The Shattered Vortex

Chapter 9 The Abyss and the Emerald Needle

The obsidian doors slammed shut behind Lu Chen with a sound like a clapping thunderbolt, plunging him into absolute, terrifying darkness. The vibrant cheering of the coliseum and the warm high-altitude sun vanished, replaced instantly by a heavy, suffocating silence and a freezing, damp draft that smelled of ancient decay and wet iron.

Lu Chen did not move. He stood perfectly still, his back against the cold stone doors, listening.

Deep within his belly, the temporary sealing knot that Sect Master Jiang had provided was already beginning to fray. The stolen, golden Core Formation energy of Elder Zhao was like a caged sun, bucking and roaring against the razor-sharp fragments of Lu Chen's crimson vortex. Every breath he took felt like inhaling molten lead. Droplets of dark, highly concentrated spiritual blood leaked from his nostrils, sizzling as they hit the freezing floor.

"If I don't find a place to anchor this energy now," Lu Chen muttered, his jaw locking against a wave of blinding agony, "the Sect Master won't even need to execute me. I’ll blow this entire cavern to pieces."

He dragged his battered body forward, blindly navigating the pitch-black tunnel. The further he walked, the more the air changed. The ambient Qi here wasn't just thin; it was heavy, thick, and oily, saturated with the malicious, maddened remnants of thousands of slaughtered monsters. This was the Myriad Beast Abyss—the dumping ground of the Vermilion Sect's bloody history.

After what felt like miles of descending a steep, slippery incline, the narrow tunnel suddenly opened up into a colossal underground cavern.

Lu Chen stopped at the edge of a jagged stone precipice. Below him lay a subterranean world of nightmarish scale. Thousands of glowing, bioluminescent purple mosses clung to the distant ceilings, casting a dim, spectral light over an endless maze of shattered stone towers, black lakes, and yawning chasms. Far below, the muffled, distorted roars of ancient beasts echoed through the fog, vibrating the rock beneath his boots.

But what drew Lu Chen's attention was the center of the cavern.

A massive, towering pillar of cracked obsidian shot from the bottomless depths up to the very roof of the cave. Wrapped around this pillar were hundreds of glowing, emerald-green chains woven from pure, condensed sealing energy. This was the Great Mountain Seal—the construct keeping the entities of the lower layers from breaching the surface.

Currently, one of the massive emerald chains was pulsing erratically. A deep, jagged fracture had opened near its anchor point, and from that crack, a dense, swirling geyser of black, corrupt demonic Qi was violently spewing into the cavern air.

Vrrr—!

The moment Lu Chen's eyes locked onto the leaking demonic energy, the jagged vortex in his dantian gave a violent, predatory lurch. The glass-like shards of his foundation began to spin at a manic speed, completely throwing off the Sect Master’s stabilization chant. The vortex didn't want to compress anymore; it recognized a feast.

"The Sect Master said to use my vortex to consume the leak," Lu Chen rasped, a dark, dangerous smile breaking through the blood on his face. "Let's see if this hell can crack a broken mirror."

He leapt from the precipice.

Using the rough, jagged rock formations, he slid and bounded down the steep cliff face, ignoring the agonizing protests of his fractured ribs. He hit the base of the Great Mountain Seal with a heavy thud, spraying black dust into the air.

The closer he got to the fracture, the more intense the hostile pressure became. The leaking demonic Qi screamed like a chorus of dying spirits, wrapping around his limbs, trying to corrode his flesh and melt his mind.

Lu Chen ignored the spiritual assault. He marched straight through the black gale, stepped onto the glowing obsidian pedestal, and slammed both his bare, blood-stained hands directly onto the fracturing emerald chain.

The Devouring Maw opened to its absolute limit.

BOOM!

The collision of three distinct energies inside Lu Chen’s body was catastrophic. The chaotic, black demonic Qi from the seal rushed down his left arm; the stolen, golden Core Formation energy of Elder Zhao exploded from his core to fight it; and his own razor-sharp, crimson vortex acted as the battlefield, violently grinding them both together.

"Aaaaaagh!"

Lu Chen roared to the empty cavern, his voice cracking from raw pain. His eyes completely rolled back, showing only whites as arcs of golden, crimson, and pitch-black lightning violently erupted from his pores, shattering the obsidian floor beneath his feet. The sheer friction of the energy transfer was tearing his widened meridians apart, only for the unique resilience of his Shattered Mirror Technique to instantly force them back together, thicker and harder than before.

It was a cycle of continuous shattering and tempering occurring a thousand times a second.

The spinning cyclone inside his belly grew so dense it began to form a terrifying gravitational pull. The chaotic, wild demonic energy was violently crushed by the razor-sharp shards, its impurities thrown out of his body as a foul, black mist, while its raw power was forced to fuse with Elder Zhao’s golden liquid.

Under the immense, crushing pressure of the vortex, the two diametrically opposed energies—holy gold and demonic black—were forced into a shotgun marriage. They began to compress, hardening, turning solid.

CRACK.

A crisp, metallic ringing sound echoed inside Lu Chen’s soul. The chaotic, liquid storm in his dantian suddenly crystallized. When Lu Chen opened his eyes, the blinding white light was gone, replaced by a deep, terrifying calm.

He looked inward. The jagged vortex was still there, but at its absolute center, where a smooth, standard cultivator’s core should be, there now floated a tiny, razor-sharp needle made of pure, compressed, emerald-and-crimson light.

By forcing the golden core energy and the demonic seal energy to grind against one another, he hadn't just stabilized himself. He had forged a weapon. He had broken through the barriers of mortal flesh entirely and stepped into the First Layer of the True Foundation Realm. His Qi was no longer just a gaseous force; it was a physical, piercing solid.

Lu Chen pulled his hands away from the emerald chain. The fracture in the seal had completely stopped spewing black smoke; the leaking energy had been entirely hollowed out, leaving the chain glowing a stable, quiet green once more.

He stood tall at the base of the monument, his tattered clothes smoking, his body entirely healed. His skin now possessed a faint, metallic sheen, and his presence was so cold, so sharp, that the low-tier beasts lurking in the nearby shadows of the cavern instantly ceased their growling and scrambled back into the dark in absolute terror.

"The first layer of the seal is quiet," Lu Chen whispered, his voice smooth, carrying an icy, razor-sharp edge as he looked down into the deeper, darker abysses of the second and third layers. "But I can feel them down there. Hundreds of them."

He balled his fist, and a tiny, shimmering blade of emerald-crimson Qi extended three inches from his knuckles, humming like a hornet. He had three months in this dark paradise, and for the first time in his life, the beggar was the one holding the knife.