The night following Werner’s departure, an ominous, searing wind swept across the moors of the Morey Earldom. It carried the salt-iron tang of blood, blowing down from the distant northern provinces, whistling through the withered gorse before circling the weathered stone walls of the Morey manor. The pale moonlight was swallowed by a ceiling of leaden clouds, leaving the estate in a state of funereal solitude, save for a single, flickering candle in the western study.
Allen Morey sat before that guttering flame, his fingers tracing the faded heraldry of a yellowed family ledger. He was weighing the threat of "Order" left by Werner against the shadow of his master, Del, who had dragged him from the mire of mediocrity.
Suddenly, Allen’s expression cramped in a spasm of phantom pain. He felt a violent constriction in his chest—a sensation like a white-hot needle driven into his heart. It was the "Black Sand Anchor" Del had planted within him. Usually a steady, dormant core of warmth, it was now vibrating at a frenetic, screaming frequency, its heat searing through the fabric of his shirt.
This was not a summons from Del.
It was the anchor’s instinctive revulsion, a biological alarm triggered by the entry of an intensely concentrated, aggressive "alien energy" into its sensory range. It was a clash of fundamental rules—like oil meeting a roaring furnace.
"Eagle!" Allen shoved his desk aside, his voice low but carrying the jagged edge of command.
The door burst open instantly. Eagle stood there, his long blade unsheathed, his face a mask of grim intensity. "Young Master, I feel it too. Two of the outer sentries went silent. No signal flares, no dying breaths. Their speed... it’s impossible."
"It’s not speed. It’s sensory deprivation," Allen strode to the window, peering through a sliver in the shutters.
The manor grounds were deathly still. The nocturnal birds that usually nested in the ancient oaks had fallen to the grass in unison, their wings stiff and paralyzed. The air was saturated with a faint, translucent blue shimmer—an ethereal film that seemed to "peel" the manor away from reality itself.
"This is the embryonic stage of a High-Tier Domain," Eagle whispered, his knuckles whitening as he gripped his hilt. "Only those who have crossed the threshold of 'God’s Decree' can stretch their Combat Qi into such a suffocating web."
At that moment, the front gates of the manor let out a sound that made the marrow of their bones ache. It wasn't the sound of an impact, but a groaning, rhythmic shriek of matter being reorganized. Without any visible violence, the massive doors—forged from century-old oak and reinforced with cold iron—began to warp, sag, and collapse inward. It looked like a sheet of burning paper, curling away from an invisible flame, until the thousand-pound gates dissolved into a pile of uniform, flour-fine sawdust.
The night wind rushed into the hollow entrance, extinguishing every candle in the grand hall.
Three figures stepped through the ruins.
The man in the center was tall and slender, draped in a deep purple velvet robe embroidered with the complex, interlacing sigils of the Holy Church. A silver mask, carved with scrolling floral patterns, covered the upper half of his face, leaving only a mouth curled in a sneer of celestial arrogance. With every step he took, a ripple of pale blue light expanded across the marble floor—an "Elemental Ripple" caused by the friction of ultra-condensed Combat Qi against the air.
To his left and right stood two knights in heavy mithril plate. Their armor glowed with a frigid, inner light, and the massive cross-swords strapped to their backs radiated an aura of absolute slaughter. The two breathed in perfect unison, their Qi wavelengths overlapping to form a mobile, two-man battle-array.
"Little master of House Morey."
The silver-masked man stopped in the center of the hall. His voice was not loud, but the vibration of his Qi made it boom against the eardrums of everyone in the house like a rhythmic drum. "There is no need to hide. I can hear your heartbeat. It is as loud as a hammer against a hollow box."
Allen took a breath, leading Eagle out from the shadows of the second-floor gallery.
"The 'Inquisitorial Court' of the Holy Cross?" Allen stared at the purple robe, a cold smile touching his lips. "To send a High Inquisitor for a fading Earldom... you certainly flatter us."
"We are not here for the land," the silver-masked man said, his gaze lingering on Allen before drifting toward the darker shadows behind him. "Where is he? The 'Master of Succession' who slaughtered Castille and fabricated those 'miracles' in the mines? Hand him over, and I may allow a single ember of the Morey bloodline to remain. Otherwise, by dawn, this land will hold nothing but a curse."
"My Master is resting," Allen’s hand settled on the hilt of his black-steel short sword, the Black Sand Qi beginning to flow with a heavy, leaden momentum. "He isn't fond of visitors while he sleeps—especially those who bring the stench of the gallows with them."
"Ignorant child."
The Inquisitor’s eyes turned to ice. He didn't move a muscle, merely tilting his chin upward. The mithril knight on the left erupted into motion.
【Combat Skill: Fissure Strike】!
The knight didn't take a step; he slammed his armored boot into the floor. A surge of ochre-colored Combat Qi, like a subterranean beast, tore through the marble tiles in a straight, jagged line toward the staircase. The force was enough to disintegrate the entire gallery and Allen along with it.
Eagle roared, preparing to leap down and intercept the blow, but Allen’s hand clamped onto his shoulder like an iron vise.
"Wait," Allen whispered.
In the heartbeat before the fissure hit the base of the stairs, the world fell into a grotesque, absolute stillness. A sound echoed—thin, distant, like a heavy stone dropping into a bottomless ocean.
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The violent, mountain-shattering fissure stopped dead exactly half a meter from the stairs. It wasn't blocked; rather, the moment the ochre energy reached that radius, it hit a wall of infinite, invisible mass. Then, under the horrified stares of the invaders, the shattered stones didn't fly upward. They were hammered into the earth by a terrifying downward force, creating a perfectly compressed, ten-centimeter-deep black crater in the ground.
"Waking people up in the middle of the night is quite an impolite habit."
A calm, almost lazy voice drifted from the depths of the second-floor corridor.
Del appeared, wearing a wrinkled, charcoal-grey robe, one hand shoved in his pocket and the other rubbing sleep from his eyes. He looked utterly mundane—no radiant aura, no mountain-shaking pressure. But as he stood there, the Inquisitor’s blue "Perception Domain" began to shudder violently, as if the space itself could not bear the weight of the boy’s existence.
Del looked down at the dissolved door, then at the ruined floor, his brow furrowing slightly.
"I personally chose those stones and wood from the deep mines," Del said, his tone as casual as a merchant discussing grain prices. "Are you going to pay for the repairs?"
A deathly, awkward silence filled the hall.
The silver-masked Inquisitor stared at Del. As a master of the "God’s Decree," his spiritual senses were screaming in a deafening, high-pitched alarm. In his vision, the boy before him wasn't a human; he was a black, collapsing "hole." Everything—light, air, his own perception waves—was being dragged toward that boy by an irresistible, entropic force.
"You are the 'Master of Succession'?" The Inquisitor forced back the primal fear rising in his gut. His blue aura flared into a raging tide. "I care not for your sorcery. Before the judgment of the 'God’s Decree,' all heresy shall turn to ash!"
"God’s Decree Domain: Torrential Perception—Total Activation!"
The blue light solidified within the hall. Within this domain, the Inquisitor was God. He could track every mote of dust, predict every neural signal. To him, Del’s every movement should have been as slow as a slug in thick mud.
Del merely tilted his head and whispered two words:
"Too light."
Then, Del took his first step.
CRACK!
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the hall. The Inquisitor watched in terror as his "invincible" domain film, upon contact with a three-meter radius around Del, shattered like thin ice under a sledgehammer.
It wasn't a clash of power. It was a crushing of rules. The gravity field around Del was of such high density that the Inquisitor’s fluid-dynamic-based "Decree" algorithm simply collapsed.
"Impossible!" the Inquisitor shrieked, his voice breaking. "You have no Combat Qi! What are you!"
"I am the one who teaches you physics," Del said smoothly.
With every step he took, the very structure of the manor let out a groan of agony. Allen and Eagle felt the floorboards beneath them bending downward, as if Del’s weight had suddenly become several thousand tons.
"Together! Kill this monster!" the Inquisitor screamed.
The two mithril knights locked eyes, their years of shared training overriding their fear. They crossed their paths, their greatswords carving a perfect arc in the air. Their golden Combat Qi resonated with their mithril armor, erupting into a light so bright it threatened to blind the room.
【Combined Combat Skill: Decisive Cross-Star】!
Two massive beams of golden light crossed in the air, tearing the vacuum with a high-pitched scream as they sheared toward Del. This was the ultimate technique of the Temple Wardens, used to decapitate high-tier heretics across the empire.
Del watched the cross-beam approach. He slowly pulled his right hand from his pocket. He didn't form a fist or a seal. He simply pressed his palm downward in the air before him. The gesture was as casual as a teacher signaling a noisy class to sit down.
WOOM—!
A visible, ink-black ripple expanded from Del’s palm. The golden beams, which could have leveled a mountain, underwent a grotesque physical deformation. Under the extreme pressure of the ripple, the straight paths of the light began to curve violently downward.
Allen watched, breathless, as the golden "Cross-Star" was literally slapped into the floor by Del’s hand.
BOOM!
A massive impact shook the foundations. A十字-shaped crater, several meters deep, appeared in the floor. Del, meanwhile, hadn't even had a hair out of place.
"Your 'Qi' is too airy," Del said, looking at the stunned knights. "A beautiful shell with a heart made of cotton. How can something so thin bear the weight of the world?"
Del took another step, and this time, he appeared directly in front of the knight on the left. This wasn't speed. In Allen’s "Black Sand Vision," Del had shifted the local gravitational constant to "pull" the space toward himself.
"No..." The knight tried to raise his shield—a mithril tower shield rumored to withstand dragon fire.
Del extended a single finger and tapped the center of the shield.
Snap.
The shield didn't break; it was compressed. The half-meter-thick tower shield was instantly flattened into a sheet of iron thin as a dragonfly’s wing. Then, that pressure passed through the iron and hit the knight’s chest. The knight gave a muffled grunt, and his entire body, encased in the heavy mithril, folded like a piece of discarded paper. He died without a sound.
"Monster... you are a devil from the depths!"
The silver-masked man broke. He realized that before this boy, all martial logic, all Qi rankings, and all holy doctrines were meaningless. He waved his hand, his blue Qi exploding into a blinding mist, and he turned into a streak of light, fleeing for the gates.
"Leaving?" Del turned, his right hand reaching out into the void. "Leave half of yourself behind."
"Black Buddha Siphon: Gravitational Cage."
In that second, the Inquisitor felt the air itself turn into solid concrete. No, heavier than concrete. Every cell in his body was being dragged downward by an inescapable force. His leg bones shattered under the sudden weight.
CRACK! CRACK!
"AAAGHHH!"
His scream echoed into the night as he was slammed into the dirt ten meters outside the gate. He wasn't falling; he was being "pressed" into the earth.
Del walked out of the manor, standing over the man buried in the mud. There was no malice in his eyes, no anger—only the cold indifference of one who saw the fundamental nature of matter.
"Earlier, you asked where the Master was," Del said, looking down. In his right palm, a dark-red vortex began to spin slowly. "This is the 'Succession' I have taught this land."
"Stripping, and Returning."
Del pressed his palm onto the man’s silver mask. A terrifying suction erupted. The pure, water-attribute Combat Qi—the result of decades of cultivation—was dragged from the Inquisitor’s body in visible blue streams. His body withered into a desiccated husk.
Thirty seconds later, Del withdrew his hand. A corpse like dried driftwood lay in the purple robes. Del exhaled, the dark-red vortex in his palm becoming more solid, tinted with a deep, stolen blue.
"Master..." Allen’s throat was dry. He knew Del was strong, but this was beyond martial arts. This was a god cleaning a messy table.
"Did you see it clearly?" Del brushed dust from his hands. "That is their 'God’s Decree'. If you can analyze the vibration frequency of their energy and overwrite it with a heavier rule, then even the 'strongest' are just slightly more durable materials."
Eagle swallowed hard, pointing at the shattered mithril armor. "Master, what do we do with... them?"
"The bodies are useless. Throw them out," Del said, gesturing to the mangled armor plates. "But the mithril is decent quality—tempered with holy water, good conductivity. Eagle, melt these down tomorrow. Make two valves for the drainage pipe at the bottom of Black Wind City. The water pressure there is high; we need something 'durable' for the plumbing."
"..." Eagle was silent. The sacred mithril, the life-blood of knights, was being turned into sewage valves.
"Allen," Del looked at his disciple. "If they are sending Inquisitors, the 'Moon Tower' or the High Cathedral has taken notice. Accelerate the excavation. I want the gravity field of Black Wind City to cover the entire Morey Earldom within fifteen days."
"Master, you mean to..." Allen’s eyes shone with fanatical light.
"Nothing much," Del yawned, walking back into the house. "I just hate being woken up. If they like using 'Domains' to oppress people, I’ll build them a 'Hell' they can never crawl out of."
