Chapter 13: Baptism Under the Gaze of the Path-Devourer
The massive Void Herald descended slowly over the rocky plateau of Skull Rock. The midday sun still spat relentless fire over the Dragon Bone Desert, distorting the horizon with waves of suffocating heat.
As the ship's heavy ironwood hatch opened, the dry, blistering air hit the members of the Morningstar Clan like a slap of raw reality. This was no paradisiacal refuge; it was a trial of extreme survival.
Samael was the first to step onto the white, calcified sand.
His figure was imposing. Standing at 1.90 meters tall, with his long white hair blowing lazily in the hostile wind and his black combat robes lined with imperial white details, he looked like the very incarnation of a monarch claiming new territory. His neon violet eyes, flashing with crimson notes, scanned the horizon. Through the soles of his boots, his new Dragon Physique felt the faintest tremor beneath the surface, as if something of continental proportions were shifting deep within the earth.
In his left hand, the Dragon Bone Compass throbbed with an ominous, ocher glow.
"It is still hunting us," Samael warned, his deep, cold voice resonating loud enough for the entire clan to hear. "The Path-Devourer hasn't forgotten that we tore off a piece of its claw. And the Valois hounds won't take long to catch the scent of our blood. Listen well: training here isn't just to get stronger. It's so you don't die."
Behind him, Grand Elder Lilith walked down the ramp. Her pale skin held a subtle ashen glow under the desert sun, and her white hair, streaked with rebellious silver and reddish strands, cascaded over her smoky red robes. She surveyed the dunes with her dark red eyes, evaluating the terrain like a deity of war about to incinerate a world.
"No one separates from the central formation," Lilith ordered, her voice shedding all the maternal warmth she reserved for her nephew, adopting the tone of a ruthless commander. "The sand swallows the weak and devours the overconfident. If I see anyone wander off without permission, I will break their legs myself so they don't jeopardize the rest."
Before the disciples could begin unloading the heavy supplies, a sharp, violent vibration rippled through the rocky plateau.
The millennial silence was shattered by the sickening screech of stone against stone. From a fissure near the massive "teeth" of the rock skull, an abomination emerged. It was a Basalt Scale Viper, a colossal beast fifteen meters long. Samael's System immediately identified it as a Superior Beast (Early Grade 3). Its body wasn't covered in skin, but in thick, impenetrable plates of volcanic rock.
Terror paralyzed the younger disciples. Elder Torian, with his Pure Metal affinity, stepped forward and unsheathed his saber, ready to dismember the creature. Elder Marcus, the silent and unbreakable "anvil" of the clan, was already channeling Earth Qi to raise a wall.
Samael raised a hand, stopping the two veterans dead in their tracks. His violet eyes settled on his vanguard.
"Kael. It's yours."
The redhead stepped forward. Kael wore dark red and black combat robes that contrasted sharply with the pale sand. His expression was noble and serious, but his golden eyes betrayed the boiling excitement in his blood: he loved to fight, perhaps a little too much.
"Remember, cousin," Samael warned, crossing his arms. "Against a Grade 3 basalt shell, the brute force of a Qi Sea is useless. Don't seek to destroy; seek to separate. The desert does not reward excess, only absolute precision."
Kael nodded, wiping a drop of sweat from his brow. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, Whisper of the North.
The viper hissed, opening jaws lined with venomous crystals, and attacked. It didn't bite; it launched a sonic shockwave and a barrage of stone spikes at blinding speed.
Kael didn't block. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and let the Wind Essence he had assimilated from Silas burn through his meridians. His body turned ethereal. He sidestepped—a footwork so fluid and excruciatingly fast that it left behind an afterimage. The sonic wave and the spikes obliterated the spot where he had stood a millisecond prior.
Kael appeared right at the massive serpent's flank. His golden eyes scanned the overlapping scales of basalt rock until he found the single weak point: a tiny fissure in the neck where the plates joined to allow mobility.
"Sword Intent: Silent Blade."
It was a flash of pure, cold wind. An invisible arc, concentrated to a microscopic level, slipped perfectly between the basalt plates. There was no massive explosion, no clash of energies.
The viper's massive rock head slowly slid off its neck and fell heavily onto the sand with a dull thud, rolling to a stop just feet away from Kael's boots.
Kael sheathed his sword. His hands trembled slightly, and his breathing was heavy. He had spent nearly forty percent of his Qi on that single, perfect evasion and lethal strike. The difference in realms demanded a brutal physical toll.
"Efficiency, not a spectacle," Samael approved, nodding slowly.
However, the Patriarch's violet eyes were not celebrating the victory. He noticed how the tremor beneath his feet was subtly intensifying. The dark, sulfurous blood pouring from the viper's decapitated neck wasn't pooling; the white sand was absorbing it almost instantly, with an unnatural voracity. Something immensely larger and older was feeding on the scraps and the fear in the depths.
Without wasting a second, Samael walked over to the corpse, plunged his Void-coated hand into the creature's chest, and extracted its Beast Core, which pulsed with pure Earth Qi.
"Everyone inside. Now," he ordered.
The retinue moved into the "jaws" of the massive stone skull. The interior was fascinating and oppressive in equal measure. The walls weren't common stone; they were formed of crystallized obsidian, polished by the fire of ancient dragons. The place completely blocked the wind and the sand outside, but the accumulated heat inside was suffocating, thick with an extremely dense, primordial Yang energy.
In the center of the group, the twins pressed forward, leaning on each other. The suffocating heat and the pure Yang energy of the environment clashed violently with the Taboo Red Destiny of their fragile bodies, causing them to sweat profusely.
Violeta, the older sister, wore light blue and silver robes that now clung to her pale skin from the sweat. Her silvery-white hair fell over her delicate face. She opened her eyes, revealing her striking heterochromia: one neon violet eye and the other a diamond blue as cold as a glacier. She surveyed the surroundings with a calculating coldness, her deeply Tsundere and distant attitude activating as a defense mechanism against the pain.
"Stop complaining about the sand," Violeta hissed at her younger sister, though her hand squeezed Eris's with desperate, protective tenderness.
Eris, beside her, scoffed. The younger twin, with the tips of her white hair dyed bright red and wearing red and white robes, possessed inverted heterochromia: one crimson red eye and the other violet with reddish flashes. Unlike the cold Violeta, Eris was an explosive whirlwind. Despite the fever consuming her, she looked around the obsidian cave with a wild smile.
"I'm not complaining, Vio," Eris retorted, bearing her teeth in a defiant grin. "I was just thinking this place would be perfect for setting something on fire. Or someone."
Seraphina walked behind them, ensuring they didn't stumble. Her long, bluish-silver hair seemed unaffected by the heat, and her deep, almost translucent blue eyes, outlined by a subtle silver ring, radiated the serenity of an Empress evaluating her new court. She didn't wear the Ice Crown of her past life, but her sheer presence was enough for the disciples to instinctively step aside as she passed.
"Conserve your energy, girls," Seraphina advised them, her voice an oasis of calm and diplomacy amid the group's tension. "The true fire is only just about to be lit."
Samael reached the exact center of the massive obsidian cavern. He pulled out the Gravity Pagoda's Formation Core, the core of the freshly hunted viper, and the heavy bag containing the 2,000 pure spiritual stones looted from the Valois.
"I invest the Grade 3 core and the 2,000 spiritual stones as base fuel," Samael declared aloud. "System, anchor and activate the defense and training formation."
[DING!]
[Fuel detected. Obsidian Yang environment synergy detected.]
[Resource Investment Multiplier: x30.]
[The 'Gravity Pagoda' facility has merged with the local geography and evolved into: "Celestial Void Tempering Chamber".]
The bronze core sank into the obsidian floor. Immediately, lines of golden and black light raced across the walls, ceiling, and floor of the entire cavern, sealing it like an impregnable fortress.
"Increase gravity to 3x. Filter the impurities from the air and concentrate the Qi," Samael commanded.
The change was instantaneous and brutal.
Gravity tripled. All thirty-seven disciples fell to their knees or slammed face-first against the black obsidian. The air was driven from their lungs. They felt as if their own blood had suddenly become boiling lead surging through their veins. Several of the youngest vomited bile onto the floor; others felt their noses begin to bleed from the crushing pressure.
Samael turned to face them. He, too, was under the array's effects. The golden veins in his neck bulged from the strain, but, relying on his Dragon Physique and the sheer stubbornness of a Sovereign who refused to bow, he remained perfectly on his feet, standing tall, enduring the torture in silence to set the example.
"You have exactly three months before the Valois hounds manage to cross this desert," Samael declared, his deep voice bouncing off the oppressive chamber walls. "You will train here in groups, day and night, rotating only to hunt and eat. If you feel your meridians burning, let them burn; it is the only way your bodies will be reborn stronger. If you collapse, you get up. If you cannot get up... then you will remain as dust in this cave."
Elder Marcus, sweat dripping from his hard jaw, nodded in silence, his unbreakable will accepting the challenge like the anvil he was. Torian unsheathed his sword, leaning on it to slowly push himself up, a fierce grin spreading across his face.
Lilith, enduring the 3x gravity with military grace, took immediate logistical control.
"Sela, Livia, come here," the Grand Elder ordered.
From the literal shadows of the cave, Sela emerged. The elder with the dark affinity had hair and eyes as black as coal, and a slender, athletic figure that moved with the absolute stealth of a nocturnal predator. She was analytical and silent, an assassin who preferred surgical elimination to the glory of frontal combat. Beside her walked Livia, the healer with the wood affinity; serene, compassionate, and surrounded by a faint aura of green life, but whose eyes hid an iron determination willing to kill if anyone touched the "sprouts" of the clan.
"Sela, you will organize the hunting patrols outside. Livia, you will be in charge of treating muscle tears and preventing them from dying of overexertion in the chamber," Lilith decreed. "In here, age or time in the clan grants no rank. Only the merit of survival will dictate who eats first. Understood?"
A chorus of affirmative, albeit breathless, responses filled the room. The air vibrated with anxiety, fear, and a ravenous hunger for power.
One of the junior elders, coughing blood from the pressure, looked up at Samael.
"Patriarch... What if that giant monster... the Path-Devourer... decides to come for us while we're locked in here?"
Samael stared at him. His violet eyes, devoid of any hesitation, were as hard and cold as quartz.
"Then, when we finish our training... the Path-Devourer will learn the meaning of true terror."
At nightfall, while the first group of disciples ground their teeth trying to take a single step inside the Celestial Void Tempering Chamber, the surface of the desert hundreds of kilometers away trembled.
Samael, meditating in the center of the 5x gravity array, his bare torso drenched in sweat and his draconic scales gleaming, opened a single eye.
Thanks to the subtle thread of killing intent he had left on the beast's broken claw, a fleeting, terrifying image crossed his mind: He saw a gigantic blue eye, surrounded by ancient runes, slowly opening beneath tons of white sand, staring blindly in the direction of Skull Rock. The monster hadn't forgotten them; it was just waiting for them to tenderize.
Simultaneously, in the freezing foothills separating the northern empire from the desert, an elite squadron halted its march.
There were twenty riders clad in red and black armor that looked like coagulated blood. In the center of the formation, the Commander of the Valois Blood Hunters held the thick iron chain of his mount. It wasn't a horse. It was a mutant spiritual hound, a grotesque abomination of cooked flesh with three eyeless heads and flared nostrils that smoked with acid.
The Commander pulled a scrap of burnt, bloody cloth from his tunic, recovered from the Liu Manor Massacre. He brought it up to the mutant hound's snouts.
The three-headed beast sniffed the drop of Morningstar bloodline blood. It let out a guttural howl that froze the dunes and began to pull wildly at the chain, pointing directly toward the southern sea of bones.
"The Patriarch and the Ancestor have spoken," the Valois Commander growled, his eyes shining with murderous fanaticism behind his helm. "They want the head of the pale brat and the two white-haired girls intact. Break formation. Tonight, the desert will know the true scent of Morningstar blood."
The hunt had formally begun. The sand vibrated beneath the weight of the Path-Devourer, and the peace inside the obsidian cave was nothing but a fragile, fleeting illusion of glass.