The bronze handle of the main suite of the Pavilion of the Autumn Wind turned with a muted click.
The fresh air of the white stone courtyard was immediately swallowed by the dense steam escaping through the crack — a thick gust that smelled of sandalwood, ozone, and the sweet, residual musk of fourteen uninterrupted days of possession.
Lín Jié crossed the threshold.
The exhausted bureaucrat — tense-shouldered and strictly clothed — had died in those sheets. The woman who stepped onto the veranda displayed the luster of freshly polished jade, her mortal flesh entirely purged and rebuilt by Primordial Qi. The new, heavy velvet-green Hanfu she wore strained scandalously. The thick fabric embraced the colossal fullness of her breasts and descended molding the wide thighs and hips that displayed a proud and impassable solidity.
Her hair — previously short and dull — now cascaded in a heavy waterfall of deep velvet-green, swaying down to the curve of her buttocks, matching the dark silk perfectly. Her irises, a crystalline green, blazed with the vastness of a newly forged Sea of Laws.
Lín Jié stopped on the wooden step. She raised her right hand.
The old ink stains that had ingrained her fingers for decades had vanished, but the essence of her work had survived the forge. Without chanting or forming seals, a round, incredibly dense drop of liquid ink sprouted from the tip of her index finger.
A dry peach tree leaf detached from its branch in the courtyard, spinning in the wind. The ink drop shot forward.
In the millisecond the black liquid collided against the dead leaf, the rough brown texture faded. The plant fibers unfolded and stretched, gaining the dark gleam of glistening wings. The dead matter transformed into a perfect butterfly, which beat its ink-damp wings and flew toward the sunlight before dissolving into a thin mist of black smoke, leaving no trace.
A wet chewing sound cut through the silence of the demonstration.
"For someone who enjoys staring at the wind, that's a pretty trick, woman of ink," Yù Méi grumbled, sprawled across the white courtyard slabs with her long legs spread across the stone. The younger sister swallowed a chunk of roasted meat, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, the golden silk of her dress pulling against her thighs. "But the smoke vanished in three seconds. Next time, draw a boar. At least you can roast it on a spit."
At the center of the garden, reclined in the immense wicker lounger, Zhì Yuǎn let out a low, guttural laugh. The baritone sound vibrated in the man's broad, bare chest beneath his wide-open charcoal-grey robe.
"If the fabric of reality depended on your hunger to be painted, Méi, the ceiling of this world would be made of undercooked meat," the god's deep voice echoed through the courtyard, laden with a gentle, relaxed tone.
Yù Méi blinked. The heat rose to the roots of the girl's blonde hair. She crossed her grease-stained arms and made a sulky pout, but the raspy laugh escaped her full lips at being exposed.
The god's altar was perfectly distributed around the lounger.
Kneeling at his feet, Qīng Yǔ rested. The former healer fairy kept her sky-blue eyes raised, fixed on her husband's face. Her pale, soft hands massaged the man's calves with a rhythmic dedication, her parted lips releasing a gentle sigh every time the touch found the dense temperature of his muscles.
At the top, the dynamic was infinitely more possessive.
Yù Qíng was seated on Zhì Yuǎn's broad shoulders. With her pale legs sliding forward along his body, the eldest sister used her own bare feet to massage and tease her husband's rigid chest. She tilted her torso forward, resting the soft weight of her breasts directly atop his head.
"Our golden flower only knows how to break the earth. But your ink now dictates the limits of the horizon, sister Jié," Yù Qíng murmured, her pale fingers sliding to trace Zhì Yuǎn's temples with a lethal proprietorship. "Our heaven wastes not a single drop of water. Your soil is now one of the pillars of our house."
Seated at the stone table a few steps from the lounger, Huáng Bìyù crossed her long legs covered in scarlet silk, releasing a contralto laugh that resonated through the courtyard. Beside her, Mò Yán set her porcelain cup on the saucer.
The snow-haired young woman wore her purest white Hanfu dangerously untied at the collar, baring the sweaty, generous valley of her neckline.
"Your brush rewrites reality before the old men of this world even open their mouths," Mò Yán's voice flowed sensuously, her pale neck stained by the constant flush. "A delicious economy of effort."
Seated on her own heels in the corner of the garden, Bái Wǎn pressed a bamboo scroll against her pearlescent dress. The former academic's large ocean eyes dilated.
"Matter responds directly to concept..." Bái Wǎn's voice came out thin and breathless, her soft cheeks gaining a rosy shade of intellectual wonder. "Sister drew on reality as though it were nothing. It's frightening."
Zhì Yuǎn's large, calloused hand rose, gently holding Yù Qíng's pale ankle resting against his chest, while his dark eyes descended to the woman on the veranda.
"The canvas has been stretched, Jié," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice filled the white stones — unshakeable and demanding the work. "Show me the weight of your ink. Paint our board."
Lín Jié's chest rose in a long breath. The former secretary raised her face, walking to the exact center of the garden, moving away from the veranda.
Raising both hands to shoulder height, the Ink Goddess closed her eyes. The immense Sea of Laws in her core pulsed. Thick drops of black ink sprouted from the tips of her ten fingers, floating in the air and multiplying into thousands of dark spheres. The smell of old paper and raw ore permeated the courtyard.
But when Lín Jié attempted to stretch her own Will to give form to the geography of the entire continent, her back locked up.
Cold sweat broke on her forehead. Her perception groped beyond the palace walls, slid through the capital's streets, but collided violently against the limits of her own mind. She could not visualize the empire's borders simultaneously. The vastness of the plane crushed the processing capacity of the newly forged woman.
Her breathing faltered. The flush stained her pale neck.
"My heaven..." Lín Jié's voice came out scraped and breathless, her arms weighing down as the ink hovered uselessly around her. She looked over her shoulder, her green irises damp and imploring, fixed on him. "My brush cannot reach the edges of the table. Lend me your eyes, husband."
Zhì Yuǎn rose from the lounger.
The continuity of the action was invisible. The moment the god's massive frame stood, Qīng Yǔ gently lowered her empty hands, pressing her forehead against the wicker of the freshly vacated cushion, while Yù Qíng glided through the air, setting her bare feet on the white stones without making a sound.
In two absolute steps, Zhì Yuǎn crossed the courtyard and stopped precisely at Lín Jié's back.
His broad, warm chest pressed against the woman's back. Both calloused hands descended, seizing her full waist over the thick silk. The grip tore a choked gasp from the bureaucrat's lips. The dense warmth of sandalwood and ozone enveloped her completely.
"Do not try to read the entire parchment, Jié. The volume of the world would fry your mind in the blink of an eye," his deep voice grazed her ear, the breath raising the hairs on the woman's nape. "Simply hold the brush. I will dictate the stroke."
He did not wait for assent. Zhì Yuǎn released the restraints of his Singularity.
The god's perception did not grope — it swallowed the ocean of earth and space of the Middle Plane in a single millisecond. His Wisdom dissected mountain ranges, valleys, and forgotten empires. With surgical precision, he carved out only a monumental fraction of the continent's east — a territory where entire oceans could fit, yet minuscule before the totality of his vision.
Bypassing Lín Jié's mind entirely, he injected the pure geometric form of that fraction directly into her Sea of Laws through the hands gripping her waist.
"AAH!"
Lín Jié released a high-pitched cry, her voluptuous body arching violently back against his chest.
The legs of the velvet Hanfu failed beneath the impact of the cosmic invasion. She did not collapse only because his hands kept her cemented in place. The Yin in her core boiled — a thick dampness soaking her intimacy instantly before the terrifying scale of the power using her as a simple living brush.
The ink haze in the courtyard exploded.
Guided by the projection of Zhì Yuǎn's mind, the black and silver ink rained over the white stones within a five-meter radius. Where the mist touched the ground, reality folded. A hyper-realistic, colossal, three-dimensional scale model of that continental fragment rose from the jade floor.
Obsidian peaks, forests of gleaming steel, and abyssal rifts took shape. The rivers cutting through the miniature valleys emitted the subtle sound of running water. The richness of detail reproduced absolute physics.
Behind the monumental map, Lín Jié panted loudly. The woman had let her head fall back, resting against Zhì Yuǎn's shoulder — her green eyes rolled back and her chest heaving in spasms of exhaustion and pure submissive relief.
Zhì Yuǎn activated the second layer of his projection. The Law of Karma filtered the geography into the scale model.
Beneath the black and silver ink, red and golden veins ignited. Luminous lines revealed ancient routes. But what stole the altar's breath were the scarlet nodes of light blazing buried deep in the entrails of the illusory map. At the far east of the projection, beneath a black and jagged mountain, a colossal crimson node pulsed — thick and blinding: the pure accumulation of fate, legacies, and locked-away treasures.
Huáng Bìyù rose from the stone table. The heroine crouched beside the scale model, pointing at the scarlet light.
"The Dead Fire Mountain Range..." Bìyù's contralto voice faltered, her jaw dropping as she looked at sister Qīng Yǔ. "Our ancestors mined and overturned that mountain range for two thousand years without ever knowing what truly existed beneath. The records said there was nothing particularly special beyond raw materials... but our husband's Karma is showing that they barely scratched the surface."
Leaning against her husband's warm chest and blinking to clear her blurred vision, Lín Jié curved her lips. A mature, cynical, and lethal smile drew itself across the bureaucrat's sweaty face.
"Your clan's old men were swinging pickaxes blind, Bìyù. Two thousand years excavating without ever imagining what lies in there. That node is not stagnant ore... most likely an inheritance or treasure that has been buried for millions of years."
Yù Méi could no longer contain herself.
The warrior leapt from the ground, landing beside the scale model with a thud that made the teacups tremble on the tables. Her almond irises sparked in living gold, her canines bared in a savage smile.
"Old roots and locked doors that need to be broken at the base with a good punch!" Yù Méi cracked her knuckles loudly, rubbing her grease-clean hands together. "My legs were going numb from drinking tea all day."
Zhì Yuǎn released Lín Jié's waist slowly, allowing the former secretary to prop herself against the stone table with heavy breathing. The god adjusted the collar of his charcoal-grey robe. The baritone vibration resonated in the man's broad chest, and the void in his eyes gave way to a lethargic gleam — but laden with a shameless, intimate irony. He raised an eyebrow at the younger sister.
"Curious, Méi," the god's deep voice cut through the courtyard — gentle and velvety. "From the way you were begging with your face buried in the pillows last night, I deduced the numbness in your legs was from my weight, not from the tea."
Yù Méi's face exploded in a furious red.
The Brutal Blade mask shattered into a thousand pieces. The thick heat rose to the roots of the girl's blonde hair. She crossed her arms beneath her full bust with speed, averting her gaze to the ink scale model. The sulky pout on her full lips failed miserably at hiding the surrendered smile breaking at the corners of her mouth.
"I-I was not begging..." Yù Méi grumbled, her guttural voice faltering into a high-pitched stammer.
Propped on her own knees near her husband, Yù Qíng let out a crystalline, delicious laugh. The priestess in blue shook her head, her crimson lips curving slowly as she watched the tough sister be dismantled with a single sentence.
Even Mò Yán lowered her immaculate face — the diplomat's pale neck staining a feverish pink. The explicit memory of the Furnace melted the young woman's discipline, making the Yin in her core throb violently.
The god did not wait for them to recover. The lethal darkness in his eyes returned, fixing itself on the crimson node of the Dead Fire Mountain Range.
"That has been hidden for what are likely millions of years," Zhì Yuǎn declared, the black silk cape fluttering as he raised his right hand. "Let us see if the structure of that mountain can withstand Méi's numb legs."
The space before the scale model folded in on itself with the dry sound of thick silk being torn.
A black and silver dimensional rift split open, swallowing the courtyard's sunlight. Its edges vibrated under the absolute pressure of the Law of Space, woven with the exact route traced in Lín Jié's projection.
The Abyss's Banquet had begun.
The altar's seven goddesses did not hesitate. Yù Qíng glided through the air, followed by Yù Méi's heavy, euphoric march. Lín Jié adjusted her velvet-green Hanfu and crossed the threshold just behind Mò Yán. Huáng Bìyù, Qīng Yǔ, and Bái Wǎn closed the march, abandoning the pavilion's luxury.
Zhì Yuǎn took the final step. The rift collapsed with a silent snap.
---
Thousands of kilometers to the east of the capital, the Dead Fire Mountain Range exhaled the smell of sulfur, ancient ashes, and melted basalt. Obsidian peaks rose like rotten teeth of a colossal beast, and rivers of stagnant magma cooled in the dead rifts.
The fabric of reality tore exactly three hundred meters in the air, hovering vertically and in a straight line above the widest and darkest peak indicated on the scale model.
Zhì Yuǎn stepped onto the rarefied air. The colossal gravity of his Inner Universe crushed the sulfur smoke instantly, opening a circle of clean sky around his family.
Lín Jié stopped beside his left arm. The Ink Goddess looked at the vastness of black stone below. She extended her pale finger, pointing to the epicenter of the volcanic crater.
"The root of that node pulses forty thousand meters directly beneath that basalt crust, husband," Lín Jié informed him, her breathing measured.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his dark eyes to the impenetrable rock.
"The door is locked, Méi," the god's deep voice reverberated through the clouds — a gentle, permissive command. "Open it."
Yù Méi released a loud, passionate sigh.
The younger sister cracked her neck from side to side. The golden silk of her dress pulled violently against the hyper-dense muscles of her thighs and shoulders as she bent her knees in the air. The Brutal Blade's canines gleamed in a smile that split her face from ear to ear.
She dropped.
Yù Méi's body cut through the atmosphere like a meteor of living gold. A hundred meters from impact, the warrior pulled her right arm back, closing her fist. The Astral Body of Rupture in her core roared, sending the lethal intent to shatter matter itself into her knuckles.
BOOOM!
The collision shattered the mountain's eardrum. Yù Méi's bare fist sank directly into the center of the solid basalt crater.
The black stone crust — which the empire's ancient miners had spent twenty centuries tapping blindly without finding much value — did not resist a single millisecond against the Law of Rupture. The foundation shattered. Billions of tons of volcanic rock imploded and then sprayed sideways in an eruption of dust. The mountain's center was pulverized by the Rupture, directly opening a bottomless crater.
In the air, suspended beside Zhì Yuǎn, Huáng Bìyù held her breath. The warrior's liquid amber irises dilated to their fullest as she watched the work of her bloodline's millennia pulverized in a single punch — as though it had never existed.
The dust settled quickly, forced down by the gravity of the man in the charcoal-grey robe.
At the bottom of the newly created abyss, the sterile rock had vanished. In its place — where sunlight could barely reach — rose immense double doors of ancient bronze and stained jade. The doors stood dozens of meters tall, sealed by thick chains exhaling the weakened echo of eras of isolation.
Zhì Yuǎn did not wait. With a simple thought, he teleported the entire altar directly to the bottom of the freshly opened crater. Yù Méi was still shaking stone splinters from her knuckles with a sulky pout.
"Weak mountain. Didn't even warm up my shoulder," the golden warrior grumbled up at the ravine's ceiling, kicking a crushed piece of basalt against the earth wall.
Yù Qíng let out a crystalline laugh, her bare feet touching the stones at the crater's bottom.
"Apparently sending saints and transcendents to explore mountains was not very profitable, Bìyù," Yù Qíng murmured, her black eyes glinting with pure sadism at the futility of someone else's history. "How fortunate for us."
Zhì Yuǎn took the first step. He walked to the immense sealed bronze doors.
The absolute Hunger of his Inner Universe pressed against the millennial chains. The ancient matter groaned. The black iron chains shattered on their own, evaporating into dust beneath the god's unshakeable Will. With a drawn-out groan of metal and stone, the immense double doors yielded and swung inward.
Zhì Yuǎn adjusted the collar of his charcoal-grey robe.
"The door is open," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice echoed in the mountain's depths. "Let us see what has been locked in there for millions of years."