The space between dimensions roared like a chaotic ocean of dark storms, lethal lightning, and absolute vacuum — a natural rift designed to disintegrate mortal matter.
Zhì Yuǎn's Inner Universe, however, imposed its own rules upon the anarchy. With each movement of his dark leather boots, the Law of Space materialized beneath his soles in the form of a solid, silver-light bridge, repelling the cosmic chaos to keep the internal air calm and saturated with the thick scent of sandalwood and ozone.
Wound between the fingers of the god's right hand, the invisible threads of the Law of Karma stretched into the darkness.
Just behind him, Yù Qíng rested perfectly anchored in the Lotus of the Void, gliding millimeters above the bridge of light. The priestess reclined her head close to her husband's broad shoulder, her black eyes tracking the dimensional storm with the same lethargy with which she would watch dry leaves falling in a courtyard.
Yù Méi marched with her hands crossed behind her neck. The thick silk of her golden robe billowed around her long legs, her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth in pure impatience. Mò Yán followed just behind, her black and white Hanfu straining violently against her full chest with each measured breath of dense air she drew in, maintaining her straight posture beside Bái Wǎn. The ocean-haired young woman floated in her pearlescent dress, her soft face bathed in a serene smile, marveling at the space currents bending before her eyes.
Closing the march, old Mò Zhōng carried the essential baggage in the storage rings, his irises fixed on the floor of light in mute reverence.
Entire days were consumed in the darkness.
When the Karma thread finally tensioned to its limit, Zhì Yuǎn stopped. He raised his left hand and cut the air vertically. The Law of Destruction tore through the membrane of reality with the dense sound of flesh being gutted.
The raw, absurdly heavy light of the new plane invaded the rift. The group crossed the threshold, and the portal collapsed at their backs with a dry crack.
The dark leather boots touched a springy, waterlogged ground. The surrounding jungle exhaled a predatory, violently hypertrophied biology. Colossal trunks rose like pillars of titanic temples, coated in a black, smooth bark resembling obsidian. Thick vines coiled around the dark wood, and the canopy of blade-like leaves blocked out the sun, plunging the environment into an abyssal green.
Mò Yán drew her first lungful of air.
Where a mortal from the inferior pocket dimension would have had their lungs crushed, the diplomat's full chest rose with avidity. The dense Qi descended her throat like thick, cold nectar, feeding the feverish warmth in her belly. A hot flush stained her immaculate neck.
Bái Wǎn released a breathless gasp. The Perfect Sea in her abdomen undulated, folding back the forest's crushing pressure with the naturalness of a lake swallowing a raindrop.
Yù Méi stretched, her muscles vibrating beneath the golden silk. She took a step and drove her bare heel into the black root of the nearest tree. The dense bark yielded, splitting open to spill a hot, dark red sap.
"The wood in this place bleeds," Yù Méi murmured, her canines drawing a savage smile. "I already like it."
A loud sound of cracking cartilage echoed behind them.
Old Mò Zhōng collapsed to his knees on the springy earth. The raw density of the environment collided with the primordial foundation the god had planted in the steward's chest. The man's bones cracked and thickened within milliseconds, his muscles tearing and rebuilding themselves in a violent evolution, breaking through the martial bottleneck simply by breathing. Trembling, the servant pressed his forehead to the damp ground, his eyes brimming with tears of gratitude at being able to endure that soil.
Zhì Yuǎn swept the Ebony Jungle with a dark, lethargic gaze. The Hunger in the void of his Dantian throbbed heavily, savoring the raw vitality of that world's flesh, recognizing the leap up the food chain.
Yù Qíng slid her cold hands along her husband's shoulders. The conceptual thread of karmic illusion shimmered around the group, cementing the disguise of dust and mediocrity for any external gaze that dared to cross through the undergrowth.
"The earth of this backyard sweats, my love," Yù Qíng purred, resting her pale cheek against his arm. "Our roots will drink deeply from this warm mud."
Zhì Yuǎn adjusted the collar of his charcoal-gray robe. The forest's dim light receded, swallowed by the insatiable abyss of his cape. The invisible Karma threads pulsed between his fingers, driven far beyond that hostile biome.
"The bait has flourished," the god's unshakeable voice reverberated against the bleeding wood. The dark boot sank into the earth, dictating the rhythm of the new era. "Let's walk."
---
Hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the Ebony Jungle, the urban landscape was dictated by the law of those who possessed the thickest blood.
In the bowels of the capital of the Two-Faced Crown Empire, a subterranean palace built from volcanic rock operated as the continent's hidden heart. The vast circular hall reeked of expensive incense, dried blood, and spilled wine.
Reclined on a throne forged from beast bones encrusted with silver, Lóu Jiàn turned a heavy wine goblet between his pale fingers. Around the former leader of the Bleeding Blade, three assassins native to that Middle Plane lay with their throats cut on the floor, the pools of blood quietly seeping into the drains.
The shadows of the hall shifted.
Jiàn Wúshuang, the once-proud Hegemon of the Immortal Sword, crossed the threshold wiping dark liquid from his blade's edge with a white cloth.
"The merchant alliance of the Boiling Glass Desert has been completely exterminated," Jiàn Wúshuang reported, his voice pragmatic and dry. The swordsman tossed a storage ring onto the stone table. "Yáng Yè has assumed control of the routes. All the Spirit Stone mines in the central region now pay exclusive tithe to the Shadow Syndicate."
Lóu Jiàn drank his wine and laughed — a harsh sound that echoed off the rock.
In the lower world, they had been bitter rivals. There, bound by the same karmic leash and rooted in the same unbreakable devotion, they operated as the absolute predators of the night.
The air behind the bone throne glinted.
An elite native assassin materialized from invisibility. The poisoned dagger descended in a perfect arc, driving through the back of Lóu Jiàn's neck down to the base of the skull with a dull thud.
The mercenary released the weapon's handle and leapt backward on quick instinct, retreating several steps until his back struck the shadows of one of the volcanic rock pillars in the hall. He smiled, his chest heaving, waiting for the Crystal Soul in the target's chest to crack with the irreversible death of the brain.
Lóu Jiàn did not blink. The wine did not even shift in the goblet.
Slowly, the former leader turned his head. The dagger was still buried in his neck, passing through the flesh.
The assassin's eyes went wide against the pillar. The smile evaporated, replaced by an uncontrollable tremor that climbed up his legs. He watched, paralyzed, as Lóu Jiàn raised his hand and pulled the blade from his own neck with a wet yank. The grotesque wound hissed, and within a thousandth of a second, the muscle fibers reconnected, sealing the skin without spilling a single drop of blood.
"The Grinding..." the assassin choked, his shrill voice faltering from lack of air, terror disfiguring his face. "Your soul melted into your blood... But how?! A monster at the fourth sub-realm of Immortal Establishment should be isolated on a mountain peak, praying for an ascension! Why would an untouchable aberration like you be sitting on a trash throne running the underworld?!"
Lóu Jiàn rested his head against the bone throne, twirling the bloodied dagger between his pale fingers.
"Stagnant filth spends centuries freezing their own soul inside a pathetic glass in their chest, crawling in the dust trying to reach what I am now," Lóu Jiàn murmured, his habitual boredom giving way to a hollow, devoted fanaticism. "Our Master spared us those centuries of torture, boy. He remade us."
Without rising, Lóu Jiàn flicked the dagger back with a flick of his wrist.
The steel crossed the hall like a beam of black light. The blade pierced the assassin's throat with such brutality that it passed clean through the neck and drove itself deep into the volcanic stone pillar behind him. The assassin was pinned to the pillar, his boots swaying loosely in the air, held up only by the steel lodged in his throat. Thick blood ran down the dark stone, pooling at his feet.
Jiàn Wúshuang did not look at the hanging corpse. The swordsman poured himself wine.
"The underworld of nine provinces is sealed, Lóu," Jiàn Wúshuang commented, his eyes on the vast map spread over the table. "The Mist Consortium laundered the dirty gold. Madame Feng secured the Imperial Seal for the Firmament Auction House, having worked her way into the generals' beds. The purified resources demanded by the White-Haired Mistress are secured in invisible vaults."
The swordsman drove his finger into two enormous crests drawn at the center of the map. An Ochre Dragon and a Blue Fire Bird.
"Let the mutants of the Huánglóng Clan and the Qīngluán Clan keep playing emperor up above with their legacy sects," the swordsman continued. "The infrastructure for our Master's arrival is paved beneath the very earth they walk on. Everything awaits His will."
Lóu Jiàn drank the rest of his wine. The hollow, manic reverence sank into the cruel lines of his face.
"An entire universe has no rush to breathe, Jiàn," Lóu Jiàn hissed. "And when the Creator arrives, the lineages that fancy themselves gods on this earth will understand what it means to reach the bottom of an aby—"
The sentence died in the air.
The wine goblet slipped from Jiàn Wúshuang's fingers, shattering on the floor. The swordsman's blade fell next, its clink echoing through the empty hall.
On the throne, Lóu Jiàn's indestructible body seized violently.
The two underworld monsters — untouchable assassins who no longer feared mortal cuts or lethal poisons — began to tremble uncontrollably. Cold sweat soaked their dark silks.
Deep within their hyper-dense blood, the golden spark of Primordial Qi that kept them alive ignited in absolute combustion. The invisible Karma thread, which crossed stars and dimensions, had just gone taut.
It was not a distant call. It was a colossal anchor, carrying the weight of entire galaxies, sinking into the ocean of their minds. The crushing gravity of the Creator's presence touched them across space, annihilating every last remnant of pride or individuality. They could not breathe.
Jiàn Wúshuang fell to his knees on the shards of his own shattered goblet, tears of pure idolatry streaming down his austere face. Lóu Jiàn threw himself from the throne, his bones cracking as he crawled across the filthy floor until his own forehead struck the stone, his chest heaving hysterically.
"The Master... the Master has arrived..." Lóu Jiàn babbled, his voice thick with a servile ecstasy, his nails digging into the obsidian as the devotion suffocated him. "The gods are walking this earth."