The cold volcanic sand of Mount Tai Sector 02 shifted slightly as the heavy purple smoke of the collapsing gateway began to rapidly recede into the dark stone floorboards. With the
Core Marrow Font
thoroughly digested and anchored within Lin Feng’s dual-loop framework, the pocket dimension's artificial atmosphere had completely flatlined, turning the towering skyscraper-sized pillars of white jade into dull, dead gray columns of common limestone.
Lin Feng walked calmly up the ancient stone transit shaft leading toward the rift's surface exit, his worn utility backpack slung loosely over his right shoulder. Behind him, Han Xue and Bai Qingxi followed at a calculated distance, their boots clicking sharply against the uneven rock. Neither of the legacy heiresses spoke. The absolute structural mass vibrating within the youth's bare frame had thoroughly re-drawn the boundaries of their pride, leaving their respective strategic networks in a state of silent, frozen panic.
The internal baseline is perfectly stabilized,
Lin Feng calculated, his vacant, bottomless eyes tracking the smooth, pressurized currents of sapphire energy running through his dorsal pathway.
The Mount Tai core fuel has scoured the remaining impurities from my Du Channel ahead of schedule. But the true world-rift boundary is still surrounded by the Southern Syndicate's legacy assets. They are attempting to force a terminal shutdown before Director-General Sun's defense columns can establish a sovereign state corridor.
Suddenly, the stone tunnel ahead opened into a massive, mist-shrouded mountain valley.
The air here didn't carry the humid, polluted tang of the capital metropolis; it was freezing, razor-sharp, and completely choked by a dense, artificial crimson heat-shroud that stained the low-hanging overcast sky a dark, mottled shade of rust.
The blockade was total.
Spreading across the absolute mouth of the Mount Tai mountain pass were nearly three hundred elite combatants from the
Southern Flame Syndicate’s Vanguard Division
. They didn't wear the corporate mesh plates of the Bai family or the mechanical exoskeletons of the Zhao clan enforcers; they wore traditional, layered crimson battle tunics reinforced with high-density volcanic crystal shards that violently pulsed with a continuous, liquid orange heat.
Flanking the pass were six massive, heavy-caliber mobile plasma turrets—custom-engineered syndicate hardware explicitly calibrated to compress the ambient pre-awakening Qi into dense kinetic fireballs that could vaporize a standard military transport vehicle from two kilometers away.
Standing at the absolute center of the defensive line, leaning heavily against a massive, two-meter-long ironwood execution blade, was the Head Marshal of the Southern Syndicate, Marshal Huo.
His face was a mask of deeply scarred, weathered leather, and his rhythmic, deep respiratory cadence indicated a flawlessly integrated Stage 9 Flesh Refinement foundation that was mere millimeters away from forcing open a genuine
Qi Circulation
channel.
"The data lines from the capital core were absolute," Marshal Huo said, his gravelly baritone carrying a dense internal vibration that caused the surrounding mountain gravel to rattle in perfect geometric hertz. His burning orange eyes locked instantly onto Lin Feng’s lean frame emerging from the cave mouth. "The independent student block representative didn't just luck into a regional fluke—he scoured the entire sector font using his bare container. Step away from the valley, boy. The Southern Syndicate's ancestral ledger doesn't permit a commoner to walk out of Mount Tai with the continental geocentric root."
Bai Qingxi’s fingers tightened instinctively around her wrist-mounted interface module as the six mobile plasma turrets whirred to life, their automated targeting visors painting the valley path with hundreds of shifting red grid lines. "Lin Feng... Huo’s vanguard brigade is completely stripped of corporate identification codes. They are operating under a direct ancestral death-warrant. If they open fire with the plasma array at this proximity, the thermal feedback will trigger a total tectonic collapse across the entire mountain ridge."
Lin Feng didn't break his slow, unhurried gait, his hands remaining loosely buried inside his gray utility jacket pockets.
"Your syndicate’s ledger was written before the fault lines cracked, Marshal," Lin Feng said softly, his calm voice carrying an unhurried, mountain-like density that caused the crimson heat-shroud above the valley to faintly flicker. "You’ve spent forty years packing your marrow with impure volcanic stone, assuming your physical container could hold back the evolution of the earth. You failed to calculate that when a true dual-loop cultivator claims the gate, your plasma toys are no more durable than common brittle clay."
"Court death!" Marshal Huo roared.
He didn't wait for a secondary data review. He hoisted the two-meter-long ironwood execution blade with a single, explosive flex of his forearms, the custom volcanic crystals lining the steel violently erupting into a towering, five-foot column of pure, condensed liquid fire. He lunged forward across the volcanic sand, his massive frame moving with a terrifying linear speed that outpaced the optical data transmission rate of standard tracking visors.
The next execution stage was open, and the undefeated apex of modern Huaxia didn't even alter his pulse as the burning blade dropped over his eyes.