The tunnel sloped down at a steep grade, the polished black stone underfoot smooth from ages of heat and pressure.

The air grew thicker, heavier, not just with heat but with a kind of spiritual weight that pressed against Lin Tian’s eardrums.

The Obsidian Map in his hand glowed steadily, painting their faces in shifting shades of orange and red as it charted their descent.

He led, with Yan Jiao a solid, reassuring presence at his shoulder, the Earth-Sunderer sword held ready across her body.

Xueya and Su Lan followed, their contrasting auras a quiet hum of ice and fire at his back. Yue Chan and Lu Cang brought up the rear, their footsteps nearly silent.

The deeper they went, the stranger the silence became. The distant roar of the battle above had vanished, swallowed by the mountain.

All he could hear was the scrape of their boots, the soft rustle of Yue Chan’s silks, and his own breathing. And beneath it all, the deep, sub-audible thrum of the mountain’s corrupted heart.

It’s like walking into a giant’s ribcage, he thought.

"The air tastes wrong," Su Lan muttered behind him. She wasn’t complaining, just stating a fact. "It’s not just heat. It’s... hollow."

Lin Tian knew what she meant. The natural, vibrant fire-essence of the volcano was being leeched away, replaced by a cold vacuum. It was the Anti-Resonance. He could feel it as a subtle static against his skin, a faint dissonance in the hum of the Link Pentagon connecting them all.

The bond with Xueya was a steady stream of glacial calm. The one with Su Lan, a banked furnace of readiness. Yan Jiao’s new connection was like a deep, grounding chord, solid as stone. Yue Chan’s was a complex, fluid network of threads. And Lu Cang’s was a loyal, sharp line of focus.

But now, at the edges of each connection, he felt a faint... fuzziness. A barely-there resistance, like trying to hear a whisper through a closed door.

"The interference is increasing," Xueya said, her voice cool and clear in the gloom. "Our spiritual communion is attenuating by approximately three percent since we entered this passage."

"It’s feeding on the bonds themselves," Yue Chan added, her tone clinical. "The phenomenon is not merely an absence. It is an active consumer. A scavenger."

As if her words were a signal, the attack came.

There was no sound, no flash of light. One moment, the tunnel was empty. The next, Lin Tian felt a sharp, cold tug deep in his chest, right where the core of his bond with Xueya resided. It wasn’t pain, but a sudden, terrifying sense of thinness, as if a layer of his spirit had been peeled away.

Xueya gasped, a short, sharp intake of breath. Ahead, a patch of darkness rippled, like heat haze over a desert, and then was still.

"What was that?" Yan Jiao growled, hefting her sword. "I saw nothing."

"I felt it," Lin Tian said, his hand going to his sternum. The cold spot lingered. "It took a bite out of the link."

"Multiple contacts," Yue Chan said, her voice suddenly urgent. She was staring into the darkness, her eyes wide and unfocused. "They are all around us. They have no true physical form. They are voids shaped by hunger. They perceive the world through the vibrations of spiritual connections."

Another tug, this one at the bond with Su Lan. Lin Tian gritted his teeth as a wave of hollow nausea washed over him. Su Lan cursed, a flicker of her fire aura sputtering like a damp match.

Lu Cang spun, his spear pointing at empty air. "Where? Show me a target!"

They couldn’t fight what they couldn’t see. The things were invisible, not just to the eye, but to normal spiritual sense. They existed in the blind spot created by the very Anti-Resonance they propagated.

"I have an idea," Yue Chan said, her fingers already flying. Strands of shimmering, almost translucent silk erupted from her sleeves, not aiming at the enemies, but at her teammates. A thread snapped toward Lin Tian’s wrist, another to Xueya’s, to Su Lan’s, to Yan Jiao’s, to Lu Cang’s. They connected with a soft, psychic click.

"Do not resist," she instructed. "My silks are conduits. I am weaving a Sensory Silk Web, mapping the emptiness through our shared network. What I perceive, you will perceive."

For a second, there was nothing. Then, the world shifted.

The dark tunnel was still there, but overlaid upon it was a ghostly, luminous web of light—the visualization of their Link Pentagon. And moving through that web, like spiders through their own trap, were the creatures.

Void Stalkers—rippling holes in reality. Where they passed, the luminous bond-strands dimmed and frayed. They slithered between connections, feeding on relationship energy.

"Now!" Lin Tian barked.

Yan Jiao was the first to move. With a roar that echoed in the confined space, she swung the Earth-Sunderer not at the stone, but at the empty air between Lin Tian and Xueya. The massive blade passed through a hovering patch of void.

There was no metallic clang. Instead, a sound like shattering glass mixed with a distant scream filled the tunnel. The black patch splintered, fragments of darkness dissolving into motes of grey light before vanishing. The immediate pressure on Lin Tian’s bond with Xueya eased.

"They can be hit!" Yan Jiao shouted, a fierce grin on her face.

Xueya didn’t need another invitation. She didn’t aim for the Stalkers directly. She laid down a field. Her hands swept out, and a wave of glacial mist flooded the tunnel, coating the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the mist, the Void Stalkers became clearly outlined—blotches of nothingness that refused to frost over.

Su Lan saw her opening. She pointed two fingers, and a beam of concentrated white-gold fire, thin as a needle, lanced out. It pierced a frosted outline. The creature writhed silently, imploding in on itself with a puff of icy steam.

Lin Tian defensively condensed his domain into a razor-thin, protective shell of Ice Flame Qi.

Violent reactions erupted as energies annihilated upon contact, shaking the air with silent, neutral force. Maintaining shields proved draining. Lu Cang fought with controlled fury, his spear a blur. Guided by the sensory web, he popped Stalkers like bubbles with fire-qi.

Yue Chan directed, her signals guiding their strikes to vaporize foes.

It was a brutal, efficient dance in the cramped dark. But with every Stalker they destroyed, Lin Tian felt the Anti-Resonance in the tunnel thicken. It was a paradox. Removing the scavengers made the environment worse.

"They’re not the source," he grunted, deflecting another invisible lunge with his domain-shell. "They’re just the rats feeding on the garbage. The garbage is getting deeper the further down we go."

Strained links buckled under the cold; their warmth grew sluggish, fading away.

It’s getting stronger. The closer we get to the Engine, the more it hates what we are.

"The map," Xueya said, her voice tight. "How much further?"

Lin Tian glanced down. The glowing schematic showed their blinking dot was near the end of a long, twisting artery. Just ahead, it opened into a vast, spherical chamber labeled in pulsing ancient script: Heart-Forge. Primary Ignition Core.

"The chamber is just ahead," he said. "Maybe a hundred paces."

"Then we run," Yan Jiao said, smashing another Stalker into oblivion with a horizontal sweep of her sword. "We can’t win a war of attrition in this soup. We break through to the source."

It was the only play. They couldn’t stay here. The Anti-Resonance was a slow poison, and the Stalkers were endless.

"On me!" Lin Tian ordered. He dropped the precise shield and instead pushed his domain forward in a wedge, like the prow of a ship. It wasn’t as efficient, but it was faster. He charged, forcing a path through the invisible horde.

The others fell in behind him. Yan Jiao guarded the rear, her massive sword creating a zone of nullification that disintegrated any Stalker that tried to follow. Su Lan and Xueya covered the sides, firing precise beams of fire and ice at the shapes that surged in from the darkness. Lu Cang and Yue Chan protected the center.

It was a desperate, stumbling sprint down the last of the tunnel. The psychic static became a roar in Lin Tian’s mind. The bonds flickered, threatening to gutter out like candles in a storm. He felt a moment of pure panic—a terrifying loneliness—as the link to Xueya wavered and almost snapped.

Then they burst out of the tunnel mouth and into the chamber.

Lin Tian skidded to a halt, the others piling up behind him. The sensory web from Yue Chan dissolved, their normal vision returning.

They stood on a ledge above the vast, gloomy Heart-Forge. Below, a sea of surging violet energy replaced magma; within it rose a single, colossal, corrupted center of power.

It was the Eternal Engine.

The structure resembled a fossilized heart of iron and sickly-purple crystal. Violet veins pulsed, driving pistons into the corrosive energy sea. Each rhythmic plunge sent waves of Anti-Resonance, making their skins crawl and spirits cringe.

This was the source. The second Progenitor Fragment wasn’t just here. It was powering this abomination. He could feel its ancient, pure signature buried deep within the Engine’s core, screaming silently beneath the layers of void-corruption.

But they weren’t alone on the ledge.

Blocking the only ramp to the Engine stood a humanoid void-construct. Its smooth, obsidian face lacked features, and it gripped two jagged, light-consuming shards of darkness, ready to strike any who dared to pass.

It didn’t move. It simply waited, a final sentinel.

From the tunnel behind them, a skittering, scraping sound echoed. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the Void Stalkers poured out onto the ledge, cutting off their retreat. They were surrounded, the corrosive sea below, the endless horde behind, and the silent guardian ahead.

The Anti-Resonance from the Engine’s next grinding pulse hit them like a wall. Lin Tian’s knees buckled. For a single, terrifying second, every one of his bonds went completely, utterly silent.

He was alone in his own head.

Then the feeling passed, the links rushing back with a painful, staticky intensity. He looked at his team, saw the same shock and disorientation on their faces.

The guardian took a single step forward, its featureless head tilting toward them.

End of Chapter 171