Arthur sat in the center of the array he had etched earlier. The Void Pulse Stone rested in his palm, feeling heavier than it looked. Using his Dimensional Sensing, he looked past the physical grey shell of the rock. He saw a microscopic swirling vortex of pure, concentrated entropy. It wasn't "dead"—it was just vibrating at a frequency so high that this world's sensors couldn't perceive it.
"Time to shed this skin," Arthur whispered.
He closed his eyes and began to circulate his Qi. Normally, a cultivator moving from Rank 3 (Core Awakening) to Rank 4 (Spirit Condensation) would try to compress their elemental energy into a solid diamond-like core. But Arthur did the opposite. He used his Void Lightning to dissolve his core.
The pain was agonizing. It felt like his insides were being shredded by a million microscopic razors. His fake Lightning Root screamed as the Void began to consume it. But Arthur didn't flinch. He channeled the Void Pulse Stone, drawing its grey, silent energy directly into his meridians.
Suddenly, the room went pitch black. Not the absence of light, but the presence of something deeper. The Dimensional Sensing flared—Arthur could see the strings of the universe around him starting to fray.
CRACK.
His internal Dantian shattered, only to be instantly rebuilt by the stone's energy. The liquid Qi didn't just solidify; it transformed into a Singularity. A tiny, spinning black hole of energy now sat where his core once was.
He had reached Rank 4 (Spirit Condensation), but his "Spirit" was now composed of Void Matter.
The shockwave from his breakthrough was silent. No explosion, no thunder. Instead, every object in the room—the furniture, the training dummies, even the air—lost its color for a split second. A layer of grey frost covered the walls. Arthur opened his eyes, and for a moment, they weren't crimson; they were absolute, bottomless black.
He stood up, feeling a strange lightness. He wasn't just stronger; he felt more real than the world around him. He looked at his hand and flicked his finger. A grey spark danced, and a small hole appeared in the reinforced obsidian wall—not through heat or force, but because the wall simply ceased to exist at that point.
"Rank 4," Arthur smiled, his eyes returning to their crimson hue. "But if I use 100% of this... I could erase a Rank 7 Sovereign from existence."