The impact sounded like a dropped sack of wet turnips.
*THUMP.*
A smoking crater, four feet deep and six feet wide, opened in the soft black loam of Solitude Spire’s front yard.
Lord Nether-Bane lay at the bottom of the pit, his skeletal spine twisted at an unnatural forty-five-degree angle.
The once-glorious Sovereign of the Spectral Void was in absolute ruins. His imperial funeral silks were reduced to charred, smoldering ribbons of ash. His ancient bone crown had been shattered into gravel. His ten-thousand-year soul-cultivation had been stripped down to a flickering, dying spark of pale purple light.
Slowly, painfully, the Ghost King dragged his skeletal fingers through the dirt.
He hauled his upper torso out of the crater, spitting a mouthful of damp potting soil and crushed clover.
"Mercy..." he rasped, his voice sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping over slate. "Spare... this remnant soul..."
He lifted his head, blinking through the smoke.
The first thing his hellfire eyes landed on was a pair of colossal golden paws.
Resting less than five feet from his crater was the Imperial Sun-Griffin.
The colossal war-beast had not fled from the sky-shattering sonic explosion. It had merely rolled over onto its stomach.
The griffin had the body of a massive golden lion and the head of an eagle, with feathers that radiated pure, concentrated solar warmth. Right now, the beast was lazily chewing on a roasted beef marrow bone the size of a fence post.
*CRUNCH.*
The griffin’s beak crushed the marrow bone with effortless, casual power, spraying savory grease across the grass.
It turned its golden, predatory eyes downward, staring directly at the smoking skeleton crawling out of the hole.
The beast let out a low, rumbling growl. A wave of pure ozone and solar heat washed over the Ghost King’s face, causing his necrotic flesh to hiss and smoke.
*A Celestial Solar Chimera!* the Ghost King’s mind screamed in unadulterated panic.
*A primeval beast of the divine sun realms, bred exclusively to hunt and consume spectral sovereigns! And it is merely lounging in the weeds like an overgrown house cat!*
The griffin sniffed the Ghost King’s charred skull once, decided he tasted mostly of soot and disappointment, and turned its head away with supreme contempt. It nudged the marrow bone with its paw and closed its eyes, returning to its afternoon doze.
The Ghost King trembled so violently his finger joints clattered against the grass.
He dared not move quickly. He crawled on his elbows, dragging his broken legs across the lawn toward the wooden porch steps.
Then, he looked up at the porch railing.
Perched upon the polished cedar balustrade was a brass automaton.
Barnaby the clockwork owl sat with immaculate, unyielding posture. His brass feathers gleamed like polished gold under the warm afternoon sun.
In his beak was a thick, black rubber laboratory stopper, immovably jammed into place.
As the Ghost King approached, Barnaby’s brass head executed a silent, instantaneous one-hundred-and-eighty-degree swivel.
*Click.*
The owl’s glowing amber crystal eyes locked directly onto the Ghost King’s soul.
A wave of suffocating, mechanical stillness radiated from the brass bird.
To the Ghost King’s shattered perception, this was no mere toy. This was an ancient Divine Construct of the Primeval Law—a supreme Grand Inquisitor of the Silent Void.
*Look at its beak!* the Ghost King thought, his spirit trembling with holy dread.
*It has sealed its own divine voice with a dark void seal! It refuses to speak because a single syllable from its holy tongue would shatter the physical reality of this entire realm! The Sovereign keeps a Primordial Silent Arbiter on his railing to judge all who approach!*
The Ghost King immediately threw his hands forward, slamming his skeletal forehead against the soft turf: *THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!*
"Great Arbiter of Silence! Supreme Solar Chimera!" the Ghost King wept, dark soul-tears leaking from his empty eye sockets. "This lowly ghost had eyes but failed to recognize Mount Tai! I was blinded by ten thousand years of crypt darkness! I did not know this sacred peak was the ancestral dwelling of the Supreme Sovereign!"
Barnaby didn't blink. He couldn't blink. He was an eight-pound brass clockwork toy with a rubber cork in his mouth.
He just stared into the distance, his internal balance gyro humming at sixty hertz.
Desperate to prove his sincerity before the silent brass bird ordered the griffin to eat him, the Ghost King reached deep into his cracked ribcage.
He plunged his claw into his very soul-origin.
With a ragged, agonizing shriek of spectral agony, he tore out his most precious, sacred possession.
A blinding, sapphire-and-midnight orb materialized in his trembling palms.
It was the **Ten-Thousand-Year Primordial Soul-Pearl**.
The orb was the size of a cantaloupe, radiating a soft, cool luminescence that calmed the restless dead across ten thousand miles. In the First Epoch, entire empires had burned to the ground just to possess a single shaving of its dust. It contained enough refined spiritual mass to elevate a mortal to an immortal ghost god.
"A tribute!" the Ghost King sobbed, lifting the massive pearl high above his head with both hands. "I offer my ancestral Dao origin to the Supreme Sovereign! If the great master disdains my worthless life, take this pearl! Let it serve as a toy for the divine griffin! Let it be a rolling marble for the Silent Arbiter! Only grant this lowly ghost a corner of the garden to atone for his sins!"
***
Up on the porch, Felix Vance walked over to the pine side table in his bare feet.
He was still wearing his loose linen shorts and his soft gray hemp tunic. His straw hat was tucked under his arm, his messy black hair sticking up from twenty minutes of rolling around in his recliner.
He was frowning.
The afternoon breeze had picked up again, and it was causing a practical household nuisance.
On the pine table sat a stack of twelve printed paper menus and delivery receipts from the Imperial Pastry Guild, detailing tomorrow’s scheduled deliveries of pork buns, fried sesame balls, and honeyed lotus roots.
The breeze was catching the corners of the papers, making them flutter and flap against his cold teacup. One receipt had already blown off the table and landed near the screen door.
"Where is a rock when you need one?" Felix muttered, looking around the porch.
His gaze drifted down to the front yard.
There, kneeling facedown in the clover beside the cabbage patch, was a skinny, soot-stained man in tattered black rags.
The man was holding up a shiny, dark-blue sphere with both hands like he was offering a bowling trophy.
Felix blinked.
A set of HUD brackets popped up over the glowing sphere:
【Item: Ten-Thousand-Year Primordial Soul-Pearl】 【Grade: Calamity-Grade Spectral Core】 【Weight: 14.2 kg (Dense, cold, heavy)】 【Inspector Note: Cool to the touch. Incredibly dense. Emits zero heat. Ideal dimensions for securing loose documents in high-wind environments. Zero nutritional value. Do not attempt to swallow.】
Felix’s eyes lit up slightly.
"Fourteen kilos?" Felix whispered to himself. "And totally flat on the bottom?"
He walked down the three porch steps, his bare feet sinking into the soft green grass.
The Ghost King felt the ground tremble beneath Felix’s approach.
To the Ghost King, every step Felix took felt like an entire continent shifting along a fault line. The 2.0-Earth-Mass core in Felix’s chest emitted a gravitational aura so concentrated, so incomprehensibly dense, that the light around Felix’s ankles was literally bending into optical halos.
*He walks with the mass of worlds,* the Ghost King thought, his soul shriveling into a speck of dust. *He does not fly because the earth itself begs to carry his feet!*
Felix stopped in front of the kneeling skeleton.
He looked down at the dark-blue orb, then looked at the trembling man in the soot-stained rags.
"Hey," Felix said, his voice flat and casual. "You done with this?"
The Ghost King’s jaw rattled. "S-Supreme Sovereign... this lowly one offers his entire ancestral origin to your divine footstool! It is yours for eternity!"
"Cool. Thanks," Felix said.
Felix reached down with one hand, pinched the top of the fourteen-kilogram Primordial Soul-Pearl between his thumb and forefinger, and lifted it effortlessly into the air.
He tossed it lightly into the palm of his hand, testing the balance.
*Toss. Catch.*
It had a nice, solid heft. Cold as a river stone, completely smooth, and heavy enough that even a mountain gale wouldn't budge it.
"Nice weight," Felix noted, nodding with mild approval. "Good solid density."
He turned on his bare heels and walked back up the porch steps.
He walked over to the pine side table, gathered his fluttering stack of pastry menus and delivery receipts into a neat square pile, and set the Ten-Thousand-Year Primordial Soul-Pearl right in the dead center.
*THUD.*
The table groaned under the fourteen-kilogram weight, but Grandmaster Vivienne's Sovereign Heart Seal—still wedged securely under the short front leg—absorbed the shock without vibrating a millimeter.
The paper menus were pinned flat. No corner fluttered in the breeze.
Felix brushed his hands off with a satisfied nod.
"There," Felix said. "Now the takeout menus won't blow into the bushes."
The Ghost King, still kneeling in the grass, watched this entire sequence with his jaw hanging open.
*A... a paperweight?*
*The Ten-Thousand-Year Primordial Soul-Pearl... the divine relic that drowned three ancient dynasties in blood... was placed on top of greasy paper slips describing steamed bread?!*
The sheer, unfathomable absurdity of it shattered the Ghost King’s remaining sanity into fine powder.
He looked at the pearl sitting on the table. The ancient relic seemed almost content, its boundless necrotic yin power suppressed entirely by the ambient solar radiance of the porch.
Felix leaned over the porch railing, looking down at the shivering skeleton in the yard.
"Look, buddy," Felix called out, his voice tinged with mild annoyance. "You can hang out in the yard if you want. Pull some weeds, help the bird keep watch, whatever. Just don't touch the cabbages, don't scream, and definitely don't make any more cold drafts."
He pointed a lazy finger toward the northern sky.
"Quiet hours are between one and four in the afternoon," Felix added firmly. "If you wake me up again, I'm throwing the other slipper."
The Ghost King felt his soul freeze solid at the mention of the 'other slipper.'
*The other slipper...*
*The Supreme Sovereign possesses a second God-Slaying Implement of Equal Kinetic Fury!*
The Ghost King pressed his forehead flat into the dirt, weeping with overwhelming gratitude.
"This sinner understands!" the Ghost King cried, his voice trembling with reverent awe. "I shall guard the sacred cabbages with my life! I shall silence the very mountain winds so the Sovereign may rest!"
On the porch, Lyra Ashford stepped forward, her golden eyes shining with profound tears.
She looked at Senior Brother, then looked at the former Calamity-tier Sovereign bowing in the dirt like an obedient yard boy.
*Unbelievable,* Lyra thought, her chest swelling with boundless devotion.
*Senior Brother did not merely defeat the enemy. He crushed his pride, claimed his ancestral relic as a desk ornament, and transformed a ten-thousand-year nightmare into an unpaid groundskeeper! All without raising his voice above a whisper!*
*This is the supreme height of the Dao! Total subjugation through absolute inaction!*
Felix Vance let out a tired yawn, stretched his arms over his head, and climbed back into the Zero-Gravity Recliner.
He settled into the ergonomic mesh, pulled his straw hat back over his eyes, and crossed his hands over his stomach.
Down in the yard, the Ghost King crawled quietly into the corner of the garden fence, curled into a ball beside the cabbage patch, and didn't dare breathe a single wisp of cold air.
Beside him, the griffin snored.
Barnaby sat silently on the railing, his black rubber stopper gleaming in the afternoon light.
Felix Vance let out a peaceful, contented breath.
"Finally," Felix murmured from beneath his hat. "Back to the grind."