The Shattered Vortex

Chapter 33 The Ledger of the Deep

‎The body of Emperor Solarus lay empty on the obsidian stairs [1.1], a withered gray shell stripped of the golden light that had kept a continent on its knees for four hundred years [1.1]. Below, the Grand Imperial Square was a landscape of absolute silence [1.1]. Fifteen thousand paladins lay motionless in the liquid marble, and the great warships of the Northern Fleet were nothing but burning skeletons sinking into the harbor miles away.

‎Lin Xue ascended the blood-slicked stairs, her emerald hair catching the erratic, crimson sparks leaking from Lu Chen’s skin [1.1]. She stepped around the hollow husks of the Sun-Eater Praetors [1.1], her green eyes fixed on the massive, iron-reinforced doors of the inner throne room.

‎"The empire has fallen, Lu Chen," she said, her voice carrying a sharp, ringing clarity that cut through the heavy air pressure [1.1]. "But Solarus’s final warning was not an empty threat. Look at the sky."

‎Lu Chen did not turn his head. His pitch-black eyes were fixed on the golden throne room doors, but his consciousness expanded upward [1.1]. High above the palace spires, the bruised purple haze he had conjured was beginning to ripple. A massive, translucent barrier of interwoven golden runes—the Continental Ward—was shimmering violently across the northern horizon. The death of the Emperor had severed the anchor point of the ward, and the boundary line separating the outer rim from the central continent was actively fracturing like cheap ice.

‎"The gate is opening," Lu Chen said, his flat, layered voice vibrating the stone steps beneath his bare feet. "The master of the house is dead, so the neighbors are coming to look."

‎Deep within his belly, the Golden-Crimson Cosmic Core was spinning with a slow, heavy density [1.1]. The multi-sided crystalline prism had completely absorbed the late-stage Core Formation base of the Emperor, cementing his own foundation at the absolute Peak of the Core Formation Realm. The gravity around his frame was so immense that the loose gold foil peeling from the palace pillars was pulled inward, orbiting his silhouette like tiny, glittering meteors.

‎He raised his right hand, balled it into a fist, and slammed it directly into the center of the throne room doors.

‎BOOM!

‎The six-inch-thick iron-reinforced doors didn't just open; they violently exploded inward, the gold carvings tearing apart into a hail of sharp metal shrapnel that pelted the interior walls. Lu Chen stepped through the dust, his black hide boots crunching over the debris, followed closely by Lin Xue.

‎The inner throne room was vast, lined with towering pillars of black jade, but it contained no treasures, no silk, and no gold. At its center stood a singular, deep stone well that dropped into the absolute core of the mountain. Suspended over the well by a single, thick chain of gray bone was a massive, ancient iron chest wrapped in hundreds of glowing, runic seals—the Imperial Hidden Treasury.

‎"The scribe's blueprints said this chest holds the original records of the founding ancestor," Lin Xue said, her daggers humming with wind-Qi as she approached the lip of the well. "It contains the map lines of the central continent and the locations of the high pools."

‎Lu Chen didn't look for a mechanism to lift the bone chain. He reached out with his bare right hand, his index finger extending like an iron rod. The solid blade of emerald-crimson Qi extending from his knuckle sliced through the bone links with a sharp, metallic ping.

‎The massive iron chest plummeted into the well, but before it could fall ten feet, Lu Chen unleashed The Devouring Maw.

‎Vrrr—!

‎A terrifying, localized gravitational vacuum erupted from his palm. The heavy iron chest stopped dead in mid-air, defying the natural laws of gravity, and was violently pulled upward, crashing heavily onto the black jade floor plates at his feet.

‎The absolute, piercing solid force of his core-tier jagged Qi slammed down onto the runic locks. The complex seals exploded into a rain of useless blue sparks, the heavy lid of the chest flying open to reveal its contents.

‎Inside lay no spirit stones or weapons. It contained only a single, colossal scroll wrapped in weathered dragon-hide and a tiny, pulsing sphere of dark emerald crystal—a Primordial Soul-Shard identical to the one he had devoured beneath the iron lotus.

‎The moment Lu Chen's hand touched the dragon-hide scroll, a massive, projection of light shot from the parchment, mapping a giant, multi-layered continent across the walls of the throne room.

‎The Northern Rim—the entire empire they had just dismantled—was nothing but a tiny, insignificant sliver of gray dust at the very edge of the map. The true continent was dominated by a massive, central territory that glowed with a suffocating, pitch-black energy: the Sovereign Holy Land of the Primordial Eclipse. The map marked dozens of ancient sects, lawless border territories, and hidden inheritance vaults that were ten times larger than the Vermilion Mountains.

‎"The Slate Border Lands," Lin Xue read, her finger tracing a narrow, jagged canyon pathway that ran directly through the fracturing Continental Ward. "It's a lawless, toxic waste zone between the outer rim and the inner kingdoms. If we use the flagship, we can breach the border through that canyon before the central sects deploy their vanguard."

‎Before Lu Chen could answer, the air inside the throne room suddenly turned completely freezing, the black jade pillars instantly coating over with a thick layer of white frost.

‎The central stone well began to hum with a deep, terrifying vibration. The dark purple sky outside the palace completely tore open, and a single, blinding pillar of solid white light shot down from the upper heavens, striking the center of the grand plaza with enough force to vibrate the entire mountain range.

‎The messenger from the high lands had arrived.

‎Lu Chen slowly reached down, grabbed the dragon-hide scroll and the primordial soul-shard, and tucked them tightly inside his animal-skin tunic. He turned his pitch-black eyes toward the shattered entrance of the palace, a cold, predatory smile breaking across his marble-hard face as the cosmic core inside his chest roared with a manic, insatiable hunger.

‎"The gate is open, Lin Xue," Lu Chen whispered, his voice smooth and carrying an absolute promise of continental slaughter. "Let's go greet the neighbor."

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