The bones of the Outcast were still disintegrating into dust, but the viscous, mercury-like waters of the Pool of Purgatory had suddenly ceased their churning.
Silence. An absolute, heavy silence that felt as if time itself had been flash-frozen.
"Gu Hanzhou... get away from there!" Su Qingyue forced herself upright, her pupils narrowing into needle-thin slits. Deep within her amethyst eyes, a thick, palpable dread began to leak out. "There is something at the bottom... something you just 'ignited' with your outburst of Imperial Gold energy!"
Gu Hanzhou retreated in a blur, his boots skidding on the slick stone. He brought the fractured [Black Order] up in a defensive guard, his eyes locked on the crimson liquid.
Glub. Glub.
A single, massive bubble rose from the depths, bursting at the surface to release a cloud of twisted, dark-gold and ethereal-purple mist. Suddenly, the liquid level of the entire pool began to drop at an alarming rate. It was as if a massive drain had opened at the bottom, and the thousands of gallons of concentrated chemical waste were being devoured by something below.
SPLASH—!
A hand, so pale it was almost translucent, slammed onto the stone rim of the pool.
The hand was elegant, yet it was covered in a network of pulsing, dark-red veins. Its fingers sank into the solid rock as if it were soft clay. Then, a man with long, tangled hair and a bare torso—draped in heavy, shattered iron chains—slowly rose from the receding pool.
His eyes were closed. His chest showed no sign of movement, no breath. Yet, with his emergence, the oxygen seemed to vanish from the vault, replaced by a pressure so intense it made the stone walls groan.
"This is not a living thing..." Gu Hanzhou felt the Imperial Gold blood in his veins screaming in a mixture of predatory instinct and absolute repulsion.
"It's Subject Zero," Su Qingyue's voice was trembling violently. "Lin Xiu's journals mentioned it... the Inquisition spent decades cultivating a 'Perfect Vessel' here. They harvested the remnant blood of countless Ancient Court descendants and funneled it into this body. They were trying to create a god without a soul—a Pseudo-God that only obeys the laws of the New Order."
The long-haired man slowly opened his eyes.
There were no pupils. In their place were two swirling vortices of dark-gold light. He turned his head with mechanical stiffness, his gaze settling on the fractured blade of [Black Order].
"In...complete..."
He spoke, but the sound didn't come from his throat; it felt like a resonance vibrating through the very foundation of the mountain.
"Return... to the... source..."
BOOM!
The stone platform beneath Subject Zero shattered. He became a streak of dark-gold lightning that the human eye could not track, crossing dozens of meters in a microsecond. His hand, curved like a claw, lunged directly for Gu Hanzhou's heart.
Too fast.
This speed transcended the limits of the Blood-Ignition Phase. It was a terrifying glimpse into the Flow-Blood Phase (行血阶).
In the final millisecond, Gu Hanzhou brought his blade up.
CLANG—!!
The ear-piercing scream of metal hitting metal sent a violent shockwave through the hall. Gu Hanzhou felt the bones in his forearms shatter like glass under the force of a tectonic hammer. He was sent hurtling backward, slamming into the reinforced alloy wall behind the pool with a bone-jarring thud.
[Black Order] let out a piteous wail. The fractures along the blade widened, and the dark-gold etchings began to flake off like burnt skin.
"Dammit..."
Gu Hanzhou spat out a glob of thick blood, his gaze turning increasingly feral. He realized that while the creature's power was overwhelming, its movements were stiff—with every strike, a series of minute, cracking sounds echoed from its skin.
The "Vessel" wasn't stable. The shock of the earlier cannon blast and the resonance of Gu Hanzhou's pure blood had caused an "early birth."
"Gu Hanzhou, don't meet him with brute force!" Su Qingyue bit her tongue, using the metallic tang of her own blood to ignite the last of her strength. She projected a fragile, violet barrier in front of him. "He has no reason, only a predatory instinct to devour the Laws of the Ancient Court! Use the 'Suppression' within your own bloodline to paralyze him!"
Suppression?
Gu Hanzhou watched Subject Zero charge again. He did something unthinkable: he sheathed the broken Tang Dao.
He closed his eyes, focusing on the dark-gold vortex in his heart—the one that had caused him nothing but agony. He stopped trying to contain it. He stopped the spiral. Instead, he tore down the internal dams and let the Imperial Gold energy explode outward like a dammed river meeting the sea.
"Get back!"
Gu Hanzhou snapped his eyes open, and the golden light within them momentarily outshone the Pseudo-God's. A wave of pure, ancient, and profoundly arrogant authority erupted from him as the epicenter.
Subject Zero's unstoppable momentum came to a grinding halt exactly three inches from Gu Hanzhou's face.
In his swirling, pupil-less eyes, a flash of very human confusion and struggle appeared. He could feel it—the boy before him possessed a bloodline purity that was infinitely more noble than his own synthetic concoction.
It was the absolute hierarchy of the Ancient Court. The King commands, and the Servant obeys.
"King..."
A distorted syllable escaped Subject Zero's throat. He collapsed to his knees, his entire body convulsing as his veins began to rupture under the pressure of the bloodline rejection.
Gu Hanzhou did not hesitate. He lunged forward, pressing his palm firmly against Subject Zero's forehead.
"Since you are made of the stolen life-force of my ancestors... give it all back to me. With interest."
[SPIRAL · REVERSE ABSORPTION]!
Gu Hanzhou began a frantic, predatory devouring.
Decades of refined Order-essences, distilled at the bottom of the pool, flooded into Gu Hanzhou's palm like a tidal wave. He felt his internal sea of energy expanding, collapsing, and being rebuilt in a cycle of agonizing rebirth.
Blood-Ignition Phase — BREAKTHROUGH!
In that instant, a massive, shadowy figure sitting upon a throne seemed to materialize behind Gu Hanzhou's back. Though it vanished in a heartbeat, the aura it released caused every mutated creature in the Lightless Zone to prostrate themselves in instinctive terror.
As the last drop of energy was siphoned away, Subject Zero disintegrated into a pile of cold, grey ash.
Gu Hanzhou stood alone in the center of the vault. His body was now draped in a flowing, dark-gold liquid energy that acted like a secondary skin. His presence had become deep, terrifying, and ancient.
"Su Qingyue." He turned his head. The gold in his eyes had dimmed, yet it held a majesty that made it impossible to look him in the eye. "We're leaving. To the Mid-Sector. To the Black Prison."
He no longer looked at the filth of the Pool of Purgatory. He hoisted Su Qingyue onto his back and walked toward the elevator rails leading to the surface.
He knew that when he finally stepped back into the light—artificial or not—Duke Mordent would realize that he was no longer hunting a rat in the sewers. He was facing a dragon that had finally found its teeth.