I DESTROY THE LAW'S OF HEAVEN

SHATTERING THE SECT

A single thought could bring down a mountain.

Elder Vane did not wait for Thorn to answer. He raised his golden blade, sending a blinding wave of light upward through the ceiling. The light punched clean through the earth, tearing the mountain open to the sky and exposing the dark cavern to the gray afternoon.

"Purge this filth!" Vane roared, his heavy voice echoing across the entire mountain range. "Burn the camp! Burn the valley! Leave nothing of this cursed place alive!"

Above them, the sky exploded in golden fire as the sect disciples unleashed their full power on the mining camp. Screams of sheer terror echoed from the surface as hundreds of miners and lower cultivators were cut down in seconds by falling light.

"He is destroying the whole valley to wipe out your footprint, boy!" Lyra shrieked in anger, her spectral chains rattling against the crumbling rock face. "Unmake my chains right now or we both die under this mountain!"

"Shut up," Thorn said, his voice terrifyingly calm.

He did not look up at the falling ceiling. He did not care about the innocent miners dying in the dirt above. He knelt down on the cold floor, pressing both palms flat against the stone beneath his boots.

Using his new technique, he guided a thin, black thread of power deep into the mountain’s ancient roots. He did not try to smash the stone. He did not try to blow up the rock with raw force.

Instead, he unmade the friction holding the stone together.

In an instant, every grain of dirt, every slab of granite, and every giant boulder lost its ability to grip the stone beside it. The rock strata beneath the mining camp became smoother than greased ice.

"What are you doing?" Vane demanded, his golden eyes narrowing as the ground beneath his boots gave a strange, sickening lurch. "What form of magic is this?"

"I am leaving," Thorn said, staring up at Vane with dead, hollow eyes.

"You are going nowhere!" Vane yelled, lunging forward through the dust with his golden sword.

Before Vane’s blade could reach Thorn’s throat, the entire mountain gave way.

With a deafening roar that shook the clouds, the entire eastern side of the mountain split open. Millions of tons of rock, dirt, and iron ore lost all grip, sliding downward like a wave of liquid mud. The massive mining camp, the heavy iron gates, the stone barracks, and hundreds of screaming cultivators were instantly swept away in an ocean of collapsing earth.

"The mountain is melting!" a disciple high above screamed into the wind, his voice full of panic. "Fall back! Fall back!"

"Help us!" another voice wailed before being buried under a tidal wave of gravel. "The ground is turning into water!"

Vane lost his balance as the stone cavern floor broke apart beneath him. He fired beams of golden light into the dirt, trying to anchor himself, but the rock had no friction left. Every spell he cast slid off the stone like water off glass.

"Damned rat!" Vane spat, his white robes getting covered in brown dust as he floated upward using his cultivation light. "You buried your own people without a second thought!"

Thorn did not answer. He rode the collapsing slab of stone downward, his body moving smoothly with the landslide. His new technique allowed him to keep the black energy wrapping around his skin like a second coat, protecting his internal organs from the crushing feedback of the stone.

Around them, the destruction was absolute. Raw strength could crack a wall, but removing a rule of nature destroyed everything for miles around. Structures that had stood for three hundred years folded like paper. Cultivators with powerful shields were buried under tons of sliding stone before they could even draw their weapons.

"You monster!" Lyra's voice rasped inside his mind, her chained form tumbling through the falling debris as the underground cavern collapsed completely. "You just wiped out an entire sector to clear a path!"

"They were already dead," Thorn muttered under his breath, watching a row of wooden barracks snap in half as the ground shifted beneath them. "They just did not know it yet."

"You really have no soul left," Lyra hissed, her voice fading slightly as the rocks smashed her spectral image. "You are worse than the gods who chained me."

Thorn did not feel a single pang of regret. He did not feel pity for the miners he had worked beside for days, nor for the guards he had dodged in the dark. They were just obstacles, and the landslide was his path out. If five hundred men had to choke on dirt for him to take another breath, he would drop the mountain every single time.

"Keep falling," Thorn whispered to the earth, pressing his hand deeper into the sliding slab. "Take it all down."

The roaring wave of dirt slammed into the valley below, filling the narrow canyon with a massive cloud of gray dust that blocked out the sun. Buildings crushed into splinters, and the screams of dying men were swallowed whole by the endless sound of grinding stone.

When the mountain finally stopped moving, half the valley was buried under a hundred feet of fresh rubble. Silence fell over the ruined landscape, heavy and thick with the smell of crushed stone and fresh blood.

High above the dust cloud, Elder Vane hovered in the air on golden light, his pristine white robes torn and stained with dirt. His face was twisted in pure, unbridled rage as he looked down at the complete destruction of his sect's most valuable asset.

"Where are you?" Vane roared into the dust, his voice trembling with furious power. "Show yourself, coward!"

The wind blew hard through the canyon, slowly parting the thick gray cloud of dust near the center of the slide.

Thorn stood right at the epicenter of the destruction, balanced on top of a giant, smooth boulder. His dark hair whipped in the wind, his clothes were covered in ash, and his right arm hummed with a faint, deadly black pulse. He was not running. He was not hiding. He just stood there in the quiet ruins, watching the dust settle.

"You destroyed a three-hundred-year-old sanctuary," Vane said, floating down five feet lower, his golden blade trembling in his grip. "You killed hundreds of innocents just to save your own worthless neck."

"They were not my people," Thorn said, his voice carrying clearly through the silent valley. "And my neck is not worthless to me."

"You are an abomination," Vane spat, his golden light flaring brightly around his shoulders. "The divine overseers were right to order your death. You are a cancer on creation."

"Then come cut me out," Thorn grunted, wiping a streak of black mud from his cheek.

Elder Vane leaned forward, his golden eyes locking onto the pale boy standing amidst the ruins.

Thorn looked up through the drifting dust, his dead blue eyes staring right back into Vane’s soul without a single trace of fear.