Heavy wooden doors at the front of the stone warehouse blasted off their rusted iron hinges with a deafening boom.
Fifteen-year-old Gu Hu led the charge out into the snowy village square, his bare feet leaving steaming footprints in the black slush as golden-silver dragon aura roared down his newly regrown spine.
Behind him, two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine branch teenagers—boys and girls who had spent years staring at the moldy rafters of the infirmary with hollowed-out backs. Poured out into the freezing afternoon air like a dam breaking across the valley.
Every single one of them radiated the booming vitality of a flaw-free [Star-Dragon Spiritual Bone]. Their fresh Rank 6 Golden Core and Rank 7 Nascent Soul realms humming in a synchronized chorus that shook the icicles off every roof in Iron-Root Village #4.
“Hu’er! My grandson!”
Seventy-year-old Village Head Gu Tie dropped his iron walking staff into the snow and stumbled forward with his arms wide open.
Across the mud square, ten thousand gaunt miners and their wives froze in their tracks, their eyes bulging out of their sunken sockets as sons, daughters, nieces. Nephews who had been carried into that dark warehouse on stretchers came sprinting across the frost at sonic speed.
