I Have the Martial Arts Heavenly Eye in the Storm Riders

Ahead lay a vast pool of blood.

Within a radius of several tens of feet, the pool was churning with blood, bubbles bubbling and hissing, like boiling lava.

The dark red light reflected on the cave walls, flickering like something breathing.

The stench of blood in the air was so strong it was almost tangible, making every breath feel like drinking blood.

In the center of the blood pool, a suit of armor floated.

The armor was entirely black, with barbs growing at the joints, exuding a suffocatingly menacing aura.

But what shocked Huai Kong the most were the several sharp, segmented limbs extending from the back of the armor—

He was all too familiar with the structure of those arthropods and that scent.

That is a sin committed by God.

His divine sin.

It was incorporated into this suit of armor.

Huai Kong's mind went completely blank.

The missing islanders, the blood pool, the heavenly sin, and the armor.

These things mixed together, forming an answer in his mind that he couldn't believe, yet couldn't deny.

"Kong'er, what are you doing here?"

A voice came from the shadows.

Huai Kong suddenly turned around—"Iron God" walked out with his hands behind his back, his face calm, as if he were taking a walk in his own backyard.

His hands were trembling.

He looked at his master's face, at that kind and familiar face, and his lips moved several times.

"Master..." his voice was strained, "What...what is this?"

He pointed to the blood pool, to the Heavenly Tribulation Armor, and to the remains of Heavenly Sin.

"This blood...is it...?"

He couldn't continue.

Tie Kuangtu looked into Huai Kong's eyes and remained silent for a moment.

Then he sighed, a deep, heavy sigh, like an old man carrying too many secrets finally deciding to unload his burden.

"Since you're here, follow me." He turned and walked deeper into the cave.

"There are some things...it's time for you to know."

Huai Kong stood there, watching his master's back.

Every nerve in his body was stretched to its limit. His intuition told him that something was wrong—very wrong.

But that figure was too familiar. From childhood to adulthood, he had followed that figure to learn forging, martial arts, and how to be a person.

He followed them.

The two crossed the pool of blood and arrived at the end of the cave.

Here stands a huge iron sphere, about ten feet in diameter.

A thick black iron chain was attached to the top of the iron ball, extending all the way to the depths of the cave ceiling.

Tie Kuangtu walked to the stone wall and pressed several mechanisms.

"Click click click..."

The chains tightened slowly, lifting the heavy iron ball weighing tens of thousands of kilograms.

Beneath the iron sphere, a pitch-black opening, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, was revealed. A chilling aura billowed from the bottom of the hole, like an entrance to hell.

"Kong'er," Tie Kuangtu said calmly, pointing to the cave entrance.

"The answers to your questions are below."

"Let's go take a look."

Huai Kong walked to the edge of the cave and peered down.

It was very deep down, pitch black, and you couldn't see anything.

At that very moment—

He was suddenly kicked in the back.

The force was immense; it landed squarely on his back.

Huai Kong's body was lifted into the air, and he fell into the cave entrance.

The wind howled in his ears, and everything went dark. He instinctively tried to circulate his qi to protect himself—but the kick to his back made his blood surge and his true qi could not be contained.

He glanced back as he fell.

The light from the cave entrance grew fainter and fainter, like a closing eye.

And within that halo stood a person—

The "master" was looking down at him, his face devoid of kindness or remorse, only displaying a cold, condescending mockery.

"Go down."

These three words were the last sounds Huai Kong heard.

"Boom!"

The iron sphere fell, completely sealing the hole.

The light is gone.

The sound disappeared.

Everything is gone.

Only falling.

I don't know how much time passed—it could be a breath, or it could be a lifetime.

"Bang!"

Huai Kong landed on something soft.

Excruciating pain exploded from every bone in my body.

He felt as if his internal organs had shifted, and a metallic taste filled his mouth, but he gritted his teeth and did not faint.

He can't faint.

Once you faint, you'll never wake up again.

Huai Kong struggled to get up, rubbed his groggy head, and barely managed to look around.

The bottom of the cave is not completely dark.

Several luminous pearls were embedded in the surrounding stone walls, emitting a faint, cold light that was barely enough to make out the surroundings.

He landed on a thick layer of straw.

The straw was wet and smelly, emitting a musty and rotten odor.

In the corner of the haystack, a person was huddled up.

An old man with disheveled hair and tattered clothes.

The old man seemed terrified by the commotion; he huddled in the corner, trembling, his withered hands clutching his head, muttering incoherently:

"Don't hit me...don't hit me...don't hit me..."

Huai Kong couldn't care less about the crazy old man at that moment.

He looked up at the ceiling—it was pitch black, with the tens of thousands of pounds of refined iron sphere pressing down on it, not a single ray of light could get in.

He has to go out.

"drink!"

With a loud shout, Huai Kong gathered his inner energy and stomped back and forth between the two stone walls. Each step propelled him to the opposite side with the rebound force, like light refracting in an optical fiber. In just a few leaps, he was on the top of the cave.

"The Sky-Breaking Elemental Hand!"

He unleashed a full-force palm strike onto the refined iron sphere.

"when--!!!"

A deafening roar echoed through the cave, causing pebbles to fall from the stone walls.

The iron ball remained completely still.

Huai Kong's arms were sore, numb, and swollen from the shock, and his tiger's mouth was cracked, with fresh blood dripping from between his fingers.

He was in mid-air with nowhere to put his footing. After he ran out of strength, he could only fall back to the bottom of the cave and crash heavily onto the pile of straw.

He lay on his back, his chest heaving violently, staring at the cold iron ball above his head.

can not go out.

The tens of thousands of pounds of refined iron were tightly wedged into the hole, preventing him from exerting his full strength in mid-air.

Even if you use all your strength, you probably won't be able to budge this thing.

Despair surged up like a tide.

Master...why?

He has followed his master for so many years.

His master taught him forging, martial arts, and how to be a person.

He thought his master was the most trustworthy person in the world.

But his master kicked him down into the hole.

The force of that kick was without the slightest hesitation.

Huai Kong closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath.

Don't panic, the more panicked you are, the faster you'll die.

He opened his eyes and his gaze fell on the old man who was still shivering in the corner.

How long has this person been detained here?

Who dug this hole?

Why would Master have such a place?

Suppressing the myriad questions in his heart and enduring the excruciating pain throughout his body, Huai Kong staggered toward the old man.

"Grandpa," he said softly, trying not to frighten the man.

I won't hurt you.

"What's your name? How did you get here?"

The old man curled up into a ball, trembling even more violently, and couldn't hear a word.

Just then, the old man's eyes lit up—he saw something moving on the wet ground.

A red-headed centipede, about half a foot long, is crawling out of a crack in the rock.

The old man lunged forward, his withered fingers grabbing the centipede with astonishing speed, and opened his mouth to stuff it inside.

"Stop!" Huai Kong exclaimed in alarm, grabbing the old man's wrist.

"This stuff is poisonous! You can't eat it!"

The old man, whose "food" had been taken away, let out a low growl like a wild beast and struggled to bite the empty hand in his arms.

Huai Kong felt as if something had violently clenched his heart—

How long has this person been detained here?

So hungry that they'd even stuff poisonous insects into their mouths?

He restrained the old man with one hand and used the other to brush away the old man's disheveled hair that was covering his face.

"Grandpa, don't be afraid, I—"

The sound stopped abruptly.

Huai Kong froze.

They were frozen in place, as if someone had cast a spell on them.

This face.

His face was covered in dirt, he looked old and haggard, and his eyes were unfocused.

But those eyebrows, those features, those lines on the forehead—

Exactly the same as the person above.

The person he's called "Master" for so many years looks exactly the same.

Huai Kong's hands began to tremble violently.

His brain felt as if it had been cleaved in two—

Half of them were desperately denying it, and the other half were desperately trying to remember.

What are we reminiscing about?

He recalled all the moments over the years when his master made him feel "something was wrong".

Those doubts he suppressed, those moments he explained as "his master's strictness was for my own good," those thoughts he dared not delve into—

The light in his master's eyes when Tiezhu turned to ash before him.

It's not sadness, it's satisfaction.

"You...who are you..." Huai Kong's lips trembled, and the voice seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.

"Are you... Master...?"

The mad old man couldn't understand what he was saying; he just huddled in the corner, muttering the same sentence over and over again.

"Don't hit me...don't hit me..."

Huai Kong knelt on the ground, looking at the emaciated and delirious old man in front of him, and then thought of the "master" who had kicked him down.

Two identical faces.

One of them was on top, impeccably dressed, strategizing and planning.

One was below, disheveled and filthy, gnawing on poisonous insects.

Huai Kong's eyes reddened.

He didn't know which one was true.

But he knew—one of them was fake.

That night, the three of them split up to patrol, agreeing to meet at the dock in the middle of the night.

Bai Ling and Huai Mie arrived, but Huai Kong did not.

After waiting for almost half an hour, they still hadn't arrived.

"Something's not right." Bai Ling's expression changed. "Second Senior Brother is never late."

Huai Mie's eyes instantly darkened.

The two men followed Huai Kong's patrol route, searching through his assigned area again and again.

I've walked every road and every corner, but I haven't found anything.

There wasn't even a single clue.

Like the other missing islanders before them, Huaikong also vanished into thin air.

Bai Ling's eyes reddened, but she didn't cry. She squatted by the pier, the sea breeze whipping her hair wildly, her voice strained:

"Senior Brother... do you think Second Brother might...?"

"No," Huai Mie interrupted her, his tone firm. "He'll be fine."

Bai Ling looked up at him.

Huai Mie's face was ashen, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

He said "no" but his hands were shaking.

Bai Ling stood up and reached out to grasp his fist.

They didn't say anything, they just held hands.

Huai Mie's fist slowly loosened a little.

They searched all night, and by dawn, there was still no sign of Huai Kong.

After the news spread, the entire Ironheart Island was in an uproar—

First, the islanders went missing one after another, and now even the young master has disappeared.