MMORPG: Birth of the World's Luckiest Player

Chapter 506: The Celestial Prismatic Jade Awakens

"Damn it!"

Marcus’s mind lurched. This was bad. He had stumbled into something far beyond anything he understood, and judging by how viciously that green jade bead was draining him, there was a very real chance he wasn’t walking away from this alive. In the best-case scenario, he would lose every bit of martial arts progress he’d spent more than a year building.

And that was assuming he survived.

If the bead kept devouring his essence at this pace, it wouldn’t stop with his inner energy. Once that was gone, it would start consuming his life itself. His body wouldn’t even last a minute.

’Shit. What the hell is this thing?’

He forced himself to stay calm, suppressing the panic threatening to overwhelm him. Gritting his teeth, he circulated the Human Rock technique with everything he had, desperately trying to break free from whatever nightmare had seized him, but nothing happened.

No matter how he resisted, the bead’s terrifying pull continued to wrench his inner energy out of him without slowing in the slightest. It wasn’t violent or erratic. It was steady, absolute, as though his resistance meant nothing at all.

Worse still, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even open his mouth to scream. An invisible force held him completely still while crushing the air from his lungs. Every breath became harder than the last, his chest tightening until his vision began to blur around the edges, and panic finally set in.

He wasn’t just losing his cultivation; he was suffocating.

There was no longer any doubt. This bizarre green jade bead was going to kill him before it finished draining him dry. Even the Human Rock technique, the mysterious cultivation art that had transformed his life, was utterly powerless against it.

’What do I do?’ He shouted the words inside his own head, but there was no answer.

His thoughts grew sluggish as darkness crept into his vision. His limbs turned numb, his strength vanished, and his knees began to buckle beneath him.

’So... this is what dying feels like.’ That was the last clear thought that crossed his mind.

Then, at the exact instant the green bead drained the final trace of his inner energy, just as death closed in, a brilliant golden light exploded from his lower core.

The eruption was overwhelming, like a miniature sun igniting inside his body. Boundless golden energy surged through every meridian and every pathway mapped by the Human Rock technique, flooding his entire body in a single unstoppable wave.

Marcus couldn’t see what was happening, but if he could have opened his eyes, he would have seen himself wrapped in dazzling golden radiance, his entire body shining like a warrior descended from the heavens.

Nor could he see the deeper transformation taking place: every meridian, every vein, every drop of blood, every inch of flesh touched by that golden light was changing in ways no ordinary cultivator could imagine.

All he felt was... Whoosh. Like an ancient dragon awakening from an endless slumber, the golden energy burst through him with overwhelming force, snapping him back from the edge of unconsciousness.

Part of that blazing power rushed through his meridians, following the exact route the green bead had used to steal his energy. It shot forward like a furious golden dragon before crashing directly into the jade bead.

Crack. The strange bead, which moments earlier had seemed completely invincible, shattered instantly beneath the impact.

Yet the broken fragments never had the chance to scatter. The golden light swallowed them whole, reducing every last piece to nothing; within moments, there wasn’t even a trace left behind.

’The Celestial Prismatic Jade...’ Marcus’s heart pounded. ’It saved me.’

The silent jade that had rested within his lower core ever since that mysterious day had finally awakened. At the moment he had been certain he was going to die, it had erupted with unimaginable power and destroyed the thing that had nearly taken his life.

The memory came flooding back with startling clarity. Just before graduating, after Snow had returned home, Marcus had taken a trip into the mountains to clear his mind. During that journey, he’d wandered into a place unlike anything he’d ever seen. It was as though the hidden valley hadn’t existed until he stepped directly into it, invisible to both sight and sense until that very moment.

The entire place had felt like something pulled from a dream. At its center rested a palm-sized rectangular plaque, neither metal nor jade nor wood, yet somehow resembling all three at once. Seven brilliant colors shimmered across its surface, white, green, blue, red, yellow, gold, and purple, constantly flowing over one another without ever fading.

Its surface was covered in strange symbols unlike any writing Marcus had ever encountered. Even so, he could instinctively tell they were unimaginably ancient, older and more profound than the oldest scripts recorded in history. Combined with the shifting seven-colored light, the plaque possessed an indescribable aura that made it seem almost sacred.

Unable to resist his curiosity, he reached out. The instant his fingertips brushed its surface... Boom. The seven-colored light erupted, swallowing the entire valley in an instant. Before Marcus could even react, an invisible force lifted him off the ground as the plaque floated into the air before him, spinning slowly as if examining him.

Then it shot straight into his body. It sank directly into his lower core. The torrent of seven-colored light followed immediately after, pouring into him all at once. The overwhelming force robbed him of consciousness before he could even let out a cry.

When he finally woke, night had already fallen. He was lying atop a massive stone deep within the mountains, completely alone. The hidden paradise had vanished without a trace.

His first thought had been that it was all a dream, but dreams didn’t explain why he had awakened miles from where he’d started, sleeping on an enormous rock in the middle of nowhere.

Unable to make sense of it, Marcus spent several days searching the surrounding mountains, hoping to find that mysterious valley again, but he never did.

Eventually, with no clues left to follow, he returned home carrying more questions than answers. Then, exactly forty-nine days later, just as the experience had begun to fade into the back of his mind, he started dreaming again.

Countless colorful jade fragments appeared before him, drifting through endless darkness. One by one, they joined together until they formed a complete martial arts manual.

Its name was Human Rock. The technique existed only within those dreams, yet once he had read it, every word etched itself permanently into his memory. Whenever he closed his eyes and silently recited the technique’s name, the jade fragments would reappear before him as clearly as if they were floating in the air.

From that day onward, he devoted himself to cultivating the Human Rock technique, and now, after what had just happened, he finally understood.

That encounter in the mountains had never been a dream; it had been the greatest opportunity of his life.

The mysterious seven-colored plaque had remained hidden inside his lower core all along, silently watching, waiting for the moment it was truly needed.

He still didn’t know what it really was, who had created it, or where it had come from, so he had given it a name of his own.

The Celestial Prismatic Jade, a name inspired by its seven-colored radiance and the incredible cultivation art it had bestowed upon him.

After beginning his cultivation, Marcus had returned to those mountains twice, determined to find that hidden paradise again, but both searches ended in failure.

Perhaps such opportunities only came once in a lifetime, or perhaps he simply wasn’t meant to return yet.

Either way, after today, one thing was beyond question: whatever the Celestial Prismatic Jade truly was, it had just saved his life.