The silence in Qin Jiang's mountain sanctum wasn't empty; it was dense, saturated with the weight of compressed eons. The scent of deep, wet bedrock and ancient petrichor filled his lungs, cool and sharp as flint. He stood before the plain stone plinth holding his relics: the chipped warrior, the shattered armor, the shadow-seal shard. The air vibrated, crystals humming in the walls, anticipating the seismic shift about to occur. He closed his eyes, drawing not just breath, but the unyielding resolve of the continent itself. The Final Breath of the Terracotta Emperor beckoned – apotheosis or dissolution. He raised his hands. The relics dissolved into streams of brown, grey, and obsidian light that flowed intohim. The transformation began, slower, deeper than Embodiment. His skin darkened to rain-slicked river stone, intricate fissures spreading like sacred glyphs, pulsing with soft earthen light. Robes merged into seamless stone plates. His eyes became molten obsidian swirling with starlight. The pressure radiating from him was continental, commanding. The effortless Mutation Pose of Final Breath threshold.
Then, the world didn't dissolve. It shattered. A sensation like falling through bedrock. Darkness. Cold, dry clay filled his nostrils, choking, suffocating. Not air, but dust – the dust of millennia. His vision swam, then focused with terrifying clarity. He wasn't Qin Jiang. He was inside a Terracotta Warrior. Rough, unglazed clay pressed against his senses. He saw through slitted eyes in a stylized helmet, felt the heavy, inflexible weight of baked earth limbs. He stood rigidly at attention, one amongst an infinite rank. The air was thick with the scent of dry riverbeds, ancient kilns, and the iron tang of impending bloodshed. Before him stretched an unimaginable plain under a bruised, twilight sky devoid of stars. As far as his clay-bound sight could see, rank upon rank, column upon column, stood Terracotta Warriors. Two hundred million. An ocean of silent, waiting earth. The sheer, oppressive mass of them vibrated through the ground, a low, tectonic drone that was the only sound. He knew, with the instinct of the gen, this was his Tribulation. Not cosmic judgment, but a war of attrition waged from the very bottom.
A gong sounded, deep and sonorous, resonating through the clay in his chest. The sound wasn't heard; it was felt – a command etched into the earth itself. "ASCEND." Instantly, the sea of warriors surged. Not with battle cries, but with the terrifying, grinding silence of mountains moving. The warrior beside him, identical in every way, swung its heavy glaive in a brutal, efficient arc aimed at his neck. Qin Jiang – within the warrior – reacted with Chainbound-honed reflexes, but the clay body was slow, ponderous. He barely parried with his own glaive, the impact jarring up his rigid arms like an earthquake, sending cracks spiderwebbing across the forearm. The smell of powdered clay filled his nostrils.
He was in hell. A silent, grinding, brutal hell. He fought. Not as the Emperor, but as a single soldier in an endless legion bent on his destruction. He used Foundation Stage precision to maximize the limited strength and speed of the clay vessel. Pressure Stage fury to shatter limbs with well-placed blows. Chainbound resilience to endure shattering impacts that would pulp flesh. Breakthrough fluidity to flow through clumsy attacks. Embodiment mastery to subtly reinforce the cracking clay body with internal energy, patches of harder, darker stone forming over wounds.
Days bled into weeks, weeks into months within the timeless plain. He fought in choking dust storms that smelled of pulverized history. He waded through ankle-deep mud churned from clay and the "blood" – dry, ochre powder – of shattered warriors. He climbed mountains of broken limbs and torsos, the air thick with the sterile, mineral scent of annihilation. He learned the patterns: the relentless press of the infantry, the sudden flanking maneuvers by units wielding halberds, the crushing advance of shield walls.
Then came the Generals. Five figures, emerging from the dust like monuments. Larger, their clay adorned with stylized armor markings, weapons crackling with faint energy. They commanded squads with silent efficiency, their tactics sharper, their blows carrying the weight of Breakthrough Stage power. Qin Jiang fought them on slopes of debris, their glaives striking sparks from his reinforced limbs, the impacts sending shockwaves through the broken plain. He shattered the first by exploiting an overextension, driving his glaive through a joint. The second fell to a trap laid amidst rubble. The third he outmaneuvered, using the press of lesser warriors against it. The fourth required sacrificing an arm, reforming it mid-swing with Embodiment control to land a decapitating blow. The fifth, the largest, he fought atop a plateau of its own fallen kin, a duel of pure endurance that ended when Qin Jiang, body a latticework of cracks, channeled the pressure of the entire plain into a single, shattering stomp that liquefied the General from the legs up. He had no time to rest. The Warlords arrived. Five figures radiating Embodiment Stage power. Their clay was dark as basalt, etched with glowing crimson sigils. They moved with terrifying speed and grace, their weapons – massive swords, spiked mauls, dao blades wreathed in dust-devils – humming with contained fury. The scent of ozone and hot stone cut through the dust. These were not commanders; they were engines of destruction. One wielded gravity, making Qin Jiang's clay body feel like lead. Another commanded localized earthquakes, shattering the ground beneath him. A third moved like shadow, striking from impossible angles. The fourth projected waves of concussive force. The fifth radiated a chilling aura that tried to freeze his earthen spirit.
This was the true crucible. Qin Jiang fought not just the Warlords, but the relentless tide of millions still surging around them. He used the terrain – the mountains of debris became fortresses, the chasms traps. He learned their rhythms, turned their powers against each other. He shattered the gravity wielder by luring it into the earthquake zone. He used the concussive Warlord's blasts to disorient the shadow-assassin. He froze the aura-projector solid with a desperate surge of his own Chainbound resilience, shattering it with a blow from a fallen General's maul. The final Warlord, a titan with a sword taller than Qin Jiang's warrior-body, he engaged in the center of a swirling dust-devil. They fought for what felt like years, blows echoing like continents colliding. Qin Jiang's clay form was crumbling, limbs shattered and reformed countless times, energy bleeding out. He saw an opening, a fraction of a second. He abandoned defense, channeling every shred of his Emperor's will, his unbreakable resolve, into a single, desperate lunge, driving the broken haft of his glaive like a spear through the sigil glowing on the Warlord's chest. The dark clay imploded with a sound like a dying mountain. Silence. Utter, profound silence.
The remaining millions of warriors froze mid-motion, then crumbled simultaneously into vast dunes of ochre dust that rose in a choking, silent cloud. The bruised sky began to lighten. Qin Jiang stood alone on a featureless plain of pulverized clay, the dust of two hundred million warriors swirling around his shattered, barely-standing Terracotta Warrior form. He was a broken statue, held together only by the indomitable will within. He had fought for an eternity. He had won.
As the dust settled, a profound change began. Not imposed from outside, but radiating outward from his core. The crude, battle-scarred clay of the warrior body began to flow. Cracks sealed not with patches, but smoothed into seamless perfection. The drab ochre darkened, gaining depth and luster, becoming the rich, imperial hue of polished imperial jade. The simple armor plates dissolved, reforming as intricate robes of state, woven not from cloth, but from solidified shadow and threads of captured starlight. A high collar rose, adorned with subtle geometric patterns echoing his fissure-glyphs. Broad shoulders supported epaulets shaped like miniature fortress towers. A belt of woven obsidian strands cinched his waist. The transformation wasn't just clothing; it was his Legend Pose: The Imperial Raiment. He stood no longer as a warrior, but as the sovereign, radiating effortless, absolute authority. The scent of petrichor vanished, replaced by the ozone tang of cosmic command and the deep, resonant aroma of imperishable stone. Then, the Legend Manifestation bloomed. Not an aura, but a singularity of his will.
Above his outstretched right hand, space warped. A point of absolute darkness appeared, no larger than a fist, yet radiating gravitational terror. This was no destructive void; it was the Gravitic Heart of the Empire. Around it, orbiting like lethal planets, spun thousands upon thousands of spectral Terracotta weapons – glaives, swords, halberds, spears, axes – forged from shimmering, dark energy. They moved in complex, interlocking patterns, a deadly constellation of imperial might. And flanking him, standing rigidly at attention just outside the orbit of the weapons, materialized two Terracotta Sideguard Warriors. They were not mere statues, but embodiments of his final defense – taller, broader, their clay dark as volcanic glass, etched with glowing crimson sigils of warding and retribution. Their eyes burned with cold, earthen fire, and massive tower shields of solidified gravity shimmered before them, while their hands rested on the pommels of swords that hummed with contained annihilation. They radiated an aura of immovable finality.
This was the Manifestation: Throne of the Gravitic Legion. The black hole was the anchor, the crushing weight of his command. The orbiting weapons were his infinite, ready arsenal. The Sideguards were his absolute, unbreachable defense. Reality itself bent passively around the Manifestation; loose dust spiraled inwards towards the Gravitic Heart, light dimmed and warped near the orbiting weapons, and the ground beneath the Sideguards solidified into unbreakable foundation stone. The silence now was the silence of absolute dominion. He felt the Tribulation's presence recede, acknowledging the ascension. The timeless plain faded. The scent of deep earth and petrichor, the cool solidity of his mountain sanctum, returned. He stood once more before the plinth, unchanged in location, yet utterly transformed.
He was Qin Jiang, Principal of Sky University, Master of the Terracotta Emperor Gen.
He had reached the Final Breath.
He wore the Imperial Raiment. The Throne of the Gravitic Legion pulsed silently around him, the Gravitic Heart a dark sun, the weapons a lethal halo, the Sideguards eternal sentinels. The dust of two hundred million warriors was the foundation of his throne. The long, brutal climb, fought inch by inch from the lowest rank, was over. The Emperor had breathed his last mortal breath. The Eternal Legion stood ready.