The journey south took three days. Three days of floating through clouds stained with the memory of battle, aboard Old Chen's rickety flying vessel that groaned with every gust of wind like an old man complaining about his joints. The ship was small—barely large enough for four people and the old merchant's collection of salvaged artefacts that clanked and rattled in wooden crates. But it was stable, and after the chaos of Neverthaw's collapse, stability was a luxury none of them dared complain about. Lin Feng sat at the bow, legs crossed, eyes closed. To anyone watching, he appeared to be meditating—recovering from the ordeal, gathering his strength. But inside his mind, a storm raged. The voices had started two hours after they escaped. "The leyline patterns are shifting..." "He doesn't understand. He cannot understand." "We should tell him. Warn him. The Chaos... they remember." Whispers. Not words, exactly, but impressions—fragments of thought from beings who had been dead f

The roof tiles were cold beneath Lin Feng's fingertips, gritty with centuries of accumulated dust and the droppings of spirit birds that had long since abandoned this place. Through a crack no wider than his thumb, he could see everything—the raised dais where Grand Elder sat like a stone effigy, the rows of lesser elders flanking him like carrion birds waiting for a meal, and in the centre of it all, two kneeling figures that made his heart clench with a fury so pure it threatened to burn through his carefully constructed calm.Chen.And Yun Xue.They were both chained—not with ordinary iron, but with Spirit Binding Shackles, their surfaces etched with formations that glowed a sickly green. Lin Feng's Deconstruction Eye, enhanced by the gauntlet hidden beneath his sleeve, fed him information in a constant stream.[Analysis: Spirit Binding Shackles]· Type: Restraint Artefact (Low-Grade Mortal)· Function: Suppresses Qi flow in bound

Three days. That was all the time they had to prepare for what might very well be their last journey.Lin Feng stood at the edge of the makeshift camp, watching the sunrise paint the sky in shades of amber and rose. Behind him, the remnants of Verdant Vine Sect stirred to life—warriors checking their weapons, medics organising supplies, scouts marking maps with trembling hands. A hundred of them. The best of what remained. And beside them, volunteers from sects he had never heard of until a week ago: Frostvale, Misty Peaks, even a small contingent from the distant Iron Sand Sect.All united by fear. All looking to him.Me, Lin Feng thought, the absurdity of it almost making him laugh. A former slave. A fugitive. And now they expect me to lead them into hell."Stop brooding. It doesn't suit you."Yue Ling appeared beside him, her silver fox mask pushed up to reveal sharp eyes that missed nothing. She had changed since Neverthaw—they all ha

The Shard in Lin Feng's chest pulsed with an intensity that bordered on agony. Not the sharp, stabbing pain of an injury, but something deeper—a resonant ache that seemed to vibrate through every meridian, every bone, every memory he possessed. It was as if the Shard was recognising something. Calling out to something.And then he understood.The creature deep within Crimson Scratch was not a Chaos Being.It was one of them. One of the Architects.Buried when the defence system collapsed thousands of years ago, she had not died—not completely. Trapped between life and death, her body had fused with the chaotic energies of the Fracture, her flesh warping into something monstrous, her consciousness fragmenting into a nightmare of pain and isolation. For millennia she had lain here, slowly being consumed by the very energy she had once helped to control.And the Shard Lin Feng carried—the complete one, the heart of Neverthaw Observatory—was

The silence within the Crimson Scratch was a living thing—a heavy, pulsating absence of sound that pressed against Lin Feng's eardrums like underwater pressure. Around him, the walls of flesh and metal continued their rhythmic breathing, expanding and contracting with the slow, agonised respiration of the buried Architect. The air was thick with the smell of decay and ancient iron, so dense it felt like he was breathing through cloth.Lin Feng sat cross-legged before the mountain of flesh that was the monster's core body. His hands, bare and trembling slightly, pressed against the pulsating, diseased surface. It was warm, feverish, and slick with some kind of spiritual fluid that glowed faintly red. The moment his skin made contact, a jolt of pure agony shot through him—not his own, but an echo of the Architect's millennia of suffering.Deconstruction Eye activated at its highest level, pushed beyond its normal limits by the urgency of the moment and the silent sup