Chapter 20: Feast and Friction in the Shattered Glass
The Frostfang Labyrinth had become a symphony of screaming dimensions. Ayush's single, surgical Unweave had not just disarmed a trap; it had shattered the delicate, artificial balance of the entire pocket realm. Spatial fractures now bloomed and vanished like deadly flowers. Platforms of solid ice phased in and out of existence. The very air rippled with gravitational eddies, making navigation a constant, heart-stopping gamble.
The Sun Moon team's arrogance had evaporated, replaced by grim-faced survival protocol. Their sophisticated scanners were now liabilities, screaming constant alerts that only fueled panic. When a rogue spatial tear sheared clean through a junior member's defensive barrier—leaving him unharmed but severed from the team by a wall of shimmering void—their leader, Lin Xi, made the only rational call.
He activated a public address function on his armor, his voice strained. "Shrek team! This is Sun Moon Expeditionary Unit Alpha. The realm's instability has exceeded all predictive models. We propose a temporary ceasefire and coordination for mutual survival and egress. Do you acknowledge?"
Teacher Fan Yu, his face tight, looked to Bei Bei and Ayush. "They're right. This chaos is beyond any natural secret realm. Something is critically wrong."
"They tried to kill us," Wang Dong said coldly, his Light of the Butterfly wings flickering with agitation.
"And their trap backfired," Ayush said, his voice low. "Now we're all in it. A truce gets us access to their sensor data and firepower. We need it." He met Fan Yu's gaze. "We acknowledge."
An uneasy alliance was forged in the groaning ice. The two teams merged into a single, larger group, with the Sun Moon members huddled behind glowing energy shields projected from their armor, and the Shrek team relying on raw power and Ayush's uncanny spatial sense.
It was this sense that became a point of intense, silent scrutiny. While others stumbled through the shifting maze, Ayush moved with a strange certainty. He would pause, his silvery-enhanced Spirit Eyes scanning, and point. "The path there will solidify for nine seconds in three… two… one. Now." Or, "Gravity surge incoming from the upper left. Brace."
He was never wrong.
Lin Xi watched him like a hawk, his own tool spirit—the Multi-Lens Scope—constantly trained on Ayush, gathering data. "His spiritual perception is operating on a wavelength our tools can't even register," he muttered to his second-in-command. "It's as if he's reading the realm's source code."
Wang Dong watched too, but with a different kind of intensity. The concern in his eyes was slowly being overtaken by a dawning, chilling realization. His roommate wasn't just lucky, or blessed by a strange spirit. He was interacting with this chaos on a fundamental level. During a brief respite, as Ayush leaned against a stable ice wall, subtly letting the Black Book analyze the energy output of a nearby Sun Moon "Gravity-Nullifier" soul tool, Wang Dong cornered him.
"You knew," Wang Dong whispered, his voice barely audible over the realm's hum. "Back at the entrance. You didn't just stop the ceiling from falling. You pulled a thread. I felt it. A… a command. Not a spirit skill. Something else. What are you, Yuhao?"
The question hung in the frozen air. It wasn't accusatory, not yet. It was terrified. Ayush saw the fracture in Wang Dong's trust, the fear that the person he was bound to was a stranger.
He had prepared for this. He met Wang Dong's gaze, letting a mask of pained exhaustion and vulnerability slip into place. It wasn't entirely fake; the mental strain of constant spatial perception was real. "The Vault… it changed more than my body, Wang Dong," he said, voice raw. "It gave me… an understanding. Like the memory of how the world breaks. Brother Tianmeng is terrified of it. He hides from it. But I… I can see the cracks. I don't know how. I just can." He leaned closer, lowering his voice further. "And I think… I think the ones who made this place can see them too. And they don't like that I can."
It was a masterful deflection. It confirmed Wang Dong's observation without revealing the truth, framing it as a traumatic, unwanted mutation and pointing the finger of suspicion at the mysterious "makers"—a label that could encompass both the Sun Moon Empire and, though Wang Dong wouldn't know it, Tang San.
Wang Dong's expression softened slightly, the fear mingling with protective anger. "Then we get out of their playground," he vowed, squeezing Ayush's arm.
The alliance, however brittle, allowed the Black Book its feast. Whenever Ayush was near a Sun Moon soul tool—a Spatial Anchor Generator, an Elemental-Dispersion Rifle—he would let his spiritual sense, sheathed in Gu Yuena's authority, brush against it. The Book would drink deep, analyzing the crude, forceful methods of binding elemental and spatial laws into crystalline matrices and spirit-conducting channels.
ASSIMILATING PRINCIPLES: [MECHANIZED LAW BINDING – SUN MOON VARIANT].
CONCEPT: 'FORCED ELEMENTAL RESONANCE VIA ARTIFICIAL FREQUENCY.'
CONCEPT: 'SPATIAL STABILIZATION THROUGH ENERGY OPPOSITION.'
EFFICIENCY NOTE: PRIMITIVE. WASTEFUL. BUT NOVEL IN APPLICATION. ASSIMILATION PROGRESS +5%.
[MARTIAL UNIVERSE] UNLOCK PROGRESS: 39%.
As they delved deeper, drawn by a growing, thunderous pulse of energy, they found the heart of the labyrinth. It wasn't a natural formation.
It was an engine.
A colossal, half-buried structure of a dull, non-reflective metal, covered in intricate, glowing runes that hurt the eyes to follow. It thrummed with power, and from its central core, a beam of distorted light shot upward, feeding the chaotic spatial field of the entire realm. This was the Frostfang Labyrinth's true secret: not a natural secret realm, but an ancient, malfunctioning Dimensional Forge, a soul tool of unimaginable scale designed to create stable pocket dimensions. It had suffered a critical failure millennia ago, and now, its uncontrolled output was the source of the realm's power—and its instability.
Tang San' divine will had been using this existing instability as a weapon. Now, with its guided trap foiled, that will reacted.
As the combined team stared in awe at the monstrous engine, the space above the forge curdled. The chaotic spatial energies, instead of radiating randomly, began to swirl, to coalesce. The humming of the realm rose to a deafening shriek. From the vortex of distorted space and ice, a form began to pull itself together.
It was not a spirit beast. It was a Spatial Anomaly given predatory sentience. A being of shimmering, refractive edges and a core of absolute gravitational hunger. It had no eyes, but its presence fixed on Ayush with the unerring accuracy of a divine targeting system.
Lin Xi's scanners exploded with catastrophic warnings. "Spatial coherence forming into a pseudo-life entity! Energy signature off the charts! It's… it's ignoring all other targets! It's locking onto Huo Yuhao!"
The god's new move was brutally direct. He hadn't just guided the environment; he had weaponized it, forging a guardian from the very chaos Ayush had unleashed, and directing it with a single, simple command: CONSUME THE VARIABLE.
The Spatial Predator descended, a silent avalanche of cutting space and crushing gravity.
The truce shattered instantly. "Fall back! Regroup at a safe distance!" Lin Xi yelled, his team already retreating, prioritizing data and survival over allies.
"Yuhao!" Wang Dong screamed, his wings blazing as he moved to interpose himself.
"No!" Ayush roared, shoving Wang Dong back with a careful but irresistible application of his enhanced strength. "It wants me! Fan Yu Laoshi, get everyone back! Buy me time!"
This was no longer a test he could hide from. This was a divine assassination attempt wearing the skin of a natural disaster. As the Spatial Predator loomed, its form making reality bleed at the edges, Ayush reached not for his Spirit Power, not for his Dou Qi, but for the two deepest, most powerful authorities he now held.
He reached for the Black Book's hunger for laws.
And he reached forGu Yuena's sovereignty over elements.
"It is a child of broken space and arrogant will," the Silver Dragon King's voice was a blade of winter. "You cannot fight it with force. You must redefine it. Show it the Book. Show it a law its creator cannot comprehend."
Ayush stood his ground before the descending monstrosity. He opened his spiritual sea, not to attack, but to project. He let the Black Book's aura, the scent of countless waiting, locked realms, bleed into reality. And he let Gu Yuena's silver dragon authority, the memory of a whole and sovereign world, ring out like a clarion call.
To the Spatial Predator, a creature born of a single, broken dimension and a god's narrow command, the presence that suddenly stood before it was an ontological shock. It was not a thing to be consumed. It was a lens looking back. A gateway to infinities that made its own existence seem like a scribble in the margin.
It hesitated. Its form flickered, the coherent will Tang San had imposed wavering against the sheer, overwhelming conceptual weight of what Ayush represented.
It was only a second of hesitation.
But for Ayush, with his perception, it was an eternity. He saw the thread of divine will holding the anomaly together—a single, shining, hateful blue strand in its core.
He didn't have the strength to Unweave something this powerful. But he didn't need to break it.
He just needed to redirect it.
With every ounce of his will, he pointed at the heart of the malfunctioning Dimensional Forge. "YOUR HOME IS THERE!" he shouted, the command imbued with Gu Yuena's elemental authority, making the words a law the chaotic entity could understand. "THE ONE WHO MADE YOU SEEKS TO DESTROY YOUR HOME! HE FEEDS YOU LIES!"
He focused the Black Book's alien, multiversal aura and pushed it, not at the predator, but along that single blue thread of divine will, back toward its source, carrying a distorted echo of the predator's own chaotic hunger.
The Spatial Predator shuddered. The divine command (CONSUME) collided with a sudden, primal, implanted instinct (PROTECT HOME). Its simple sentience shattered into confusion. With a final, dissonant shriek that tore at the fabric of the realm, it turned. Not toward Ayush, but toward the colossal, thrumming engine of the Dimensional Forge. It plunged into the central beam of distorted light.
There was a soundless, flashless implosion of reality. The engine' core overloaded. The Frostfang Labyrinth gave one final, agonized groan.
And then, it began to collapse.
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The race for escape as the pocket realm disintegrates around them. The alliance is permanently broken in the frantic dash for the exit. Ayush, drained from the confrontation, must rely on Wang Dong and the others to navigate the final, violent stages of the collapse. They barely make it out, tumbling back into the frozen wasteland as the spatial tear behind them seals with a cataclysmic boom. Back at Shrek, the debriefing is a minefield. Lin Xi presents damning data suggesting Ayush "provoked" the realm's collapse. Wang Dong's defense is fierce but based on a lie he only half-believes. And Tang San, reeling from the feedback of his will being rejected and used, decides the variable has grown too dangerous. He stops plotting accidents. He begins planning an execution, using the most legitimate, untraceable weapon at his disposal: the laws of the Douluo Continent itself. He will force Ayush to break a fundamental rule in front of the entire world, giving him divine justification to erase the anomaly for "the good of the plane."