The massive, chain-operated cargo lift groaned, its thick steel gears shrieking in a horrifying metallic chorus. The reinforced ironwood platform was visibly bowing in the center, straining under a load it was never designed to carry.
Shang Jue stood in the middle of the lift, his posture slouched, his breathing deliberately ragged and shallow. On his right shoulder rested the Abyssal Star-Core—a jagged, light-swallowing mass of ultimate density. Between his own eighteen-hundred-pound frame and the two-thousand-pound meteorite fragment, he was currently subjecting the lift's array matrix to nearly four thousand pounds of localized kinetic stress.
In the corner of the platform, the Deep Ash foreman was huddled against the iron railing, his face pale and slick with terrified sweat. He kept casting frantic, darting glances at the gaunt, bandaged boy and the impossibly heavy ore on his shoulder.
"The... the top floor is the Grand Furnace," the foreman stammered, his voice barely audible over the grinding gears. "Only Inner Elders and elite disciples are permitted there. If they see a filthy porter carrying unauthorized ore... they won't even ask questions. They will throw us both into the magma channels to fuel the fires."
Shang Jue did not respond. His dark, abyssal eyes were fixed on the approaching ceiling of the shaft, watching the ambient light shift from a dull, angry red to a blinding, brilliant gold.
He was using the slow ascent to finalize his tactical equation. He did not intend to butcher his way through the Crimson Furnace Valley. Slaughtering orthodox cultivators was a means to an end, but it would not forge his Sword Intent. He needed the unparalleled heat of this volcano, and more importantly, he needed to observe the supreme forging techniques of the sect's grandmasters. To do that, he needed to become an indispensable, albeit freakish, tool.
CLANG.
The lift violently jolted to a halt. The heavy iron gates rumbled open, unleashing a wave of heat and sound so intense it felt like a physical blow to the chest.
If the Deep Ash level was the bowels of hell, the Grand Furnace was the throne room.
The cavern was unimaginably vast, hollowed out directly into the heart of the active volcano. Rivers of glowing, white-hot magma flowed through intricately carved basalt canals, powering building-sized mechanical hammers that struck colossal anvils with the deafening roar of continuous thunder. *THOOM. THOOM.* The air was thick with the smell of sulfur, vaporized iron, and heavy, violently Yang-attributed spiritual energy.
Hundreds of shirtless, heavily scarred disciples worked the smaller forges, their muscles corded and gleaming with sweat.
When the lift doors opened, the rhythmic striking of the nearest hammers slowly ground to a halt.
Three Inner Court disciples, clad in deep crimson robes woven with fire-resistant silk, immediately stepped forward to block the lift's exit. They possessed Late Foundation Establishment auras, their eyes burning with the arrogant, volatile temper typical of fire-attribute cultivators.
"Halt!" the lead disciple barked, placing a hand on the hilt of a massive, glowing warhammer at his belt. "A Deep Ash maggot? How did you bypass the lower security wards? And what in the hells are you carrying?"
Shang Jue let his knees buckle slightly, putting on a masterful performance of a man teetering on the absolute edge of physical collapse. He let out a low, pathetic wheeze.
"Heavy..." Shang Jue rasped, his voice muffled by the dirty bandages wrapping his face. "The foreman... said bring it... to the masters..."
The foreman, still cowering in the lift, immediately threw himself face-first onto the hot stone floor. "S-Senior Disciples! Forgive the intrusion! This boy... he found this ore buried deep behind the standard Earth-Marrow veins. I... I have never seen a metal like it. It swallows the light. I thought the Grandmasters would want to examine it!"
The lead disciple sneered, walking toward the slouched boy. "A new ore? Let me see this supposed treasure."
The disciple didn't ask Shang Jue to set it down. He casually extended his right hand, channeling a surge of fiery blue Qi, intending to simply lift the dark stone off the boy's shoulder using spiritual telekinesis.
As the disciple's Qi wrapped around the Abyssal Star-Core, a shocking phenomenon occurred.
The fiery blue spiritual energy did not lift the stone; it was instantly stretched, warped, and violently pulled downward, as if it had been sucked into a localized black hole. The disciple gasped, feeling a terrifying, phantom weight suddenly slam into his meridians. He stumbled forward, almost falling to his knees before frantically severing his Qi connection to the ore.
The disciple stared at the dark, jagged metal, his arrogant expression entirely replaced by profound horror.
"That's... that's impossible," the disciple whispered, his arm trembling. "Its localized gravity is devouring my spiritual sense. Is that... an Abyssal Star-Core? From the forbidden ancient texts?"
The disciple looked up at Shang Jue, completely failing to comprehend the physics in front of him. "If that is Star-Core... how are you standing? You have no Qi. The sheer physical weight should have turned your spine to powder."
Before the disciple could press further, the ambient temperature in the Grand Furnace suddenly spiked. The air itself seemed to blur and distort.
Walking out from the central, most massive forge in the cavern was an old man.
He was completely bald, his skin the color of heavily oxidized copper and mapped with thousands of burn scars. He wore no shirt, only heavy, black iron trousers. He radiated an aura so intensely hot and oppressive that the Inner Court disciples instantly dropped to one knee, bowing their heads in deep reverence.
He was Elder Gao, the Chief Forge-Master of the Crimson Furnace Valley, and a Late Core Formation titan.
"What is disrupting the rhythm of my hammers?" Elder Gao's voice was a deep, tectonic rumble that easily overpowered the noise of the magma rivers.
"Elder Gao!" the lead disciple said quickly, still kneeling. "A porter from the Deep Ash levels. He... he has brought up a piece of raw ore. I believe it is an Abyssal Star-Core."
Elder Gao's blazing, orange eyes snapped toward the lift. He ignored the groveling foreman and the kneeling disciples. His gaze locked instantly onto the massive chunk of light-swallowing metal resting on Shang Jue's shoulder.
The Elder slowly walked forward, the stone floor hissing beneath his bare feet. He stopped two paces away from Shang Jue.
Elder Gao didn't bother using Qi telekinesis. He reached out with a thick, calloused hand and placed it directly against the dark metal.
The Core Formation master's muscles immediately tensed. His eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock as he felt the absolute, unyielding density of the two-thousand-pound meteorite fragment.
Then, Elder Gao slowly shifted his gaze from the ore to the gaunt, bandaged face of the boy holding it.
Elder Gao's spiritual sense swept over Shang Jue like a wave of boiling water. He found exactly what Elder Feng and the toll guard had found: absolutely nothing. No Qi. No spiritual foundation. Just raw, terrifying, biological silence.
"You carried this," Elder Gao murmured, his voice laced with a mixture of disbelief and growing, manic excitement. "You carried two thousand pounds of dead weight up the lift shaft using nothing but flesh and bone."
Shang Jue let his head loll to the side, letting out another exhausted, pathetic grunt.
Elder Gao threw his head back and let out a booming, echoing laugh. The sheer force of his mirth shook the ash from the high ceiling.
"A freak of the mortal realm!" Elder Gao roared, his eyes gleaming with the manic obsession of a master craftsman who had just found the ultimate tool. "A natural-born Iron-Slaying Physique! In a hundred years, I have never seen a mortal shell with such absurd, impossible density!"
The Elder looked at the Abyssal Star-Core, and then back at Shang Jue. The gears in his mind were turning rapidly. The Crimson Furnace Valley had always possessed the heat required to melt legendary metals, but they lacked the physical, kinetic force to fold them properly. Qi hammers could only do so much against metals that actively rejected spiritual energy.
"Boy," Elder Gao commanded, a terrifying, greedy smile spreading across his scarred face. "You did not find a rock. You found your destiny. I am going to forge the heaviest, most destructive blade this continent has ever seen. And you... your freakish bones are going to help me strike the anvil."
Beneath the dirty bandages, hidden from the Core Formation master's piercing gaze, Shang Jue's dark eyes narrowed into a cold, calculating curve.
The infiltration was absolute. He had secured the Abyssal Star-Core. He had secured the Grand Furnace. And he had just manipulated one of the greatest blacksmiths in the orthodox world into acting as his personal instructor.
The crucible was ready. It was time to see if his mind was heavy enough to wield the gravity he had just unleashed.
"Clear the Sun-Devouring Crucible!" Elder Gao's voice roared, echoing off the high basalt ceiling of the grand cavern. "Divert the primary magma flow! We are waking the Ancestral Anvil!"
The Grand Furnace erupted into a frenzy of organized chaos. Dozens of Inner Court disciples scrambled, weaving hand seals to manipulate the massive array matrixes that controlled the volcano's inner pressure. Heavy, iron-wrought floodgates were cranked open, redirecting a blinding, white-hot river of pure magma directly beneath the central forge.
Elder Gao turned to Shang Jue, his eyes burning with maniacal fervor. "Bring it, boy. Follow me."
Shang Jue maintained his slouched, exhausted posture. He took slow, deliberate steps, letting the Abyssal Star-Core rest heavily on his shoulder. With every footfall, the stone floor groaned, a subtle reminder to the terrified disciples giving him a wide berth that they were sharing oxygen with a walking cataclysm.
They arrived at the center of the cavern.
The 'Ancestral Anvil' was not a block of iron. It was a perfectly flat, naturally formed plateau of ultra-dense black diamond, twenty feet wide, protruding directly over the newly diverted river of white-hot magma. The ambient heat here was so absolute that the air rippled violently, turning the surrounding disciples into blurry, shimmering silhouettes.
"Set it down," Elder Gao commanded, stepping back. "Gently. If you crack the Ancestral Anvil, I will use your bones as kindling."
Shang Jue approached the center of the diamond plateau. He didn't drop the ore this time. He engaged his biological anchor, perfectly counterbalancing the two thousand pounds of dead weight, and lowered the Abyssal Star-Core onto the anvil with terrifying, absolute silence.
Elder Gao watched the display of physical control, his copper-colored jaw tightening. A mortal without Qi who can perfectly manipulate a ton of dead weight without making a sound, Gao thought, a shiver of profound awe running down his spine. The heavens truly balance all things. They denied him spiritual roots, but gave him the physical density of a mountain.
"Listen to me, maggot," Elder Gao said, stepping onto the anvil beside Shang Jue. The heat was blistering, causing the coarse bandages on Shang Jue's face to singe and smoke at the edges. "Abyssal Star-Core actively devours thermal energy and rejects spiritual Qi. We cannot 'melt' it in a traditional crucible. To forge it, we must force the metal into submission through absolute, catastrophic kinetic trauma. We must beat it until the friction of its own atomic structure forces it to soften."
Shang Jue listened intently. This was the high-tier forging theory he had come to steal.
Elder Gao walked over to a massive weapons rack nearby and pulled down a colossal, two-handed sledgehammer. The head of the hammer was a solid block of refined Deep-Earth Tungsten, roughly the size of a beer keg. The handle was wrapped in fire-dragon leather.
"This is the Earth-Breaker," Elder Gao said, hefting the massive hammer effortlessly with his Core Formation Qi. He tossed it horizontally toward Shang Jue. "It weighs four hundred pounds. Catch."
Shang Jue didn't reach out to grab it out of the air. He let the massive hammer fall, casually catching the heavy handle with one hand just before the Tungsten head struck the diamond anvil.
He let his arm sag, acting as if the four-hundred-pound hammer was incredibly heavy, though to him, it felt like holding a wooden training stick.
"Your job is simple, boy," Elder Gao instructed, his hands igniting with a terrifying, white-hot spiritual flame the unique Core-Fire of a Late Core Formation grandmaster. "I will apply the maximum thermal pressure my Core can sustain. I will heat the outer shell of the ore. When I say strike, you hit the Star-Core with everything your freakish body can generate. You do not stop until I tell you."
Shang Jue nodded slowly, his posture slumped.
Elder Gao stepped forward, placing both of his blazing, white-hot hands directly onto the dark, jagged surface of the Abyssal Star-Core.
The cavern was filled with a deafening, high-pitched hiss. The Star-Core actively fought the Core-Fire, devouring the thermal energy like a black hole. Elder Gao gritted his teeth, the veins on his bald head bulging as he poured decades of refined, Yang-attributed cultivation into the dead metal.
For ten agonizing minutes, nothing happened. The ore remained pitch black.
Then, slowly, a faint, incredibly dull cherry-red glow began to appear at the very center of the jagged rock.
"Now!" Elder Gao roared, stepping back, his chest heaving from the immense spiritual exertion. "Strike!"
Shang Jue stepped up to the anvil.
He didn't think about blacksmithing. He thought about the *Gravity Cleaver's Path*. He thought about the shattered Azure Peak longsword, and the fleeting, microscopic phenomenon of the air turning heavy beneath his blade.
He raised the four-hundred-pound Tungsten hammer high above his head. He didn't just use his arm muscles. He engaged his localized gravitational anomaly. He let his two-thousand-pound density flow upward into his shoulders, locking his joints into a perfect kinetic chain, aligning the center of mass of the hammer with the absolute gravitational pull of the earth below.
He brought the hammer down.
DOOM.
The impact was not a sound; it was an apocalyptic physical event.
The shockwave blasted outward in a visible ring, violently extinguishing the flames of the smaller forges fifty yards away. The Inner Court disciples were physically thrown backward by the displaced air. The entire volcanic mountain let out a deep, tectonic groan that vibrated through the soles of everyone's feet.
Elder Gao, shielded by his Core Formation Qi, stared in absolute shock.
The Tungsten hammer had struck the glowing cherry-red center of the Abyssal Star-Core. The impossible, unyielding metal had actually compressed. A shallow, perfect indentation had been driven into the meteorite fragment.
But Shang Jue wasn't looking at the dent.
Behind his bandages, his dark eyes were wide with a profound, terrifying revelation.
When the hammer struck the Abyssal Star-Core, the metal did not just resist the physical blow. Its own immense density created a kinetic rebound a violent pushback of pure physical force. The shockwave traveled up the handle of the hammer, tearing through Shang Jue's forearms, his shoulders, and directly into his spine.
For the first time since he had consumed the Earth-Marrow, Shang Jue felt genuine physical pain. The two-thousand-pound rebound shook his bones, threatening to rattle his internal organs.
Perfect, Shang Jue thought, a cold, euphoric thrill washing over his mind.
Ordinary swinging was useless because there was nothing in the mortal realm heavy enough to provide resistance against his density. But striking the Abyssal Star-Core was like punching a mirror image of his own gravity. The violent kinetic rebound was actively hammering his own cellular structure, forcing his muscles and bones to compress and adapt even further.
He wasn't just forging a sword. He was forging himself.
"Again!" Elder Gao bellowed, his shock quickly replaced by manic ecstasy. The boy was actually doing it. He was bending the Star-Core.
Shang Jue raised the massive Tungsten hammer again.
He focused his mind, completely isolating his consciousness from the searing pain in his arms. He visualized the concept of absolute weight. He imagined his intent not as a sharp edge, but as a crushing, inescapable singularity.
He brought the hammer down.
DOOM.
Another seismic shockwave ripped through the cavern. The cherry-red glow of the ore deepened.
DOOM. DOOM. DOOM.
Shang Jue settled into a terrifying, rhythmic cadence. With every strike, he poured the nascent, crushing concept of his Gravity Intent into the hammer. And with every violent kinetic rebound, the Abyssal Star-Core hammered the Intent back into his mind, refining it, stripping away the useless ethereal concepts of orthodox sword arts and leaving only the brutal, physical truth of mass.
The Inner Court disciples watched in paralyzed silence. They were witnessing a myth being born. The gaunt, filthy porter was swinging a four-hundred-pound hammer with the force of a falling meteor, over and over again, without a single drop of Qi, his bare skin completely ignoring the ambient heat that was currently melting the iron railings nearby.
Hours passed.
The Abyssal Star-Core, subjected to the relentless, cataclysmic trauma of Shang Jue's absolute density and Elder Gao's Core-Fire, finally began to yield. The jagged, asymmetrical chunk of meteorite was slowly, agonizingly being flattened and elongated, taking on the crude, brutal dimensions of an oversized heavy blade.
But Shang Jue was reaching his limit.
The continuous kinetic rebounds had caused micro-fractures along his forearms. His muscles, strained beyond their impossible limits, were screaming. Blood began to seep through the pores of his hands, staining the fire-dragon leather of the hammer's handle.
As he raised the hammer for the five-hundredth strike, the mental fatigue finally caused his absolute control to slip.
He swung the hammer down, but his center of gravity was off by a fraction of an inch. The localized gravitational anomaly spiked erratically.
As the Tungsten hammer descended, the air pressure around the anvil suddenly warped with such violent intensity that the white-hot magma river flowing directly beneath the diamond plateau was physically repelled, creating a massive, momentary crater in the liquid fire.
CRACK.
The hammer struck the ore, but the sheer, uncontrolled conceptual weight of his fractured Intent bypassed the metal entirely.
The Ancestral Anvil the flawless block of black diamond that had withstood thousands of years of forging let out a sharp, agonizing shriek.
A massive, jagged fissure shot across the surface of the diamond, splitting the ancient plateau perfectly in half.
The cavern fell into a dead, horrifying silence.
Shang Jue lowered the hammer, his chest heaving slightly. The Tungsten head of the hammer had been completely flattened into a useless disk by the failed strike.
Elder Gao stood frozen, his jaw slack, staring at the ruined Ancestral Anvil. He looked at the cracked diamond, then slowly looked up at the bandaged boy.
The Core Formation master realized, with a sudden, chilling clarity, that the force that had just cracked the diamond was not just physical strength. It was a pressure that felt distinctly like the imposition of a terrifying, alien Dao.
"What... what are you?" Elder Gao whispered, the manic excitement finally giving way to a creeping, primal dread.
The cargo lift groaned as it began its long ascent back to the surface, but the sound was entirely drowned out by the blaring of the massive, brass war-horns echoing from the depths of the caldera.
Down in the Grand Furnace, the shock that had paralyzed Elder Gao finally evaporated, replaced by a violent, frantic realization. The master blacksmith had allowed his obsession to blind him. He had just forged the ultimate weapon from an irreplaceable, mythic material, and he had handed it to an anomaly a rogue variable that possessed no loyalty to the Crimson Furnace Valley. To let the boy walk out with the Abyssal Star-Core was a catastrophic failure of his authority.
"Seal the upper gates!" Elder Gao's voice roared, amplified by his Late Core Formation Qi, sending a spiritual shockwave racing up the lift shaft faster than the grinding gears. "Lock down the caldera! The porter is an infiltrator! Do not let him leave with the black blade!"
Inside the ascending lift, the Deep Ash foreman curled into a fetal position in the corner, sobbing openly. He knew the lockdown protocols. The entire sect was mobilizing.
Shang Jue stood in the center of the platform. He didn't look at the weeping foreman. He simply rested the flat of the six-foot, pitch-black cleaver against his shoulder. He felt the terrifying, dense thrum of the weapon. It was perfectly synced with his own biological gravity. For the first time in his existence, he was whole.
CLANG.
The lift violently slammed into the surface docking bay. The heavy iron doors were immediately yanked open from the outside by thick chains.
The sweltering, smog-filled air of the surface caldera rushed in, bringing with it the sight of absolute military mobilization.
Over two hundred elite Crimson Furnace disciples formed a massive half-circle around the lift's exit. They were clad in heavy, fire-resistant armor, wielding massive warhammers, halberds, and heavy iron shields. Standing at the forefront were four sect elders, including the burly, red-bearded elder who had initially recruited Shang Jue in the border settlement.
The red-bearded elder stared at the gaunt, bandaged boy stepping out of the lift, and then at the massive, light-swallowing cleaver resting on his shoulder.
"You..." the elder snarled, his Early Core Formation aura exploding in a wave of blistering heat. "You hid your strength. You used the Valley to forge a stolen treasure. Drop the weapon, vagrant, or we will melt you down to the bone!"
Shang Jue stepped off the wooden platform onto the solid basalt pavement of the surface courtyard.
He didn't speak. He didn't slouch. He reached up with his free hand and tore the singed, filthy bandages from his face, tossing them into the dust.
The disciples gasped. The boy's face was pale and gaunt, his abyssal eyes completely devoid of human empathy. But it was the glowing, jagged brand on his glabella the Soul Seal of the Heavenly Sword Sect that sent a shock of profound confusion through the orthodox ranks.
"A branded heretic!" one of the elders shouted, his eyes widening. "A slave of the Heavenly Sword Sect! Kill him! Do not let the weapon fall into their hands!"
"Shield formation! Suppress him!" the red-bearded elder roared, raising a massive, flaming warhammer.
Fifty heavy infantry disciples surged forward simultaneously. They slammed their thick iron shields together, forming an impenetrable, curved wall of spiked metal. They channeled their collective Yang-attributed Qi, linking their shields into a glowing, red-hot barricade designed to crush advancing beasts.
Shang Jue did not stop walking. He gripped the thick, Leviathan-tendon-wrapped hilt of the Gravity Cleaver with both hands.
He didn't run. He didn't charge. He simply raised the massive, two-thousand-pound blade over his right shoulder and stepped into a wide stance.
He isolated his mind. He recalled the excruciating failures with the standard longsword, and the euphoric, cataclysmic success in the Grand Furnace. He didn't push Qi into the blade. He pushed the concept of absolute, crushing weight.
He swung the black cleaver in a wide, horizontal arc.
The Gravity Cleaver: First Form - The Falling Horizon.
The pitch-black blade cut through the sweltering air. It didn't make a sharp whistling sound. It emitted a deep, low-frequency hum that vibrated in the teeth of every cultivator in the courtyard.
Before the blunt physical edge of the weapon even reached the shield wall, the conceptual Intent arrived.
A massive, invisible crescent of pure, localized gravitational pressure violently expanded from the blade. It struck the glowing, red-hot shield formation like a tidal wave of solid lead.
The collision defied orthodox logic.
The linked Qi shields didn't shatter; they instantly collapsed under their own sudden, impossible weight. The heavy iron physical shields buckled inward, groaning like crushed tin cans.
"Hold the line!" a disciple screamed, but the words were instantly silenced.
The sheer kinetic force of the Intent violently pulverized the fifty heavy infantrymen. They were launched backward, their armor caving in, their bones instantly shattering under the sudden imposition of an artificial gravity spike. The entire front line was swept away like dead leaves in a hurricane, leaving a massive, fan-shaped crater carved deep into the solid basalt pavement.
The remaining hundred and fifty disciples froze, absolute, paralyzing terror locking their joints. They stared at the pulverized remains of their comrades.
A mortal without Qi had just annihilated a synchronized heavy infantry formation with a single, ranged swing of a blunt object.
"Impossible," the red-bearded elder breathed, his flaming hammer drooping. He looked at the pitch-black cleaver. The weapon hadn't cracked. It hadn't vibrated. It had perfectly channeled the cataclysm.
Shang Jue slowly lowered the blade, letting the heavy, flat tip rest against the stone floor. *Screeech.* "You rely on the energy of the world," Shang Jue's voice carried across the silent, terrified courtyard, cold and unyielding. "I am my own world."
The red-bearded elder roared in a mixture of fury and despair. He bit his tongue, burning his blood essence to forcefully elevate his Early Core Formation power. His warhammer erupted into a pillar of blinding, white-hot plasma.
"Die, anomaly!" The elder leaped into the air, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second, bringing the blazing hammer down toward Shang Jue's unarmored head with the force of an erupting volcano.
Shang Jue didn't dodge. He simply raised the flat of the Gravity Cleaver horizontally above his head, using it as a canopy.
CLANG.
The flaming warhammer struck the Abyssal Star-Core.
To the elder's absolute horror, the kinetic force of his ultimate strike did not transfer through the boy. The two-thousand-pound blade, anchored by an eighteen-hundred-pound biological singularity, acted as an immovable physical absolute.
The kinetic rebound was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The elder's massive warhammer violently rebounded, the handle shattering into splinters. The shockwave traveled back up the elder's arms, instantly exploding his forearms into a mist of blood and shattered bone. The white-hot plasma was violently deflected outward, raining down upon the terrified disciples nearby.
The elder plummeted to the ground, screaming in absolute agony, his arms reduced to ruined stumps.
Shang Jue lowered the blade. He looked down at the writhing Core Formation master. He didn't strike him again. He didn't need to. The anvil did not pity the hammer that broke against it.
He stepped over the screaming elder.
The remaining disciples of the Crimson Furnace Valley parted like the Red Sea. They dropped their weapons. They fell to their knees. Their orthodox arrogance had been completely, violently crushed beneath the weight of a physical reality they could not comprehend.
Shang Jue walked through the sea of kneeling cultivators, dragging the massive black cleaver behind him.
Screeech... thud.
He approached the massive, heavy iron gates that led out of the volcanic caldera and back into the Gatekeeper Marches. He didn't bother looking for the winch mechanism.
He swung the Gravity Cleaver once.
The heavy iron gates exploded outward, torn off their massive hinges by the localized gravitational wave, tumbling down the mountain path.
The path was clear.
Shang Jue walked out of the Crimson Furnace Valley. The blazing heat of the volcano was behind him, replaced by the freezing mountain winds.
He had a blade that could withstand his density. He had forged an Intent that could crush orthodox Qi. Now, he turned his abyssal eyes toward the east, where the true masters of the Gatekeeper Marches resided.
He was ready to test the weight of his blade against the heavens.