They were led to a chamber deep within the Obsidian Spire. The walls were etched with runes that absorbed all sound and light. Xarax stood at the doorway, his translucent body flickering. He didn't leave; he simply phased into the shadows, his yellow eyes remaining visible.
Fang Yuan looked at Kaelen and Zane, who were now placed on cold stone slabs. Lia stood nearby, her hands trembling.
"Master," she whispered through a soul-link, barely a flicker of energy. "The demon... he is counting our heartbeats."
"I know," Fang Yuan replied silently. "He is waiting for me to use my original power so he can report us. We cannot give him that satisfaction."
Fang Yuan approached the "Void-Sentinels." To the demon's eyes, he was just checking his weapons. But in reality, Fang Yuan was performing a desperate alchemy.
As a Rank 2: Space-Time Weaver, he began to pull the acidic, demonic mana from the very air of the room. He didn't repel it; he wove it into his own indigo threads. The threads began to change—they turned from a royal purple to a bruised, rotting violet-black.
He was infecting his own power system. It was a gamble that could permanently damage his cultivation, but it was the only way to create a "Demonic Signature" that would satisfy Xarax.
Suddenly, Fang Yuan felt a sharp, cold probe in his mind. Xarax was attempting a "Mana Trace." The yellow-eyed stalker wanted to see the "Core" of the Weaver.
Fang Yuan didn't block the probe. He welcomed it. But as Xارax's consciousness entered Fang Yuan's mana-pool, he didn't find the clean, logical threads of a Weaver. He found a chaotic, bubbling swamp of Void-Essence and demonic rot.
Xarax recoiled, his yellow eyes widening in the shadows. "Such... filth. You truly have embraced the end of all things, Pilgrim."
"The Void is not clean, Stalker," Fang Yuan said, turning toward the shadows. "Neither am I."