The gate to the Aether-Scar Rift did not sit on ground; it hung suspended in the void between two broken peaks, a jagged tear in reality held open by six massive obsidian suppression pillars. Beyond the threshold, the sky was a bruised swirl of violet nebulae and jagged floating islands of celestial rock, all bathed in an eerie, ambient hum.
Ren stood among twenty newly promoted Inner Disciples. The atmosphere was stifling—not from heat, but from the raw, unrefined atmospheric pressure bleeding through the portal.
Around him, disciples were already channeling their spirit pathways to push back against the environment. Light blue, pale green, and fiery red Qi barriers shimmered around their bodies, their foreheads beaded with sweat.
"Listen closely," declared Senior Instructor Gao, his voice booming over the roaring tear. "The Aether-Scar is a graveyard of spatial laws. The gravity shifts constantly. What is a light step on one floating island will crush your lungs on the next. You have three days to gather celestial iron, spirit herbs, or ancient scrap. Do not cross into the Deep Void."
Ren stepped through the shimmering curtain of the rift.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the spatial pressure slammed into him like a crashing wave. Disciples around him stumbled, two of them dropping to one knee as the heavy gravity dragged at their limbs.
For Ren, it was like stepping into a cold bath after a long walk.
His Null Root purred. The crushed, dense gravity of the realm didn't compress his lungs; it fed his singularity. Without revealing his speed to the others, he adjusted his body mass to match the island's pull, stepping onto the purple-tinted soil as effortlessly as if he were walking through his own cell.
Lin Xiu passed him, her icy aura slicing through the atmospheric drag with refined, effortless precision. She cast a brief, curious glance at Ren’s steady footing before launching herself toward a distant floating ridge, her pale blue shadow vanishing into the mist.
Ren broke away from the main group, heading west toward a cluster of shattered rock spires where the cosmic pressure hummed loudest.
An hour into the ruined landscape, the ambient noise of the rift faded into dead silence. Ren stopped near the mouth of a basalt cavern. Deep inside the crag, a jagged chunk of star-iron glowed with faint celestial light.
Clang.
The sound was subtle—the faint ring of a blade sliding from a leather scabbard twenty feet behind him.
Ren didn't turn around. "Elder Lu didn't send you here to scavenge scrap, did he?"
From behind a shattered stone pillar stepped Enforcer Zhao, one of the two inner-sect guards who had stood beside Elder Lu in the crater. His crimson flying sword hovered three inches above his palm, humming with razor-sharp Gale-Qi.
"You're sharper than you look, Null-Vein," Zhao sneered, his wind energy whipping up the purple dust around his boots. "The Elder doesn't care about your 'iron body' diagnosis. He doesn't like loose ends from the ridge. A dead outer disciple in a secret realm is just another body claimed by the void."
Zhao raised his hand, the crimson blade spinning violently into a hurricane of sharp, wind-infused force.
"Nobody can save you here," Zhao laughed. "Die!"
The flying sword shot forward, cutting through the heavy air like a streak of red lightning.
Ren turned slowly, his eyes flashing with a deep, cosmic violet. He dropped his suppression, releasing the full weight of his nine ignited spirit pathways into the surrounding soil.
"You're right," Ren whispered, his voice resonating with heavy mass. "Nobody can see us here."