In the deepest folds of the North District’s tunnels, the air was so thick it felt like coagulated plasma. This was the most lightless wrinkle of the Meteor Mine, a place perpetually saturated with the bitter tang of sulfur and the metallic sting of rusted iron. Now, those familiar scents were being overwritten by something far more concentrated and nauseating—the raw, copper stench of fresh internal organs being shredded into paste.

  Vivian knelt in the foul sludge, her slender fingers pressed frantically against the cold, jagged puncture wound in her throat. Life was being stolen from her in rhythmic, hot spurts. She tried to stem the flow, but the freezing liquid of her own blood continued to hiss through her fingers, carrying away the last traces of the warmth she once called "nobility."

  Standing over her was a knight of the Morey family—a man with a plain, almost lecherous face. He grunted as he wiped his blood-stained short sword on his leather breeches, his eyes glittering with the greed of a scavenger. He reached down, brutally tearing the blood-flecked necklaces and rings from her cooling skin.

  "A scion of the Simon family, dying in the muck... a fitting end," the knight spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the floor. "Down here, there are no lords. There are only the dead and the predators who pick them clean."

  Suddenly, a chill as sharp as a glacier’s edge surged up the knight’s spine. It was the primal, instinctive terror of a gazelle realizing it had been locked onto by an apex predator. He spun around, slamming his sword into a defensive guard, and roared into the suffocating darkness:

  "Who’s there?! Show yourself!"

  In the dim, flickering light of a nearby glow-stone, a figure draped in a deep black robe approached with unhurried, measured steps. The man’s face bore a sickly, translucent pallor, and his frame was so thin he looked as though a single subterranean draft might knock him over. In this realm of steel and slaughter, he appeared as fragile as a ghost.

  "Me?" Del stopped a few paces away. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotional inflection, as if he were addressing a stray rock rather than a murderer. "I am just a passing Low-Tier Alchemist."

  "An alchemist? Then go to hell!" The knight’s Combat Qi exploded. An earthy, yellow radiance shattered the puddles around his feet as he lunged forward like an enraged bull, his blade whistling toward Del’s seemingly defenseless throat.

  However, the moment the knight stepped forward, Del’s silhouette blurred with an unnatural, liquid grace.

  Too fast... That was the final thought the knight ever had.

  He didn't even see the movement. He felt a sudden, icy coolness at his throat, and then his vision began to tumble and spin. His head traced a wide, wet parabola through the air before slamming into the mud next to Vivian. The fountain of blood erupting from his neck sprayed three meters, coating the stone walls in a fresh layer of crimson.

  Vivian’s dilating pupils caught the entire scene. In the final, flickering light of her life, she stared into Del’s eyes—eyes as vast and indifferent as a dark abyss. For months, she had mocked him, tried to manipulate him, and treated him like a broken toy. Now, at the very end, she realized that this "cripple" was the only true sovereign of the lightless depths.

  A single tear, a mixture of blood and absolute regret, escaped her eye just as her heart gave its final beat. She had spent her life dancing on the edge of the void, laughing at the silence of the pit, never realizing the void was watching her back.

  Del walked to her corpse, his expression stripped of all humanity. He leaned down, his long fingers precisely detaching the necklace known as the "Abyssal Ember" from her neck. Simultaneously, he swept up several crates of "Original Sin Plasma" left behind by the Morey elites—a rare alchemical fluid that smelled of dark, intoxicating incense.

  [Chip Feedback: Core logic integration in progress. High-frequency mental-negative medium captured: 【Abyssal Ember】. High-concentration alchemical raw material captured: 【Original Sin Plasma】 (Concentration: 88%). Extracting... Analysis progress jumping: 101%... 118%... 135%! Logic reconstruction complete: 【Black Buddha Origin - Second Tier: Undercurrent】 officially unlocked.]

  Del clenched his fists, looking inward. The obsidian seed in his Dantian was now pulsing with violent life, branching out into thousands of hair-thin black threads that wove through his spine and into his limbs. He could feel it—the Black Sand Qi was no longer a static force he had to consciously summon. It had become an "Undercurrent," as natural as breath and as fluid as the tides.

  "Form up! There! Kill the man in black!"

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  A sharp, piercing whistle tore through the air. Five heavy-set knights clad in reinforced plate armor—the "Cleaners" of the Morey family—surged from the shadows. Their chests bore the silver skull sigil of their unit, and they moved with the practiced synchronization of a single killing machine, closing a semi-circle around Del.

  The leader, Commander Mozza, held his broadsword across his chest, the blade burning with a fierce, crimson Combat Qi. He was no fool; as a veteran slayer, he noticed the way the blood around Del’s feet had dried instantly, as if consumed.

  "The intelligence was wrong! This isn't an alchemist!" Mozza roared, immediately activating the family’s secret art: 【Blood Resonance】.

  The Combat Qi of the five knights began to vibrate at the same frequency. A heavy, mountain-like pressure expanded from their formation, grinding the surrounding gravel into fine powder.

  "Strike! Iron Cage, First Wave—Close the net!"

  Two shield-bearers wielding massive, man-high tower shields slammed their weights into the ground. The resulting shockwave sealed off any possible escape route. From the flanks, long spears thrust forward like striking vipers, their tips whistling with a piercing sound as they aimed for Del’s ribs. This was the Cleaners' most feared tactic—a high-pressure encirclement that left zero margin for error. Even opponents an entire tier higher often died under this relentless coordination.

  "Good coordination," Del remarked, standing at the heart of the death-trap. "But your use of energy is primitive."

  As the spears closed in, Del’s right hand made a casual sweeping motion in the air. Three specialized alchemical flash-globes, etched with dark runes, detonated simultaneously.

  Woom—!

  It wasn't a normal white light. It was a violent, violet flash saturated with spiritual interference. It didn't just blind the eyes; it stripped the five knights of their Combat Qi perception, plunging their senses into a chaotic, screaming void.

  "Blinded?! Defensive Stance!" Mozza barked, swinging his broadsword in a desperate, blinding arc to create a wall of fire.

  But to Del, now operating in the 【Undercurrent】 state, their movements were as sluggish as if they were submerged in honey. Supported by the Chip, his dynamic vision analyzed every node of their Combat Qi fluctuations with surgical clarity.

  He gestured with his fingers, and a broken blade lying in the mud was pulled by the Black Sand Qi into his palm.

  【Black Wind Sword - First Form: Overcast Sky】

  Del took a single step, his body turning into a flickering shadow. A stroke of darkness, as viscous as ink and as sharp as a razor, swept through the air. This was no simple slash; it carried a terrifying "dissolution" property.

  The moment the dark arc touched the golden shield-guard of the two front-runners—armor designed to withstand magical artillery—it didn't bounce off. Instead, the golden Qi was devoured, eaten away like butter under a hot knife. The black intent pierced through the shields and the steel plate behind them.

  Squelch! Squelch!

  A mist of blood erupted. The two heavy knights didn't even have time to register their failure before their heads, still encased in their helmets, were severed and sent spinning. The blood columns geysering from their necks were immediately caught by the swirling dark Qi, drawn into a dark-red vortex.

  "Impossible! My Qi is vanishing! He’s eating it!" one of the remaining spearmen screamed in terror.

  "Your 'strength' is nothing more than a pile of disorganized waste," Del whispered, appearing like a nightmare behind Mozza.

  Mozza was a commander for a reason. Despite his lost sight, he caught the faint shift in the air and spun around with a desperate, horizontal cleave. His broadsword carried a wave of scorching heat, a suicidal attempt to take Del with him.

  Del didn't flinch. He raised his left hand, two fingers extended like a blade, glowing with a black-gold undercurrent. He tapped the flat of the broadsword at its weakest point—the exact junction where the Qi was most unstable.

  CLANG!

  The sonic boom from the collision shattered the nearby corpses. Mozza felt a frigid, corrosive force surge through his blade and into his arm, instantly twisting his muscles and meridians into a knotted mess of agony.

  "What kind of Qi is this..." Mozza let out a subhuman howl.

  Del didn't give him time for an answer. His right hand spun the broken blade in a tight, light-swallowing arc.

  【Black Wind Sword - Second Form: Return to the Void】

  For a heartbeat, the air within a three-meter radius was siphoned out by a terrifying gravitational force. Mozza felt the air being dragged from his lungs. His reinforced steel breastplate began to buckle and collapse inward under the vacuum pressure.

  CRACK!

  Del’s palm slammed into the center of the collapsing plate. With a sickening sound of pulverizing bone, the Mid-Tier commander was sent flying backward like he’d been hit by a siege engine. His internal organs, mixed with shattered Qi, were reduced to a dark-red mist that sprayed neatly across the freezing cavern wall.

  The two remaining spearmen watched their leader turn into a bag of broken meat in the blink of an eye. Their iron-clad discipline shattered. They dropped their weapons and turned to flee, but Del was already moving.

  He moved like a black wind. Two flashes of ink-colored light followed, and the final two lives were snuffed out.

  From the moment the flash-globes detonated to the final kill, less than five breaths had passed. Five elite "Cleaners," a squad capable of terrorizing the imperial borders, had been dismantled and slaughtered without ever completing a single maneuver.

  Del stood in the center of the bloodbath, his black robes unblemished by a single drop of filth. He felt the Siphon Seed in his chest warming as it absorbed the refined Qi remnants of the five fallen knights. This feedback from real combat was far more potent than any laboratory cultivation.

  He slowly turned his head, his gaze crossing the piles of corpses to look toward a small, huddled figure in the distance.

  There, at the end of this hallway of hell, sat a youth covered in blood and grime, his face a mask of absolute despair. It was Allen Morey, and his hands were shaking so hard he could barely hold his sword.