The mining caverns of the Broken Link Sect smelled of ancient sweat and damp stone.
Leaving behind the open training field where Instructor Fēng Lì and her warriors slept deeply, crushed against the earth by the weight of his gravity, Zhì Yuǎn walked through the darkness. The god in the charcoal‑gray tunic needed no torches. Wisdom mapped the grooves of dead space around him, guiding him through the narrow tunnels to the rocky core of the mountain.
At the center of the deepest cavern, the skeleton of dark‑green jade of the second matrix rested.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped before the stone embedded in the ground. He rested his hand on the cold rock. His Inner Universe turned, and a thick drop of golden Primordial Qi flowed through his fingers, seeping into the dead foundation.
The mountain roared. The ground beneath the training field trembled slightly as the stone needle awakened. A colossal pillar of starlight erupted from the peak, piercing the sea of gray clouds and curving across the sky toward the southeast, silently connecting with the Ruin of the Throne.
Zhì Yuǎn shook invisible dust from his hands.
"One remains," murmured the unshakable voice in the darkness.
He pulled at the Law of Space and cut the air. The silver rift opened with a dry crack and swallowed him.
---
The portal tore the atmosphere in the Eastern region, opening directly over the middle plateaus that formed the domain of the Stone Cauldron Sect.
The smell of woodsmoke and bitter herbs leaked into the dimensional void. Zhì Yuǎn crossed the veil and landed silently in the sect's vast courtyard.
Wisdom in his mind dissected the environment in a fraction of a second. The scene was the apex of martial decay. Hundreds of common stone furnaces were scattered across the courtyard. The alchemists fed the furnaces with firewood and forced their own raw Qi against the stone to try to generate heat through sheer physical friction.
When the sound of space closing echoed, production stopped.
The Sect Master of the Stone Cauldron Sect, a man with swollen features and a tunic stained with soot, spun around, flanked by dozens of elders. Their mortal perception could not measure the calamity that had landed in the courtyard, and territorial instinct screamed louder than prudence.
"Intruder!" roared the Sect Master, his face contorting in fury. He wasted no time with capture orders or negotiations. "Kill him!"
The Sect Master's and his elders' hands moved in unison. From their wide sleeves, dozens of black walnut‑sized pills were hurled at the man in the black cloak. The spheres collided in the air and exploded simultaneously, creating a thick, swirling cloud of purple smoke. It was a corrosive, slowing poison, refined to melt lungs and paralyze the meridians of any cultivator in seconds.
Behind the smoke, the clan's warriors drew short swords. The blades did not gleam with clean Qi; they dripped a greenish, bubbling oil, ready to slice the poisoned prey.
Zhì Yuǎn did not hold his breath. He did not retreat. His unfathomable eyes merely registered the biological structure of those men running toward him. They possessed the largest number of 8th‑Stage cultivators in the South, but Wisdom showed the fragile foundations, stretched and rotten by the excessive consumption of those very pills. They were balloons about to burst.
Zhì Yuǎn took a step forward, entering the toxic cloud.
He merely stopped restraining the gravity of his Inner Universe.
The existential weight of his presence collapsed upon the plateau. The impact was not horizontal. The cloud of poisonous smoke surrounding him was flattened against the stone floor in a fraction of a second, compressed by the absurd gravity until it liquefied into a harmless purple stain on the slabs.
The oil‑bathed swords never reached him. The atmospheric pressure struck the swollen bodies of the alchemists. The sound of dozens of dantians cracking and bursting at once echoed through the courtyard like a volley of wet fireworks.
The Sect Master choked, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets as his own foundation collapsed in his belly. Pressure invaded the rotten meridians. One by one, the cultivators of the Stone Cauldron fell to their knees, their swords clattering to the ground as they vomited pools of dark blood and bile.
"Empty foundations," Zhì Yuǎn murmured, his lethargic, indifferent voice stating the biological failure to the wind.
Ignoring the bodies writhing in agony on the dirty stone, the god walked to the main furnace, embedded in the base of the mountain rock. He rested his hand on the grimy masonry. The golden torrent of Primordial Qi descended through his arm, crossing the earth until it reached the dormant matrix in the depths.
The last mountain needle awakened. A colossal pillar of starlight erupted from the stone core and tore through the clouds toward the sky.
High above, far above the sea of mist, the four lines of cosmic energy united into a formidable dome, converging in perfect harmony toward the region's Central Pillar. The continental lock that had kept that world stagnant for ages had been completely unlocked.
---
Zhì Yuǎn raised his face, the darkness of his eyes reflecting the celestial dome that pulsed with the power he himself had re‑activated.
"The door is open," the god murmured to the cold wind.
His mind, however, immediately abandoned the celestial gears and the ruined sects. The searing Hunger of his dantian returned in full force, reminding him of the living furnace awaiting him at the center of that domain. He raised two fingers and tore the fabric of reality.
When the dimensional rift spat him back into the Sewing Hall of the Shattered Heaven Sect, the pressure of space receded gently.
Zhì Yuǎn crossed the threshold, and the lethargic apathy of his gaze retreated in the same instant, swallowed by a possessive, carnivorous heat.
The hall was in perfect silence. The three women had already finalized the concealment strategy for the higher realm. Lined up in the center of the wooden pavilion, wrapped in their respective heavy silks and thick veils, they awaited him like three imposing shadows—untouchable and absurdly dangerous.
The Hunger of his Inner Universe ignited like a supernova star before that sight. Hiding something so lethal and devoted in closed cloths only made the act of unpacking infinitely more tempting.
Yù Qíng leaned her covered shoulder against the heavy cedar wall. The attitude meant to convey the rigorous modesty of the new clothing was brutally corrupted by the languid, submissive tilt of her head.
"The ribbon on this new packaging is very tight, my heaven," Yù Qíng purred, her voice muffled by the veil gaining a rough, sadistic, intimate timbre, openly offering herself to him. "I hope you don't lose patience trying to tear it off with your teeth when we close the doors of our home up there."
The cold lethargy that inhabited the darkness of Zhì Yuǎn's eyes evaporated, violently swallowed by uncontrollable, carnivorous lust. The Hunger of his Inner Universe roared in response to that provocation, demanding the friction and submission of his primary furnace.
He did not walk. The women in the pavilion did not even register the physical displacement of the air. In an imperceptible fraction of a second, bending the very fabric of reality, Zhì Yuǎn materialized millimeters from Yù Qíng.
Before the priestess could blink, the god's left hand wrapped around her waist over the heavy layers of silk, crushing his wife brutally against his own rigid chest. The impact tore a wet gasp from Yù Qíng's lips, but the absolute possession did not stop there. Zhì Yuǎn's right hand rose like an implacable claw, skillfully burrowing under the folds of the collar of her navy‑blue tunic.
His long, calloused fingers gripped the skin of her neck, smooth and pale as jade, applying a dense, possessive pressure that forced the goddess to tilt her head back, exposing her throat beneath the starry veil.
The thick heat of Zhì Yuǎn's breath beat against the semi‑transparent fabric covering his wife's face. He did not tear the silk; instead, he leaned in and deposited a visceral, scalding kiss directly on the line of her chin and exposed neck, his teeth grazing her soft skin through the veil itself, marking the territory with contained aggression.
"Do not tempt me with burdens I can tear open right now, Qíng," his deep, unshakable voice vibrated against the goddess's skin, his breath, intoxicating with the scent of ozone and sandalwood, drugging the woman's senses. He tightened his grip on her neck a little more, a dominating caress that made the priestess's legs buckle with pure delight. "The lock of this world has already been broken. The passage is already open."
The possessive heat in his actions and the sudden brutality of the touch made the Yin of all three women pulse in unison in the room. Yù Qíng let out a trembling, adoring sigh, melting completely against her husband's iron grip, her black eyes gleaming with manic devotion beneath her veil.
Mò Yán, instinctively, joined her hands and curved her torso. The thick gray tunic strained violently against her full breasts beneath the disciplined gesture, the virgin Yin in her belly throbbing as she witnessed that overwhelming domination.
"The passage to the core is unobstructed, my heaven," the diplomat murmured, using the submissive, restricted language the goddesses had imposed on her. "The mountain has been evacuated. Since we left our conveyance behind in the village, I ordered the Sect Master to prepare a new armored carriage, forged from the finest hardwood and steel of our clan, as well as four new pure‑bloods. The vehicle and our luggage are already positioned in the depths of the Ruin of the Throne, awaiting your command."
Zhì Yuǎn fixed his gaze on the three women. Hidden under layers of heavy fabric, they were his family, the roots of his existence, and the furnace of his universe. The mortal world had reached its sterile limit, and the stage was set.
The black cloak fluttered slightly as he turned toward the pavilion's exit.
"To the Ruin of the Throne," Zhì Yuǎn commanded, his unshakable tone reverberating with the promise of ascension.
---
They left the Sewing Hall and began descending through the millennial, silent corridors of the sect.
The walk to the depths was swift. As they approached the final stairways leading to the colossal underground chamber, a solitary figure awaited, kneeling on the cold stone of the corridor.
Mò Tiān, the Sect Master of Shattered Heaven, kept his forehead pressed to the floor. The man had evacuated the mountain's core as ordered, abdicating his own empire to avoid being crushed by the calamity. He dared not lift his face when the light footsteps of the women and the silent tread of the god drew near.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped.
The god's black, unfathomable eyes descended upon the prostrate figure of Mò Yán's father. Wisdom in his mind felt no rancor or pity for the stagnant leader, but Mò Yán now belonged to his altar. The blood of Shattered Heaven was the origin of one of his women.
"Sect Master," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice echoed in the dark corridor.
Mò Tiān trembled, but managed to murmur a strangled response against the stone: "I hear, Lord."
"The foundations of the Stone Cauldron Sect collapsed today," Zhì Yuǎn declared, laconic, delivering the information with the coldness of one reporting the weather. "The alchemists' dantians are in ruins. Their defenses have fallen. The furnaces and pill vaults are full and unprotected. Emptiness always attracts those who are hungry."
Mò Tiān choked. The Sect Master's brain processed the information in a fraction of a second. The Stone Cauldron was the richest sect in healing resources in the South. If they were incapacitated, it was a banquet of treasures ready to be plundered by whoever arrived first.
The old leader lifted his face, his eyes gleaming with sudden greed and deep understanding. The "god" had just torn the roof off his world, but had handed him the key to become the absolute emperor of what remained on earth.
"Shattered Heaven thanks you for the mercy of your vision, Lord!" Mò Tiān exclaimed, bowing even deeper, his voice trembling with bloodthirsty gratitude.
Zhì Yuǎn did not answer. He simply resumed walking, leaving the Sect Master behind, descending the last steps to the core of the world.
---
The Ruin of the Throne awaited them.
The vast circular chamber of black rock and veins of dead jade was illuminated by the silver glow of the Astrolabe of a Thousand Bridges, already pulsing in the center of the matrix. On the polished obsidian floor, the new carriage—a colossal mobile fortress of dark cedar and tempered steel, delivered as an undeniable tribute from Shattered Heaven—was positioned. On the driver's seat, Mò Yán's old grandfather kept his head bowed, his hands firmly gripping the leather reins of the four new pure‑blood black horses snorting in the thin, ozone‑charged air.
"Enter," Zhì Yuǎn ordered, walking not toward the carriage, but to the exact center of the jade matrix.
Yù Qíng glided into the luxurious cabin, closely followed by Mò Yán. Yù Méi, with a wild smile hidden beneath her opaque veil, leaped onto the vehicle's veranda and closed the heavy armored door.
Alone in the center of the Ruin of the Throne, Zhì Yuǎn raised his face.
Through thousands of meters of solid rock, his Wisdom connected to the cosmic dome shimmering in the firmament. The four lines of starlight were aligned. The physical space of that stagnant world stretched like the skin of a drum about to burst.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his right hand.
He did not open a simple portal. His Inner Universe turned, and the Law of Space projected from his fingers like a dense, incontestable claw. He seized the convergence of the celestial matrices high above and, with a violent flick of his wrist, pulled the very sky downward.
CRACK.
The sound of reality shattering surpassed the crash of a thousand thunders, echoing in the entrails of the earth. The ceiling of the Ruin of the Throne did not collapse in stones; it yielded dimensionally. A colossal vortex of silver and darkness opened directly above the jade matrix, swallowing the light and exhaling a furious wind from an unknown realm.
The Law of Space enveloped the colossal carriage in a silver sphere. Mortal gravity was nullified. The four black horses neighed as their hooves lost contact with the black rock, and the immense fortress of wood began to levitate, being sucked vertically toward the cosmic rift.
With a single step, Zhì Yuǎn vanished from the stone and materialized on the ascending carriage's veranda.
The armored vehicle plunged into the stellar convergence. The silver vortex flickered and collapsed upon itself, swallowing the calamity. The Mortal World, with its decaying sects and hollow egos, was irrevocably left behind. The march to the true furnace of the higher realms had begun.
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