Volume 2, Chapter 48: Five Years Later
Five years is a funny thing. When you are thirteen, five years sounds like an eternity. But when you are eighteen, standing in the middle of a dusty border town with a headache that feels like a drill in your skull, five years feels like a long, exhausting weekend.
My boots were covered in red clay. I hated red clay. It never really washed out, just faded into a permanent, rusty stain.
"Arbitrator Huo," the man kneeling in the dirt rasped. He was the master of the Iron Wood Sect, a local faction that had decided the Federation's laws on spirit vein mining didn't apply to them. "You don't understand. The vein belongs to our ancestors."
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. My head was throbbing again. It wasn't a normal headache. Deep inside my upper dantian, my spiritual power was doing something weird. It was spinning. For the past month, the vast ocean of my mental energy had started compressing into a tight, heavy spiral. Professor Lakas had warned me about this. He called it the condensation of a Spiritual Soul Core. It was the mark of a high-tier Soul Master, but right now, it just made me want to take a very long nap.
"Your ancestors are dead," I said, my voice flat. "And they didn't sign the Treaty of the Phoenix. The vein is unstable. If you keep mining it, the mountain collapses on the village below."
The sect master sneered, his own soul rings flashing — six of them. "You are just a boy. A dog for the Hall of Execution."
He lunged. A massive, iron-wood spiked club materialized in his hands, aimed straight for my head.
I didn't move. I didn't even draw the Life Guardian Blade.
I just opened my eyes. All three of them.
The slit on my forehead parted, revealing the Gaze of Openings. The legacy of the Evil Eye Tyrant Emperor flared with a cold, violet light. I didn't attack his body. I just looked at the movement of his soul power. Through the Gaze of Openings, the world turned into a wire-frame map of energy. I saw the knot of power building in his right shoulder.
"Boring," Ah Tai grumbled in the back of my mind. "Freeze his blood and be done with it."
Too messy, I replied.
I raised a single finger. As a Level 72 Soul Sage, my reserves were deep, but I didn't need raw power here. I just needed precision. I tapped the exact point in the air where his attack's resonance peaked.
A pulse of violet spiritual pressure hit him like a physical wall. The sect master's club shattered into splinters. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into the dirt, entirely unconscious. His mind was temporarily paralyzed by the sheer weight of the Spirit Eye.
I sighed and pulled out my Spirit Pad, typing a quick message to the local garrison to come pick him up.
"Job's done," I muttered to the empty road. My head gave another sharp throb. I needed a glass of cold water and a ticket back to the Capital.
The Anito Academy didn't look like a school tonight. It looked like a palace.
The Centennial Phoenix Gala was in full swing. Floating lanterns illuminated the grand courtyards, casting a warm, golden glow over the manicured lawns. Everyone who was anyone in the Federation was here.
I tugged at the collar of my formal Arbitrator uniform. It was stiff, black, and embroidered with silver Baybayin markings. It looked sharp, but the fabric was terrible for breathing.
"You look like you're going to a funeral, Yuhao," a voice laughed.
I turned and actually smiled. Ma Xiaotao was walking toward me, wearing a deep red dress that seemed to shimmer like actual embers. She looked taller, sharper. At twenty-three, she wasn't just a student anymore; she was a legendary front-line fighter for the Hall of Radiance, famous for burning out entire nests of corrupted beasts.
"I feel like I'm at one," I joked, tapping my temple. "My head is killing me."
"Soul Core acting up?" Bei Bei asked, appearing right beside me. I blinked. I hadn't even heard his footsteps.
Bei Bei wore the matte-black tactical gear of a Shadow Sentinel Commander. The past five years had carved away his easygoing smile, leaving a quiet, dangerous calm. He moved like a ghost, completely in control of the Serpent's Path.
"It won't stop spinning," I admitted. "Every time I use the Third Eye, the vortex gets tighter."
"That means you're close," Tang Ya said, joining our circle. She held two glasses of pale wine, passing one to Bei Bei. She wore the elegant, emerald robes of a High Purifier. The Baybayin ᜉ (Pa) was tattooed faintly on her wrist, a mark of her mastery over radiant life energy. "When it finally solidifies into a core, the pain will stop. You'll just have a permanent battery in your head."
We stood there for a moment, just listening to the music drift over the gardens. It was rare for all four of us to be in the same city, let alone the same room. We had grown up. The academy days of worrying about exams and sparring matches felt like a lifetime ago. Now, we worried about border treaties, corrupted artifacts, and the ever-present, quiet dread of the Silence.
"So," Xiaotao asked, taking a sip from a glass I hadn't even seen her pick up. "Who has actually seen Chen Feng lately?"
The mood instantly dropped.
"Nothing," Bei Bei said softly. "The Sentinels sweep the borders every week. My men have found hushed villages, yes. But the man himself? He's a ghost. He went deep into the Slaughter City dimension five years ago, and he hasn't come up for air."
"He's scared of the High Arbitrator," Tang Ya pointed out. "Ye Xishui nearly cut his head off."
"Or he's just digging a deeper hole," I said. My Third Eye twitched beneath my skin, reacting to the mention of the void. "He's building something down there."
"Let him dig," Xiaotao said dismissively. "If he pokes his head out, we'll just chop it off again. Come on, stop looking so grim. It's a party."
I nodded, but I couldn't shake the heavy feeling in my gut. I excused myself and walked away from the lights, heading toward the quieter balconies on the upper floors. I needed some actual air.
•••••
The balcony was supposed to be empty. It wasn't.
Professor Lakas was leaning over the stone railing, a half-empty bottle of very cheap wine dangling from his fingers. He was wearing a wrinkled suit that looked like he had slept in it. He hadn't aged a day in five years. Not a single gray hair, not a new wrinkle.
"Nice uniform," Lakas said without looking back. "Makes you look very official. Very serious."
"The collar is choking me," I said, leaning on the railing next to him.
The night breeze was cool. I looked at the man beside me. He was playing the part of a lazy, slightly eccentric teacher perfectly. But I was eighteen now. I had the Spirit Eye, or the Gaze of Openings. I could see the movement of the world, the way the ambient soul power of the entire city seemed to unconsciously bend around him, avoiding him out of respect.
"You're not going to ask me how my mission went?" I asked.
"I don't need to," Lakas took a swig from his bottle. "You're standing here, which means you won. And you're rubbing your head, which means your Spiritual Core is almost done cooking. Everything is on schedule."
I stopped rubbing my temples and looked at him. "Whose schedule, Professor?"
He paused, the bottle hovering near his mouth. He finally turned his head to look at me. His dark eyes were bottomless. There was no light reflected in them, just a quiet, endless depth.
"You've been asking a lot of questions lately, Yuhao."
"I see things now," I said. "When I look at Dean Mu En, I see a mountain of light. When I look at Ye Xishui, I see a burning sun. But when I look at you… I don't see anything. It's like looking at the sky. There's just no end."
Lakas smiled. It wasn't his usual lazy smirk. It was a very old, very tired smile.
"Do you know why the statues of the Ancient Ancestor in the temples don't have a face?" Lakas asked quietly.
I shook my head.
"Because a face implies a limit," Lakas said. He set the bottle down on the stone. "People think the gods are just strong humans. They think godhood is about throwing bigger fireballs or living forever. It isn't. Godhood is a law."
He reached out and tapped the center of my forehead, right where the Third Eye rested.
"You are building a core. You are gathering power. That makes you strong," Lakas said, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to vibrate in my bones. "But above the Seven Realms, and beneath the Infinite Void… strength doesn't matter. Only the rule matters. Throughout all of creation, I alone…"
He stopped. He pulled his hand back and let out a dry chuckle, the oppressive weight in the air vanishing instantly.
"…I alone know a good vintage from a bad one. And this," he tapped the cheap wine bottle, "is a terrible vintage."
He didn't say the name. He didn't have to. The truth was sitting right there, heavy and undeniable between us. The All-Bloodline Sovereign. The Only One. The founder of the Federation. He was standing on a balcony, drinking awful wine, and complaining about the noise.
Why? Why was he down here playing a mortal?
I opened my mouth to ask, but the words died in my throat.
A sharp, piercing sound cut through the music. It wasn't the orchestra. It was an alarm.
The heavy oak doors of the balcony burst open.
A messenger from the Shadow Sentinels stumbled out. His black armor was cracked, and his left arm was hanging limply at his side. He wasn't just bleeding blood; he was bleeding a thin, gray mist.
"Commander!" the messenger gasped, collapsing to his knees.
Bei Bei was there in an instant, dropping from the roof above. He caught the man before he hit the ground. Xiaotao and Tang Ya rushed onto the balcony right behind him.
"Report," Bei Bei ordered, his voice like cracking ice.
"The quarantine zone…" the messenger coughed, clutching his chest. "It's gone. The whole northern ridge."
"What do you mean gone?" Xiaotao demanded, her hands igniting. "Did the Holy Ghost Church break out?"
"No," the man wheezed, looking up with wide, terrified eyes. "The city didn't break out. The city expanded. The Hell Road… the pocket dimension… it's overwriting the physical world. It's bleeding into the soil."
I felt a cold spike of adrenaline hit my stomach. My headache vanished, replaced by a sharp, absolute clarity.
I looked out over the northern horizon. With the naked eye, the sky just looked dark. But with the Gaze of Openings, I saw it.
A massive, jagged tear in the fabric of the world. It looked like a rotting wound in the sky. Red light and gray smog were pouring out of it, cascading down the mountains and drowning the forests. The draining force wasn't an infection anymore. It was an invasion.
Chen Feng hadn't been hiding. He had been incubating. And now, the egg had hatched.
"He opened a door," Lakas said softly. He wasn't holding his wine bottle anymore. He was standing tall, looking at the red stain on the horizon. The lazy teacher was gone.
"To where?" I asked, though the dread in my chest already knew the answer.
"To the Abyss," Lakas replied.
The Centennial Gala's music finally stopped, replaced by the screaming of the Capital's sirens. Five years of peace ended in a single heartbeat. The real war had just begun.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 48