The violet cable dragged Lin Feng across the stone, its edge cutting through his tunic like frozen wire."Lin Feng!" Meng Yao screamed. She lunged forward, her dagger flashing as she drove the blade down with both hands directly into the glowing tendril.The steel shattered on impact, spraying cold sparks across the dark floor, but the force of her strike drove the tendril three inches into the stone, halting the drag. Zhang Wei dropped his broadsword, grabbed Lin Feng under both arms, and heaved him back onto the platform with a guttural roar.The violet line snapped back toward the gate like a severed whip, leaving the source chamber in a heavy, suffocating pitch.Every ribbon in the sky had gone dark. The thousands of glowing pathways that had illuminated the void were completely extinguished, leaving only one faint, flickering strand of pale light stretched across the gloom.Xiao Chen scrambled across the cracked stone, his hands frantically tapping the brass base of the pillar. "

The echo of the third knock died against the stone walls, leaving an icy stillness in the air.Xiao Chen dropped to his knees, his hands trembling as he swept dry dust away from the iron frame of the trapdoor. "The locking runes... they aren't oriented toward the outside," he gasped, his fingers tracing the deeply cut grooves. "This wasn't designed to stop an invader. It was built to keep something inside from getting out.""Inside?" Zhang Wei asked, lowering his broadsword slightly, his knuckles white against the grip. "You mean your father isn't the only thing down there?"The dark fluid in the pool stirred, a faint, terrified whisper rising from the black depths. "It is the first grief," the ancient consciousness whimpered. "The first civilization tried to build a network without pain. When people died in the early harvests, the creators took those memories and buried them beneath the foundation. They thought if the connected worlds felt that