"What have you done?" His voice echoed in the darkness, filled with disbelief, as we fell.
The world around us no longer seemed stable. The shattered heavenly seal exploded above like a collapsing sun, its fragments dissolving into blinding light that rained down through the abyss we were falling into. Earth, stone, and remnants of spiritual arrays rushed past in chaotic silence.
I didn't answer him because I didn't know exactly what I had done. In fact, I'm as confused as he is.
The Devouring vortex inside me was no longer something I controlled, It was something I was barely surviving from.
The cultivator's protective aura shattered when the seal fell, but part of his refined sword Qi didn't disperse as expected. It was caught...Caught by me by the spiraling black-and-gold current tearing through my meridians like a newborn storm.
I felt his Qi struggling and fighting to mix with mine. "You are pulling my cultivation," he said sharply, stabilizing himself mid-fall with sheer willpower. Even without his sword, he radiated steady authority. "Release it immediately."
Release it? If I knew how to, maybe I would have done that.
Pain spread through my body again as the vortex tightened. My meridians, barely reformed after the tribulation lightning, expanded violently to accommodate power far beyond my realm.
I could sense his cultivation level: Foundation Establishment. It was stable which probably took years of disciplined practice and my body that newly began Qi Refinement, was already trying to absorb it.
"No" I said, but my voice broke as another dose of energy flooded in.
The Devouring Sovereign's presence stirred with a dangerous amusement. 'You have touched something larger than yourself.' Shut up, I thought bitterly.
The abyss around us was unnatural. It was the cavity left by the collapsing heavenly seal
"No?" He repeated
The question struck harder than any lightning had ever struck. If he died, he would not hunt me.
If he died, the righteous sect would lose a cultivator and I would cross a line that could never be uncrossed.
The cultivator's gaze locked onto mine even as we fell. There was a strain there now, a strain of realization.
The cultivator thrust his palm outward, forming a barrier of condensed sword intent around himself. "You will rupture," he said firmly. "Your meridians cannot withstand this."
He was right about that, I felt the cracks forming. Blood seeped from my pores as the vortex continued pulling at his cultivation base like a starving beast clawing at prey but I truly cannot control it.
The vortex moved again...This time, a visible stream of white Qi broke free from his barrier and spiraled toward my chest.
His breathing hitched and I felt it enter me in a refined orderly manner and immediately, my own Qi reacted violently, clashing against it.
The two forces did not merge peacefully, they devoured each other in agony and there was a sense of clarity, and for the first time in my life, I could feel the structure of higher cultivation. I sensed how his Qi rotated in layered cycles, how it stabilized his dantian, and how it reinforced bone and flesh beyond mortal limits.
The Sovereign had not lied, this was the knowledge he talked about and I was learning it through devouring. "Stop resisting," the Sovereign murmured within me. "Let the vortex complete its function."
The abyss around us began to shrink as the spatial fracture attempted to repair itself. We were running out of time.
"Listen to me," he said suddenly, his voice cutting through the chaos. "If you do not stabilize your core now, you will not only kill yourself, you will trigger another heavenly response."
Another response? The golden eye above had already marked me. If it sensed this imbalance...
My heart had already begun to stutter.
"Guide your Qi downward," he commanded sharply. "Compress it into your lower dantian. Do not allow it to expand further."
Why was he helping me? Even as his cultivation was being drained. Even as I endangered him.
Our eyes met again and I understood that he did not want me to become something worse.
It was not for his sake but for the world's.
I clenched my jaw and forced my awareness inward. The vortex resisted, It did not want compression. It wanted to expand, to consume but I pushed through it.
The cultivator staggered mid-air, clearly weakened. The abyss around us is sealed completely.
We slammed into the solid ground. Stone shattered under the impact and dust erupted into the air.
For several long seconds, neither of us moved. I lay on my back, staring up at a sky no longer filled with golden eyes or descending seals.
The tribulation clouds were now gone. The heavens had finally withdrawn but something was wrong...Very wrong. I could feel it in my dantian. They remembered the structure of his Qi, the way it was stable.
Instead of letting the vortex tear upward, I forced it downward, compressing both my Devouring Qi and the fragments of his sword intent into my dantian. The pain was indescribable...It felt like crushing a storm into a glass sphere.
My meridians screamed. Something inside me cracked, but did not shatter.
The white stream from his body slowed then stopped. The cultivator compressed sphere of Qi within me which was no longer purely black nor was it white but it was streaked in gold, black, and white rotating slowly and unnaturally stable.
The Devouring Sovereign spoke quietly. "You have formed something unprecedented."
I pushed myself upright slowly. Across the shattered clearing, the righteous cultivator also rose, though less steadily than before. His aura was diminished, but not destroyed.
He stared at me carefully. "You have stepped beyond ordinary deviation," he said quietly.
The crack widened and from within it, a single drop of pure golden light fell. It was a seed that descended directly toward me.
The Devouring vortex in my core reacted instantly, pulsing in anticipation.
The cultivator's face paled. "That is not a punishment," he whispered. "It is a designation."
The golden seed entered my chest and something inside my dantian reacted in recognition.
"Heaven marked you and it withdrew immediately."
"What does that mean?" I asked before he could answer, the atmosphere had already changed profoundly. A tremor grew through the spiritual fabric of the region and far above us, beyond visible clouds, there was a faint crack of golden light which reopened, smaller than before and more focused.
The cultivator's expression hardened. "Heaven has not withdrawn," he said quietly. "It is carefully observing."