The shockwave dissipated slowly, rippling outward across the obsidian floor before fading into the oppressive stillness of Obsidian City. For a brief moment, neither of them moved.
Jin Huang drew in a breath; his body betrayed him.
The air of the Abysmal Demonic Star System surged into his lungs like liquid fire. The demonic energy saturating the atmosphere was dense, impure, violent- and his perfect mortal foundation reacted with terrifying enthusiasm.
It seized everything. Not some of it. All of it.
His chest locked up.
Jin Huang staggered as pain blossomed deep in his lungs, sharp and crushing, as though invisible hands were squeezing them from the inside. Each breath became heavier than the last, as if he were inhaling molten iron instead of air. His meridians seemed to cheer in delight as power flooded through them faster than he could stabilize in his current state.
Too much. It was simply too much.
His perfect mortal foundation drank without restraint, stripping the demonic energy down to its most primal essence and forcing it through him in a relentless torrent. His heart thundered. His vision blurred at the edges, stars flickering across his sight that had nothing to do with the sky above.
"So this is what it feels like," he thought, "when you bite off more than you can chew."
Across from him, the rogue straightened, rolling his neck as his red aura flared once more. He could feel it too- the sudden imbalance- the wild fluctuation of energy pouring into Jin Huang's body.
A sharp grin split his face.
"Ha," he said, eyes glinting. "You're pulling demonic energy straight from the atmosphere of this abyss. Unfiltered. Unrefined."
He leveled his spear. "That hunger of yours will kill you faster than I ever could."
Jin Huang tried to respond. Only a hoarse rasp came out. His legs trembled and his lungs burned with every involuntary breath. He felt swollen from the inside, as though his body were a vessel being overfilled, pressure building with nowhere left to go.
"If this keeps up-" His instincts finished the thought for him.
I'll burst.
The rogue attacked.
He didn't bother with flourish or named techniques this time. He became a storm- spear thrusting, sweeping, crashing down in brutal arcs infused with murderous intent. Red miasma screamed through the air, tearing trenches into the obsidian wherever it passed.
Jin Huang retreated, barely holding the line.
He blocked with his forearms, redirected blows with desperate twists of his body, each impact rattling his bones and sending fresh spikes of pain through his already-overloaded system. Every step back cracked the obsidian beneath his feet.
Every breath made his lungs scream.
His vision tunneled as he screamed at himself in his own mind. "End it! I have to end this now!"
His gaze flicked wildly for an answer- any answer.
And then he saw it. The Void-Crossing Array.
The circular mosaic beneath them appeared lifeless, but would still faintly glow occasionally. Its runes etched deep into the obsidian floor, quietly resonating with universal qi. It was stable. Ancient. Vast beyond comprehension.
And right now it was standing between him and death.
A reckless thought ignited in his mind. A stupid thought. A very 'Jin Huang' thought.
The rogue lunged again, spear thrusting toward Jin Huang's shoulder with lethal precision.
Jin Huang didn't retreat, stepping into the attack.
The spear punched through his side, ripping a gasp from his throat as pain exploded through him. Blood sprayed across the obsidian- but Jin Huang didn't stop.
He slammed forward, arms wrapping around the spear's shaft and the rogue himself, dragging them both toward the center of the array.
"What are you--!?" the rogue barked, struggling in sudden alarm.
Jin Huang planted his feet, then he opened his mouth and exhaled.
Not air, but every stolen breath of demonic energy. Every drop his foundation had hoarded. Every unstable, violent fragment tearing his body apart from the inside. He forced it all out as though he were throwing up from his dantian.
Golden miasma erupted from him in a violent torrent, blasting downward into the array beneath their feet.
The runes flared in alarm, blinding.
The Void-Crossing Array shuddered as foreign demonic energy was forcibly injected into a system designed to channel the power of the universe itself. Space twisted and gravity lurched; the air screamed as a localized spatial distortion blossomed violently outward.
The Array didn't activate.
It rejected everything that Jin Huang had regurgitated onto it.
The backlash was instantaneous.
The rogue was torn from Jin Huang's grip as if seized by an invisible giant, his body hurled backward in a spiraling arc. He slammed into a distant obsidian spire with a thunderous, sickening crash, stone exploding outward on impact.
He did not get back up.
The spear ripped free from Jin Huang's side and clattered uselessly across the floor.
Jin Huang staggered, the golden miasma vanishing as abruptly as it had come. With nothing left sustaining him, his legs buckled. He dropped to one knee, then pitched forward, palms scraping uselessly against the obsidian.
His lungs burned one last time as the pressure finally released, breath rushing out of him in a long, shuddering exhale.
"Never…" he murmured weakly, face pressed against the cold black stone, "…do that.... again. Got it."
The world dimmed.
As the Void-Crossing Array slowly- begrudingly- settled back into silence, Jin Huang lost consciousness, sprawled across the obsidian floor on the outskirts of Obsidian City, utterly spent.
In his eyes, the already-dark world dimmed even further, as though someone had drawn a veil over reality itself. Colors bled away. Sensation followed. Thought dissolved into a formless haze before vanishing entirely.
Jin Huang lay unmoving on the obsidian floor, unconscious and utterly unaware of what he had set in motion.
The obsidian beneath him- smooth, ancient, and impossibly dense- was the same substance from which Obsidian City itself had been carved. This planet-sized mass of black glass was not merely a foundation, but a single, unified body. What happened upon one part of it echoed throughout the whole.
The Void-Crossing Array, embedded deep within that obsidian, continued to hum faintly.
The violent spatial fluctuations born from Jin Huang's reckless act did not vanish immediately. They rippled outward, sinking into the obsidian like a shock traveling through bone. Subtle distortions skittered along buried array lines, whispering through dormant formations and half-forgotten constructs.
Somewhere far away, eyes opened.
High above, the skies of the Abysmal Demonic Star System responded.
The black heavens churned, thick clouds folding over themselves in vast, unnatural spirals. Red lightning crawled through them like exposed veins, illuminating the cloudscape in jagged flashes that lasted just long enough to cast colossal, warped shadows across the obsidian plains below.
Then came the thunder.
Not a single crash, but a low, rolling resonance that seemed to echo not only through the air, but through space itself- as though the storm were large enough to be heard across the galaxy.
The rain followed.
It did not fall gently.
Black-tinged droplets descended in sheets, striking the obsidian with sharp, hollow clicks. The water pooled quickly, spreading across the glassy surface in oily rivulets that reflected the red lightning above in broken, trembling fragments.
The obsidian drank nothing.
Instead, the water flowed.
Guided by natural grooves and ancient fractures, the rain collected into thin streams that traced the subtle slope of the land. Those streams merged into wider channels, their dark waters sliding inexorably downward.
Toward Obsidian City.
The rain intensified, becoming torrential. Water surged over Jin Huang's still form, soaking his clothes, lifting strands of yellow hair, pooling around his limbs. His body shifted slightly as the current grew stronger, the water rising until he was half-submerged, then more.
Nearby, another crack spread through the obsidian floor.
With a sharp, echoing sound, the fractured surface finally gave way.
The ground collapsed inward, opening a slanted channel beneath the weight of the flood. Water rushed forward, eager and relentless; Jin Huang's unconscious body was swept along with it.
He vanished into the dark flow, carried by black rainwater through winding obsidian channels, tumbling helplessly deeper and deeper into the planetary structure, unaware and unresisting.
He was now on a slow, inevitable journey to Obsidian City.
...
Meanwhile, standing beneath a mighty obsidian gate, a figure in loose-fitting grey robes leaned onto a wooden staff. The bright red ribbons tied to it, blown by the stormy winds, whipped softly.
"That was quite a fight, young one. Come, let's see what else you can do."
The crimson lightning flashed against that person's silhouette, soft laughter escaping their throat.