Chapter 145 — Training Grounds of the Abyss
The next time Rowan summoned Lin, it wasn't to the usual forge platforms.
It was deeper.
Farther inward.
The air changed long before Lin saw anything.
Gravity grew heavier, but not in a crushing way—more like each breath carried mass. Heat was no longer a simple byproduct of flames, but a quality of space itself. Faint metallic harmonics hummed along the stone, as if the mountain were singing to itself beneath everything.
Rowan waited on a narrow bridge of black alloy that jutted over a vast, circular chamber.
Floating above the center of that chamber—
Were weapons.
Incomplete ones.
Spears that were nothing but sharpened spines of light.
Swords whose blades were translucent, only their cores truly solid.
Axes that looked wrong at the edges, weight and mass contradicting their visual symmetry.
They hovered point-down over arrays that pulsed in slow, steady intervals.
"Welcome to the Shaping Hall," Rowan said.
Lin stepped to the railing, eyes narrowing.
These weren't decorative. Every single weapon radiated unfulfilled intent—like they were waiting for a wielder, a law, a battle… something.
Rowan gestured, and one of the hovering prototypes descended toward them, rotating slowly.
It was a spear. Or something close. The shaft was flawless, alloy-laced and reinforced. The head, though—its metal was over-dense, the weight distribution wrong. The balance point sat too close to the front. It would strike hard, once… and throw the user open after.
"This," Rowan said, "is a failure."
He flicked his finger.
The spear dissolved into metallic sand and vanished into the array below.
Lin's eyelid twitched.
"…It looked close," he said.
"That is why it's dangerous," Rowan replied. "A clearly flawed weapon will be rejected as soon as it touches the hand. A nearly ideal one will wait until the first life-and-death battle to reveal the hidden flaw that kills its wielder."
He turned to face Lin fully.
"Forging metal is only the beginning. Weapon shaping is where you decide how that metal will live."
---
1. What Makes a Weapon in the Titan Realm
Rowan extended his hand.
A schematic of light formed between them—a spear, a hammer, a sword, a dozen silhouettes overlaid and cycling.
"In lower realms," Rowan said, "a weapon is form plus material. Blade and steel. Spear and shaft. Hammer and head."
The overlapping diagrams shifted. Lines of force extended outward, curving like orbit paths around each shape.
"In the Titan Realm, a weapon is mass distribution, law channeling, and intent geometry. Shape is secondary."
The spear outline expanded. Tiny runic channels appeared along its surface.
"These," Rowan continued, "are law conduits. Too many, and the weapon leaks power. Too few, and it suffocates. Place them wrong, and the weapon fights its wielder."
The hammer outline followed, its head expanding outwards, the internal metal grain depicted as layered spirals rather than straight lines.
"Regarding your path," Rowan said, "blunt-force weapons are deceptively complex. They must carry more internal law than edge weapons. Otherwise, they become heavy clubs instead of Titan instruments."
His gaze sharpened.
"Your allotment of refined alloys is sufficient for one attempt at shaping. Waste it, and you will wait until the next cycle."
So that was the real lesson.
Not just theory.
A test.
Lin inclined his head.
"…Understood."
But Rowan wasn't finished.
---
2. The Cost of Real Materials
"This hall," Rowan continued, "consumes more resources than any other node in the Astral Forge Sect."
He pointed to the overhead vault.
Veins of ore, crystals, and embedded beast bones could be seen fused into the stone above, all of them slowly eroding into drifting streams of energy that fed the shaping formations.
"Star cores. Abyssal bones. Titan-tempered alloys," Rowan said. "Nothing here is cheap. Which is why—"
He looked back at Lin.
"Outer court disciples like you are required to gather materials at least once per month."
Lin's brows lifted slightly.
"Gather… from where?"
Rowan gestured toward a plated door at the far end of the hall.
"From the sect's training ground."
Lin waited.
Rowan's lips thinned, as if he disliked what he was about to say—but duty overrode preference.
"A spatial rift," he said. "Anchored to a section of the Abyssal Plain."
The words struck Lin harder than any gravity formation.
Aurora froze within him.
Saint Shengyuan went utterly silent.
Rowan continued, oblivious to the turmoil inside Lin.
"You mine metals, crystals, and ores. You harvest herbs and collect the remains of abyssal creatures that meet forging standards," Rowan said. "You bring back what you can carry. The sect evaluates. If your haul meets quota, you keep your training privileges and stay on the forging track."
He paused lightly.
"If your haul is exceptional, you may keep certain choice materials to shape your own weapons."
Lin's fingers curled slightly.
The Abyss.
Not as existential doom.
Not as an unavoidable catastrophe.
But…
A training ground.
A resource point.
Something Titans used.
His home realm had nearly been erased by that same power.
Here, it was homework.
---
3. The Rift
Later that cycle, Lin stood at the edge of a cavernous chamber carved into the deepest part of the mountain.
The air here felt wrong.
Stale, but not with age—more like the space itself had been held in tension for too long. Formation pillars ringed the circular room, etched with densely layered runes designed to isolate and contain.
At the center hung the rift.
It wasn't dramatic.
No swirling storms, no roaring void.
It was a vertical wound in reality about three men tall and one man wide, edges barely visible—like someone had drawn a crack in glass with a brush dipped in black ink.
Around it, squads of sect disciples checked armor, weapons, and storage artifacts. Some went in groups. Some in pairs.
No one went in laughing.
Lin watched them with quiet eyes.
"Outer court quota is posted," a robed supervisor called from a side platform. "Minimum contribution: abyssal beast materials equivalent to one low-grade Titan ingot, or ores and crystals of equal value. Anything extra may be applied toward debt, contribution points, or personal allotment."
Lin didn't join any group.
He was used to traveling alone.
And he had a weapon to practice with.
He stepped toward the rift.
The closer he walked, the more he felt it.
Beneath the layered formations and suppression fields…
Something familiar.
Heavy.
Hungry.
The smell of the Abyss.
Aurora spoke in a low tone only he could hear.
> "This is not the same layer as before. This is a controlled interface. But make no mistake—it is still the Abyss."
Saint Shengyuan added:
> "And if the Abyssal Ancestor is truly searching for you… each step you take there brings you closer to being found."
Lin's jaw tightened.
"Then I'll make those steps count."
He stepped through.
---
4. The Abyss, Reframed
Transition wasn't a violent pull.
It was a sinking.
One moment, Lin felt the weight of the Titan Realm's gravity formations.
The next—
He felt nothing.
Then everything.
He emerged into a sky the color of spilled ink, streaked with faint violet fissures like cracks in an old painting. The ground beneath his feet was a patchwork of dark stone and dried, blackened soil, veins of dull red glowing far below the surface like the buried memory of magma.
Low ridges rose in jagged lines, and in the distance, shapes moved—twisted silhouettes with too many limbs or not quite enough, their forms flickering as if they were slightly out of sync with reality.
The Abyss.
Lin had seen it before.
But not like this.
Back in his home realm, Abyssal intrusion meant:
Skies tearing.
Lands corrupting.
Entire regions falling to madness and ruin.
Here—
Formations floated in the air like translucent shields, marking safe zones and boundary lines. Signal beacons pulsed gently with sect insignias. In the distance, Lin saw the faint flare of a combat technique—someone's blast of law-light crashing into an abyssal creature's body, driving it back into the shadows.
What had nearly destroyed his reality—
Was a structured training zone here.
A resource well.
A hunting ground.
The difference in perspective hit him like a punch.
"So this," he murmured, "is what a stronger realm looks like."
Not a place without catastrophe.
But a place that could farm it.
His resolve hardened.
He wouldn't stay a fledgling under its protection forever.
---
5. Alone in Enemy Territory
Lin moved away from the rift boundary.
Most disciples stayed near the established hunting paths, where formations supported their fights and patrols ensured nothing too high-ranking slipped close.
Lin did not.
He angled away, cutting through a series of broken stone ridges, senses spread wide.
The air here tasted faintly metallic, like blood that had evaporated but never been washed away. The ground held traces of old battles—scorch marks, shattered carapaces, fragments of abyssal bone that still twitched with residual malice.
He summoned his hybrid weapon.
The hammer-spear formed in his hand with a subtle twist of space.
The Titan hammer head did not blaze with power. It sat at the end of the shaft like an accusation, dense enough to drag the air around it, the runes along its face dim and sealed.
For now.
He took a stance.
Different from his old realm.
Wider.
Heavier.
Rooted in the Five Elements.
Then he walked deeper into the Abyssal Plain.
---
6. First Hunt — Testing the Rhythm
He didn't have to wait long.
The first creature found him.
It rose out of the ground like a tumor tearing free from flesh—an Abyssal beast with a centipede's body and a crocodilian head, its eyes nothing but glowing pits of violet void. Its carapace reflected the distortions of the air around it, its steps leaving faint smears where it touched reality.
The old Lin would have started with safe techniques.
This Lin—
Stepped forward.
The centipede-beast lunged, its jaws distorting space as they closed in.
Lin met it halfway.
The hammer-spear moved.
Not as a hammer.
Not as a spear.
As both.
The shaft dipped, rotated, then snapped upward in a spiraling arc. The spear tip pierced the beast's foreleg with surgical precision; the hammer head followed half a heartbeat later, crashing into the creature's shoulder joint with collapsing mass.
The impact did not send the beast flying.
It drove it down.
Gravity bent around the contact point, pinning the centipede-beast into the ground as if an invisible mountain had slammed down on its back.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the stone.
The creature howled, its cry warping into a reverberating echo.
Lin didn't waste the opening.
He pivoted, Five Elements flowing perfectly:
Earth holding his stance.
Wind guiding the arc.
Fire igniting muscle.
Metal stabilizing joints.
Water smoothing recoil.
The second strike sheared through the beast's neck.
Abyssal ichor splattered the ground.
The grotesque body spasmed, then collapsed into a slowly dissolving husk, leaving behind a hardened core and sections of carapace that still hummed with corrupted law.
Lin stood still for a breath.
Then two.
His heart was steady.
His breathing even.
"…Better," he murmured.
The weapon felt right.
Almost.
There were still micro-delays in the transition from pierce to crush, places where his balance shifted a fraction too late, where his law channels overcommitted.
He would fix those.
One beast at a time.
He collected the useful materials and moved on.
---
7. The Abyss Remembers
On another layer of reality, far beyond the Titan Realm—
Deep within the true Abyss—
Something stirred.
An ancient presence that had once clawed at Lin's existence like a hand reaching through shattered worlds…
Twitched.
A thread of its awareness brushed against a familiar flavor.
Not a presence fully formed.
Just a trace.
A resonance.
A fragment of sovereignty it had once nearly devoured.
The Abyssal Ancestor did not yet know where.
It did not yet know how.
But it knew this:
> The prey still lived.
And somewhere—
A path now existed between them once more.
---
8. Lin's Resolve
Lin, unaware of that distant shift, continued his hunt.
Each encounter was an experiment:
One beast with a hard shell—
He tested the hammer's capacity to transfer shock through armor into underlying organs.
Another agile, shadow-slipping creature—
He refined his spear thrusts, binding space to kill its escapes.
A flock of twisted, bat-like things that screamed law-disrupting shrieks—
He practiced counter-rotational swings, threading Wind and Metal Dao together to cut clean arcs that disrupted their resonance.
With each battle—
His movements smoothed.
His understanding of his weapon deepened.
His Five-Element body learned how to express Titan-level mass and motion without tearing itself apart.
Hours passed on the Abyssal Plain.
Days passed inside his inner world.
When he finally turned back toward the rift, his storage items were heavier with cores, metals, and bone.
But heavier still—
Was the certainty coiling in his chest.
This place, which could have erased his former world…
Was just the beginning.
If he wanted any hope of facing the Abyssal Ancestor in the future, even indirectly—
This level of threat had to become routine.
A training ground.
Just as it was for the Titans.
He tightened his grip on the hammer-spear and walked back toward the rift, shadows of new battle arts already forming in his mind.
He had work to do.
And not nearly enough time.
---