Zhao Rui traced the fourth page of the God-Sealing Tome with reverence, its cerulean glyphs pulsing like a captured tide. Though Hua Yang's pursuit of the Dragon Palace intrigued him—ancient leviathan bones crusted with primordial qi—his path lay elsewhere. The fifth scripture page haunted his dreams with its absence, a phantom limb in his soul.
Dun Che's ursine shadow darkened the doorway. "Come! Dragon Palace's treasures could—"
"—be guarded by things that pick their teeth with Unity Stage cultivators," Zhao Rui interjected without opening his eyes. The fox demon's obsession with maritime ruins had grown tiresome.
"Where's your spirit of adventure?" Dun Che's claws scraped steel walls, leaving furrows in the Reinforcement Array sigils. "We'll be like those... those..." He snapped fingers the size of sausage links. "Sea otters! Crack open clams while sharks fight!"
"Otters drown." Zhao Rui rose, the God-Sealing Tome's pages orbiting him like indigo moons. "I'll be meditating. Try not to burn down Shanghai."
The vault door's 30-centimeter steel barely muffled Dun Che's grumbles.
The cultivation chamber exhaled winter's breath—its mercury-coated walls drinking sunlight from hidden ducts. Zhao Rui knelt on snow lynx pelts, arranging the scripture pages in a pentagram. As the fourth page aligned, the air thickened with ozone and whispers.
Not again.
The vision struck without warning—obsidian chains snapping beneath a starless sea, something vast and eyeless rising through liquid darkness. Its song vibrated in his marrow—a dirge older than language.
"Fifth page..." Zhao Rui gasped as the vision dissolved, sweat freezing on his brow. The God-Sealing Tome blazed hotter, its edges charring the lynx fur.
Shaking off dread, he cycled through the Eight Desolations Immortal-Slaying Art's eleventh meridian diagram. The chamber's Spirit-Gathering Arrays flared crimson as external qi flooded in—not the gentle streams of modern cultivation, but a tsunami.
Three floors below, Shi Clan disciple Li Wenyan choked mid-meditation. His carefully gathered qi vortex unraveled like yarn before a hurricane.
"What demonic art...?" He pressed palms against the vibrating floor. The clan's ancestral Earth Pulse Formation—designed to evenly distribute spiritual energy—now screamed in overload. Through reinforced glass, he watched colleagues stagger from their chambers, faces ashen.
Elder Guo clutched a jade qi-monitoring orb gone supernova-bright. "Impossible... The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal's ley lines are draining!"
Above them, Zhao Rui's chamber became a black hole. Qi visible as emerald tendrils ripped through ventilation shafts, coalescing into a spinning maelstrom around his suspended form. The lynx pelts ignited.
Within the storm's eye, Zhao Rui's silver-haired second spirit flickered. Golden motes bloomed across its translucent flesh—cosmic pollen adhering to an astral body never meant to bear such stains.
Mutation? He probed the motes with tendrils of consciousness. They bit back—fragments of the God-Sealing Tome's power crystallizing in his soul avatar.
The ancient curse flared—a white-hot brand between his shoulder blades. For three agonizing breaths, Zhao Rui teetered on the edge of qi deviation... until the scripture pages sang in unison. Cold blue light doused the inferno, leaving his back marbled with frost patterns.
"Closer," he whispered to the watching dark. Each golden mote now pulsed with the rhythm of his heartbeat—or perhaps his heart had begun syncing to theirs.
In the surveillance room, Yun Fang stared at thermal imaging displays. Zhao Rui's heat signature outshone the noonday sun.
"Madam CEO..." An engineer trembled. "His core temperature just hit 3,000 Kelvin. The tungsten shielding—"
"Evacuate floors fifteen through twenty," she ordered, Chanel suit immaculate despite the blaring alarms. "And bring me the Black Tortoise Emergency Cultivation Manual."
As staff fled, she pressed a hand against the monitor. The feed pixelated where Zhao Rui's aura burned through sensors.
"Fool," she murmured, lips curving. "Always needing rescue."
Dawn found Zhao Rui floating half a meter above scorched alloy floors. The golden motes had spread—his second spirit now glimmering like a dandelion clock frozen mid-blow.
A tentative probe revealed terrifying beauty: each speck contained micro-verses of swirling scripture, their gravitational pull bending qi into Klein bottle shapes.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor.
"Brother!" Dun Che's bellow shook dust from the ceiling. "Your human nestmates are—"
The vault door disintegrated.
Through the smoke, Zhao Rui met the fox demon's widening eyes.
"By the Nine-Tailed Ancestor..." Dun Che breathed. "You're... shining."
Three blocks away, a street sweeper paused. His broom handle's hidden sensor—a parting gift from True Monarch's Grotto—blinked crimson.
"Target confirmed," he muttered into a jade pendant. "Anomalous qi signature matches Wanshou Peak residuals. Awaiting orders."
The pendant warmed. Hua Yang's voice emerged, distorted by solar winds: "Observe. Do not engage."
Above them all, unnoticed, migratory geese veered sharply north—their innate qi sensitivity rejecting the maelstrom's pull. The city's dogs howled in unison. Somewhere beneath the Huangpu River, leviathan bones stirred.