Harem Link Cultivation System

The river of Absolute Zero hit Xueya like a tidal wave.

Lin Tian felt it through their bond, it was a shuddering impact that would have frozen a mountain solid into ice. For a heartbeat, he feared he’d killed her, that he’d passed on a force meant to destroy him.

Then her presence on the other end of the bond flexed.

It wasn’t resistance. It was acceptance. The glacial Yin poured into her, and her Ice Phoenix bloodline, honed and purified, drank it in like a desert swallowing rain. The energy didn’t harm her. It fed her. He felt her meridians brighten, her core pulse with a deeper, more ancient cold. A soft, silver glow enveloped her figure in the frost zone, and the violent torrent became a controlled, powerful flow.

She’s stabilizing it, he realized, a wave of fierce pride cutting through his own pain. She’s turning a weapon into nourishment.

The relief was momentary. The Solar Flare Yang on his left was a rabid beast, trying to incinerate his soul. He grasped the searing current and hurled it down the warm, golden thread connecting him to Su Lan.

Her reaction was immediate and violent. A gasp echoed in his mind, sharp with surprise and strain. Where Xueya was a deep, cold lake, Su Lan was a forge. The overwhelming Yang energy slammed into her Flowing Ember Body, and for a terrifying second, Lin Tian felt her spiritual flame gutter, almost snuffed out by the sheer magnitude.

No. Adapt to it. Please.

Su Lan’s will was a tempered steel blade. He felt her grit her teeth, felt her core rotate. Instead of fighting the foreign fire, she wrapped her own essence around it, spinning it, refining it. The rabid, wild Yang was forced into a vortex, its fury gradually tempered into a disciplined, brilliant heat. The hellish glare around her softened, coalescing into a steady, golden aura that pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

The circuit was complete.

Lin Tian stood in the center, a conduit for destruction. The Avatar’s twin beams continued to pour into him, an endless baptism of opposites. But now, he wasn’t a dam trying to hold back the flood. He was the channel in the middle, directing the flow.

The pain didn’t vanish. It transformed. The tearing, conflicting pressure inside his Chaos-Harmony Vessel eased, replaced by a tremendous, balanced strain. It was like holding the weight of two worlds on his shoulders, but his spine was straight, his foundation unbroken. The energies still raged, but they moved through him, not against him.

A system notification flickered at the edge of his vision, stark and clinical.

[Triadic Circuit Established. Synchronization: 87% and rising.]

[Guardian Energy being metabolized. Initiating Body Refinement Process.]

He felt it then, a subtle grinding deep in his bones. The Avatar’s power was pure, a primordial force far beyond the diluted spiritual energy of the world. As it cycled through the three of them, it didn’t just pass through. It left traces. It scoured away microscopic imperfections in his meridians, the tiny flaws and residual damage from every past battle and breakthrough. His flesh felt tighter, denser. His senses, already sharp, stretched further. He could feel the individual vibrations of the energy beams, the slow crystallization of frost on the distant walls, the faint scent of ozone from Su Lan’s side of the chamber.

Through the bond, he sensed the same thing happening to Xueya and Su Lan. Xueya’s frost wasn’t just colder, it was purer, taking on a diamond-like clarity. Su Lan’s fire burned brighter, but with a focused, surgical precision instead of wild hunger.

They weren’t just surviving the trial. They were being remade by it.

"It was impossible," a voice rasped.

The word was a crack in the chamber’s solemn atmosphere. Lin Tian’s focus, locked on the cosmic balance flowing through him, didn’t waver. But a part of his mind, the part that had spent a lifetime watching for threats from the shadows, noted it.

The Crimson Sun spearman.

The man was hunched on the floor near the entrance, cradling the cauterized stump of his arm. His face, visible in the mixed light of the chamber, was a mask of pain, sweat, and something uglier. His eyes were fixed on Lin Tian, wide with a venomous disbelief that curdled into rage.

"You... you gutter-born cheat," the man hissed, his voice gaining strength with his fury. "You think you’ve won? You think you can just steal what’s mine?"

Lin Tian ignored him. He had to. The circuit demanded his full attention. A single misstep, a flicker of doubt, and the balanced torrent would collapse, crushing all three of them. He poured his consciousness into the flow, feeling Xueya’s serene cold and Su Lan’s resilient heat, using them as anchors to keep himself centered.

The spearman pushed himself to his knees, then unsteadily to his feet. He swayed, his complexion pale from blood loss and shock. But his remaining hand gripped the broken haft of his spear, the bladed end still gleaming with a dull, vengeful light.

"That power... should be mine," he muttered, not to Lin Tian, but to the room, to the Avatar, to the uncaring Fragment above. "I am a direct descendant of the Solar Vanguard! I have trained since I could walk! And you... a jumped-up cripple from a backwater clan with a... a harem trick..."

Jealousy poured off him in waves, a spiritual stink as potent as the blood soaking his robes. He saw the three of them standing united, transforming under the very power that had maimed him, and it broke something in his mind.

The logic of survival was gone. The fear of the Avatar was gone. All that remained was a white-hot need to destroy the thing he could not have.

Lin Tian felt a spike of alarm from Su Lan, a sharp warning through their bond. She was monitoring the room, her healer’s instincts sensing the shift in intent.

Lin, her mental voice was a tense thread. The wounded one. His qi is spiking erratically. He’s preparing something.

Lin Tian couldn’t turn. He couldn’t even nod. All he could do was send a pulse back down the bond, a wordless acknowledgment. He trusted her to watch his back. He trusted Xueya to hold the line. He had to.

The spearman’s breathing became ragged, purposeful. He dropped the broken spear haft. With his one good hand, he reached into a bloodied pouch at his waist. His fingers closed around something small and metallic. A last-resort talisman, Lin Tian guessed, something that would burn the user’s life force for a single, devastating attack.

"If I can’t have the legacy," the spearman snarled, his voice rising to a shout that echoed in the vast chamber, "then NO ONE WILL!"

He bit down on his own tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the talisman. It ignited in his hand with a sickly crimson light, not the pure gold of Solar Flare, but the ugly red of corrupted fire and hatred. The light wrapped around his remaining arm, hardening into a jagged, spear-like projection of pure killing intent.

The Avatar did not move. It watched, its starlight form impassive. This was not part of the trial. This was mortal interference. It offered no protection.

"Lin Tian!" Xueya’s cry was both mental and physical, a sharp sound of pure fear that cut through their spiritual connection.

The spearman charged.

He was wounded, unbalanced, missing an arm. But the talisman’s power fueled him, a final, suicidal burst of speed. He crossed the chamber floor in a blur of crimson, his eyes locked on Lin Tian’s exposed back. He wasn’t aiming to disrupt. He wasn’t aiming to injure. The jagged energy spear pointed directly at the base of Lin Tian’s spine, at the core of his dantian—a strike meant to pierce his foundation and explode his cultivation from the inside out.

A death blow.

Time seemed to slow. Lin Tian felt the murderous intent like a physical chill, a separate cold that had nothing to do with the Avatar’s Yin. He was locked in the absorption cycle, his body a statue channeling unimaginable forces. He couldn’t dodge. He couldn’t deflect. To move was to break the circuit, to loose the twin torrents inside him with catastrophic results.

He saw Su Lan, from the corner of his eye, start to turn, her hands coming up, golden fire swirling to life. But she was too far away, her own role in the circuit tethering her to her spot.

He saw the look of triumphant madness on the spearman’s face, inches away.

All Lin Tian could do was pour every ounce of his will into the bonds, into the circuit, and hope his body, currently being refined by primordial energy, was strong enough to survive.

The crimson energy spear, fueled by a dying man’s jealousy and a forbidden talisman’s power, reached its apex and stabbed forward, a single, vicious thrust aimed to sever his destiny forever.

End of Chapter 145