The sky over the Dead Echo Valley boiled.
Thick clouds of apocalyptic purple spun in a frenetic whirlpool, swallowing the canyon's natural darkness. The air became dense and charged with lethal atmospheric pressure. The Will of the World had awakened, sniffing the anomalous, unbearable weight of Lóu Jiàn.
At the edge of the ruined arena, Bái Wǎn clutched the pearlescent fabric of her celestial‑blue dress. The rumbling in the heights made the girl's bones vibrate in a primitive dread induced by the Heavenly Tribulation—something she had spent her entire life learning to fear.
But as she turned her eyes from the clouds to the figure in the charcoal‑gray tunic a few steps away, the dread melted.
Zhì Yuǎn observed the storm with his hands clasped behind his back, his neck slightly tilted upward. The void in his black eyes dissected the purple lightning with the lethargy of someone watching raindrops hit the roof. Blind fascination flooded Bái Wǎn's light‑blue irises. The girl sighed, her soul overflowing with relief and pride at belonging to that man's altar.
A massive purple lightning bolt descended, tearing through the canyon.
The discharge struck Lóu Jiàn directly. The black rock beneath the Sect Master melted, turning into magma. Yet the old cultivator's body, grotesquely swollen by Zhì Yuǎn's Primordial Qi, withstood the impact. His carnal shell glowed with the resistance of an indestructible wall, repelling the world's annihilation.
The fabric of local reality gave way.
Unable to digest the anomaly, the dimension opened its throat. An irregular spatial rift, surrounded by void and static currents, tore open just behind the Sect Master. The vortex violently sucked Lóu Jiàn in, ejecting the test subject out of the mortal plane.
The rift collapsed abruptly. The sky cleared in the blink of an eye. The purple storm disappeared, returning the Dead Echo Valley to its cold, silent darkness.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his right hand.
His unfathomable eyes followed the tension of the silver thread of the Law of Karma, perfectly tied to Lóu Jiàn's enslaved soul. Wisdom decoded the trajectory of the thread stretching through abyssal dimensions. The exact coordinates of the other side were engraved and lit up on one of the stars of his Inner Universe. The compass was locked.
"The route is mapped," the god's deep, unshakable voice echoed through the canyon, lowering his hand. "Our first bloodhound has stepped onto the other side. The door will open exactly beneath our feet."
Mò Yán adjusted the crossed collar of her white and black Hanfu. The thick silk strained violently against the monumental curve of her breasts, the gold thread embroidery gleaming in the dimness. The fearful modesty of before had evaporated; the diplomat's scarlet irises now met Zhì Yuǎn's gaze with a bold, fanatically devoted submission.
"The main deposits of this sect are located in the lower fissures, husband," the white‑haired young woman informed, organizing the logistics with fervor, the blush on her neck betraying her excitement to serve him. "The bone dust our little sister caused drove away the guards. The plunder is free."
Zhì Yuǎn turned his face toward the caverns. The Universe demanded resources.
---
Three hours passed in the belly of the Bloody Blade Sect.
The heavy iron doors of the main vault yielded to Zhì Yuǎn's mere approach. The interior, lit by glowing moss stones, revealed piles of resources stolen from mortals and lesser sects over millennia.
Mò Yán separated the flasks of Yin venom and the boxes of ores, cataloging values with absolute precision. Bái Wǎn ran from shelf to shelf, collecting ancient scrolls and jade tablets, delivering them into the god's hands.
Zhì Yuǎn spun the jades between his fingers, Wisdom dissecting the corrupted Laws and cultivation paths; when the essence of the information was swallowed, the stone turned to gray dust and trickled to the floor.
While he worked, Yù Qíng remained in her perfect aerial seiza. Anchored by the Lotus of the Void millimeters above Zhì Yuǎn's shoulders, the eldest rested her full bust on the top of his head. Her pale, cold hands massaged her husband's scalp and black hair with lethal, devoted slowness, her soft thighs pressing lightly around his neck in a loose, indisputable dominion.
Light, perfectly paced footsteps echoed at the vault's entrance.
The Brutal Blade crossed the iron threshold. Yù Méi wore her golden silk dress, resplendent. Her living pure‑gold hair fell in damp waves down her back, smelling of fresh waterfall water, completely devoid of the blood mask that had covered her hours earlier.
"Ah, you came to clean up the mess," Yù Méi commented, stretching languidly and rolling her relaxed shoulders. Her almond eyes gleamed with euphoric satisfaction.
Yù Qíng glided from the air, descending gracefully from her husband's shoulders. The blue goddess stopped before the youngest, her pale fingers tucking a damp golden strand of Yù Méi's hair with a sisterly affection laced with proud sadism.
"You took your time finding your way back home, little flower," the eldest teased, her sweet smile curving her lips.
Yù Méi laughed, a rough, genuine laugh, leaning against the vault's stone wall.
"There was a lot of tall grass in that valley, sister, and the rats tried to scatter into every crack," the warrior explained, cracking her fingers, the carnivorous memory gleaming in her eyes. "I lost count after the first ten thousand. I swear to you, there was so much snapping spine and tearing flesh that the mountain's base turned into a single carpet. A very fun morning."
The youngest rubbed her own belly, her full lips forming a soft, pouty expression that absurdly contrasted with the genocide she had just confessed.
"But all those smashed people left a damned emptiness in my stomach, husband," Yù Méi grumbled, her rough tone melting into explicit coquettishness as she looked at Zhì Yuǎn. "I'm starving to death."
Yù Qíng let out a crystalline laugh, her black eyes gleaming in approval at the youngest's voracity. The priestess turned her face majestically to the novice holding an armful of scrolls.
"Come, little lotus," Yù Qíng called, adjusting the sleeve of her navy‑blue dress. "Show me where this place's furnaces are. We will cook for our heaven while he and Yán finish devouring these dead stones."
Bái Wǎn nodded frantically. She set the jade tablets on the table and followed Yù Qíng to the back of the canyon, toward the abandoned sect's rustic kitchens.
---
The stone kitchen hall was deserted. Yù Qíng floated to the wooden counters, beginning to slice the immense cuts of meat with the lethal elegance of a predator, while Bái Wǎn washed the vegetables and prepared the fire with a domestic comfort that filled her heart with adoration.
Yù Qíng noticed the novice's awed gaze. The sweet smile bloomed on the eldest's red lips, and the invisible intention of the Law of Devotion rippled through the stuffy air.
"The world tries to cage women with dogmas of dust and silence, Wǎn'er," Yù Qíng's velvet voice slid through the room, intoxicating the former academic's mind. "But our family is governed only by the roots our heaven plants. We are the extension of his divinity. The altar where he rests."
Yù Qíng drove the steel knife into the wooden board with a sharp crack. Her black, absolute eyes met Bái Wǎn's oceanic irises.
"The secrets of his dantian and the gears of our mill belong to the shadows of our walls. Discretion is the shield of our heaven," the priestess instructed. "But this devotion does not mean you should lower your head to the world. Never diminish your own size again, little lotus. The ants out there do not have the right to breathe the same air as us, let alone to be skittish and disrespectful in our presence."
The pure Yin in Bái Wǎn's belly shuddered, absorbing the inescapable weight of that authority.
"If an insect looks at you with greed, if a sect's presence bothers you, or if someone dares to test the limits of our house…" Yù Qíng stepped closer, her pale fingers holding Bái Wǎn's soft face with maternal, terrifying firmness. "You do not hesitate. You simply annihilate whatever is frustrating you. Weeds do not have the right to touch our roots, and I forbid any of my sisters to taste the flavor of humiliation. The authority over the lives of others has already been granted by our husband."
Those words struck Bái Wǎn's chest like a tectonic jolt. The cowardice and stagnation that a repressive environment and fear of the world had cultivated in her shattered definitively. The woman in blue had just given her the irrefutable permission to crush threats. The sensation of power, protection, and belonging made her blood boil.
Tears of pure joy overflowed from Bái Wǎn's blue eyes. The young woman in the pearlescent dress could not contain her own body; she threw her arms around Yù Qíng's slender waist, burying her face in the priestess's shoulder with a muffled sob.
"Thank you, eldest sister…" Bái Wǎn whimpered, her choked voice overflowing with the rawest, most faithful gratitude. "Thank you for bringing me into our family."
Yù Qíng smiled indulgently and satisfied, her cold hand stroking the long oceanic hair of her new sister, the cultivation of devotion on the altar flourishing with absolute perfection.
In the minutes that followed, cradled by the heat of the embers and the sound of grilling meat, the cultivation of devotion continued. Yù Qíng patiently reviewed the rules of the altar, the absolute etiquettes, and the sacred titles that the new sister should use to address their husband, cementing the young woman's loyalty.
---
An hour later, the platters of seasoned meat and the bowls of steaming rice were already empty in the vault transformed into a banquet hall.
Zhì Yuǎn rested his chopsticks on the porcelain. Mò Yán wiped her lips with a silk cloth and spread a large parchment of cured leather over the ebony table. The strategic audacity gleamed in the white‑haired diplomat's scarlet irises, the febrile blush on her skin exuding the devout hunger of one who wished to expand her husband's altar without the slightest trace of shame.
"The compass to the Higher Realm is secured, my darling," Mò Yán reported, her melodious voice overflowing with affection. "But your Inner Universe requires thick foundations before we ascend. I have mapped the most fertile targets."
She circled three points scattered across the extremes of the map.
"There remain two Great Hegemonies in the center of the continent, drowned in stagnant riches. There are also five Orthodox Sects and two Perverse Sects isolated in the smaller valleys. The energy accumulated in the dantians of those old monsters and the vaults of their pavilions are fat foundations for our needs."
Yù Méi licked her grease‑stained fingers, her almond eyes gleaming like molten gold.
"Which one do we crush first?" the warrior purred, the Brutal Blade ready to plunge into the next slaughterhouse.
Zhì Yuǎn looked at the map. The unfathomable void of his gaze swept across the ink marks, uniting the entire continent into a single functional concept: a routine meal.
The Hunger's patience had run out, and the structure of his dantian demanded the weight of the world.
"The order of falls does not matter. The destiny of their stones is the same," the god's deep voice descended upon the table, unshakable and colossal, dictating the final sentence of the mortal plane. "We will march across this continent. We will swallow the foundations of every sect and plunder the knowledge of all their libraries. Our ascension will only occur when all your flesh is forged into an unbreakable density."
He raised his face, the shadow of conquest covering his sculpted features.
"And the old men rotting in the leadership of these mountains will not be wasted," Zhì Yuǎn pronounced, his tone absolute. "They will be bound by the Law of Karma and ejected into the heavens, like today's trash. Bloodhounds. They will build our foundations in the world above so that, when we ascend in a few years, our empire will already be waiting for us."
His Inner Universe demanded the structure of the world, and carnage was the only accepted currency.
"We will be the last storm of this land, my love," Yù Qíng whispered, her red lips curving into a dark, devout, eternally hungry smile, her head resting sweetly on her husband's shoulder.
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