The abyss had no light, no sound, and no air.
As Fang Lin fell through the spatial rift, the heavy pressure of the lower levels crashed into him like a physical wall. The air here was thick and hostile. It smelled like ancient ozone and burnt ash.
*BOOM!*
He crashed onto a solid metal surface, hitting hard enough to shatter ordinary spirit-metal. Dust and debris exploded outward, but the floor beneath him did not budge.
Slowly, Fang Lin pushed himself up. He rolled his shoulders as a cold smile spread across his face in the absolute darkness.
He was alone.
No Lin Wan. No elders. No eyes watching his every move.
For three years, he had operated as Mu Tie, keeping his true cultivation sealed away under the guise of an ordinary blacksmith. And for the past several days, he had forced three of his four cores into dormancy while holding back his newly broken-through Greater Mastery Asura Flesh. It was a necessary restraint, but a suffocating one.
Now, in the pitch-black depths of Ou Yezi's ruin, the chains were off.
"Finally!" a lively, childlike voice echoed in his Spiritual Sea.
Deep within his Spiritual Sea, a tiny girl made of pure black fire sat on the edge of the Ancient Spatial Furnace. She kicked her legs and giggled. The heat radiating from her tiny form was terrifying.
"Ooh, a gravity-press! The old master used to build ones the size of moons to crush dead stars. This one is tiny, but it's trying to crush you! Are we going to break it, Loud-Boy?"
"Wait," Fang Lin said aloud. His voice dropped an octave. He lost the gruff tone of Mu Tie, returning to the cold, calculating cadence of Fang Lin.
He activated his Crystal Soul Realm. Instantly, his divine sense flooded the surrounding darkness, spreading out to analyze the environment.
He was standing inside a colossal, enclosed chamber made entirely of ancient void-metal. The walls were arranged in bizarre, shifting angles, creating a twisted maze that defied normal architecture. Massive, dormant array nodes pulsed faintly in the corners.
As soon as his boots had touched the floor, the environment registered his presence. But it didn't react like a standard trap.
*KACHUNK. HUMMMMMM.*
A deep vibration echoed through the chamber. The walls of the maze began to shift and rotate.
Suddenly, gravity stopped being a single, downward force.
Fang Lin felt his body being pulled violently to the left. Then simultaneously upward. Then crushed diagonally.
The spatial pressure multiplied instantly. It skyrocketed from a heavy burden to a catastrophic crush. The sheer force was no longer at the Core Formation level—it was rapidly approaching the power of a Late Spirit Manifestation expert.
"Ah," Fang Lin murmured. His eyes glowed with a faint light as his Asura Flesh instinctively pushed back. "This isn't a trap. It's a centrifuge."
He realized exactly where the shattered transport platform had dropped him. He had fallen directly into the raw ore intake chute of the ancient workshop.
Ou Yezi didn't process high-grade ores with mere hammers. He threw them into this gravity maze. The shifting gravity acted as a massive environmental press, squeezing the weak impurities out of the raw materials before they were sent to the smelting furnaces.
Because Fang Lin had fallen into the intake chute, the environment naturally activated. It treated his body like a stubborn piece of raw ore that needed to be purified.
The shifting gravity intensified again, bending the very air around him. The pressure was overwhelming, designed to compress tough metals into dust.
For a team of Core Formation experts, navigating this maze would be a nightmare. It would require perfect calculation, dodging gravity wells, and finding the one safe path through the shifting walls.
Fang Lin closed his eyes.
*Thump.*
A heavy heartbeat echoed from his Dantian. The Four-Pointed Astral Star—the flawless three-dimensional array of four supreme cores he had painstakingly forged—flared to life.
*Thump.*
The Silver-white Frost Core.
The Emerald-gold Life Core.
The Violet-black Death Core.
The Dark-red Dark Flame Core.
All four cores spun like planetary bodies, aligning in perfect harmony. The Four-Pillared Cosmic Cycle roared through his meridians like a raging river, flooding his Asura Flesh with endless Qi.
Fang Lin opened his eyes. They were pitch-black, devoid of whites. Surrounding the pupil were four distinct rings of color: silver-white, emerald-gold, violet-black, and dark-red.
He didn't need to navigate this maze. He didn't need to find the safe path. The environment was treating him like peak-grade ore to be crushed, but it had grossly underestimated how tough he was.
"Let's see if this ancient Sovereign's array can purify me," Fang Lin whispered.
He lunged forward.
Ignoring the shifting corridors, he aimed straight for the nearest solid metal wall.
The maze detected his movement and immediately focused the gravity on him. It attempted to crush him diagonally into the floor with the weight of a mountain.
Fang Lin didn't slow down.
Black, necrotic fire erupted from his right arm as he unleashed the Dark Flame Core. The Abyssal Consumption innate skill flared, eagerly eating away at the spatial energy. He converted the array's own crushing power into fuel.
Simultaneously, a layer of absolute zero frost coated his left fist. He slammed his left hand into the massive wall. The extreme cold of the Frost Core instantly dropped the temperature of the aged metal, freezing its structure and making it temporarily brittle.
Before the array could adjust, Fang Lin drew back his right fist. His muscles bulged with the pure kinetic violence of Greater Mastery Asura Flesh.
*BOOOM!*
He punched the supercooled wall.
Cracks spread across the ancient, rusted metal. It exploded outward in a shower of jagged, frozen shrapnel. It wasn't completely destroyed, but he had forced a gap large enough to slip through.
Fang Lin stepped through the gaping hole into the next chamber. The gravity immediately shifted again, pulling him toward the ceiling with violent intent.
He didn't care.
With a chilling laugh, Fang Lin unleashed his full battle prowess. For the next ten minutes, the pitch-black abyss echoed with the continuous, deafening sounds of destruction.
He couldn't shatter the pristine core sections of the Sovereign's maze, so he didn't try. Instead, his Crystal Soul Realm searched for the thousands-of-years-old decay in the structural nodes.
He froze the weakest walls with Frost Qi. He burned through the rusted circuits with Dark Flame. He shattered the brittle barriers with his bare hands.
The shifting gravity couldn't lock him down. His Four-Pointed Astral Star generated its own internal gravity, keeping him perfectly balanced amidst the chaos.
*CRASH! BOOM! SHATTER!*
Wall after wall of the rusted outer chute fell before him. The Ore-Purification Centrifuge, having lacked maintenance for millennia, groaned and sparked in protest. Its outer intake failed to process the anomaly inside it.
With one final, earth-shattering kick, Fang Lin obliterated the last rusted grate.
He stepped out of the shifting maze and landed heavily on a smooth, heated floor of dark bronze. The crushing gravity vanished instantly, replaced by a wave of intense, dry heat that felt like a physical blow.
Fang Lin let out a long breath, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.
The black fire sank back into his skin. His Four-Pillared Cosmic Cycle spun rapidly, fighting to replace the massive amount of Qi he had spent forcing his way through the rusted array. It had taken considerable effort, but his foundation held strong.
"That was a fun game!" the Dark Flame Spirit cheered in his Spiritual Sea.
Her innocent voice was completely at odds with the sheer devastation they had just unleashed. Then, she paused. Her tiny black flames flickered as she sniffed the air.
"...Wait, Loud-Boy. Do you smell that?"
Fang Lin looked up.
He was standing in a massive, vaulted chamber. The air here was so hot it warped the light, making the far end of the room blur like a mirage.
Directly in front of him stood a pair of colossal, burning bronze doors. They were covered in ancient runes that pulsed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. The heat radiating from them was profound, ancient, and terrifyingly pure.
"A high-grade fire source," the Spirit muttered.
Her tiny form leaned forward from the furnace in his Spiritual Sea. Her tone was innocent, but the words carried the weight of ancient eras. "It smells like the primal flames the starry cultivators used to forge world-pillars. Can we eat it, Loud-Boy?"
Fang Lin stepped forward, his eyes locked on the burning bronze doors.
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