Chapter 5: The Kneeling of the Archmage

The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, and absolute.
The burning embers of the plaza hissed as they fell into pools of steaming, golden-tinged dragon blood. Thousands of eyes—belonging to elite vanguard knights, high-ranking magi, and trembling apprentices—were glued to the center of the ruins.
There stood Jiang Chen.
His ragged linen clothes were soaked in crimson, yet the violent wind didn't dare touch him anymore. The ambient mana in the air seemed to bow in his presence, completely subdued by the sheer, crushing gravity of the newly formed Purple Mansion Golden Core rotating slowly inside his chest.
In his right hand, the volleyball-sized Ancient Dragon Core pulsed with a blinding, rhythmic light, its volcanic heat entirely neutralized by the thin layer of violet True Yuan coating Jiang Chen's palm.
*Thud.*
The sound of wood striking marble shattered the silence. The Chief Archmage had dropped his legendary, cracked staff. He didn't even bother to pick it up. His hands were shaking so violently that he could barely keep his balance.
"Barehanded..." the Archmage whispered, his voice cracking, stripped of all the supreme dignity he had displayed hours prior. "No magic circles... no structural incantations... he didn't even trigger a single elemental resonance... He just... ripped it apart."
To the magical civilization of Saint Sophia, what they had just witnessed wasn't a victory; it was a total violation of the laws of physics. A creature that could withstand an army’s worth of strategic-tier spells had been butchered like a common farm animal by a boy whose magic level was verified to be absolute zero.
Jiang Chen casually tossed the heavy dragon core into the air, catching it effortlessly. He turned his gaze toward the high-ranking members of the guild, his dark eyes radiating a faint, terrifying violet sheen.
Every single mage who met his gaze instantly took a step back, their hearts hammering against their ribs. The memory of their cruel laughter on the testing plaza felt like a barrage of invisible slaps to their own faces.
"Chief Archmage," Jiang Chen said, his voice calm, yet carrying a natural, echoing resonance that rattled the eardrums of everyone present. "According to the guild's regulations from this afternoon, my official membership has been revoked, and I am currently assigned to the F-Rank Maintenance Department. Am I correct?"
The Archmage’s face turned from ash-gray to a ghostly white. His knees buckled under the invisible pressure radiating from the boy. In front of thousands of his subordinates, the supreme ruler of the Holy Crown Magic Guild slowly, unsteadily sank to both knees, lowering his proud head until it nearly touched the blood-stained stone.
"M-My Lord... please, spare us..." the Archmage stammered, his voice filled with profound terror. "The testing stone... the testing stone must have been defective! It is a blind, useless piece of rock! A supreme entity of your caliber... how could you possibly be a failure? It was our ignorance! Please, do not destroy the guild!"
Seeing their absolute ruler kneeling on the floor, the surrounding elite knights and magi didn't hesitate.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
Hundreds of knights dropped their heavy steel shields and knelt in unison. The mages threw themselves to the ground, their bodies trembling in a magnificent display of collective submission. The very plaza that had rejected Jiang Chen as trash hours ago was now a sea of groveling sycophants.
Jiang Chen looked down at the kneeling crowd, his expression entirely unbothered. He had seen empires rise and fall in his past life; the submission of a few local hedge-mages didn't stir a single ripple in his Daoist heart.
"I have no interest in destroying your little guild," Jiang Chen said, walking past the kneeling Archmage without a second glance. "But the F-Rank warehouse is too noisy. Find me a quiet place at the highest peak of the mountain. I am going into seclusion to refine this beast's core."
"Yes! Right away! The Sacred Starlight Tower! It is the most secluded and mana-dense area in the entire region!" The Archmage scrambled to his feet, frantically waving at his top disciples. "Quickly! Clear the tower! Prepare the finest elixirs! Move!"
"No need for elixirs," Jiang Chen intercepted coldly, his figure already walking toward the mountain path. "Just make sure no one disturbs me. If anyone steps within a thousand paces of the tower during my refinement... I will treat them the same way I treated that lizard."
He pointed a finger behind him toward the giant, bisected corpse of the Ancient Dragon.
The Archmage swallowed hard, his throat dry as bone. "Understood, My Lord! We will guard the perimeter with our lives!"
As Jiang Chen’s figure disappeared into the dark mountain trails leading to the highest peak, the remaining guild members finally let out the breaths they had been holding. They looked at the ruined plaza, then at the sky that had been violently cleared of all clouds by Jiang Chen's ascension, realizing that the power dynamic of the entire continent had just been permanently rewritten tonight.