The stench of burnt ozone was thick enough to taste.
Ren opened his eyes to a world tilted on its side. The high cliffs of the Western Ridge were gone, replaced by a smooth, bowl-shaped crater where the mountain’s outer rim had been sheared clean away. Below, the violet mists of the Void churned like an open mouth.
He moved his fingers first. The skin was blackened by soot, but beneath it, his muscles felt abnormally dense—like cold iron wrapped around heavy wire. When he pressed a hand against the cracked bedrock to lift himself, his palm sank an inch into solid stone without a sound.
What is this?
Ren drew a shuddering breath. Deep in his chest, where the cold, dead space of his Null Root had sat for six years, something new pulsed. It wasn't a glowing golden core or a flame of Qi. It was a dark, spinning vortex—a microscopic grain of cosmic mass that pulled inward with terrifying strength.
Beside him, young Lin gasped, clutching his chest, his eyes wide with shock. He was alive, untouched by the crushing shockwave that should have liquefied them both.
"Ren..." Lin whispered, his voice trembling. "Your skin... your chest..."
Before Ren could answer, a sharp, piercing whistling sound cut through the sky.
Three shadows descended from the upper clouds, landing on the lip of the crater with heavy, echoed thuds. The air around them grew instantly suffocating—not from atmospheric pressure, but from the raw, deliberate release of high-tier Qi.
At the center stood Outer Sect Elder Lu.
His silver robes hovered inches above the scorched rock, unblemished by dust. His face was sharp, eyes narrow and cold as polished jade. Flanking him were two inner-sect enforcers, their hands resting on the pommels of long, crimson-hued flying swords.
"Clean the area," Elder Lu commanded, his voice carrying a resonant, metallic chime that made Ren’s eardrums bleed. "If a single grain of divine scrap remains on this peak, search every disciple's sea of consciousness."
The two enforcers blurred, moving across the crater like pale ghosts.
Elder Lu stepped forward, his boots coming to rest three feet from Ren. He looked down at the surviving outer disciples with the mild disgust one might reserve for squished insects on a garden path.
Senior Brother Zhou was crawling nearby, his clean robes torn to shreds, vomiting dark blood as his ruptured spirit veins leaked Qi into the air.
"Elder..." Zhou choked out, raising a trembling hand. "The... the sky fell. A divine shard... it crushed the unit..."
Elder Lu didn't even look at him. He flicked his sleeve, and a wave of invisible force swept Zhou thirty feet across the rock, silencing him. The Elder’s gaze locked onto Ren and Lin.
"Two worms survived at ground zero," Lu murmured.
He raised his right hand, two fingers extended. A thread of brilliant, golden Divine Sense shot from his fingertips, piercing straight into Lin’s forehead. The boy froze, his eyes rolling back as the Elder forcibly scanned his soul. Satisfied, Lu snapped the thread, leaving Lin unconscious on the stone.
Then, the golden beam turned toward Ren.
If he scans my core, I am dead, Ren realized instantly. A Null Root opening nine spirit veins in a single breath was an impossibility; carrying a fused sliver of a fallen Godhead was an immediate death sentence.
As the golden thread pierced his brow, Ren panicked. He didn't have Qi to construct a mental shield. Desperate, he focused on the heavy, dark vortex inside his chest.
Pull, he commanded it. Absorb it.
The tiny grain of Godhead Shard within his Null Root answered. Instead of building a wall, Ren’s core created a micro-vacuum directly behind his forehead.
Elder Lu’s Divine Sense entered Ren’s skull and was instantly dragged sideways into the dense, black abyss of his core. The golden energy didn't find open veins or glowing Qi—it was simply swallowed, crushed, and compressed into nothingness, returning no reflection to its owner.
Elder Lu frowned, his brow furrowing slightly. He intensified the probe, sending a second, heavier pulse of energy into Ren’s frame.
Ren clamped his teeth together so hard his gums bled. The internal pressure was unbearable. His new, dense spirit veins groaned under the weight of the Elder's intrusive power, but his Null Root drank every scrap of force, grinding the Elder's probe into raw mass.
Lu withdrew his fingers sharply, a flicker of irritation crossing his face.
"A completely dead vessel," Lu muttered, wiping his fingers on his silk sleeve as if he had touched something filthy. "No pathways, no residual spirit energy. The spatial collapse must have blown right through his empty frame without finding anything to tear."
He turned his back on Ren, looking down into the endless mists of the Void where the main body of the falling shard had disappeared.
"Gather the corpses and seal the Western Ridge," Elder Lu ordered the returning enforcers. "The artifact has fallen into the lower realm, but the residual intent here is volatile. Any disciple who shows signs of sudden, unexplained breakthroughs is to be taken to the Punishment Hall immediately for soul-refining."
The Elder stepped back onto his flying sword, rising into the blood-red clouds without another glance.
Ren lay motionless in the grit until the air pressure returned to normal.
When he finally looked down at his own hands, he saw subtle, hair-thin violet lines running along the bones beneath his translucent skin. He pulled his fist back an inch and lightly tapped the solid granite beneath him.
Crack.
A network of fractures spider-webbed four feet across the crater floor.
Ren closed his fist tight, hiding his hand within his ragged sleeves. He had survived the sky falling, and he had survived Elder Lu. But as he looked toward the inner peaks of the Azure Cloud Sect, he knew the real danger had just begun.