The annihilation array’s golden chains dissolved into phosphorescent ash. Lin Hao’s boots crunched over the Thunderbound Sentinel’s shattered remains—molten alloy joints still popping with residual voltage. The stench of vaporized copper wiring clung to his tongue.

  11:07 – Infiltration

  Warriors stampeded past, their torchlight flickering across tunnel walls veined with bioluminescent fungus. Lin Hao’s shadow merged with Fang Xiaoke’s as she entered the third left passage. Chen Wu’s dagger glinted ahead, its edge catching the fungal glow in sickly green highlights.

  The tunnel breathed. Air currents carried whispers of rusted clockwork and embalming resins. Lin Hao’s enhanced hearing isolated specific sounds—a mercenary three corridors east screaming as stone jaws snapped his femur, the wet squelch of treasure hunters looting a mummified attendant’s jeweled eye sockets.

  11:12 – Divergence

  Forked passages spread like cracked ice. Xie Ying’s group chose the central artery, their boots kicking up spores that fluoresced angry orange when disturbed. Chen Wu dragged Fang Xiaoke leftward, her sleeve snagging on a wall carving of lightning-wreathed sacrifice altars.

  Lin Hao paused. His knuckles brushed the carving—centuries of mineral deposits flaking away to reveal Wu Kuang’s skeletal grin beneath storm clouds. The stone hummed with faint static, raising arm hairs.

  11:15 – Pursuit

  Deeper chambers exhaled colder air. Frost crystals feathered Lin Hao’s eyelashes as he trailed the duo through a gallery of suspended storm vials. Each glass cylinder contained miniature cyclones that howled against their prisons when passersby neared.

  Chen Wu’s greed nearly proved fatal. Reaching for a vial, he jerked back as its containment field seared his fingertips black. “Cursed wards!” he spat, sucking blistered flesh.

  Fang Xiaoke pressed onward. Her blood—dried brown on bandaged palms—left smudges that made door seals hiss and recoil.

  11:23 – Revelation

  The tunnel dead-ended at a circular vault. Its bronze doors depicted twin storm dragons consuming their own tails. Fang Xiaoke trembled—not from cold, but genetic memory. “Ancestor’s sanctum,” she breathed, breath fogging the air.

  Chen Wu’s dagger found her throat. “Open it. Now.”

  Lin Hao stepped from shadow tendrils. “She dies, you lose the key.” The Devourer Sword’s event horizon hum drowned the man’s panicked heartbeat.

  11:25 – Threshold

  Fang Xiaoke’s blood droplet struck the dragon’s eye. Metal gears ground like tectonic plates shifting. The doors parted, exhaling air so ancient it made lungs ache.

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  Wu Kuang’s inner chamber defied logic—a cathedral-sized space where gravity tilted thirty degrees. Lightning staffs floated in lazy orbits above a dais holding the Saint’s skeletal remains. His ribcage cradled a pulsing core of captured thunderheads.

  Chen Wu lunged.

  His body disintegrated mid-stride—molecules unraveling in the dead Saint’s final defense grid. Fang Xiaoke collapsed retching as the scent of burnt pork fat filled the chamber.

  11:27 – Confrontation

  The skeleton’s jaw creaked open. “Dragon-kin.” The voice vibrated from every surface. “You reek of stolen divinity.”

  Lin Hao’s scales rippled discordantly. “I reek of survival.” He stepped through the disintegrating energy grid, boots leaving molten prints in stone.

  Wu Kuang’s phalanges tightened on his staff. Residual willpower crackled. “Let us test whose stench prevails.”

  Solarstone Harvest

  The tunnel’s air grew thick with the scent of heated minerals. Lin Hao’s boots crunched over gravel flecked with pyroclastic dust as he paused before the sealed chamber. Behind him, Chen Wu’s suspicion hung like swamp humidity—a palpable tension his acting skills barely masked.

  11:34 – Discovery

  The Obsidian Edge cleaved stone with a sound like splitting slate. Cracks spiderwebbed across the door, leaking crimson luminescence that painted Lin Hao’s face in bloody hues. His nostrils flared—the sharp tang of geothermal energy stung like sniffing chili powder.

  Inside, the chamber glowed. Thousands of solarstones lay piled like dragon eggs, each radiating dry heat that parched the throat. Bai scrambled across the hoard, crystalline fangs crunching through mineral matrices to extract molten cores.

  11:37 – Confrontation

  Boot soles scuffed stone behind him. Three mercenaries filled the doorway, their sweat-stained gambesons reeking of stale wine and ambition. The leader’s sword tip wavered—a nervous tremor betraying greed’s chokehold on reason.

  “Empty your spatial ring,” he demanded, flankers spreading to triangulate attack angles. “Or we’ll peel it from your corpse.”

  Lin Hao turned slowly. Solarstone glare etched his shadow across their faces—a wraith stretching claws. “Feed them,” he said.

  11:38 – Execution

  Bai’s cloak billowed. The mercenary leader had time to register simian fangs before a clawed fist pulverized his sternum. Rib fragments embedded in the chamber wall like shrapnel. Blood mist hung crimson in solarstone light, each droplet sizzling where it struck the heated floor.

  The remaining duo backpedaled. Sword swings carved useless arcs through air Bai had already vacated. Primate knuckles shattered knee caps with wet pops. A scream died mid-crescendo as furred fingers crushed a windpipe.

  11:41 – Consumption

  Lin Hao resumed harvesting. Solarstones clinked into his spatial ring—a metallic rain chorus beneath Bai’s wet feasting sounds. Kung Fu Fly monitored the corridor, compound eyes splitting infrared spectra to track retreating footfalls.

  The stones’ energy prickled his skin—a sunburn sensation accumulating with each addition to the hoard. By the thousandth stone, his meridians throbbed like overfilled boilers.

  11:47 – Pursuit

  Wolf Spider’s chittering report came as Lin Hao sealed the last solarstone. Chen Wu and Fang Xiaoke had reached an octagonal vault—its walls etched with lightning-worship frescoes. The girl’s blood smeared a central altar, reactivating mechanisms that made Lin Hao’s fillings ache with induced current.

  He moved, solarstone heat still radiating from his pores. The tunnel’s bioluminescent fungi dimmed in his wake—sensitive organisms recoiling from concentrated yang energy.

  11:53 – Threshold

  The vault door stood ajar. Inside, Fang Xiaoke trembled before a floating lattice of Saint-tier lightning—a defensive matrix that had vaporized Chen Wu’s dagger hand. His cauterized stump leaked pork-scented smoke.

  “Finish the ritual,” he snarled, pressing blade-edge to her jugular.

  Lin Hao stepped from shadow. Obsidian Edge’s event horizon hum drowned the man’s final curse. Chen Wu’s head hit floor tiles that drank his blood with thirsty capillary action.

  Fang Xiaoke stared at her liberator—and the spatial ring bulging with stolen sunlight.