The last normal thing Lin Tian saw before the world changed was the holographic clock in his Shanghai penthouse blinking 07:59 AM.
"Your 8:00 AM delegation from the European Union has been delayed, Young Master." Luo Mei, his sharp-eyed personal bodyguard, materialized at his side as he gazed through floor-to-ceiling windows at the city's neon-drenched skyline. Her voice carried its usual clinical precision. "They claim their quantum shuttle encountered 'gravitational anomalies' over the Himalayas."
Lin Tian smirked, his tailored black suit shimmering faintly with nanotechnology designed to stop anything from bullets to poison needles. "Tell them the Lin Family doesn't reschedule. If they want access to our orbital defense grids, they'll crawl here on broken glass by noon."
A chime interrupted Luo Mei's nod. Lin Tian's wrist implant projected a crimson hologram—his grandfather's aged face, framed by the dripping stalactites of the family's underground Arctic vault.
"Tian'er," the old man rasped, his single visible eye glowing unnaturally blue. "The Dragon's Vein is stirring. It's… earlier than the ancestral prophecies said. Prepare the—"
The transmission dissolved into static.
Then the sky ripped.
Lin Tian staggered as golden light erupted across the heavens, not from the sun but from jagged cracks spreading like shattered glass. Aurora-like waves of emerald and violet qi cascaded downward, washing over skyscrapers, flooding streets, penetrating flesh. Shanghai's hover-traffic spiraled into chaos as drivers clutched their heads, some screaming, others laughing madly as their eyes began to glow.
"Report!" Lin Tian barked, already sprinting toward the emergency elevator. His military-trained mind registered critical details—Luo Mei's pistol hand trembling unnaturally, the air tasting metallic and alive, the jade pendant at his chest burning like a coal. A family heirloom passed down for millennia, now pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
The building shook. Through security feeds projected onto his retinal display, Lin Tian watched as a junior executive in the 42nd floor R&D division changed—fingers elongating into claws, skin hardening into scale-like plates as he tore through reinforced doors.
"Qi deviation," Luo Mei whispered, her usually stoic voice fraying. She gripped her temple, veins glowing faintly gold beneath her skin. "The legends… the Great Return… it's real?"
Lin Tian's implant buzzed with a hundred simultaneous alerts—Tokyo gone dark, Washington's AI defense grid collapsing, the moon colonies reporting "bioluminescent storms." But one message froze him mid-stride:
Family Headquarters – Beijing – Status: Breached.
Patriarch's Life Signs: Critical.
The jade pendant seared his chest. Suddenly, the world shifted.
Lin Tian's vision doubled—he saw Luo Mei's qi as swirling silver threads, the mutated executive as a knot of festering black energy, and his own body…
Golden meridians blazed beneath his skin, forming a blazing constellation mirroring the Lin Family's secret cultivation manual—one he'd dismissed as mythology.
"Luo Mei." His voice resonated with unintended authority, the pendant's heat spreading through him. "Order all Lin Holdings facilities to activate Protocol Azure Dragon. And ready the jet."
"Protocol requires your grandfather's biometric—"
"I am the Lin Family now," he said, and for the first time, the 22-year-old heir believed it.
As they descended to the private hangar, Lin Tian's mind raced. The pendant's whispers grew clearer—phrases in dead languages about "Sovereign Dragon's Bloodline" and "cleansing the unworthy." He silenced it, focusing on the tactical nightmare unfolding: global communications down, cities erupting in chaos as ordinary humans either mutated into qi-crazed beasts or collapsed entirely, unable to withstand the surge.
Yet when a hulking security guard—now a 9-foot-tall monstrosity with crystalline tusks—charged them in the hangar, Lin Tian moved on instinct. His fist lashed out, channeling the strange energy.
The golden light that erupted from his knuckles wasn't technology.
It was power.
The creature disintegrated.
"…Young Master?" Luo Mei stared at him, her qi threads brightening as if drawn to his presence.
"Later." Lin Tian boarded the hyperjet, its engines humming to life. "We're going to Beijing. And Mei?" He glanced at the crimson alerts flooding his vision—including a cryptic message from a "Dr. Xia Qingyue" at the family's forbidden research division. "Summon everyone."
"Everyone, sir?"
"The cousin obsessed with ancient swords. The prodigy hacker from the New York branch. The… troublesome ones." He leaned back, fingers brushing the jade pendant. "If this is truly the Era of Qi Recovery, the Lin Family will control it. And to do that…"
Outside, Shanghai burned gold.
…I'll need more than soldiers, he thought, watching Luo Mei's silver qi curl protectively toward him. I'll need weapons even the ancients feared.