leaves. His muscles, honed by hammer-swinging under Su Yang's tutelage and the arena's brutality, met his determination: he would not falter here.
As the guardian raised a colossal arm—a forelimb the length of a man—Qiang Ming darted forward. The arm came down with a blast of spirit-force, each knuckle-sized spike on its elbow leaving cratered gouges in the earth. Qiang Ming dove beneath the swing, feeling the air compress in his wake. He rolled, the hammer's haft whistling above him just inches from his head.
He sprang up, keeping his distance, and surveyed the battlefield. The once-lush forest lay in ruins: shattered trunks, cracks that gaped like jaws, and the bodies of fallen beasts—beetles, foxes, lizards, wolves, bears, and lions—dissolving in ethereal motes of light. The only living spirit here was the dragon and himself.
Qiang Ming's violet eyes narrowed. This was a spirit construct; its bones were a cage, the smoke its true form. A passive ability named Piercing Abyss had allowed him to delete through spirit shields—now he must test it fully. No shield could stop him, he realized; only the physical structure of bone itself offered resistance.
He closed the gap with a sprint, feet pounding the fractured earth. With a thought, the Blackstone Abyss Hammer materialized in his hand, suspended in swirling purple mist. The guardian rasped—a sound like wind choking through gravestones—and swung its other arm in a vicious arc. Qiang Ming sidestepped, then unleashed a SoulQuake Blow against the dragon's ribs. The ground trembled with the shockwave, and the hammer's head buried itself halfway into bone.
CRACK! The ribs splintered, and a jet of black smoke hissed through the gap. The dragon reeled, its hollow roar echoing through the canopy. Qiang Ming withdrew the hammer and retreated two steps, eyes scanning for the next weak point. Four ribs lay broken; the smoke shield pulsed but did not mend. He confirmed his strategy: bone destruction first, spirit dissipation second.
He advanced again, hammer held low. The guardian lunged, jaw snapping—each tooth a specter of decay. Qiang Ming leapt high, planting his boot on the dragon's lower jaw. The brittle bone cracked under his weight. He used the leverage to pivot, swinging the hammer in a devastating blow to the joint connecting jaw to skull.
CRUNCH. The jaw shattered, and the dragon's head dropped, tethered only by a single vertebra. Smoke poured from the wound in a great plume. Qiang Ming dropped from the beast's chin and rolled clear as a cascade of bone fragments rattled to the ground.
The dragon reeled, its skull lolling. With measured calm, Qiang Ming summoned another SoulQuake Blow, targeting the spine just beneath the shattered jaw. The mist around the hammer flared, compressing reality itself. The vertebra exploded outward in a shower of spectral dust and bone shards. The creature's head flopped to one side, smoke dwindling.
Yet the guardian did not collapse. Its arms—massive forelimbs crowned with wicked spikes—swept downward in a double arc, attempting to crush Qiang Ming like an insect. He sidestepped both, hammer pivoting in his grip. With each retreating step, he measured the beast's balance points, noting how the broken skeleton shifted when support was lost.
He snarled and charged, heart racing. He sidestepped a third swipe and raced along the ribcage's length, cleaving through each remaining rib one by one with precise hammer blows powered by his passive piercing ability. Each strike severed bone as if it were mist. Black smoke erupted in ragged gusts, then dissipated.
At the rear of the dragon's torso, Qiang Ming spotted its last true anchor: the pelvis joint. He backed up, generating momentum, and drove the hammer butt first into the joint's socket. CRACK! The pelvis splintered, hips collapsing, and the entire lower torso shuddered.
The skeletal dragon buckled to its knees, clutching shattered remains to its chest. Qiang Ming stood over it, breathing heavily, sweat and spirit mist clinging to his skin. He raised the hammer overhead and whispered, "This ends now."
With a cry that echoed through the platform's virtual sky, he brought the hammer down onto the dragon's skull. Bone snapped, spirit smoke roared, and the last fragment of consciousness tore free in a high-pitched whisper before falling silent. The skull—and with it the idea of a dragon king—exploded in a final burst of purple and black light, the shockwave splintering the remaining cleft earth wide.
Silence followed. The clearing lay littered with shattered bones, and only two massive arm-bones remained intact—each still humming with dark potential. Qiang Ming knelt between them, hammer planted in the soil, and placed both hands on the larger bone. He felt its resonance: a deep, slow heartbeat. Spirit energy coalesced around his palms, pouring into his meridians. His body glowed briefly as the bone fused with his spirit sea—an External Soul Bone of unmatched rarity settling into place.
In the control room, Manager Lian clutched his temples, voice cracking: "A‐gain?!" He watched the bones' fusion data stream across holo-displays—spectral signatures, compatibility matrices, raw Soul Power graphs spiking into the stratosphere. Technicians scrambled to record every detail.
Duke Qiang Shen sat with a triumphant grin, eyes reflecting the ghostly glow of the screens. "A youthful overachiever," he quipped. "Nothing like a little imaginary genocide to sharpen one's appetite."
The Manager shot him a withering glare. "You built him in a slaughterhouse, then dropped him into a beast gauntlet—and now you gift him a dragon's core!" He shook his head, wild-eyed. "I've never seen anything like it."
As technicians backed up data and reset the Platform's simulation, the Duke and Manager Lian exchanged amused, exhausted looks. Together, amid the swirl of readouts and alarms, they witnessed the birth of a legend: Qiang Ming, child-martyr turned hammer-wraith, who shattered the bones of a lich and claimed its soul-bone as his own.
Outside, in the gray predawn light, East Sea City awoke to another ordinary day—unaware that within the Spirit Pagoda, a boy had become a titan unmatched in centuries. And the world would soon tremble at the first rumblings of his might.