The roar hit Gu Hanzhou's eardrums like a physical blow from a sledgehammer. The Dross Lord's gargantuan claw—a chaotic fusion of rusted steel girders and necrotic, mutated limbs—swung down with the momentum of a collapsing mountain, tearing the stagnant air into a violent Gale.
Gu Hanzhou did not meet the strike head-on. He took a sharp, agonizing breath, suppressing the searing fire in his lungs. His body blurred, moving like a wisp of smoke caught in a draft, sliding beneath the arc of the descending claw with a hair's breadth to spare.
BOOM!
The mound of slag where he had been standing a microsecond ago was pulverized into a crater several meters deep. Dust, thick with the acrid, choking scent of sulfur and ancient decay, billowed into the void.
"Its core is in the left side of the thoracic cavity! That is the only weakness!" Su Qingyue cried out. Her voice, weakened by her internal injuries, sounded thin and fragile in the echoing expanse of the ruins.
Gu Hanzhou didn't respond. His attention had been snatched by something unearthed by the sheer force of the monster's impact.
The blow that had shattered the ground had also dislodged a metallic object buried deep beneath centuries of debris. It didn't possess the dull, rusted hue of the surrounding scrap. Instead, it shimmered with a cold, gunmetal-blue luster—a piece of engineering defined by sharp, brutal lines and the industrial violence of a bygone era.
It was a Heavy High-Frequency Vibration Cannon, a standard-issue weapon for the heavy-duty mechs of the Old Era.
Such weapons had long been lost to the city's archives, their blueprints turned to ash. Only in the deepest, most forgotten graveyards of the war-torn zones could one occasionally find the jagged shadows of their former glory.
Gu Hanzhou did not hesitate. He sheathed his fractured blade in a fluid motion and lunged for the weapon. His hands clamped onto the two-meter-long, freezing metal chassis. He ignored the screams of his protesting muscles and poured every remaining drop of his dark-gold Order Blood into his arms.
"Rise!"
The veins on his forehead bulged like thick cords. A guttural, primal growl escaped his throat as he strained against the earth. With a screech of protesting metal and grinding stone, he tore the century-old killing machine from its grave.
The Dross Lord sensed the shift in the air. A flash of predatory fury flickered in its stitched-together eyes. Its massive, bloated body accelerated with a speed that defied its immense bulk, charging forward like a runaway locomotive. Every piece of debris in its path was ground into powder.
Gu Hanzhou dropped to one knee, his shoulder braced firmly against the cannon's heavy recoil-stock.
The weapon's internal power cell had been dry for a hundred years, but the complex energy conduits within the barrel began to emit a low, ecstatic hum the moment they came into contact with his Imperial Gold blood.
The blood of the Ancient Court was reigniting the fires of the Old World.
"If this world is broken..."
Gu Hanzhou forced his blood to flow in reverse, pumping his very life-essence into the weapon's ignition port. The dull, gunmetal-blue casing suddenly came alive as veins of dark-gold light spread across the barrel like a web of glowing capillaries. The cannon began to vibrate with such intensity that its high-pitched whine drowned out the monster's roar.
"...then burn it all down!"
VRRRRR—BOOM!!
A pillar of dark-gold light, as thick as a man's torso, erupted from the muzzle. It wasn't flame; it was a stream of pure energy vibrating at such a frequency that it shredded the very fabric of the space it occupied.
Everything the beam touched was utterly erased.
The Dross Lord's heavy industrial plating—armor thick enough to deflect a barrage of modern Order-bullets—was as fragile as wet parchment before this ancient power. The beam transfixed the creature's chest, vaporizing the massive waste-core and the surrounding necrotic flesh in less than a hundredth of a second.
The monster's roar died in its throat.
Its massive frame held the momentum of the charge for a heartbeat, skidding to a halt less than three meters from Gu Hanzhou before it began to disintegrate. It collapsed into a heap of ash and twisted, molten scrap.
The sheer recoil of the blast sent Gu Hanzhou flying backward. He slammed into a reinforced metal pillar behind him, his breath leaving his body in a sharp gasp. The heavy cannon in his hands, unable to withstand the overwhelming load of his bloodline, warped and shattered into a pile of useless junk.
Cough. Cough.
Gu Hanzhou spat out a mouthful of dark, stagnant blood. His vision began to fray at the edges, turning into a blur of grey and gold. That single shot had drained him to the very marrow of his bones.
Su Qingyue stumbled toward him, her gaze fixed on the deep, smoking tunnel carved into the darkness by the blast. A complex emotion flickered in her purple eyes. "You... you ignited the 'soul' of that relic. The creations of the Old Era... they only wake for a bloodline like yours."
Gu Hanzhou ignored her awe. He used the wall for support, forcing himself to stand. His eyes were locked on the heavy, reinforced vault door that had been hidden behind the monster's lair.
Etched onto the door was a macabre, chilling insignia: a skull transfixed by a heavy iron chain.
The Pool of Purgatory.
"So this is it," Gu Hanzhou's voice was a dry, metallic rasp.
He could feel it. Behind that door lay more than just the truth of his father's disappearance. It held a power—a cold, lucid, and primordial darkness—that would give him the means to truly tear down the rotting heavens of the Iron City.
He bent down, retrieving the fractured remains of [Black Order]. Without looking back at the ruins he had created, he stepped into the beckoning darkness behind the vault door.
The night of the Iron City was ending, but the nightmare for those above was only just beginning.