Deep within the central pavilion, behind heavy limestone doors, the Sect Master of the Unique Path Sect rested upon a white jade mat.
The gray-haired man in a golden robe kept his breathing controlled. Isolated by the thick walls of the meditation chamber, he was consuming a batch of rare raw herbs, accumulating energy in his Dantian to eventually break through to the Ninth Mortal Stage.
The sound of breaking rock tore through the silence of the room.
The massive doors were violently pushed open. The Sect Master opened his eyes, a crease of irritation immediately forming on his brow at the interruption.
— Elder Gāo? — the leader's voice echoed through the hall, sharp. — What is the justification for breaking down my door?
The figure that emerged from the corridor was not wearing the sect's red embroidery.
Zhì Yuǎn crossed the threshold, his dark gray tunic standing out against the lamplight. Beside him, Yù Qíng glided across the stone floor, her navy-blue silk and dark veil stopping one step from the jade mat.
The Sect Master's pupils contracted. Surprise turned into pure rage. He did not stand; he simply drew in air and tensed his Dantian, preparing to release his own aura and crush the intruders against the floor before interrogating them.
The leader's breath swelled his chest. But Zhì Yuǎn did not give him time to act.
— The scrolls piled up in your trading pavilion are useless — Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice cut through the old man's concentration directly. The young man pointed his calloused finger at the massive obsidian wall to the left. — The ancient books that detail the depths of this volcano are in the hidden library behind that stone, aren't they?
The Sect Master froze.
The old man's breath caught halfway. Shock crushed the air in his lungs. The direction pointed crossed the wall and aimed directly at the sect's central and secret vault. An involuntary spasm tugged at the corner of the patriarch's left eye.
Zhì Yuǎn followed the tremor on the man's face and nodded slowly.
— I thought so.
Zhì Yuǎn's body did not even move.
The Sect Master's chest exploded from the inside out.
Dark blood, pieces of broken bone, and torn tissue ripped through the golden robe and sprayed across the floor in a wet arc. The accumulated energy of the Eighth Stage simply evaporated into the air. The old man collapsed sideways onto the white mat, his eyes glazed toward the door, extinguished before his own mind could register the pain.
Yù Qíng stopped beside her husband. The young woman looked at the puddle staining the flawless jade of the room.
— I didn't see you attack — she murmured.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand and walked toward the obsidian wall, stepping over the splattered blood without paying much attention to the fallen body.
— I didn't attack just now. I left an invisible thread of Qi on the ground of the square when we passed through earlier — he said casually. — The moment he decided to attack, I injected it into his heart. I was just testing whether someone at this stage could notice something wrong so close by.
He stopped in front of the dark rock and examined the masonry.
— Apparently, they can't.
Yù Qíng curved her lips into a silent smile beneath the veil, completely indifferent to the death of the strongest ruler in the region. She simply followed her husband's steps to see what lay behind the wall.
The secret chamber rose, stifled, just beyond the false wall of the room.
The time it took to burn half an incense stick was spent in the quiet of the hidden library. Piles of ancient scrolls and bamboo tablets were stacked on the stone table. Zhì Yuǎn scanned the opened rolls in fractions of a second, processing the sect's underground maps and topographical records.
In the corner of the room, Yù Qíng kept her arms crossed, her navy-blue silk intact and free of any dust from the old chamber.
The sound of wet footsteps cut through the corridor.
Yù Méi leaned her shoulder against the stone doorframe. The teenager was breathing lightly. Her blonde hair was wet and the skin of her face showed the rough cleanliness of someone who had just splashed well water on her own head. However, the cleaning stopped there.
The youngest's golden dress had turned into a hard, darkened crust from liters of coagulated blood. The girl reeked of old iron, entrails, and sour sweat. The smell of a slaughterhouse flooded the library.
Yù Qíng immediately took half a step back.
The black veil of the eldest fluttered with her cut-off breath. The woman raised her pale hand and fanned the air in front of her face.
— You reek of carrion, Méi — Yù Qíng's voice came out velvety, but loaded with genuine disgust. — Stay away. The smell of those clothes of yours is poisoning the entire room.
Yù Méi frowned and crossed her dirty arms, smearing her own clean skin.
— I washed my face and parked the carriage at the pavilion door just like you told me! — the youngest retorted, her voice rough with exhaustion. — It's not my fault if the blood dried on my clothes. You send me to do the dirty work in the square and then complain about the smell.
She ignored her sister's sharp look and turned her face toward the table.
— Did you finish reading the papers, brother-in-law? Are we going down to the bottom of the volcano now? — she asked.
Zhì Yuǎn closed the last bamboo scroll. The snap of the wood struck the table sharply. He turned his broad torso and his dark eyes assessed the crust of blood stuck to the girl's dress.
— You're not going down, Méi — Zhì Yuǎn said. His deep voice filled the space, cutting off any room for negotiation. — The bottom of this mountain is a sealed furnace. The air down there will melt your skin and cook your veins. You stay here on the surface.
Yù Méi opened her mouth to protest, but the words died in her throat when Zhì Yuǎn continued:
— A pretty girl like you shouldn't be stained with the blood of this scum. Find a bath chamber and clean yourself properly. Throw that filthy rag away, put on one of the new dresses your sister sewed with that golden silk we took from Qīngshí, and wait for us.
The teenager froze. Her chest rose and fell quickly. The compliment exploded something hot and feverish inside her chest. She squeezed her own arms tightly, her fingers digging into her clean skin. Her entire face turned red, her eyes shining with an almost sickly light.
She quickly lowered her head, hiding the wide, trembling smile that threatened to tear across her face. Her voice came out thin, almost breathless:
— Okay… I'll clean up. I'll wait in the carriage.
She spun on her heels and hurried out through the corridor, her uneven steps echoing on the stone.
In the library, Yù Qíng let out a short sigh. The woman rolled her black eyes beneath the veil, finally free of that carrion stench. Her sister's easy embarrassment barely registered — what truly bothered her was the smell still clinging to the air.
The dark corridor swallowed the youngest's hurried footsteps.
With the library returned to silence, Zhì Yuǎn approached the iron hatch embedded in the stone floor. His calloused hand grabbed the rusty ring and pulled. The pins groaned. The massive lid gave way with a dry thud, revealing a steep staircase and a darkness that plunged toward the volcano's bowels.
A stifling gust rose immediately, carrying a strong smell of sulfur and old ash. The heat dried the moisture from the scrolls scattered on the table in the blink of an eye.
Yù Qíng stopped at the edge of the hole. The hot air struck the young woman's pale face, but she did not step back. She adjusted her navy-blue silk, ready to descend.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his hand and gently held her arm, stopping her before the first step.
— It's hot down there — he said, his deep voice carrying a care he only used with her. — And I won't let this soot touch your skin or dirty your clothes.
Yù Qíng looked at him, her black eyes shining with curiosity beneath the veil.
— We unlocked your pores so you could swallow energy from outside, remember? — he continued, lightly brushing his thumb along her arm. — Try to create a cycle. Pull the energy in, but don't store it. Force it to circulate close to your skin, over your dress. Keep the pressure constant. That creates a shield.
Yù Qíng frowned, concentrating.
— Won't that dry out my energy too quickly? — she asked.
— No, on the contrary, it increases the level of absorption if you need energy. And once you get used to the rhythm, your body does it on its own. — He gave a short smile. — And there's more. If you push that pressure directly against the ground, the flow lifts you. You float.
The young wife absorbed the explanation without hesitation.
Yù Qíng closed her eyes. Her mind pulled the sulfurous air around her, drew the energy through her pores, and forced it to circulate back in a rapid, constant flow, creating an invisible film close to the silk. The disgust she felt toward the filth of the sect dictated the next step: she pushed the pressure of the cycle directly against the stone floor.
The friction of the Qi against the limestone hissed softly.
The woman's small body rose exactly three millimeters from the ground. The hem of her dress floated in an unshakable calm, perfectly clean and isolated from the dirt below.
Yù Qíng opened her eyes. The euphoric fascination broke through the usual coldness of her face. She glided through the air without touching the ground and threw her arms around Zhì Yuǎn's neck, pressing her body against his tunic as she savored the sensation of being detached from the dirty world below.
— I'll never dirty my feet with the earth of this scum again, A-Yuǎn… — her velvety voice vibrated against her husband's chest, loaded with vain adoration. — It's the perfect gift. I'll call it Suspended Lotus.
Zhì Yuǎn laughed softly. His large hand descended to her waist, securing the embrace with affection.
— Just get used to the rhythm first — he warned, separating slightly. — The path down there is long.
The Suspended Lotus glided over the darkness, following Zhì Yuǎn's heavy steps down the staircase carved into the magmatic rock.
The spiral staircase carved into the magmatic rock sank into the darkness. The heat increased with every turn, thick and suffocating, but the barrier created by the Suspended Lotus swallowed the volcano's breath and kept Yù Qíng's navy-blue silk intact.
Midway down, Zhì Yuǎn's leather boot crushed something that snapped dryly beneath the leather.
White and gray powder spread across the step. It was bones. As they descended, more broken skeletons lined the staircase.
Zhì Yuǎn looked at the ashes.
— The details I read upstairs are quite old — Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice echoed in the staircase, his tone practical and direct. — The sect that founded the top of the mountain tried to descend, obviously wanting to "inherit" whatever was here, but the pressure and heat crushed them halfway. They were limited to the surface.
Yù Qíng curved her lips beneath the dark veil. A smile of pure scorn formed on her face. The idea of those arrogant mortals, who called themselves masters of an entire region, dying cooked on the stairs for being too weak to endure their own basement was pathetic. She despised that scum. She continued gliding her body through the air, passing over the remains without touching the filth, feeling untouchable.
The staircase ended in a stone arch. The low ceiling disappeared at once.
They emerged into a gigantic cavern at the heart of the mountain. The black rock floor was cut by thick cracks where lava bubbled slowly, illuminating the space with a raw red light.
The place was a dead machine. Enormous bronze cauldrons lay overturned. Pillars of melted metal marked ancient, heavy formations. Zhì Yuǎn looked at the rubble and understood the mechanics of the place. That was the furnace where the transcendents had concentrated the mountain's energy to forge dense materials and Laws of Space, creating the portals through which they had escaped the world in the past.
Zhì Yuǎn walked quickly across the gravel. Yù Qíng's Suspended Lotus followed close behind, the two crossing the graveyard of destroyed metal until they reached the back of the vault.
The man stopped in front of a smooth, massive wall of obsidian.
— The architecture here is very sturdy. It withstood the passage of time without issue — he noted, evaluating the thickness of the stone.
Yù Qíng stopped right behind him. To her eyes, it was simply the end of the cavern. But Zhì Yuǎn's perception penetrated the dark masonry. He saw the sealed vault hidden inside the rock.
In the center of the secret chamber rested an energy core the size of a human head. It was the battery they had used to store the mountain's energy and power the forging of the portals. But Zhì Yuǎn's eyes noticed the anomaly. The core was not merely accumulating power as it had in the ancient era; after ages sealed there, the essence had condensed in a different form. There was something more pulsing inside it.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his hand and pointed his finger at the black wall.
— Here. The only thing worth anything in this "inheritance." The energy core they used to forge the portals is still inside, Qíng. But there's something more pulsing inside it now. And I'm going to tear it out of this wall.
Yù Qíng looked at the obsidian wall and smiled. Her husband's unwavering ambition was the only thing in the world she enjoyed feeding. The young woman took a step back in the air, leaving the space perfectly clear for him to demolish the stone.