The "secure cell" was a tomb carved from colder, blacker stone than the general barracks. No straw pallet, just damp rock. No light source except a single flickering torch sconce outside the heavy iron door, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to leer. The unnatural chill from the Whisper Shaft clung to Chen Fan's skin, deeper than the mountain's cold. It felt like the Abyss itself had breathed on him.
Before him, the System's prompt pulsed with urgent, malevolent light:
```
Ambient Chaotic Qi Detected (Source: Abyssal Chasm - Residual)
Density: Moderate. Purity: Low (Highly Corrosive).
Initiating Passive Absorption Protocol? (Y/N)
```
`Stability: 24.0% (Critical)`
*Yes?* Absorb the poison that twisted cultivators into monstrosities, that dissolved stone and sanity? *No?* Let the System starve, let his only advantage flicker out in this darkness? The choice was paralyzing. His finger hovered in the air, trembling. He needed power. He needed *not* to die.
**CLANG.**
The iron door shrieked open, slamming against the stone wall. The meager torchlight was momentarily eclipsed by a presence that filled the cramped space like freezing oil.
**Elder Zhu.**
He didn't stride; he *manifested*. His grey and green sect robes were immaculate, untouched by mine dust. His face, narrow and severe, was carved from alabaster, devoid of warmth. But his eyes… they were obsidian chips, absorbing the weak light and reflecting nothing. A subtle pressure radiated from him, not the brute force of Bao or Bruiser, but an insidious, bone-deep cold that seeped into Chen Fan's marrow, making his teeth chatter involuntarily. It was the weight of absolute authority, of life and death held in a dismissive palm.
Lao Jin hovered behind him, a grey ghost, his usual sharpness replaced by rigid deference and poorly concealed fear. Zhu didn't acknowledge him. His obsidian gaze pinned Chen Fan to the rock wall.
"Leave us," Zhu commanded, his voice a soft rasp that scraped like stone on stone. Lao Jin vanished instantly, pulling the door shut with a final, echoing clang that sounded like a coffin lid sealing.
Silence descended, thick and suffocating. The only sounds were Chen Fan's ragged breaths and the drip of condensation somewhere in the dark. Zhu didn't move. He simply *looked*, his gaze dissecting Chen Fan layer by layer: the fresh bruises, the grime, the chains, the raw fear – and something else beneath it. Something Zhu couldn't quite categorize, which displeased him.
He moved then. Not a step, but a glide. He stopped an arm's length away. From within his sleeve, he produced the chunk of **Blood Iron**, its crimson streaks seeming to writhe in the dim light. He held it up, not for Chen Fan to see, but as an object of profound distaste.
"Where," Zhu asked, the word devoid of inflection, yet carrying the weight of an avalanche, "did you *truly* find this?"
Chen Fan's throat constricted. The lie he'd told Teng felt flimsy as cobweb before this gaze. "A-After the energy surge in Deep Vein Seven, Elder," he stammered, forcing his voice to quaver, shrinking in on himself. "It… it broke loose. I didn't know what it was! I just grabbed it…"
Zhu's expression didn't change. The pressure in the cell intensified subtly. Chen Fan felt his ribs creak, his vision blurring at the edges. It wasn't physical force; it was pure, focused **killing intent**, a whisper of annihilation that promised pain beyond comprehension.
"Do not," Zhu whispered, leaning infinitesimally closer, his breath smelling faintly of frost and bitter herbs, "insult my intelligence, *waste*. Blood Iron does not simply 'break loose' like common slag. Its presence signifies intent. Carelessness. Or," his obsidian eyes bored into Chen Fan's soul, "*treason*." He paused, letting the word hang. "Did my *esteemed nephew*, Li Feng, perhaps suggest you keep an eye out for… unusual finds? Did he promise you leniency? A return to the clan's gutter?"
Chen Fan's blood ran cold. Zhu was probing the conspiracy directly. He knew Li Feng was involved. This was a test. Denying Li Feng entirely might ring false. Acknowledging too much was death. He walked the razor's edge.
"Y-Young Master Li Feng?" Chen Fan injected bewildered terror. "H-He barely knows I exist, Elder! After… after the Awakening… he said I was clan refuse. Fit only for the mud. Or the mines." He let a spark of genuine, bitter resentment show – Li Chen's resentment, fueled by Chen Fan's own authorial fury at this character he'd written. "He… he wouldn't trust me with anything, Elder. He'd sooner spit on me."
Zhu watched him, unblinking, for an eternity measured in heartbeats. The killing intent eased fractionally, replaced by cold assessment. The bitterness felt real. The fear was palpable. Yet… something *was* off. The boy's reactions were just a fraction too measured beneath the panic. A flicker of awareness beneath the terror that didn't belong to a broken mortal.
Zhu's other hand produced the **Chasm-touched stone**. The temperature in the cell plummeted further. Violet light, faint but malevolent, seemed to writhe within its depths. He placed it on the damp floor between them.
"And this?" The soft rasp held a new, sharper edge. "You stood at the breach of the Whisper Shaft. You felt its breath. You grasped *this*… and lived. Mortals who touch the Abyss's shadow *die*. Their minds shatter. Their bodies wither. Explain. Or I will peel the truth from your screaming flesh, layer by layer."
The threat was absolute. Chen Fan had one shot. He poured every ounce of Li Chen's terror and his own authorial desperation into his voice. "The collapse, Elder! It was enormous! The wall… it just exploded *inwards*! Bruiser and Crusher… they were thrown! The air… it screamed! It was so cold it burned! I saw the hole… blacker than anything… and this rock was just… lying there. At the edge. I grabbed it! I don't know why! Maybe… maybe proof I wasn't crazy? Then I ran! I just ran!" He gasped, shaking violently, the chains rattling a frantic counterpoint. "Luck! It was only luck! Please, Elder!"
He emphasized Bruiser and Crusher's presence, his own proximity to death, the sheer, overwhelming terror. Truth woven with omission. He was a terrified mortal caught in geological catastrophe.
Zhu remained silent, his gaze shifting from the hyperventilating prisoner to the pulsating stone, then back. He knelt slowly, gracefully, never taking his eyes off Chen Fan. He reached out a long, pale finger, not touching the stone, but hovering millimeters above it, feeling the chaotic energy. His expression was unreadable, but Chen Fan saw a flicker… not of fear, but of intense, covetous *interest*.
He straightened. The obsidian gaze locked onto Chen Fan again, sharper than ever. The displeasure was palpable now, mixed with that unnerving curiosity. "You are either the most fortuitously inept fool the heavens have ever spat out," Zhu murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to crawl inside Chen Fan's skull, "or you possess knowledge far exceeding your station. Luck does not explain *this*." He gestured at the stone, then encompassed Chen Fan's bruised but defiantly alive form. "Nor does it explain how you filled your quota in Deep Vein Seven after a major surge… or how you pinpointed ore for Kael's thugs in Nine." His eyes narrowed to slits. "What are you, Li Chen?"
The question hung in the frozen air. Not 'who'. *What.* Zhu sensed it. The dissonance. The unnatural core beneath the mortal shell. The pressure returned, crushing, probing, seeking the truth Chen Fan guarded with his life – the System, the knowledge, the transmigration.
Chen Fan's mind screamed. The System prompt flared violently in his vision, reacting to Zhu's oppressive aura and the concentrated Chasm residue:
```
WARNING! EXTERNAL PSYCHIC PRESSURE DETECTED!
CHAOTIC QI CONCENTRATION SPIKING!
SYSTEM STABILITY: 19.7% (CRITICAL FAILURE IMMINENT!)
PASSIVE ABSORPTION PROTOCOL: OVERRIDE? FORCE INITIATE? (Y/N)
```
Stability plummeted: 19.0%... 18.3%... The interface flickered, lines of code scrambling. He was out of time. Out of lies. Out of options. Zhu took a single, deliberate step forward, his right hand lifting slowly. Fingers curled. Not for a blow. For a *gesture*. Dark, crackling energy – pure, lethal **Nether Qi** – began to coalesce around his fingertips, casting ghastly shadows on the cell walls. The air hummed with imminent death.
"*Speak.*"
The word was a command laced with the promise of agony. The Nether Qi pulsed. The System screamed failure. The Abyss whispered cold promises.
In that split second, facing the annihilation he'd once penned for this character, Chen Fan didn't choose. He *surrendered* to the only option left. With a silent, desperate scream of his will, he slammed his consciousness against the flickering prompt:
**`Y`**
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The System interface didn't just accept the command; it **detonated** in Chen Fan's mind. Golden text shattered into a thousand screaming shards of light.
```
!!!CRITICAL OVERRIDE!!!
PASSIVE ABSORPTION PROTOCOL: ENGAGED
WARNING! UNFILTERED CHAOTIC QI INFLUX!
```
A torrent of **ice and fire and razors** tore through Chen Fan's meridians. It felt like his veins were being injected with liquid entropy. He gasped, a soundless, agonized rictus, his body snapping rigid as a bowstring. Blood – dark and shockingly cold – erupted from his nose, splattering the damp stone floor. His chains rattled in a violent, uncontrolled spasm.
The frigid, chaotic energy flooding the cell surged *towards* him, visible as a swirling vortex of dark violet and obsidian shadows converging on his convulsing form. The torchlight outside the door guttered wildly.
Zhu recoiled, not in fear, but in profound, icy shock. His gathered Nether Qi flickered and destabilized. He hadn't sensed an attack, or cultivation technique. He'd sensed… a *rupture*. A violent, uncontrolled *siphoning* of the Abyss's power directly *into* the waste before him. It defied every law of cultivation, every principle of mortal frailty.
His obsidian eyes, wide for the first time, blazed with a terrifying mix of disbelief, furious curiosity, and dawning, avaricious comprehension. He took not a step back, but a single, sharp step *forward*, his hand now outstretched, not to kill, but to *seize*.
**"WHAT. WAS. THAT?"** Zhu's voice, no longer a rasp but a crack of thunder in the confined space, shook the stones. **"WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?"** His fingers, crackling with re-stabilized Nether Qi, aimed not for Chen Fan's heart, but for his violently trembling, blood-streaked forehead. The shadows in the cell deepened, coalescing around the convulsing author and the furious elder, as the mountain itself seemed to hold its breath.