The temporal scar pulsed with malevolent invitation as Zǔ Zhòu descended into its chamber for a different purpose than usual.
"Tonight, we excavate," he told his anchor servant. "The scar has been feeding me paradox energy, but I've been negligent. Wounds this deep don't just leak power—they accumulate resources."
For weeks, he'd used the scar as a cultivation accelerator. Now, with his meta-textual understanding adding weight to dramatic moments, he felt ready to probe deeper.
"Temporal scars are reality's infected wounds," he explained, approaching the sphere of absolute nothing. "And infections... collect things."
The servant watched nervously as Zǔ Zhòu circled the distortion. "What kind of things?"
"When I tore through reality fifty thousand years ago, matter and energy were caught in the wounds. Compressed, corrupted, transformed by paradox. Some dissolved, but denser materials? They crystallize."
He pulled out specialized tools—not mystical instruments but mundane implements modified through his translated techniques. Rods of conductive metal, mirrors polished to mathematical perfection, containers lined with temporally-treated cloth.
"The skeleton we found proved others discovered this place," he continued. "But they tried to cultivate directly. I'm going to mine."
The first probe extended toward the scar's edge. Where the metal touched twisted space, it began to age and de-age simultaneously. Zǔ Zhòu watched the oxidation patterns, reading them like text.
"Seventeen layers of temporal shear. The deepest deposits will be near layer twelve—old enough to crystallize, not so deep they've achieved non-existence."
He adjusted the probe's angle, following oxidation patterns like a map. At the predicted depth, resistance changed. The metal struck something solid within liquid time.
"Contact," he murmured, carefully extracting.
What emerged defied easy description. A crystal that existed in seven colors including three that didn't have names. It pulsed with its own heartbeat, each beat aging the air around it by minutes.
"Temporal amber," he identified. "Crystallized time containing... oh, how delightful."
Within the crystal's translucent depths, he could see frozen moments. A demonic cultivator's final technique, caught mid-execution. The man had been attempting some form of blood sacrifice when the temporal shear took him. Now his last moment existed eternally, the demonic qi frozen at peak density.
"One thousand years of compression," Zǔ Zhòu calculated. "The qi density exceeds anything available in the modern era."
The servant leaned closer. "Can you extract it?"
"Not extract. Absorb the entire crystal—qi, technique, and temporal paradox together." He smiled. "It will either advance my cultivation dramatically or turn me inside out. Let's find out which."
But first, more excavation. The initial success had proven his theory. He adjusted the probes, following the scar's geometry to locate other deposits.
The second crystal contained something different—not a cultivator but a manual. Pages of demonic text frozen mid-burn, caught in temporal loops that preserved words that should have been ash.
"'Blood River Rebellion Method,'" he read through the crystal. "A technique for converting righteous qi to demonic through systematic corruption. Crude but effective."
More crystals emerged. Each held preserved moments from the scar's violent birth:
A nascent soul cultivator's spiritual essence, compressed to liquid malevolence Demonic beast cores caught mid-explosion, power frozen at critical mass Pills that aged and renewed eternally, their effects multiplying through paradox Weapons whose killing intent had fermented for millennia
"A treasury of corruption," Zǔ Zhòu breathed. "Everything evil that got caught in my reality wound, preserved and concentrated."
The deepest probe struck something massive. Not a crystal but an entire structure—a building or artifact caught in the scar's formation.
"Help me with this," he ordered. Together, they maneuvered larger tools, carefully extracting what appeared to be...
"A shrine," the servant whispered.
A demonic altar emerged from temporal chaos, twisted but intact. Black stone that wept blood, carved with rituals that predated current cultivation systems. The altar had been performing some massive sacrifice when reality tore—now it existed in eternal mid-ritual, power building but never releasing.
"Pre-dynasty demon worship," Zǔ Zhòu identified. "They tried summoning something during my breakthrough. Instead, they got caught in the temporal explosion."
The altar hummed with accumulated power—ten centuries of suspended sacrifice creating pressure that warped space around it. The demonic qi was so dense it had achieved partial sentience, whispering promises of power.
"This explains the skeleton," he realized. "Previous discoverers found the altar, tried to use it without understanding its suspended state. The temporal paradox tore them apart."
But Zǔ Zhòu understood paradox intimately. He began setting up a extraction formation, using the altar's own suspended energy against itself.
"We'll create a controlled temporal collapse," he explained. "Let the sacrifice complete across compressed time. Ten centuries of demonic ritual finishing in ten seconds."
The servant backed away. "That sounds catastrophically dangerous."
"Yes. The audience should love it."
He felt the meta-textual observers' attention sharpen. Dangerous power grabs during dramatic exploration? Peak engagement.
The extraction began. The altar's suspended sacrifice resumed, time flowing at different rates across its surface. Blood that had been falling for a thousand years finally struck stone. Chants that echoed eternally reached their culmination. The promised demon tried to manifest across ten temporal streams simultaneously.
Reality screamed.
Zǔ Zhòu stood at the center, absorbing everything. Not just the demonic qi but the temporal distortion itself. His Body Tempering cultivation shouldn't have been able to contain such power, but narrative weight made the impossible temporarily possible.
"MINE," he declared, and the universe briefly agreed.
Power flooded in—raw, corrupted, impossibly dense. His cultivation base didn't just advance, it mutated. Body Tempering Fourth Stage solidified completely, and he touched the threshold of Fifth Stage. But the energy was too unstable, too paradox-laden for rapid advancement.
When the explosion settled, he stood amidst crystallized time and altar fragments. Body Tempering Fourth Stage, peak—the resources would need careful refinement before further advancement.
"Successful extraction," he noted calmly, though his eyes now reflected moments that hadn't happened yet. "The temporal scar proves an excellent repository."
He gathered the remaining crystals—enough demonic resources to fuel cultivation for months. Each one contained preserved evil from his reality wound, concentrated by time into forms no modern cultivator could acquire.
"Tomorrow we catalog everything properly," he decided. "Crystallized techniques to study, temporal pills to refine, paradox weapons to modify."
The scar pulsed, depleted but not empty. Deeper layers remained unexplored, promising greater treasures and dangers.
"My past self left quite the inheritance," he said, ascending with arms full of impossible resources. "Wounds that bleed opportunity instead of weakness."
Behind them, the extraction site already showed signs of recovery. New crystals would form, new resources precipitate from temporal chaos. The scar was self-sustaining, an eternal fountain of corrupted treasures.
The perfect resource for a demon too patient to rush and too clever to overlook opportunity.
"Next time," he promised the scar, "we go deeper."