The Ninth Fragment

That shattered star hung at the edge of the Source Sea.

It had once been a living starfield.

Now, only an empty shell remained, its surface pitted and scarred as though countless meteorites had smashed into it.

The edges of those craters had long since become brittle; a light touch of the finger would reduce them to powder.

There was no atmosphere, no light— even the most basic fluctuations of law were so faint they were nearly impossible to detect.

A dead star.

After leaving the seal, Chu Ming had flown for two full days before finding this place.

There were no routes nearby, no debris, no trace of any living creature.

The nearest star was ten thousand li away, no more than a dim speck embedded in the darkness, like an eye on the verge of going out. He landed on the star's surface.

The rock beneath his feet gave off a series of faint crackles, and fractures spread outward from the soles of his boots.

Too brittle—brittle as sun-dried bread.

He raised his foot and walked deeper in. With every step, tiny fragments of stone flaked away from the crater rims and rolled into deeper fissures.

There was no wind. No sound.

Only the noise of his footsteps crushing rock rang with exceptional clarity through the deathly stillness.

The Stellar Core lay a hundred li below.

Chu Ming made his way downward, passing through layer upon layer of brittle rock strata.

The colors of those layers shifted from ash-white to deep gray, from deep gray to pitch-black. The farther down he went, the denser the stone became, and the duller its shattering sounds grew. By the time he reached the core, there was no light left around him.

Only the gray-gold radiance around his body illuminated the space