The core of the Aether-Scar Rift was a place where light and weight bled together.
In the center of a massive, inverted crater suspended over a dark void, a jagged fragment of violet crystal—the size of a carriage—floated in mid-air. It pulsed with a rhythmic, thunderous heartbeat, radiating waves of unstable celestial law that made the surrounding air twist and buckle.
Standing on a narrow ridge twenty feet from the floating fragment was Lin Xiu.
Her icy aura was pushed to its absolute limit. A dome of translucent blue frost enveloped her, but it was cracking under the violent gravitational pull of the cosmic crystal. Beside her lay the corpse of a massive Void-Leopard—a Third-Tier spirit beast whose skull had been crushed by the sheer atmospheric drag of the anomaly.
Lin Xiu breathed heavily, blood trickling from the corner of her lips. She raised her sword, trying to reach the glowing core of the fragment to secure it before the rift collapsed, but every step forward felt like carrying an entire mountain range on her shoulders.
"It's too heavy..." she gritted out, her knees trembling as the frost barrier shattered into glittering dust.
A sudden, sharp spike in gravitational pressure tore through the cavern. The violet crystal hummed violently, unleashing a concentrated beam of compressed, chaotic mass straight toward Lin Xiu's exposed back.
She turned, raising her icy blade in a desperate, final parry.
BOOM!
A figure dropped out of the sky like a falling meteor, landing directly between Lin Xiu and the roaring wave of gravity.
Ren stood with his back to her, his bare hands thrust forward into the air.
"Ren?!" Lin Xiu gasped, her cold composure breaking in sheer shock.
Ren didn't answer. He couldn't speak.
The concentrated beam of cosmic weight slammed into his chest, intending to grind his flesh to dust. But the moment the energy struck his sternum, the microscopic singularity inside his dantean roared with starved fury.
Pull! Ren commanded his soul. Absorb it all!
The dark vortex expanded, violently drinking in the beam of mass. His Nine Spirit Veins ignited, glowing with brilliant, unholy violet light beneath his skin. His bones hummed like struck bells as his physical frame compressed to an unprecedented density.
CRACK!
Deep inside his chest, the microscopic grain of the original Godhead Shard broke its shell, fusing completely with his Null Root.
Stage Breakthrough: Spirit Vein Ignition (Gravity Realm).
Ren’s dense domain erupted outward. Instead of a narrow twenty-foot field, an invisible sphere of fifty feet expanded from his core, seizing control of the local atmospheric pressure. The violent, wild gravity of the entire cavern instantly calmed, pulled under the absolute control of Ren's command.
The floating violet crystal above them trembled, shedding its volatile outer shell to reveal a tiny, glowing seed of pure celestial law—the second fragment of the crown.
The seed shot down like a streak of purple lightning, sinking effortlessly into Ren’s forehead.
Ren exhaled a long, heavy cloud of violet-tinted grey mist. The heavy pressure vanished from the cavern. The sky above straightened out, the broken spatial tears slowly sealing shut.
He turned around slowly to face Lin Xiu.
The Ice Lotus sat on the stone, her clear eyes wide with utter bewilderment. She looked at the outer disciple who had been called a talentless cripple—standing before her now with hair floating in zero-gravity and eyes like dark, deep cosmoses.
"You..." Lin Xiu whispered, her hand trembling on her sword hilt. "You aren't a crippled laborer. You are... the sole heir to the Firmament."
Ren looked down at her, his voice carrying the deep, resonant echo of a mountain shifting.
"Elder Lu is coming," Ren said quietly. "And when he arrives, this sect will learn what real weight feels like."