The perimeter of the newly condensed 100-mile Poison Dead-Zone was a scene of organized chaos. Spirit Hall's Judgement Angels, having successfully pushed back Dugu Bo's toxic domain, were now securing the scorched earth.
Tents made of fire-resistant silk were erected. Patrols of Spirit Kings marched in tight formations, their armor gleaming under the fading light of the setting sun. At the center of the camp, an intricate array of silver mirrors and crystal lenses was being assembled by dozens of Spirit Hall technicians. This was a forward relay for the God-Observation Tool.
Elder Pyre sat in a heavily guarded command tent, a healer desperately trying to soothe the void-burns on his chest.
"The array will be operational in one hour, Elder," a chief technician reported, bowing deeply. "Once online, the Supreme Pontiff will have a direct, unblinking view into the Poison Douluo's 100-mile shell. We will map every stone of the Starfall Peaks by midnight."
Elder Pyre grunted, waving the healer away. "Good. The Poison Freak thinks he can turtle inside his shell. Once we have the coordinates, the Hall of Elders will authorize a Divine Strike to shatter the mountain completely. Double the guards around the mirrors. If a single leaf moves in that forest, I want it burned."
The technician bowed again and exited the tent. The camp was heavily fortified. Three hundred elite Spirit Masters, thirty-six Spirit Sages, and eight Contras. It was an impenetrable fortress of light and fire.
But they had made a fundamental miscalculation. They were looking for an army to march out of the mist. They didn't understand the Void.
A mile away, standing on the branch of a massive, half-burned oak tree, stood Yu Feng. Yu Chen's elder brother watched the Spirit Hall camp with eyes that were no longer human; they were pools of swirling silver-black starlight.
Behind him, blending perfectly into the charred bark and lengthening shadows, were twelve members of the Shadow Constellations.
Before the Great Seclusion, Yu Feng was a Rank 64 Spirit Emperor, proud of his Mountain-Rift Phoenix spirit. But when Grandmother Yu Shui declared the unsealing, and Yu Chen revealed the truth of the Gatekeepers, Yu Feng had been the first to break his own chains. He had shattered the "Unmoving" seal on his heart. His martial soul had evolved into its true, terrifying form: the Void-Rift Phoenix.
"Commander," the lead Shadow whispered, his voice bypassing the air and transmitting directly through spatial resonance. "The technicians are aligning the primary lens. The Contras are stationed at the four cardinal points. Elder Pyre is in the central tent, his aura is erratic."
Yu Feng drew a pair of short, curved daggers. They didn't reflect the moonlight; they seemed to absorb it.
"My little brother gave us a mandate," Yu Feng said, his voice cold and devoid of arrogance. "He said we are no longer the shield. We are the abyss that swallows the sword. Target the technicians first. Disable the God-Observation Relay. Then, bleed the Contras. Do not engage Elder Pyre directly; let his paranoia consume him."
Yu Feng raised his hand, two yellow, two purple, and two black rings silently dropping to his feet.
"Sixth Spirit Skill: Phoenix Void-Walk."
Yu Feng didn't jump. He simply stepped forward and vanished into the space between the air molecules. The twelve Shadow Constellations followed, dissolving into the night.
In the center of the Spirit Hall camp, the chief technician was adjusting the final crystal lens. "Hold the primary mirror steady! The spiritual alignment must be perfect—"
He stopped. He looked down. A jagged blade of solidified darkness was protruding from his chest. There was no sound. No flash of spirit rings. He simply fell forward, his blood pooling silently on the silver array.
Before the guards could even scream, the shadows cast by the tents seemed to detach themselves from the ground.
A Spirit Sage guarding the northern flank opened his mouth to shout a warning, but a hand materialized from the empty air behind him, covering his mouth, while a dagger severed his vocal cords and spinal column in a single, fluid motion. He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
The Yu Clan's Shadow Constellations were not fighting a battle; they were performing a surgical excision. Because they were using the unsealed Void-logic, their spirit power signatures were completely masked. To the Spirit Hall's sensory tools, it looked like their men were just randomly dropping dead.
"Attack!" a Contra finally roared, igniting his blazing broadsword. "Invisible enemies! Burn the shadows!"
The camp erupted into chaos. Walls of fire were thrown in every direction. But fire needs fuel and oxygen. When the flames hit the locations where the Shadows stood, they found only localized pockets of a vacuum. The fire sputtered and died, leaving the Spirit Masters completely exposed in the dark.
Yu Feng materialized directly above the massive, half-assembled God-Observation array. His Void-Rift Phoenix wings flared—not made of feathers, but of spatial tears that looked like shattered glass.
"You look too closely at things you do not understand," Yu Feng whispered.
He crossed his daggers and plunged them directly into the primary crystal lens. A shockwave of pure, anti-axiomatic void energy exploded outward. The array didn't just break; the spiritual logic holding the materials together was unmade. The millions of gold coins worth of divine-tier equipment turned into a pile of mundane gray sand.
Elder Pyre tore through his tent, his Solar-Flare Falcon avatar blazing with the heat of a dying star. "Show yourselves, cowards!" he screamed, unleashing a massive wave of plasma that incinerated his own tents.
He looked wildly around the camp. Over fifty of his elites were dead. The technicians were wiped out. The God-Observation Relay was completely destroyed.
And the attackers were gone.
Yu Feng and the Shadow Constellations had already slipped back into the spatial rifts, retreating to the safety of Dugu Bo's 100-mile Dead-Zone. They had suffered zero casualties.
Elder Pyre fell to his knees amidst the burning wreckage of his camp, the gray sand of the destroyed lens slipping through his fingers. He finally understood the terror of the "Anomaly." The Unmoving Mountain hadn't just moved; it had become a ghost.