The Morey Earldom, three thousand meters beneath the earth.

  The air here had thickened into a literal, physical "heaviness," where every breath felt like pouring cold, hard mercury into the lungs. Del stood before the massive stone wall carved with the scenes of the Punisher’s deicide, his fingertips lightly tapping the frozen rocky surface. Behind him, Allen, Eagle, and the three hundred disciples were shivering like a flock of quails caught in a torrential storm, trembling amidst the violent gravity and surging hallucinations.

  Deep within Del’s consciousness, the chip that had accompanied him through his soul-transmigration flickered with cold, mechanical characters.

  【Mind-Chaos Intent Import: Progress 98%.】

  【Monitoring Host’s heart rate: Stable. Suggest initiating "Group Load" mode.】

  Del had never mentioned the word "chip" to anyone. To Allen and the others, it was merely an unspeakable secret technique within Del’s "Succession," perhaps an ancient artifact spirit. To Del, it was his final secret as a transmigrator, the only anchor he possessed in this bizarre and kaleidoscopic world.

  "It seems the foul air of this abyss hasn't suffocated you. Instead, it has nurtured a rather formidable demonic nature."

  A raspy voice drifted from the end of the mine tunnel. Del did not turn around. With a slight twitch of his finger, the violent gravitational waves pressing down on the disciples instantly retracted, receding into his body like a ebbing tide.

  Ian held a sorcerous lamp emitting an eerie green glow as he walked slowly into the Grand Hall. His grey robes were even more tattered than they had been years ago, and the wrinkles on his face were as deep as a dried-up riverbed. When he saw Del’s back—the aura as unfathomable as an abyss—his fingers involuntarily tightened around the lamp's pole. He was Del’s master, the old wizard who had once pushed Del into this ten-thousand-foot chasm with his own hands to preserve his life.

  "Master, you’ve arrived a bit later than I imagined." Del turned around. The pitch-black vortices in his pupils had not yet fully dissipated, and the oppressive aura inherent to the 【Great Dark Heaven: Indestructible Body】 caused the local gravitational constants to climb stealthily in the shadows.

  "Don't look at me with those eyes, Del." Ian gave a self-deprecating laugh, his clouded eyes staring at the faint, dark-gold Sanskrit runes on Del’s skin. "I threw you down here hoping you would hide, not so you could forge yourself into a God of Slaughter."

  "Hide?" Del walked down from the ink-jade throne, his movements as light and ethereal as a ghost. "In a world where even light is captured by gravity, hiding is the cheapest form of struggle." He walked up to Ian. They were of similar height, but the sense of "density" radiating from Del—the paradox of extreme mass creating an illusion of weightlessness—made this wizard feel an unprecedented sense of estrangement.

  "Since you are here, Master, you can bear witness to my 'Product Quality Inspection'."

  A dangerous smile tugged at the corner of Del’s mouth. He spun around suddenly, his right hand clawing at the empty air.

  "Mind-Chaos Altar: Full Power Activation."

  BOOM—!

  The originally dark-red gravitational ripples transformed instantly into a bottomless bloody-purple. The entire subterranean space seemed to turn into a gargantuan, writhing stomach. At that moment, Allen and the three hundred disciples, who were just catching their breath, were plunged straight into the lowest level of hell.

  The first hour of the trial.

  Allen felt his bones moaning. This wasn't ordinary gravity; it was a pressure with a "viscous" quality. His vision blurred. The dim mine tunnel vanished, replaced by a wasteland overgrown with dark-red brambles—the very imagery Del had seen when acquiring the Black Buddha legacy. But now, these thorns were like living creatures, burrowing into his flesh through his pores.

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  "Is this a hallucination... or gravity?" Allen roared in agony.

  "In this domain, mass is your desire, and attraction is your fear," Del’s voice echoed from the void, carrying the cold indifference of a god. "Allen, think of your stolen title. Think of the nobles who sneered behind your back, calling you a stray dog. If you cannot crush these emotions, they will increase your 'mass' until you are flattened into a pile of rotten meat."

  On the other side, the experience of the three hundred disciples was even more horrific. Because they lacked Allen’s physical foundation, Del used the chip to adjust the gravity on a microscopic level. Each disciple was isolated in an independent mini-gravity well. In their perception, they were reliving the final forty-nine days of the "Demonic Bladesman." They became the demon who betrayed his kin and was hunted by the world. They felt the hot blood splatter across their faces; they felt the desperate scratching of their sister-in-law; they felt the agonizing pain of a brother's sword piercing their chest.

  "Kill! Kill you all!" one disciple screamed, frantically swinging a non-existent blade. Due to the gravitational distortion, every swing of his arm tore his own muscles apart.

  "Del, this is pure demonic path!" Ian watched the disciples sprawled across the plaza like writhing slabs of meat, his face ashen. "They won't survive this trial!"

  "Master, the Temple’s baptism requires holy water. My baptism requires only the ultimate reality," Del responded flatly while flipping through a stack of Saint-Tier documents. "If they can't withstand even this level of 'Mind-Chaos,' then the moment they face the Church’s Inquisitors, they will kneel and defect at a single word. I don't need loyalty. I need them to be so 'heavy' that no one can move them."

  The third day of the trial.

  Non-human screams echoed from the depths, followed by a deathly silence. One disciple, unable to bear the weight of his guilt and the crushing gravity, began to undergo a bizarre disintegration. His skin cracked like a parched riverbed, and what seeped from the fissures was not blood, but dark-red gravitational debris.

  "Chip, monitor heart rates," Del whispered in his mind.

  【Current mortality rate: 4%. Mental collapse rate: 18%. Suggest injecting 'Chilled' pulse.】

  "Labor costs are getting higher these days; I suppose I should be a bit more thrifty with them." Del let out a self-deprecating sigh and flicked his wrist. A micro-vibrational gravitational wave swept across the floor. This wave didn't increase pressure; it acted like a freezing needle, piercing straight through the disciples' feverish seas of consciousness.

  Allen, who was on the verge of self-destructing in his madness, shuddered violently. He saw the bramble wasteland vanish, replaced by the final mad laughter of that bladesman as he faced a sky full of false gods. "So... all the humiliation and desire... were only meant to make the fist heavier?" Allen murmured. He rose slowly. Faint dark-gold Sanskrit runes began to emerge on his swollen skin. Though not as deep as Del's, they radiated an indestructible tenacity. The seeds of the 【Black Buddha Physique】 had begun to sprout within these commoners.

  The seventh day of the trial.

  When Del withdrew the gravity field, the underground plaza had transformed into a "bloody lake"—a bizarre spectacle formed by mass sweat mixed with micro-subcutaneous hemorrhaging.

  Allen opened his eyes. There was no longer hatred or hot-blooded fervor in his gaze, only a depth like a withered well. He stood and bowed, every movement appearing slow and heavy. The surviving two hundred and eighty disciples knelt in unison. They radiated an aura of "dead silence," the lingering aftertaste of having killed their former selves and buried their sanity.

  "Master, look. Aren't the drainage pipes a bit sturdier now?" Del turned to Ian with a hint of mockery. Ian looked at these reborn disciples, his palms slick with cold sweat. He could sense that these people, who were once ordinary mortals, each now felt like a "gravity bomb" waiting to go off.

  "You brat... there’s not a shred of humanity left in you." Ian shook his head, yet he looked somewhat sentimental. "But you're right. If you don't make yourself harder than stone, you don't even have the right to dream in this land."

  Del laughed to himself, stepping down from the ink-jade throne and patting the dust from his robes. "Master, I’ll have Allen take this 'hidden energy' to reinforce your castle on the surface. That 'Golden Body Master' sent by our Northern Duke should be on his way by now." Del took a sip of tea and softly commanded the cold consciousness in his mind:

  "Record target coordinates. Tomorrow, when they enter the door, set the reception hall’s gravitational constant to... sixty times. I’d like to see if a 'Golden Body' can maintain its charming luster when it's pressed into a gold foil." He turned and tossed a final remark to Ian: "Old man, do you think these gods are so ugly that they feel the need to paint themselves in this golden, shiny way just to overcompensate?"

  Ian froze for a moment, then burst into a roar of laughter that echoed through the three-thousand-meter depths for a long, long time.