The oppressive silence of Qin Jiang's sanctum, thick with the scent of deep petrichor and ancient stone, was shattered by a whisper of displaced air. Mei Lin materialized near the obsidian desk, her usual ozone-and-parchment scent laced with something new: cold, sterile urgency. She held not a crystal tablet, but a physical envelope. Its material was unnatural – woven from strands of iridescent shadow and solidified moonlight, cool to the touch and utterly silent. Upon its face, written in ink that seemed to writhe like captured lightning, were the words:
To the Terracotta Emperor
Sky University, DanNuan City
DongNan Guo
Beneath, stamped in wax the color of dried blood and bearing a complex sigil of six interlocking rings surmounted by a stylized crown, was the seal and inscription:
From: The Six Sky Leaders
The United Governing Council
DongNan Guo
Mei Lin placed it on the obsidian surface with reverence bordering on dread. "Principal. It manifested… inside the outer wards. No carrier detected. The wards registered… nothing until it was here."
Qin Jiang's flint-grey eyes, holding the slow swirl of galaxies, fixed upon the envelope. The ambient pressure in the room intensified subtly; dust motes froze mid-drift, spiraling infinitesimally towards the unseen Gravitic Heart above his right hand. The scent of deep caverns grew sharper, colder. A message bypassing Sky University's legendary defenses, delivered directly to him, bearing the combined seal of the Six Sky Leaders – the absolute rulers of the DongNan Guo nation-state. This was not protocol. This was an event.
He reached out. His hand, resembling leather wrapped over river stone, moved with deliberate slowness. The envelope felt unnervingly inert yet thrummed with contained, terrifying authority. The wax seal crackled faintly as he broke it, releasing a scent like ozone and crushed, ancient peach blossoms – the signature fragrance of the Sky Leaders' sanctum. He withdrew a single sheet of paper, impossibly thin and strong, woven from solidified starlight and void. The characters inscribed upon it weren't written; they were burned into existence by pure will, radiating palpable power that made the air hum.
Qin Jiang read.
His expression, already carved from bedrock, didn't change. Not a flicker crossed his weathered face. His flint-grey eyes scanned the lines once, then again. The swirling galaxies within them seemed to slow, then stop entirely, becoming cold, dead points of light in an infinite void. The pressure in the room didn't just intensify; it solidified. Mei Lin felt her breath catch, her bones creak under the invisible weight. The scent of petrichor vanished, replaced by the sterile, crushing silence of deep space and the faint, metallic tang of… doom.
He finished reading. Slowly, precisely, he refolded the starlight missive. He placed it back onto the obsidian desk. The silence that followed was absolute. Not the quiet of contemplation, but the silence of a continent holding its breath before the cataclysm. The implications, the sheer scale of what those words conveyed, hung in the air, heavier than any mountain. Qin Jiang, the Unmoving Mountain Throne, the Terracotta Emperor who had faced armies of millions and abyssal harbingers, simply stared at the folded message.
Silence.
Thousands of miles away, deep within a fortress carved not from rock, but from solidified despair and the ossified screams of vanquished foes, the air reeked of sulfur, burnt offerings, and the cloying sweetness of decay. The Chamber of Whispers. Five figures, draped in robes the colour of congealed blood and deepest shadow, stood around a central dais. Their faces were hidden deep within cowls, but the air around them vibrated with ancient malice and cold, calculating ambition.
On the dais lay the broken, desiccated husk that had once been Su JinXin. The Harbinger of the Abyssal Tide was now merely meat and bone, the terrifying Demonic Leviathan gen extinguished. The scent of deep brine and ozone had been replaced by the sickly odor of rapidly putrefying flesh and the sterile tang of powerful preservative wards.
"The Terracotta Emperor..." hissed one elder, their voice like dry scales sliding over stone. "He remains the immovable object. JinXin was a scalpel meant for his heart. Now, the scalpel is broken."
"Broken, but not useless," rasped another, their cowl shifting towards the corpse. "Qin Jiang believes the threat extinguished. He consolidates. He prepares his students... for other threats." A dry chuckle echoed. "He does not yet perceive the true tide rising."
"The nation weakens," stated a third elder, their tone flatter, colder. "The Six Sky Leaders bicker amongst the stars, blind to the rot festering below. Their grand 'Unity' is a façade cracking under the weight of ambition and fear. The Gens run wild, the Towers flicker with instability... the people whisper of change."
"The time is ripe," the first elder declared, a note of fanaticism entering their hiss. "DongNan Guo groans under its own contradictions. We have seeded the discontent, nurtured the shadows. The infrastructure is ours. The Gen-Legions have their price. The only stone left unmoved... is Sky University. And the Mountain upon which it sits."
"Qin Jiang..." the second elder rasped again, gesturing towards JinXin's corpse. "...must be moved. Permanently. But his power... his Final Breath... it is a continent unto itself. JinXin, even empowered, was but a wave crashing upon his shore."
"Then we must send not a wave," spoke the fourth elder for the first time, their voice a chilling whisper that seemed to drain the warmth from the air, "but the abyss itself. And JinXin... JinXin still has a role to play. Not as a scalpel, but as a key. A sacrifice to unlock a greater door."
As one, the five elders raised their hands. Dark energy, viscous and smelling of spoiled blood and psychic rot, streamed from their concealed fingertips, coiling around JinXin's corpse. The preservative wards shattered with audible cracks. The corpse began to smoke – not with heat, but with an oily, black vapor that reeked of purest negation. The flesh blackened, shriveled, then ignited with cold, purple-black flames that emitted no heat, only an intense, soul-chilling cold. Bones cracked and warped, reassembling not into a skeleton, but into a twisted, articulated framework of obsidian and void-stuff. The stench of burning flesh was overwhelmed by the acrid tang of dissolving reality and the psychic scream of a soul being violently reshaped.
"Mutation Technique: Soul-Forge Puppetry - The Abyssal Key!" the five elders intoned as one, their voices merging into a dissonant chorus that vibrated the chamber walls.
The flames died. Where Su JinXin's corpse had lain stood a nightmare puppet. Seven feet tall, its body was a latticework of fused, blackened bone and solidified shadow, jointed with screaming faces etched in pain. Its head was a featureless, elongated oval of polished obsidian, reflecting the chamber's gloom in distorted, horrifying ways. In its chest cavity, where a heart should be, pulsed a single, malevolent violet eye – the trapped, tormented essence of JinXin's soul, radiating pure, focused hatred and despair. It radiated an aura of profound wrongness, a wound in reality that sucked in light and hope. The Abyssal Key Puppet stood motionless, awaiting command.
Before the elders could speak further, the heavy, rune-carved obsidian doors to the Chamber of Whispers groaned open. Not by hand, but as if the stone itself recoiled in primal terror. The sulfurous braziers guttered, their flames shrinking to near-nothingness, plunging the chamber into near-darkness. The air turned thick, heavy, and impossibly cold, smelling suddenly of ozone, volcanic ash, deep-space vacuum, and the metallic tang of freshly spilled blood – all at once. A presence entered, vast and terrible, bending the very fabric of the chamber around it.
The entity was tall, easily eight feet, its form shrouded in shifting, swirling darkness that defied focus. Within the darkness, impossible glimpses flickered: the sinuous coil of a serpent forged from liquid shadow, the glint of scales like polished hematite, the momentary silhouette of vast, membranous wings that seemed to blot out perception, the glimmer of eyes like dying stars set deep within an ever-changing visage. It wielded not one element, but many, indistinctly: a clawed hand that seemed made of solidified lightning one moment, crushing granite the next; tendrils of darkness that bled freezing mist or spat embers; an aura that warped gravity and made the light bleed color. This was power beyond Final Breath, beyond known categorization – a Primordial Fury given purpose.
The five elders, beings of immense power and malice themselves, instantly dropped to one knee, pressing their foreheads to the cold stone floor. Their earlier arrogance vanished, replaced by abject terror and fervent devotion. Their voices, when they spoke, were a trembling, unified whisper filled with awe and dread:
"Great Shun..."
The entity, Great Shun, stopped before the Abyssal Key Puppet. The featureless obsidian head of the puppet tilted upwards, its single violet eye fixing on the swirling darkness where the entity's face might be. The chamber held its breath. The silence was no longer sterile, but charged with the potential for infinite annihilation. Great Shun regarded the puppet, then slowly, deliberately, turned its unseen gaze towards the cowering elders. The weight of that regard was like a collapsing star.
"The Mountain..." a voice spoke. It wasn't a sound, but a vibration felt in the marrow, in the soul, composed of grinding tectonic plates, dying suns, and the silent screams of consumed realities. "...will be dust. The Key... will turn. DongNan Guo... will drown."
The violet eye in the puppet pulsed with frantic, trapped intensity. The elders trembled, not daring to lift their heads. Great Shun stood amidst the oppressive silence, a convergence of impossible elements and unfathomable purpose, the architect of the coming cataclysm. The path to conquest was laid bare, and Sky University, the Unmoving Mountain, stood squarely in the path of the deluge.
Somewhere else the Azure dragon heir Qing KunJue was training in his seclusion chamber where he was punching dummies. His eyes lightning colored with every sonic speed punch.
And suddenly a burst of ice and lightning he entered breakthrough stage in his ice and his azure dragon gen. And he said "mutation technique: the mandate of lightning!" A crushing yin-yang circle made lightning appeared and summoned a lightning form of a dragon that coils upwards and explodes into fire.