The floor of the Ebony Jungle did not tremble; it pulsed.
The group's march was dictated by the mild, unshakeable steps of Zhì Yuǎn. With each dark leather boot that sank into the springy, waterlogged earth, the forest's abyssal green dimness seemed to curve, opening a path for the man who now breathed beneath that new ceiling.
Bái Wǎn glided beside Mò Yán. The silk of her pearlescent dress floated exactly three millimeters above the damp mud, anchored by the Lotus of the Void. The Perfect Sea in the young woman's belly undulated, folding back the crushing pressure of that ecosystem with the serenity of a lake swallowing rain. Mò Yán watched the surroundings. The black and white Hanfu strained violently against her full breasts with each dense lungful of air the diplomat drew in, her scarlet irises mapping the colossal shadows of the black trunks that bled red sap.
The guttural roar sounded again. This time, tearing through the canopy of blade-like leaves directly ahead of them.
The acoustic force swept the layer of black moss from the ground and made the thick obsidian roots crack. The smell of rust, boiling sap, and musk descended upon the group like a physical avalanche.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped. The mild abyss in his dark eyes rose toward the curtain of steel trees.
A wall of flesh and ore erupted from the darkness.
The titanic boar was as wide as a small hill, its skin clad in bone plates that gleamed with the density of raw iron. The beast's eyes burned in a volcanic red. Its colossal tusks jutted from the jaw, tearing through the earth and toppling millennia-old trees like rotten twigs — a runaway meteor aimed directly at the man in the charcoal-gray robe.
The thick silk of the golden dress billowed. Yù Méi took a single lazy step forward, placing herself in the collision path of the living mountain. The girl's bare heel stopped a millimeter from the mud.
Her almond-shaped irises ignited in living gold.
"Noisy little thing."
The beast collided.
The impact did not push her a single centimeter. Yù Méi's two pale hands drove themselves against the monster's colossal tusks. With no ground friction to dissipate the blow, the absurd kinetic force of the beast met the hyper-dense resistance of the woman's body and traveled through the air. A cone-shaped shockwave burst directly behind Yù Méi's back, vaporizing the moisture, shattering vines as thick as pythons, and stripping the black bark from the trees within a hundred-meter radius.
Old Mò Zhōng drove his boots into the earth and crossed his arms over his face to avoid being ground to nothing by the obliterating gale.
The dust settled.
The Primordial Beast was locked in place. Its massive paws tore at the ground in desperation, its titanic muscles trembling, but the iron of the carcass groaned in a deafening effort without managing to advance a single inch. Yù Méi's arms remained perfectly relaxed beneath the sleeves of her golden silk, her slender hands steady against the indestructible ivory. She smiled openly at the beast, which now stared back at her with a sudden terror.
The gold in the girl's eyes flashed.
"The carcass is big, but the core is soft."
The beast attempted to retreat, roaring in pain as it felt its own tusks cracking beneath the grip of those feminine fingers.
"Don't run. I just got here."
Yù Méi twisted her wrists violently to both sides. The golden seed in her belly pulsed. The Law of Rupture flowed down her arms, seeping through the ivory directly into the material foundation of the beast's skull.
CRACK.
The beast's spine exploded from the inside out in a nauseating symphony. The Law did not merely break the structure; it commanded the cells to collapse. The iron skull split in two with the sound of a quarry caving in.
A geyser of hot, near-black blood sprayed through the air, raining down over the clearing. The viscera and the monumental carcass crashed down with a dull thunder, raising a curtain of springy mud.
The boiling blood struck the invisible barrier of the Suspended Lotuses and slid off to the sides, leaving the family's clothes perfectly dry and clean. Yù Méi shook her hands in the air, the red droplets being repelled from her jade skin before they could even stain it.
The youngest looked down at the mountain of dead flesh at her feet and kicked the split tusk with her bare big toe.
"The bone breaks just like the filth we left behind." Yù Méi crossed her arms, cracking her neck. The sulky pout returned to her full lips. "How boring. I thought this place would at least give me a callus on my hands."
Yù Qíng glided through the air, stopping beside her sister. The sweet, lethal smile descended over the smoking carcass. The pale fingers affectionately tucked a golden strand of Yù Méi's hair back into place.
"The tree shook off its dust, little flower. That piece of flesh only knew how to use the weight it was given. It lacked the root to withstand your gale. But the earth is grateful for the blood."
Mò Yán approached, her scarlet irises assessing the kill. Old Mò Zhōng was already at the ready, holding two storage rings in his calloused hands, the steward's own bone structure dilated and unrecognizable after being forced to break through the martial bottleneck simply by breathing the brutal density of the new world.
Zhì Yuǎn walked to the carcass. The man's silence was absolute. He stopped before the eviscerated chest of the creature, his eyes fixed on the fissure where the energy throbbed in an atypical way.
Yù Qíng raised her pale hand. The invisible threads of the Law of Space leapt from her fingers like scalpels.
With a single gentle motion, the mountain of flesh and iron was dissected. The metallic skin peeled away from the muscles intact. The steaming blood was contained in spheres of pressurized vacuum. Mò Zhōng moved swiftly, sucking the massive spoils into the rings under Mò Yán's attentive supervision.
At the center of the dismantled thoracic cavity, a dense, red, thick core the size of a rock emitted residual heat.
Zhì Yuǎn extended his hand and touched the pulsating mass.
The core was not a crystallized stone. The beast's blood was ingrained in the energy, the pulsation flowing through the creature's veins as a single unified thing.
"The souls of these beasts are not made of glass," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice echoed through the clearing. His long fingers gently compressed the core, observing the energy leak fused with the dark blood. "It melted. The Grinding stage is the natural state of this environment. The flesh here breathes the immortality they seek."
Yù Qíng settled her pale face against her husband's broad shoulder. Her black eyes glittered.
"Difficult insects to step on, my love. The ceiling of this backyard forces life to digest its own power instead of hiding it in the chest like cowards."
Zhì Yuǎn released the remnants of the core. He adjusted the collar of his charcoal-gray robe, raising his face toward the vastness of the ebony forest.
The damp air shimmered.
The invisible threads of the Law of Karma, coiled in the man's right hand, entered extreme tension. The vibration pulled at his arm, echoing the terror and the servile devotion that crossed the continent's dimensional rift.
"They caught the scent of their owner." Zhì Yuǎn sank his boot into the mud, dictating the rhythm of the new era. "Our tracker hounds are barking, Qíng. Let's see the size of the bone they buried for us over these two years."
Before they could take a second step, the thick foliage a few meters ahead cracked violently.
The sound was not that of beasts. It was heavy boots crushing obsidian roots with the arrogance of those who consider themselves the masters of the land.
Five figures emerged from the abyssal green darkness.
They wore crude armor forged from black scales and thick leather, radiating a turbulent Qi that burned the damp air around them. The wide swords hanging from their belts dragged lightly against the mud. They were native hunters of that Middle Plane — men whose bodies had adapted to its punishing gravity since birth.
The group's leader, a heavyset man with a square jaw and scars across his neck, stopped abruptly.
The mercenary's eyes did not focus on the man in the charcoal-gray robe. Due to the karmic illusion thread that the priestess and the god sustained passively, the group of natives did not see cosmic deities or women of profane beauty. The hunters' primitive brains registered only a band of dirty, forgettable, pathetic peasants standing in the middle of a destroyed clearing.
But what arrested the leader's breath was not the "peasants." It was the high-level storage rings that old Mò Zhōng was still holding in his hands, overflowing with the residual aura of the freshly dissected Primordial Beast's core and precious blood.
"What a joke from the heavens..." The leader laughed — a harsh sound that echoed off the colossal trunks. He spat on the springy ground, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. "An iron-shell beast gets slaughtered, and the worms crawling in the dust show up first to loot the carcass."
The other four mercenaries laughed, fanning out into a lazy semicircle to block the family's escape routes.
Mò Yán narrowed her scarlet eyes. The white Hanfu tightened slightly with the diplomat's deep breath. She felt no fear, only a profound and irremediable disgust at that audacity. Bái Wǎn blinked, the serenity of her Perfect Sea rippling in mute compassion for the men's ignorance.
Yù Méi, however, opened a smile that showed every tooth.
The girl in golden silk took a step forward.
"Hey, old man," Yù Méi called to Mò Zhōng, without taking her almond-shaped eyes off the mercenaries. Her voice was a guttural purr of pure excitement. "Hold those rings tight. This filth's blood is going to dirty our spoils."
The native leader furrowed his brow, offended by the suicidal insolence of a scrawny peasant girl. He drew his sword. The heavy gray steel cut the air with a lethal hum, the blade whining under the pressure of the world.
"Leave the rings in the mud, tear off your own legs to save us the trouble of hunting you down, and maybe I'll let the ugly females live to carry our baggage," the man snarled, his raw Qi exploding, forcing the gravity around them to press even harder against the clay.
Yù Qíng sighed, resting her pale cheek against Zhì Yuǎn's shoulder.
"The soil of this place sweats life, my love, but the pests are terribly loud," the priestess murmured, her velvety voice dripping with a bored sadism.
Zhì Yuǎn did not look at the swords. He did not look at the mercenaries. The abyss in his eyes was fixed on the shadow projecting itself through the trees, kilometers beyond the clearing.
Yù Méi bent her knees. Her muscles vibrated. She was going to lunge. She was going to shatter the native leader's spine into three pieces and use his skull to beat the other four.
But the lunge never came.
The temperature in the clearing plummeted violently.
The wind stopped. The smell of boiling sap was swallowed by a suffocating stench of old blood, expensive incense, and pure murderous intent. It was not the hostile Qi of the forest. It was the crushing weight of absolute Grinding — an aura so diseased, condensed, and dark that the very bark of the obsidian trees began to crack.
The mercenary leader's cruel smile froze.
The steel sword in his hands suddenly felt like it weighed tons, pulling his arms downward. The native tried to draw air, but his lungs locked in his chest. A colossal, glacial shadow crawled across the moss, projecting itself from the foliage directly behind the family of "peasants."
The hunter's eyes went wide in pure dread. The man's pupils trembled uncontrollably as he stared into the void materializing from behind the trees.
These were not primordial beasts. These were not pathetic peasants.
The darkness of the ebony forest had just bowed before the two untouchable demons emerging slowly from the mist.