’If I can absorb the spatial Qi directly... coat myself in it the same way I coated Bloodfang with it... maybe I can weaken the pull.’
It was the only idea he had. With no better option, he acted.
Drawing upon his newly deepened Comprehension of Space, Stan reached out to the surrounding spatial Qi. Instead of channeling it into his weapon, he pulled it toward his own body.
The ambient Qi flowed across his skin. He compressed it into a thin, dense layer that clung to every inch of his body like a second skin.
The coating resonated with the chamber’s spatial fabric.
Rather than existing as a foreign object within space, his body became, in a localized sense, an extension of it.
Instantly, the pull weakened, not completely but dramatically. Understanding flashed through his mind.
The whale’s devouring force was not targeting living beings. It was consuming space itself. Everything caught within that space was merely dragged along toward the expanding void. This much was pretty obvious.
But by coating himself in spatial Qi that perfectly resonated with the chamber, he had made his body temporarily indistinguishable from the surrounding fabric of space.
To the whale’s devouring field, he was no longer a separate object resisting its pull. He was simply part of the space being drawn forward.
Instead of fighting against the suction, he moved with the surrounding spatial flow, reducing the force acting upon him to only a fraction of what it had been.
At that very moment, the system responded.
[Your Comprehension of Space has increased!]
[Your Comprehension of Void has increased!]
[Comprehension of Space: 15%.]
[Comprehension of Void: 3%.]
[Affinity with Space: 15%.]
[Affinity with Void: 3%.]
With the pull acting on him greatly reduced, Stan ran with everything he had.
He accelerated with every scrap of speed his body could produce. The Qi coating held.
Behind him, the whale opened its jaws even wider and lunged forward. Its great black maw swallowed the space before it in a continuous erasure, closing the distance between them at a terrifying speed.
Stan reached the portal at a full sprint and threw himself through. His body passed into the blue light of the portal...
Behind him, the portal collapsed shut with a single, soundless snap.
The whale’s field of absence, sealed on the other side of the closing portal, could no longer consume its way forward. Stan crashed onto solid stone, rolled several times, then came to rest on his back, gasping for breath.
The ambient Qi coating still clung to his skin. Every muscle in his body burned from the desperate sprint, while the wounds from his previous battles throbbed in protest.
’I made it... I fucking made it!!! I didn’t die?!!’
No words could describe the relief flooding through him.
The sense of death he had felt from the whale was several times greater than what he had experienced against the werewolves. It even surpassed the overwhelming pressure Camilla had once made him feel.
He had never been happier simply to be alive.
Above him, the ceiling of the new chamber glowed with a soft, welcoming golden light.
The familiar voice returned, distant yet unmistakably pleased.
"Well done, kid. You survived the third trial. The rest gets more interesting."
Stan let out a short, breathless laugh before allowing his head to fall back against the stone.
’Fuck you! You’re clearly toying with my life! "More interesting," my ass!’
’Fuck... fuck... fucking hell!!!!’
He was beyond annoyed, but there was nothing he could do about it. By now, he had already concluded that the mysterious voice possessed terrifying spatial abilities, making resistance utterly impossible.
Since he had no choice, Stan decided to enjoy the brief moment of peace while it lasted... before asking what the voice meant by "more interesting."
But before Stan could catch his breath, the space around him folded once more.
The gold-lit chamber vanished and he found himself inside a temple.
Or, more accurately, inside what had once been a temple.
The structure lay in ruins. Vast broken pillars rose toward a shattered ceiling. Weathered stone walls, carved with intricate ancient patterns, had been half-eroded by whatever passed for time in this place. Sections of the floor had collapsed into deep, lightless pits. The air was perfectly still. The silence was profound. Whatever had happened here had happened an unimaginably long time ago, and nothing had disturbed the aftermath since.
Beyond the temple’s broken walls, Stan could see the remains of an entire city.
Ruins stretched across the plain in every direction, the skeletons of countless buildings, the faint outlines of streets, and the toppled remains of towering statues that had once stood as monuments to something long forgotten. The sheer scale of the city hinted at a civilization of extraordinary sophistication. Its architecture was unlike anything he had ever seen. The precision of the stonework and the complexity of the carvings suggested a level of craftsmanship that even modern engineering would have struggled to replicate.
And everywhere were bones.
Stan walked slowly into the temple’s central hall before coming to a stop..The floor was carpeted with skeletons.
Not dozens but in thousands.
They lay exactly where death had claimed them, some sprawled across the stone, some frozen in the midst of an attack, others collapsed atop the remains of their enemies. Their bones had been bleached white with age, yet they remained preserved with unnatural perfection. Tattered remnants of robes still clung to many of the skeletons. Around them lay weapons of every kind, swords, spears, staves, bows, and strange artifacts Stan couldn’t even identify.
Stan crouched beside the nearest skeleton and examined it carefully.
The first skull was human. The next skeleton, three paces away, was not. Its cranium was longer, its jaw lined with two prominent canine fangs that remained intact even after death.
’A vampire.’
The next skeleton was unmistakably lupine.
’A werewolf?’
The one beyond it possessed the light, hollow bone structure of what could only have belonged to a hawk-lineage beastkin/demjhumans. Farther ahead lay a fox-lineage beastkin. Then a serpent-lineage one.
Every one of the great vanished races. All of them were here. All of them were dead.
Yet despite their differences, they all shared one thing in common. Most of the skeletons still emanated a faint, lingering pressure.
It was the residual aura of cultivators who had died with immense power still contained within their bodies, the echoes of their strength refusing to fade completely, even after countless ages. Stan’s newly awakened Qi senses perceived those remnants as heavy, cold, and unmistakable.
Even in death, the aura radiating from some of these remains was so overwhelming that they made him seem no more significant than an insect.