Volume 2, Chapter 52: The Knot and the Glass
My nose itched.
It is funny how you can be a disembodied spirit floating inside a dimension of pure suffering, and your nose still itches. You would think leaving your physical body behind means leaving the small, stupid annoyances too. But no. The mind holds onto the mundane things. Maybe it is just a way to keep you grounded when the world stops making sense.
The white void didn't stay white for long. It quickly changed into a dark, narrow tunnel. It smelled exactly like wet coal and old sweat.
I was standing inside the Heart. Or rather, I was standing inside the collective memory of the people trapped in it.
The walls were made of thousands of thick, black threads. They pulsed like veins. I reached out and touched one.
Instantly, the dark tunnel vanished. I was looking through someone else's eyes. A miner. His name was Kael. He was swinging a heavy iron pickaxe at a wall of gray stone. His arms ached. He was thinking about what his wife was cooking for dinner. Then, the rock wall simply dissolved. A thick gray fog poured out of the stone. Kael dropped his pickaxe. He tried to scream, but the smog filled his throat. His lungs stopped working. The cold ate his mind.
I pulled my hand back. I was back in the dark tunnel, gasping for air.
"Breathe, Yuhao," Bai Xue's voice echoed in the dark. The Ice Jade Swan appeared beside me as a phantom of blue light. "Their pain is loud. Do not listen to it. Look for the center."
I nodded. I pushed past the memory threads. I didn't try to untangle them from the outside. You don't untie a massive knot by picking at the edges. You find the core and you cut it.
I walked deeper into the maze. The smell of coal faded, replaced by the sharp, metallic scent of ozone and blood.
At the very center of the maze, the black threads came together to form a thick, solid pillar. And standing in front of that pillar was a man.
He wore a pristine white uniform with gold trim. He had a perfectly straight posture and a calm, polite smile.
Chen Feng.
Or at least, a shadow of him. It was a mental projection left behind to guard the core. Who leaves a copy of their own mind just to gloat?
"You are late, Arbitrator," the shadow of Chen Feng said. His voice was smooth, completely lacking the frantic panic of a normal person. "The Vanguard already visited your little party. I hope the food was good."
I didn't answer him. I drew a blade of pure spiritual energy. It glowed with the violet light of my Gaze of Openings.
"You think you can save them?" Chen Feng laughed softly. "They are fuel, Yuhao. They have a purpose now. The Federation left them to dig rocks in the dark. I gave them the honor of opening the door to a new world."
"You talk too much for a battery," I said.
I lunged forward. The shadow raised a hand, and the black threads around us snapped like whips, trying to bind my arms and legs. I dodged the first two, but a third thread wrapped around my ankle. It burned like dry ice. The despair of a hundred dying guards flooded my mind.
But I didn't stop. I used the momentum of my fall to throw my spiritual blade straight at his chest.
While my mind fought in the dark, my body sat entirely defenseless on the cavern floor.
Through the sheer size of my Spiritual Core, I could feel the outside world. I felt the violent shaking of the cavern.
The Gatekeeper was a nightmare. It was a twelve-foot-tall titan made of jagged bone and black glass. It swung a fist the size of a carriage directly at my head.
"Not today!" Bei Bei roared.
He intercepted the punch. Black lightning exploded from his sword as he clashed with the glass fist. The impact sent a shockwave through the cavern that cracked the stone walls. Bei Bei's boots dragged through the dirt, digging deep trenches as he was pushed back. His arms went numb from the force.
The Gatekeeper didn't flinch. It just raised its other three arms.
And then, the room began to flood.
Thick, oily Abyssal water poured from the cracks in the walls. It hit the floor and started rising fast. It wasn't normal water. It carried the draining force. The moment it touched a rock, the rock turned to gray ash.
"The water is toxic!" Tang Ya yelled.
She slammed her hands against the ground. The emerald light of her life energy flared out, forming a bright green circle around my sitting body and the rest of the team. The black water hissed and boiled as it hit her radiant barrier, unable to break through. But the effort was draining her. Sweat poured down her face.
Xiaotao took to the air. Her Phoenix fire illuminated the massive cavern. She dove at the Gatekeeper, unleashing a torrent of pure, concentrated heat at its chest.
The fire washed over the monster. But when the flames cleared, the Gatekeeper was unharmed. Its black glass armor was too thick. The heat couldn't penetrate the shell.
"My fire can't melt it!" Xiaotao shouted, pulling back as one of the giant hands tried to swat her out of the air.
"We don't need to melt it!" Bei Bei yelled back. He shook the feeling back into his arms. "We just need to crack it! Xiaotao, I need a weak point! If I can hit a fracture with my lightning, the thermal shock will blow the armor wide open!"
"I need three seconds!" Xiaotao replied.
The Gatekeeper opened the vertical mouth on its chest. A low, vibrating hum filled the room. The sound hit Tang Ya's barrier like a physical hammer. The green light flickered violently.
"Hold on, Ya!" Bei Bei shouted. He charged the monster again. He didn't aim for the fists this time. He slid under a massive swing and slashed upward, aiming for the joints in the beast's knee. His black lightning sparked against the glass, leaving a tiny, barely visible scratch.
It wasn't much, but it was enough.
"There!" Bei Bei pointed.
Xiaotao didn't hesitate. She folded her wings and dropped from the ceiling like a red missile. She focused all of her Phoenix fire into the heel of her boot. She slammed her foot directly into the tiny scratch on the Gatekeeper's knee.
The extreme heat flooded the tiny fracture.
"Now!" she yelled, launching herself backward to avoid the blast radius.
Bei Bei was already there. He drove his sword straight into the glowing red crack. All the black lightning he had left poured into the wound.
The clash of extreme heat and sudden, violent electrical expansion was too much for the glass to handle. The Gatekeeper's leg shattered with a sound like a bomb going off. The giant monster roared, a horrible, metallic screech, and crashed to the floor.
Back inside the Heart, my spiritual blade sank into Chen Feng's chest.
He didn't bleed. He just looked down at the violet blade with a mild expression of surprise.
"You can break this anchor," the shadow whispered, its edges beginning to fray into gray smoke. "But a door has two sides, Yuhao. You are just locking yourself in the burning house."
"Then I guess I will just have to put out the fire," I said.
I twisted the blade. The shadow shattered into a million pieces of black dust.
With the guard gone, the central pillar of threads was exposed. I didn't hesitate. I raised my hand, and Bai Xue's gentle blue light wrapped around my fingers. I didn't cut the pillar. I pressed my hand against it and let the calming, oceanic energy flow into the knot.
I felt the connection snap.
It wasn't a violent break. It was like a stretched rubber band finally going slack.
The dark tunnel collapsed. The white void shattered.
I opened my real eyes.
I gasped, taking a massive lungful of stale cavern air. The heavy, suffocating pressure in the room vanished instantly.
I looked up. The giant, beating heart suspended above us turned completely gray. The sickly light inside it died. Then, the entire structure turned to ash and rained down on us like dirty snow. The souls trapped inside were gone. I didn't save them. But at least they were finally quiet.
The black water flooding the floor turned clear, losing its toxic bite.
A few feet away, the crippled Gatekeeper stopped moving. The Abyssal energy holding its broken body together evaporated. The remaining glass armor simply fell apart, leaving a pile of empty rubble on the floor.
"We did it," Tang Ya breathed. She dropped to her knees, her emerald light fading entirely. She looked completely exhausted.
Bei Bei leaned heavily on his sword, wiping sweat and ash from his forehead. Xiaotao landed softly next to him, her wings retracting.
I stood up slowly. My legs felt like they were made of lead. The right side of my face throbbed where the Gaze of Openings was closing.
"Is everyone okay?" I asked.
"I have had better dates," Xiaotao muttered, kicking a piece of the broken glass.
"The tether is gone," Bei Bei said, looking at the empty space where the heart used to be. "The portal is closed. We bought the northern ridge some time."
I looked at the ash covering my boots. We won the fight. But Chen Feng was right about one thing. They were just using the hushed as fuel. And there were a lot more abandoned towns along the border.
"Let's go home," I said. "We have a lot to tell the Professor."
End of Volume 2, Chapter 52