Tearing Apart the Hunting Butterfly, Heading to the Ninth Level
The azure restorative light faded, leaving Yao Xuan standing before the final gate. The air itself seemed to thicken with anticipation, the silence of the vast hall now a palpable weight. The void-black portal with its silver stellar streaks did not merely exist—it pulsed, a slow, rhythmic heartbeat that resonated in the marrow of Yao Xuan's bones.
His body was at its peak, the Tower's energy having perfectly replenished the substantial drain from the feint and the spatial-step execution. His mind, however, was a fortress of focused calm. The victory over the Hunting Phoenix Butterfly had been a lesson in economy and psychology, not just power. The ninth level would demand everything.
'*A Soul Emperor-level manifestation. Equivalent to a 61st-ranked human, but a soul beast. With my suppression… it becomes a battle at the very edge of possibility.*' He analyzed coldly, even as a different, warmer current flowed beneath the logic. 'For the promise of a future. For the chance to walk a path, side-by-side, as equals.' The image of silver hair and violet eyes, watching, waiting, was his true restorative.
He did not rush. He took a final, centering breath, feeling the Ancestral Dragon's power coil deep within, not as a raging inferno, but as a compacted star of potential energy. The golden scales along his arms gleamed with a subdued, internal light.
Then, he stepped into the abyss.
There was no transitional flash. One moment he was in the hall; the next, he was… elsewhere.
It was a realm of silent grandeur and crushing isolation. He stood on a circular dais of polished, midnight-black stone, floating in an endless void. Above, below, and on all sides stretched an infinite cosmos—not the friendly stars of a night sky, but the cold, impersonal tapestry of deep space, nebulas swirling in silence, distant suns burning without warmth. There was no sound, no air current, only the profound quiet of the vacuum and the thin, recycled atmosphere provided by the Tower's formidable machinery around the dais.
At the center of the dais, awaiting him, was his opponent.
It was not a beast of grotesque size or roaring fury. It was an entity of elegant, deadly perfection. A Stellar Python, its body seemingly woven from condensed starlight and dark matter, about ten meters long and as thick as Yao Xuan's torso. Its scales were not individual plates but a continuous, smooth surface that shifted between absolute black and pinpricks of brilliant white, mimicking the cosmos around it. It had no visible eyes, only two pools of swirling nebula where its head tapered. It did not move; it simply was, an ancient, celestial pressure radiating from it that made the air hum.
< Final Trial: Ninth Stage. Confront the Echo of the Void.>
The mechanical voice was a stark intrusion in the cosmic silence.
Yao Xuan felt it immediately—the bloodline suppression. His Ancestral Dragon aura flared instinctively, a golden corona pushing against the stellar pressure. But the feedback was different. The suppression effect was there, a tangible reduction in the python's looming spiritual mass, but it was muted, perhaps only 15%. This creature's lineage was ancient and profound, not so easily cowed.
The Stellar Python moved. It did not strike. It flowed. One moment it was coiled; the next, its body was a sinuous line of star-streaked darkness, not lunging at Yao Xuan, but circling the dais at impossible speed, leaving afterimages of constellations in its wake. The space within the dais's boundary seemed to warp, the distances becoming deceptive.
'It controls the battlefield. Illusion? Spatial manipulation? Both.' Yao Xuan's thoughts raced. He stood still, his senses expanding to their limit. The 'Eye of Detection' provided data, but it was fuzzy, as if the python existed in multiple places at once.
Then, an attack came from nowhere. A section of the python's afterimage detached and solidified into a lance of condensed stellar energy, shooting toward Yao Xuan's side. It moved at the speed of thought.
"Ancestral Dragon Chaos Qi!"
Yao Xuan's reaction was preternatural. The nine-colored shield bloomed around him not a moment too soon.
BOOM!
The impact was soundless but immense, a concussion of pure force that rattled Yao Xuan's bones and sent cracks spider-webbing across his shield. The energy didn't explode; it eroded, eating at the chaotic dragon qi with cold, cosmic hunger.
Before Yao Xuan could reorient, a second attack came from the opposite direction—a whip of darkness that felt like the gravity well of a dead star.
He couldn't block both. With a grunt, he abandoned the shield and used the Ancestral Dragon Shattering Void Step, not to attack, but to evade. He vanished from the spot, reappearing ten meters away. The spatial membrane beneath his feet felt unstable, trembling in the warped space of the dais.
The Stellar Python's main body finally struck. Its true form slithered through the space he'd just vacated, its maw—a vortex of swallowing darkness—snapping shut on empty air.
Yao Xuan landed, heart pounding. This was different. This enemy wasn't about overpowering or outmaneuvering in a traditional sense. It was about surviving in a reality it subtly commanded. A direct clash seemed suicidal. He needed to find its rhythm, its anchor in this fabricated cosmos.
He looked at the pools of nebula that were its eyes. And deep within his soul, the Ancestral Dragon's spirit, the progenitor of primal chaos, stirred with a sense of profound challenge.
The true final trial had begun.