The Arena of Manifested Potential stretched before Qin Jiang, a testament to his path. The seamless dark Terracotta floor radiated deep earth and resolve beneath his boots. Gleaming Imperial Gold pathways traced the borders, whispering authority. Jade structures pulsed with harmony, while stark Obsidian bulwarks promised chilling defense. High above, the vortex of raw elemental earth and shadow – grinding plates, landslides, dust storms, pools of pure void – churned, the primal essence of the Terracotta Emperor Gen. The air hummed with the mineral tang of deep caverns and the crushing weight of compressed epochs. He stood, the Unmoving Mountain Throne, within a domain sculpted from his own soul's journey.
Silence, profound and absolute, held sway. Then, the air directly before him rippled. Not like water, but like stone under immense, localized pressure. The Terracotta floor buckled and flowed upwards, as if commanded by an unseen hand mirroring his own. From the rising earth, a figure coalesced.
Qin Jiang's flint-grey eyes, swirling with galaxies frozen in the face of this impossibility, narrowed infinitesimally.
The figure solidified. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Carved from the same bedrock certainty. Robes of sun-baked earth colour, identical to his own. Snow-white hair pulled back severely. A face mapped with time's fissures, framing eyes as hard and ancient as flint.
It was Qin Jiang.
Yet… not. The eyes held the same depth, but swirling within wasn't the patient weight of eons or the measured resolve of a guardian. Instead, they churned with a cold, relentless hunger – the insatiable ambition of conquest stripped bare of duty, the raw, tectonic fury of an emperor who consumed realms not to build, but to possess. This was Qin Jiang as he might have been, had the Terracotta Warrior's path bent solely towards dominion, had the Reawakenings chosen the Tectonic Wyrm or the Adamantine Colossus, shorn of the Sage or the Sanctifier. This was the Emperor of Unyielding Conquest, the shadow self who saw mountains not as foundations, but as obstacles to be ground into dust.
The doppelganger didn't speak. It merely tilted its head, a predator assessing prey, a conqueror surveying territory. The air between them thickened, charged with the unbearable pressure of two continental plates grinding against each other. The Imperial Gold pathways nearby groaned, warping under the conflicting gravitational fields radiating from both figures. The primal vortex above seemed to churn faster, agitated by the mirrored power below.
"You built fortresses," the Other's voice finally rasped, a sound like continents shearing apart, devoid of the deep resonance of Qin Jiang's, replaced by a chilling, metallic finality. "I shatter them. You guard anvils. I forge weapons from the ruins. You stand immovable. I am the landslide that moves mountains."
The Other raised a hand, mirroring Qin Jiang's own posture. But where Qin Jiang's gesture commanded stability, the Other's radiated annihilation. The Terracotta floor beneath its feet liquefied instantly, not into mud, but into molten slag that hissed and spat, radiating furnace heat that warped the air. Jagged spikes of compressed Obsidian, sharper than any natural formation, erupted around it like a crown of blades.
The challenge was absolute. Not a test of power, but a trial of purpose.
The air in the Chamber of Unseen Tides was thick enough to choke on. The cloying sweetness of decayed offerings warred violently with the acrid sting of high-voltage ozone and the thick, metallic reek of blood – old blood crusted on the ossified walls, and the fresh, coppery tang emanating from the figure standing motionless on the obsidian dais. Sickly green phosphorescence oozed from the walls, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to writhe with a life of their own. The grotesque fusion machinery – pulsing organic sacs intertwined with humming crystal conduits encased in black metal – throbbed like a diseased heart, its rhythm syncopated with the faint, psychic scream resonating from the dais.
The Abyssal Blood Puppet stood sentinel. Its form was a nightmare lattice of fused black bone and solidified void-stuff, articulated with unnatural precision. The jagged shards of crimson-black ichor embedded across its limbs and torso gleamed wetly, like obsidian dipped in fresh gore. The featureless, elongated obsidian head reflected the chamber's gloom in terrifying, distorted tableaus. But the true horror lay in its chest cavity: a single, malevolent violet eye – Su Jinxin's tormented soul-essence – now encased in a cage of seething, pulsating blood-light. It radiated a profound wrongness, a wound in reality that pulsed with despair, hatred, and a terrifying, ravenous hunger.
The ruling Triumvirate observed from their tiered obsidian platforms, their distinct auras pressing down on the chamber:
Tu Yan: Centermost, radiating ancient, crushing malice and the scent of scorched granite. His obsidian jaw remained clenched, his flint-grey eyes (visible beneath his deep cowl) calculating, assessing.
You Ying: To his right, woven from gloom, skeletal fingers tracing patterns that left trails of chilling shadow smelling of grave dust. Her focus was intense, monitoring the Puppet's psychic resonance.
Lie Yan: To Tu Yan's left, vibrating with volcanic fury, smelling of hot iron and violent ozone. His eyes, like banked coals, burned with impatient anticipation. "Enough observation! Let the abyss bite! Test the weapon, Tu Yan!" he rasped, the sound grating on the tense silence.
Tu Yan didn't turn. His grinding voice, like tectonic plates shifting, filled the chamber. "Patience, Lie Yan. A blade untested is a liability. A blade misunderstood is suicide." He raised a petrified-wood hand, not dramatically, but with absolute, chilling intent. "Puppet. Acknowledge."
The command wasn't sound; it was a psychic pulse, laced with the binding frequencies Gao Jian and Shen Min had woven into its creation, amplified by You Ying's shadow matrix. It slammed into the Abyssal Blood Puppet.
The reaction was instantaneous. The violet eye in its chest flared with incandescent hatred, the seething blood-light cage around it surging violently crimson. A wave of soul-chilling dread, now laced with that terrifying undercurrent of ravenous hunger, washed over the assembled elders, far more potent than before. Lie Yan grinned savagely. You Ying's fingers stilled, her shadowy form leaning forward slightly. Tu Yan remained implacable.
"Target designated," Tu Yan intoned, gesturing towards the far end of the vast chamber. Reinforced hatches slid open, revealing a reinforced testing bay. Within it stood a dummy – not polymer, but a solid replica of an Embodiment Stage Earth-Shaper warrior, forged from dense enchanted granite and plated with resilient spirit-steel. It radiated a palpable aura of defensive power.
"Destroy."
The command was simple. Absolute.
The Abyssal Blood Puppet didn't coil, didn't gather power visibly. Its featureless obsidian head simply lifted, a minute, unnerving adjustment. The violet eye blazed. The crimson cage around it pulsed once, violently.
Then, it vanished.
Not with speed, but with a terrifying negation of space. Where it stood, the air screamed. Jagged, black-purple cracks fractured reality itself, spiderwebbing outwards from the point of its departure, leaking cold void-static and a psychic whine that scraped against the mind. The scent of ozone became overpowering, mixed with the sudden, sterile chill of deep space vacuum. The spatial tears lingered for a split second, unstable and hungry, before snapping shut with a sound like shattering glass.
In that same impossible instant, the Puppet reappeared.
Not in front of the granite dummy. Behind it.
The transition was flawless, instantaneous. There was no blur of motion, no displacement of air – just the abrupt, horrifying presence of the nightmare construct where it hadn't been a heartbeat before. The spatial cracks it left at its origin point were still fading.
Its arrival coincided with its attack. One obsidian-void limb, sheathed in that crackling crimson-dark energy, lashed out. Not a punch, not a slash. A gesture. A contemptuous flick of its clawed hand towards the dummy's back.
The effect was cataclysmic.
The space around the dummy's torso imploded violently. The dense enchanted granite didn't crack or shatter; it vaporized in a microsecond under the combined assault of spatial collapse and ravenous blood-energy. The spirit-steel plates warped like tinfoil before dissolving into molten slag that sprayed outwards, sizzling on the reinforced bay floor. The sheer concussive force of the implosion wasn't outward; it was inward, compacting what remained of the dummy's lower half into a super-dense sphere of pulverized stone and metal no larger than a fist, which then dropped with a heavy thud.
But the horror wasn't over. As the spatial collapse faded, tendrils of that seething crimson energy, smelling fiercely of ozone and raw, metallic blood-hunger, lashed out from the Puppet's limb. They struck the dissipating cloud of vaporized granite and molten slag. Not to attack, but to consume. The energy siphoned the residual matter and latent Gen-energy from the destruction, pulling it back towards the Puppet. The jagged crimson-black shards across its form glowed brighter, pulsing with stolen vitality. The violet eye in its chest flared with a sick satisfaction amidst the hatred.
Silence descended again, heavier than before. The air stank of vaporized stone, molten metal, ozone, void-static, and the coppery tang of fulfilled hunger. The reinforced bay floor was scarred with a deep, circular depression and radiating cracks where space itself had buckled. The dummy was gone, reduced to a compacted sphere and a fading haze of annihilation.
Lie Yan threw his head back and unleashed a guttural roar of triumph that echoed off the ossified walls. "YES! See!? Utter annihilation! It feeds on the ruin it creates!"
You Ying drifted closer to the observation barrier, her shadowy form peering intently at the Puppet. "The void creates the vulnerability... the hunger consumes the remnants... strengthening the whole. The fusion... it is more stable than projected. The consumption stabilizes Jinxin's volatile essence." Her whisper carried a note of dark fascination.
Tu Yan remained silent for a long moment, his calculating gaze fixed on the Abyssal Blood Puppet as it stood amidst the devastation it had wrought, perfectly still once more, the crimson light around its core dimming slightly but fiercely present. The spatial cracks were gone, leaving only the lingering wrongness and the scent of destruction.
"Satisfactory," the eldest elder finally grated, the word carrying the weight of continents. "The scalpel cuts. The beast feeds. The key turns." He turned his obsidian gaze towards the pulsating holographic projection of the million-strong Bai Gu Jing Legion. "Prepare the first breach point. The Tide rises... and its vanguard walks through walls."