Inside the belly of the five-hundred-foot cooking pot, darkness gave way to a singular, pulsing point of total zero.
At the geographic center of Lin Xiao’s azure core, the Primordial Chaos dantian unsealed its innermost valve. It didn’t roar. It didn’t flash with dramatic fire. True ancient chaos possessed no color, no sound, and no ego. It was the ancient state of the cosmos before the separation of yin and yang, an infinite void that regarded all matter, whether sacred nectar or demonic poison, as simple elemental energy waiting to be reclaimed.
A whirlpool formed.
At first, it was a gentle indentation on the surface of the boiling crimson lake, no larger than a teacup. But within three seconds, the indentation deepened into an upright spiraling funnel that bored straight to the bottom of the star-bronze vat.
The three million gallons of boiling rotting marrow, which Elder Han Gu had spent eighty years brewing from the blood of forty slaughtered mortal settlements, didn’t merely drain. They were pulled downward by a gravity force so huge that the thick, clotted fluid sped up into hyper-speed streams.
SLUUUUUUUUURP!
The sound echoed through the bronze hull like a massive underground drain tube unsealed beneath an ocean. The nine wailing specters circling overhead froze in mid-flight as the marrow supporting their ghostly forms was yanked out from beneath them. Their chimeric limbs of flayed bone and weeping human faces stretched like warm taffy, dragged backward down the throat of the whirlpool.
“No! Wait!” Han Gu’s psychic voice screamed into the void, panic finally piercing through his manic rage. He felt the life-link between his Nascent Soul and the cooking pot shuddering wildly. “What’s happening to the marrow?! Revert! Seal the drainage channels!”
It was far too late for drainage channels.
In less than forty-five seconds, the final drops of black, bubbling sludge vanished into Lin Xiao’s core. The boiling lake was gone. The acid-burning green soul-flame was put out. The inside of the huge five-hundred-foot vessel was left bone-dry, its ancient bronze floor swept so thoroughly clean that even the stone-hard soot of hundreds of years was scraped away into pure elemental intake.
Lin Xiao bounced gently in the center of the vast, hollow bronze tiered arena. His sapphire skin glowed with a pleasant, warm soft glow.
“Ahhh,” Lin Xiao sighed inwardly, rolling from side to side across the smooth star-bronze flat stone slabs. “The broth was definitely too greasy, but the heat was spot on. A little heavy on the liver, but very healing medicine on the back muscles.”
He bumped against the curving bronze wall. Extending a small, inquisitive slime arm, he tapped the metal surface.
CLANG.
The sound was deep, ringing, and clear. It rang like an ancient temple bell cast from the bones of fallen stars.
“Now that’s high-grade craftsmanship,” Lin Xiao noted, tasting the trace stone signed names through his outer membrane. “Eighty percent refined star-bronze, twelve percent deep-sea cold iron, and eight percent ancient meteor ore. Tie Shan could use this metal to forge forty thousand plowshares, twelve new water gate gates, and at least three dozen iron-hard kitchen cooking pots. But how on earth am I supposed to haul five hundred feet of solid bronze down the mountain without crushing the turnip patches?”
He paused, tilting his round head upward to stare at the distant rim where the sky showed through like a small round skylight.
“Well,” Lin Xiao finished with simple, undeniable logic. “If you can’t carry the takeout container in your hands, you just have to eat the container.”
“Host is formally advised that consuming an eight-hundred-and-fifty-ton Grade Four divine ancient object poses severe spatial shifted weight settings,” the Dao Spirit chimed, her voice carrying a dry, analytical sparkle. “However, using the macro-star-core dantian allows for nonstop spatial unfolding. Load-bearing digestion smooth speed is projected at ninety-nine point eight percent. Recommended mastication method: swallow whole.”
“Swallow whole it’s,” Lin Xiao replied cheerfully. “No chewing needed.”
Outside the cooking pot, Elder Han Gu was wildly pounding his dragon-bone staff against his blood cloud, trying to reignite the nine ghost heads. The nine dragon mouths hung slack, their jaws clicking pathetically in the wind like dead fish on a dry riverbank.
“Wake up, you cursed relics!” Han Gu screamed, spraying blood from his cracked lips as he dumped another cup of his own life essence onto the staff. “Burn him! Digest him! Where is the blood marrow?!”
Before Han Gu could finish his magic chant, the five-hundred-foot cooking pot shuddered.
It didn’t shake from an explosion. It swelled.
From within the vessel, a radiant semi-clear azure light began to bleed through the tiny pores of the ancient bronze. The light spread along the engraved demonic magic charms, overwriting the crimson curses with calm sapphire light.
Then, over the five-hundred-foot rim of the ancient vessel, a massive dome of blue gelatin crested like a rising tide.
Han Gu’s eyes bulged until the veins threatened to burst through his temples.
The blue slime had not melted. It had swelled.
Stretching its non-Newtonian mass with the stretch of an infinite rubber balloon, Lin Xiao’s semi-clear membrane spilled over the bronze lip. It cascaded down the outside walls like an azure waterfall. It wrapped around the nine carved dragon-heads. It slid over the three giant tripod legs, and fully wrapping the eight-hundred-and-fifty-ton metal titan in a smooth, shimmering sapphire skin.
Down on the safe hall walls, five thousand beastfolk and mortal defenders stood frozen in total, numbed silence.
Tie Shan dropped his pipe, the cherry-red embers tumbling across his steel shin guards unheeded. Beside him, Su Ling’er covered her mouth with her silk sleeve. Her amber eyes were wide with amazing wonder. Xiao Hei’s silver tail stood straight out in the air, his star-pattern runes frozen in mid-pulse.
“He’s... He’s wrapping the pot,” Tie Shan muttered, his voice barely a croak. “The boy isn’t just cleaning it. He’s... He’s wrapping it up to take home.”
Four miles away, at the Hundred Treasures Trade Depot, Patriarch Lu Feng collapsed onto his knees on the watchtower roof. His merchant ledger fell from his numb hands, pages fluttering in the sudden wind.
“He swallowed it...” Lu Feng whispered, his voice cracking in sheer existential awe. “He swallowed the Ancestral Cauldron of the Blood Sea Sect... Like an emperor swallowing a single candied hawthorn berry. That ancient object drowned seven sects in blood! What manner of ancient deity walks among us in the shape of a drop of water?!”
In the sky, Lin Xiao tightened his hold.
With a gentle, internal flex of his void dantian, Lin Xiao engaged his macro-star-core suction. The five-hundred-foot bronze behemoth, heavy enough to sink a fleet of mortal warships, was subjected to extreme spatial squeezing. The metal didn’t crumple. It folded into non-Euclidean spatial folds, drawn inward like a silk handkerchief slipping into an invisible pocket.
SHWUUUUUUUUUMP!
The sound was not an explosion. It was the soft, wet pop of an impossibly large dumpling vanishing down a very small gullet.
In the blink of an eye, the five-hundred-foot Nine-Ghost Blood Soul Cauldron vanished from the sky.
There was no bronze. There were no dragon heads. There was no boiling marrow.
There was only a single, remarkably round, slightly plumper sapphire-blue slime, floating comfortably in the empty air three hundred feet above the valley floor.
For four entire seconds, the entire eastern continent seemed to hold its breath. Not a bird chirped. Not a blade of grass rustled. Even the crimson blood-clouds in the sky seemed to stall, hovering in numbed confusion. In the detention pens, several captured demonic officers fell backward onto the straw, their eyes rolling back as their minds failed to process the total deletion of their sect’s foundational divine treasure.
Then, Lin Xiao wobbled.
His round, semi-clear belly rippled with a series of rhythmic, nested waves. Inside his dantian, the eight hundred and fifty tons of star-bronze settled into the void caverns. He felt pleasantly solid and crunchy, like a pouch full of rock candies waiting for tea. His cheeks puffed out into two adorable blue domes. His curved white eyes narrowed into contented crescents.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP!
The eructation didn’t sound like a polite table burp. It was a clear, ringing sonic blast wave of purified ancient air that swelled outward across thirty miles of open sky.
The bone-shaking blast of clean, peach-scented wind slammed into the leftover blood-clouds. It tore the demonic foul fog into ragged ribbons and swept the sulfuric grease from the air in a single stroke. Warm, golden autumn sunlight broke through the shattered crimson ceiling, bathing the valley’s turnip fields and stone cottages in glorious amber radiance.
High in the clearing skies, Xiao Long let out a joyous, rolling draconic bellow, coiling his jade scales through the sunlight and sending down a gentle shower of sweet, dewy mist to wash away the lingering ash.
High above, Elder Han Gu stood fully alone on his blood cloud. He grabbed his dead, silent staff in trembling hands, his mouth hanging open so wide that his jaw joints popped.
“My... My cooking pot...” Han Gu whimpered, his voice shrinking into the hollow squeak of a scared child. “Where is... My ancestor’s cooking pot?”
Down in the golden sunlight, Lin Xiao gave a happy, squishy bounce in mid-air, patting his rounded blue tummy with two tiny azure flippers.
“A bit crunchy,” Lin Xiao’s telepathic voice floated down to the numbed battlefield, cheerful and fully relaxed. “A little too much copper in the aftertaste, but overall, very satisfying. Definitely hits the spot.”