## Chapter 198: Shaking Foundations
The words hung in the air, thick and heavy as poison.
Thirty percent.
The grandmaster's smile was a crack in the mask of ancient stone, revealing the boundless contempt beneath. Before Li Chang'an could even process the sheer, gut-churning scale of that admission, the world changed.
It wasn't an explosion. It was an unclenching.
The pressure holding Li Chang'an in place didn't vanish; it inverted. The soul-draining field collapsed inward, into the grandmaster, and then erupted outwards as pure, undiluted power. The air in the throne room didn't just move—it screamed. A visible shockwave, rippling with dark violet energy, blasted out from the old man's body.
The stone beneath Li Chang'an's feet didn't crack. It turned to powder. The impact drove him back, his boots carving twin trenches through the floor as he skidded, the newly-formed [Divine Soul Shield] around his core flaring bright gold under the spiritual assault. The sound was a physical thing, a deep, groaning roar that came from the fortress itself. Dust and chunks of mortar rained from the vaulted ceiling. The very foundations of Black Iron Fortress groaned in protest, a seismic shudder running through its bones.
"You see, boy?" the grandmaster's voice boomed, no longer reedy but layered, echoing with a chorus of stolen souls. "This is the weight of centuries. This is the price of defiance."
He took a step forward. The flagstones melted under his foot, bubbling into black glass.
Li Chang'an's mind, his Heaven-Defying Comprehension, was a frantic engine. It wasn't analyzing techniques anymore; it was processing a natural disaster. The energy flows around the grandmaster were no longer a cultivator's circulation—they were a typhoon, a vortex of stolen lifeforce so dense it warped the light. But within the chaos, his talent seized on patterns. The way the violent energy still pulsed from the core of the [Soul-Devouring Demon Art]. The slight, almost imperceptible lag as it converted stolen strength into raw power.
It was a flaw. A tiny fracture in an otherwise monolithic wall.
The grandmaster vanished.
Not with speed, but with a short, brutal teleportation that left the air crunching in his wake. He reappeared inside Li Chang'an's guard, a skeletal hand, now sheathed in crackling violet lightning, aimed straight for his heart.
There was no time for thought. Only instinct, forged from a thousand comprehended movements.
Li Chang'an's body moved without his command. He twisted, not away, but into the blow. The basic footwork of the [Misty Vale Step], observed from a guard a lifetime ago, evolved in a nanosecond. His form blurred, becoming three afterimages. The grandmaster's claw passed through two, shredding only mist.
The third was real. Li Chang'an's fist, guided by the perfected, mythical-tier essence of [Dragon-Subduing Force] he'd evolved from a manual fragment, met the grandmaster's extended arm.
The impact wasn't a sound. It was a silence, followed by a detonation.
BOOM.
A ring of white force exploded from the point of contact. The remaining stained-glass windows in the hall vaporized. The iron braziers lining the walls were ripped from their mounts and hurled like children's toys, scattering coals that hissed against the stone. The air itself felt hot and thin, sucked away by the violence of the clash.
Li Chang'an felt the bones in his forearm scream in protest, a network of hairline fractures singing their pain. He was flung backwards, crashing through a stone pillar. Dust and rubble swallowed him.
But from the epicenter, a snarl of genuine pain cut through the thunder.
Li Chang'an pushed himself up from the debris, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His vision cleared.
The grandmaster stood where he'd been, but his left arm hung at a wrong, sickening angle. The forearm was visibly fractured, the dark robes around it soaked with something black and viscous that wasn't quite blood. The violet energy around it sputtered and sparked.
He looked down at his broken limb, then back at Li Chang'an. A low, wet sound bubbled from his throat.
It was laughter.
"Hah… Hahaha… AHAHAHA!"
It was the most terrifying sound Li Chang'an had ever heard. It held no anger, no frustration. Only a dawning, manic delight.
"You broke it!" the grandmaster cackled, shaking his ruined arm as if it were a delightful toy. "A whelp, a first-step reincarnator in a Trial World, fractured the bones I tempered with ten thousand souls! Marvelous!"
With a grotesque crunch, he slammed the arm against his own torso. Dark energy writhed around it like serpents, and the bones visibly knitted back together under the flesh. The process looked agonizing. He didn't even flinch.
"Do you understand what you've done?" he whispered, the laughter dying into something infinitely more hungry. "You have proven the theory. True pressure forges true diamonds. You are not a bug to be crushed. You are a whetstone!"
He launched himself again, but this time, there was no finesse. It was a barrage.
Violet fists fell like meteors. Li Chang'an danced and weaved, his comprehension working overtime. He saw the openings, the micro-delays. He countered with palm strikes evolved from [Shattering Mountain Palm], each blow carrying a concentrated quake that disrupted energy flows. He used kicks from [River-Cutting Leg] to sweep at the grandmaster's foundation, forcing him to reset.
They became a blur of violence in the crumbling throne room. Shockwaves from their collisions were constant now, a rhythmic pounding that systematically demolished the fortress. A pillar shattered. A section of the outer wall buckled and collapsed, revealing the stormy grey sky outside. The air was filled with the ozone-stink of lightning, the coppery tang of blood, and the dry-chalk smell of pulverized stone.
Li Chang'an was taking damage. A grazing claw ripped through his shoulder, leaving burning cold numbness in its wake. A kick he partially deflected still cracked a rib, the pain a sharp, bright line with every breath. But he was giving as good as he got. A well-timed elbow, infused with the penetrating force of [Star-Piercing Finger], found the grandmaster's kidney. The old monster grunted, his aura flickering.
For a single, glorious moment, Li Chang'an saw it. A path to victory. A sequence of three moves, exploiting the lag, the flaw, the arrogance. He gathered his qi, focusing it into his unbroken right hand, preparing to unleash the pinnacle of his comprehension—a strike that would pierce the demonic core.
He lunged.
The grandmaster didn't try to block. He simply looked up, past Li Chang'an, past the ruined ceiling.
And he sighed. A sigh of profound, almost religious relief.
"Enough play."
He didn't move, but the world did.
All the violent, swirling violet energy in the room, every wisp of stolen soul-force, snapped back into his body. An absolute, deafening silence descended, broken only by the distant rumble of collapsing masonry. The pressure vanished, replaced by a void, a vacuum of power that made Li Chang'an's ears pop.
Then, the grandmaster looked at him, and his eyes were no longer human. They were pools of endless, starless night.
"You've forced my hand, whetstone," he said, his voice now echoing with a resonance that seemed to come from the earth itself. "To break you properly… I must first break the rules."
He raised his freshly-healed hand, not towards Li Chang'an, but towards the gaping hole in the roof.
"I must break the world's limits."
Above Black Iron Fortress, the sky darkened. Not with clouds, but with a deep, bruise-purple void that spread like ink in water, swallowing the daylight. The very fabric of the Trial World seemed to shudder, to strain, and a low, planetary groan vibrated through the ground and into the marrow of Li Chang'an's bones.
Something was coming. Something the world itself had tried to forbid.
And it was looking right at him.
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