An Understated Dominance Novel (Dahlia & Dustin) by Marina Vittori updated 2025-26 - An Understated Dominance Chapter 2688

Chapter 2688

“Let’s move. We can’t stay here.”

Logan was the first to step onto the fractured, slippery stone path. His stride remained steady, though Grace could sense something different about him—the calm power surrounding him had become quieter, more focused, as if he were conserving strength for whatever lay ahead.

The group followed in silence. The air itself felt heavy.

Alongi and the other two guards gripped their weapons tightly, their eyes darting toward the blood-red waves on either side, half-expecting some monstrous thing to burst out of the water at any moment.

Stevie supported Old Jhangi, whose condition was rapidly worsening. The dragon blood’s corruption was eating away at his life force, leaving his skin pale and his eyes unfocused.

As they ventured deeper, the scenery began to twist and blur.

The once-clear boundary between the lake’s azure waters and the dark red contamination started to fade. The two colors mixed like oil and paint, bleeding into each other to form a surreal, distorted landscape.

The air itself grew unstable—spiritual energy and violent power blended together, becoming wild and chaotic.

Then came something worse: an invisible but crushing sense of oppression that seemed to press in from every direction. It didn’t come from an enemy—it came from the space itself.

The first thing to go wrong was gravity.

At one moment, their bodies felt unbearably heavy, as if a thousand-pound weight had been dropped on their shoulders. The jade path beneath them bent and groaned. The next moment, gravity suddenly reversed—lightening until they nearly floated off the path, forcing them to use all their inner strength just to stay grounded.

The fluctuations were completely random—sometimes pulling them down violently, other times making them feel weightless. The constant shifts drained both their energy and their focus.

“Steady yourselves! Control your breathing—match it to the rhythm of the changes!” Logan’s voice cut through the chaos, calm yet commanding.

Around him, an invisible field shimmered faintly. It dulled the erratic gravitational pull, giving those nearby some relief—but even Logan had to divide his concentration to maintain it.

Unfortunately, gravity was only the beginning.

Moments later, the world itself began to warp.

The path still looked straight—but when one stepped forward, they’d find themselves veering off course, dangerously close to the lake’s edge.

The scenery stretched and compressed like a mirage; light bent unnaturally, distorting perception until everyone’s heads spun.

“It’s… spatial distortion!” Grace gasped, her face pale.

She tried to steady herself, extending her spiritual sense to find the true path through the warped space—but the chaotic laws of this realm tore at her mind like a raging storm, scattering her focus to pieces.

One of the guards attempted to swing his sword at a particularly twisted patch ahead, but when the blade touched it, it felt as though he were cutting through thick glue. The weapon bent under the strain before he hastily pulled it back, his heart pounding.

And that was just the beginning.

The deeper they went, the worse it became.

Invisible cracks began to appear in the air—thin as glass and nearly transparent. Anything that brushed against them was instantly severed.

One guard wasn’t fast enough. A corner of his robe brushed one of those cracks and disintegrated into powder. Cold sweat poured down his face.

At times, wild elemental energy erupted without warning. A flare of blue fire would blaze to their left, while to their right, an icy wall would form in an instant—the clashing forces of flame and frost warping the air between them.

Fragments of illusions occasionally broke into their minds—random flashes of memory or nightmare, trying to shake their grip on reality.

It felt as though they had entered a world where the laws of creation itself were breaking apart—a domain where even heaven and earth had turned hostile.

“Ah!”

Old Jhangi finally reached his limit. When gravity suddenly doubled again, his weakened body couldn’t keep up. His balance faltered, his mind clouded with hallucinations. With a strangled cry, he slipped off the edge—toward the lake filled with invisible spatial rifts.

“Old Jhangi!” Stevie shouted, reaching out instinctively—but a violent gust of chaotic energy shoved him back.

Just as Old Jhangi was about to fall into certain death, a flash of green streaked through the air.

Logan appeared beside him like a phantom. One hand caught the back of Old Jhangi’s collar, while the other formed a sword with his fingers, slashing several times at what seemed like empty space ahead.

Buzz!

A strange ripple spread outward. The twisted air before them suddenly flattened, as if an invisible hand had forcibly smoothed the distortion.

Seizing that brief moment, Logan pulled Old Jhangi close and blinked through the danger—dodging several invisible blades and bursts of corrosive energy before landing safely back on the trail.

Old Jhangi collapsed to the ground, gasping, his face pale and eyes wide with terror.

The others stared, stunned, cold sweat trickling down their backs.

Logan gently set Old Jhangi down, his expression darker than before.

He scanned the warped, shifting landscape ahead and spoke in a grave tone.

“This is the core region of the Sealed Rift. The Ruin Dragon’s power has broken the laws of this place, creating what’s called a Law Chaos Realm. Every step we take here could trigger disaster—so don’t rely on logic or what your senses tell you.”

He turned his gaze to the group—Alongi and the guards, exhausted and pale from the energy drain; Old Jhangi, barely hanging on; and Stevie, whose cultivation was far too weak for this place.

“Stay close to me. Don’t use spiritual power unless I tell you to, and suppress your aura as much as possible. The less you resist the chaotic laws, the safer you’ll be.”

From that point on, every step was torture.

Logan led the way, his eyes glowing faintly with cyan-gold light. He no longer relied on spiritual sense but on something deeper—his sense of the Dao itself—to feel and adapt to the shattered rules around them.

Sometimes he stopped suddenly, signaling them to wait for a surge of chaotic energy to subside. Other times, he’d veer sharply off course, stepping into what appeared to be empty space—only for that step to land on the one stable point in the entire distortion.

Occasionally, he’d strike with a single, precise motion—breaking a newborn spatial crack before it could fully form.

He moved like a helmsman steering a fragile ship through a hurricane, relying on instinct, mastery, and profound understanding of heaven’s laws to carve a safe path through the storm.

The others followed closely behind, stepping in his exact footprints, afraid to breathe too loudly.

They stared at Logan’s back—narrow yet unwavering—and awe swelled within them. It wasn’t just a difference in strength. It was the difference between worlds.

Here, in this collapsing realm, Logan wasn’t just a cultivator. He was the axis around which their reality still held.

Time lost all meaning.

Minutes or hours—it was impossible to tell. Every breath felt longer than the last. Their strength was nearly gone, their willpower the only thing keeping them moving.

Then, at last—the distortion ahead began to fade.

The twisted colors softened, space settled, and gravity steadied once more.

From the distance came a wave of energy—vast, refined, and alive. Though faintly hostile, it carried a gentle vitality that washed over them like the first breath of dawn.

They had finally passed through the death zone.