Panic was all Jin Huang felt.
His body, after being painlessly converted into streams of light rushing at impossible speed, felt as though it were thrashing inside a narrow, unyielding tube of spatial force. His organs seemed to flip, settle, then flip again- over and over- until the very concept of up and down lost all meaning.
Even worse than that was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind, but the absolute absence of sound. No wind, no pulse, no heartbeat. Just the crushing emptiness of the void pressing in from all directions. Whatever his eyes perceived never lingered-- fractured smears of color, flashes of texture, half-formed silhouettes that dissolved the moment he tried to focus on them.
Stars. Or memories of stars.
Jin Huang wanted to scream.
He couldn't.
The Void-Crossing Array did not allow such luxuries.
It dragged him onward with the inexorable authority of a law written into the universe itself, flinging him across incomprehensible distances as though distance had never mattered to begin with.
And then--
Impact, but no pain. Just arrival.
The rushing pressure vanished in an instant, replaced by weight. Gravity slammed back into existence, and Jin Huang's light-forged form reassembled itself with brutal efficiency.
Flesh remembered flesh. Bones snapped back into place. Breath returned all at once, and he sucked in air like a drowning man breaking the surface.
He staggered forward, boots skidding against stone that felt wrong beneath his feet.
Black.
Not merely dark, but black in the truest sense-- obsidian so deep and polished that it swallowed reflections instead of returning them. The Void-Crossing Array beneath him was etched directly into this impossible surface, its runes glowing faintly red, then slowly dimming as the last of its power dissipated.
Jin Huang doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping.
"Never," he wheezed, "doing that again…"
He straightened slowly.
The sky above Obsidian City loomed like a wounded god-- an endless canopy of crimson clouds and fractured stars, warped by the violent qi flows of the Abysmal Demonic Star System.
Vast structures rose in the distance, jagged and monumental, as though the city had been carved rather than built. Entire districts were hewn directly from the planet-sized obsidian mass, spires and terraces cutting into the darkness like the teeth of a colossal beast.
The air itself felt hostile.
Demonic energy churned invisibly, thick enough to taste, scraping against Jin Huang's skin and crawling along his meridians like curious insects.
"…Wow," he muttered, awed despite himself. "Qin Shuyue would hate this place."
That was when killing intent crashed into him like a spear to the spine.
Jin Huang's head snapped up, truly feeling his senses for what felt like the first time.
From the far end of the array platform, a figure stepped out from behind a jagged obsidian pillar. He was lean and sharp-eyed, dressed in mismatched armor plates and travel-worn robes. In his hands rested a long spear, its dark metal shaft etched with vicious, angular runes that drank in the surrounding light, however meager.
Jin Huang guessed that he was a rogue cultivator and, judging by the way his lips curled, a practiced one.
"Well now," the man said, voice smooth and predatory, "looks like the Array finally spat something worthwhile my way."
Jin Huang's heart lurched.
The man's eyes flicked over him- first his uniform, the scroll and bead in his hands, then his storage ring- before settling on his face with pure delight and unmasked greed.
"A first-year," the rogue snickered. "What the hell are you doing here with such a tasty-looking storage ring? Are academy brats so egotistical that they think they can just come to the Abysmal Demonic Star System for sightseeing?"
Jin Huang swallowed and forced himself upright. "Uh. Senior. Friend. Dao-Enlightened Handsome Brother--"
The spear lashed forward and Jin Huang gasped. His senses flared up, a rush of energy comparable to Hei Shisan's flooding them. Dao Integration.
This wasn't a warning strike. It was meant to kill... instantly.
Jin Huang yelped and threw himself sideways, barely avoiding the spearhead as it punched into the obsidian where his head had been a heartbeat earlier. The impact cracked the surface, spiderwebs of fractures racing outward.
"Tch!" the rogue clicked his tongue. "Slow reaction. Guess I won't need to try."
He yanked the spear free and rolled his shoulders, killing intent thickening until it felt like a blade pressed against Jin Huang's throat.
"Hand over everything," the rogue said lazily. "Your ring. Your tokens. Anything edible too-- I know you academy-types carry strange things."
Jin Huang stared at him, mind racing.
He had just crossed the void.
He had just arrived in the heart of the Abysmal Demonic Star System, just as the scroll had outlined when he first read it. According to the details on that scroll, he was supposed to come here to gather the cores of demonic beasts on the outskirts of Obsidian City.
No where was it highlighted that he would be attacked upon arrival.
Jin Huang panted, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles creaked. "Sorry," he said hoarsely, eyes bright and feral, "but I don't share my food."
The rogue moved.
There was no warning this time-- no taunt, no flourish. The spear simply was there, demonic flame detonating along its length as it drank greedily from the demonic energy saturating the air. The distance between them vanished in a blink.
Jin Huang's world narrowed.
Everything slowed-- not because the rogue was slower, but because Jin Huang's senses were somehow just that fast.
Those senses screamed.
Every vibration in the obsidian floor, every fluctuation in the spear's trajectory, every shift in killing intent registered at once. His body reacted before thought could even form. What looked like a clumsy stumble was in fact a razor-thin evasion, his shoulder twisting just enough for the spearhead to miss his throat by a hair's breadth.
The shaft still scraped past him, and demonic fire kissed his side.
"Agh--!"
Pain exploded through him as the flames burned through cloth and skin, the foreign energy gnawing viciously at his flesh as if trying to hollow him out from the inside. Jin Huang staggered, teeth clenched, breath hissing through them.
The rogue straightened, spinning the spear once. Trails of fire clawed through the air as he smirked.
"Why struggle?" he said calmly. "I stand in the Dao Integration realm, days away from fully aligning myself with the Dao of Murder. You're already dead-- you just haven't realized it yet."
The spear came to rest at his side, his arm draped over it as the demonic fire merged with him, coiling like a living thing.
Jin Huang didn't answer.
He was breathing steadily now.
Too steadily.
His instincts were shrieking at him to run. Every sensible part of him agreed. But beneath that- deeper, older- something else had stirred. The demonic energy burning in his side didn't feel like poison anymore.
It felt like fuel.
His perfect mortal foundation throbbed, not in pain, but in hunger. With every breath, it pulled harder, dragging the invading energy inward, breaking it down, claiming it as its own.
Fight.
The thought wasn't conscious. It was just there.
The rogue noticed his stance and laughed. "Foolish. You dodged twice by luck. This time, I won't miss!"
He moved.
The world snapped back to full speed.
The rogue crossed the distance in a heartbeat, the spear thrusting straight toward Jin Huang's chest, demonic flame roaring as it went. It was clean. Efficient. Final.
Jin Huang didn't dodge.
He stepped in.
The tip of the spear was inches from him when his arm shot out. Pain flared white-hot as his hand closed around the burning shaft, skin blistering instantly- but he didn't let go.
The rogue's eyes widened, then he sneered. "Idiot! What can a mere Mortal Foundation--!"
He drove the spear forward.
Power crushed into Jin Huang's chest. The impact blasted the air from his lungs, his body shuddering as the demonic energy surged violently into him, tearing through flesh and meridians alike.
And yet—
He did not fall. His grip tightened, and his perfect mortal foundation roared to life.
His meridians opened wide, no longer resisting, no longer overwhelmed. They devoured.
The demonic energy pouring from the spear vanished into him, stripped of its violence, broken down into raw, usable power. Jin Huang's eyes blazed.
The rogue frowned. Then his expression twisted into disbelief as he tried to pull the spear back. It didn't move.
"What—"
He yanked harder, pouring more strength into it, layering his vital energy atop the demonic qi. The spear should have been torn free of Jin Huang's grip.
Instead, the flames guttered, died then the shaft grew dull.
The rogue released it instantly, horror flashing across his face as he drove a fist into Jin Huang's jaw. The blow detonated, sending Jin Huang flying back into a wall of obsidian with a thunderous crack.
Stone shattered.
Jin Huang slumped, coughing, the spear still lodged against his chest.
The rogue was already reaching into his spatial ring. "Monster…!"
A second spear flashed into his grip, then he froze.
Jin Huang stood back up.
Slowly, he wrapped his hand around the embedded spear and pulled it free. The wound sealed itself almost immediately, flesh knitting together as if it had never been harmed. The last traces of demonic energy were swallowed whole.
Their eyes met.
"Tch," the rogue spat, forcing a grin as he leveled his new weapon. "So that's it. Hiding your cultivation, are you? Shameless. You nearly fooled me."
Red aura erupted from him, thicker and more oppressive than before, replacing the flames with a dense, murderous miasma.
"Good," he continued, spinning the spear. "A real fight, then."
"Haogui Spear Arts-- Dragon Tail!"
The ground shattered beneath his step. Obsidian cracked as he appeared before Jin Huang in a blur, spear arcing overhead and crashing down with catastrophic force.
Jin Huang didn't retreat.
Power flooded him- more than ever before. The demonic energy he had absorbed circulated effortlessly, guided by something ancient and instinctual within his foundation.
His fist clenched, golden miasma igniting around it.
He punched upward, red and gold colliding. The impact ripped outward in a concussive blast, shattering the obsidian beneath their feet and sending shockwaves screaming through the array platform. Both figures skidded back, boots carving furrows into the black stone.
They stopped at the same time.
The rogue stared at Jin Huang, breathing hard, eyes alight- not with fear, but with exhilarated disbelief.
"Equal," he muttered, a grin slowly spreading across his face as the spear spun in his hand.
Jin Huang, fist still raised and humming with golden power, realized the same thing at the exact same moment...
...and smiled.