The moment Gu Hanzhou pushed open the massive, pressurized vault doors leading to the third subterranean level, the world as he knew it shattered.
There was no floor.
The "Inverted Tower" was exactly what its name suggested: a colossal, hollowed-out fortress spiraling deep into the crust of the earth like a jagged steel tooth. Gu Hanzhou stood upon the highest rim of a skeletal metallic walkway. Looking down, he saw a dizzying abyss of crisscrossing glass conduits—thick, translucent pipes that pulsed like the veins of a titan, all converging toward a monolithic crystal pillar at the center.
The atmosphere was choking. It was a thick, ionized soup of formalin, ozone from high-voltage energy leaks, and the copper tang of fresh blood. Floating in the gloom were hundreds of oversized incubation vats filled with a sickly green nutrient fluid. They didn't contain corpses; they contained harvested potential. Pulsing hearts, twitching spinal cords, and raw, stripped-away Order Circuits were suspended in the liquid, kept alive by the cruelest of sciences.
"This isn't a prison..." Su Qingyue's voice crackled through his earpiece, her tone trembling with raw horror. "It's a factory... a god-foundry. They aren't just torturing people, Hanzhou. They are trying to stitch together a perfect vessel... something powerful enough to house the shattered will of the Ancient Court."
Gu Hanzhou didn't answer. His silence was colder than the obsidian walls around him. He gripped the slick, cold railing and began a rapid descent, leaping across the spiraling stairs with the predatory grace of a phantom.
His senses were dialled to the absolute maximum. Within his chest, his Imperial Gold blood was humming—not in fear, but in a frantic, aching resonance. As he dove deeper into the gut of the tower, that blood-tie became a thundering roar, synchronized with the rhythmic pulsing of the machinery around him.
Finally, at the absolute nadir of the tower—barely separated from the churning, white-hot magma of the planetary core by a single, vibrating layer of shock-resistant plating—he skidded to a halt.
There, at the center of the energy vortex, stood a specialized incubation chamber forged from purple-gold alloy. Etched into the base of the tank were two words that chilled his soul: [SUBJECT ONE].
The chamber was filled with a thick, viscous dark-gold fluid. Dozens of hooked sensor-wires were driven deep into the major acupuncture points of the man inside. He was suspended in the center, limbs stretched taut by rusted iron chains. His long, matted hair drifted in the fluid like dead seaweed, veiling his face.
Gu Hanzhou's hand slammed against the reinforced glass of the tank.
That familiar silhouette... even through the distorted fluid and the scars of a decade, it struck his heart with the force of a mountain. The iron walls he had built around his emotions for ten years crumbled in an instant.
"...Father."
The word was a ragged, broken whisper. Sensing the proximity of its master's kin, [Black Order] began to vibrate with a frequency so violent it nearly leapt from Gu Hanzhou's hand, the blade screaming in a pitch only those of the blood could hear.
The man inside the tank seemed to hear the call. That body, which should have been a hollowed-out husk, gave a sudden, microscopic tremor. Slowly, agonizingly, he lifted his head. Behind the veil of tangled hair, a pair of eyes opened—eyes identical to Gu Hanzhou's, though dimmed and glazed with a decade of torment.
"Han... Zhou..."
The man didn't speak with his mouth. His voice was a flat, synthesized rasp projected through the sensor-wires and into the room's intercom system.
"Run... This is... a trap."
The moment the words left the speakers, the cold white lights of the Inverted Tower flipped. In a heartbeat, the entire facility was bathed in a strobing, violent scarlet.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Dozens of the smaller incubation vats surrounding the base shattered simultaneously. The discarded limbs, organ tissues, and severed nerves within them didn't fall to the ground. Instead, guided by a repulsive, forbidden law of attraction, they swirled together in a whirlwind of gore, knitting themselves into monstrous, mindless Flesh Golems.
"Hahaha... hahahaha!"
A dry, mocking laugh echoed from the heights of the tower, bouncing off the alloy walls like the cackle of a vulture.
The silhouette of Duke Mordent slowly materialized on the highest walkway, hundreds of feet above. He looked down at Gu Hanzhou with the amused detachment of a scientist watching a rat in a maze. His crimson eyes glowed with sadistic triumph.
"You actually came. The instinct of Royal Blood... it truly is the most reliable fishhook in the world." Mordent spread his arms wide, and a tide of grey, necrotic energy surged from his back, sealing the tower's exits. "I kept your father alive for three extra years just for this moment—to wait for a fresh drop of 'King's Blood' to jump into the pot of its own accord."
Gu Hanzhou spun around, his neck snapping back as he glared up at the Vice-Adjudicator who stood above him like a dark god.
"Mordent."
Gu Hanzhou's voice was devoid of all heat, a void of absolute zero. He shifted his grip on [Black Order], funneling every ounce of his peak Blood-Ignition energy into the blade. The dark-gold etchings on the steel didn't just glow; they began to bleed light.
"I came here only to take him back," Gu Hanzhou said, his voice echoing through the chamber. "But now... I think I'll start by stripping the skin off your wretched bones."
Before the echo could die, the steel platform beneath Gu Hanzhou's feet exploded. He didn't try to flee upward. Instead, he used the gravity of the fall to transform into a streak of dark-gold lightning.
He lunged downward, aiming not for the exit, but for the tower's central energy hub.
If this was a trap, he wouldn't just break the cage. He would burn the entire hunting ground—and the hunter—to a pile of unrecognizable ash.