The immense double doors of bronze and jade swallowed the eight steps. The sound of the millennial metal closing at their backs did not echo in a cave. It was muffled instantly by a gust of sharp, alien wind.
The spatial transition was abrupt. The air shifted suddenly beneath their boots. The dense smell of volcanic basalt evaporated, replaced instantly by the sterile aroma of ancient ozone and stellar dust.
They were definitively no longer inside a mountain.
The group stepped onto a colossal circular platform of white, cracked jade, floating in the void. Above them, a deep, turbulent purple sky stretched without sun or clouds. Below and ahead, the vision of an entire continent in ruins tore across the horizon — with stagnant oceans and shattered floating mountains — swallowed by the silence of an era predating the fracturing of the Three Thousand Worlds.
The dimensional wind howled across the platform.
Lín Jié's heavy velvet-green Hanfu fluttered, the thick fabric molding against the fullness of her bust and her wide hips. The secretary narrowed her green eyes, cold sweat gleaming on her forehead as the newly forged Law of the Edict in her core groaned attempting to process the age of that space.
Beside her, a rhythmic metallic tinkling sounded on the stone.
Clink. Clink.
Qīng Yǔ took two steps forward. The silver bracelet on her bare right ankle touched the jade dust. The young woman wore her flowing dress of multiple silk layers — the outer silver layer and the vibrant inner cyan swaying in the wind, lending her an unshakeable purity that contrasted violently with the warm flush on her neck.
"The air of this place is hollow," Huáng Bìyù's contralto voice cut through the wind's hum. The warrior maintained her perfectly upright posture. The dark scarlet silk Qipao adjusted to her curves, and the deep slits along its sides exposed her thick thighs and skin of a warm, immaculate white jade. The heavy cascade of scarlet hair gleamed beneath the purple light, standing out against the faded landscape.
At the center of the formation, Zhì Yuǎn was not looking at the destroyed mountains. The black silk cape fell heavily over his broad shoulders. The man's dark eyes fixed on a gigantic obsidian monolith rising a hundred meters away, at the middle of the platform.
His Wisdom expanded, dissecting the animic currents operating the gears of that dead dimension. And in the depths of the absolute silence, Zhì Yuǎn's perception caught a grumbling, mechanical, worn-down whisper vibrating in the stones beneath his boots.
"Another pack of mortal garbage... Hollow bones, loose flesh. And they brought a harem of barefoot women to a cemetery. Pathetic. They'll turn to dust on the first trial just like the last ten thousand idiots who washed up here."
A millisecond after the spirit's echo crossed the man's mind, the dimension's conceptual loudspeakers activated for the physical world.
The voice that erupted from the purple skies did not sound cantankerous. It was an ancestral voice — thundering and unquestionable, calibrated eons ago to make mortals drop to their knees.
[Welcome to the Cradle of the Empty Eye.] The declaration made the jade floor vibrate. [Only the youth who defies the corrosion of time and the soul whose weight bears the ceiling of the world may inherit the foundation and tread the Path of the Shen.]
Yù Méi, who was chewing a piece of dried meat, stopped. The younger sister swallowed hard, crossed her arms beneath the golden silk, and made a sulky pout — her almond eyes evaluating the obsidian monolith from top to bottom.
"What a tedious thundering voice," the warrior grumbled, cracking her neck loudly. "Someone tell this rock that we didn't come to inherit anything. We came to rip the hinges off the house. Where do I need to punch?"
Seated in the air just above Zhì Yuǎn's left shoulder, Yù Qíng let out a crystalline, crawling laugh. The woman in blue rested her pale chin in her own hand, her legs loosely crossed in her invisible seiza.
"Insects who build glass cages always believe their own buzzing is the sound of a storm, little flower," Yù Qíng murmured, her crimson lips curving slowly. The priestess's black eyes fixed on the pillar with a dark, lethal gleam. "Little do they know that our heaven need only stretch to shatter their ceiling."
Zhì Yuǎn adjusted the collar of his charcoal-grey robe.
The void in those irises receded. A lopsided, lazy smile overflowing with irony drew itself at the corner of his lips. The contrast between the invisible spirit's embittered curses and the supreme god voice echoing in the sky genuinely amused him.
"The ghost hidden in the walls thinks we brought too much dust to his cemetery," the husband's deep voice sounded relaxed, the leather of his boots clicking on the jade floor as he took the first step toward the center. "Let us put our hands on the stone. I want to see if this machine's ruler has the numbers we need."
The women followed him in silence.
When they stopped before the hundred-meter-tall monolith, the obsidian stone lit up. Silver-colored runes flowed across the smooth surface, forming the image of an outstretched hand at the base of the pillar. The thundering voice tore through the purple clouds again.
[First Gate. The Test of Time and Root. Only those who have not surpassed four hundred cycles beneath the sun may proceed. Place your hand on the stone and reveal the age of your bones.]
Yù Méi did not wait.
The younger sister took a wide step — the golden silk parting at her thigh — and slapped her right palm directly against the silver runes with a dull thud, while her left hand carried the last piece of dried meat to her mouth.
The monolith flickered. The silver light, previously continuous, oscillated hysterically. A sharp hiss of overloaded energy hummed in the black stone.
The spirit hidden in the walls attempted to read the bones touching its machine. The structure was not porous calcium or diluted Qi. Yù Méi's bones weighed like mountains of dense gold, forged by years of violent fracturing under the Law of Rupture and the uninterrupted friction of the Forge of Flesh.
Behind the scenes of the dimension, Zhì Yuǎn's mind caught the automaton specter's mute, panicked scream: "WHAT IS THIS?! What kind of monster swallows shooting stars for breakfast?! This density makes no biological sense!"
The monolith groaned. The Ancestral Voice stuttered across the sky's loudspeakers — the once-majestic tone cracking like old glass.
[Bone Age confirmed: Twenty-one cycles... Bone structure... planetary anomaly. E-Extreme qualification. Access granted.]
Yù Méi pulled her hand from the stone, chewing hard, and looked at her own palm.
"The machine almost choked trying to count to twenty-one," the younger sister commented, shrugging and stepping back toward her husband. "Loose stone."
Mò Yán advanced next. The diplomat aligned the heavy black skirt of her Hanfu and pressed her pale fingers against the monolith with a strict elegance — the wide-open neckline straining the white silk of her bodice. The stone trembled violently again as it attempted to scan the purified and rebuilt foundation by the god's crushing Yang.
[Bone Age confirmed: Twenty-seven cycles... Structural density... Reading error... Extreme qualification. Access granted.]
Huáng Bìyù and Qīng Yǔ touched the stone together. The silver light flickered frantically — the machine fighting not to blow its own circuits while reading the living mercury's immutability beneath Bìyù's scarlet silk and the cosmic purity entrenched in Yǔ's reborn bones.
[Bone Age confirmed: Twenty-eight cycles... Twenty-eight cycles... P-Passage cleared.]
Lín Jié walked with firm steps. The green velvet swayed as the former secretary pressed her ink-deeply-stained hand against the obsidian.
[Bone Age confirmed: Thirty-five cycles. Extreme qualification.]
Bái Wǎn was next. The young woman with soft cheeks and pearlescent dress touched the obelisk carefully, and the thundering voice let out an exhausted noise before announcing the girl's twenty-four cycles.
"Twenty-one? Twenty-seven?! Thirty-five?!" The specter's voice vibrated in the floor's cracks, bordering on logical collapse to Zhì Yuǎn's ears. "These monsters aren't even the age of a rat and they already weigh more than the tyrants of the Dao Synthesis Realm! What in the devil's name is this bloodline?!"
Finally, Yù Qíng slid the tips of her cold fingers across the obsidian surface. The monolith went completely dark for two seconds. The antiquated machine's core nearly melted attempting to process the infinite, devoted darkness sustaining the twenty-nine-year-old eldest sister's bones.
When the silver light finally came back on — flickering weak and breathless — Zhì Yuǎn stopped before the stone.
He did not press his entire palm. The man in the charcoal-grey robe merely rested the tip of his index finger at the center of the runes.
The entire purple sky blinked in a power failure. The monolith released a prolonged groan of stone cracking from top to bottom.
[Bone Age... Twenty-nine cycles... P-please... P-Proceed...]
The silver light of the first monolith flickered and went out entirely — the obsidian core still crackling from the overload of attempting to calculate that family's foundation.
The alien wind blew harder across the jade platform. A few steps away, a second obelisk rose from the ground. This one was wider, made of a grey and porous stone, and the runes beginning to ignite on its surface held a ghostly blue glow.
The conceptual loudspeakers tore through the purple sky again — the Ancestral Voice resuming its thundering imposition.
[Second Gate. The Test of the Shen Palace. Flesh ages, but intent must be unbreakable. Only those who have already forged their own Crystal Soul may bear the sanity demanded by our inheritance. Touch the stone. Prove you are not unworthy.]
Yù Qíng let out a low, velvety laugh.
The woman's chin rose by a millimeter. Gliding through the air via the Lotus of the Void, her dark blue dress grazed her pale thighs as she stopped gracefully before the grey stone pillar. With her crimson lips curved in a slow, unshakeable smile, she extended her glacial hand and pressed her flat palm against the blue runes.
The obelisk hummed.
The blue light oscillated up her arm, rose to her forehead, groped at the Upper Dantian searching for a crystal structure... and found nothing but a mortal mist. The stone's imposing hum died. A hollow, loose, and terribly disappointing sound rang out on the platform — like a cracked bell.
The Ancestral Voice echoed — mechanical and merciless:
[Soul Strength: Formless Mortal Mist. Rejected. Unworthy to proceed.]
Absolute silence fell over the group.
Yù Qíng's pale hand remained pressed against the grey stone. The sweet smile on her crimson lips froze, cracking until it disappeared entirely. The temperature around the priestess plummeted brutally, and a glacial, purely lethal mist began to darken the purple sky light above her.
A few steps away, Yù Méi raised both hands to her own mouth. The golden-silk girl's almond eyes went wide and she bit the inside of her own cheek. Her full chest began to rise and fall in lurches. She could not hold it.
"Pfff... HAHAHAHA!" Yù Méi bent her body forward, slapping her own thigh so hard the sound cracked across the platform. "'Unworthy'! For the love of our heaven! The old stone called you unworthy dust right to your face!"
Mò Yán turned her face to the side, her pale neck burning in a deep flush. The diplomat pressed her lips together tightly, her shoulders shaking as she desperately fought to maintain composure and swallow the laugh. Even Huáng Bìyù covered her mouth with the sleeve of her scarlet Qipao, pretending to clear her throat.
Yù Qíng's intent turned venomous. The woman's hand tightened on the grey stone.
"I am going to turn this talking garbage into gravel," Yù Qíng hissed — her velvety tone shredded by pure hatred.
But before she could activate the Black Star in her core, the leather of a heavy boot clicked on the jade platform.
Yù Méi's laughter died. Mò Yán straightened her back immediately.
Zhì Yuǎn walked to the obelisk. His broad chest rose and fell beneath the charcoal-grey robe in a slow rhythm — the gravity around him suddenly saturated. He simply stopped behind Yù Qíng, pressing his warm chest against his wife's trembling back.
The man's large, calloused hand rose, resting with precision exactly over her cold hand still touching the stone.
He did not test his own soul. Zhì Yuǎn connected his own Will to his wife's animic sea, injecting a colossal drop of his own Dantian's weight directly into her formless mist. The intent of an entire cosmos collided against the inheritance's lock using the woman as a bridge.
The grey obelisk did not merely flicker — it exploded in light.
The stone groaned deafeningly. A fissure opened from the top to the base of the pillar. The ghostly blue light was obliterated, replaced by a dense, suffocating golden glow that blinded the entire platform.
Behind the scenes of the dimension, the Ruin Manager's archaic circuits collapsed catastrophically attempting to process the size of infinity.
The Ancestral Voice choked. The majestic filter failed violently, and the raw, genuine, hysterical desperation of the automaton spirit tore through the cave's loudspeakers:
[Evaluating... What in the absolute hell is this?! E-ERROR! C-CRITICAL ERROR! Incalculable weight! C-Cosmic Royalty! P-Proceed! The gate is wide open, for the love of existence, remove your hand from the machine!]
Zhì Yuǎn released Yù Qíng's hand. The golden glow vanished, leaving the obelisk smoking, cracked, and emitting small pops of melting stone.
The man adjusted the collar of his charcoal-grey robe with a casually polished slowness. He looked at the destroyed pillar, then lowered his gaze to the first wife — who was still panting against his chest, her body numbed by the weight of the energy that had just used her as a channel.
"The old machine had faulty gears, Qíng," the husband's deep voice reverberated across the platform — gentle and dripping an absolute, protective irony. He brought her pale fingers to his own lips, kissing her knuckles with a warm reverence. "Let us try to overlook the furniture's poor manners."
The flush of humiliation on Yù Qíng's face was immediately swallowed by a feverish, arrogant warmth. The woman's ego was rebuilt and shielded instantly by that man's visceral protection. She turned her face to the sisters who had been laughing moments before — the unshakeable smile returning to her crimson lips.
"Even blind stones need the weight of heaven on their backs to learn to recognize the true root of the world, little flower," Yù Qíng purred at Yù Méi, pressing the back of her head possessively against Zhì Yuǎn's chest.
Yù Méi crossed her arms, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
"Tch... he always ruins the joke so he doesn't have to watch you sulk," the younger sister grumbled — but the predatory smile never left her face as she walked toward the center of the hall.
The obsidian gate behind the cracked pillar began to open with a deep groan of dragging stone. The smell of old steel, dried blood, and murderous intent swept the jade platform. Yù Méi's almond eyes went wide, inhaling the promise of carnage coming from the darkness.
The gate opened onto a vast martial training courtyard — flanked by decapitated statues and carved with blade marks from forgotten eras.
At the exact center of the courtyard, the foundation trembled.
A colossal Golem, forged from blocks of dark granite, rustic steel, and dried-blood runes, rose fifteen meters tall. The inorganic guardian turned its stone neck with a sound of crushed gears. The gravitational pressure leaking from the creature's joints belonged to the apex of the 9th Sub-realm of Immortal Establishment. The machine's mere murderous intent distorted the purple sky's light — dense enough to crush the lungs of an entire army.
The dimension's loudspeakers crackled — the Ancestral Voice recovering its thundering pomposity after the malfunction in the previous test.
[Third Gate. The Test of Blade and Flesh. Only the strength that shatters mountains is worthy of protecting the root of the Shen. Survive the Guardian of Ashes, or become fertilizer for the Cradle.]
Yù Méi released a loud, passionate sigh, opening a wide smile that showed her sharp canines.
The younger sister cracked her neck from side to side. The heavy dark-golden silk of her dress rustled as she took her first steps toward the arena — the lateral slits exposing her thick thighs and milky jade skin.
"Finally," the warrior purred, her fists closing with dry snaps. "Something large enough that I don't need to hold back."
The Golem raised a solid stone broadsword and took a heavy step. The impact of the granite foot against the courtyard raised a thick cloud of grey dust, dead earth, and rotten soot that flew directly in the girl's direction.
Yù Méi stopped.
The predatory smile melted instantly. The younger sister blinked her almond irises, looking at the cloud of dry filth falling from the giant monster's rusted joints. She wrinkled her nose. Her tense shoulders slumped in pure, absolute disappointment.
With a furious pout on her full lips, Yù Méi crossed her arms beneath her colossal bust.
"It doesn't bleed and it reeks of old garbage!" Yù Méi complained, jutting her chin toward the giant. "Husband, if I punch this mountain of rubble, the rotten dust will stick to my sweat and ruin the new silk!"
A few steps away, Huáng Bìyù nodded gently. The scarlet warrior maintained her perfectly upright posture, the Qipao embracing her voluptuous curves without a single crease.
"The younger sister is correct," Bìyù agreed, her contralto voice echoing with an unshakeable elegance as she appraised the filthy creature. "There is no martial glory in punching old roof tiles — only unnecessary sweeping work afterward."
Zhì Yuǎn released a low, imperceptible sigh.
The darkness in the man's irises was bathed in a quiet warmth. He did not mind indulging his women's aesthetic sensibilities. He drew no weapons. He recited no mantras, adjusted no stance. The charcoal-grey robe did not so much as sway with the advancing Golem's wind.
Zhì Yuǎn merely raised his right hand to chest height and pressed the tip of his calloused thumb against his middle finger.
His Wisdom located the spatial coordinates and atomic integrity of the fifteen-meter-tall structure. A contained, microscopic fragment of the Law of Destruction focused in the air.
Snap.
The click of Zhì Yuǎn's flick sounded faint and dry across the courtyard.
There was no thunderclap of Qi. No clash of light. The Guardian of Ashes — at the apex of Immortal Establishment — simply lost the cohesion of its own existence. The rustic steel, the black granite, and the blood runes dried up and dissolved simultaneously. The creature imploded from top to bottom, converting instantly into a mountain of fine, grey sand that collapsed to the ground without emitting a single sound of resistance. The sky's purple wind swept the dust to the corners, leaving the center of the courtyard immaculate.
Absolute silence returned to the dimension.
Behind the false walls of the Secret Realm, the Ruin Manager's logical gears suffered a complete collapse. The millennial machine attempted to calculate the kinetic force used to disintegrate the guardian, but found no numbers. Found nothing.
The Ancestral Voice tore through the purple sky's loudspeakers. The majesty filter crumbled, swallowed by the automaton spirit's pure, stuttering panic:
[Evaluating... A-Assessing the impact... H-How... Threat eradicated... C-Completion time: zero... Z-Zero seconds. P-P-Proceed! Just proceed and don't break anything else!]
Seated in the air in her invisible seiza just behind her husband, Yù Qíng covered her crimson lips with the sleeve of her dark blue dress — her shoulders trembling as a crystalline laugh escaped into the wind.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand, adjusting the collar of his robe with an indolent casualness, while shaking an invisible dust from his fingertips. The man's dark eyes swept the clean courtyard and the immense final gates — swinging open in fearful haste at the back of the scene.
"The caretaker of this house is very dramatic for someone who guards nothing but sand," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice grazed the cold wind — gentle and laden with a lethargic humor. "Let us see if his pantry holds anything worth our time, before Méi decides to chew through the gates out of boredom."