The white ceiling of the quarantine cube didn’t crack or open, yet the skybox suddenly darkened from sterile white to a deep, dark royal gold.
A heavy, choking pressure dropped upon the chamber. Not the moving shock of falling stonework, but the artificial spiritual gravity that high sky officials projected to crush the spirits of mortal petitioners. For an ordinary fighter, the weight would have shattered their spirit veins, rupturing their dantian and forcing them to their knees in begging on their knees terror.
Lin Tao merely shifted his stance, his boots planted firmly fifty paces from the western wall.
His zero-byte dantian buffer remained fully empty. The sky pressure, designed to overload and rupture spiritual energy reservoirs, found nothing to grasp. It passed through his core like mountain wind blowing through an empty bamboo pipe, grounding harmlessly into the seamless floor beneath his heels. His pulse didn’t speed up. His breathing remained calm and measured.
Above him, the golden light coalesced into the huge, semi-clear projection of a bearded face adorned in the jade crown and vermilion robes of an Imperial Grand Judge.
It was High Archon Xuan Ji.
The Archon’s golden eyes, each larger than a carriage wheel, stared down through the virtual ceiling with total, arrogant contempt. When he spoke, his voice rang with the booming rhythm of bronze bells. It shook the air inside the cube with tyrannical grandeur.
