Lin Feng's POVThe structural blueprint of the High-Spires Academy was actively bleeding in my mind. The geometric vectors pulsing from Chen’s cracked slave-collar hadn't just bypassed the local network, they had carved a physical path through the floorboards, cutting three hundred feet down through the bedrock until they hit the heavy, lead-shielded bulkheads of the Imperial vaults.I walked down the subterranean spiral staircase, the heavy iron links dragging from my wrists ringing against the wet stone like a funeral knell. The black ink of my [Weeping Domain] followed me down, crawling along the walls like a living coat of oil, systematically digesting the ancient preservation runes that had kept these depths dry for three centuries.At the bottom of the shaft stood the grand treasury doors. They weren't made of steel, they were constructed from solid blocks of white diamond-glass, reinforced by twelve interlocking golden seals bearing the seal of the Northern Crown.I didn't bot

Yue's POVThe view from the High Observatory was usually a testament to human ascension. From this apex, the white stone of the Silver-Spire Academy was designed to catch the very first rays of dawn, reflecting a pristine, blinding brilliance that signaled to the lower districts that the gods were awake.Tonight, there was no dawn. There was only the stain.I leaned heavily against the balustrade, my knuckles white against the carved railing. Beneath my feet, the pristine white stone wasn't just losing its luster, it was turning a dead, calcified grey. The ink-black veins of Lin Feng’s [Weeping Domain] were pumping a continuous tide of absolute entropy from the roots of the mountain, unweaving the ancient light-enchantments that had held these towers together for three hundred years.I drew a shallow breath, and behind my shoulders, my silver light-wings gave a sudden, erratic flicker. The translucent feathers of pure Origin-Light, the primordial law I had unchained to survive Yun Q

Lin Feng's POVThe administrative dashboard of the High-Spires Academy was flashing an ugly, unprompted crimson in my left eye.I sat cross-legged on the cold floor of the central control nexus, I was still with the iron chains on my wrist. Ever since the library exploded into that diseased silver beacon, the local mana grid had been acting like a leaking pipe in a monsoon. The [Weeping Domain] was intact, and my [Mana-Vore] passive was still drawing ambient energy from the bedrock, but the ledger didn't balance. Every three hundred seconds, a precise, micro-incremental drop of exactly 0.04% of the redistributed commoner mana pool would simply vanish from the interface's database.It wasn't being digested by the Void Core. It was being systematically erased before the system could even log its characteristics."Server admin protocol," I muttered, my voice echoing hollowly against the vaulted stone ceiling. "Trace the variance. Isolate the leakage vectors."[System Status: Scanning C

Lin Feng's POVChen really left me frozen down here. Quite disrespectful, but the funny thing was that I wasn't even mad. My Gacha spinned and I free. Usually, I'd punish him, but living as a commoner after falling from so much grace was painful enough. I headed out of the tunnels and back to the throne room. The ink-black detection lines of my [Weeping Domain] were spaced exactly three inches apart across the entire marble expanse of the throne room, pulsing like a web of hyper-sensitive nerves. They were calibrated to register the displacement of a single atom of foreign mana, the shifting of a shadow, or the heat of a breath.Yet, the air behind the Emperor’s empty throne did not ripple.There was no sound or sudden fluctuation in the local atmospheric pressure. The first indication that I was no longer alone in the ruined chamber was a sudden, absolute drop in the ambient temperature, a cold so biting that the black fluid pooling around the dais instantly froze into brittle, g

Lin Feng's POV“This is just great.” I said with disappointment written all over my features. The sky over the northern valley tore open in a jagged, stuttering rhythm of mechanical fire.From the apex of the broken gatehouse wall, the spectacle was magnificent. The forward vanguard of the Northern Crown’s heavy cavalry, three hundred armored drakes and their silver-plated riders, had expected a grand, structured magical barrier.Instead, their iron hooves struck the very first line of Junjie’s accidental [Scrap-Mine Grid] hidden within the ink-black puddles of my domain.The resulting explosions weren't composed of standard elemental fire. They were violent, compressed eruptions of raw physical kinetic force and flying iron shrapnel. The ancient Imperial gears and brass tension-springs that had been boiled in the charcoal furnace detonated with the precise, rhythmic snap of a thousand dying spring-traps, tearing through the drakes' scaled bellies and shredding the silver breastplat