Elyon watched as the mysterious man in front of him did sothing beyond his comprehension.
And to top it all off, Lin Mu had done it with a single gesture—as though peeling a curtain from a window.
"That’s not just spatial manipulation," Elyon muttered, almost to himself. "That’s... dominance."
He stared at Lin Mu now, not as a talented cultivator, not even as an elite of the Xian Sword Sect—but as sothing else.
Sothing that stood above what the world considered normal.
’Who is this man?’
Elyon’s thoughts surged like a storm.
’He’s no re disciple. That control... that power... that calm. His sword intent was terrifying, but now... now I see that was just one facet. That body of his withstood Earth Fla like it was a hot spring. Now he’s ripping into spatial folds with his bare hands. What kind of monster have I joined hands with?’
And yet, he felt not just fear but also... awe.
Gratitude, even.
Because this was a man you followed—not one you fought.
"I can see it now," he whispered.
Lin Mu, now half-imrsed in the rift, gently pulled sothing free.
A scorched scrap of fabric.
A half-lted talisman.
A few warped pieces of tal that might once have been a dagger or buckle. All heavily corroded by chaotic spatial turbulence—but still intact enough for Elyon to test.
The wolfkin was still dazed when Lin Mu turned and handed the remnants over. "Can you check these with your darkness technique?"
Elyon blinked and nodded numbly, taking the items. "Y-Yes. I can."
Daoist Chu smirked at the wolfkin’s shaken expression. "Now you understand."
Elyon nodded slowly. "I understand sothing, alright..."
He looked back at Lin Mu, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.
"I don’t know who your master is, or what world forged you," Elyon said under his breath. "But if there’s a blade pointed at the heart of the heavens... it’s probably you holding it."
The chamber fell into silence once more, the faint pulse of Earth Fla in the walls casting a subtle reddish glow over the group.
Elyon still held the scorched remnants Lin Mu had retrieved from the spatial rift—each fragnt still humming with residual energy and decay. The void-wrought scrap of cloth, the lted talisman, and twisted tal buckle were all mute testants to a violent and unstable teleportation.
Elyon glanced at Lin Mu, who stood calmly beside the sealed rift, then at Daoist Chu and ng Bai. His wolf-like eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion, but in restraint.
He had so many questions.
’What kind of power was that?
How did he open a rift to the void?
What kind of body can absorb Earth Fla like it’s ambient air?
What kind of cultivation path produces this kind of... anomaly?’
But he knew now wasn’t the ti. Not yet.
With a subtle breath, Elyon brought his hand forward and conjured his darkness. It flowed smoothly from his palm—not like a shadow cast from a fla, but a living, swallowing veil of night. It wrapped around the tattered items, swallowing them one by one.
Lin Mu, Daoist Chu, and ng Bai stood silently as the darkness shifted, then spread outward into the air before them.
And then it began.
The darkness twisted into shapes—mories reford as visible illusion, born from Elyon’s unique ability to pull echoes from lightless voids. What they had seen before had been murky and faded, but now, here—surrounded by the void’s residual touch—the images were crisp, distinct.
Clear as day.
Three figures raced through a violent spatial channel, their bodies contorted by the unstable currents of the void. Shards of fragnted spatial energy tore past them like razor-sharp glass, slicing through armor, clothing, and flesh.
Blood floated freely in the gravity free, dinsionless passage, twisting alongside sparks of light and dissolving terrain.
Lin Mu’s eyes narrowed.
Daoist Chu leaned forward.
ng Bai held his breath.
The first two figures were clearly the elders—one of them a tall man with silver hair tied in a bun, wrapped in the Xian Sword Sect’s High Elder robes, the other a slightly shorter man with a black sword and visible injuries.
Even as they were battered by the spatial chaos, they moved with determined speed and practiced formation—coordinated like veterans.
And ahead of them was a third figure.
The attacker.
Cloaked in fragnted shadows, the third figure darted through the channel, their movents strange—less like they were flying and more like they were swimming through cracks in reality.
Every ti they seed to be cornered by the collapsing channel, they shifted and reappeared further ahead.
But it was the brief mont when the void spat wisps of raw spatial energy that it happened—the figure’s cloak tore, and a belt buckle glead in the flickering light.
A crescent.
Sunken in what looked like an ocean, or perhaps a turbulent lake.
The vision shattered.
Elyon inhaled sharply, his shadows dissipating like smoke. He stared at the others, then slowly turned to Lin Mu.
"I know that symbol."
The calm in his voice had vanished, replaced with sothing between dread and alarm.
"You do?" Daoist Chu asked, stepping forward.
Elyon nodded grimly. "That’s the mark of the Drowned Crescent Cult."
The na echoed in the air like a curse.
Lin Mu’s brows furrowed. "The sa na as the one we read carved into the wall earlier?"
"Yes," Elyon confird. "At first, I thought it was just a taphor. A poetic way of describing the volcano’s collapse or so ancient tragedy. But now... now I realize it was literal."
ng Bai swallowed. "So the cult... it’s real?"
Elyon nodded, his voice low. "Very real. Or at least... it was.
The Drowned Crescent was an old cult. One of the oldest evil factions recorded in the Silent Lotus World and even the adjacent realms.
They were obsessed with the idea of ’returning the world to the womb of night,’ as they called it. That’s what the ’drowning’ part referred to. Drowning the world in darkness and silence—cleansing it in the flas beneath the earth."
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