On the high platform, Elder Shen Ruoyi cleared her throat. The sound cut through the lingering tension like a knife.

"The exhibition matches are concluded," she announced, her voice carrying a new, unshakable authority. "The Azure Snow Sword Sect has demonstrated superior mastery and control. We claim the primary entry slots into the Progenitor Rift."

Elder Zhu looked like he’d swallowed a hot coal, but he gave a stiff, jerky nod. Elder Ming of the Void Whisper Sect simply inclined his head, his expression unreadable.

"Vanguard teams will form up," Elder Shen continued. "Azure Snow’s first team: Lin Tian, as appointed Vanguard, will lead. He will be accompanied by Bai Xueya, Su Lan, and Lu Cang."

Lin Tian glanced over at Lu Cang, who stood a little apart from the other Hidden Dragons. The tall disciple met his gaze and gave a single, firm nod. He’s solid, Lin Tian thought. Not flashy, but reliable. Good in a tight spot.

"The rift is unstable and operates on its own temporal and spatial laws," Elder Shen warned, addressing all the chosen disciples now. "The teleportation is chaotic. Expect to be scattered upon entry. Your first objective is to regroup with your squad using your team resonance tokens. The secondary objective is to secure any progenitor artifacts or insights you can find within the three-day window. Survival is not guaranteed. The environment itself is hostile."

She raised a hand. The three Heart-Seeing Mirrors behind the elders flared with light, their surfaces swirling not with mercury, but with a deep, starless void. The air in the center of the training ground began to warp, pulling light and sound into a single point.

A tear appeared in reality, edges crackling with unstable energy. It widened, revealing a glimpse of floating islands of rock draped with shattered architecture, lit by the violent flash of lightning that was the wrong color.

"First team, advance," Elder Shen commanded.

Lin Tian took a deep breath and feeling the twin threads of warmth and cold on his wrist where his bonds to Xueya and Su Lan hummed. He looked at his team. Xueya’s expression was one of focused readiness, her ice qi a calm glacier. Su Lan had settled into a watchful stillness, her new Emberheart Sage Physique a quiet furnace at her core. Lu Cang cracked his knuckles, a grim set to his jaw.

"Stay close on the jump," Lin Tian said. "If we get separated, don’t panic. Use the tokens. Move toward the highest concentration of ice or fire energy you sense. That’ll be one of us."

They nodded. Together, they walked toward the rip in the world.

The noise from the portal was a physical thing, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated in Lin Tian’s teeth. The air smelled of ozone and ancient dust. He stepped through first.

The sensation was not like the smooth teleports of the sect. It was like being sucked through a straw made of sandpaper. Reality shredded around him, colors and sounds and sensations blurring into a nauseating scream. He felt the presences of Xueya, Su Lan, and Lu Cang one moment, bright points of familiar energy, and the next they were yanked away, ripped into different streams of the chaotic flow.

Scattered. Just like she said.

He tumbled out of the void and into madness.

His boots hit uneven ground, skidding on loose gravel. He dropped into a crouch, his Ice Flame Qi flaring instinctively to form a protective shell around him.

Where...

He was on a chunk of rock, maybe fifty paces across. It floated in a vast, purple-tinged emptiness. Below him, above him, and on all sides, other fragments of a broken world hung suspended. Some were bare stone. Others held the ruins of buildings—collapsed towers, walls carved with faded runes, archways leading to nothing. The sky was not a sky, but a swirling canvas of bruised violet and electric green, shot through with silent flashes of crimson lightning that left afterimages on his eyes.

The air was thin and cold, but not with a natural cold. It was a draining chill that sought to leach the warmth from his spirit. Occasional gales of wind roared between the islands, carrying stinging grit and the faint, metallic taste of raw spatial energy.

This is the Progenitor Rift. The thought was less awe and more stark assessment. A broken piece of an older world. No rules.

His team resonance token, a smooth jade disc attached to his belt, was warm but its pulse was faint and directionless. The scattering had been severe. He closed his eyes, reaching out through his bonds.

He felt Xueya—a distant, sharp point of glacial silver, far to his left and down. He felt Su Lan—a warm, golden ember, further still, and moving. Both were alive, their signals strong but separated by what felt like vast gulfs of chaotic space.

Lu Cang’s presence was fainter, a muted echo of earthy, unrefined qi. He was out there too.

Regroup. That’s step one.

He stood, taking stock of his little island. The ruins here were minimal, just a few low, broken walls. A jagged stone bridge, half-collapsed, connected his island to a larger, temple-dotted fragment about a hundred feet away. It was the only obvious path.

He moved toward the bridge, his senses stretched to their limits. The silence was profound, broken only by the moan of the alien wind and the occasional deep crack from somewhere in the rift’s depths, like the world itself was settling.

He was halfway across the precarious bridge when the ambush hit.

It wasn’t subtle. A wave of blistering heat erupted from the temple ruins on the larger island ahead, a concentrated river of fire that aimed to engulf the bridge and him with it.

At the same instant, whispering tendrils of shadow, cold and insidious, snaked up from the abyss beneath the bridge, seeking to wrap around his ankles and freeze his qi.

Lin Tian didn’t hesitate. He kicked off the bridge stone, propelling himself upward as the fire washed over where he’d been. The shadow tendrils lashed at his legs. He twisted in mid-air, a surge of Ice Flame Qi coating his feet.

He stomped down, not on the shadows, but on the empty air, using a burst of force to change his trajectory. He landed in a roll on the far side of the bridge, just on the edge of the temple island.

Four figures stepped out from behind the broken pillars and crumbling walls.

Two wore the deep red robes of the Crimson Sun Sect. One was Zhu Yan, his face still twisted with humiliation and now burning with vindictive fury. Beside him was a woman Lin Tian didn’t recognize, her hands wreathed in coiling orange flames.

The other two were from the Void Whisper Sect. A man and a woman, both clad in grey that seemed to drink the light. Their movements were silent, their eyes flat and calculating.

"You bypassed the rules," Lin Tian said, his voice calm. He straightened up, brushing grit from his sleeves. "The exhibition decided the entry order. You weren’t supposed to be in here yet."

Zhu Yan spat on the cracked stone. "Rules? This is the Progenitor Rift. There are no rules here. Only strength. And you’re alone."

The Void Whisper man smiled, a thin, unpleasant stretch of his lips. "Our elders provided a... simultaneous entry vector. A minor spatial manipulation. The Azure Snow elders will never know. They’ll assume you fell to the environment."

"Which you will," the Crimson Sun woman added, her voice a low crackle. "We clear out the competition early. Our sects split the spoils."

Lin Tian felt the cold, logical anger settle in his gut. This wasn’t a duel. This was an assassination. They had used the rift’s chaos to cheat, to corner him away from his team.

He reached for his bonds, sending a pulse of alarm—danger, ambush, coordinated—down the links to Xueya and Su Lan. He felt their immediate, sharp concern, their wills turning toward his location, but the distance was vast. They wouldn’t get here in time.

He was on his own.

"Four against one," Lin Tian said, cycling his qi. The Ice Flame energy in his dantian stirred, a balanced vortex of opposing forces. "You must be very confident."

"We saw your women fight," Zhu Yan sneered, taking a step forward. A sword of condensed fire appeared in his hand. "The ice bitch and the healer. You just stood there and let them protect you. What can you do, Vanguard?"

The two Void Whisper disciples melted into the shadows of the ruins, becoming indistinct blurs. The Crimson Sun woman fanned out to Lin Tian’s right, her flames licking across the ground, heating the very stone.

They had him surrounded on the small, exposed ledge of the island, the broken bridge at his back, the abyss below.

Alright, Lin Tian thought, his mind going preternaturally clear. No rules. Just survival.

End of Chapter 131