The silver-white rain left behind by the High-Emperor's shattered finger did not just heal the scorched earth—it awakened things that were never meant to wake.
Less than an hour after the dimensional rift slammed shut, the ground beneath the shattered peak of the Azure Sky Sect began to vibrate with a low, rhythmic tremor. Thick, black-veined roots burst upward through the freshly sprouted emerald grass, coiling around the fallen marble pillars like starving pythons.
Han Feng stood near the edge of the abyssal crater, his eyes fixed on the Primordial Purification Mirror floating steadily at chest level. A hairline thread of pure, incandescent gold stretched upward from the bronze frame, piercing straight through the bruised twilight clouds toward an invisible point in the void.
"The spatial coordinate is stable," Su Yue said, stepping up beside him with a jade slip in hand, her brow furrowed as she cross-referenced the glowing thread with ancient star charts. "Normally, ascending to the Upper Realm requires passing through the Nine-Heavens Tribulation Gate, where Sovereign factions station border legions to tax and enslave newcomers. With this coordinate, we can bypass the gate entirely and tear straight into the High-Emperor's peripheral domain."
"A direct backdoor into a Sovereign's backyard," Lin Xiruo murmured, resting one hand on her frost-jade sword as she surveyed the trembling horizon. "That sounds less like an infiltration and more like jumping straight into a furnace."
"A furnace only burns those who can't refine the fire," Han Feng replied calmly. He reached out, his fingers brushing the golden thread hovering over the mirror. "How long until we can open the passage?"
"Three days," Su Yue answered immediately, tapping the jade slip. "The spatial barrier between realms is still healing from the High-Emperor's intrusion. If we force it open now, the spatial turbulence will shred anything below the true Immortal realm. We need seventy-two hours for the rift to thin—and for you to fully stabilize your breakthrough."
Han Feng nodded, his gaze shifting toward the encroaching black vines now creeping over the edge of the crater. "Three days is more than enough. Let's—"
CRACK-BOOM!
A violent eruption shattered the earth three hundred paces to their left.
Geysers of dark, foul-smelling mud shot into the sky as a colossal stone altar—easily fifty丈 wide and covered in rusted, blood-stained chains—pushed its way up from the subterranean depths. Every chain on the altar rattled furiously, resonating with the lingering Upper Realm origin energy still drifting in the air.
"What is that?" Lin Xiruo's eyes narrowed, her hand instantly tightening around her hilt as Frost Qi flared around her boots. "There was no underground ruin beneath the Azure Sky Sect!"
"Look at the architecture," Su Yue said sharply, her analytical gaze locking onto the jagged, obsidian pillars framing the altar. "Those aren't Lower Realm runes. That's a Soul-Harvesting Beacon—an Upper Realm anchor planted millennia ago when this world was first turned into a farming ground!"
Han Feng's expression turned ice-cold. He activated the Mirror's True Sight.
Through his spiritual vision, the rising altar was no mere pile of stone. Beneath the dirt and rusted iron, thousands of translucent, agonized wraiths—the ancestral souls of the Lower Realm's fallen cultivators—were chained to the core, burning like oil in a lamp to power a massive, dormant transmission array.
"The High-Emperor didn't just try to crush us," Han Feng realized, his voice dropping an octave. "The silver rain fed the world's spiritual veins, and this beacon is siphoning that surge to send an emergency distress pulse straight to the Upper Realm!"
HUMMMMM!
As if confirming his words, the central crystal atop the obsidian altar flared with a blinding, sickly crimson light. A beam of dark red energy punched upward into the clouds, locking directly onto the faint spatial scar left by the High-Emperor's retreat.
"It's broadcasting our exact coordinates!" Su Yue warned, her fingers flying across a dozen formation talismans. "If that signal completes its cycle, the High-Emperor won't send a projection next time—he'll dispatch an extermination legion before our three-day window even opens!"
"Then we purify it before the pulse finishes," Han Feng said, stepping forward as silver light erupted across his palms.
"Wait—don't touch the core directly!" Su Yue shouted, her eyes widening as she read the shifting runes on the altar's base.
Too late. Han Feng had already flashed forward like a bolt of silver lightning, slamming the Primordial Purification Mirror directly onto the crimson crystal.
SIZZLE-CRACK!
A torrent of pure, relentless silver-white light flooded the obsidian altar. The rusted chains shattered like dry twigs. The thousands of trapped ancestral souls let out a collective sigh of relief, dissolving into pure, unstained spiritual mist as the mirror greedily devoured the dense karmic filth fueling the beacon.
Within three breaths, the blinding crimson beam vanished. The obsidian pillars crumbled into harmless gray dust, and a fresh surge of purified soul-essence poured back into Han Feng's dantian, pushing his newly attained cultivation realm even higher.
"Problem solved," Han Feng said, turning back toward Su Yue and Lin Xiruo as the dust settled. "A nice bonus harvest before we depart."
Neither woman smiled.
Su Yue was staring down at the shattered base of the altar, the color draining completely from her face. Lin Xiruo had already drawn her sword halfway out of its scabbard, her eyes locked on the empty pit where the central crystal had stood.
"Han Feng..." Su Yue's voice trembled—a sound he had never once heard from his usually unflappable strategist. "That crystal wasn't a transmitter."
Han Feng frowned, glancing back over his shoulder. "What?"
"It was a seal," Su Yue whispered, pointing a shaking finger at the bottom of the pit. "The Upper Realm didn't plant that beacon to call for help. They planted it to keep something buried inside the core of this world."
THUMP.
A heavy, suffocating heartbeat echoed up from the pitch-black abyss beneath the shattered altar.
The ground didn't just shake this time—gravity itself inverted for a split second, yanking loose stones upward into the sky. From the depths of the dark pit, a pair of massive, slit-pupil eyes—each the size of a city gate and burning with ancient, primordial malice—slowly snapped open in the darkness.
A raspy, ancient voice echoed directly inside their minds, dripping with dark amusement:
"Ten thousand years... I wondered which foolish insect would finally clean the chains off my cage."