Chapter 207: The First Gate

The dead man raised his hand.

The ocean around them answered at once.

Water lifted in wide sheets and hardened into pale stone. The soft light from the surface bent and thickened, forming walls, pillars, and a broad platform that pushed upward beneath their feet. In the space of a few breaths the empty ocean was no longer empty. A massive gate stood in front of them, tall enough to dwarf any structure Lian had seen in the outer tomb. Its surface was dark metal marked with deep grooves, sealed down the center by a single vertical line of force.

The broken aura pressed harder for a moment as the construction finished, then settled back into its previous crushing weight.

Lian kept his eyes on the gate.

The dead man’s voice carried across the new platform without effort.

“The first test begins now. Each of you will enter alone. There will be no assistance and no shared progress. What you face beyond this gate is yours to endure or fail.”

The vertical line of force split open with a low, grinding sound. Cold air spilled out from the darkness beyond. Lian could not see the far side clearly, only a vast space and the faint suggestion of movement deep inside it.

“Behind this gate wait one hundred thousand of the silver-armored beasts you already encountered,” the man continued. “The same species that hunted you near the living gate. They will not tire. They will not retreat. Your task is simple. Cut your way through them until none remain standing in your path.”

He paused, and the weight of his presence deepened.

“This is not an illusion. If you die inside, you die. There is no revival and no second attempt. The test measures who is capable of carrying what I left behind. The dead have no use for inheritance.”

One hundred thousand.

The number settled in Lian’s mind without drama. He had faced eleven of them before and barely escaped. The difference in scale was absolute. A pack had nearly killed him. An army of them waited on the other side of that gate, and failure meant actual death.

The dead man’s gaze moved across the three of them.

“You will enter one at a time. The gate will close behind each of you. When one finishes or falls, the next may enter. There will be no observation of each other’s progress. The test measures the individual.”

Lian felt the weight of the statement clearly. Elara and Ryzek would face the same number. None of them would know how the others performed until the test was over. Cooperation ended here. Mercy from the trial itself did not exist.

The dead man lowered his hand.

“Who enters first is irrelevant. The result is what remains.”

Silence held for a moment on the stone platform. The open gate waited, cold air still flowing from the darkness beyond. Lian adjusted his grip on his blade and compressed what Qi he could control into tighter cycles. The healing the man had forced through his body had restored function, but it had not erased the memory of how hard even a small number of those silver-armored beasts had been to fight.

One hundred thousand of them.

Real death if he failed.

He stepped forward.

The dead man’s eyes followed him, measuring, unreadable. Lian did not look back at Elara or Ryzek. Looking back changed nothing. The rules had already been set.

He walked toward the towering gate and crossed the threshold without slowing.

The moment both boots passed the line of force, the gate sealed behind him with a heavy, final sound. The platform, the ocean, and the other two disappeared. Darkness pressed in from all sides for a short distance, then opened into a vast, barren plain of cracked stone under a colorless sky.

In the distance, silver light began to move.

Thousands of pale, bloodshot eyes turned toward him at once.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders