The Grand Abyss Dungeon did not welcome intruders; it actively sought to crush them.
The moment Ming Xuan Ji and the halfling shadow-walker, Lynx, passed the boundary of the fifth floor's subterranean threshold, the very fundamental nature of the world changed.
The Zel'Mora forest, where she had spent her first hundred days, had been a wild, chaotic expanse of untamed nature, a breathing ecosystem of rotting leaves, shifting territories, and primal beasts.
But the Abyss was entirely different.
This was not a natural ecosystem. It was a contained, unnatural pressure cooker of highly condensed mana. The air here was oppressively heavy, thick with a metallic tang that tasted distinctly like old blood and ozone. The stygian darkness seemed to possess a malevolent will, actively trying to swallow the meager, sickly green light of the luminescent moss that clung to the jagged cavern walls.
Xuan Ji hit the stone floor with the terrifying, silent grace of a falling leaf, her *Qinggong* bleeding off the lethal terminal velocity of their drop in a single, masterful rotation of internal Qi.
She did not let go of her guide. Her left hand remained firmly clamped onto the thick, boiled-leather collar of Lynx’s patchwork coat, holding the four-foot-tall halfling suspended a few inches off the uneven ground.
"Gods and demons," Lynx gasped, his small, nimble hands clutching desperately at her iron-like grip. His chest heaved, his wide, amber eyes darting around the gloom. "You didn't use a feather-fall rune! Are you actively trying to kill us before we even hit the deep zones?!"
"We are already behind schedule," Xuan Ji stated. Her voice was a cold, absolute murmur that cut cleanly through the low, ambient, vibrating roar of the dungeon.
She didn't wait for him to catch his breath. She locked her dark, abyssal eyes onto the descending, cavernous tunnel ahead, bent her knees a fraction of an inch, and pushed off.
The dense bedrock beneath her soft boots literally shattered, spider-webbing outward from the sheer concussive force of her launch.
It wasn't a run; it was a localized spatial distortion. Xuan Ji became a terrifying blur of black-and-crimson silk, rocketing down the wide, winding corridors of the upper floors at a speed that entirely defied the physical limitations of the human body.
To protect her fragile, mortal cargo, she extruded a microscopic, highly aerodynamic layer of her own Yin Qi around Lynx. It formed an invisible, frictionless teardrop shield that kept the halfling from having his skin flayed off or his lungs pulverized by the sheer, violent wind resistance of their passage.
*Floor 6. Floor 7. Floor 8.*
The upper levels of the Grand Abyss were vast, labyrinthine networks of towering stalagmite forests, echoing gorges, and rushing underground rivers. They were heavily populated by mid-tier beasts and the ambitious, well-armed adventurer parties brave enough to hunt them.
It was here, plunging through the subterranean expanse, that Xuan Ji fully observed the stark, functional differences between the Abyss and the surface world. Just as Marquess Vael’s extensive library had detailed, the entities within this labyrinth were not born. They did not breed, they did not sleep, and they did not hunt each other for sustenance.
They were raw, violent manifestations of the dungeon's overflowing mana.
Because of this unnatural origin, their behavior was entirely, perfectly predictable. Unlike the wild beasts of Zel'Mora, which migrated, established complex territories, and acted on erratic survival instincts, the Abyssal monsters operated on rigid, cyclical logic. They manifested at specific mana nexuses, patrolled set routes, and reacted to threats with uniform, unvarying aggression.
As Xuan Ji tore through a massive, echoing grotto on the eighth floor, she blew past a fully formed, silver-ranked hunter party taking advantage of that very predictability.
The group of ten heavily armored men and women had formed a meticulous, practiced shield wall in the center of a chokepoint, setting up their formation exactly where a specific horde was known to periodically manifest. They were desperately trying to hold off a churning swarm of heavily armored cave-arachnids, spears thrusting in a rhythmic, practiced cadence.
They didn't even have time to notice.
A gale-force wind ripped through their rigid formation. The sheer kinetic displacement of Xuan Ji’s passing knocked the heavily armored vanguard flat onto their backs and violently scattered the front line of the monsters.
The party leader, a scarred dwarf with a raised warhammer, looked up in sheer, unadulterated shock as a beautiful, ethereal woman carrying a screaming halfling in her left hand blurred past them like a dark comet.
Xuan Ji didn't stop to assist them. She didn't slow down to ask for directions. She completely ignored their existence, her mind singularly, violently focused on the ticking clock counting down Evanthe's life.
But ignoring the humans did not mean she ignored the monsters in her path.
As a massive swarm of the displaced, armored arachnids turned their screeching, clicking attention toward the new, rapidly moving target, Xuan Ji didn't even break her stride. Since her left hand was occupied carrying her guide, she relied entirely on her right.
She thrust her open palm forward.
*[Heavenly Demon Palm: Mountain Shattering Wave].*
A massive, invisible shockwave of highly condensed, vibrating Qi erupted from her right hand. The cavern air violently compressed, emitting a deafening *CRACK* that echoed for miles down the subterranean tunnels.
The shockwave slammed into the vanguard of the monster horde. Chitinous armor, historically thick enough to deflect dwarven steel, shattered like cheap, brittle glass. Dozens of the massive spiders were instantly pulverized.
But they did not leave behind a gory mess of flesh, blood, and bone. Because they were born of the dungeon's magic, the death blow destabilized their physical forms entirely. The arachnids exploded into a fine, glittering green mist of rapidly degrading mana, dissolving into thin air.
This was the great trade-off of the Grand Abyss. When an adventurer killed a wild beast in the Zel'Mora forest, they claimed a full, physical corpse, meat to sell to butchers, heavy bones to sell to weaponsmiths, thick leather for armorers, and blood for alchemists. A single wild hunt could yield a massive payday.
In the Abyss, the dissolving constructs left behind only a fraction of that physical wealth.
As the green mist faded, a few solid objects dropped toward the cavern floor: a handful of condensed mana cores and a few rare, crystallized venom sacs that had managed to fully solidify before the creature's death.
Xuan Ji, harboring the soul of a veteran progression player, was not about to leave resources behind. In her past life, leaving high-tier loot to despawn was a cardinal sin.
Without slowing her breakneck pace, she activated a high-tier external art. *[Invisible Hand of the Void].*
Threads of her spiritual energy lashed out like invisible, ethereal whips. With terrifying, microscopic precision, the Qi snatched the glowing monster cores and the venom sacs right out of the dissolving mist mid-air. The loot was violently pulled toward her, shrinking instantly as it crossed the spatial threshold of her Void Ring, vanishing into her inventory seamlessly.
Kill. Loot. Advance. It was a flawless, devastating loop of absolute martial efficiency.
By the time they reached the heavily fortified, downward-sloping descent gates of Floor 10, the monsters had grown significantly larger, their hides exponentially thicker, and their elemental affinities far more volatile.
A hulking horde of molten-rock golems blocked the narrow, natural stone bridge leading down to the eleventh level, their magma-infused bodies radiating a heat so intense it visibly warped and distorted the cavern air.
Lynx squeezed his amber eyes shut, wrapping his arms around his head. He braced for the inevitable, bone-crushing impact, absolutely certain they were going to be turned to cinders against the wall of living magma.
Xuan Ji merely narrowed her dark eyes. She didn't have the time to meticulously punch through their hardened, obsidian-laced armor one by one with concussive force.
She raised her right hand, tucking her middle finger tightly against her thumb. She tapped directly into the deepest, most volatile Yin reserves of her Dantian, forcefully funneling the liquid-ice energy through her external meridians.
*[Eternal Ice: Sundering Demon Spear].*
She flicked her fingers.
A concentrated, blindingly brilliant beam of pure, white-cold Qi shot forth. This wasn't the natural, atmospheric elemental ice that the city mages conjured with runic staves; this was the supreme ice of absolute Yin, a transcendent ice born entirely from soul, and indomitable willpower.
The beam lanced directly through the dense center of the golem horde. The extreme, localized ice didn't just freze the magical constructs; it instantly vaporized the ambient moisture in the air and slagged the golems' obsidian armor into frozen, liquid glass. The massive constructs collapsed, their internal matrices destabilizing, their glowing earth cores exposed and dropping to the stone bridge.
Once again, the *Invisible Hand* swept through the cooling devastation, plucking a high-tier earth core from the glowing slag and depositing them into her spatial ring as she blurred past the ruins.
*Floor 11. Floor 12. Floor 13.*
The desperate, plunging descent took three full days of non-stop, brutal movement.
They only stopped when Lynx physically, biologically could not endure the dive any longer. Despite the protective Qi shield Xuan Ji maintained around him, the halfling’s mortal body required basic rest, hydration, and caloric sustenance.
During these brief, tense respites, Lynx would collapse against the cold, jagged cavern walls. He would sit shivering in the unnatural, creeping chill of the deep dungeon, hastily chewing on salted dried meat and drinking greedily from his enchanted, self-replenishing canteen.
He would look up at the woman standing silent guard over him, and he would feel a profound, staggering sense of awe mixed heavily with a deep, primal terror.
Ming Xuan Ji did not eat. She did not drink. She did not sleep.
She had reached a supreme level of martial cultivation where the mundane, mortal requirements of the flesh were rendered entirely obsolete.
Her physical vessel was sustained perfectly by the cosmic, perpetual cycle of the balanced Qi within her Dantian. As long as she had ambient energy to filter, and the Abyss was practically overflowing with it. Her cells repaired themselves, her mind remained razor-sharp, and her physical stamina was infinite.
While Lynx gasped for air, his muscles aching from the sheer tension of the travel, Xuan Ji stood perfectly still. Her immaculate black-and-crimson hanfu was completely untouched by a single speck of cavern dirt or a stray drop of monster venom. She was a flawless, untouchable statue of impending violence, her dark eyes always fixed on the downward path, silently counting the hours remaining for her disciple.
"You... you aren't human, are you?" Lynx wheezed during a rest stop on the edge of Floor 14, using a ragged cloth to wipe a mixture of nervous sweat and cavern condensation from his brow. "No human makes it to the fourteenth floor in three days. Not even the King's vaunted Sword Saint nor Archmage. You haven't even drawn a proper weapon."
"Who knows. I wonder about that myself. Regardless, rest, halfling," Xuan Ji replied, her melodic voice entirely devoid of exhaustion. "Do not waste your breath on questions you do not need the answers to."
Lynx let out a dry, hacking cough, taking another pull from his canteen. The oppressive weight of the Abyss always made people talkative, a desperate psychological bid to fill the crushing silence with the sound of a human voice.
"I've guided a lot of high-rankers down here," Lynx muttered, leaning his head back against the cool stone, his eyes tracking the glowing moss on the ceiling. "Most of them come to the Abyss for the predictability.
It’s the perfect crucible, isn't it? You know exactly where the beasts will manifest. You know their attack patterns. For a squire trying to become a knight, or an acolyte trying to force a magical breakthrough, there is no faster way to push your limits and rapidly accumulate strength than grinding through the upper floors."
Xuan Ji remained silent, though she listened carefully. The mechanics of the world's economy fascinated the analytical, gamer side of her brain.
"But everyone hits a wall eventually," Lynx continued, his voice echoing softly. "A plateau where the dungeon stops making them stronger. When that happens, they have a choice. The smart ones take their accumulated wealth and retire. They go back up to the surface, open a martial arts hall, become an instructor for some fat noble’s kids, or open a shop in the capital."
The halfling chuckled, a bitter, hollow sound. "The greedy ones, though? The ones who can't let go of the blade? They leave the Dungeon entirely. They head out to places like the Zel'Mora forest and become wild monster hunters.
Sure, it’s more dangerous because the beasts are unpredictable, but killing a real monster? Harvesting the meat, the bones, the pristine leather, the fangs, *and* the core from a single kill? The profit margins are astronomical compared to the dissolving constructs down here. It’s the fastest way to rake in a fortune before your luck finally runs out."
Lynx looked at Xuan Ji, his amber eyes searching her unreadable face. "But you... you aren't here to push your limits. And you aren't here to get rich. You're moving like the devil himself is on your heels."
"We are hitting the threshold soon," Xuan Ji said, completely ignoring his probing assessment.
Lynx sighed, recognizing a closed door when he saw one. He packed his canteen away with trembling, dirt-stained hands. He pushed himself to his feet, checking the straps on his leather armor.
"Floor 15. The edge of the Twilight Zone," Lynx warned, all traces of conversational ease vanishing, replaced by genuine, professional dread. "The rules fundamentally change down there, Lady Ming. The deeper we go, the denser the mana gets. The monsters aren't just mindless beasts acting on pre-programmed instinct anymore. They're ancient aberrations. They hold grudges. They use military tactics. They move efficiently."
"Let them," Xuan Ji said softly. She reached down, grabbing the thick leather of his collar with her left hand once more.
An hour later, they crossed the heavy, runic boundary into Floor 15.
Lynx had not been exaggerating in the slightest. The moment they stepped out of the transition tunnel, the atmosphere hit them like a physical, suffocating wall of lead. The ambient mana here was so intensely dense, so deeply saturated with ancient malice, that it felt exactly like trying to inhale underwater.
The cavern was impossibly, terrifyingly vast. It was a sprawling subterranean wasteland of jagged, black obsidian pillars and slow-moving rivers of glowing, necrotic sludge that cast a sickly, violet light over the environment.
But what truly signaled the violent shift in the Abyss was the absolute, deafening silence.
There were no roaring beasts. There were no chittering swarms of insects echoing off the walls.
Instead, the shadows themselves seemed to deliberately detach from the bases of the obsidian pillars.
Xuan Ji stopped. For the very first time in three days, her forward momentum ceased entirely.
Surrounding them, rising silently from the banks of the necrotic rivers and dropping with heavy, muted thuds from the cavern ceiling, were towering, hulking figures clad in rusted, ancient plate armor. They possessed no faces beneath their horned helms, only hollow, abyssal voids filled with swirling, amethyst light. They wielded massive, jagged greatswords that dripped continuously with a corrosive, dark-elemental aura.
Abyssal Death-Knights.
They were high-tier, intelligent undead constructs that possessed the refined martial skills of fallen, ancient heroes and the raw durability of dungeon bosses. There were over thirty of them, and they had not blindly charged. They had waited, analyzing their prey, and had already formed a perfect, airtight tactical encirclement.
Xuan Ji’s dark eyes narrowed. This was not a mindless horde of spiders she could simply blast through with a single, sweeping shockwave. The Death-Knights had their heavy kite shields raised in a phalanx formation, their dark, necrotic auras linking together to form a massive, anti-magic dampening field that stabilized the air around them.
The easy, rapid dive was officially over. The Grand Abyss was finally fighting back.
Xuan Ji lowered her left arm, setting Lynx down onto the smooth obsidian floor. She didn't look down at him, her golden *[Divine Eye of Veritas]* already activating. It blazed to life, casting a brilliant light in the gloom as she rapidly analyzed the spiritual and structural weak points of the undead battalion surrounding them.
"Lynx," Xuan Ji commanded, her voice dropping into a register of absolute, deadly seriousness that left no room for negotiation.
"Y-yes, Lady Ming?" the halfling squeaked, his small hands gripping the hilt of the mythic-tier dagger she had bribed him with back in the capital.
"You are a shadow-walker. Do exactly what you do best," she ordered. She took a slow, measured step forward, rolling her shoulders as the immense, oceanic Qi in her Dantian flared to life like a waking sun. "Blend into the darkness. Hide. Do not engage them. Do not make a single sound."
"But they're, "
"If you die, I lose my map to the twentieth floor," Xuan Ji interrupted, the air around her beginning to physically vibrate with lethal, crushing intent. "And if I lose my map, my disciple dies. So you will hide, halfling. And you will not come out until every single one of these things has been ground into dust."
Lynx didn't need to be told twice. Tapping into the dark, elusive energy of his dagger, he took a swift step backward and literally melted into the shadow cast by a nearby obsidian pillar, completely erasing his presence, his heartbeat, and his scent from the physical world.
Alone in the exact center of the massive, hostile cavern, Ming Xuan Ji raised both of her bare hands, settling flawlessly into the opening stance of the Heavenly Demon.
The Death-Knights charged in perfect, silent, and lethal unison.
And Xuan Ji stepped forward to meet them.