The descent through the layers was not a fall.
It was more like memory, each layer a different register of the same fundamental reality, pressing around him as he passed through it. The silver-tree First Layer, the enormous-shadow Second Layer, the vast city Third Layer, the burning-sky Fourth Layer that no previous Portal run had reached, and the deep-stone Fifth Layer where the rock itself carried a slow geological awareness. Each layer was a texture that his Void Core absorbed, processed, and moved through.
The relay chain held. Nyx was at the far end, having transited ahead to establish the Fifth Layer anchor, and as Liu Yun's physical form descended along the chain he could feel each node. The Einherjar, the Myth-Born Echoes, Stormward at the Fourth Layer holding steady with divine patience, Nyx at the Fifth holding with four-thousand-year certainty.
The Sixth Layer boundary arrived as a wall of pressure.
Not physical, but ontological. The pressure of a barrier that existed to separate what Bael claimed as his domain from everything beyond it. It resisted not his body but his intent, reading the nature of a Void Sovereign and rejecting it.
He spent forty seconds at the boundary, feeling the resistance, mapping its structure with precision, searching for the weakness Mira had described.
He found it. The boundary was uneven, thinner at points aligned with the natural energy flow between layers.
He struck the weakest point with everything he had.
The boundary registered it as a fracture. A natural stress event. The dimensional anchor guardian, designed to detect deliberate Void transit, classified it as harmless.
Liu Yun stepped into the Seventh Layer.
It was a throne room the size of a continent.
The space went beyond grandeur. The ceiling stretched like a sky of molten darkness lit by crimson without source. The floor was a plain of polished obsidian extending to a curved horizon, suggesting a spherical space of impossible scale.
At the center, distant yet immediate, was Bael's court.
The first guardian found him three minutes after entry.
It was a primordial demon, ancient beyond classification. Its form was a towering fusion of darkness and fractured bone, its aura a deep red approaching black. When it focused on him, the attention struck like a physical force.
"Void-born," it said. "You descend to your death."
"I descend to a conversation," Liu Yun replied.
He deployed Nyx. The battle began.
The first guardian matched S-rank power, roughly equal to Liu Yun's individual output but far below the combined force of Nyx and Stormward, both brought into the layer through the relay chain.
The fight lasted six minutes.
The guardian was powerful, resilient, and resistant to conventional damage. It was not prepared for a Void General applying simultaneous extraction pressure while a divine entity blocked every escape path.
He extracted it.
Five remained.
The second and third guardians arrived together. Corrupted divine entities, coordinated with the efficiency of long partnership. Faster than the first, their attacks disrupted shadow-substance directly, damaging his army in ways standard demons could not.
He adapted.
Instead of direct combat, he deployed Shadow Domain. The suppression field slowed them, weakening their movement and power. Outside their range, he and Nyx controlled the engagement.
Under suppression, their strength became insufficient.
He extracted both.
Registry count: 351.
The remaining three retreated toward the court center. They were adjusting, reorganizing after centuries without facing a Void Sovereign.
He pressed forward before they could stabilize.
Guardians four and five fell under Sovereign's Authority. His Void Energy surged, doubling in intensity, shadows operating at peak efficiency. Their defenses collapsed before they could fully form.
Guardian six, the dimensional anchor, was different.
Its function was to disrupt void control itself. In its native layer, that ability intensified. When engaged, it destabilized his shadows faster than he could restore them.
He stopped using the army.
He fought alone.
For twelve minutes, Liu Yun, now level 41, with S-rank combat capability and amplified Void Affinity, fought the anchor using only his blade and Void Step. Movement, precision, timing. No army, no support. Only control.
It was the hardest fight of his life.
He won.
[GUARDIAN 6 EXTRACTED — DIMENSIONAL ANCHOR DISSOLVED][PATH TO BAEL'S COURT: OPEN]
He stood in the Seventh Layer, armor damaged, Void Core at fifty-three percent, the path ahead clear.
Then Liu Yun walked forward.