The silence of the dead engine room was broken only by the rhythmic dripping of condensation falling from the cooled copper pipes. Lu Chen stood in the center of the cooling chamber, his body radiating a dense, oppressive aura. Within his chest, the Golden-Crimson Cosmic Vortex spun with a slow, heavy hum, completely containing the titanic, refined lifeforce of thousands of liquidated souls and the Third Layer True Foundation base of Chief Engineer Boros. He was at the absolute peak of his realm, his physical body hardened into something resembling divine iron.Thud. Thud. Thud.Lin Xue slid down the vertical iron ladder, her emerald-green hair matted with sweat and sea spray. She held her wind-inscribed daggers in her hands, her breathing ragged, but her green eyes went wide as she took in the scene. The forty-foot furnace was dark, the organic veins reduced to gray ash, and Boros was nothing but a pile of dust on the iron floor plates."The legionnaires on deck retreated the moment

The Iron Sovereign slipped into the narrow jaws of the Inland River Gates, its massive iron hull casting a long, dark shadow against the towering canyon walls. The wide, chaotic expanse of the black ocean was gone, replaced by a deep, swift-flowing river that sliced straight into the heart of the Grand Holy Land of the Eternal Eclipse. High above, the cliffs rose thousands of feet into the purple sky, so steep and narrow that they completely blocked out the wind, plunging the channel into a suffocating, unnatural calm. Up on the primary command deck, Lin Xue spread the thick leather ledger across the brass console. The glowing blue ink of the Imperial Transport Blueprints illuminated her fierce green eyes as she traced a map line running down the river canyon. "The first major checkpoint is less than five miles ahead, Lu Chen," she said, her voice dropping into the quiet air of the bridge. "It’s known as the Slate Threshold. The empire didn't just build a wall here—they anchored an an

Director Bao collapsed into the splintered wood of the pier, his burgundy silk robes soaked in the oily, black river water. He stared at his empty, trembling hands, which were still covered in the worthless brass dust of his high-grade spiritual abacus. He looked up at Lu Chen, his round face completely hollowed of blood, looking like a man who had just looked directly into the mouth of a cosmic void. "The vault... it's beneath the central pavilion," Bao stammered, his teeth chattering so violently he nearly bit his own tongue. "The registries... everything the Five Crows smuggle through the Northern Rim is logged there. Just spare my life... I am only a bookkeeper!" Lu Chen didn't answer. He reached down, grabbed the director by his thick silk collar, and dragged him across the shattered pier like a sack of dead weight. Lin Xue bounded down from the command bridge, the heavy leather ledger tucked under her arm, her wind-affinity Qi flaring to keep the surrounding, panicked crowd of d

The pitch-black river current carried the Iron Sovereign deeper into the subterranean throat of the empire. The open basin of Slate Harbor fell behind them, its glowing purple lanterns fading into the dark like dying embers. Up on the primary command deck, the atmosphere was suffocatingly heavy. The iron hull vibrated with a low, continuous rumble as the ship navigated a tunnel so narrow that the jagged stone walls occasionally scraped against the metal plating, releasing cascades of bright yellow sparks into the damp air. Lin Xue stood over the brass console, her wind-affinity Qi gently illuminating the blue ink of the Imperial Transport Blueprints. Her fingers were trembling slightly—not from weakness, but from the raw, static pressure leaking from the youth sitting at the center of the bridge. "The blueprints were right," she said, her voice a low whisper that barely carried over the grinding gears of the ship. "The main river line ahead is completely blocked by the Imperial Gate o

The dark, glass-like fragment of the Primordial Core-Shard did not pierce Lu Chen’s flesh like a knife; it melted straight into his skin upon contact. The moment the ancient entity's remnant passed through his sternum, the freezing chamber inside the iron lotus was instantly swallowed by a blinding, catastrophic flare of pure, negative light. BOOM! The internal soul space of Lu Chen’s mind didn't just fracture—it collapsed into an absolute, timeless oblivion. The multi-layered Golden-Crimson Cosmic Vortex inside his belly completely stopped spinning for a terrifying millisecond. Then, it reversed. Driven by the raw, unholy resonance of the primordial shard, the crystalline prism at the center of his soul violently shattered into ten thousand microscopic needles of pure gravity. "What... what madness is this?!" Grand Master Corvus’s smooth voice violently cracked into a screech of pure, primal panic [1.1]. The massive, solid blade of pitch-black darkness he had swung at Lu Chen’s throa