The resonating sound of metal slamming against metal reverberated through an oppressive and all encompassing sheet of pitch black darkness.
The only signs of life amidst the cloying shadows, a scant few sparks produced by a hammer as it raced downward towards a scalding hot bar of metal, lighting up the gloomy expanse that seemed to stretch on forever like the unending void of space.
But no stars were present in this realm, they were all dead and gone, snuffed from existence thousands of cycles ago. Devoid of all life except for that of the single being working at its now fireless forge tirelessly, even now that its kiln had burned out into nothing but cold embers.
And yet.
The figure still hunched over its anvil, striking at its budding new creation.
It did not care about the darkness, as the lack of visibility was no impediment to its senses.
It did not acknowledge the dead emptiness of its realm, for it did not need the warmth of fire and light to soften the metal that it was working on.
It did not care about what laid beyond its home, because it could scarcely remember that such a thing as an outside even existed.
Once more the hammer fell with might enough to crush mountains and the weight of a defunct world behind it, producing a spray of bright sparks that showered its body in tiny pinpricks of warmth and light, momentarily revealing its form for all the empty world to see.
And it was indeed an ‘it’.
Rough, coarse skin the dull grey of burnished iron clung tightly to what once had been a man, his features now blank. Eyeless, mouthless, noseless, there was no defining feature save the human shape of the skull, no hair, no ears, no noise coming from the barely human looking thing.
A reddish hue shone through its metallic skin, as if blood had once flowed freely over its surface and now only an old stain remained, faded away by the inexorable passing of eras, only the memory of the warm crimson ichor lingered.
The golem of aged iron and withered blood continued in its unending work, hammering the metal into the shape it had decided upon. A blade slowly came into being from the lumpy and uneven chunk of metal.
As it lifted its arm for another strike, the featureless golem suddenly stilled.
Fate shifted, tickling what remained of the golem’s soul. A spark of higher intellect lit up its brainless skull, as the tides of Karma moved around.
Its senses pierced through the darkness, truth, and reality as they billowed out into the desert around its home.
More cultivators had come to him to be tested, looking for bounty and riches, hoping to find something to aid them on their Path to eternity. Trepidation filled their hearts alongside hope and excitement.
Fools, one and all. How could they hope to spite the decrees of the Heavens with such feeble hearts?
But still, it would allow them to test themselves in its home, and if they were to succeed, as unlikely as it believed such an outcome to be, they would be rewarded with the treasures that they were seeking.
Its featureless face shifted slightly, regaining only the barest hint of the humanity it had long ago forgotten- then that momentary recovery stagnated until once more it forgot what it had once been and returned to its mindless work.
The sound of metal striking metal echoed throughout the not so dead realm once more.
<<<>>>
Every civilized person in existence hates sand.
It’s all coarse and rough, and irritating. Not to mention the way it somehow manages to slip into every nook and cranny. It just gets everywhere!
Unfortunately, most of Yu Xiang's traveling companions did not mirror his opinion.
"What is wrong dear Yu?" Huang Lei asked him playfully as she ran by his side through the shifting dunes, her usual modified robes hidden under a thin white shawl that protected most of her body from the oppressive heat. "What has you frowning so discontentedly on such a fine day?"
Yu Xiang refused to rise to the bait, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that her affected tone was as fake as Su Rong's new arm, with not even half of the functionality to boot!
"Hmm, I believe he does not appreciate this weather." A soft voice came from his other side, foiling his plans to simply ignore the young woman's humorous prodding.
The young reincarnator's neck produced a loud cracking sound from the sheer whiplash of his head turning so fast that the sand clinging to his skin was flung away towards some poor unsuspecting inner disciple, who almost stumbled over himself as he sputtered and did his best to get the minuscule pebbles out of his mouth and eyes.
His emerald orbs met a pair of silver eyes, shining mischievously and with a healthy dose of schadenfreude; betrayal and surprise battling for dominance over Yu Xiang's expression.
Et tu, Lin?
The lady's smile widened a touch as the young reincarnator's gambit failed miserably by the hand of his own closest friend, metaphorically pouncing on his wounded ego to sink her claws deep into his flesh.
"What a pity." She said while slowly shaking her head. "There is not a cloud in the sky and the breeze is so nice, I wonder what could be the problem..."
Yu Xiang's eyebrow twitched in irritation, his usual resilience to such base and simple taunts woefully thin thanks to the effect their surroundings had on him.
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"It is a mistery." Lin Fen nodded solemnly at Lei's words, his mirth easily readable by the twitching of his feline ears and the way his long fuzzy tail waved around behind him, no matter how deadpan his voice and expression remained.
Yu Xiang huffed, fed up with the two of them teaming up to needle him. With an effort of will, spiritual energy streamed into his right leg, which he then used to kick up a cloud of sand on either side of himself.
Most of the wave of sand was easily dodged by both cultivators, even if some did end up landing on their robes. It was for naught though, as a burst of silvery fire burned away the sand that got on the young alchemist from existence, while the one that got on Lei seemed to slide right off of her as if her entire form were completely smooth and frictionless.
"Now now, that wasn't very nice." She said with her nose raised in the air and a chiding wag of her finger.
Once again, Yu Xiang inwardly questioned in exasperation why they had to traverse the desert on foot. They had taken their time while heading for their destination, using a bunch of the sect's flying barges to transport all of the disciples who had either been chosen or bought their way into the expedition, all captained by at least one core disciple, aside from the one Yu and his companions had been in, as that one had one of their sect's elders at the helm.
He was only a minor elder, and nobody that Yu Xiang knew personally, so he mostly ignored him and left the old cultivator to his mission, as he seemed kind of tense.
Well, not that it was strange, after all, he was more than likely only there to keep the Golden Prince away from harm, while they would be left to rot if everything went to shit.
But hopefully, it would not come to that, and they would all have a relatively peaceful trip, obviously discounting whatever hellscape was waiting for them inside the Blood Iron Tomb.
Speaking of which, Yu Xiang could already see it rising up in the distance, and he'd been able to keep track of it for a while now which hopefully meant that they were close to their resting stop, as none of them fancied walking through this desolate expanse while the sun was out.
The green eyed cultivator was only thankful that they hadn't encountered any major opposition yet.
As if summoned by the young reincarnator's ill timed thought, a sudden tremor broke the group of cultivators out of their various discussions and other methods to pass the time while bounding through the sands.
The dunes all around them shifted violently, jets of sand spraying with great force into the air as something beneath their feet moved around, something big.
"Earth Dragons!" A voice pierced through the cacophony of displaced earth, a core disciple yelling at the top of his lungs alerting everyone in earshot.
The warning came right on time as many disciples manage to jump away from the shifting sands, fang filled maws erupting from just beneath where their feet had once been, enormous jaws snapping on nothing but empty air.
'Earth Dragons' is kind of a misnomer in Yu Xiang's humble opinion, he can't help but think of himself as he watches the strange beasts rise out of the sand.
They were big, freakishly so for something living in a barren wasteland with little to no sustenance, with raw, dark pink skin where scales would have been on a normal dragon, if such a qualifier could even be applied to a dragon, and with tiny malformed horns sprouting from the back of their heads. Their maws distended grotesquely, reminding Yu more of a frog than the majestic creatures these things were allegedly distantly related to, filled with rows upon rows of needle like teeth like those of a monstrous lamprey.
The only parts of their bodies that did not look malformed were their reptilian eyes and their long whiskers, floating gently in the air just like the stories told.
Most of the pack that ambushed them reached barely twice the height of an average man, with only a handful of the stronger ones rising above that at around the size of a house. The strongest and biggest instead dwarfed them all by several orders of magnitude, rising high into the sky until it stood taller than the biggest palace Yu had ever laid eyes on.
The green eyed cultivator couldn't help but come to the conclusion that mama dragon had chosen them as dinner for her hungry children.
Fortunately, none of the disciples would have to deal with the big bitch herself, as the elder that had accompanied them stepped forward to deal with the oversized beast himself.
Yu Xiang's attention fell instead on one of the many, much smaller specimens, who was currently rocketing towards him and his two companions at his side.
Huang Lei was the first one to step forward, not because Yu and Lin lacked courage, but simply because her higher cultivation made it easier for her to break the beast's mad charge, despite having stagnated at her stage instead of pushing for advancement, busy as she had been for the last half a year.
With a flick of her wrist, her war fan opened in a 'fwip' of displaced air, which once she applied her Intent and spiritual energy became a combined gale of sand and hurricane winds.
The young Earth Dragon collided headfirst with the wall of air, breaking right through but slowing down enough for the three cultivators to jump out of the way of its wild attack.
Lin Fen prepared for their counterattack by extracting his silver knife from his loose bottomless sleeves, holders of a hundred and one mysteries, while Yu Xiang called forth one of his oldest techniques.
[Piercing Fulmination]
The spiritual art had been irrevocably changed by his experience all those months ago, become something more which he could scarcely explain with human words.
If before, he had needed to consciously shape his spiritual energy and cast his Intent forward to execute the skill, then now it leaped into existence with no conscious thought of his own, as natural as breathing or moving a limb.
Golden lightning flowed around his body almost like a fluid, ready to congeal into impossible solidity at his mere wish, and as his fingers instinctively gripped down to hold a weapon, Yu Xiang already found a crystalline spear of topaz laying in his grasp as if waiting for him to catch up to his own subconscious command.
A roar escaped from the malformed beast's fauces, as it coiled in on itself for another charge.
But before it could leap forward, the sand around its body rose up against its wrinkled skin, keeping it immobile and defenseless in a grip of scalding powder.
No matter how hard it trashed and screamed, more and more sand rose up to pin it down, giving Yu and Lin a clear shot at finishing it off in one fell swoop.
The two young men shot forward fearlessly, leaving a sweating Huang Lei behind as she did her best not to let the juvenile Earth Dragon escape from her hold.
The young alchemist moved first, his eyes narrowed and his feline ears pressed against his scalp. From his hands flew forth a cluster of silvery fireballs, unerringly impacting against the struggling dragon's face and mouth in a pale conflagration of cleansing heat.
The pained scream released by the beast set it up for its own demise, and Yu Xiang stepped up, executing a move that almost brought a smile to his face due to nostalgia.
The young reincarnator gripped his crystalline spear tightly, rising it over his shoulder before he flung it forward into the Earth Dragon's gullet, focusing his Intent and commanding it to pierce through.
It may have been a dragon in name, but the malformed beast before him was far from the majestic legends that were said to swim through the Heavens like fish in a pond, and whatever trace of their legendary resilience was present within this juvenile specimen was simply not enough to hold up to their combined assault.
With a flash of light and a low crackle, the spear exploded from the back of the overgrown worm's skull, flash cooking its brain in a single moment and bringing its struggle to a gruesome end.
For a moment it stood completely still, its muscles seizing up due to its sudden death and the electricity wrecking through its system, before a second later it toppled to the ground bonelessly, the sand previously holding it down falling alongside it.
Yu Xiang looked around at his other comrades now that their foe had been vanquished, unsurprised when he found the rest of his fellow disciples finishing off the rest of their attackers, with almost no injury in sight.
Returning his gaze to his own dead dragon, Yu Xiang happily reached into his backpack for some extra sturdy carving tools, mirrored by Lin Fen who sported an equally eager expression on his delicate face.
Huang Lei inched away from them, clearly not sharing their passion for booty in all of its forms.
But hey! More loot for them!