The echo of the furious roar of the Sect Master Zhào Fēng still trembled in the stalactites of the dark cavern, mingling with the metallic hum of dozens of drawn swords.
The aura of the 4th Pillar Saint — the Sacred Vessel — exploded from Zhào Fēng's body, accompanied by the crushing pressure of the twelve Great Elders and the principal leaders of the Celestial Mirror Hegemony. A martial atmospheric tempest swept through the stone tunnel, designed to grind the invaders who had reduced the Guardian Beast to a carpet of minced meat.
In the center of the cavern, Yù Méi's bare, immaculate feet stepped directly onto the sludge of viscera and blood of the Dragon‑Turtle. The youngest tilted her neck to the right, her bones cracking with a dry sound. The oppressive wind of the sect's leadership struck her dark‑gold dress and the open slits that exposed the warrior's bare thighs, breaking instantly, unable to move a single millimeter of her musculature.
A predatory, wide, euphoric smile tore across Yù Méi's face.
"Finally," her guttural voice vibrated in pure anticipation as she raised her bare fists. "I was starting to think we'd leave this hole without breaking any new necks. Can I smash his mouth, husband? Just one punch. He shouted too loudly."
A few steps behind, Yù Qíng let out a low, velvety, crystalline laugh. The eldest's perfectly bare, pale feet hovered silently in the air. Using the Lotus of the Void, she anchored her weight in the invisible folds of space, immune to the world's filth.
"A puddle of dry mud, and the frogs decide to croak at the clouds, thinking they can demand the rain back," the blue goddess mocked, her red lips curving into a cutting smile. She leaned her shoulder against Zhì Yuǎn's arm. "You attract the noisiest dust in this world, my love."
Mò Yán pressed her hands together beneath the sleeves of her white and black Hanfu. The diplomat's bare feet rested naked on the damp rock, hidden only by the pull of the heavy black skirt. The young woman watched the fury of the Hegemony's Great Elders, remembering with exactitude when her own father had tried to raise his voice against the man before her.
Zhào Fēng, his eyes bulging at the carnage of the turtle and offended to the marrow by the mocking posture of those women in the midst of the slaughterhouse, raised his heavy blade. The steel hummed, resonating with the foundation of his 4th Pillar.
"KILL THEM ALL!" the Sect Master ordered, his face purple with hatred. "TEAR THE ANSWERS OUT OF THEM!"
The Great Elders advanced in unison, the Qi of their cultivation bases illuminating the cavern like a raging sun.
Zhì Yuǎn merely lifted his unfathomable eyes.
The colossal gravity that inhabited the god reacted to the hostility. The crushing weight of his Inner Universe collapsed upon the environment, imposing the existence of a true heaven upon a false glass ceiling.
Space in the cavern ruptured.
CRACK.
The sound of dozens of bones failing was simultaneous. Zhào Fēng's aura shattered like a thin shell. The invisible, absolute force hurled the entire clan's leadership into free fall against the ground. Their knees collided violently against the sharp stones, sinking directly into the thick pool of viscera, sludge, and blood of their own Guardian Beast.
"GHAH!" Zhào Fēng spat a clot of dark blood, his face crushed against the damp floor, his lungs suffocated.
Beside him, the elders choked, their eyeballs bulging from their sockets, their fingers desperately digging into the stone in a pathetic attempt to lift their own weight. Zhì Yuǎn's gravity reduced them to the exact, humiliating condition of ants trapped under a giant's boot.
But the submission of a 4th Pillar Saint did not end with the flesh.
Zhào Fēng's face twisted in furious agony in the mud. His physical body was immobilized by the god's gravity, but the Nascent Divinity — the Crystal Soul forged in his chest — refused to be crushed. Pressured by the terror of losing control, the Sect Master made a suicidal decision. He gritted his teeth until they broke and burned ten years of his own life force in a single millisecond.
"THE HEGEMONY DOES NOT BOW TO THIEVES!" Zhào Fēng roared, blood running from his eyes and nose.
Ignoring his own body pinned to the ground, the intention of his Crystal Soul erupted violently. The bloodied water and mud around the invaders instantly froze and levitated, converting into six translucent currents of massive ice and mirror razors. The attack ignored Zhì Yuǎn. Zhào Fēng's target was clear: the woman in blue who floated mocking him. If he could capture her with the Law of the Mirror, he would have a hostage to reverse his imminent death.
The ice currents shot toward Yù Qíng's neck with the fury and speed of a 4th Pillar Saint's retaliation.
Yù Qíng did not move a muscle. The priestess merely smiled, her black eyes overflowing with lethal boredom.
Before Zhào Fēng's technique could cover half the distance, the mud beneath Yù Méi's feet exploded. The Brutal Blade did not invoke barriers. She advanced a single step, the dark‑gold silk tearing through the air, and intercepted the sacred currents with her own bare hands.
The Law of Rupture throbbed in the youngest's veins. Yù Méi grabbed the tip of the ice construct and squeezed.
CRUNCH!
The sound was deafening, like a mountain of glass being chewed by steel teeth. The Sect Master's brutal structure, forged by the burning of his own soul, disintegrated completely upon contact with the warrior's fingers. The hardened ice turned to opaque dust, raining harmlessly onto Yù Qíng's navy‑blue dress.
"You burn your own soul to throw ice cubes at me, old man?" Yù Méi snarled, carnivorous disappointment distorting the girl's beautiful features. She shook her hand, dusting off the crystalline powder. "How pathetic. I swear I'll tear your legs off if you try another cheap trick."
Zhào Fēng gasped, absolute despair driving into his spine. The most powerful retaliation attack his soul could project under that suppression had been crushed by the bare hand of a mere concubine. He swallowed more blood, preparing to detonate his own core all at once in a final act of insanity.
But he did not get the chance.
The darkness in Zhì Yuǎn's eyes boiled. The insect's desperate effort to attack his wife deeply irritated him.
Zhì Yuǎn did not raise his hand. He did not recite any technique. His Inner Universe simply imposed its will upon the concept of that man's existence.
— Crawl.
Zhì Yuǎn's word echoed, deep, low, and absolute. It was a Mandate. The god's conceptual authority did not strike the Sect Master's flesh; it pierced the invisible defenses of the 4th Pillar and struck directly the Crystal Soul in the center of Zhào Fēng's chest.
CRACK.
A hollow, terrifying crack leaked from the Sect Master's sternum. His Crystal Cage cracked. Zhào Fēng's connection to the Laws of the world was cut like a marionette's string. The leader collapsed face‑down into the pool of blood, his eyes rolling back, drooling and trembling in uncontrollable spasms as his own soul agonized under the weight of a command his existence was incapable of disobeying.
Resistance had died.
In the midst of the fallen men, suffocated by the horror of seeing their leader reduced to a convulsing worm, the Elder Bai trembled uncontrollably. Summoned by the sect's alarm, the old grandfather had merely followed the leadership, his heart tight with uncertainty over his granddaughter's fate in those dark hours.
With an effort that cost years of his own vitality, the old man forced his neck upward. He searched desperately for any trace of Bái Wǎn, fearing to see her broken, discarded, or dead.
But the sight he found made his sanity waver.
Just behind the imposing shadow of the man in the charcoal‑gray tunic, a figure advanced.
Her small, bare feet did not touch the bloodied stone. Wrapped in the technique of the Floating Lotus Step, Bái Wǎn hovered exactly millimeters above the carnage, repelling the mud to keep her porcelain skin and her robes immaculate.
The celestial‑blue, pearlescent silk dress flowed around her divinely sculpted body, and the oceanic mantle of blue hair dragged through the cavern's damp air, shimmering with sapphire and emerald reflections. Her soft, naturally rosy cheeks contrasted with the deep neckline that displayed the fullness of her heaving breasts. The air around her exuded the dense, majestic, overwhelming freshness of an infinite ocean.
Zhào Fēng, his face sideways crushed against the rock and his soul throbbing in pain, widened his eyes until the veins burst. The pressure of Qi that the former academic now radiated obliterated her old foundation, suffocating the ruined intention of the leader himself.
The old Elder Bai let out a gasp, his chin trembling in the bloodied mud.
"Wǎn… Wǎn'er?!" the grandfather's scream came out strangled, hoarse, and desperate, incredulity mixed with genuine shock.
The Goddess of Serenity stopped beside Zhì Yuǎn.
Her light‑blue irises, purified by the primordial element, descended upon the most powerful elders of her sect. Bái Wǎn's melodious voice filled the cavern with a soft, terrifying authority.
"Grandfather looks for a foundation that no longer exists. That glass girl was washed away by my husband's waters."
The word "husband," spoken with such reverence and naturalness by a girl who had barely dared to raise her voice before, fell upon the elders like a lead anvil.
"Bái Wǎn… what… what has this demon done to our foundation?!" Zhào Fēng snarled, drooling blood on the rock, terrified by the oceanic force the girl now displayed.
A devout, dangerously dark gleam darkened Bái Wǎn's soft features. She took a floating step forward, the pearlescent silk brushing against Zhì Yuǎn's leather boots, positioning herself not as a victim, but as his shield.
"Your paradise was nothing but a stagnant water hole, Sect Master," the girl pronounced, her voice dropping to a firm octave that froze the elders' spasms. "Our sect lived trapped, venerating a dead lake. My husband shattered that mediocrity. He drained the rot from your dimension and forged me into the true ocean. I am his goddess."
The shock of that confession obliterated the last shred of the clan's pride. Zhào Fēng shuddered, his eyes fixed on the young woman who displayed her new strength with a fanatical, sick pride.
Yù Qíng smiled widely beneath the dark veil of her own hair, her black eyes overflowing with satisfaction as she savored the new recruit's devout posture before the world.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his dark eyes to the crushed ants before him. His voice reverberated, deep and lethargic, in the tunnel.
"Your water dimension no longer exists, and the resistance of your souls is an unnecessary annoyance. My family wants silence."
The gravitational weight in the air increased subtly, and the sound of cracking ribs made the elders groan in unison. The god retracted the lethal force by just a millimeter to allow them to breathe.
"Out of respect for the ancient blood that still runs in my wife's veins, I will grant you the toll of survival," Zhì Yuǎn decreed, unquestionable. "The ignorance of this plane needs to be mapped. Bring me all your millennial records, the detailed cartography of the other Hegemonies, and every scroll that your dust guards about the true structure of the Three Thousand Worlds. Deliver all your knowledge, and your sect will continue to exist to see tomorrow's sunrise."
Yù Méi, still cracking her knuckles at the edge of the blood pool and lifting her bare, red‑stained big toe, huffed.
"But if you try to hide a single useful page, or conjure one more pathetic technique…" the Brutal Blade warned, her golden eyes gleaming in the cavern's dimness. "I swear I'll rip out your spines and use them to build a ladder back to the top of the mountain."
Funereal silence dominated the cavern.
Without a single drop of pride remaining, on their knees in the bloody mud of their own guardian beast, with their souls cracked by a single command, and suffocated by the realization that the millennial genius of their sect was now merely another divinity submissive to that man, the Sect Master Zhào Fēng bowed his forehead until it scraped the damp dust, swallowing the absolute humiliation.
"We will obey, Venerable One," the Sect Master whispered, his defeated voice sealing the plunder of his entire clan's knowledge.
---