While Pham Tuan was busy redesigning the fortress's front entrance, Lin Ming was having his own kind of fun.
The mess hall was a canvas of chaos. Madakaros soldiers, warriors of a star-faring empire, were reduced to screaming, hallucinating children with severe stomach cramps.
One Golden Core officer was trying to fight a chair, convinced it had insulted his mother. Another was curled in a fetal position, weeping, as he watched his own fingers melt and drip onto the floor like candle wax.
The "Instant Regret Frog" pollen was working beautifully.
Lin Ming didn't linger to admire his handiwork. He had a singular purpose.
He moved through the pandemonium like a surgeon navigating a frantic emergency room. He was a whisper in the whirlwind, untouched by the madness around him. His destination: the Chamber of Echoes.
He burst out of the mess hall and into the main corridors of the fortress.
Alarms were blaring now. The blue flash of his "Rasengan" had not gone unnoticed. Red lights pulsed along the grey hallways, casting long, dancing shadows.
A squad of four guards, who had thankfully missed the evening meal, rounded a corner and saw him. They were the "unlucky" ones. Or perhaps, the lucky ones, depending on your perspective on explosive diarrhea.
"Intruder! Halt!" their leader yelled, raising his plasma rifle.
Lin Ming didn't break stride. He didn't even draw his sword.
He simply raised a hand.
He had spent hours in the Tu Thu Dien, not just absorbing knowledge, but practicing. The principles of Earth were more than just making diamond fists. It was about control. Gravity. Weight.
He focused on the four guards and pushed. Not with his hands, but with his will.
The gravity around the four soldiers suddenly multiplied by ten.
Their armor, designed for combat, not for supporting ten times its own weight, groaned in protest. The soldiers' knees buckled. They fell to the floor with a series of heavy, metallic thuds, pinned to the ground as if an invisible giant had just stepped on them. They couldn't move. They could barely breathe.
Lin Ming ran past them without a second glance, leaving them to contemplate their sudden, extreme weight gain.
He followed the fortress map in his HUD, a glowing blue line leading him deeper into the mountain. The path to Vex's chamber was, predictably, heavily guarded. But the fortress's command structure was in disarray.
He could hear frantic, panicked voices over the internal comms system, which Minerva was helpfully patching into his earpiece.
"...the entire Third and Fourth battalion are compromised! They're... they're fighting the soup pots!"
"What do you mean, they're fighting the soup pots?!"
"And the main gate has been breached! Something... something punched a hole in it!"
"Sir, we have an unconfirmed report that Gary is just... watching. He seems to be waiting for something."
"What is happening to this fortress?!"
It was music to Lin Ming's ears. His plan, a three-pronged assault of laxatives, brute force, and sheer absurdity, was working perfectly.
He reached a large, ornate set of double doors. They were made of a polished black stone that seemed to absorb the light. Two elite guards stood watch. These were different. They were not just grunts. They were Golden Core cultivators, their armor inscribed with glowing runes. They were the Inquisitor's personal guard.
And they were ready for him.
"So, you're the ghost causing all this trouble," one of them said, his voice a low growl. His primary eye narrowed. He recognized Lin Ming from the intel reports. The human prodigy. "Your journey ends here."
The two guards activated their weapons—long, crackling energy lances.
Lin Ming finally stopped. He rolled his shoulders, a small, satisfied smile playing on his lips. "You know, I was starting to get bored. Thank you for showing up."
The first guard charged, his lance a blur of lethal energy aimed straight for Lin Ming's heart.
Lin Ming didn't dodge.
He simply took a step forward, into the path of the attack. At the last possible second, he raised his hand. Not to block, but to catch.
His fingers, glowing with a faint golden light, closed around the tip of the energy lance.
The crackling energy sputtered and died, absorbed harmlessly into his body. The guard stared, his three eyes wide with disbelief. It was like trying to stab a black hole.
"My turn," Lin Ming said cheerfully.
He tightened his grip, twisted, and shattered the lance into a thousand glowing shards. Before the guard could even process the loss of his weapon, Lin Ming's other hand shot out. It wasn't a punch. It was a simple palm strike to the chest.
It looked gentle.
The impact, however, was not.
The elite guard's chestplate, a masterpiece of defensive technology, caved in as if it were made of tin foil. The guard flew backwards, smashing through the stone wall behind him and landing in a heap, unconscious or dead.
The second guard froze, his planned attack forgotten. The casual, overwhelming display of power had short-circuited his brain.
Lin Ming looked at him. "Are you going to stand there all day, or are we going to do this?"
The second guard, to his credit, was a professional. He overcame his fear and let out a furious war cry, channeling all his energy into a single, desperate attack.
Lin Ming sighed. "I guess we're doing this."
He vanished.
One moment he was standing there. The next, he was behind the guard, his hand resting gently on the back of the alien's helmet.
The guard's war cry died in his throat. He hadn't even seen him move.
"You're fast," the guard managed to whisper.
"I know," Lin Ming replied. A single, sharp chop to the neck. The second elite guard collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Lin Ming dusted off his hands. He looked at the ornate black doors.
The Chamber of Echoes.
He could feel the energy behind them. A cold, oppressive power. The focused will of a Peak Golden Core cultivator who had spent three hundred years stewing in his own ambition.
Lin Ming pushed the doors open.
It was time to meet the director.
The Chamber of Echoes was not what Lin Ming expected.
He had pictured a grand throne room, or a dark, sacrificial altar. Maybe some dramatic, evil-guy lighting.
Instead, the room was… boring.
It was a vast, natural cavern, the stone walls damp and glistening. There were no decorations, no furniture, no thrones. The only feature was a single, large, flat-topped black rock in the dead center of the cavern.
And sitting cross-legged on that rock was Inquisitor Vex.
He didn't look like a fearsome commander. He was a thin, almost frail-looking Madakaros, his skin a pale, unhealthy grey. He wore simple, dark robes. His three eyes were closed, and his face was a mask of intense concentration. The air around him crackled with immense power, a vortex of raw energy swirling around his meditating form.
He was clearly in the middle of a critical cultivation session.
Lin Ming quietly closed the heavy stone doors behind him. The sound echoed in the cavern, but Vex didn't move. He was completely absorbed, deaf to the world.
"Well," Lin Ming said to the empty room, "this is a bit anticlimactic."
He could have killed Vex right then and there. A single attack would have ended it. But that felt... unsatisfying. This was the monster who planned to sacrifice fifty thousand innocent people to fuel his own ambition. He didn't deserve a quick, peaceful death in the middle of his yoga session.
He deserved to be terrified first.
Lin Ming walked casually towards the center of the room. He looked around at the cavern walls.
"You know," he said loudly, his voice echoing off the stone, "for a supervillain's inner sanctum, this place has terrible feng shui. It's damp, the lighting is atrocious, and it could really use a nice rug to tie the room together."
Vex's middle eye twitched, but he remained silent, his concentration unwavering.
"And this rock," Lin Ming continued, tapping the large black stone Vex was sitting on. "Is this supposed to be intimidating? It just looks uncomfortable. My grandpa has a better meditation cushion, and he bought it on sale."
He decided to take a more direct approach.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic object. It was a standard-issue emergency flare. He had taken it from the 'White Rabbit's' survival kit.
He popped the cap and struck it against the rock.
FWOOSH!
A brilliant, blindingly red light filled the cavern, accompanied by a loud, hissing sizzle. The intense light and sound finally broke through Vex's concentration.
His three eyes snapped open. They were filled with pure, undiluted rage. To be interrupted at the most critical juncture of his breakthrough attempt... it was an unforgivable sin.
"YOU!" Vex hissed, his voice like grinding stones. He levitated off the rock, his frail body radiating a power that was anything but. "Do you have any idea what you have done?!"
Lin Ming held up the still-burning flare, examining it with a critical eye. "I'm providing some much-needed mood lighting. You're welcome."
Vex stared at him, his three eyes burning with hatred. He saw the human prodigy from the reports. But he also saw something else. There was no fear in this boy's eyes. Only a calm, almost bored amusement. It was infuriating.
"You have ruined three hundred years of my work!" Vex shrieked, his voice rising. "I was on the verge of touching the threshold of the Nascent Soul! I will flay the skin from your bones! I will drink your very soul!"
Lin Ming sighed dramatically. "Look, can we skip the monologue? I've had a long day. I had to bribe a three-headed badger, and the plumbing in your mess hall is about to stage a violent protest. I'm just not in the mood for villainous platitudes."
Vex's rage was so immense it was almost a physical force. "You think this is a joke? You think you can waltz in here and..."
His tirade was cut short by a sudden, low gurgle.
It came from his own stomach.
Vex froze. A look of confusion, followed by dawning horror, spread across his face. He had been so deep in his meditation that he hadn't eaten with the others. But he had taken a large drink of "purified spring water" from his personal flask just before beginning. The very same water Lin Ming had spiked.
Another, louder gurgle echoed in the chamber. It was a sound of profound betrayal.
Vex clutched his abdomen, his face turning a sickly shade of green that clashed horribly with his grey skin. The immense, swirling power around him faltered, flickering like a dying candle. It was hard to maintain a powerful aura of dread when your intestines were staging a rebellion.
Lin Ming watched this, a look of faux sympathy on his face.
"Oh dear," he said, his voice dripping with mock concern. "It seems my special ingredient has a faster activation time than I anticipated. Are you feeling okay, Vex? You look a little... unsettled."
Vex stared at him, his murderous rage now competing with a far more urgent, far more primal terror.
"What... what did you do?" he managed to gasp out.
Lin Ming tossed the spent flare aside. He cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing loudly in the suddenly silent cavern.
"I just gave you a little push," he said, a cold, predatory smile finally replacing his amused one. "You wanted to reach the next realm, right? Well, I'm about to send you there."