Two days passed in the frozen stillness of the hydra's lair. Two days that, for Lin Feng, were a surreal cycle of pain, recovery, and increasingly sophisticated humiliation. Xiao Lan, true to her word, had become the most terrifying and efficient tutor a disciple could imagine. Her teaching method was not based on patience, but on a ruthless logic of investment: he was her most valuable asset, and a damaged asset generates no returns.
"Concentrate," Xiao Lan ordered on the morning of the third day. Her voice, as always, was a chisel of ice. They were sitting across from each other by the white, smokeless fire. "The 'Circulating Jade River' technique is the most basic meridian strengthening method of the Scarlet Cloud Sect. If you can't even master this, your usefulness as... a partner will be severely limited."
Partner, Lin Feng thought as he tried to guide a wisp of Qi through his battered energy channels. The word sounded so strange in his mind. She says 'partner' like a farmer would say 'my trusty ox.' It's an improvement, I suppose. I've gone from being the fertilizer to the draft animal.
The pure energy of another Jade Essence Pill, which she had given him without batting an eye, flowed through him. It was like pouring a mountain spring into a rusted, fissured pipe. The Qi leaked, stagnated, and protested with sharp pangs of pain. But slowly, with a tenacity born of pure terror of Xiao Lan's disapproval, it began to flow.
"Better," she conceded, noticing the faint spiritual glow that had begun to surround him. "Your control is crude, but your innate affinity for energy is... anomalous. You learn too quickly."
"It's the fear of death, Esteemed Partner," he muttered, his eyes closed and his face beaded with sweat. "It's a prime motivator."
Glob, curled up in his lap, pulsed in agreement. The small creature was recovering faster than he was, passively absorbing the dense Yin energy of the environment. Sometimes, Lin Feng would feel the creature slide under his robe and press against his abdomen, right over his dantian, emitting a cold, soothing frequency that eased the worst of the pain. It was his own personal, sentient, abyss-born ice pack.
It was during this forced meditation session that the resonance returned.
At first, it was the same low, disturbing vibration he had felt after the battle. The hum of a distant universe. But this time, it was different. It was... closer. Stronger. It wasn't just an echo; it was a call.
Lin Feng frowned. The flow of Qi from the "Circulating Jade River" stuttered and stopped.
"What is it?" Xiao Lan asked instantly, her sharp perception detecting the change. "Have you lost concentration?"
"No... it's that feeling again," Lin Feng said, opening his eyes. The discomfort was evident on his face. "The vibration in my dantian. It's stronger."
The white fire that illuminated them flickered violently for a moment, reacting to the dissonance in the air. Glob stirred, detaching from Lin Feng's abdomen and backing away, emitting a series of pulses of alarm and confusion.
"Define 'stronger'," Xiao Lan commanded, her body tensing. The scientist in her was intrigued; the warrior, alert.
Lin Feng didn't have time to answer.
The vibration became a pull.
It was the strangest, most terrifying sensation he had ever experienced. It wasn't a physical pain, not at first. It was an invisible tidal force tugging at something deep within him—his soul, his origin. It felt as if a cosmic fishhook had lodged itself in the core of his being and was pulling.
"Argh!" A choked cry escaped his lips. He doubled over, clutching his abdomen, his knuckles white.
"Lin Feng!" Xiao Lan leaped to her feet, her hand flying to the hilt of her sword.
The pull intensified, becoming a wrenching pain. It was physical now, an agony that eclipsed any beating or wound he had ever suffered. It was the pain of the very fabric of reality tearing apart inside him. His dantian, the epicenter of his chaotic power, wasn't exploding; it was collapsing in on itself.
He fell to the ground, convulsing. The chaotic energy that normally swirled within him spiraled out of control, but not in the way Xiao Lan expected. There was no explosion of darkness. There was an implosion.
The air around Lin Feng distorted. The firelight bent toward him, as if being siphoned. Sound died out, swallowed by an unnatural silence. Space itself seemed to tremble and thin, becoming translucent. Just above his convulsing body, a razor-thin line of pure darkness appeared in the air. It was not a shadow; it was the absence of everything. A rift. A trembling wound in the skin of existence.
"Damn it!" Xiao Lan hissed. Pragmatism and curiosity vanished, replaced by genuine alarm. This was not an experiment. This was a catastrophe. Ignoring the danger, she lunged forward, intending to grab him, to stabilize him, to do something.
She reached out, her fingers wreathed in the protective light of her Purifying Fire. The moment her energy touched the distorting aura around Lin Feng, it was repelled with a conceptual violence that took her breath away. It wasn't a collision of forces, but a negation of its existence. Her Purifying Fire, a fundamental law of purity and order, simply could not exist in the same space as the primordial chaos being unleashed. It was like trying to write on a page that was erasing itself from reality. The repulsion flung her back. She landed hard against the cave wall, the breath knocked from her lungs.
She watched, horrified and helpless, as the rift above Lin Feng began to open.
For Lin Feng, the pain faded, replaced by a sensation of endless falling. Consciousness was ripped from his body and dragged through the wound in the world. For an instant that lasted an eternity, he existed in the void.
It was not the hydra's lair. It was no place he could comprehend. He was standing on an endless wasteland of desolation under a starless sky of absolute blackness. The ground beneath his feet was not earth or rock, but a compacted carpet of bones that stretched to an invisible horizon. Bones of every shape and size. He saw the colossal ribs of serpentine dragons, so large they could have been cathedral arches. He saw the skulls of titanic beasts with horns that scraped the non-existent sky. He saw the delicate, fossilized skeletons of phoenixes, their bony wings still spread in silent agony. They were the remains of beings of unimaginable power, a cemetery of gods and monsters.
And in the center of this landscape of death, dominating everything, stood a throne.
A colossal throne, built not of stone or metal, but of the intertwined skeletons of titans. The spines of giants formed its legs, their skulls adorned the armrests, and a rib cage of cyclopean proportions formed the back. It was a monument to conquest, a declaration of power so absolute it made the arrogance of the Scarlet Cloud Sect seem like the squeak of a mouse.
On the throne, a figure was seated. It was wrapped in living shadows, a cloak of darkness that moved and rippled, concealing its form. It was impossible to discern its size, gender, or species. It was a silhouette of pure power, a singularity at the heart of annihilation.
But it was not completely invisible. Two points of light glowed from the depths of the shadowy hood. Two eyes. Eyes of a deep, predatory purple, a color Lin Feng recognized with a soul-chilling terror. It was the color of his chaotic fire. Those eyes didn't just look at him; they assessed him, weighed him, dissected him atom by atom. Within them was an intelligence so ancient and vast that his own mind threatened to fracture just from being perceived by it. They didn't promise pain; they promised power and annihilation as two sides of the same coin.
And the figure was not alone. Around the base of the throne, kneeling on the carpet of bones, were dozens of other silhouettes. Though less imposing than the one on the throne, the power emanating from each of them was so overwhelming it made Xiao Lan's spiritual pressure feel like a gentle breeze. They were generals, lieutenants, beings of devastating power, and they were prostrated in absolute, fearful submission.
The figure on the throne tilted its head slightly, a gesture of acknowledgment. And Lin Feng felt a word resonate in the void of his mind. It wasn't spoken. It was... imprinted.
"...Mine..."
The vision shattered.
Lin Feng's consciousness slammed back into his body with the force of a lightning strike. The rift in reality above him was no longer a line; it was a swirling vortex, a miniature black hole pulling everything in with an irresistible force.
Xiao Lan had recovered and, with fierce determination in her eyes, had lunged for him again, this time using no energy, relying only on her physical strength. She managed to grab the edge of his tattered robe just as the vortex reached its peak power.
"Lin Feng!" she shouted, desperation and alarm mixing in her voice.
It was too late. The force of the implosion was absolute. Lin Feng's convulsing body was lifted from the ground and pulled toward the rift. Xiao Lan, clinging to him, was dragged along as well, her cry of surprise choked off by the warping space. Glob, which had tried to anchor itself to the ground, was torn loose and sucked in with them.
For an instant, their three figures—the trash disciple, the goddess of the sect, and the blob from the abyss—were suspended on the threshold of the vortex.
Then, with a silent pop that was the antithesis of an explosion, they vanished.
The rift in reality sealed itself, healing without a trace.
Silence returned to the hydra's lair. The white, smokeless fire they had maintained sputtered one last time before extinguishing, plunging the cave into an icy, absolute darkness. The Thousand-Year Ice Lotus, which had fallen from Xiao Lan's hands, lay on the ground, its cold, golden light the only testament that anyone had been there.
But now, there was no one. Lin Feng and Xiao Lan were gone, swallowed by the abyss he himself had summoned.