The "Rusty Empress" was not a creature of grace. As it hauled Long Chen and Hanzo deeper into the Ghost-Salt Desert, every joint of the mechanical lizard shrieked in a different key of agony. The white salt flats had given way to a landscape of jagged obsidian shards and "spirit-drifts"—piles of fine, blue-tinged dust that hummed with the leftover radiation of the ancient war.
Hanzo sat at the helm, his hands dancing across a chaotic array of copper levers. "Rule number three, kid!" he shouted over the roar of the engine. "Never look a Salt-Worm in the eye. Mostly because they don't have eyes, but also because if you're close enough to look, you're already lunch!"
Long Chen didn't answer. He was sitting cross-legged on the vibrating metal plates of the Empress's back, his eyes closed. To Hanzo, it looked like he was napping. To Long Chen, the world was a map of frequencies. He could feel the engine's rhythm—a stuttering, uneven beat—and he could feel something else. A vibration coming from deep beneath the salt crust.
"Hanzo," Long Chen said, his voice cutting through the mechanical din without effort. "Stop."
"Stop? We're making record time! The Empress is practically purring—"
"Stop. Now."
The weight of Long Chen's words was so heavy that Hanzo's hand moved instinctively to the brake lever. The mechanical lizard hissed, its six legs locking into the salt as it ground to a halt. The silence that followed was deafening.
"What? What is it?" Hanzo whispered, peering through his goggles.
"The ground is hollow here," Long Chen muttered. He stood up, his bare feet gripping the hot metal. "And something is waking up."
Suddenly, the salt thirty yards ahead erupted. A massive, segmented creature—the size of a mountain pass—burst into the air. It was a Salt-Worm, but its hide wasn't flesh; it was covered in overlapping plates of translucent crystal that refracted the sun into blinding needles of light.
"Great ancestors' teeth!" Hanzo yelped, frantically pulling at a stubborn gear. "It's a Crystal-Back! My scrap-cannons won't even scratch that thing!"
The worm let out a sound like grinding glass, sensing the heat of the engine. It coiled, ready to crush the Empress into a pancake.
Long Chen stepped off the machine. His feet hit the salt with a dull thud that seemed to silence the wind. He didn't draw the Stone-Breaker's Gavel. Instead, he simply adjusted his stance, sinking his weight deep into his heels.
"Hanzo, hold the lizard still," Long Chen commanded.
As the worm lunged, a terrifying aura began to bleed out of Long Chen. It wasn't the bright, flashy Qi of the Cloud-Mist Sect; it was a dark, invisible pressure. The air around him grew thick, as if the gravity in a ten-foot circle had suddenly tripled. The falling salt-dust didn't land; it accelerated toward the ground, hitting the crust with the sound of hailstones.
The Crystal-Back slammed into this invisible wall. The sound was like a ship hitting a reef. The massive creature's head flattened against the pressurized air, its momentum completely negated by the "Weight" Long Chen was projecting.
"Is... is the air solid?" Hanzo stammered, his goggles clicking as they tried to process the scene.
Long Chen reached out and placed a single hand against the worm's crystalline snout. He pulsed his Dual-Polarity Marrow. A ripple of absolute stillness passed from his palm into the beast. The worm didn't explode; it simply stopped moving, its internal structure paralyzed by the "Logic" of Long Chen's touch.
"Go," Long Chen said, his voice resonating with a metallic edge.
The worm, feeling a primal terror it couldn't understand, burrowed back into the salt at twice the speed it had appeared.
By nightfall, the duo reached the Iron-Thorn Oasis. It was a jagged cluster of metallic trees—spire-like plants that drew minerals from a pool of liquid mercury at the center. Hanzo's workshop was built into a nearby glass cliff, a fortress of gears, wires, and half-finished inventions.
"Well, welcome to the 'Palace of Rust,'" Hanzo grunted, hopping off the Empress and kicking a pile of copper pipes out of the way. "It's not much, but the salt-ghosts hate the smell of oil, so they stay clear."
He turned to Long Chen, his eyes glinting with a sudden, mischievous thought. "Since you're so 'Smart,' kid, maybe you can help me with my masterpiece." He hauled out a suit of armor that looked like a birdcage crossed with a circular saw. "The Cutter-Plate 5000. Built-in tea-steamer and everything. Try it on!"
Long Chen sighed. "Hanzo, it won't hold."
"Nonsense! It's Grade-4 Reinforced Steel! Put it on!"
Long Chen stepped into the chest piece and buckled the straps. For a second, he looked like a bizarre mechanical knight. Then, he breathed.
CREAK. SNAP. CRUNCH.
As his lungs expanded, his natural "Weight" reacted to the constriction. The reinforced steel plates groaned and then buckled inward, folding like wet paper. Within seconds, the three-hundred-pound suit of armor had been crushed into a ball of scrap metal the size of a melon, which fell to the floor with a heavy clack.
Hanzo stared at the remains of his life's work. A single copper pipe rolled across the floor and hit his boot.
"You... you just crushed three years of welding by inhaling," Hanzo whispered, a tear nearly forming behind his goggles. "You're not a human, kid. You're a walking hydraulic press."
"I told you," Long Chen said, picking up a piece of the scrap and inspecting the grain of the metal. "The logic of the joints was flawed. You prioritized defense over flexibility."
"I prioritized looking cool!" Hanzo barked, though he was already reaching for a notebook to record the data.
Later that night, the comedy of the workshop faded into a heavy, oppressive silence. Long Chen sat by the mercury pool, the silver liquid reflecting the twin moons of the desert. He was at the Absolute Peak of Stage 3. His bones were now so dense they felt like solid bars of lead.
He tried to cycle his energy to form the Dantian Foundation, the legendary Stage 4. But every time he tried to "spin" his power into a core, his own bones resisted. They were too perfect. Too rigid. He was like a master architect who had built a house so strong he couldn't open the front door.
"It's a cage," Long Chen muttered, his skin glowing with a faint, crystalline light. "I've turned my body into a prison."
"The desert does not have walls," the Key in his pocket whispered. It felt hot against his thigh. "The Kings of old did not store their power in a belly-sack like common cattle. They became the center of the world. If your body is too small for your power... expand the body."
Long Chen looked out at the vast, white desert. To reach the next stage, he wouldn't just be a cultivator. He would have to learn how to break himself apart and rebuild his foundation using the very salt of the earth.
He looked at Hanzo, who was busy trying to repair the Empress with a oversized wrench. "Hanzo," Long Chen called out. "How far is the Glass Hive?"
Hanzo stopped, his face going pale. "The Hive? That's where the Shatter-Sentinels live. They don't just kill you; they vibrate your soul until it turns into dust. Why?"
"Because," Long Chen said, standing up as the ground beneath him cracked under his shifting weight. "I need something strong enough to break my bones."