Dorian took the plunge. Ker-plunk!

At his stage, one breath could last an hour if necessary. He could go a month without eating if needs be. His body was fueled mostly by qi. So he was heedless as the Sinkhole waters enveloped him in a cool embrace, heedless as he sank farther and farther in, feeling vast currents swirling and coursing all about him. He went on, seeking the depths—the fathomless deep blue and the promise of that sweet, sweet resonance.

At first there was only things he’d seen at the surface: farming cages knotted with flora, nets draped over schools of silver-scaled fish, kelp forests drifting to and fro, mottled with warm hues by the sunlight. Only little critters up here: small schools of fat, lazy fish, oysters clinging to the Sinkhole walls.

What he sought went deeper. To the places the light hardly dared touch. As he swam, slicing easily through the waters, sunlight grew dimmer; the kelp forests spread out, twining and drifting over each other, choking the light above. Even from here, down some twenty-odd spans, Dorian couldn’t see how deep these stalks of kelp went. They only seemed to widen and multiply as he swam. The Sinkhole was a big—nearly as big as the Coliseum in size—but a solid half of it was entangled in this stuff!

He kept going.

Soon the fat fish thinned in number. The oysters vanished. The atmosphere was less cheery sunny lazy, more gloomy murky drab. The water was thicker somehow—gunkier. Each kick of his legs, each stroke of his arms took ever-so-slightly more out of him. And he could hardly see far at all—his hand was a dim pink haze before his eyes.

So it was not with sight that he sensed them, but with sound. And smell. A gift of that awesome Tear of the Dweller.

A gift that might’ve saved his life.

All about him, rank, rotting smells were drifting out from the walls. Drifting out in arcs. Coming closer. At first it was only a few, behind, in front, a smattering from above. And then more and more, breaking out, closing in.

Dorian squinted.

Suddenly his pupils dilated, and what once seemed impenetrable melted away—he saw, but not like humans did. He saw as he imagined the Dweller must see. He saw them all around him in perfect definition, without color: Gunk Eels. Like giant squirming tongues made of gray, rotting flesh, one gooey, watery eye gazing out from a face that could’ve been drawn from a child’s nightmares. Each of them had maws studded with rows upon rows of dagger-sharp teeth, and from them spewed an inky gunk which hissed as it left their mouths, as though it was burning the water itself.

Profound Realm beasts, one and all. There were even a few in the Earth Realm.

And there must’ve been dozens of them!

Dorian had dove straight into the middle of their nests. Blundered in, crudely, brutishly—like a fool with hardly a plan in mind. Very unlike him.

All this was true, but Dorian had also come in with a few key facts in mind.

He was in the Earth Realm. He had the Heilong Javelin, now spiced up with two Bloodline Techniques. He had the Serpent’s Senses—an ace-in-the-hole.

Plans, strategy, tactics—none of this mattered when you held the ultimate trump card.

Absolute power.

He smirked. Of the Mortal Realms, he now stood at the second-highest stage of cultivation. There was only the Sky Realm left before godhood, and he’d wager he was strong enough to go toe-to-toe with the typical early Sky-Realm Spirit Beast.

Which meant after his latest breakthrough—in theory, at least—almost nothing in this Oasis could threaten him!

Time to put that theory to the test.

Dorian drifted there, letting the Gunk Eels seal up the exits, hemming him in, tightening like a net…

But this environment was dark, soaked in shadow. The deeper he went, the deeper the shadows grew. It took but a flicker of will to call them to his aid.

[Blacken the Sky!]

Darkness flooded the waters.

The eels tilted side-to-side, bewildered, their one eye suddenly made blind. The only one who saw through it all was Dorian. It was all clear as day to him, for these shadows answered to him. What they saw, he saw too.

[Level-Up!]

[Blacken the Sky] Lv. 1 -> 2

Ooh! The Technique’s drainage went down nearly a quarter. How convenient.

Dorian smiled, a flash of vicious white in the dark. Then, right above, another prick of white: growing brighter, larger, a cruel fang unsheathed from the shadows themselves.

Dorian closed his eyes. He saw the eels in his mind, points mapped easily by his new senses.

Then he connected the dots.

There was no screaming underwater. There was no writhing. It happened very fast—and his Fang, powered by a full Earth-Realm Spirit Sea, did its job with brutal efficiency.

It was like a needle sewing: back-and-forth in clean lines, mercilessly stringing through flesh and bone as though there was nothing there at all.

By the end of it there was a pleasant stillness. These gunk eels did him the courtesy of not bleeding. They simply hung there, inert, gaping, Massive holes punched through the centers of their bodies. Some were cut cleanly in two.

Dorian surveyed his handiwork, satisfied. Not bad. Not bad at all!

A nice warm-up exercise. It was a useful rule of thumb, when entering a dungeon, to clear out the chaff.

If he found himself needing a quick escape out to the surface, the last thing he needed was these things gunking up the route!

Then Dorian froze.

He felt in an instant like a bug trapped under glass staring up at the blinding and infinite sun. Something formless and absolutely massive drifted over him—and he knew, somehow, that he’d been seen. The mere gaze was enough to send all of his nerve endings flaring; it was so monstrously huge it felt like he’d been swallowed whole, held in place under an aura whose sheer breadth and heft was stole his breath, weighed down his chest.

It passed, retreating once more to the depths from which it’d come.

For a time, Dorian only stared at the blackness below him.

What. The. Fuck.

He’d barged in here gung-ho because he should’ve been essentially invincible in the Oasis! Yet—

That thing. That did not feel like the pressure of a Sky-Realm creature…

That felt like the pressure of a fallen God.

Dorian swallowed. A demigod—or even higher, potentially!—that’d been so wounded its cultivation had dropped back to a line straddling mortality and godhood. A line that let it seek refuge in the Lower Planes…

The Dweller. That was it. It must be!

The revelation had him slightly nervous—and also utterly giddy.

It’s true! The damned thing’s alive!

He hung there, treading water, without a clue what to do next.

On the one hand he’d just confirmed the existence of a creature that no doubt had the capacity to slaughter him. And he had no escape techniques, really—certainly not down here. If he went farther in, and it took it as a sign of aggression…

But did it?

To it, Dorian must seem like a fly! There was no hint of malice in its gaze. Only an impassiveness—a passing glance thrown his way as it shifted to other things. Dorian knew creatures like these, that dwelled at the bottom floors of dungeons. The affairs of the riffraff seldom concerned them.

Or am I just trying to talk myself into going farther?

…That was probably it. The safe, smart move would be to regroup, call himself lucky that it hadn’t come after him, and live to fight another day…

He frowned at the deep waters, dithering.

Then he felt something.

That resonance, once more—but now that he was closer, he felt something peculiar about it…

Was it…moving?

And in more directions than one. A resonance drifting to north, another, subtly different, shifting south. He strained his senses to their limits—was that a mote of Bloodline aura, moving in a semicircle?!

And finally he put his finger on what set the Sinkhole’s resonances apart from all the other Bloodline resonances. What made them so vibrant, and deep, and layered.

They felt like his own.

Which was to say, they weren’t inert, dead relics. They belonged to the living.

Nine fucking hells. Does this mean what I think it means?!

Either there was more than one Dweller, or the thing had descendants!

Descendants filled with fucking Bloodline! Fountains of Blood, swimming about, waiting to be sucked dry, burned up, waiting to rocket him up to the highest stratospheres of cultivation! This was not scrounging in the muck for possibly a Bloodline Relic, as he’d originally intended. This was draining it from the source!

He was getting too giddy. Far too giddy. His inner goblin was screaming at him to dive down there this instant and slurp up a seafood buffet and good heavens did it take a firm hand on the inner leash of his soul to reign himself back! Hold on—just a second—

If I go down there, like this, and try to slaughter creatures with my own Bloodline—creatures who the Dweller may hold dear!—

This could very well be the last anyone ever heard of him.

Yet how, after that, could he not go deeper in?! If only to explore? If the whole point of this ordeal was to bloat up on empty calories—why, if he had access to this kind of Bloodline to burn, he could practically skyrocket himself far into the Sky Realm. He could in an instant bloat himself with so much qi he’d be an army unto himself! He’d be a step from godhood, just like that!

Okay, bit of a stretch. Calm down. That so-called step still meant imbibing and fashioning and deepening a Dao. That was still a tremendous undertaking.

But if he could seize this thing and set all that Bloodline ablaze he might become the strongest thing under Heaven. Certainly the chunkiest thing. The sheer size his qi pool would be made his head spin—it’d be like comparing the Sinkhole to a common pond. He was nearly forming his own pond of saliva just thinking about it. This heft of qi wouldn’t be merely uncommon. It’d be bordering on unheard of for any mortal. It’d be the most firepower he’d wielded as a mortal ever.

Greed and caution warred within him. Yet he already knew, going into it, that greed would win out. What the hells was he to do—not try for it?

The only thing he conceded to wisdom was to reign himself in a bit.

He could not afford to brashly stride into those depths. All his assumptions were flipped on their heads. This little stunt with the Eels was a one-off. From now on, slow and cautious. If anything, he told himself, he’d merely go take a peek at it.

He nodded. He was well and truly warming to the idea now. Yes, yes, just a peek—just to scout things out! It couldn’t hurt, right?

And if an opportunity does arise, well…

We’ll see, won’t we?

He plunged farther into the depths.