From the center of the dust cloud, a jagged, terrifying laugh emerged.

Ethan lay in the dirt, his body a shattered wreck, but he was smiling from ear to ear. The final influx of energy from the last disciple had been the tipping point. The floodgates had burst. The embryonic core had solidified into a perfect, pulsing Amethyst sphere, and the remaining Void energy was pouring into his cells like molten starlight.

The atmosphere around Ethan began to warp. A pillar of violet light erupted from his chest, piercing the darkened clouds. The pressure he released was so immense that the nearby Crimson soldiers were forced to their knees, their armor cracking under the weight of his ascension.

Xuan Li’s eyes widened, his face pale with disbelief. "A newly ascended Spiritual Core... is pressuring me? Impossible!"

He felt a cold spike of genuine terror. If this monster was this strong at the moment of breakthrough, he would be unstoppable once the process was complete.

"Die now!" Xuan Li screamed, lunging forward with his halberd aimed at Ethan’s throat.

But the world itself seemed to protect its chosen monster. The World Matrix lashed out, sensing Xuan Li’s desperate surge of power. Colossal lightning bolts descended one after another, a rhythmic curtain of destruction that forced the Captain to veer off course and retreat.

In the center of the storm, Ethan stood up. His bones snapped back into place with the sound of a forest breaking in a gale. His skin glowed with a translucent, amethyst hue.

Ethan rose from the crater, his movements fluid and unnervingly silent. The jagged, broken version of the man who had been crawling in the dirt moments ago was gone. His skin shimmered with a metallic, amethyst luster, and his eyes were no longer just eyes—they were twin vortices of absolute nothingness.

He tilted his head, watching the terrified disciples of the Crimson Sect. "Did you have enough fun?"

His voice didn’t travel through the air; it vibrated directly inside their skulls, cold and final.

The Void energy within him had reached its zenith. Previously, the massive, terrifying silhouette of the Void Nightmare would manifest in the clouds above him, a beacon of his power. Now, that manifestation had vanished from the sky, pulled inward and compressed into the core of his very being. His secrets were locked away, hidden from the prying eyes of the experts on the horizon, but the power it radiated was ten times more concentrated.

The slaughter that followed was not a battle; it was a harvest.

Ethan moved. He didn’t run; he simply ceased to be in one spot and appeared in another. The remnants of the hundred soldiers were mowed down like tall grass before a peasant’s scythe. Every swing of his hand sent out a blade of vacuum that bypassed armor and bone alike.

In the distance, atop the wreckage of the Invictus, Elder Xuan Ni watched the massacre, his face contorted in a mask of impotent rage. He gripped the railing of the bridge so hard the reinforced steel turned to dust. He wanted to descend and erase Ethan from existence with a single thought, but he was trapped.

Beside him, the Venerable Open Sky was drenched in sweat, his hands blurred as he manipulated the Seeker’s Scepter to locate the planet’s hidden pillars. The World Matrix was in its final death throes, and it was focusing all its remaining spite on the strongest invaders.

Every time Xuan Ni even thought about stepping outside the protective runic circle of the Invictus, the darkened sky churned. Colossal, violet thunderbolts, each pregnant with the weight of a dying world’s judgment, hovered directly above his head, waiting for him to move.

"How much longer, Open Sky?!" Xuan Ni roared, his voice shaking the deck.

"The nodes are shifting! This planet is fighting back like a living thing!" Open Sky cried out, his eyes bloodshot. "If you step out now, those bolts will ignore your cultivation and strike your soul directly! Stay within the runes!"

Xuan Ni turned back to the battlefield. He could only watch as his elite disciples were turned into red mist. At the center of the gore stood Ethan, looking back at the warship.

Ethan raised a blood-stained hand and curled his fingers into a mocking "come here" gesture.

Ethan felt the surge of his breakthrough beginning to plateau. The violent, overflowing energy of his newfound Core was stabilizing, and with it, the peak momentum that had allowed him to slaughter the disciples was fading. He was at a crossroads: approaching the Invictus was suicide—the hundreds of remaining disciples and the deck-mounted cannons would vaporize him before he could touch the hull.

But Xuan Li wasn’t finished. Despite his battered state, the Captain’s combat instinct was sharp.

The fight grew even more ferocious. Ethan’s strikes were tearing jagged rifts in the air, but Xuan Li used every ounce of his centuries of experience to weave through the vacuum blades. Up close, however, the Captain was suffering. Every blow he parried left a new wound; one of his arms hung limp and useless, and his other fist was a mess of shattered knuckles. He was reduced to a desperate, frantic dance of evasion.

Suddenly, a piercing cry from the Venerable Open Sky echoed across the wasteland. "Elder Xuan Ni! NOW! Strike the center!"

In the heavens, the invisible pillars of the world finally flickered into view, pulsing like a dying heart. The nodes were exposed. Open Sky had proven his genius—he had stripped the world’s protections bare, leaving the planet’s core floating defenseless at the center of the grid. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Elder Xuan Ni didn’t hesitate. He struck the sky with a roar of pure, unadulterated fury. The impact didn’t just break the air—it shattered reality. The World Dome collapsed like falling crystal, the fragments dissolving into nothingness.

The suppression vanished instantly.

--------------------

From this moment forward, to avoid confusion regarding cultivation ranks, I will include this footer with the current established levels.

Note: These are only the ranks mentioned so far to avoid spoilers.

Body Refinement Realm

Skin Refinement / Bone Refinement / Organ Refinement

Spiritual Gathering Realm

Spiritual Perception / Spiritual Mist / Spiritual Condensation

Spiritual Core Realm

Core Solidification / Core Awakening / Spiritual Collapse (Half-step Spiritual Core)

Spiritual Soul Realm

Spiritual Soul Awakening / Soul Nourishing / Soul-Core Fusion

Golden Core Realm

Prime Fusion / Core Perfection / Core Destruction

Spiritual Sea Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Dao Manifestation Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Spiritual Transcendence

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??