Li Zhan led them into the formation.
The moment their feet touched the invisible boundary, the air hummed with a low, living frequency. On the ground of the floating altar island, strange symbols ignited—geometric patterns that pulsed with the cold, familiar logic of the Wheels of Destiny. They were not of one Wheel, but a complex, interlocking script of all five.
Nix's eyes snapped open from his meditative pose. He stared across the short, lethal distance, a look of weary amusement on his scarred face. His voice, though strained, carried easily. "Death isn't something you people of this world seem to understand. You keep running towards it."
To that, Gen simply bared his teeth in a smile that held no warmth. "Just wait. I'm coming for your head."
Li Zhan, his face a mask of concentration, made a sharp gesture. His puppet, the chained cultivator-ghost, shot forward with a silent shriek. It met the first retaliatory strike of the formation—a blade of pure, condensed sword-light that materialized from the sigils on the ground. The ghost's sword met it in a shower of white and grey sparks that bloomed like a dying star.
"Now! Move!" Li Zhan hissed.
Gen shot forward. He used **Shidow** not to fly, but to pull and push against the dense, hostile air, making himself a zigzagging projectile. His **Jingdao** flared, the golden light of the First Door taking on a harder, desperate edge as he weaved through a hail of sword-light. Blades of energy sizzled past his ear, grazed his shoulder, each near-miss leaving a line of numbness in its wake. He followed the path Li Zhan's puppet was brutally carving, a shadow of golden defiance.
On their left flank, a massive sword-light, wider than a door, swept horizontally to bisect the group. Duo Yi's eyes narrowed. She didn't command; she *willed*. The **Doom Dragon** coiled around her roared, a sound of pure rage, and lunged. It didn't try to destroy the blade. It opened its maw of annihilating intent and *bit down* on the leading edge. The sword-light screeched, its forward momentum grinding to a halt against the dragon's conceptual jaws. The dragon's form crackled, fine fissures appearing in its grey-black body, but it held. It bought them two seconds.
Ahead and to their right, another cluster of sword-lights converged. With Gen defending the front with Li Zhan and Duo Yi holding the flank, Lorel understood her role.
She raised her hands. The seven **Supremacy Swords** orbiting her back fanned out into a wide, defensive ring. She pushed her will through them, her connection sharp and clear. It was not the desperate, emotional surge of the arena. This was control. *Ever since I came back from the Tower, from the 45th floor… I don't know why, but it's different. Before, the seven swords only came when I was cornered, when my fear or anger boiled over. Now, the path is just… open. I can see the way to their power. It's a road I can walk whenever I choose.*
The swords moved. They became a blizzard of precise pink light, intercepting the incoming blades in a rapid series of *PING-CRACK-SHING!* impacts. Most shattered into harmless sparkles. A few slipped through, hissing past her thighs and cheeks, leaving thin, stinging cuts. She ignored them, her focus absolute, weaving her shield of light.
They advanced, a battered, determined knot pushing through a storm of cutting energy.
Just as the altar proper came within a desperate leap, the formation changed. The sword-lights converging on them dissolved. In their place, the air directly ahead coalesced into a single, dense figure.
It was a man made of solidified sword-light, a ghostly cultivator from a distant age. He wore a strange robe, short at the hem but with impossibly long sleeves. He smiled at them, a cold, algorithmic expression, and tapped his foot on the non-ground.
Beneath his foot, a symbol bloomed. It spread across the blank sky above them like fiery ink on paper. From within it, a dozen pillars of piercing white light lanced down.
Gen dove left, then right, contorting his body. The pillars were faster than the sweeping blades. One sheared through the edge of his golden aura, carving a deep, blackened furrow across his ribs. The golden light there didn't just dim; it was *erased*, leaving behind dead, numb flesh. He spat a mouthful of blood but didn't stop. He planted his feet, his entire body aligning.
He concentrated all his **Jingdao**, all his will, into a single point at the tip of his index finger. The light there didn't brighten; it deepened, becoming a point of perfect, silent density.
**End of the World Finger.**
He thrust. The power released was not a beam, but a line of absolute negation, a stitch of nothingness sewn through reality towards the ghostly swordsman.
The figure lifted an eyebrow. It slid its foot back, and another array of symbols appeared before it, layering into a shimmering, multi-layered curtain.
The finger's negation struck the curtain.
***BOOOOOOM.***
The sound was a deep, shuddering concussion that had no echo, swallowed by the realm. The curtain of symbols *bent* inward violently. A spiderweb of cracks exploded across its surface, glowing with frantic, dying light. But it held. It did not break.
Gen's expression froze in disbelief. That was his strongest strike. It hadn't broken through.
He wasn't alone. Lorel and Duo Yi attacked from the sides the instant his strike landed. The **Doom Dragon** bit into the cracked curtain from the left, its jaws of malice grinding. From above, Lorel's seven **Supremacy Swords** rained down in a focused volley on the same spot, their points of superior light drilling in.
***CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!***
The curtain fissured further, the cracks deepening, spreading like ice about to give way.
The ghostly swordsman smiled at their coordinated assault. It shook its long sleeves, and the same symbols bloomed not in front, but *behind* Lorel and Duo Yi.
It waved a hand.
Sword-light erupted from the symbols at their backs, exploding sideways in a surprise scythe meant to cut them in half.
The two girls moved with desperate speed. Duo Yi threw herself flat, the blade passing so close it sheared off a lock of her hair. Lorel twisted mid-air, but the edge caught her across the back of her shoulder, slicing through robe and skin. They landed hard, bleeding, wounded, but alive.
It was the distraction Li Zhan needed.
While the formation's intelligence focused on the girls, Li Zhan and his puppet had slipped unseen to the weakest point—the nexus of cracks Gen had created. Li Zhan's face was pale with strain. All his Qi poured down the shimmering **Shidow** threads into his creation. The chained cultivator-ghost swelled, its muscles bulging against its spectral bonds, its eyes rolling back in its head in silent agony. It raised its sword high and brought it down in a single, monumental arc of condensed sorrow and control.
The blade struck the center of the cracked curtain.
***SHATTER.***
The curtain of light didn't just break. It disintegrated in a silent, expanding ring of dissipating energy. The ghostly swordsman flickered, taking a single, involuntary step backward.
In that instant, a hole—a jagged, swirling vortex of unstable light—gaped open in the formation's integrity.
Without a word, without hesitation, they bolted. Gen first, a pained grimace on his face, then Lorel and Duo Yi, scrambling, and finally Li Zhan, recalling his flickering puppet. They threw themselves through the closing hole just as the ghostly figure reached out a hand to seal it.
They tumbled through chaos and landed in a heap of scraping limbs and pained gasps on the hard, cold stone of the altar itself. The oppressive, cutting pressure of the formation was gone, replaced by the closer, more intimate menace radiating from the center.
Gen pushed himself up, spitting another mouthful of blood onto the ancient carvings. His hands were trembling, aching as if the bones inside were on fire. He didn't care.
He lifted his eyes.
Nix was now standing a dozen paces away, having risen from his lotus position. A blade of nullification energy, thin and focused like a needle of dying star, condensed in his one good hand. His scarred face was a mask of contemptuous triumph.
"You are as foolish as that Varja," Nix rasped, his voice raw but ringing with malice. "Charging in here like penned cattle. Now… you all shall die."