The mouth of the spatial rift resembled a torn wound in the night sky, bleeding purple light and jagged void-sparks.
As the expedition vessel passed through the tear, the roar of the wind ceased instantly. A eerie, absolute silence settled over the surroundings.
Ren stood at the bow of the ship, watching as the clouds vanished, replaced by a shattered realm of floating, ancient ruins drifting through a dark indigo void. Colossal obsidian towers, broken marble plazas, and inverted mountain peaks drifted aimlessly like fallen leaves on a still pond.
"No gravity..." Lin Xiu murmured, her boots lifting off the deck tiles as the ship's weight-anchors sputtered and died. She adjusted her posture mid-air, using a faint thread of Ice Qi to anchor her boots back to the wooden deck.
Saintess Yao floated gracefully beside them, her green silk sash wafting gently around her waist. "The environmental Qi here is dead. Do not waste your internal reserves on light spells or basic flight steps. Once your core drains, you will drift into the deep void until a spatial tear cuts you in two."
Around them, forty elite disciples chosen from various upper-realm sects were already panicking. Disciples accustomed to leaping across mountain peaks found themselves tumbling awkwardly through thin air, their heavy armor making them rotate helplessly in zero-mass.
SCREECH!
A high-pitched, metallic shriek echoed from the hollow interior of a shattered floating plaza three hundred yards away.
From the dark cracks in the stone, dozens of translucent, serpent-like shadows poured out into the void—Gliding Husks. Their bodies were composed of razor-sharp spatial glass, and without air resistance to slow them, they shot toward the helpless disciples at terrifying speed.
"Form a defense formation!" an inner disciple shouted, unleashing a flaming sword wave.
The fire Qi flared brilliantly for a second before sputtering out in the dead atmosphere. The Gliding Husks sliced clean through the flame wave, their glass-like bodies severing two disciples' shields and sending them flying backward through the dark void.
"They move too fast!" another disciple cried, flailing wildly as he drifted away from the ship's railing.
Ren stepped off the deck.
While the others drifted or struggled to find footings, Ren didn't use Qi to propel himself. He simply shifted his personal gravitational vector ninety degrees forward.
Spatial Anchor: Forward Pull.
Ren shot through thin air like an arrow released from a steel bow, slicing through the zero-gravity expanse in a perfectly straight line.
He intercepted a swarm of twenty Gliding Husks mid-flight. As the razor-sharp spatial serpents lunged for his throat, Ren unsealed his core.
Sovereign Domain: Absolute Drag.
A fifty-foot sphere of crushing weight exploded around the swarm. In a realm with zero natural mass, the sudden imposition of fifty-fold gravity was catastrophic. The Gliding Husks were instantly locked in place mid-air, their high-speed momentum halted so abruptly that their fragile, spatial-glass bodies shattered into thousands of glittering, harmless dust particles.
Ren reached out with his bare right hand, grabbing the largest husk by its neck.
Pull.
The Null Root in his chest roared, drinking the kinetic energy of the swarm's impact. The glittering dust dissolved into streams of violet light, flowing straight into Ren's skin and strengthening his Sovereign Frame.
Saintess Yao’s eyes narrowed as she watched Ren glide effortlessly through the void, stepping from one floating stone ruin to the next as if walking on invisible, solid ground.
"He isn't fighting the zero-gravity..." Yao whispered to herself, her fingers tightening around her green silk sash. "He's writing the laws of weight for this entire graveyard."
Ren landed lightly on the roof of a drifting obsidian temple at the center of the ruins. Deep within the temple's dark, sealed sanctuary, a familiar, rhythmic hum vibrated straight into his marrow—the pulse of the Fourth Godhead Shard.
Ren looked back at Lin Xiu and Yao, his voice carrying clearly through the silent void.
"Keep up," Ren said quietly. "The tomb is opening."