247 The Binding Crux

[POV: Gu Jie]

One moment, Gu Jie had been standing with the Guardians, and in the next, she found herself on a throne of unpolished stone. Behind her, the imposing statue of a sword embedded in the earth. Slowly, it began to fracture. Stone veins split across its length until it crumbled into dust. In its place stood a blind woman, barefoot on scorched ground, hammer in hand and veil across her eyes. Her mouth curled into a crooked grin.

“Now, this is interesting,” said the Heavenly Demon. “But this isn’t much of a plan…”

Gu Jie didn’t respond at once. Instead, her eyes swept the battlefield from this new vantage point before settling on Alice. Gu Jie folded her hands across her lap and spoke in Qi Speech, her tone formal and deliberate. “Greetings, Mistress Alice. If you don’t mind, can you cast a spell to obscure what Master is doing down there?”

Alice didn’t speak. She lifted a single finger, twisting it in the air, and the quintessence at her command spiraled into a translucent sphere, shrouding the suspended battlefield below. She had long since transcended conventional mana, her Mana Road having evolved into something sublime. With just that one gesture, the False Earth before them was cloaked from prying eyes.

However, that peace was short-lived.

A scornful voice cut through the room. “What is she doing here? This should be against the rules…” The Dark Witch remarked, robes writhing like shadow serpents around her ankles. “Da Wei already forfeited…”

Jue Bu’s voice followed with cynical amusement. “And now, we have a new player substituting for him? That doesn’t seem fair.”

The Game Master’s words rang with casual finality, “This isn’t against the rules. The player sacrificed his soul. He even gave his epithet to you, Jue Bu. The seat he once claimed now stands empty… and it just so happens with convenience a new player joined us.”

Gu Jie didn’t understand what weight the term “epithet” held in this so-called game. Titles, tokens, and honorifics meant little to her. She placed both hands atop her lap and activated her Qi Speech. Threads of thought and strategic overlays converged as she took command of the Sacred Groves’ military apparatus. Every soldier, formation, and defense responded as if she'd trained with them since birth.

Across the suspended vision of False Earth, the war raged. The Great Forest was under siege from every direction. Undead surged from the west. Rebellious forces wormed their way to the eastern canopy. Cultivators from Heavenly Alliance marched from the north.

Gu Jie reached for Lu Gao with her Qi Speech, using the quintessence left to her by her master, her master's soul resting easily within her. 

“Gu Jie, is that you?” asked Lu Gao, his purple blaze pulverizing a tide of skeletons. “Where is Master?”

Gu Jie watched from the throne without flinching. Her voice remained even. “Master is… doing his thing. I’ll take over from here.”

Yuen Fu called out next, blade soaked in ash and blood. “What’s happening? Where’s Lord Wei?”

“Attacking the heart of the Heavenly Alliance,” she answered without hesitation, eyes never leaving the projection.

That was when the Witch’s voice called to her, slithering into her mind with syrupy venom. “Little girl, why not just forfeit to me? You have such beautiful eyes… What’s your name?” Power surged through the Dark Witch’s words, and Gu Jie’s vision swam. The world tilted sideways. Her soul recoiled from the pressure. It was more than seduction. Instead, it was compulsion woven with malice. Her knees wobbled, head tilting involuntarily.

Alice didn’t wait. She lifted a hand and sent a pulse of light across Gu Jie’s mindscape. The nausea and dizziness dissipated like fog burned by the sun.

Alice turned her gaze toward the Witch. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she said, voice like steel shrouded in velvet. “Because trust me, you don’t want mine on you.”

The Game Master clapped once. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. I have a proposition.” His grin widened, all teeth and charm. “Surrender now, Sacred Groves, and I will ensure your soul is set free to return to the cycle of reincarnation. You’ll retain memory traces, perhaps even talent, in your next life. It is more than most get.”

“Tempting,” said the Heavenly Demon with a dry snort. “But no. I’d rather be consumed into nothingness than suffer a humiliating defeat.”

He turned his gaze toward Gu Jie, sending an unspoken threat laced with contempt: ‘Do not betray me. Do not surrender.’ Gu Jie received the meaning but didn’t flinch. The idea of giving up hadn’t even entered her mind. Not with everything hanging in the balance.

The Game Master seemed almost pleased. “Very well spoken,” he said.

With a faint crackle, Alice’s obfuscation spell began to fall apart. Light bent unnaturally as the illusion dissolved, layer by layer. When the final veil dropped, the core of the Heavenly Alliance’s territory was revealed… and it was no longer whole. A crater stretched across what had once been a gilded palace. Fire and ruin clung to fractured spires. Shockwaves had splintered their bastions into twisted debris. Smoke curled from chasms that belched shattered sigils and broken barriers.

And at the center of that hellscape stood Da Wei and the Guardians, their robes torn, weapons drawn, surrounded on all sides by soldiers, hundreds of thousands strong, bearing the crest of the Heavenly Alliance.

“Twists from left and right,” commented Jue Bu, “Such sensational developments.”

The sensation of ‘vision’ aligning with ‘reality’ came with a strange, almost dizzying vertigo. Gu Jie steadied herself as the threads of possibility snapped into certainty around her. Every step she took, every breath she drew, felt rehearsed. It wasn’t arrogance, merely confirmation. She had seen this happen before. The truth of the moment wrapped tightly around her like a second skin, prickling with consequence. She was precisely where she was meant to be. And that was the most dangerous feeling of all.

Knowing the future was an act of theft. It stole the unknown, bled the world of mystery, and tore causality apart with its bare hands. Time rebelled when it was cornered, reshuffling its deck to escape the grip of certainty. The Destiny Seeking Eyes were not merely a blessing. Instead, they were a constant test. A single wrong glance could unravel a truth that had once seemed inevitable. But Gu Jie had long come to terms with the paradox. If destiny had a shape, then she would be its sculptor.

Gu Jie narrowed her eyes, deciding on her offense. “The Enlightened Scholar. Your General piece is dead. Your defeat means the end of your existence… and my claim to your soul.” This would be just the start of a series of escalating events. She extended her hand, fingers open and expectant. “As per the rules of this game, I now own you. Your soul, please.” And then, she pulled.

A quiet groan emanated from the center of the room as the Game Master’s form began to ripple and twist. His smile faltered. The compulsion of the game, a structure built by his own hand, pulled at his core. Even he wasn’t immune to its verdict.

“You know certain facts you should be incapable of knowing,” the Game Master said, his voice strained yet oddly calm, as though trying to delay the inevitable by indulging in admiration. “As expected of the Destiny Seeking Eyes…”

Gu Jie didn’t wait for him to finish. She clenched her fingers and pulled a second time.

“Fine,” spat the Game Master. “Take it. I can always make another.”

Something without weight or mass, yet vast in presence, was dragged into Gu Jie’s palm. It trembled, fought, and cried soundlessly. Her expression remained flat. She wasn’t Da Wei. Mercy didn’t enter her considerations. The soul sparked between her hands, sputtering out motes of resistance, until she invoked the final stroke of destiny.

With a firm squeeze, followed by a flare of light… and the Game Master ceased to exist.

The Dark Witch let out a wistful sigh. “That’s unfortunate…”

A sudden gasp came from Jin Chenglei.

“What is this?” he asked, his hand flying to his chest where a chain of spectral black had erupted, linking his heart to the woman beside him.

The Dark Witch’s smile deepened. “I had fun, but there are things I need to do.”

She yanked.

Jin Chenglei’s soul tore free with a scream. It was foul, riddled with corruption, the color of festering tar. The Witch opened her mouth and, with a sickening draw, consumed it. His body shuddered, bones cracking, and flesh turning pale. When his eyes reopened, they were no longer Jin Chenglei. The man who looked around now had something ancient behind his gaze.

Jue Bu snarled. “From the very beginning… You’ve been colluding with Him.”

Alice remarked, her tone sharp and cutting. “And what are we supposed to call you now?”

The man smiled, then gestured with a tilt of his head. “The Game Master, of course. I must admit, I never imagined I would have to resort to stealing this inferior... flesh.”

“Hah,” Jue Bu growled. “Inferior flesh—”

But he never finished the sentence.

With a flick of the Game Master’s hand, Jue Bu disintegrated into fine ash, blown away in a single exhale.

“Surprised?” the Game Master said, brushing off his robes from the lingering ash that touched him as if inconvenienced. “I could have always done that from the very beginning. But as you can see, there is a reason for everything. Now, ask yourself, why haven't I done the same to the rest of you?”

Gu Jie didn’t even flinch. “Because you need this game.”

“I do,” confirmed the Game Master. “I desperately do…”

“You shouldn’t have done that… We still have uses for him…” the Dark Witch said. Her voice echoed with disappointment, not sadness.

“He was a complication we didn’t need,” the Game Master replied flatly. “We are better off without the Foolish King.” 

Alice let out a bitter breath. “This is the part where you reveal your grand master plan, shedding all pretenses of ‘weakness’ and going for the kill. Is that correct?”

He smiled, not the kind of smile meant to disarm but the kind that acknowledged something long inevitable. “It is unfortunate I will not be able to claim the Paladin’s soul the way I intended. However, his perishing on the battlefield is just fine, I guess.”

Far away, on the suspended sphere that was the False Earth, Da Wei led his Guardians like a man possessed. The sky was broken, fractured clouds bleeding unnatural light across a scarred continent. Legions of the Heavenly Alliance advanced like tides of flesh and metal, yet none succeeded so far as felling even one Guardian.

Da Wei moved ahead of his Guardians with unwavering might. Ezekiel rose behind him, a skeletal colossus howling through the plains. Lightning peeled open the sky whenever Da Wei roared. His sword, brimming with divine fury, cut through generals and foot soldiers alike as if they were made of fog.

Each of his Guardians followed his lead: Ding Shan carved paths through cavalry lines like death itself; Li Feng crushed chariots with his bare fists; Su Ai slaughtered through rows of archers with speed that blurred space. They fought like a single will, and not one of them had fallen. They seemed, impossibly, untouchable.

“This isn’t a game anymore,” Gu Jie said as her gaze returned to the throne room where the illusion of order crumbled. Her voice was sharp, cut from the steel of certainty. “The gross violation of the rules, ‘disqualifying’ a participant on a whim… What was even his violation?”

The Game Master didn’t hesitate. “I don’t care.”

That silence held.

And then the Heavenly Demon spoke, his voice lined with judgment, “Yes, you do…”

The air trembled slightly, as if the plane itself listened.

“Epithets,” he continued, offering a theory. “To a mortal, they are nothing but names, labels, and decorations to intimidate the weak. But to an immortal, they are the culmination of who they are. It's there... identity. You fear the Immortal Paladin.”

Back in the False Earth, Da Wei lifted a Guardian caught under a gigantic war hammer and hurled the offender into the air. His people followed without hesitation. They wove around ballista bolts and alchemical fire. And through all of it, none died. Not a single soul. They bled, but they healed. They faltered, but they stood. Their presence broke morale in the enemy lines, word spreading like wildfire… the Paladin’s army cannot die.

“Let me offer a hypothesis,” the Heavenly Demon said. “You are not who you say you are. This ‘game’ you’ve dressed up with rules and pageantry is a misdirection. It's a performance.”

The Game Master didn’t smile this time. “On both accounts, you are correct. My true goal had never been to sit on the Ascension Throne and flee the False Earth.”

And then the entire Sealed Island shuddered.

From the clouds above, through the soil below, the voice of something massive, ancient, and inescapably near, crawled into their ears… not spoken, but imposed.

“AFTER ALL, I AM THE FALSE EARTH.”

“THE LAND YOU WALK. THE AIR YOU BREATHE. THE WATER YOU DRINK. THE QI THAT FLOWS IN EVERY LIFE.”

A tentacled abomination shuddered from its respective throne as if it had always been there, simply waiting for acknowledgment. It towered over them, formless and shifting, a dream given mass. The entire time, the Great Dreamer had been here; however, it had been quiet.

What changed?

The Game Master looked up at it with familiarity, not awe. “And the eternal prisoner of this poor imitation of mundane paradise.”

Alice’s voice cracked like a whip. “And you?”

He placed a hand on his chest. “A mental construct. More like a personality, really. The Supreme Void is an existence incapable of personality, so it made me.”

…

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[POV: Alice]

A thousand thoughts crowded Alice’s mind as she stood still, not out of fear, but stunned awe. The being before her, neither man nor god in the traditional sense, was the one who created her world. The Lost Supreme, once only whispered of in fragmented prophecies, now faced her with the ease of someone wholly unconcerned with consequence. And that made her question everything.

She had never dared to voice her doubts until now. Not to Gu Jie, nor to the others, and certainly not to David. Why did the world of LLO exist? What purpose did they serve? What exactly were they fighting for… against? The one they called Game Master had never struck her as particularly malevolent until it became politically or strategically convenient to paint him so. David had labeled him the enemy, and that was enough for her to draw her weapon and aim it true, but the cracks in that certainty had been deepening since Gu Jie started exposing the nature of the Ancient Souls. They weren’t protectors or creators. They were narcissists, so self-absorbed that even the most insufferable vampires Alice once hunted would’ve found them embarrassing.

She broke the silence with a name. “And how about Losten?”

The Game Master lifted his gaze, a flicker of amusement flashing across his otherwise aloof features. “Ah, you came from that world. So did our mutual friend tell you anything?”

Alice nodded. “He spoke highly of you. Said a memory of you helped him save Joan during his fight against Aixin.”

“That is… flattering,” the Game Master replied, rubbing his chin as if genuinely touched. Alice couldn’t tell if the sentiment was real or if it was just another layer of his affectation. His calmness reeked of someone too old to care.

She narrowed her eyes. “Why did you make Losten?”

“You already know the answer.”

And she did. The world of Losten was a battlefield, a quarantine zone, and a spiritual bunker designed to repel an undefined but universally feared threat. To them in the Hollowed World, this enemy was called the Outsiders. But that begged the question. “Why?” she asked again.

The Game Master tilted his head as if the answer were obvious. “Because Earth is mine to devour.”

Alice didn’t know what made the word Earth carry so much weight in his voice. From David’s rare and reluctant explanations, it didn’t seem like a place worth all this effort… capitalist decay, governments of liars, no cultivation, and a diet that would kill a mid-tier vampire in a month. Sure, he talked about friendships, mountains, food, the sea… but nothing that justified why it should be fought over like divine property. 

Her voice trembled, but not from weakness. “Are we… just a game to you? Was Losten just some kind of sandbox?”

The Game Master smiled without warmth. He pressed a hand to his chin, gazing at her with patronizing detachment. “Yes.”

The answer hit her like a cold arrow through the ribs. She didn’t scream. Didn’t curse. Instead, her palm ignited, summoning a thick orb of miasma, which warped and hissed into the shape of a spear. She flung it straight at him, filled with every trace of bitterness, betrayal, and disgust. The spear dissipated in the wind before it could even brush his sleeve.

A voice interrupted the growing tension. The Dark Witch turned her attention toward the Heavenly Demon, her voice dripping with teasing venom. “Ru Qiu, I had fun,” she purred, stretching each word with mocking satisfaction. Then she laughed like a woman already savoring victory. “Checkmate.”

Ru Qiu exhaled slowly. “It looks like you found my General.”

The Dark Witch’s lips curled into a smirk. “Yes. Your only and probably last disciple is about to die… oh, said disciple just died… That was quick—”

But before she could finish, Gu Jie raised his voice, clear and unshaken. “I raise an appeal to negotiate the soul of the Heavenly Demon.”

She sneered, not even entertaining the possibility. “As if—”

“You can have my eyes.”

The declaration dropped like a thunderclap.

Alice’s body froze, not because she couldn’t move, but because she didn’t know how to move forward from those words. Her chest tightened, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe. “Gu Jie!” she cried, her voice breaking.

Gu Jie turned toward her, not smiling, not solemn, just resolute. “I will be fine, Mistress Alice.”

There was no reassurance in his tone, only finality.

Before Alice could reach for her, act, protest, or anything, she saw the drastic changes on the False Earth. Her eyes caught a vision through the boundary. In the False Earth, the Guardians were breaking through, retreating with remarkable speed and coordination. Victory, maybe. But something was wrong. At the rear, there was no sign of Da Wei.

He wasn’t retreating with them.

He had stayed behind.

Alice blinked, confusion overtaking her fear.

Why would he—?

No. This wasn’t part of the plan. Wasn’t it?

…

..

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[POV: Dark Witch]

Gu Jie’s eyes ruptured with a soft, wet crackle. No blood poured out, only motes of blinding light, drifting in quiet spirals through the air like weightless embers. They shimmered with a strange finality, knowing they no longer belonged to her. Without a single chant or incantation, the motes flowed into the Dark Witch’s sockets, and her breath hitched in ecstasy. Her body shook, but she did not scream. Instead, a breathless murmur escaped her lips, “Yes… Incredible…”

For as long as she could remember, ever since first glimpsing Wen Yuhan’s gaze in that faraway timeline, this had been her obsession. The Destiny Seeking Eyes finally belonged to her. As they merged with her Seven Gazes, new planes of understanding bloomed within her. Futures, fates, unseen threads, they all twisted in her view like strands of a living tapestry. The seven-layered lenses of her sight churned with maddening clarity. Infinite doors opened, too many to walk through, yet none dared to shut.

But the ringing pleasure was interrupted, tugged away by a voice… Gu Jie’s voice. Her tone was measured, yet no less heavy than thunder.

“Heavenly Demon, I now own your soul,” she said.

The Heavenly Demon blinked, meeting Gu Jie’s hollowed eyes with the sort of expression carved by ancient pride. Then he turned his eyes to Alice, who looked completely unflappable.

Gu Jie continued, “Your pride will, of course, hinder us from communicating properly, so it is your choice whether to follow what I ask or not.”

In that moment, the Heavenly Demon vanished.

And then, Da Wei sat in his place.

The Dark Witch tilted her head, her newly empowered gaze shifting from the real to the unreal. With the fused power of her Seven Gazes and the Destiny Seeking Eyes, she no longer needed movement. Her consciousness alone was enough to traverse the folds of reality. She peered down upon the False Earth, where the Heavenly Demon fought alone, stuck in the middle of the Heavenly Alliance formation. 

The battlefield was scorched. Warriors of every kind swarmed like an ocean with no shore. Yet the Heavenly Demon moved through them with terrible grace, his strikes precise, cruel, and without hesitation. His blade carved reality itself, and blood formed strange constellations in the air. One man. One war. One last stand. It was almost poetic. The Dark Witch nearly laughed, but something else gnawed at her. There was an itch behind her thoughts and a pressure at the nape of her soul.

Her vision shifted back to the Game Master.

He wore no expression, yet somehow his disappointment was deafening. “So that’s their play,” he said flatly. “It is indeed quite a gamble. So what’s it going to be? Will you tell me, Witch, if you’ve changed your mind?”

She frowned. “Change? What do you mean—”

The words caught in her throat. Her breath failed her as a sudden lurch overtook her being. Her mind was dragged across infinity. She stared into the abyss, and it stared back, not in threat, but in indifference. So many possibilities screamed into her brain at once, she felt her soul fray. But then… it cleared.

Clarity wasn’t comfort.

She saw the inevitable end.

The deal with the Game Master… no, with the Supreme Void… had seemed simple. Help him break his chains, and she would receive the Ascension Throne, be allowed to rule the Hollowed World, and taste divinity in her own right. In return, he would leave to explore the true universe beyond the seals.

But what she witnessed now told a different tale.

The moment he was freed, he smiled with no joy and reached into the sky. With hands that gripped concepts, he slaughtered the Sun and Moon. Not metaphorically. He killed them, literally.

She saw it, the great blot of ink swallowing the False Earth, and then curling toward the twin celestial lights above, consuming both. The Hollowed World was plunged into eternal night. No stars. No wind. No time. No future. And then… that world shattered. She watched it fall like cracked glass, each shard dragging screams in its wake.

And then… the rest of the universe followed.

That creeping void, the Supreme Void himself, spread across galaxies like a disease of reality, wiping out meaning, erasing identity, undoing laws. The stars died without ceremony. Civilizations ceased to exist. Even memory became ash.

The Dark Witch gasped. Her knees shook.

“No… No… It could be a trick…” she whispered, desperate. Her hands clutched her arms, nails digging in. “It’s just a lie… a vision to deceive…”

The Game Master didn’t argue. He simply watched her crumble with eyes stripped of empathy. Then he raised a single finger.

A flick was all it took.

Her body responded before her mind caught up. Her skin lost its color. Not just paled. Instead, it grayed and flaked. She looked at her arm and saw it crumble like dried ash, drifting away with no wind to carry it. Her lips parted, but no spell came out. No curse. Only silence. And as her eyes began to disintegrate, she realized what she truly felt. Not rage. Not sorrow. But betrayal.

Because in the end, she wasn’t his equal. She wasn’t a player. She was a piece.

And she had been played.

…

..

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[POV: Jue Bu]

From the highest tower of bone and mourning incense, Jue Bu stood alone. His robes of imperial violet, embroidered with silver orchids, fluttered in the cold, dry wind, a mockery of the regality he once wielded without question. Below him, the dead stirred in waves, a tide of rotting armor and quiet loyalty. Slowly, they parted, allowing a man of flesh and blood to walk through their ranks. Each of his steps left a trail of violet flame that clung to the ruined stones like lotus blossoms blooming in fire.

“To say I’m pissed…” Jue Bu muttered to no one, clenching the stone railing so hard that cracks spidered through it, “…would be the most pathetic understatement in all of damnation.”

Twice! The same trick! The same perpetrator behind the scenes!

Jue Bu had been duped like a wide-eyed mortal sniffing incense for the first time. How did he not see it? The Dark Witch had never once inspired trust. If anything, she had built her entire legend upon betrayal, seduction, and whispered deceit. And yet, when she offered the same poison with a new perfume, he drank it again, greedy and grateful like a fool.

Thankfully, he had used a body-double to attend the game.

The visitor finally arrived beneath the tower, and without waiting for an invitation, took to the air, rising in gentle defiance of gravity until he stood atop the rooftop opposite Jue Bu. His robes were plain, his blade still sheathed, and yet his presence distorted the space around him.

“My name is—” he began.

“Lu Gao,” Jue Bu interrupted with a wave of his hand, tone flat and unimpressed. “Yes, yes, I know you. We've met already. Save the preamble. I’m already regretting not stabbing something this morning.”

Lu Gao didn’t flinch at the rudeness. Instead, he smiled. “Then you know why I’m here.”

“To ask a disgraced monster to switch sides?” Jue Bu chuckled bitterly. “Quite the plan, boy. You’re lucky I’m in a mood to vent.”

Lu Gao’s voice didn’t rise or lower, but carried with quiet gravity. “This is your chance to redeem yourself. Not to me. Not to David. But to yourself. Fight with us. Not as a King of the Underworld, but as the man who once shook Heaven’s Gates with his roar.”

Jue Bu’s eyes narrowed. He drew his sword in a single breath, the motion swift and without dramatics, yet somehow thunderous in its execution. The bone tower beneath his feet trembled.

“Bring me to the enemy. At once.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“The Heavenly Alliance.” Jue Bu smiled, a cruel, vicious thing. “I need to relieve stress. I’ve been stuck in David’s righteous mind for far too long. It’s been bleeding into me, making me say stupid things like ‘honor’ and ‘second chances.’”

“You just said ‘redeem yourself’ wasn’t stupid.”

“Shut up.”

Lu Gao pointed toward the far north. “There. The main force. That’s where we need you.”

Without another word, Jue Bu leapt from the tower, purple and black flames gathering along his feet, catching the wind like wings. The instant his feet touched ground, the scent of old blood swelled from the soil. He raised his sword high and howled, not a spell, not a command, just pure intention.

And the dead answered.

The black-eyed soldiers in rusted armor began to stir, their limbs creaking with cold and hate. Swords rose, drums of war thudded from empty ribcages, and the great legion of the Foolish King marched once more, not toward conquest, but vengeance.

The true war had begun.

…

..

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[POV: Ru Qiu]

The Heavenly Demon never imagined he'd be used like this, dragged from one indignity to the next like some expendable pawn. He was not made for servitude, not built to take commands from girls barely older than children, and certainly not prepared to be shackled by soul-binding contracts in the name of some convoluted greater good. Each humiliation had stacked upon the last until the pressure had become unbearable, a tightening coil in his chest that now quivered with the urge to explode.

“And who are you supposed to be?” Ru Qiu’s tone was dry, almost bored, as his obsidian eyes settled on the battered figure that stumbled through a crumbled archway. His voice barely rose above the ambient wails of a battlefield, yet it seemed to stop the wind in its tracks.

The man, bloodied, limping, and draped in the torn remnants of imperial armor, raised his chipped greatsword and flared his presence like a torch in a drought-stricken forest. “I am Han Yu!” he bellowed, each syllable edged with desperation and wrath. “Where is he!?”

Ru Qiu knew who ‘he’ was, but that didn’t mean he had any inclination to share. The last thing he needed was another overdramatic hero marching toward martyrdom.

Then came the tremors, great shudders rolling across the field. Earth cracked beneath the strain as multiple legions emerged from the swirling black mists. Some bore the colors of fallen dynasties, others wore nothing but death itself, and all of them moved in eerie synchronicity. A noose had closed around the ruined plaza, with Ru Qiu at its center and Han Yu stubbornly standing at its edge, defiant.

“It seems the Supreme Void had stopped thinking about any sort of pretense…”

With a flick of his wrist, Ru Qiu summoned his weapon from the folds of his Storage Ring. A pitch-black sword materialized in his grasp, darker than the void and humming with a malice that made nearby corpses twitch. He raised it with both hands, and the air itself recoiled.

“Immortal Art: Defying the Heaven’s Decree.”

The name alone split the sky.

A pressure descended. Shadows spilled across the ruined city as though time itself had been dyed. Above them, an eclipse that hadn’t been there moments ago began to devour the sun, throwing the battlefield into premature night. Every breath turned cold. Every heartbeat sounded like a final drumbeat.

Han Yu’s eyes widened in awe and ecstasy. Then he laughed, loud, crazed, and utterly unhinged. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha~! That’s more like it!” he howled, dashing forward with a manic glint in his eye.

Their weapons met with a force that didn’t just shatter stone. Instead, it ruined the very intent of the structure. Earth split apart in jagged bursts, air screamed as pressure waves ripped across the broken plaza, and even the light seemed to flee the collision. In that instant, Ru Qiu became the storm, and Han Yu the lightning that dared strike it.

…

..

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[POV: Jia Yun]

The scent of sweat clung to Jia Yun’s skin, mixing with the heat of her exertion. Her robes clung damply to her body, heavy with moisture. Flickers of fur shimmered across her wrists, tailbone, and brows, remnants of the Immortal Beast sealed within her. They pulsed, distorted, then vanished again in flashes, revealing just how unstable the fusion had become. Her breath came in heaving gulps as she knelt at the center of what remained of Da Wei’s shrine. The walls had long since crumbled under the pressure of rising qi. Holy stones cracked. The incense burners spilled their ash. The once-sacred place had turned into a battlefield of silence and tense ritual.

Moments ago, the boy… no, that thing in the boy’s form… had begun to unravel. Something dormant in his soul clawed its way to the surface, forcing her to hastily invoke the sealing art. Jia Yun’s fingers worked without rest, each hand seal sharper than the last. Sheets of talisman paper fluttered in the air like autumn leaves caught in a storm, their golden ink shimmering against the rising twilight. Chains manifested, spiraling from each cardinal pillar of the formation. They snaked forward and wrapped around the boy’s body, then wrapped again, each layer tighter than the last. As the chains constricted, the talismans latched to them like barnacles on a hull, binding the chaotic energy into a cocoon of spiritual iron. Beneath it all, the floor pulsed with glowing ink… centuries-old sigils drawn in lacquer derived from demonic beast blood.

Suddenly, the door slammed open with enough force to dislodge tiles from the roof. A haggard figure stood on the threshold. Black hair streamed behind her like a storm banner, her eyes hollowed by sleeplessness and something far worse.

“Where is my son?” Da Ji’s voice cracked the silence like a whip.

Jia Yun turned sharply, her fingers still held in an incomplete seal. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

She cursed inwardly; her charm should’ve kept Da Ji unconscious until the ritual was complete. Clearly, it hadn’t worked. Perhaps the boy’s corruption had disrupted it. Or perhaps Da Ji had never been fully herself to begin with.

Da Ji stepped forward, staggering like a drunk, but her gaze was fixed, burning with a strange clarity. Her eyes settled on the cocoon of chains, and she dropped to her knees beside it, stroking the surface with reverent fingers.

“My baby boy is here…” she whispered, voice trembling.

“That thing is not your son,” Jia Yun said, her voice firm. “Da Ji, get away from the—”

“You don’t get to say anything!” Da Ji shrieked.

Her face twisted. It was no longer fully human. In one blink, her cheeks elongated. Her eyes thinned into slits. For a heartbeat, Jia Yun saw a maw of teeth and foxish cunning. Alarm rang through her soul. She took a step back, grasping at her remaining qi.

Then it happened.

The sealed tail within Jia Yun shuddered and vanished. It was gone in an instant, like it had been torn out of her by an invisible hand.

“What did you do?” Jia Yun breathed.

Da Ji’s lips curled into a smile too wide for a human face. “Taking back what is mine.”

Her hair, once black, shimmered into a brilliant silver. Two ears peeked from her scalp, flicking. Nails elongated into delicate claws, and behind her sprouted a glorious tail, plush and deadly.

Jia Yun flung her fan forward, letting it spin with sharp gales that had once shredded demonic beasts. But halfway through its arc, the fan stilled in mid-air, caught by a force she couldn’t see.

Da Ji moved. With a single swipe of her claw, she carved through the sealing chains like paper. The cocoon split open with a hiss of spirit-forged metal tearing. Inside was a boy, dark-haired, still, and with eyes closed. Beautiful and silent like a corpse prepared for burial.

Jia Yun remembered Da Wei’s voice, asking her to save his sister. Her hands trembled, not from fear, but uncertainty. Was this what he meant? Was saving Da Ji even possible anymore?

She didn’t know. But she had to act.

Her body ached from the sudden absence of the Immortal Beast’s power. But she still had something left. Jia Yun drew on the dregs of her cultivation, the embers of a fire near death, and willed the formation to obey her one last time. The chains twitched, then moved, snapping like snakes toward the cocoon. They coiled and squeezed, responding to her desperation.

The boy inside jerked and screamed. A horrible noise so primal and raw tore through the chamber. His body convulsed, back arching, veins bursting. Blood spurted in sprays of black and red. The formation ignited, not with light but with utter darkness. Then…

He was gone.

Shredded into ribbons by the very chains meant to contain him. His remains were scattered across the ink-stained floor, indistinguishable from ash.

…

..

.

[POV: Wan Peng]

The winds up here were thin, barely carrying the scent of panic that brewed just beneath the polished veneer of civility. Wan Peng, Head Council of New Willow and its standing governor after the capital had been thrust into the sky, looked out across a mass of displaced citizens. Protocol Ark had activated successfully. The streets below no longer touched soil but instead floated among clouds. From the lowest streets to the tallest pagodas, New Willow was no longer a city on land but an ark upon the heavens.

He stood at the high balcony of the City Hall, elevated above a square so tightly packed with refugees that the tiles were invisible. Children clung to their parents. Scholars carried crates of scrolls and relics. Cultivators stayed on the perimeter, their vigilance a thin wall against the encroaching dread.

Wan Peng raised his hands, voice magically amplified, “People of New Willow, do not fear! This is not the end, but the enactment of the final safeguard prepared by Lord Wen Yuhan—”

He faltered, lips trembling at the name. Even after everything, it still didn’t feel right to call ‘her’ Da Wei. He continued anyway.

“—Da Wei, may his plan continue to shelter us. Protocol Ark is not abandonment! It is a sanctuary. The war has taken much from us, but this city will stand, above the chaos, above the ruin, until a new land welcomes us. The ground may be gone, but our spirit, our unity—”

Wan Peng stopped mid-sentence, mouth left agape, not by forgetfulness, but by horror.

“What in Da Wei’s name is that…?”

The people turned as one, craning their necks toward the center of the city. There, eclipsing the central plaza where the Temple once stood, loomed a silver fox, colossal and divine. Its fur shimmered like starlight spun from ice. Each movement of its nine tails summoned flurries that spread cold into the very bones of those nearby. Its mere presence warped the sky, cloaking the heavens in soft gray and dimming the sun like an approaching apocalypse.

Gasps and screams filled the plaza.

“Is it a beast tide?!”

“No—no, it’s just one creature!”

“My son! Where’s my son?!”

“The Immortal Beast! Someone said it’s from the old legends—”

The fox’s breath fogged the sky. Its golden eyes narrowed, not in rage, but in eerie stillness, as if it were observing an ant hill, unsure whether to play with it or crush it. Then it opened its maw.

The roar that followed shook everyone’s soul within the creature’s vicinity.

"KRY-JYIAAAAAAAA-KYAAAAAAAAAGH~~~!"

A gale exploded outward, shaking the city’s foundation despite its suspended altitude. Buildings trembled. The metal runes beneath the flying city flickered and dimmed as the array groaned under the pressure. Clouds parted from the impact, scattered like frightened birds, and for a moment, even light refused to exist.

Dozens fell instantly, some fainted, others collapsed in foaming hysteria. One cultivator clawed at his own face, eyes widened to the whites as he muttered nonsense prayers to spirits that no longer answered.

Wan Peng grabbed the railing, his knees nearly giving out.

“What madness have we invited into our precious city…?” he whispered. "Oh, Great Guard... protect us..."

…

..

.

[POV: Chen Wei]

The shrine was no longer a shrine. What remained was a crater of charred wood and shattered stone, soaked in melted snow and blood. Prayer-pillars had snapped in half. Talisman-threaded chains lay in tatters. A storm howled through the open sky above, shaking loose the last remnants of Da Wei’s once-sacred sanctum. The wind stank of smoke and iron.

From under the ruins, wet slithering sounds echoed like the stirring of a monstrous womb. Globs of flesh, sinew, and congealed blood dragged themselves together with grotesque resolve. Bones knit under steaming tissue, organs pulsed as if remembering their purpose, and at the center of it all rose a boy. No, something that resembled a boy. Roughly in his early teens, clothed in black robes that clung to his lean form like shadow, his short dark hair dripped with crimson, and his smile was far too calm for someone born of such ruin.

“Why is this happening to me?” he asked, his voice hollow yet lucid.

His name was… Chen Wei.

His memories of childhood were faint, wisps of laughter, glimpses of warmth, fleeting shadows of a family that once meant something. Yet even in that haze, he recognized the howling monstrosity above. A silver-haired fox the size of a huge manor, with tails like blades and eyes like moons, roared with primal fury in the sky. Snow spiraled around her with deadly grace, and wherever her paw touched, frost devoured stone and steel.

"A fox?"

That was his mother.

He stepped forward, but only once. His limbs slackened. Cold pressed against his bones, not just from the snow, but from the realization settling into his core. Something had broken her. Something had made her forget.

A voice rasped from under the rubble behind him, brittle but alive.

“She’s lost herself to rage. There’s something whispering in her mind…”

Chen Wei turned toward the sound. A woman lay pinned beneath a cracked timber beam, her body mangled and smeared with blood. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her robes were shredded, barely clinging to her frame.

Without hesitation, Chen Wei walked to her and gripped the beam. It lifted without resistance, as though it feared him. The woman crawled backward with a grimace, dragging a fractured leg behind her. Once she was clear, Chen Wei dropped the beam and stood still. There was something about her that unnerved him, something that whispered of danger. Every instinct screamed that this woman could end him, even in her current state. But he silenced the voice. Instinct was nothing compared to what he needed to know.

“My mom…” he said, eyes flicking between her and the rampaging beast in the sky. “Can you help her?”

The woman winced as she pulled a sliver of wood from her abdomen. Blood spurted, but she didn’t cry out. She leaned against a broken column, her chest rising and falling with visible effort.

“I can’t,” she said. “My cultivation’s unraveling since the tail was taken from me…”

Chen Wei clenched his fists. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

“There’s nothing to do,” the woman muttered, closing her eyes for a moment as she tried to steady her breath. “I’ve come to terms with that. You should, too. Sometimes futility is understanding there is nothing you can do.”

“But she’s my mother!” he shouted, voice breaking through the blizzard.

The woman’s eyes fluttered open. Her expression was hard, but not unkind. “No. That’s not your mother anymore. That is a progenitor beast, unchained. What remains is the instinct to destroy, devour, and erase. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I…”

“You did,” Chen Wei said softly. "You did the right thing!"

He meant it. Somewhere inside, he knew she had fought to prevent this. That she'd held the line even when there was no reward at the end of it, and he knew something else, something darker, that there was something wrong with him. Deep down, a selfishness coiled like a serpent. He wanted to live. He didn’t want to be a martyr. He hated pain. But when he looked at that woman, broken and brave, and at the fox above drowning the heavens in snow… he knew what he had to do.

“But you failed,” he whispered. "However, that doesn't have to be the end."

She looked up sharply, eyes widening just in time to see him reach for a jagged shard of glass.

Without hesitation, Chen Wei dragged it across his neck. The pain was immediate, raw, and white-hot. Blood sprayed in gouts, steaming against the cold air. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his throat. His body spasmed, choking on its own fluids. For minutes, he writhed in the dirt, blinking through a haze of agony. His heartbeat slowed. His fingers twitched. His vision blackened.

And then…

He gasped.

Breath surged into his lungs as his flesh knitted back together. The gash sealed, the blood receded into his skin, and strength flooded his limbs. In seconds, he was standing again, whole.

“As you can see,” he said coldly, “I can’t die. So, don’t blame yourself… You tried…”

He looked at the sky where the fox-beast writhed, snow swallowing the skyline. The blizzard’s eye was calm, but the chaos it birthed churned like a storm.

Soon, more would die.

The thought came unbidden, yet it felt true and certain, like instinct. As if something inside him already knew how this would end. 

But before silence reclaimed them, the woman coughed and spoke.

“There might still be hope…”