Chapter 185 — Strike Unit Three
The fracture zone did not announce itself with fire or thunder.
It revealed itself through absence.
The sky thinned first—its color draining until blue became a pale, washed-out echo. Then sound dulled. Wind lost direction. Even gravity felt uncertain, tugging not downward but inward, as though the land itself were folding toward a hidden center.
Strike Unit Three emerged from the spatial corridor in silence.
No dramatic entrance. No banners.
Just six figures standing at the edge of a broken world.
Lin felt it immediately.
This place was wrong.
Not violently corrupted—yet—but strained, like a bow pulled too far back and trembling under its own tension.
"Formation delta," the unit captain ordered quietly.
They moved without argument. Two forward scouts. Two rear anchors. Yueyin took the central resonance position, her phoenix physique radiating a gentle stabilizing warmth that kept the group's qi signatures coherent.
Lin took the right flank.
He did not lead.
But the ground responded to him anyway.
---
1. The Silence of Strike Unit Two
They found the first sign within minutes.
A banner.
Not torn. Not burned.
Simply… placed.
It belonged to Strike Unit Two.
Lin crouched, fingers brushing the fabric. His gravity sense flared instinctively—and recoiled.
"There's no residual struggle," he said.
The captain frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning they didn't fight," Lin replied. "They were taken—or erased—before they could react."
The abyssal energy here was thin but sharp, like needles woven through the air.
Yueyin inhaled slowly. Her pupils flickered gold for a heartbeat.
"I can feel echoes," she murmured. "Not death. Not life. Something in between."
That unsettled everyone.
They advanced.
---
2. The First Engagement
The abyss made its move without warning.
The ground split—not open, but sideways. A seam of void unfolded horizontally, disgorging warped figures clad in armor that pulsed like living tissue.
Abyssal infantry.
Not beasts.
Cultivators.
"Engage!" the captain snapped.
The battlefield erupted.
Lin stepped forward as instinct took over.
He did not draw power explosively.
He compressed it.
Gravity folded inward around his hammerhead, laws tightening like invisible threads converging to a single point.
He struck.
The impact did not create a shockwave.
It created a collapse.
A dome of warped space expanded outward, dragging abyssal soldiers screaming into its center as matter crumpled under impossible pressure.
> Black Hole — Controlled Manifestation
The dome imploded.
Nothing remained.
The strike unit stared for half a second—then resumed formation as if nothing extraordinary had occurred.
This was Titan Realm war.
---
3. Yueyin's Fracture
The abyss adapted.
From the shattered ground rose something else—an abyssal resonator, its form unstable, laws flickering wildly as it emitted a pulse meant to disrupt qi cohesion.
The pulse washed over the unit.
Everyone staggered.
Except Yueyin.
Her phoenix flames surged instinctively, flaring bright gold-red as they absorbed and neutralized the distortion.
But she screamed.
Not aloud.
Inside her soul.
Lin felt it.
A resonance spike—too familiar.
Yueyin dropped to one knee, hands clutching her chest, breath ragged.
"I'm fine," she insisted when Lin reached her. "Just… memories."
Her flames steadied.
But deep within her sea of consciousness, something ancient stirred—something that recognized the abyss not as an enemy…
…but as a voice.
She did not understand it.
And that terrified her.
---
4. The Mantis and the Oriole
They reached the fracture's core an hour later.
And there they found it.
Strike Unit Two.
Or what remained.
Six cultivators stood frozen mid-motion, their bodies encased in translucent abyssal crystal—not dead, but suspended, their life force siphoned slowly into a massive formation beneath them.
A trap.
The moment Strike Unit Three crossed the perimeter—
The sky tore open.
A commander descended.
Not an elder.
Not a general.
Something between.
Its presence bent the laws around it unnaturally, gravity buckling, space groaning under the strain.
"Fall back!" the captain ordered.
Too late.
The abyssal commander raised a hand.
Lin moved.
He stepped forward—not in defiance, but in calculation.
His gravity law surged—not outward, but downward, anchoring reality itself around the strike unit.
The commander's attack slammed into an invisible wall and shattered.
Silence followed.
Then the commander laughed.
> "Found you."
Lin's blood ran cold.
That voice did not belong here.
Far away—very far away—something vast turned its attention.
The abyss had not only noticed Lin's movement.
It had begun to track him.
---
5. Extraction Under Fire
They did not win cleanly.
They won precisely.
Lin collapsed the formation siphoning Strike Unit Two, shattering the crystal prisons and freeing the trapped cultivators just long enough for extraction.
The commander pressed relentlessly.
Yueyin burned brighter with every clash, her flames sharpening unnaturally, carrying hints of something older than phoenix fire should possess.
When they finally retreated through the spatial corridor, the abyssal commander did not pursue.
It simply watched.
Smiling.
---
6. Elsewhere — The Abyss Moves
In a place without sky or ground, abyssal scouts knelt.
Three rift coordinates hovered before them.
All confirmed.
A presence loomed.
Not fully manifested.
But aware.
> He is closer now, the thought reverberated.
The world-carrier.
The one who burns my harvest.
The abyss began to shift its forces.
Not toward the Empire.
Not toward the Astral Forge Sect.
But toward convergence.
---
7. Aftermath
Back at the sect, healers rushed to stabilize Strike Unit Two's survivors.
The Sect Master listened to Lin's report without interruption.
When it was finished, he spoke only once.
"The abyss has chosen you as a reference point."
Lin met his gaze evenly. "Then I'll give it something it can't forget."
The Sect Master nodded.
"You will deploy again soon," he said. "This war has found its shape."
And somewhere deep within the abyss, something ancient prepared to move—not as a tide…
…but as a hunter.
---