The medicinal power of the Healing Order-Serum acted like a swarm of frenzied army ants, tunneling through Gu Hanzhou's veins and forcefully stitching together his torn musculature. The sensation was a nauseating mixture of burning and itching, far more difficult to endure than raw pain. Yet, he kept his eyes wide open, staring relentlessly at the direction Lin Xiu had vanished, until the last trace of that suffocating, crimson aura had faded from his senses.
Half an hour later, Gu Hanzhou pushed off the jagged rock wall and stood up.
His left arm still throbbed with a dull, lingering ache, but basic mobility had returned. More importantly, the dark-gold Order Sigil over his heart hadn't faded. Instead, tempered by the life-and-death struggle against the Adjudicator, it seemed more condensed, pulsing with a newfound density.
"A Dark Order Rift…"
Gu Hanzhou repeated the words under his breath. He turned away from the Waste Pit and moved toward the deepest reaches of the mining sector, toward a massive steel bulkhead that had been under lockdown for decades. Now, the door stood slightly ajar, a jagged crack in the iron through which a wind smelling of rot, stagnant moisture, and ancient metallic rust whistled incessantly.
He didn't hesitate. Bending down, he retrieved his bent iron rebar—his faithful, rusted companion—and stepped into the devouring darkness.
The world behind the rift was a forgotten realm of antediluvian mine shafts. Here, the geology had been corrupted. The rocks were no longer grey or black; they glowed with a sickly, bruised purple hue. The walls were choked with semi-transparent, vein-like mycelium that throbbed in a slow, rhythmic cadence, as if the very cave was a living organism breathing in the dark.
Gu Hanzhou moved like a shadow, his steps deliberate and silent. He placed his feet only on the most solid sections of rock, his senses—now heightened by the Order Blood—allowing him to map the terrain through the shifting currents of air and the microscopic movement of dust. He didn't need a torch; the world was revealed to him in shades of pulsating energy.
After navigating a steep, collapsed slope, Gu Hanzhou came to a dead halt.
Ahead, at the terminus of the tunnel, an ancient altar sat half-buried within the rock strata. Scattered around its base were countless weathered skeletons. These were not the bones of men; they were grotesque, twisted remains—some possessed four arms, while others had jagged bone-spikes protruding from their vertebrae like prehistoric armor.
And in the center of the altar, a blade was driven deep into the stone.
It was a long-bladed weapon, similar in shape to an ancient Tachi or Tang Dao. The blade was perfectly straight, possessing no curve, projecting an aura of absolute coldness and grim solemnity.
Gu Hanzhou's heart skipped a beat. The Order Blood in his chest began to resonate with a violent frequency. It wasn't fear—it was a summons, a call echoing across eons. He approached the altar cautiously, checking every shadow for an ambush, until he finally stood before the weapon.
Up close, the blade looked like a piece of worthless scrap. The hilt-wrapping had rotted away into dust, and the scabbard was long gone. The exposed steel was choked with thick black rust and dark-red stains, resembling a piece of junk that had been soaking in a toxic pit for a century.
However, in the crevices of that rust, Gu Hanzhou saw something else. Tiny, shimmering dark-gold patterns flickered beneath the decay. The flow of those patterns matched the sigil on his chest with terrifying precision.
He reached out, his trembling fingertips touching the ice-cold hilt.
BOOM!
A massive, chaotic tidal wave of memory-fragments slammed into his brain. He saw legions of warriors clad in obsidian armor falling under a sky of black rain. He saw a titan of a man swinging a long blade, cleaving through a collapsing celestial firmament. The images flashed by in a blur of blood and fire, replaced instantly by a loneliness so profound it threatened to freeze his very soul.
"Nngh—!"
Gu Hanzhou ground his teeth, his right hand gripping the hilt with a death-grip. With a roar of effort, he wrenched the blade upward.
He had expected the stone to fight him, but the blade emerged as if it were weightless. With a clear, melodic hum, the steel left its stone sheath. The moment the blade was freed, the entire tunnel groaned and shuddered. In the shadows surrounding the altar, the once-still "vein-mycelium" began to thrash violently.
One after another, pale, spindly creatures began to crawl out of the cracks in the walls. They were covered in black, oily scales, possessing no eyes or noses—only a cavernous maw filled with rows of hooked, obsidian teeth.
Dark Order Aberrations—Shadow-Crawlers.
There were over a dozen of them, and they had just cut off his only exit.
The lead crawler hissed and launched its attack. Its hind muscles bunched and released like a hydraulic piston, turning the creature into a streak of black lightning as it lunged through the air.
Gu Hanzhou didn't retreat. He felt his Order Blood surge down his right arm and pour into the rusted blade. The once-dull metal ignited, glowing with a subdued, inner light of dark-gold and crimson.
As the crawler's claws grazed the tip of his nose, Gu Hanzhou pivoted his upper body with millimetric precision. It wasn't a panicked dodge; it was a calculated slip. He didn't swing the blade in a wide, desperate arc. Instead, he used the creature's own momentum against it, sliding the blade forward in a horizontal thrust.
The combination of footwork and blade-logic felt as natural to him as breathing—an instinct buried in his DNA that had finally been awakened.
The rusted tip found the unarmored flank of the Shadow-Crawler. To his shock, the "junk" iron was sharper than any scalpel. It met no resistance, slicing through the creature's toughened scales as if they were wet parchment.
With a flick of his wrist, Gu Hanzhou executed a transverse cut, severing the monster's internal organs and spine in one fluid motion.
As the foul, black blood splattered against the blade, something eerie happened. The liquid was instantly absorbed into the steel. A piece of rust the size of a fingernail flaked off, revealing a section of the blade underneath that was as reflective and cold as a winter mirror.
"This blade… is it devouring the pollution?"
Gu Hanzhou's mind reeled, but he had no time for theories. The remaining Shadow-Crawlers had begun their collective assault. They came from the walls, the ceiling, and the shadows—a coordinated swarm of teeth and claws.
Gu Hanzhou held the blade across his chest, his left hand supporting the spine of the weapon, his eyes locked onto the lead monster.
The long blade tore through the air, leaving a trail of dark-red light in the claustrophobic darkness of the mine.
In this forgotten ruin, the boy with the broken Tang Dao began his first true massacre. He didn't know the name of this weapon yet, but he knew one thing: from this moment on, in the eternal night of the Order Realm, he finally had something he could trust.