At this moment, the West Tower of Ironthorn Castle was filled with a thick, inseparable scent of muscle-regenerating herbs.

  Del lay on the pristine white experimental table, upper body bare. The bruises on his chest had mostly faded under the alchemical potions, but the profound weakness radiating from within lingered like an unshakable shadow.

  Ian stood to the side, eyes sunken, hands trembling as he manipulated a semi-transparent “Mirror of Truth.” This precious magical assessor could reveal the flow of battle-qi within a professional’s body. Projected on the mirror’s surface, a tangled mass of red threads faintly appeared in Del’s body—the standard “battle-qi circuit” of the Western system.

  “Damn it… how did it get this messed up?”

  Ian cursed, tapping his staff on the floor. In his understanding, battle-qi should flow smoothly like rivers through vessels and muscles. Yet at the spot in Del’s abdomen known as the “sea of qi,” he saw only a bottomless vortex.

  “Del, you have to face reality.” Ian set down the mirror, his tone heavy with helplessness. “According to the count’s most authoritative ‘Treatise on Knightly Circuits,’ your battle-qi core… has completely collapsed. That spot should be the hub of qi circulation, but now it’s shattered—and it’s even madly devouring what remains of your vitality.”

  Del slightly opened his eyes, gazing at the intricate magical runes on the ceiling, yet his mind was perfectly clear.

  This was the gulf between civilizations across planes.

  What Ian saw as “collapse” was because he tried to understand a “lake” with the logic of “river channels.” In Eastern martial logic, the shattering of the dantian does not signify the end of energy but a structural reorganization. Torry’s punch had indeed shattered Del’s original Bedrock foundation used for disguise, but this very crack accidentally tore open the final membrane between Del—as a “soul from another world”—and this world’s energy.

  “Uncle Ian, do you mean… I can never condense battle-qi again?” Del’s voice was calm, without a ripple.

  “Condense? No—your body now is like a porcelain vase covered in fine cracks.” Ian sighed, pointing at a spot in the mirror. “Look—at the edge of this ‘spherical void,’ any energy attempting to converge is instantly torn apart. This damage cannot be repaired by healing sorcery. In Western knightly history, this injury is called ‘Root-Origin Exhaustion.’ It means that even if you lift a sword in the future, you won’t be able to mobilize even a shred of transcendent power.”

  Del was silent for a moment, then gave a wan smile: “So in the eyes of the count and those knights, I’m already… a useless cripple?”

  “Though Torry is dead, he died ‘very valuably.’ He proved with his life that you’re an uncontrollable monster—and now your disability actually reassures the count.” Ian sat beside the table, rubbing his brow. “Del, understand this: a living, crippled genius is more in line with the castle’s interests than a mutant who might explode at any moment.”

  “What if… I can repair it?” Del suddenly turned his head, staring straight into Ian’s eyes.

  Ian froze, then gave a bitter laugh: “Repair it? With what? Church holy water? The royal life-fruit? Del, don’t let false hope destroy your reason.”

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  “While organizing those ‘masterless fragments,’ I came across a saying.” Del began weaving the lie he had long prepared, each word landing precisely in Ian’s blind spots. “In distant Eastern remnants, there’s mention of a ‘break to rebuild’ logic. They believe that when the core shatters, if you find a material of extreme hardness with energy-anchoring properties, you can ‘weld’ the broken core back together.”

  Ian’s brows furrowed tightly: “You mean… forcibly filling energy nodes with matter? That’s sheer heretical madness! It would cause your body to be directly burst by violent material energy!”

  “But what if that material is ‘Obsidian Adamant’?” Del uttered the key term.

  Ian’s hand froze. As a wizard, of course he knew Obsidian Adamant. That was the most mysterious product from the depths of the Meteorite Mine, prized for its extreme “ethereal conductivity” and “stability,” usually used to craft the core of top-tier wizard towers.

  “You want to go to the mine?” Ian’s tone grew unprecedentedly grave.

  “Rather than remain in the castle as an abandoned pawn hunted by Torry’s old subordinates and watched by the count, I’d rather gamble once in that place called the Death Forbidden Zone.” Del struggled to sit up; every movement was labored, the internal “shattered” feeling convincing Ian that the boy’s vitality was draining away.

  The next day, in the count’s council hall.

  Count Hector coldly looked down at the pale youth below. Torry’s death angered him, but what concerned him more was whether this survivor of the explosion still possessed that “evil power” capable of instantly killing a mid-tier knight.

  “Del Garay, Ian has submitted your diagnostic report to me.” The count’s voice echoed in the vast hall. “‘Root-Origin Exhaustion’—truly unfortunate news. As a knight no longer able to wield battle-qi, you have lost the qualification to inherit the family crest.”

  “I understand, my lord.” Del bowed slightly, voice low. “Therefore, I request to go to the Meteorite Mine, to guard that polluted fringe tunnel for the castle. There, I wish to use what little time remains to verify an ancient alchemical thesis and attempt to mend my ruined body.”

  The count’s eye twitched slightly. The Meteorite Mine was a place even formal knights avoided lightly—filled with otherworldly radiation and ferocious cavern monsters. To the count, Del’s proposal was nothing less than a dignified “exile.”

  “If you die there, Baron Garay will be heartbroken.” The count sighed hypocritically, then changed tone. “But if you can collect even one ounce of ‘Obsidian Adamant’ for the castle, I will acknowledge your contribution to the territory. Go, Del—this is your last chance.”

  Late night, Del returned alone to the West Tower.

  He stood in the darkness, without lighting a fire. He could feel that at the spot in his abdomen Ian called the “shattered void,” a faint yet tenacious black vortex was quietly accelerating.

  Ian was wrong.

  In this world’s Western logic, power is “borrowed” from external elements and stored in bodily circuits—so when the circuit breaks, power is lost. But in Eastern logic, the dantian is itself a small self-circulating heaven.

  Torrey’s strike—amplified by sacrificial sorcery—had indeed shattered Del’s original narrow battle-qi pathways, but this very act created space for him. Those so-called “fragments” were actually being gradually devoured and reorganized by the force called “black sand.”

  “Chip, report dantian status.”

  Status update:

  Dantian crack assessment: transformed into ‘ethereal siphon mouth.’

  Detected: shattered Bedrock battle-qi fragments being assimilated by black sand.

  Current progress: Black Wind Sword parsing 25%.

  Conclusion: Host’s body is no longer a sealed container, but an infinitely expandable vortex.

  Del extended his hand, feeling the free-floating “radiation energy”—wild and unusable in Western eyes—being madly devoured through his pores by the vortex called “dantian.”

  That sense of shattering was not death, but the birth after breaking the shell.

  “Meteorite Mine…”

  Del looked toward the darkness in the northwest. There lay the most crucial piece for recasting his sword path. Those abandoned waste mines—discarded like trash by Westerners—were, to him, the richest hunting ground on this continent.

  The next morning, a simple carriage left Ironthorn Castle.

  Del sat inside, holding the brand-new black-iron cross-sword Ian had given him—unenchanted. The wheels rolled over cold stone slabs with dull thuds, as if drawing a period on this old chapter of his life.

  As the carriage gradually receded, Del looked back one last time at the towering castle.