The Throne of the Devoured God

The Bottom of the World

The smell of death does not hide in the dark; it waits for you to wake up so it can choke you.

Lu Feng opened his eyes and gasped, his lungs filling with a rancid, sulfurous air that tasted like rusted metal and rotting meat. Every breath felt like dragging broken glass through his throat. He tried to sit up, but his left hand slid sideways, sinking into a squelching pile of discarded, semi-decomposed beast flesh. Cold, gelatinous grease smeared across his palm. He pulled his arm back with a violen shudder, wiping the foul slime against his thigh while looking around at the absolute nightmare stretching out under a low, jagged ceiling of weeping black rock.

"Where am I?" Lu Feng whispered, his voice sounding hollow and thin in the massive cavern. "Is this the bottom of the world?"

The darkness here was thick, heavy, and alive with the distant echoes of dripping water and the ominous shifting of mountain-sized mounds of garbage. He rose to his knees, his joints popping silently. He wiped a layer of black grime from his forehead, blinking against the dim, sickly green luminescence given off by patches of glowing fungus on the damp rocks.

He was completely surrounded by towering, unstable mountains of refuse. This was the legendary Forgotten Pit, the final resting place for everything the upper districts chewed up and spat out. Shattered iron armor, broken bronze swords, cracked carriages, and the rotting corpses of failed, mutated Soul Titans were piled stories high, creating a jagged, chaotic labyrinth of filth.

"Get up," Lu Feng muttered fiercely to himself, placing both palms flat against a rusted metal shield to force his legs to straighten. "Get up right now. You are not dead yet. You cannot afford to lie down in a place like this. If you stay down, the trash will bury you alive."

As he forced his weight onto his feet, he expected his body to collapse from the sheer trauma of the fall. He expected his ribs to crack, his spine to complain, and his muscles to scream in agony. But nothing happened.

He stood completely straight, his breath catching as he noticed something utterly bizarre about his own body. He looked down at his left arm. The long, jagged wound where the high priests had drained his blood had stopped leaking entirely. There was no fresh red blood, no open flesh, and no signs of infection. Instead, a complex, pulsing network of thick, pitch-black veins now webbed tightly across his skin, weaving through his flesh like living thread. The black veins pulled his skin together, holding the deep cut closed with an unnatural, permanent grip.

Intrigued, Lu Feng pressed his right thumb firmly into the raw, black skin of the wound. He dug his nail into the flesh, twisting it with enough force to make an ordinary man scream.

He felt absolutely nothing.

"Nothing," Lu Feng whispered, his eyes widening. "There is no pain."

The piercing, sub-zero cold of the underground landfill, the sharp stabs of his bruised muscles, and the throbbing ache of his battered bones were entirely gone. His body felt completely numb, insulated by a strange, icy emptiness deep within his chest. It was as if his nervous system had been severed from the concepts of suffering and temperature.

"So the monster kept its word," Lu Feng murmured, clenching his fist tightly. He felt the mechanical movement of his fingers, but the internal sensations were completely absent.

He closed his eyes for a brief second, attempting to draw upon the spiritual core energy he had trained so hard to develop during his bitter childhood in the slums. He sought the small, warm spark that every cultivator spent years nurturing. But as he searched his inner body, his face grew darker. His internal meridians were dry, cracked, and completely empty.

"I am completely empty," Lu Feng said, a cold realization settling into his mind. "No spiritual flow. No light. No noble talent. Just this cold, empty shell held together by black slime."

A low, guttural growl shattered the silence behind him.

The sound was sharp, predatory, and close. Lu Feng spun around instantly, his boots sliding against the curved surface of a rusted iron breastplate.

Emerging slowly from the deep shadows of a massive bone pile were four large creatures. They had the general shape of wolves, but their bodies were horribly warped by the toxic environment of the pit. Their fur was entirely missing in large, bloody patches, revealing scabby, gray, leathery skin like old stone. Their jaws were elongated, packed with rows of mismatched, jagged teeth. Worst of all, each beast had a vertical, blood-red third eye splitting the exact center of its forehead, pulsing with a wild, hungry light.

The wolves spread out, their heavy paws clicking against the discarded metal weapons beneath them. They were hunting, and they had just found fresh meat.

"Stay back," Lu Feng said. His voice did not shake. It dropped into a low, defensive, and completely even tone.

He reached down toward the garbage pile without breaking eye contact with the lead beast. His fingers wrapped firmly around the leather-bound hilt of a broken bronze sword buried deep in the debris. He pulled it free with a sharp tug, but as he brought it up, he saw that the weapon was snapped cleanly in half. He was left holding barely a foot of dull, notched metal.

"Do not do this," Lu Feng warned, raising the broken blade slightly. "I am not the meal you are looking for. Trust me on this."

The largest wolf stepped forward and snapped its jaws violently. A thick, yellowish, acidic saliva dripped from its yellow teeth, hissing loudly as it splattered against a rusted shield on the ground, eating away at the ancient metal. The beast began to circle to his right, its two normal eyes locked entirely on Lu Feng’s throat, while its vertical red eye tracked the slightest movement of his broken sword. The other three wolves followed its lead, cutting off his escape routes.

"You think I am an easy meal just because I look like trash?" Lu Feng asked.

A cold, humorless laugh escaped his lips, echoing against the jagged rock walls. He noticed something strange about his own mind. His heart was not racing. His palms were not sweating. The absolute, heavy numbness in his physical flesh seemed to have crawled deep into his psyche, freezing his ability to feel panic. He looked at the four deadly predators, and he felt nothing but a detached, calculating coldness.

"I just survived a fall from the heavens," Lu Feng told the pack leader, his eyes narrowing. "I watched my own brother sell my life for a piece of silver. I have been bled dry by high priests, and I have made a pact with an ancient god in the dark. Do you really think a few stray dogs will keep me down?"

The wolf to his left decided it was tired of waiting. With a sudden, explosive burst of speed, its powerful hind legs launched its heavy body straight through the air, its jaws wide open, aiming directly for his chest.

Lu Feng did not jump back or try to dodge. In his past life, he would have panicked, but now, his mind moved with a terrifying, slow clarity.

Instead of retreating, Lu Feng stepped directly into the path of the incoming monster, using his entire body weight to collide with the beast mid-air. The wolf's sharp, jagged claws tore violently through his shirt, ripping deep, ragged gasps into his left shoulder. Lu Feng felt the heavy impact, he felt his flesh tearing, but the actual sensation of pain simply never arrived. It was just data, a minor inconvenience.

With a calm, brutal, and completely unfazed efficiency, Lu Feng swung his right hand. He drove the short, broken bronze blade straight into the center of the wolf's pulsing red eye.

The weapon sank deep into the skull. The beast shrieked a short, choked sound, its entire body going completely limp in an instant. The heavy corpse crashed hard into the black mud, dragging Lu Feng down with it for a brief second.

Lu Feng did not hesitate. He planted his boot firmly against the wolf's snout and pulled with all his might, tearing the bloody shard of bronze out of the shattered skull. A thick, dark fluid splattered across his face, but he did not even wipe it away. He scrambled back to his feet, resetting his stance and holding the dripping weapon out toward the remaining three wolves.

"One," Lu Feng said, his voice completely flat, devoid of any adrenaline. He pointed the broken tip of the bronze sword at the next beast in line. "Who wants to be next? Come on, step up. Let us see if your skulls are any harder than his."

The remaining three monsters froze in their tracks. Their low growls died in their throats, and their three eyes widened in absolute confusion as they looked at their fallen pack leader lying motionless in the dirt. They had hunted hundreds of scavengers, but they had never encountered a human who did not scream when his flesh was torn open.

A moment later, their shock turned into a deeper, more vicious anger. They began to snarl much louder, their gray backs arching as their muscles bunched. They realized this prey was dangerous, and they were preparing to rush him all at once from three different angles to tear him into small pieces.

"Come on then," Lu Feng shouted, his voice finally rising, echoing loudly off the massive piles of iron, stone, and bone. "I am right here. I am not going anywhere. If you want my flesh, you are going to have to come and take it."

The wolves tensed, their claws digging into the debris, ready to spring.

But they never got the chance.

A giant shadow looms behind the wolves, crushing one instantly under its massive, scaly claw.