Dawn broke like fire through ice.
The sun clawed its way up the eastern horizon, painting the sky in streaks of crimson and gold. Beneath the brilliance, Li Yi and his companions stood at the edge of the Mistweaver Forest, their eyes fixed on the desolate path stretching toward the Twin Eclipse Mountains.
None of them spoke for a while.
Even the birds were silent.
Xue Lian was the first to break the stillness. "The records say nothing lives beyond this point. Just ghost winds and cursed soil."
Mo Ruyan checked the bindings on her saber and replied, "Perfect place for ancient secrets then."
Lan Qing'er, unusually quiet, clutched her scroll with both hands. "The Void Heir… if he's truly a counterpart to Li Yi, we're not just racing against time anymore. We're racing against fate."
Li Yi stepped forward, his Chaos Qi already circulating. His cultivation had risen again overnight—he had reached Nascent Chaos Realm, Middle Stage, and though the power surging through his meridians was immense, it brought with it a sense of urgency. His bloodline was accelerating his growth. Whether that was a blessing or a trap was still unclear.
He looked back once. "Let's go."
They passed into the gray wastelands.
The landscape changed rapidly. Trees withered into skeletal remains. The ground cracked beneath their steps. Blackened stones jutted out like broken bones from an ancient corpse. Wind howled through unseen valleys, carrying whispers in languages older than civilization.
They moved in silence, broken only by occasional pulses of abyssal Qi.
Every few miles, Xue Lian would cast a purification talisman to cleanse the area. These wards hissed and glowed with celestial fire, reacting violently to the foul energies seeping from the cracks in the ground.
By midday, they reached an ancient marker—a shattered monolith bearing the sigil of an extinct sect, the Radiant Void Temple. The name struck a chord in Li Yi's mind. His Chaos Core reacted with a faint hum.
He approached the stone and touched it.
In that instant, visions flooded his mind—echoes of a battle that had shattered the sky, voices screaming of betrayal, and a temple dissolving into a spiral of black light.
Then, silence.
He pulled his hand back. "This place was a battlefield."
Mo Ruyan stepped beside him. "From the war between the Upper Realm cultivators and the Abyssal Demons?"
He nodded. "Or perhaps older."
They pressed on.
By evening, they came upon the edge of a massive canyon—Abyssal Scar, as noted in the Oracle's map. It stretched across the land like a wound, miles wide and impossibly deep. Red mist swirled at its bottom, and from its depths, a hum vibrated their bones.
Across the scar stood the beginning of the Twin Eclipse Mountain Range.
Two peaks, black as night and crowned in stormclouds, rose into the sky like fangs. Lightning danced between them—silent, pulsing with strange rhythm.
"We camp here tonight," Li Yi said.
As night fell, they set up a barrier of protection talismans. Firewood crackled. Mo Ruyan remained on watch, while the others took turns resting.
Li Yi, however, sat in deep meditation.
The Chaos Core within him was growing more unstable—not dangerously so, but alive. It was reacting to something ahead, as though a buried truth was beginning to rise. His bloodline's memories stirred faintly, whispering of a forgotten path once walked by a creator long before time began.
His breath slowed. His awareness expanded.
In his mind's eye, he stood between the two eclipse peaks, watching as a gate—vast, dark, and circular—opened between them, releasing a flood of starfire and shadow. Two figures emerged from the gate. One carried a flame that birthed galaxies. The other carried a mirror that devoured light.
The vision ended.
He opened his eyes, drenched in sweat.
"They're real…" he murmured.
"The Ecliptic Gate."
—
Before dawn, they crossed the Abyssal Scar using a hidden path that snaked down and across the canyon. The mist below clawed at their legs, and shadows swirled within it. More than once, they glimpsed faces in the fog—twisted, broken remnants of ancient souls still bound to the battlefield.
By midday, they stood at the threshold of the Twin Eclipse Range.
The storm intensified. Lightning crashed endlessly overhead. Thunder rolled like a heartbeat.
"We're being watched," Xue Lian said.
Li Yi agreed. "Not by mortals."
They ascended the first ridge. The terrain fought them—quicksand valleys, Qi-dampening fog, and gravity fields that tried to tear them apart. Yet they advanced, cutting through the challenges with a unity forged in blood.
And then they reached the gate.
It lay embedded between the two mountain peaks, a massive circular seal carved from black obsidian and etched in celestial script. Nine silver locks shimmered around it, forming a sigil that pulsed in time with Li Yi's Chaos Core.
His hand rose, almost involuntarily.
As he approached, the central lock glowed.
"Don't touch it," Lan Qing'er warned, but it was too late.
Li Yi pressed his palm against the seal.
A blinding surge of light erupted from the gate, hurling them all back. The mountains roared. The air screamed. And then—
The seal vanished.
In its place, a staircase descended into the earth, forged from starlight and void.
A voice echoed from the depths.
> "You who carry the First Spark… enter and reclaim the Trial of Origin."
Li Yi looked at the others.
No one stepped forward. No one stepped back.
He nodded.
Then descended.
—
The stairway dropped them into a hidden world—an underground realm where gravity flowed sideways, time bent at odd angles, and the laws of Qi were rewritten. The space was lined with crystalline pillars, each inscribed with fragments of a language older than the Dao.
In the center stood a throne of chaos.
But it was empty.
Above it hovered a figure—tall, hooded, faceless. It radiated pressure beyond Immortal Ascension, beyond the God Realm. This was not a cultivator.
It was an echo of something divine.
It turned to Li Yi.
> "You have come," it whispered. "Too soon… or perhaps… too late."
> "The balance tips. The Void Heir awakens."
> "Let the Trial begin."
Darkness swallowed them.
And a new storm began.
---
End of Chapter 31