The heart of Stone Ridge Mountain, the Waste Disposal Zone.
There was no light here. Thick Gray Fog lay heavy in every crevice of the rock, like corpse oil that had been simmered in a pot for three days.
Chu Qing stood barefoot in the dark-red sludge. The sensation against his soles was slick and icy, like stepping on the rotting tongue of some colossal beast. He lowered his head and looked at his palm. The gray core was twisting desperately between his fingers, letting out a sizzling electric crackle.
"Run?"
An extremely soft cold laugh slipped from Chu Qing's throat. His right hand suddenly exerted force, his five fingers digging into the core's surface like steel hooks.
Crack!
With a crisp burst, the gray shell shattered beneath his fingertips. Dark-purple True One Aura bored in through the gaps beside his nails, savagely tearing open the logic locks inside the core.
There was no explosion as expected.
Strings of dense, faintly glowing digital runes surged out of the core. These runes interwove in the air into countless shrunken lights and shadows, like floating mirrors.
Chu Qing stared at one of them.
It was a world called the "Seventh Experimental Field." In the miniature image, the living beings of that world were at their peak, Sword Qi crisscrossing, gods descending to earth. But in the span of a single breath, an enormous, deathly pale brush tip swept across the void.
Just one stroke.
The world's Spiritual Energy instantly dried up. Living beings turned to ash, mountains and rivers collapsed into mud, and every spark of civilization fell into a pitch-black funnel like scales scraped off a chopping board.
Chu Qing's Adam's apple slid with difficulty. The rhythm of his breathing in his chest abruptly quickened, his heart slamming hard against his