The moment the first grain of sand fell, the entire hall erupted into chaos.
The prisoners who had survived multiple trials knew what was coming—their faces twisted in fear as they scrambled away from the transforming figures.
Some ran in circles, their movements frantic, while others formed tight defensive formations, their weapons gleaming under the eerie light of the hall.
Yun Lintian, however, did not move.
His gaze remained fixed on the hourglass as the sands continued their slow, inevitable descent.
Behind him, Long Qingxuan, Long Chen, Qian Jinglei, Yue Zhihe, and Tang Wei stood in a loose semicircle, their expressions wary but unshaken. They trusted Yun Lintian implicitly—if he was calm, they had no reason to panic.
"Senior Yun," Tang Wei said quietly, his voice tense. "The Temporal Phantoms—they're not just mindless beasts. They retain fragments of their past selves. Some of them… were once powerful experts."
Yun Lintian nodded slightly but did not respond. His attention was on the writhing figures ahead.
One of the transformed prisoners—a skeletal man whose flesh had turned translucent, revealing pulsing veins of temporal energy—let out a guttural scream and lunged. His fingers elongated into razor-sharp claws, aimed straight for Yun Lintian's throat.
"Die!" the phantom shrieked, its voice layered with echoes of past lives.
Yun Lintian didn't even look at it.
With a flick of his wrist, a blade of invisible force sliced through the air.
The phantom's body split cleanly down the middle before dissolving into motes of fading light.
"Rest in peace," Yun Lintian said calmly.
But the moment he said that, the walls of the hall trembled.
A chorus of laughter erupted from the stone itself, as if the entire chamber had come alive. The runes on the pillars glowed crimson, and from the cracks in the floor, more phantoms clawed their way out—these ones larger, their auras denser, their eyes burning with madness.
"Oh?" Yun Lintian smiled faintly. "Now it's getting interesting."
Meng Xuan, still kneeling where Yun Lintian had forced him down, watched with widening eyes.
He had seen countless strong warriors fall in this hall. He had witnessed emperors of ancient sects reduced to screaming wrecks as the Temporal Phantoms tore into them.
But this man—this Yun Lintian—was different.
He didn't dodge. He didn't evade. He simply stood there, cutting down everything that came at him with terrifying ease.
"This… this is impossible…" Meng Xuan muttered.
Jian Kun, watching from the Celestial Pavilion's defensive formation, clenched his fists. He had hoped the phantoms would at least slow Yun Lintian down, but instead, they were being erased like insects.
"Damn it!" Jian Feng hissed. "Why isn't he struggling?!"
Lan Huiqian, however, felt a strange sense of relief. She had seen Yun Lintian's power before, but this was on another level.
"We just need to hold on until the sands run out," she reminded her group. "Do not engage unless necessary!"
The Temporal Phantoms kept coming.
Some were former sword cultivators, their techniques still sharp despite their twisted forms. Others were beast tamers, their spectral familiars howling as they charged.
A few even wielded remnants of their past treasures—blades that could cut space, whips that burned with ghostly flames.
But none of them mattered.
Yun Lintian moved like a reaper—every step precise, every motion efficient. He didn't waste energy. He didn't show off. He simply eliminated threats as they appeared.
A massive phantom, its body covered in molten armor, swung a hammer the size of a boulder. The impact should have flattened Yun Lintian, but—
Yun Lintian sidestepped, grabbed the phantom's wrist, and twisted.
The phantom's arm shattered like glass. Before it could scream, Yun Lintian's palm struck its chest, and—
The phantom exploded into nothingness.
"He's toying with them." Meng Xuan muttered to himself in a daze.
As the battle raged, one of the older cultivators—a wizened man with a missing arm—shouted over the chaos.
"The sands! They're falling faster!"
Indeed, the hourglass was now tilting further, the stream of sand thickening.
"That means more phantoms!" another survivor cried.
Sure enough, the number of enemies doubled, then tripled. The weaker cultivators who had been barely holding on now found themselves overwhelmed. Screams filled the air as more people were dragged into the darkness.
Jian Kun's group tightened their formation, their swords flashing as they repelled wave after wave.
He didn't even break a sweat.
Instead, his eyes narrowed as he noticed something—the hourglass wasn't just a timer.
"Tang Wei," he called.
"That hourglass… it's absorbing the energy of the fallen phantoms."
Tang Wei's expression shifted. "Then… it's not just a trial. It's a feeding mechanism."
Yun Lintian's lips curled. "Interesting."
If the hourglass was gathering energy, then the true purpose of this trial wasn't just to test the survivors—it was to harvest them.
"The moment the sands run out," Yun Lintian murmured, "something worse is coming."
The battle raged on, but Yun Lintian's group remained untouched.
The Celestial Pavilion's formation was holding, though some of their weaker disciples were starting to falter. Meng Xuan, still immobilized, could only watch in horror as the phantoms ignored him—as if they knew he was already defeated.
"The last grains!" someone shouted.
The hourglass was nearly empty.
The remaining survivors braced themselves.
The phantoms stopped attacking.
For a single, breathless moment, the hall was silent.
The ground split open.
From the depths of the abyss below, a hand emerged—pale, skeletal, and radiating an aura so oppressive that even the air itself seemed to tremble.
A voice, ancient and dripping with malice, echoed through the hall.
"Who… dares… disturb… my slumber?"
Yun Lintian's eyes gleamed.
"Finally," he said, "a real fight."
The skeletal hand gripping the edge of the abyss was clad in tattered robes—once majestic, now frayed with age. The fabric bore intricate patterns of celestial bodies and divine sigils, a design that made Tang Wei's eyes widen in recognition.
"That robe…!" Tang Wei's voice was sharp with urgency. "Senior Yun, be careful! That's no ordinary guardian—he's one of the original True Gods!"
Yun Lintian's brows lifted slightly. "Oh?"
True Gods were not uncommon in his experience, but the original ones? Those who had been born alongside the Primordial Gods at the dawn of creation? That was different…