A two-kilometer vertical drop was more than enough to grind any living being into a fine crimson powder.
But amidst the searing heat of atmospheric friction, Gu Hanzhou had forced the last dying ember of his Imperial Gold energy outward. He used the flat of his blade against the narrow, jagged walls of the sewage chute, creating a violent trail of sparks that acted as a makeshift brake. Finally, with a dull, bone-shaking thud, the three of them slammed into a "trash mountain" composed of millions of tons of discarded mineral slag.
These fragments of Order-ore were defective rejects, but because they contained unstable residual energy, they maintained a porous, sponge-like structure. It was this unintended cushioning that saved their lives.
Gu Hanzhou coughed violently, spitting out a thick clot of blood mixed with fragments of his own internal organs. His left arm hung limply at his side; the white splintered bone had pierced through the skin, and the wound on his shoulder—carved by the Adjudicator's holy sword-qi—was still hissing with grey, acrid smoke.
"If you aren't dead... then get up."
A voice—raspy, ancient, and sounding like two rusted iron plates grinding together—drifted out from the darkness of the refuse pile.
Gu Hanzhou's instincts screamed. Ignoring the agonizing pain of his fractured ribs, he gripped [Black Order] in a reverse hold and positioned himself in front of the unconscious Su Qingyue and his father. Behind a glowing mound of emerald-tinted slag, a hunched silhouette was squatting on the ground, busily scavenging through the debris.
It was an old man, draped in a tattered robe stitched together from various rotting leathers. What made Gu Hanzhou's blood run cold were the man's eyes—or rather, the lack of them. Where eyes should have been, there were only two hollow, blackened pits, as if they had been gouged out by a brutal executioner long ago.
The blind old man didn't look up, yet he seemed to track Gu Hanzhou's every micro-movement. His withered, claw-like hand twitched in the air, his nose sniffing the wind. Suddenly, his entire frame shuddered.
"This scent... it's wrong."
The old man dropped a piece of ore. In a flash, he transformed into a grey blur that glided across the ground, appearing exactly three feet in front of Gu Hanzhou.
Gu Hanzhou instinctively tried to swing his blade, but an invisible pressure descended upon him like the weight of a collapsing mountain. He couldn't move so much as a finger.
[Blood-Settlement Realm]? No... this man is deeper, more unfathomable than even Mordent!
The old man sniffed the air near Gu Hanzhou's chest, specifically hovering over the spot where the bloodstained scroll was hidden. His wrinkled face began to twitch violently, and a string of saliva—whether from terror or ecstasy—leaked from the corner of his mouth.
"[Reverse Scale]... a fragment of the [Reverse Scale of Eternal Night]?"
The old man's voice trembled. His skeletal fingers traced the air, as if feeling the dried patterns on the hidden scroll. "Three thousand years... those traitors thought they burned it all. Who would have guessed that in the filthiest of ashes, there remained a spark capable of burning a hole through the heavens?"
Gu Hanzhou's pupils contracted. "Who are you?"
"Who am I?" The old man erupted into a self-deprecating, manic laugh that echoed through the vast cavern like a ghost's wail. "I am the blind dog who once guarded the gates of the Ancient Court! I am the coward who watched an empire crumble and could do nothing but gouge out his own eyes in shame!"
He cut his laughter short, those two black pits staring straight into Gu Hanzhou's soul.
"Boy, that shackle in your mind... Gu Qingshan traded his life for that, didn't he? Heh, that fool thought a lock forged by 'Order' could contain the 'Reverse Scale.' He didn't know that the Reverse Scale is called so because every time a scale is peeled back, it must take blood and flesh with it!"
Gu Hanzhou forced his body to stay upright. "Since you know it's a curse, what do you plan to do? Take it? Or kill me?"
"Kill you? I've waited three thousand years for a living vessel capable of carrying this curse."
The old man suddenly reached out, a single finger tapping the space between Gu Hanzhou's brows, right where the phantom image of the closed gate lay.
"This shackle... a piece of trash like Mordent couldn't open it, and neither can I. But since you've entered the 'Deep-Mine Abyss' at the bottom of hell, I will teach you the lowest, most primitive method used by Ancient Court slaves."
The old man rummaged through the trash and pulled out a jagged ore pulsing with a violent, dark-red light. Without warning, he shoved it directly into the gaping, bloody wound on Gu Hanzhou's left shoulder.
"[Blood-Melt Bone-Forging]."
"Use your Royal Blood to devour the dark Order-energy that has accumulated in this pit for ten millennia. Don't think about opening that lock. Instead, treat that shackle as a whetstone. Every time you strike against it, your blood will become purer."
Gu Hanzhou felt a surge of absolute, primordial energy explode from his shoulder. His dry, depleted meridians felt as if they were being injected with boiling magma.
"Survive this, and you will be the only fire in the darkness of this Iron City."
The old man's figure flickered and vanished into the shadows, leaving one final sentence lingering in the cold draft:
"Fail... and there are plenty of holes down here. I'll bury you myself."
Gu Hanzhou threw his head back and let out a roar of pure agony. Dark-gold flames erupted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. In this moment of horrific torture, his shackled cultivation—which had fallen to the early stages—began to pulse with a terrifying, rhythmic resonance.