Graveyard

The world seemed to be spinning.

No, it was the darkness that was whirling.

At Helios's deepest point, even intangible space was continuously overturning and cycling beneath the secret rites of two Grandmasters, forming one invisible vortex after another.

Sometimes, when Huai Shi lost focus for a moment, he found himself walking on the ceiling. Other times, he realized it had merely been an illusion.

In the silence, apart from the mice's squeaking, there was only the rumbling of the little handcart beneath the skeleton's butt.

For a while, he suspected he had become lost in a dizzying maze.

The farther they went, the quieter the drifting Source Matter became. It carried the scent of Abyssal Sediment, stirring a vague unease within him.

"What's ahead?"

"Boundless space, exorbitant land prices—every inch has to be put to efficient use... What else could be next to a garbage dump?"

Tong Ji drawled, "A graveyard."

Helios's graveyard.

All the dead alchemists were buried here.

"More precisely, it's for the alchemists whose ambitions exceeded their abilities and whose ideals surpassed reality." Tong Ji shrugged regretfully. "In short, the less capable bunch."

Unfortunately, reality was this cruel.

There was no room for incompetents on Helios's precious territory.

Not even in death did they receive the privilege of a grand burial.

They had been too safe, and too ordinary.

Their skills could neither fulfill their ambitions nor leave behind enough poison.

They could neither create miracles nor become calamities.

Many alchemists, even after death, retained enough accumulated calamity within their shells to turn their corpses into bizarre relics, or even mutate them into Abyssal Species.

Take a Grandmaster, for instance. Once one died, the calamities or miracles condensed through a lifetime of secret rites would gather into something solemn and terrifying.

And some people simply died.