The Heart of the World, Withering
The world dissolved into a symphony of pressure and light. Yao Xuan felt the familiar, yet always unsettling, sensation of spatial translocation—a weightless fall through a tunnel of humming silver energy where direction and time lost meaning. Beside him, he sensed the steady, powerful auras of Di Tian, Gu Yue, and the others, anchors in the formless flow.
Then, light returned, solid and green.
He stood on soft, moss-covered earth. The air that filled his lungs was so rich with life and spirit energy it felt like drinking clarity itself. Towering ancient trees, their trunks wider than houses, reached for a canopy so dense it fractured the sunlight into emerald shards. The atmosphere hummed with a profound, ancient vitality. There was no doubt.
'The Star Dou Great Forest. Its deepest, most sacred heart.'
To maintain his cover, he blinked, allowing a veneer of appropriate awe and confusion to surface. "Where is this, Uncle Di?"
Di Tian's gaze swept across the primordial grove, a complex mix of pride, sorrow, and ownership flashing in his golden eyes before being schooled into calm. "This is… a private sanctuary under our stewardship. Your martial soul test will be conducted here." His voice was even, but Yao Xuan heard the faint tremor of melancholy, the grief of a king surveying his slowly fading kingdom.
"Follow me." Di Tian turned and began walking, his steps silent on the loam. The group fell in behind him—Gu Yue close to Yao Xuan, her presence a quiet reassurance; Zi Ji and Bi Ji moving with ethereal grace; Xiong Jun a looming, watchful shadow.
They traveled deeper. The silence here was not empty, but full—the whisper of leaves, the distant call of unseen birds, the very pulse of the earth. The concentration of spiritual energy thickened with each step, becoming a tangible mist that clung to their skin and sparked faintly in their lungs. This was the core of the forest, a territory so dominated by the presence of the four beast kings that no other creature dared intrude, preserving a pristine, solemn peace.
After an hour's journey, the dense foliage parted, revealing their destination.
A lake.
But it was a lake of tragedy. The water that remained was agonizingly pure, a liquid sapphire that glowed with an inner, gentle light, radiating a power of life so potent it made the surrounding spirit energy seem thin. Yet, its shores were expansive stretches of cracked, dry mud and bleached stone, telling a story of drastic retreat. The water level was desperately low, a shallow mirror compared to the vast, empty basin that spoke of a former majesty. It was a heart beating weakly, its blood nearly spent.
"We're almost there," Di Tian murmured, his eyes fixed on the dwindling waters. They reached the shore. Up close, the tragedy was even more poignant. The life energy emanating from the remaining water was intoxicating, yet it only highlighted the vast, dead expanse that surrounded it.
"Alright, we're here." Di Tian finally tore his gaze from the lake, his face a mask of stoic control. "Yao Xuan, wait a moment."
"Yes, I understand. Thank you, Uncle Di." Yao Xuan nodded, his own gaze solemn as he looked upon the Lake of Life.
His transmigrator's knowledge supplied the name and the history. This was the Silver Dragon King's former slumber place, a convergence point where the primordial essence of the Douluo Continent world welled up. Its current state was a dire diagnosis: the world itself was bleeding out.
Standing there, the reasons unfolded in his mind with cold clarity. The root of Douluo Continent's sickness was triple-fold, a cascade of exploitation and betrayal.
The primary, parasitic drain was the God Realm. A healthy world grows, its primordial essence accumulating, preparing for evolution. Douluo Continent had been such a world, until it was chained as a "lower realm." The God Realm's sustained extraction had stunted its growth, locking it in a state of subservience. But the true devastation began ten thousand years ago with the God Realm's own chaos. In its struggle for survival, it turned from a parasitic overseer to a predatory drain, sucking the continent's essence with a rapacity that left wounds no natural process could heal.
The second cause was a more intimate betrayal: Tang San's "Ten-Thousand-Year Plan." To bolster his own power and save his precious God Realm, he saw Douluo Continent not as a home, but as bait. His scheme to lure and devour the Abyss required turning the continent into a weak, tempting morsel. To facilitate this, he orchestrated the forcible replacement of the world's own will—its natural defense mechanisms and balancing systems—with his parents, Tang Hao and A Yin, as puppet plane masters. A world's will, when injured, would induce an "End of Dharma" to reduce consumption and allow recovery. Under Tang Hao's ignorant "management," no such safeguards existed. The bleeding continued unchecked. It was only Tang San's later, calculated return of a fraction of stolen essence after consuming the Abyss that prevented total planetary death—a act of mercy from the very architect of its torture.
The third reason, the one visible to the continent's inhabitants, was the ecological carnage wrought by human soul masters. The rampant hunting of soul beasts, the disruption of spiritual nexuses—these were terrible wounds. In a healthy world, the innate will would have acted to restore balance, perhaps by suppressing spirit energy or guiding evolution. But with that will bound and silenced, the wounds festered, exacerbating the fatal hemorrhage from above.
The nearly dry Lake of Life was the symptom. The disease was the God Realm' enslavement and Tang San's ruthless calculus. This was the truth Yao Xuan carried, a heavy weight as he stood beside the dying heart of the world, in the company of its greatest guardians who could only watch its slow fade.
He felt Gu Yue's hand slip into his. Her touch was cool, but her grip was tight. She was looking at the lake too, her silver eyes reflecting the dimming sapphire light, holding a depth of sorrow and a flicker of defiant hope. She knew the truth as well. In that silent connection, their shared resolve solidified. They were not just two young souls navigating a personal bond. They were standing at the epicenter of a world's agony, and their intertwined destiny was now inextricably linked to its chance for healing. The test of his martial soul was about to begin, but the greater trial—for their hearts, and for the continent itself—loomed even larger.