# CHAPTER 17: The Whispering Deep
The discovery of the subterranean resonance changed everything.
For the next three days, Krishak became a silent observer within his own home. While he sat on the plush rug of the living room, ostensibly helping Luna assemble a magitech levitation puzzle, his spiritual consciousness was descending miles beneath the mansion's reinforced concrete foundation.
Using the *Universe Origin Body Art*, he expanded his sensory net horizontally through the island's tectonic plates. To avoid triggering the high-tech seismic sensors the Hunter Association had installed across the coastal region to predict spatial fractures, he didn't project his energy outward. Instead, he treated the earth as a massive string instrument, quietly listening to the natural, low-frequency vibrations of the stone.
What he discovered was staggering.
Directly beneath the island, roughly four miles into the oceanic crust, lay a massive, hollow localized anomaly. It wasn't a standard cave system, nor was it a magma chamber. It was a perfectly preserved, ancient pocket of compressed space—a subterranean womb that had been entirely sealed off from the world long before humanity even discovered fire.
*It is a primordial node,* Krishak analyzed, his fingers deftly clicking a glowing puzzle piece into place for Luna, who clapped her hands in delight. *When the spiritual surge flooded Earth a century ago, humanity assumed the energy dropped from the sky or bled entirely from the rifts. They never realized that the planet itself had dormant, prehistoric veins waiting to be unlocked.*
Because this node had been sealed for millions of years, the spiritual energy trapped inside hadn't been corrupted or mutated by modern atmospheric pollution or spatial tears. It was pure, unadulterated, raw *Qi*—exactly the kind of high-grade resource Krishak needed to fuel the ravenous furnace of his **Martial Warrior (Level 2)** vessel.
But there was a catch. The node was locked behind a natural gravitational lock, a barrier formed by the sheer mass of the tectonic plates above it. If an ordinary S-Rank or National-Level Awakener tried to blast their way down using raw kinetic force, the resulting seismic feedback would shatter the island, triggering a megatsunami that would submerge the entire coastal territory.
Humanity's primitive drills and radar could never touch it safely. But to a master of space, time, and gravity, a physical barrier was nothing more than a poorly written lock.
"Brother, your turn!" Luna chirped, shoving a glowing blue puzzle component into his hand. "Make the castle float!"
Krishak smiled, his eyes softening as he looked at her bright, innocent face. "Watch closely, Luna."
With a gentle tap of his finger, he balanced the piece perfectly on the micro-gravitational current of the toy, making the miniature castle float flawlessly in the air. Luna let out a gasp of pure awe, her eyes wide as she watched the toy drift.
*Enjoy the peace, little sister,* Krishak thought, standing up smoothly as Emily entered the room to announce that dinner was being prepared. *Tonight, your brother takes his first step into the deep.*
At two in the morning, the mansion was cloaked in absolute silence.
Veer was fast asleep, his body still recovering from the heavy cellular-regeneration treatments, and Ama's familiar, warm spiritual aura was resting quietly in the master suite. Even the high-tech security grid patrolling the perimeter was operating on its standard, automated midnight cycle.
Krishak stood in the center of his room. He didn't use the window this time. Instead, he knelt down, placing his small palm flat against the hardwood floor.
*Universe Origin Body Art: Intangible Mass.*
He didn't break the wood. He didn't displace a single atom of the structure. Instead, he manipulated his personal gravitational frequency, aligning his physical body to exist in the exact microscopic spaces between the molecular bonds of the matter beneath him. To the laws of physics, he became a ghost—a localized wave rather than a solid object.
Silently, effortlessly, Krishak sank straight through the floorboards.
He drifted through the mansion's lower automated maintenance levels, past the heavy steel support beams, and plunged directly into the raw, unyielding bedrock of the island.
The descent was dark and suffocating, a journey that would have crushed the lungs and sanity of any mortal cultivator. Millions of tons of solid granite and volcanic basalt pressed against his path from every direction. But under the absolute guidance of the *Universe Origin Body Art*, the stone simply parted around his small frame like water around a diving bell, sealing perfectly behind him without leaving a single trace of his passage.
One mile. Two miles. Three miles.
As he pushed deeper, the ambient temperature of the crust skyrocketed, reaching a blistering heat that could easily melt a standard alloy drill. Krishak didn't even notice. His starmetal-infused bones absorbed the thermal energy, converting the heat into a kinetic buffer that stabilized his movement.
Finally, at the four-mile mark, the solid rock abruptly vanished.
Krishak felt his personal gravity stabilize as he dropped smoothly onto a solid, crystalline surface. He stood upright, shaking his small shoulders as he took a deep breath of the air.
His eyes snapped open, and for the first time since his reincarnation, a genuine expression of shock crossed his features.
He wasn't in a dark, muddy cave. He was standing in a colossal, subterranean cavern that stretched for miles, illuminated by a breathtaking, ethereal sea of glowing, crystalline veins that pulsed like a living heartbeat. The air here was so thick with pure, ancient spiritual energy that it had liquefied, forming small, glowing blue streams that trickled along the cavern floor.
But it wasn't the energy that caught his attention.
At the center of the massive cavern, floating quietly above a lake of liquid spiritual energy, was a massive, fractured stone monument. It was covered in ancient, geometric runes that did not belong to Earth. It was an artifact of the cosmos—a shattered fragment of a high-tier celestial realm that had crashed into this planet eons ago, buried deep beneath the crust before the continents had even shifted.
As Krishak stepped closer, the **Silver Cord** deep within his soul let out a violent, deafening chime of resonance.
The ancient cosmic monument wasn't just dead stone. It was a dormant trans-dimensional anchor. And as Krishak's ancient gaze read the glowing geometric runes, a cold, sharp realization settled into his mind.
*Earth isn't just an isolated planet that randomly woke up a century ago,* Krishak thought, his pupils constricting into two sharp points of brilliant blue. *This planet was intentionally sealed. And this monument... is one of the keys.*