The sharp wind of high altitudes whistled against the spiritual wood of the newly anchored Flying Vessel.
The luxury craft hovered silently three hundred meters above the ground, positioned directly over the vast, freshly opened crater in the Dead Fire Mountain Range. The air around the hole still reeked of pulverized basalt and ozone.
On the main deck, Jiǎng Wēi sighed rudely, sinking his back into the lounger padded with the thick, quartz-studded pelt of a Mountain-Crushing Bear. The vitality of his 3rd Saint Pillar kept the five-hundred-year-old man's flesh as fresh as a boy of twenty. He did not need to move his arms; the breeze folded around his fingers, lifting a jade cup of wine and carrying it smoothly to his lips.
Beside him, leaning over the ebony railing, Grand Elder Jiǎng Bó kept his eyes fixed on the bottom of the dark ravine.
The moisture in the air that brushed against the old man's grey robe crackled, decomposing into dry dust before even touching the fabric. His Crystal Soul was already dissolving into his own blood, the 1st Sub-realm of the Immortal Establishment imposing its passive ruin upon the surroundings.
"We've been staring at this dark hole for nearly an hour, Grand Elder." Jiǎng Wēi clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, impatience grazing every word. "The boom that cracked this mountain three hours ago was massive. If we were the first to arrive, we should descend and clean up whatever remains before the dogs of the Dragon and Luan Hegemonies notice the anomaly in their territory and come to confiscate our discovery."
Jiǎng Bó did not turn his face from the ravine. The old cultivator tightened his grip on the railing, millennial prudence weighing on his shoulders.
"Haste buries the young, Young Master." Jiǎng Bó's voice scraped against the wind, dry and pragmatic. "My spiritual perception managed to reach the bottom of that smooth crater. There is a millennia-old bronze portal down there, exhaling a Qi that does not belong to our era. Whoever had the brute force to pulverize the ceiling of this mountain is now locked inside."
The Grand Elder tilted his chin toward the small battalion of three hundred guards floating around the vessel, forming a tense perimeter.
"I have already sent the signal. Our Patriarch's reinforcements will arrive before nightfall." Jiǎng Bó glanced sideways at the boy. "Exploring sealed ruins takes weeks, sometimes months, until the illusion matrices drain the sanity of the intruders. Waiting a few hours for our reinforcements will change nothing. Let the idiots who opened the door bleed and disarm the traps down below. When they drag themselves out, exhausted, our Suppression Matrix will crush them against the gravel. We will simply collect the storage rings and the treasures. A clean slaughter with no casualties for our sect."
Jiǎng Wēi scoffed, wine staining lightly at the corner of his lips. He twirled the cup in the air. The old man's logic was irrefutable, but the greed in his chest itched.
"So be it." The boy smiled, fingers tightening around the jade until his knuckles turned white. "But the primary spoils are mine. If the rats who survived that ruin brought women or cultivation slaves in their retinue, make sure the matrix does not crush their flesh. Females who endure that kind of exploitation tend to have an exceptionally pure Yin. I'll drag them to my pavilion and have the heels of each one broken first, so they don't think about running."
Jiǎng Bó let out a nasal laugh, his old and pragmatic eyes evaluating the ravine.
"Just sever the tendons of their arms before mounting them, Young Master," the Grand Elder advised, his voice scratching the wind with indifference. "Despair and pain season a woman's Yin with an excellent flavor, but desperate nail scratches on your noble skin would be a bureaucratic inconvenience for our sect's healers."
"Don't worry. I'll tie them by their necks to the headboard of my bed." Jiǎng Wēi moistened his lips, his breathing quickening, the revolting smile splitting his face. "I'll drain every last one of them until their cores run dry and they beg, weeping, to lick my boots. I'll—"
A dull tremor erupted beneath the vessel.
The wine in the floating cup rippled violently and spilled onto the wood. It was not the sound of hinges turning or people dragging themselves exhaustedly out of a hole. It was a deafening crack of unbreakable metal being gutted from the inside out.
The colossal bronze doors of the Cradle of the Empty Eye, weighing thousands of tons, exploded. The massive slabs were torn from their axes by the sheer difference in atmospheric pressure from the dimension collapsing within, slamming against the ravine walls with an impact that made the mountain range's clouds recoil.
Jiǎng Bó swallowed hard. Ancestral dust rose in a grey curtain. Three hundred blades hummed in the sky as the vessel's guards drew their weapons in unison.
At the center of the settling dust, leather boots struck stone in a calm and absolutely measured cadence.
The prey had not taken months. The prey was walking out through the front door, a mere three hours after breaking open the ceiling of the world.
Zhì Yuǎn emerged from the stone haze. He adjusted the collar of his charcoal-grey robe with a bored slowness, the black silk cape billowing heavily at his back. Behind him, seven figures walked in perfect formation, cloaked by a Karmic Illusion that gave them the appearance of hunched mortals, dust-covered, dim, and perfectly forgettable.
On the deck of the floating vessel, Jiǎng Bó's eyes nearly leaped from their wrinkled sockets. The Grand Elder's millennial prudence shattered into absolute panic before the impossible pace of that exploration. No one survived the trials of the ancients in a single afternoon.
The old man raised a trembling hand, his voice tearing through the wind.
"They're coming out! Activate the vessel's matrix! Crush the trash before they escape!"
The runes embedded in the hull of the luxury ship ignited like small suns. The golden dome fell from the sky, carrying the weight of millions of tons of spiritual suppression. The massive energy of the Scarlet Firmament Sect plunged directly down upon the head of the dark-robed man and his group of "peasants."
The dome collided with the air at exactly two millimeters from Zhì Yuǎn's shoulder.
There was no explosion. There was no impact. The celestial matrix's concept of gravity simply brushed against the passive aura of the god's Inner Universe… and forgot how to exist. The golden light snapped with the pathetic sound of cheap glass breaking and disintegrated into a shower of harmless dust. The glittering flakes fell upon the man's broad shoulders. Zhì Yuǎn did not even raise his face; he merely brushed the dust from his own sleeve with his thumb.
Jiǎng Wēi slapped his own thigh, letting out a hysterical laugh.
"Useless matrix masters!" the Young Master jeered, pointing at the dust raining over the crater, blinded by his own arrogance. "They let the nodes give out before even touching the rats! Guards, kill them with your swords and bring me their women!"
But cold sweat was already running down Jiǎng Bó's temple. The Grand Elder's millennial intuition screamed, every survival instinct begging him to tear out his own eyes. The air around the man down below was not distorted by defensive spells; it was bent by a gravitational weight that the old man's mind could not process.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped. The dark, unfathomable eyes rose, crossing with those of the old man and the boy on the vessel's deck. The tedium of concealing his own foundation before insects that did not carry the weight of a single atom annoyed him deeply.
"The dust grows rather bold," the deep voice vibrated — not through the air, but directly into the minds of the three hundred floating guards.
The lethargic timbre descended like an anvil. Thin rivulets of blood began dripping from the ears of dozens of cultivators in the sky, eardrums rupturing from the tone of that voice alone.
With an invisible mental command, Zhì Yuǎn deactivated the Karmic Veil.
The rustic illusion crumbled like burnt paper.
Sunlight struck white jade skin, celestial porcelain, and living gold. Heavy silk fabrics swayed against the curves forged in weight and brutality. The feverish ardor and abyssal submission of the snow-haired woman overflowed with audacity beneath silver silk. A cosmic and unreachable Yin exhaled from the crater, annihilating the army's sanity with the profane beauty of seven goddesses who seemed to have emerged from an impossible abyss.
Silence swallowed the mountain range. The altar had flung its doors open to the outside world.
On the vessel, Jiǎng Wēi's breath vanished.
The five-hundred-year-old boy's knees collided against the ebony deck with a hollow crash. The jade cup slipped from his fingers, shattering and cutting his skin, yet he did not even blink at the pain. A thick thread of drool ran from the corner of his trembling lips. The shiver that climbed his spine made him arch his back in a sickly manner, as a warm, yellowed stain began spreading without control through the thin fabric of his silk trousers.
He gasped, drawing air in ragged wheezes, fingernails digging into the ship's wood until the tips of his fingers bled. His brain could not process the cosmic scale of what he saw. Jiǎng Wēi crawled instinctively forward, rubbing his own chest against the wood wet with wine and urine, unable to avert his dilated, bloodshot irises from the full breasts and exposed thighs of the goddesses below. The filthy desire to chain them had melted away; his miserable biology now merely begged to be crushed beneath the bare feet of those women.
"Seize them…" Jiǎng Wēi's voice came out as the throttled squeal of a pig in a slaughterhouse. He stretched his blood- and drool-soaked hand toward the ravine. "Kill the trash in black! Bring them to me! Bring all of them alive!"
In the sky, the three hundred elite cultivators of the Scarlet Firmament Sect hesitated for a single millisecond. The aura leaking from the crater was suffocating. But the heir's order and their military conditioning screamed louder.
The hum of three hundred blades cut the air. The Qi of cultivators at the 4th Transcendent Stage and the 1st Saint Pillar exploded in unison. Like a swarm of maddened locusts, the army's vanguard dove toward the floor of the ravine.
In the crater, Yù Méi did not draw weapons. The girl in golden silk cracked her neck, her almond eyes blazing with living gold.
"Husband," Yù Méi's guttural voice purred, canines bared in a savage smile. "May I play?"
Zhì Yuǎn did not raise his face toward the storm of swords falling from the sky. The god's dark eyes remained fixed on the wood of the floating vessel, the lethargy of his presence ignoring the army entirely.
Before her husband could answer, Yù Qíng's pale, glacial hand descended gracefully onto the golden warrior's shoulder.
"Your harvest is always so loud and quick, little flower," Yù Qíng murmured, her crimson lips curving into a terrifyingly sweet and controlling smile. The blue-clad priestess looked at the three newly-forged sisters standing just behind them. "New roots need fresh blood to take hold in this earth. Let them fertilize our garden first."
Yù Méi scoffed, crossing her arms beneath her full bust with a sulky pout, but stepped back one pace, yielding to the altar's hierarchy.
Huáng Bìyù was the first to advance. The scarlet Qipao swayed as the Valkyrie planted a firm step on the rock. The liquid amber irises of the ancient legend bore none of the rigid orthodoxy of her past — only a lethality in submission to a new heaven. Bìyù did not summon spells. She clenched her fist and struck a dry blow against the air.
The Law of the Aegis expanded. A massive, invisible gravitational distortion swallowed the first hundred cultivators in the sky. The mass of flesh, bone, and steel was mercilessly crushed. The bones of a hundred cultivators snapped simultaneously in a horrifying chorus of compound fractures. Rib cages imploded, puncturing lungs and hearts, as thick blood and ruptured organs burst violently through gaping mouths. In less than a second, the entire vanguard was compacted into a perfect cube of ground meat, raining over the ravine like a nauseating red paste.
Right beside her, Qīng Yǔ raised her pale hands. The cosmic-blue eyes of the healer fairy overflowed with a corrupted compassion.
"Your world is made of dust and pain. Allow me to heal you," Qīng Yǔ whispered, her melodious voice melting into devout sadism.
The Blue Luan Fire, pure and cold, rose like a wave. The flames emitted no heat; they incinerated the lifespan and Karma of another hundred guards on the right flank. The cultivators' skin withered and necrotized in mid-air in a fraction of a second. Their eyeballs melted inside their sockets as the men screamed without sound, turning into silver ash that fell like macabre, dry snow over the rocks.
Anchored millimeters above the bloodied ground by the Lotus of the Void, Yù Qíng conducted the carnage. The blue-clad priestess moved her pale fingers through the air like a maestro orchestrating a funeral symphony, her black eyes overflowing with a sick, satisfied pride at each bone that snapped to fertilize her garden. Her crimson smile cued the entrance of the next reaper.
Lín Jié adjusted the sleeves of her heavy jade-green Hanfu. The bureaucrat's green irises assessed the eighty remaining men, who were now desperately trying to brake their descent. The Edict of her foundation manifested at the tip of her finger as a droplet of ink.
"Silence is the rule of this house," the Ink Goddess decreed, tracing a black line through the air.
Fifty hearts simply forgot how to beat. The veins in the guards' necks bulged thick and dark beneath their skin. They asphyxiated instantly, desperation widening their bloodshot eyes as they dropped lifelessly. The sound of fifty skulls cracking against the ravine's cobblestones echoed, dry and final.
Only thirty guards remained in the rear. In absolute panic, they spun their swords and attempted to flee back to the vessel.
But Bái Wǎn had already floated gracefully one step forward. The young woman in her pearlescent dress blinked her wide, oceanic eyes. The lethal Serenity of her Sea of Qi rippled.
"The water you drink already belongs to us," Bái Wǎn whispered, with the same sweet, poisoned smile her elder sister had taught her.
The moisture inside the thirty mercenaries' veins boiled instantaneously. Superheated blood burst through tear ducts and ears in violent spurts and dark jets. They collapsed, their bodies trembling in posthumous spasms over the dust.
In exactly seven seconds, the entire army ceased to exist as though it never had.
On the ravine floor, the funereal silence returned.
Yù Méi looked at the rain of corpses and stomped her bare foot against the stone, her hands tingling with frustration.
"For the love of our heaven, Qíng!" the youngest complained, her husky voice overflowing with childlike indignation, pointing at the blue-haired girl. "You keep me on a leash for being hungry, but you let Wǎn'er sweep the rest of the plate?! Little Lotus already had her kill quota on the old man's mountain, and you always pamper her! I didn't even dirty my hands!"
Zhì Yuǎn let out a low laugh, the baritone's vibration warming the ravine's dead atmosphere. The god's unfathomable gaze settled on the sulking warrior.
"The main carcass didn't come down, Méi," his deep voice noted, pointing toward the sky. "The wood on that ship is excellent. The hold awaits your fists."
Yù Méi's indignation evaporated in an instant. The girl's canines gleamed under the sunlight.
High above on the solitary floating vessel, Grand Elder Jiǎng Bó was not breathing.
The Crystal Soul in the old man's chest was cracking under the biological terror that overtook him. Prudence screamed louder than duty. Jiǎng Bó spun on his heels, sweat soaking his grey robe, and drove his hands into the vessel's helm, injecting ten years of vital force to tear through the sky and flee.
The craft shuddered violently. The sails swelled. But the ship did not move. The currents of space had been locked by the mere intention of the man below.
The air on the deck cracked.
Zhì Yuǎn took a single step in the ravine and, in the next millisecond, his dark leather boot touched the ebony deck of the vessel, folding the three hundred meters of distance like a sheet of paper. Simultaneously, the goddesses composing his altar materialized around the deck, their bare, immaculate feet anchored in the Lotus of the Void.
Jiǎng Bó released the helm. The Grand Elder's knees collided against the deck.
"M-Mercy…" the breathless wheeze escaped the old man's throat, his forehead grazing the polished wood. But even as terror crushed him, the old man's corrupted biology reacted violently to the cosmic, fresh, and unreachable Yin exhaled by the women surrounding him. A grotesque mixture of dread and involuntary arousal made Jiǎng Bó's veins throb.
Fallen near the lounger, Young Master Jiǎng Wēi had not been cured of his blindness either. The boy's mind had melted with the slaughter of his army, but the blind, filthy lust continued drooling from the corner of his mouth as his dilated eyes roamed over Yù Méi's exposed legs.
"The females… mine…" the piss-soaked insect babbled, dragging himself pathetically toward the youngest, his trembling, lacerated hand raised in an attempt to touch the hem of the golden silk.
Yù Méi looked at the outstretched hand. Absolute disgust twisted the Untouchable Petal's features.
"Revolting insect," Yù Méi hissed, tedium obliterated by raw violence.
The youngest did not punch. She merely narrowed her almond eyes, activating the Primordial Mill of her Animic Force.
Pop. Pop.
Jiǎng Wēi's two eyeballs exploded simultaneously inside their sockets, crushed by the warrior's invisible animic pressure.
"AAAAAAHH! MY EYES!" The boy's shrill scream tore through the silence, his hands flying to his face as blood and vitreous fluid gushed forth.
Yù Méi gave him no time to weep. She advanced, straddling the flailing boy's chest on the deck. Her bare knees pinned his arms to the ground. The Brutal Blade raised her living-gold-forged fists and brought them down like forge hammers directly against the heir's face and ribcage.
Crack. Crunch.
The sound of cartilage crumbling and facial bones caving under the continuous impact was nauseating. She hammered the arrogant flesh without techniques, simply driving her knuckles through sheer brute force. Scarlet blood sprayed profusely, staining the ebony deck and painting Yù Méi's pale arms and fists in a warm, sticky bath. In ten seconds, Jiǎng Wēi's face and chest were nothing more than an unrecognizable pulp of ground meat and blood.
Panting, Yù Méi rose from the ruined corpse. She looked at her own fists drenched in red, her full chest rising and falling, purely satisfied by the release of that tension.
Grand Elder Jiǎng Bó choked, his mind blanking before the grotesque carnage.
Zhì Yuǎn did not deliver a speech. He raised two fingers of his right hand.
An invisible fragment of the Law of Destruction swept the wood. Jiǎng Wēi's crushed carcass, the pool of blood on the floor, and the Grand Elder's trembling figure simply lost their conceptual cohesion. The matter crumbled into grey, harmless ash, swept away by the mountain's cold wind. The Scarlet Firmament's deck was left impeccably clean — save for the deliberately bloodied arms of the youngest, who refused to wipe them, savoring her triumph.
Zhì Yuǎn let his gaze slide across the spotless deck and the majestic structure of the Flying Vessel. The man's unshakeable tone echoed, accepting the family's new transport. His unfathomable face turned to the white-haired diplomat.
"Yán. Space obeys your will," the god ordered, his deep voice echoing in the mountain's silence. "Fetch old Mò Zhōng from the Autumnal Wind Pavilion. That capital holds no further use for us."
Mò Yán inclined her torso in a perfectly aligned bow, the flush of excitement staining the pale skin of her neck.
"As my heaven commands."
The young woman raised her hand, the Law of Space bending reality with a contained snap. A silver rift opened in the air, and she disappeared into the void to fetch the steward from the old lodgings.
Without waiting for her return, Zhì Yuǎn walked to the lounger and reclined comfortably against the thick quartz pelt. The unwavering tension of his posture receded, revealing the husband's calm. Yù Qíng immediately slid to the polished wood floor. The blue-clad priestess settled on her knees beside him, resting her flushed cheek directly on the man's thigh, her black eyes closing in pure adoration as his warm hand came to rest in her hair.
Yù Méi threw herself onto the floor on the other side. The warrior stretched her long legs across the deck, displaying her still-bloodied fists with a satisfied smile, perfectly at peace.
And, floating like a feather carried by an invisible breeze, Bái Wǎn approached. The pearlescent, sky-blue dress rustled as she landed directly on her husband's lap. She curled her legs delicately around his hips, settling her slight body between the god's thighs. Bái Wǎn buried her divinely soft face against the warm chest of the charcoal-grey robe. The young woman's oceanic irises lifted toward him, displaying a meek and adorably pleading gaze.
Zhì Yuǎn let out a low laugh. His long, calloused fingers slid through the blue strands of her hair, caressing the girl's nape with a dense affection that made her sigh and melt against him.
Less than a minute later, the silver rift blinked on the deck.
Mò Yán returned, followed by a Mò Zhōng whose old eyes nearly leaped from their sockets upon beholding the luxurious floating ship and the absolute absence of its former owners. Without losing her composure and ignoring her grandfather's shock, the diplomat tossed a heavy leather sack into the steward's calloused hands.
"Feed the helm's central matrix, Mò Zhōng," Mò Yán instructed, her voice taking on the tone of a true mistress. "Use the High-Grade Spirit Stones from our vault and keep the flight furnaces at their limit."
The snow-haired young woman walked gracefully to the lounger, her scarlet gaze overflowing with devotion as she admired the family nestled together.
"The vessel is ready to tear through the clouds, my love," Mò Yán murmured, her tone soft and intoxicated by the glory of that clean slaughter. "What will our route be?"
Zhì Yuǎn raised the hand that had been caressing Bái Wǎn's hair and pointed his finger toward the eastern horizon. The unfathomable void of his eyes gave way to a gentle gleam — genuinely curious and laden with ironic humor.
"To the Court of the Absolute Blade," the god's deep voice echoed, calm and imposing, his hand returning to caress her hair. "The dust we swept today barely served as a baseboard in this world. They say the true rulers of this continent built their empires by decoding the ruins and tombs of the Golden Age. Let us see what they are made of."
The altar's journey continued. The majestic Flying Vessel, propelled by the blinding brilliance of the High-Grade Stones, turned its prow and tore through the skies toward the heart of the continent. And in the shattered crater below, the Scarlet Firmament was left behind, erased from that family's minds like the local and irrelevant dust it had always been.