Chapter Forty: Return to the Abyss
“Get out—!!”
Lin Mo’s roar, entwined with the thunderous outburst of energy, exploded in the abyss! Centered on the needlepoint of darkness at his chest, a gray-black tempest—blending the power of finality, deathly silence, Void Disintegration, and his own ferocious will—surged forth like a world-ending beast breaking free from its cage, erupting indiscriminately in every direction!
Boom—!!
Ripples of destruction spread, layer upon layer, through the depths of the abyss!
Above, the viscous, pitch-black torrent descending from the heavens was first to meet the onslaught. It was as if a red-hot iron bar plunged into congealed grease; wherever the tempest passed, the vanguard of the deathly flood was instantly decomposed, assimilated, and swept away! The gray-black tide surged against the flow, crashing ferociously into the main body of the torrent, unleashing a muffled, thunderous roar of annihilation! The tar-like energy exploded into countless swirling gray-black vortices, recoiling upward, tearing into the darkness above! The core strike from the Immortal Refining Furnace was forcibly repelled!
Below, the countless chains of dark red, formed from tainted blood and resentful souls, aimed at Lin Mo’s vital points, shattered and vaporized upon contact with the tempest’s edge, like fragile glass smashed against a spinning grindstone! The venomous howls of resentment were drowned out by the overwhelming roar of annihilation! The tempest, its momentum unabated, scourged the surface of the foul, arched blood lake below!
Hiss—!!
It was as though a burning brand pressed into snow! The vast surface of the blood lake erupted instantly in sky-darkening columns of blue-gray smoke, mingling the black fumes of resentment with filthy steam! Countless twisted faces of blood demons silently shrieked as they dissipated within the tempest! The entire lake visibly evaporated and flattened, losing an entire layer before the naked eye! The boiling, dark-red viscous blood at the center seemed to fade in hue, growing duller still!
Roar—!!
The core of the Immortal Refining Furnace—a colossal sphere of dark gold—emitted a horrifying screech, entwining agony and rage like never before! The sphere quaked violently, its surface crawling with countless writhing black sigils, flashing and flickering madly, even cracking in places! Not only had the tempest directly ravaged the blood lake—the “fuel pool”—but it also poured through the core fissure, widened previously by the backlash of the No-Return Sword and the tearing of the Reverse Seed, flooding deep into the sphere’s interior! The force, blending finality and disintegration, wrought havoc upon the binding sigils and the void source within, disrupting and destroying the very mechanisms sustaining its function!
Lin Mo’s body stood at the absolute center of this storm of destruction, the ultimate target for its backlash!
“Ugh—!” It was as though an invisible hammer struck him hard from within, his whole body curled into a shrimp, vomiting blood in great gulps, mixed with fragments of viscera and flecks of flashing gray, crystalline shards! The gray-black ice crystals covering his body, battered by the erupting energy, were riddled with cracks like a spider’s web, yet the Reverse Seed, driven by instinct to voraciously draw external energy for self-repair, forcibly mended and thickened them! Every breath was accompanied by the crunch of ice shattering and the agony of his meridians being torn by rampant energy!
His consciousness blurred at the apex of the tempest. The cold intent of the No-Return Sword Spirit was shattered by the flood of erupting energy, leaving only intermittent shrieks: [Break... Furnace...] The fragment of the Void Sutra’s disintegration power, flickering in its dying glow, was utterly spent in the clash of such violence, its surface riddled with cracks, nearly fused with Lin Mo’s ruptured meridians, tethered only by a faint, tenuous connection that barely held it from complete dissolution.
Only the “Reverse Seed” remained!
That spark of emerald light deep within the core of the gray mark, after devouring the immense power of the pitch-black torrent and being continuously stimulated by the leaking aura of primordial void from the core fissure, now—seemed to ignite completely!
The gray-black tempest was not merely a force of destruction, but also the Reverse Seed’s frenzied plunder—and subsequent expulsion! Each eruption and annihilation of energy was accompanied by a barbaric refining and transformation of the chaotic energies flooding into his body! A cold, sinister, yet somehow bearing the meaning of universal stillness and return to primal purity—a new power was being madly gestated at the core of the emerald light!
Lin Mo felt as though he were a clay vessel, burned atop a raging fire, endlessly filled from within by molten magma! The Reverse Seed greedily drew in every devourable force from outside—the pitch-black torrent, the resentments of the blood lake, even the spatial chaos—transforming them into purer gray-black tempests that erupted outward, while reserving the most essential “essence,” injecting it into the emerald glow within himself. Every cycle of absorption and expulsion made that emerald light more solid, its cold, sinister aura growing ever stronger! Meanwhile, his body and soul, as the “vessel,” were being swiftly transformed and assimilated in this terrifying “metabolism”!
The gray-black ice crystals covering his body thickened, their texture taking on the chill and hardness of some unknown metal, their surface etched with dark, arcane patterns similar to those on the No-Return Sword, exuding a mysterious, sinister energy. His pupils were completely enshrouded by the gray-black ice, losing all trace of human spirit, leaving only two flickering emerald glimmers reflecting the abyss of destruction.
Just then!
A faint, almost entirely drowned-out whistle of something slicing through the air!
Su Li!
Her broken body—missing a left arm and half a shoulder, her wounds sealed only by a layer of gray, deadened crystal—was suddenly flung out by chaotic energy currents at the moment the blood lake was scoured flat and its suction briefly disrupted! She tumbled like a leaf in a hurricane, colliding with the violently quaking sphere of dark gold, its core ravaged!
Her remaining right eye was tightly shut, her breath so faint it nearly vanished. Yet at her shattered chest, where once a pink jade ring hung (now turned gray), an incredibly weak, but impossibly pure, fragment of dark gold emanated its last resonance—the remnant power of the Void Sutra—through her torn garment!
This resonance was nearly invisible within the abyss, saturated with destructive energy.
However!
At the very instant Su Li’s ruined body was about to strike the surface of the sphere, where black sigils flashed madly—
Buzz!!!
The sphere, quivering violently, at the fissure assaulted by the tempest, the leaking aura of primordial void—suddenly halted!
At once, a chaotic surge, bearing intense repulsion and a twisted sense of disgust—born of kinship yet corrupted—spilled from the fissure! It was the will of the Immortal Refining Furnace’s core! It sensed the Void Sutra fragment’s resonance! That resonance, inherently linked to its imprisoned “source,” to the malevolent sword, to the ravenous “vessel”—triggered its primal rejection!
This halt and repulsion!
The black sigils on the sphere’s surface, poised to “welcome” Su Li’s body and instantly refine or shred it, flickered with an almost imperceptible glitch and delay!
With a soft splatter!
Su Li’s broken form, like a stone tossed upon water, was not instantly annihilated by the sigils, but instead—unimpeded—passed through the barrier, temporarily disabled by the core’s chaotic will, and struck the cold, rune-etched surface of the dark gold sphere!
The impact was gentle.
But at the instant her body touched the sphere!
The faint dark gold fragment at her chest flared!
A surge of weak, yet unfathomably pure, power—the “Void Heaven Force,” bearing the essence of annihilation and void—was injected into the dark gold sphere like a drop of water cast into boiling oil!
Boom—!!!
The entire sphere exploded with an unprecedented, chaotic roar, as if a powder keg had been ignited! The black sigils covering its surface flickered, twisted, and clashed! The fissure at its heart, beset by both the relentless tempest and the triggered Void Heaven Force, was torn as though by an invisible giant hand—
Crack—!!!
The fissure widened tenfold or more!
An immense, pure flood of primordial void, capable of dissolving the foundation of all existence, surged forth like a volcano unleashed after ten thousand years, pouring from the gaping fissure!
At the moment this flood appeared, time within the abyss seemed to freeze.
The whirling death stagnated.
The erupting tempest was suspended.
The furious will of the Immortal Refining Furnace’s core was reduced only to boundless terror!
And within Lin Mo, the Reverse Seed’s emerald glow, pregnant with new power, upon sensing this ultimate purity of primordial void, erupted in a greed so fierce it could tear apart galaxies!
The dense gray-black ice enveloping Lin Mo, along with the last trace of human light in his gaze—froze utterly. Only the emerald glow at his chest remained, like an evil eye opening within the abyss, locked unwaveringly onto the surging flood of primordial void.