The violet fog at the bottom of the Waste Pit didn't just drift; it parted like a physical curtain, sliced clean by the invisible aura emanating from Lin Xiu.
Gu Hanzhou felt a pressure unlike any he had ever encountered. If the Shadow Hound was a beast hunting on primal instinct, then the man standing before him was a precision-calibrated killing machine. Every line of Lin Xiu's posture was a study in lethal efficiency.
Lin Xiu's fingers rested on the hilt of his saber with a terrifying, textbook stability.
"Arrogance requires capital," Lin Xiu remarked, his voice smooth and devoid of heat. "And capital is the one thing a mine-slave lacks most."
With a mere flick of his toes, Lin Xiu's body seemed to lose all weight. He didn't walk; he glided across the surface of the acidic sludge like a phantom, covering the distance in a heartbeat.
Fast! Too fast!
On Gu Hanzhou's retinas, Lin Xiu's silhouette blurred into a streak of crimson and steel.
This wasn't speed born of muscle and bone. This was Order-enhanced acceleration. Gu Hanzhou's eyes flashed with a feral, desperate light. He didn't retreat. In the Night Furnace, against an opponent of this caliber, backing away was the same as offering your throat to the blade.
Inside his chest, his Order Blood hammered against his ribs like a caged beast. That newly formed dark-gold sigil wasn't just glowing—it was burning, turning his veins into conduits of fire.
Clang!
Gu Hanzhou slammed his iron rebar into a discarded chemical reactor beside him. Using the violent recoil, he forced his body into a grotesque, mid-air contort, twisting his frame at an angle that would have snapped a normal man's spine.
In that exact microsecond, a flash of brilliant white steel whistled through the space where his head had been.
The cold arrived before the blade even touched him. The air temperature plummeted. The sleeve of Gu Hanzhou's left shoulder disintegrated, and a three-inch gash opened in his flesh. Before the blood could even spray, it was frozen solid into crimson ice crystals by the sheer intensity of the blade's frost energy.
"You actually dodged that?" Lin Xiu's voice carried a hint of playful surprise.
Without breaking his momentum, Lin Xiu flicked his wrist. His saber, named Frost-Order, traced a perfect arc in the air. The tip of the blade vibrated with high-frequency energy, unleashing three intersecting trails of cold light.
This was the signature entry-level technique of the Inquisition: [The Triple Rift].
Gu Hanzhou's eyes tracked the three silver streaks. He had no formal training. He had no "Skills" logged in a system. All he had was the raw, jagged instinct honed from years of fighting mutated horrors in the lightless depths of the deep-layer shafts.
Don't fight the blade. Fight the man.
Gu Hanzhou held his breath. Just as the three trails of frost reached him, he crushed a hidden object in his right palm—a scavenged, unstable Mercury Blast-Vial.
BOOM!
A blinding flash of crimson fire and a deafening explosion erupted between them.
Lin Xiu's brow furrowed. His blade-intent instinctively shifted for a fraction of a second to cleave through the shockwave of the blast.
Now!
Gu Hanzhou exploded out of the flames. Like a viper that had been coiled in the mud for hours, he didn't use the distraction to run. Instead, he lunged forward, closing the distance and slamming into Lin Xiu's chest.
It was a suicidal maneuver.
A long saber held an absolute advantage at a distance, but in a desperate clinch, the weapon became a liability—an oversized piece of steel with no room to swing.
"Looking for death!" Lin Xiu hissed. He released his grip on the hilt with his left hand, his palm glowing with the faint, spectral image of Order Chains. He drove his palm toward Gu Hanzhou's chest with enough force to shatter a boulder.
Gu Hanzhou didn't flinch. He didn't even try to block. With a guttural, beast-like roar, he opened his left hand and met the strike head-on.
CRACK!
The sound of Gu Hanzhou's arm bones splintering was sickening. The force of the Inquisition's strike dislocated his shoulder and shredded his forearm into a bloody mess.
But he had bought his opportunity.
In his right hand, the rusted rebar—fueled by the momentum of his charge and the totality of his newly awakened Order Blood—stabbed upward. He aimed for the narrow, unprotected gap in the armor at Lin Xiu's throat.
For a fleeting second, the rebar glowed with a dark-gold radiance.
That was the power of Gu Hanzhou's very first drop of burning True Order Blood.
Lin Xiu's pupils constricted into needle-points. He had never imagined that a slave—a "consumable"—would be willing to sacrifice an entire limb just to create a single opening to kill an officer.
This boy... is a genuine lunatic.
In that heartbeat between life and death, the Inquisition collar around Lin Xiu's neck erupted in a brilliant flare. A shimmering, translucent barrier of energy materialized out of thin air.
DING!
The rebar slammed into the barrier, sending sparks flying like dying stars. The massive kinetic feedback sent Gu Hanzhou flying backward like a broken doll. He crashed into the jagged edge of the acid pit, coughing up mouthfuls of black bile.
He struggled to push himself up, but his vision was swimming in a sea of grey. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, and his internal energy was spent.
Lin Xiu stood where he was, unmoving. On the protective barrier around his neck, a tiny, spiderweb-like crack had appeared.
He reached up, touching the spot where the barrier had almost failed. The playfulness in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a deep, chilling shadow. It was the look one predator gives another.
"Do you have any idea?" Lin Xiu's voice was low. "If I hadn't been wearing this defensive relic, you would have become the first mine-slave in the history of the Night Order to slay an Adjudicator."
Lin Xiu sheathed his blade. The sharp clack of steel on scabbard rang out through the silent Pit like a clap of thunder.
He walked over to the prone Gu Hanzhou, looking down at him from a height of absolute power. Even with blood masking his face, Gu Hanzhou's eyes were still locked onto Lin Xiu's throat. His right hand still gripped the bent iron rebar, as if he would strike again the moment he found a breath.
"I've changed my mind," Lin Xiu said coldly. "Wasting a specimen like you would be a sin against the Order. There is a 'Void' deep within the lower mines—a rift that needs a pioneer who isn't afraid of hell. If you can crawl your way back out of that hole alive... then I'll give you a real chance to challenge me for my blade."
Lin Xiu reached into his coat and tossed a small vial filled with pale-blue liquid. It landed in the dirt next to Gu Hanzhou's head.
"That is a Healing Order-Serum. You have thirty minutes. If you aren't standing by then, the Shadow Hounds will return to pick your bones clean."
With that, Lin Xiu turned and vanished into the thickening purple mists. His voice drifted back from the shadows, ghostly and distant.
"Stay alive, madman. Behind that rift, you will see the true despair of this world."
Gu Hanzhou stared at the vial, then at his mangled left arm. He didn't drink the serum immediately. Instead, he gritted his teeth, leaned his dislocated shoulder against a jagged rock, and threw his weight against it.
CRUNCH!
The agony was so sharp he nearly blacked out. He bit his lip until it bled, refusing to let a single scream escape.
He looked toward the direction Lin Xiu had vanished, the light in his eyes colder than the frost on his wounds.
"Lin Xiu... Inquisition..."
He unscrewed the vial, gulped down the serum, and closed his eyes. He felt the medicine begin a violent war with the restless blood in his veins.
He knew that the true "Long Night" had only just begun.