The rain in Shrek City didn't just fall; it hammered against the cobblestones with the rhythmic violence of a drumline, echoing the frantic heartbeat of the three freshmen fleeing through the northern merchant district. Lin Feng led the way, his breath coming in ragged, golden plumes of steam that hissed as they met the freezing downpour. Every step he took didn't just land—it impacted, leaving shallow, spider-webbed craters in the reinforced stone of the roadway.
Behind them, the silver-robed agents of the Sun Moon Empire were closing in like metallic ghosts. Their Rank 6 hovering soul-propellers hummed with a predatory, high-pitched buzz that cut through the thunder. These weren't mere guards; they were the "Silver Cross" unit, specialists in retrieving stolen imperial technology, and they moved with a synchronized efficiency that signaled impending doom.
"Feng, your rhythm is off! Your soul power is fluctuating wildly!" Huo Yuhao shouted, his voice nearly lost to the gale. His Spirit Eyes were pulsing a frantic, crystalline gold, projecting a 3D mental map of the pursuing enemies into Lin Feng's mind. "It's leaking, Feng! It's like you're trying to carry a collapsing mountain in a silk bag! The structural integrity of your Golden Body is spiking and dropping every second!"
Lin Feng didn't answer because the air in his lungs felt like molten lead. Inside his chest, the Core of the World—that ten-ton pebble of celestial matter he had fought so hard for—was reacting violently to the System Bug. Without the System's sophisticated dampening fields to act as a buffer, the Core's natural, unrestrained gravity was beginning to interact directly with Lin Feng's skeletal structure. Every bone in his body felt like it was being placed between a hydraulic press and an anvil, being compressed toward the density of a diamond.
[System Error: Resonance Cascade!]
Warning: Star-Core mass is bypassing 'Golden Dragon Anchor' filters.
Current Weight: 12,500kg... 15,000kg...
Internal Integrity: 62% and falling.
Biological Warning: Bone marrow density exceeding human limits.
"Go... to the West Gate!" Lin Feng managed to gasp out, his voice sounding like two tectonic plates grinding against one another. "The Shrek Guard... they have the high-intensity suppressors... they'll be there!"
"The West Gate is blocked! You've been led into a bottleneck!" A new voice boomed from the rain-slicked rooftops, vibrating with a commanding resonance.
A bolt of blue-purple lightning, thick as a tree trunk, struck the ground directly in front of the fleeing trio. The sheer heat of the discharge vaporized the rainwater instantly, creating a wall of thick, blinding white mist. Out of the shadows of the alley stepped a young man with a refined, scholarly face and a gentle aura that belied the terrifying energy crackling in his eyes. His right arm was already beginning to transform, scales of sapphire blue shimmering with draconic electricity. It was the fury of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon.
"Beibei!" Wang Dong cried out, his wings fluttering as he tried to stabilize himself against the sudden ozone-heavy air.
Beibei, the leader of the Tang Sect and the undisputed senior of the Shrek Seven Monsters, stood with his arms crossed, his expression uncharacteristically stern. Beside him, a massive, shield-bearing student with a lazy, arrogant smirk—Xu Sanshi—slammed the base of his Xuanwu Turtle Shield into the street, and a girl of breathtaking beauty with eyes like chips of ice—Jiang Nannan—merged from the curtain of rain like a phantom.
"Freshmen," Beibei said, his gaze flickering over their shoulder to the twelve silver-robed pursuers who had just landed on the surrounding roofs. "Elder Xuan said you might cause a 'minor disturbance' at the auction. He neglected to mention you would be bringing the Sun Moon Empire's secret police and an international diplomatic crisis back for tea."
The Clash: Seniors vs. Silver
Jing Ziyan, the Sun Moon representative, landed on a high balcony, his Rank 6 Soul Cannon already glowing with a sickly, concentrated orange light. "Shrek Seniors, do not involve yourselves in this. Those boys didn't just 'win' an auction; they utilized prohibited mental interference to steal a Star-Core fragment and blueprints that are classified as Imperial Sovereignty items. Hand them over, or this becomes a diplomatic incident that Shrek Academy cannot afford."
Xu Sanshi let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Diplomatic incident? Kid, you're in Shrek City. Here, the only diplomacy we recognize is the law of the fist, and mine is currently itching to meet your jaw."
"Then die with them!" Jing Ziyan roared, his hand slamming down on the trigger.
The alleyway erupted in a cacophony of light and steel. The Sun Moon agents unleashed a barrage of soul-guided micro-missiles that spiraled through the air like angry hornets. Beibei didn't flinch. His third ring flashed—Thunderous Fury—as his right arm fully transformed into a massive, clawed dragon limb. He moved with a surgical precision that was terrifying to behold, swiping the missiles out of the sky and detonating them in mid-air before they could reach the freshmen.
Jiang Nannan was a blur of golden light, her Soft Bone Rabbit agility allowing her to defy gravity. She ran vertically up the brick walls, her kicks snapping the mechanical soul-armor of the snipers with the sound of breaking glass. Meanwhile, Xu Sanshi stood like an unmoving wall, his Xuanwu shield expanding into a dome of dark water-energy that absorbed the laser fire from the hovering propellers.
But as the seniors held the line, the real threat wasn't the Sun Moon Empire. It was the ticking time bomb in the center of the alley. It was Lin Feng.
The Internal Collapse: The Price of the Core
As the battle raged, Lin Feng finally collapsed to one knee. The paving stones beneath him didn't just crack; they groaned and subsided, sinking three inches into the earth as his "Star-Core" reached a critical, unstable density.
"Feng!" Yuhao ran toward him, his face pale with worry. But as he reached out, he was violently repelled. A localized gravity field, so dense it warped the very light passing through it, had formed a three-meter "Dead Zone" around Lin Feng. Yuhao's spirit power flickered and died the moment it touched the field.
"Don't... touch... me," Lin Feng hissed, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl of agony. "The field... it'll crush your lungs..."
[System: Critical Failure.]
Bug Status: System logic attempted to 'Delete' the excess mass of the Star-Core to resolve the paradox.
Conflict: Golden Spirit Body has 'Claimed' the Star-Core as a permanent skeletal upgrade.
Result: FORCED MERGER IMMINENT.
Lin Feng's skin began to undergo a terrifying metamorphosis. The "Golden" radiance that usually accompanied his Body Soul was being devoured by a dark, metallic sheen—an "Obsidian" hue that seemed to drink the light around it. His muscles weren't just growing; they were being condensed, their fibers winding tighter and tighter until they had the density of steel cables.
Inside his Spiritual Sea, the Clear Sky Hammer phantom appeared, unsummoned and untamed. It didn't wait for Lin Feng's command. It began to strike the Star-Core, which had moved from his heart to the center of his spine.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The sound didn't stay internal. It echoed out of Lin Feng's body with the resonance of a cathedral bell, a metallic tolling that was audible even above the cracks of Beibei's lightning and the roar of the soul-cannons. Beibei froze, his dragon claw mid-strike, his eyes widening in pure, unfiltered horror. He knew that rhythm. Every Tang Sect disciple knew that rhythm.
"That sound... that's the Disorder Splitting Hammer technique? But it's coming from his bones?" Beibei whispered, his heart racing. "Who is this boy? What kind of monster did we let into the freshman class?"
The Awakening: The Obsidian Sovereign
Jing Ziyan, seeing the seniors momentarily distracted by Lin Feng's transformation, saw his opening. "The boy's body is collapsing! He can't handle the mass! Seize the Core while his defenses are down!" He bypassed his safety limiters, firing his Rank 6 Soul Cannon—a concentrated beam of pure thermal energy designed to melt fortress gates—directly at the kneeling, shivering Lin Feng.
"FENG!" Wang Dong screamed, his Butterfly Goddess wings unfurling in a desperate, suicidal dive to act as a shield.
But Lin Feng moved first.
It wasn't a human movement; it was the movement of a collapsing star. He didn't stand up; he simply looked up. His eyes were no longer golden; they were two pitch-black voids that seemed to pull the rain toward them. He reached out a hand, his fingers clawed, and caught the Rank 6 thermal beam as if it were a physical spear.
The heat, a staggering 5,000 degrees that could vaporize a Soul King, didn't even singe his palm. Instead, the gravity at the center of his hand was so intense that the light and heat of the beam were bent into a tight, screaming spiral, sucked into the Star-Core now fused permanently with his vertebrae.
"My debt... is paid," Lin Feng said. His voice was no longer his own—it was a low, vibrating hum that made the teeth of everyone in the alley ache and the glass windows of the surrounding shops shatter simultaneously.
He stood up slowly. The Golden Dragon's Anchor under-armor, a Rank 5 masterpiece of durability, was unable to contain the new density of his frame. It shattered into a thousand useless shards of silk and metal. Lin Feng stood there, his torso bare and etched with glowing black lines, his skin looking like polished, unyielding black marble.
[System Fixed: Forced Evolution Protocol Complete.]
Ring 1: 10,000y (Black) -> Status Stable.
Ring 2: 25,000y (Black) -> Status Stable.
New Physical Trait Unlocked: Obsidian Skeleton (Phase 1). * Passive Effect: Permanent Base Weight: 5,000kg. Physical Defense +400%.
Lin Feng took a single step forward. He didn't jump or run. He just walked. The shockwave of his foot hitting the ground sent a ripple through the street that tossed the Sun Moon agents off their feet, their delicate hovering soul-tools short-circuiting and exploding from the sheer kinetic pressure of his displacement.
"You want this stone?" Lin Feng looked at Jing Ziyan, who was now trembling. Lin Feng pointed a single, dark finger. "Absolute Gravity: Singularity."
A marble-sized sphere of black energy, so heavy it made the air scream, formed at Lin Feng's fingertip. He flicked it. The sphere didn't even hit Jing Ziyan; it merely passed within a meter of him. The atmospheric pressure shifted so violently that the Sun Moon representative was sucked toward the projectile and then slammed into the brick wall behind him. His high-grade soul armor flattened like parchment, his ribs cracking under the invisible weight of a dozen atmospheres.
The Aftermath and the Secret
The remaining Sun Moon agents didn't wait for a second strike. They grabbed their fallen leader and fled into the night, leaving behind a trail of broken tools and cooling slag. The rain began to slow, the thunder receding into a distant, grumbling echo as the mist settled over the ruined alley.
Beibei stepped toward Lin Feng, his dragon scales receding, but his suspicion was a palpable force. He looked at the deep, four-inch-deep footprints Lin Feng left just by standing still on the cobblestones.
"Lin Feng," Beibei said, his voice soft but carrying the weight of a sect leader. "You just used a rhythmic vibration technique that belongs to a clan that hasn't been seen on this continent in ten thousand years. And your rings... I am no fool. Even though the System's cloak makes them look purple to the untrained eye, the 'weight' they put out is wrong. It's too heavy. It's too dark. What are you?"
Lin Feng looked at Beibei, his obsidian skin slowly fading back to its natural golden hue, though the transformation left him feeling five times heavier than he had ever been. He felt the Star-Core pulsing against his spine, a constant reminder that he was no longer entirely biological.
"I'm a student of Shrek, Senior," Lin Feng said, his voice weary and hollow. "And like everyone else here... I'm just a boy trying to survive the monsters of this world without becoming one myself."
Xu Sanshi walked over, whistling as he looked at the crater where the Star-Core had attempted to merge. "Kid, if you're a 'boy,' then I'm a squirrel. You just ate a Rank 6 thermal beam for breakfast and asked for seconds. I don't care what your secret is, but you better be on our side when the tournament starts."
[System Notification:]
Debt Status: PAID. (The integration of the Star-Core into the user's biology has been accepted as a 'Life-Sacrifice' of 10-million gold value).
System Bug: PARTIALLY RESOLVED.
Permanent Warning: The Star-Core is now your 'Life-Anchor'. Your soul power is the only thing preventing your 5,000kg skeleton from crushing your internal organs. Do not deplete your reserves.
Lin Feng looked at Yuhao and Wang Dong. They looked at him with a mix of awe and a new, sharp edge of fear. He realized in that moment that the "System Bug" hadn't just saved him—it had fundamentally altered his humanity. He was no longer just a Soul Master with a hammer; he was becoming a celestial object in human form, a singularity wrapped in Shrek's uniform.
"Let's go back," Lin Feng whispered, the effort of moving his new weight apparent in every muscle. "Elder Xuan is waiting, and I think I've had enough 'diplomacy' for one night."
In the Shadows of the Sea God Pavilion
High above the city, on the highest balcony of the Sea God Pavilion, Elder Xuan watched the trio return. He bit into a greasy chicken leg, but for the first time in decades, his hand was visibly shaking.
"Ten tons of celestial matter... compressed into a twelve-year-old's spine," Xuan whispered to the empty air. "If he reaches Rank 70 and stabilizes that Core... he won't just be a Soul Saint. He'll be the center of the world's gravity. Every throne on this continent will tilt toward him."
He looked at a folder on his desk. It was the registration for the Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Duel Tournament.
"The world isn't ready for a hammer of this magnitude," he sighed, the wine in his jug suddenly feeling tasteless. "But ready or not, the Golden Age of Shrek is over. The Obsidian Age has begun."
[End of Chapter 16]