The crimson blade cut through the ambient purple mist, trailing a howling gale of wind-infused Qi that split the basalt ground beneath it. It was a killer's blow, designed to sever a man's head before his nervous system could even register the danger.
Ren did not retreat.
Instead, he took a half-step forward and stomped his boot onto the bedrock.
The Dense Domain.
A twenty-foot sphere of invisible, crushed mass expanded instantly from Ren’s core. The atmosphere inside the domain turned instantly dense as liquid mercury.
The enforcer's flying sword—moving at blinding speed—hit the edge of the domain and violently decelerated. The razor-sharp wind Qi wrapped around the blade buckled, distorted by the massive gravitational drag, and the red metal began to shriek like a dying animal under the sudden drag.
Enforcer Zhao’s smile vanished, replaced by sheer bewilderment. He pushed his fingers forward, pumping more Gale-Qi into the weapon. "What... what is this pressure?!"
"Your blade is light," Ren said, his voice flat as he walked through the swirling dust. "It lacks weight."
Ren reached out with his bare right hand, grabbing the hovering crimson sword directly by the edge.
The wind Qi shattered against his skin, converting instantly into kinetic force that washed straight into his chest. Ren’s Null Root drank the impact, storing the violent energy of the high-tier strike into his core. The crimson blade groaned, vibrating wildly, but Ren’s fingers locked onto the steel like a vise of cold iron.
With a twist of his wrist, Ren snapped the inner-sect spirit blade in two.
CRACK.
Enforcer Zhao let out a strangled gasp, clutching his forehead as the mental link to his bound weapon shattered. Blood leaked from his nostrils. "You... your core! That isn't a Stagnant Iron Body! You absorbed the Godhead's celestial law!"
"You realized too late," Ren said.
Zhao’s eyes filled with wild panic. He reached for his storage ring to pull out a emergency defensive talisman, preparing to flee back toward the main rift portal. "The Elder will know! He mapped my soul-beacon—"
Ren didn't let him finish. He locked his focus onto Zhao’s body and shifted the enforcer’s local gravitational anchor.
Spatial Anchor: Maximum Mass.
Zhao slammed down into the purple soil as if an invisible mountain had been dropped onto his shoulders. His kneecaps shattered against the rock face, the sheer sudden weight pinning his face hard into the dirt. He couldn't lift a finger; even the air in his lungs was compressed so tightly he couldn't form a scream.
Ren stepped up beside the struggling enforcer, looking down with dark, unblinking eyes. He extended two fingers, tapping Zhao’s chest to release the stored kinetic energy taken from the shattered blade.
THUMP.
The internal impact destroyed Zhao’s heart instantly, ending his breath without spilling a single drop of blood outside his frame.
Silence returned to the cavern mouth.
Ren knelt and pulled the copper storage ring from Zhao’s lifeless hand. With a quick pulse of his dense gravity field, he broke the dead man's mental seal and searched the interior space.
Among dozens of high-grade spirit stones and medicinal pills, Ren pulled out a thick, black-leather scroll inscribed with Elder Lu’s private seal.
Ren unrolled the parchment. Written inside were detailed star-charts and secret directives:
"The fallen shard is not mere celestial ore. It is a Fragment of the Astral Sovereign's Crown—a relic capable of bending the laws of local mass and space. If any disciple exhibits abnormal body weight, altered density, or spatial absorption, execute them immediately and bring their corpse to the subterranean altar for extraction."
Ren’s chest burned with cold fury. He squeezed his hand closed, reducing the black scroll to a fine black powder that scattered in the rift wind.
"Extraction..." Ren whispered, looking toward the deep, jagged mountain peaks at the center of the Secret Realm, where a bright pillar of violet light pulsed against the bruised sky. "He doesn't just want the artifact. He wants to harvest whoever carries it."
Ren turned away from the body, stepping off the ledge and leaping into the high-gravity sky, hurtling toward the central pillar at terrifying speed.