0p0 Chapter 194: THE BLOODLINE GATE
Chapter 194: THE BLOODLINE GATE
Orion stood at the edge of the observation deck, his palms resting lightly against the cool glass. Earth turned slowly below him, wrapped in the soft blue glow of restored oceans and the thin silver lines of orbital transit routes. He breathed in deeply, feeling the heavy pressure from his breakthrough finally smooth into a steady, quiet rhythm inside his chest. The vault doors sat far beneath the mountain now. The empire was holding steady. The quiet felt earned, but he knew better than to trust it for long.
A soft ripple cut through the air behind him. No warning chime. No sudden burst of pressure. Just footsteps.
Wukong stepped onto the deck, his dark robe catching the pale light from the Dyson ring above. He leaned against the railing a few feet away, crossed his arms, and let out a low, quiet laugh. "Congratulations," he said, his tone dry but warm. "I honestly expected you to lock that foundation in two or three months. You did it in a single day. You’re more of a monster than I gave you credit for. If you keep pushing at this pace, you’ll catch up to me in no time.
That is, if I don’t use my Divine Abilities."
Orion turned fully, his expression calm. He didn’t flinch at the praise, but he filed the words away carefully. "I pushed through because the enemy won’t wait for me to finish studying," he replied. "But you mentioned something else. Divine Abilities. What exactly are they?"
Wukong pushed off the railing and walked to the edge, looking down at the clouds. "Laws are universal rules," he explained, his voice steady and plain. "Anyone with enough patience, focus, and the right method can learn them. You study them. You align with them. You earn them through work. They follow the same structure for everyone. But Divine Abilities don’t work like that. They’re unique expressions of the Progenitor bloodline. They aren’t learned. They’re awakened. And they completely ignore the normal cultivation stages. When you pull one out, the rules bend to fit you, not the other way around."
Orion’s eyes narrowed slightly. He ran the idea through his mind. If Laws were like learning the grammar of the universe, then Divine Abilities were like being born with the ability to speak it without thinking. "Then why hasn’t a single person in the empire awakened one?" he asked. "We purified the bloodline. We stabilized the foundation. We flooded the system with energy. The conditions should be perfect."
Wukong sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Because you never opened the gate. The trial hasn’t been triggered. Without it, the power stays locked behind a spiritual seal. And the trial doesn’t happen in a training hall. It happens inside your own soul."
Orion stayed quiet, letting the words sink in. Wukong continued, pacing slowly across the polished floor. "When you step into the trial, a manifestation of your bloodline pulls itself out of your spiritual core. It looks like you, but older, sharper, and carrying the weight of every ancestor who came before. It knows every move you’re planning to make because it remembers them first. You have to fight it. Win, and the bloodline power opens. Lose, and the trial resets, and you get thrown back to the surface." He stopped and met Orion’s eyes. "It’s brutally hard. Only one in ten thousand people pass on their first try. And every person gets exactly three attempts. Burn through all three, and the seal locks forever. No second chances. You lose the chance to ever pull a Divine Ability from your bloodline."
Orion’s jaw tightened. He felt a sharp spike of frustration hit his chest, but he didn’t let it show on his face. He thought back to the cultivation technique he designed. It stripped away genetic drift. It cleaned the meridians. It built a flawless system for modern training. But in doing so, it completely sealed off the ancient trigger. He built the engine, polished the frame, and filled the tank, but he forgot to turn the key. He exhaled slowly, pushing the regret aside. Regret wouldn’t fix it. Planning would.
"Three chances," Orion said quietly. "That’s a steep risk for the average soldier. Most won’t survive the spiritual strain on the first drop."
"That’s why the old bloodlines only passed the trial down to chosen heirs," Wukong replied. "But you don’t have time for chosen heirs. You have an empire, and you’re about to get hit by a fleet that won’t care how hard the test is."
Orion nodded, his mind already shifting to logistics. "Are there any exceptions? People who bypass the trial entirely?"
Wukong’s lips curl into a faint smirk. "A handful. Figures like Merlin, Athena, and Odin. They didn’t just awaken their own bloodline powers. They studied the mechanics, tore apart the spiritual structure, and copied other divine abilities that didn’t belong to them. Pure comprehension. And just so you know, they’re still out there. Roaming the deeper voids, chasing knowledge, collecting old ruins, and probably complaining about how quiet the galaxy has become. If they were sitting in this room right now, I’m certain they’d demand a look at your cultivation technique. They’d pick it apart line by line, argue over every pathway, and completely rebuild it out of pure curiosity before dinner."
Orion actually chuckled at that. The image of ancient scholars and gods dismantling his carefully structured system for sport was both irritating and strangely fitting. "Let them try," he said. "I’d learn just as much from their corrections as they would from my mistakes. But right now, we don’t have time for guests. We need results."
Wukong straightened up, his casual posture shifting into something sharper. "I can weave an array," he said. "It’ll pull directly from the energy I seeded into the planet’s core, mix it with my own spiritual pressure, and open the trial gate one layer at a time. It won’t make the fight easy, but it will keep minds from shattering under the sudden weight. I’ll set it up in the main cultivation grounds, tune it to respond to spiritual intent, and leave it running. Anyone who steps inside and focuses on their bloodline will be pulled into the trial automatically."
Orion didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, his voice firm. "Do it. Thank you. Set the perimeter tight. I want the frontline commanders through first, then the academy elites, then the wider military. Every day matters, and I need our strongest fighters carrying awakened abilities before the enemy crosses the heliopause. I’ll assign medical teams to the outer ring and keep simulation pods on standby for anyone who gets thrown out. We’ll track pass rates in real time and adjust the exposure levels if the strain gets too heavy."
Wukong grins, tapping his boots twice against the metal floor. "I’ll start drawing the formation lines before nightfall. Just don’t trip over the ink while I work, and keep your soldiers from rushing in half-cooked. The trial doesn’t care how many ships you built." He pushes off the railing and walks toward the exit, his robe trailing lightly against the deck. "See you at the grounds."
Orion watches him leave, feeling a quiet thrill settle in his chest. The empire finally has the ignition switch. He turns back to the glass, his mind already mapping out training rotations, casualty limits, and how to weave awakened abilities into existing fleet formations. He knows the trial will break more people than it fixes on the first pass, but he also knows what happens when they succeed. The waiting is over. The next phase has already begun.