The entire spatial construct fragmented into countless shimmering shards before dissolving into nothingness. The illusion of the corridor collapsed around him like a mirror struck by a hammer.
Behind it lay the real path.
Stan slowly straightened, breathing heavily, his fist still raised, then he looked around.
He was standing in a much larger chamber now. The corridor had merely been an enclosure imposed upon a room that had always been three or four times its true size. The actual chamber stretched far into the distance, its walls barely visible. The ceiling soared high overhead. At the far end, a broad passage led deeper into whatever place he had, apparently, been trying to reach all along.
His gaze dropped to his fist.
His knuckles were scraped and slightly bloodied, but the strike had accomplished exactly what he had needed it to.
Yet he also knew... The blow had not been entirely his own.
His current strength should never have been enough.
He was only at the Initial Stage of the Genesis Realm. His Qi reserves were still shallow. Even with the amplification provided by the Qi Detonation Art, the combined force of his attack should not have been capable of fracturing space itself.
Something within the corridor, or perhaps within the very architecture of this place, had allowed the barrier to break.
His strike had merely been the trigger. Not the cause. Someone had been watching. Someone had allowed him to succeed.
’I know you’re watching... Stop playing with me.’ He waited.
Silence lingered for several breaths. Just as he was about to speak again, a voice echoed throughout the chamber.
It came from nowhere. It carried no discernible direction, no accent, no age, no gender.
Rather than traveling through the air, it seemed to resonate directly within his consciousness.
"Good."
Stan spun around instinctively, searching for the speaker, but there was no one.
"Space deceives the weak." The voice paused. "But overwhelming power can shatter deception."
Another pause followed before it spoke once more; "Remember that."
Stan frowned. "Who are you? Are you the one who brought me here? What do you want?"
The cold, detached voice sounded almost amused.
"Patience, kid... Patience."
Stan’s expression tightened. "I know I didn’t accomplish that with my own strength. You helped me. So why bring me here? What is this place? And why are you helping me?"
A long silence followed. Finally, the voice answered. "This is an inheritance and I am not helping you, You have merely learned what the corridor was created to teach."
’An inheritance?!’ Stan’s heart skipped a beat.
Even so, he forced himself to remain composed, letting out a dry laugh. "That’s incredibly vague. So the lesson is that brute force breaks space? Why would you want me to learn something like that?"
The voice answered calmly. "Brute force breaks space only when one possesses enough of it. If your strength is insufficient...understanding becomes your only weapon. And understanding is precisely what the corridor exists to teach."
Stan fell silent. His eyes narrowed as he replayed every moment inside the corridor. The walls absorbing his earlier strikes.
The faint ripples in the air he had initially overlooked.
The increasingly visible fractures after each successive attempt.
And finally... The last punch that had shattered the illusion itself. It had never been a maze. It had been a lesson, or to put it simply it was both.
A carefully constructed teaching mechanism that had forced him, through repeated failure, observation, and adaptation, toward a single realization.
Everything he had been trying to destroy was only a projection.
The true foundation had always been the space beneath it.
The voice spoke once more. "Power accomplishes what understanding cannot. Understanding accomplishes what power cannot. The truly invincible possess both."
Stan stood motionless. The meaning settled deep within him. Not merely as knowledge... But as instinct.
He felt something click inside his mind. His perception expanded.
The chamber no longer felt like a simple room enclosed by walls. Instead, it became a three-dimensional region defined by the emptiness between those walls. For the first time... He could perceive space itself. Its subtle texture, Its invisible density. The gentle flow of ambient Qi drifting through it. And beneath it all... The faintest traces of Void.
An endless absence woven through existence itself like invisible threads supporting reality.
At that very moment, the system responded.
[Comprehension of Space acquired.]
[Comprehension of Void acquired.]
[Comprehension of Space: 5%.]
[Comprehension of Void: 1%.]
[Affinity with Space: 5%.]
[Affinity with Void: 1%.]
’So that’s what he was trying to show me...’
’I understand now.’ Stan lifted his head and looked toward the wide passage at the far end of the chamber.
The mysterious voice remained silent.
Without another word, he walked forward, disappearing into the passage beyond.
...
The next chamber contained the first of the guardians. They were not ordinary beasts.
The first to emerge were four sleek, gray creatures, vaguely wolf-shaped, yet possessed of an unnatural stillness that made them seem wrong even when standing motionless. Their fur shimmered faintly, distorting the air around them, while their pale-blue eyes glowed with an eerie intelligence.
Then they moved. Or rather... They disappeared.
Each wolf vanished from its position and reappeared several meters closer in a single, discontinuous jump. There was no acceleration. No blur of motion. No transition between one point and the next. It was as though the distance separating them from Stan simply ceased to exist.
His mastery recognized the phenomenon instantly.
’I should call them Rift Wolves. Since they’re short-range spatial displacement predators.’
He barely had time to summon Bloodfang from his inventory before the first wolf materialized at his flank. He was barely able to intercept the attack...
A claw still tore across his ribs, leaving a shallow wound that burned far more fiercely than its depth should have allowed. Reacting on instinct, he drove his right-hand dagger forward.
Bloodfang slid effortlessly through the wolf’s throat, meeting the same unnervingly little resistance it had against the polar bear.
The beast died instantly. The remaining three appeared around him in the very same heartbeat.
The next several minutes were brutal.
Stan fought with everything he had. Every parry, every counter, every step was guided by the mastery etched into his mind. He wasn’t fighting creatures that crossed space.
He was fighting creatures that ignored it. They simply materialized wherever the battlefield favored them.
He was wounded again and again. A slash opened his left forearm. A bite passed within a hand’s breadth of his throat. A claw ripped through his thigh deeply enough that every subsequent step sent pain lancing through his leg.
Still... He endured. One wolf fell. Then another. Then the third.