The groan of the immense obsidian doors dragging against the stone marked the end of the physical courtyard and the beginning of the inheritance's bowels.
The transition was immediate and suffocating. The group left the purple sky behind, entering a long, narrow corridor forged entirely from massive blocks of polished black jade. The light inside was scarce, emanating from silver grooves in the floor, and the air smelled of incense burned eons ago and stagnant dust.
But the change in the atmosphere did not weigh on their shoulders or oppress their lungs. The pressure dug directly into the exact space between each of their eyebrows. The Upper Dantian. The Palace of Shen.
The conceptual structure of the dimension crackled on the jade ceiling, and the Ancestral Voice echoed through the stones, trying to recover the majestic pomp it had lost in the outer courtyard.
[First Gate of the Palace. The Trial of Weight and Sanity. Only minds forged in extreme pain can withstand the truth of our Dao. Resist the Intention of a cultivator at the peak of the Immortal Establishment. Survive, or let your souls evaporate into the darkness.]
The intention crashed down.
The purest, distorted mental weight, designed to obliterate the brains of anyone who did not possess a Crystal Soul, collided against the formless mist of the altar's minds.
Yù Méi halted her steps instantly. The vein in the warrior's neck bulged, thick and feverish beneath her milky jade skin. She gritted her teeth, her almond eyes blinking in pure irritation as she brought both hands to her temples.
"There's a giant mosquito buzzing inside my skull..." the youngest growled, her guttural voice faltering slightly, her knuckles turning white as she tried, uselessly, to punch a pain that had no physical body.
A few steps away, Mò Yán paled drastically. Cold sweat beaded on the diplomat's forehead and ran down her neck, staining the white silk collar of her Hanfu. The snow-haired young woman held her breath, her spine rigid and trembling under the weight, fighting desperately to maintain her impeccable posture while her consciousness threatened to fragment.
Huáng Bìyù clenched her jaw. The warrior's fluid and unbreakable flesh instinctively tried to activate the Law of Aegis to absorb the impact, but the attack was purely animic. The woman's warm, immaculate jade skin reddened beneath the dark scarlet silk of her Qipao, her liquid amber irises trembling as the invisible pain pierced her shielded mind.
Right behind her, a desperate metallic clinking sounded on the stones.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Qīng Yǔ stumbled. The silver bracelet swayed erratically on her ankle as the healer fairy lost her balance. Her cosmic-blue eyes widened in pure mental panic. The Fire of Rebirth in her veins was useless against the asphyxiation of the Soul, and the feather-light silk of her cyan and silver dress fluttered as she reached for the black wall to keep from falling.
Lín Jié and Bái Wǎn could not endure it for as long. The two felt their knees give out simultaneously. The chill of absolute psychic terror ran down their spines, forcing the ex-secretary and the ex-academic to bend their legs toward the black jade floor, their vision darkening under the crushing gravity.
Zhì Yuǎn continued to walk.
The lethargy in the man's dark gaze did not waver. The mere existence of his Inner Universe expanded outward from his Dantian. The gravitational weight of an entire cosmos extended like an absolute, black mantle over the women walking behind him.
The millennial intention of the Tenth Sub-realm clashed against Zhì Yuǎn's mind.
The pressure in the corridor evaporated into the vacuum in a thousandth of a second. The mental storm attempting to fry the family's sanity suddenly transformed into a hollow, silent calm.
Lín Jié's knees locked inches from touching the stone. Bái Wǎn gasped for air in a deep heave, her round face bathed in cold sweat. Bìyù released the heavy breath she was holding, her erect posture returning instantly, while Yǔ leaned on her own thigh, her blue eyes blinking in confusion at the abrupt end of the pain. Mò Yán let out a long, tremulous sigh, straightening her relieved shoulders, while Yù Méi smacked her own ear, unblocking her hearing.
In the invisible backstage of the black walls, the spirit managing the ruin suffered a catastrophic conceptual failure.
The Ancestral Voice violently choked, tearing through the air of the corridor. The filter of archaic majesty shattered under the specter's instinctive dread:
[E-Evaluating... Animic pressure... Dissipation time: zero seconds. E-ERROR! No soul can withstand this load in zero seconds! The intention was completely swallowed! W-What the fuck are you?! P-Pass! Just pass already!]
Sitting in the air in her invisible seiza, anchored by the Void Lotus just behind Zhì Yuǎn's right shoulder, Yù Qíng let out a low laugh. The goddess in blue rested her chin on her hand, her black eyes locked onto the jade ceiling with purely dry amusement.
"The machine tries to blow a storm, husband," murmured Yù Qíng, her ruby lips curving into a lethal smile. "And it only manages to cough up dust."
Zhì Yuǎn adjusted the collar of his charcoal-gray tunic.
"Let's go," the man's deep, unwavering voice sounded dry, his leather footsteps cracking rhythmically against the floor once again. "This corridor is too dirty."
The darkness of the black jade corridor opened into a vast, vaulted circular chamber.
The ambient lighting emanated entirely from the center of the hall, where a translucent scroll floated above a corroded stone pedestal. The ancient artifact was covered in fissures and exuded a sharp animic frequency. The hum did not enter through the ears; it vibrated directly in the space between the eyebrows of anyone who dared to face it, weighing against the formless mist that inhabited the women's minds.
The conceptual structure of the dimension creaked within the walls, and the Ancestral Voice resumed its thundering cadence, reverberating on the stone ceiling itself.
[Second Gate of the Palace. The Trial of Illumination. Brute force burns out quickly if the mind is a hollow cave. Before you rests a pure fragment of the Dao: the Projection of Hidden Memory. Comprehend the runes and project the truth into the air before the incense ember evaporates. Those who fail will have their minds swept into darkness.]
A small silver censer materialized on the edge of the pedestal. The reddish tip ignited, releasing a thin, straight line of smoke, marking the beginning of the countdown.
Yù Méi narrowed her almond eyes toward the floating runes. The mere attempt to focus on the ancestral technique penetrated the girl's glabella, driving an excruciating pang into the base of her skull. The warrior growled softly, her milky jade skin beneath the golden silk heating up with irritation. She rubbed her temples and took a hasty step back, her instinctive mind violently repelling the complexity of that abyss.
Lín Jié blinked heavily. The remnant of mental control provided by the Law of Edict in her womb wavered, groping the edge of that concept. The animic depth of the scroll repelled the green-velvet-clad woman's concentration with a dull jolt, forcing the ex-secretary to avert her gaze to the floor as cold sweat broke out on her neck.
A few steps away, Huáng Bìyù narrowed her amber eyes. The Valkyrie's fluid, immaculate flesh tensed beneath her scarlet Qipao. The unbreakable protection of the Aegis was useless against the sharp, thin headache that the simple reading of those runes caused.
The entire chamber was an insurmountable intellectual trap for anyone who did not yet possess a Crystal Soul.
Zhì Yuǎn stepped forward. His dark leather boots cracked against the millennial floor. The black silk cape cascaded over his broad shoulders as he stopped next to the floating pedestal.
The man's black, lethargic, and absolute gaze locked onto the scroll.
He did not invoke shields nor force his own Dantian. His mere existence swallowed the runes. The dense cosmos that inhabited the god's mind dissected the soul technique in exactly two seconds. The ancestral structure was dismembered, chewed up, and comprehended down to the last drop of intention.
Zhì Yuǎn let out a mild, disappointed sigh.
"A loose seam full of blind knots," his deep, gentle voice reverberated through the walls of the circular chamber. He pointed a long finger at a sequence of runes in the middle of the floating scroll. "They tried to force the intention to flow in a straight line, breaking the very polarity of the animic mist. And they placed structural traps on the edges to try and fry anyone attempting to read too fast. Lazy work."
To prove his observation, the god did not even assume a martial stance. He raised his right hand to shoulder height and brushed his thumb against his middle finger.
Snap.
The dry crack echoed.
The air in the center of the chamber flickered violently. The technique of Hidden Memory Projection was activated not through the scroll, but by the man's pure, crushing will.
A colossal and hyper-realistic image bloomed in the vacuum of the room. The stone ceiling disappeared, replaced by the crisp projection of a stellar vault being torn in half. The exact memory of the day Zhì Yuǎn gutted the sky of the Mortal World was reproduced in three dimensions. The silver and black rift, the cosmic vacuum sucking in the light, the atmospheric pressure simulated by the memory... The image possessed so many details, and such a dense presence, that the purple light of the pocket dimension dimmed, unable to compete with the memory of infinity.
On the pedestal, the incense ember had barely consumed the first grain of ash.
The distorted buzz tore through the air of the circular chamber. The gears of the inheritance choked catastrophically within the stones, the animic nodes nearly snapping as they tried to process the sheer scale of the memory and the perfection of the execution.
[Evaluating animic pulse... Decoding time: two seconds. E-Execution time... T-Technique deciphered... F-Flaws bypassed effortlessly! The volume of the memory e-exceeds the chamber's limits! P-Pass! Access granted!]
The heavy rock doors at the back of the chamber dragged to the side with a fearful creak, throwing open the path to the final room before the inner vaults.
Yù Qíng slipped her pale face over Zhì Yuǎn's shoulder, her bare feet landing silently on the floor. The priestess in blue pressed her flushed cheek against the dark silk of his charcoal-gray tunic.
"The architects of this house took millennia to formulate a riddle, my heaven," whispered Yù Qíng, her velvet voice dripping with a marveled pride at her husband's crushing talent. "And you solved it while yawning."
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand, dispelling the stellar illusion with the same lethargy with which he had created it. The man's dark gaze swept over the newly opened passage, adjusting the collar of his own tunic.
"Their bad calligraphy gave me a headache, Qíng," his deep voice brushed against the calm of the chamber, perfectly serene and oblivious to the specter's panic in the walls. "Let's see if the next room has something worth our reading time."
The heavy rock doors dragged to the sides, revealing the final antechamber before the heart of the ruin.
The final chamber was smaller, forged in pure obsidian, and the temperature there plummeted to glacial levels. In the center of the perfectly smooth floor, a low pedestal of oxidized silver supported a dark memory crystal. The artifact pulsed in a slow, sickly rhythm, emitting a frequency that made the dust in the air spin in chaotic spirals.
The stone structure of the ceiling reverberated, the Ancestral Voice echoing through the cavern's fissures with a clear hesitation, its thundering tone already cracked by the terror of the previous trials.
[Third Gate of the Palace. The Trial of Inheritance. True comprehension requires the ability to plant the Dao in virgin soil. The crystal contains the Transfer of Will. Correct the stagnant flow and prove that you can teach what you have learned. Failure will result in the rupturing of your own mental meridians.]
Zhì Yuǎn's dark and lethargic gaze fixed on the pulsing crystal.
His leather footsteps cracked on the obsidian as he walked up to the pedestal. The man's calloused thumb touched the freezing surface of the artifact.
The dense cosmos that inhabited the god's mind dissected the artifact in a single heartbeat. The crystal vibrated chaotically, a sloppy piece of engineering that tried to hammer the intention in a straight line, shattering the sanity of anyone who received it.
The atmospheric pressure around Zhì Yuǎn distorted the light in the chamber. His Will crushed the gross error, reordering the energy currents and the polarity of the millennial technique. The ancient Dao was devoured, purified, and evolved into a tool of direct, absolute, and perfect transfer of experience.
Zhì Yuǎn let go of the darkened crystal, turning his body toward Lín Jié, Huáng Bìyù, and Qīng Yǔ.
Lín Jié, Huáng Bìyù, and Qīng Yǔ had not yet gone through the same massacres as the first three wives. Their bodies knew what pain was, but their minds had not yet been ground into fine flour inside that family's furnace.
The god walked over to Lín Jié. His warm, rough thumb touched the exact space between the ex-secretary's eyebrows.
The torrent of intention and memory was overwhelming. Years of combat tactics, the freshness of ancient massacres, and the lethal gears of the Primordial Mill flooded the woman's foundation. Lín Jié held her breath, her bureaucratic mind trying to archive the chaos in a controlled manner. Her clear skin, like newly polished jade, glistened with feverish sweat, and the heavy green-velvet Hanfu strained against her ample bust when she finally yielded, her green irises dilating as she accepted the weight of a world with no rules on paper.
His hand moved, his index finger resting on Huáng Bìyù's glabella.
The warrior clenched her jaw, her fluid muscles instinctively activating the Aegis to absorb the impact. But the blow was not physical. The mountain of lethal knowledge bypassed her invulnerable flesh and crashed directly into her core. The impact of the transfer made Bìyù's thick legs tremble. Her warm jade skin reddened beneath the silk of the scarlet Qipao, panting breaths escaping her lips as the Valkyrie absorbed the carnivorous efficiency of the techniques that now made her a true predator.
Finally, his touch rested on Qīng Yǔ's forehead.
Clink. Clink.
The healer fairy lost her balance. The silver bracelet chimed on the obsidian as the young woman's knees gave out under the conceptual load. The Blue Fire in her veins hissed. Her empathetic mind was bombarded by the brutality of extermination memories and the dark mechanics of the family. The celestial porcelain of her face flushed violently, tears overflowing not from sadness, but from the raw injection of a divine reality that completely intoxicated her. She leaned on Bìyù's shoulder, panting and trembling.
A few steps away, the golden silk dress rustled in the cold air of the chamber.
"Fuck, now that's useful," Yù Méi crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth while a carnivorous smile tore across her face. "Now I don't have to waste spit explaining to them how we turn arrogant trash into fertilizer."
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand. The man adjusted the collar of his charcoal-gray tunic.
"Direct shortcut," his deep voice sounded low, almost affectionate, as his dark gaze swept over the three panting women. "Now you won't need years to synchronize with our roots."
In the center of the chamber, the crystal on the pedestal could not withstand the weight of the existential rewrite. Fissures spread through the silver and the obsidian, and the relic exploded silently into a handful of gray dust.
At the exact moment the dust touched the floor, the walls of the ruin trembled hysterically. The Ancestral Voice echoed, its thundering timbre crumbling, drowned in the panic of a system whose core had just been obliterated:
[Evaluating... The technique wasn't just fixed! The Dao... was rewritten! Execution time: zero... M-Masters... Main gates... opened... The Cradle... is yours... Please... just enter...]
At the back of the antechamber, the immeasurable double bronze doors, engraved with the image of an eyeless beast, unlocked on their own. The millennial chains yielded in surrender, the heavy metal leaves dragging back and revealing the abyssal darkness of the main hall.
Yù Qíng glided silently through the air. The priestess did not float in her seiza or stop beside him; she pressed her pale body against her husband's broad back, her soft arms wrapping around the god's neck.
She tilted her face until her ruby lips sensually brushed the lobe of her husband's right ear. Her sweet, intoxicating breath sent shivers down the man's nape as she locked her black gaze onto the newly opened abyss, her thigh brushing possessively against his.
"The ghost in the walls has finally learned the right tone to tremble before my heaven..." whispered Yù Qíng against his skin, her voice husky, wet, and distilling the purest, darkest satisfaction.
Zhì Yuǎn clicked his dark leather boots on the obsidian, resuming the march with the soft weight of his wife anchored to him.
"Let's see the face of the caretaker who cries so much," the god's gentle, unwavering voice entered the shadows, guiding the altar to the heart of the ruin.