Time within an isolation array holds no meaning. In the absolute silence of Chamber Seven, there was no sun to mark the days, nor wind to signal the shifting of the weather. There was only the steady, rhythmic booming of Shang Jue's newly fortified heart.
Three days had passed since the mortal boy locked the heavy iron door.
When his eyes finally opened, the pitch-black room seemed to brighten. The abyssal darkness within his pupils had deepened, possessing a faint, predatory glint that cut through the gloom. He exhaled slowly, a long stream of gray, chaotic Qi escaping his lips. It struck the stone floor with a sharp hiss, leaving a faint layer of frost that quickly melted into the ambient warmth of his body.
He stood up from the stone slab.
He did not stretch, for there was no stiffness left in his limbs. The Iron-Blood Condensation Pill, forcefully devoured and subjugated by his terrifying willpower, had completely reconstructed his Mortal Foundation. The deep lacerations on his chest had vanished, leaving behind smooth, unnaturally tough skin that held a faint, metallic sheen. His muscles, once starved and withered, were now dense, coiled like high-tension steel beneath his flesh.
He was still small, possessing the frame of a twelve-year-old, but the sheer gravity of his physical presence was fundamentally altered. A normal martial artist relies on the tension of tendons; a Qi Condensation cultivator relies on the explosive flow of spiritual energy. Shang Jue, forged in the Abyss, now possessed both in terrifying extremes.
He reached down and picked up the rusted iron axe head. For years, it had been a heavy, cumbersome tool. Now, it felt as light as a dried twig. It was completely unbalanced and structurally compromised by the direwolf's bite. If he tried to channel his newly expanded Qi through it, the rusted metal would shatter into shrapnel.
The Path of the Origin required a vessel that could handle its violent plunder. He needed a true weapon.
Shang Jue donned his tattered tunic, ignoring the bloodstains, and draped the massive Alpha direwolf pelt over his shoulders. He secured his pouch of Spirit Stones and the remaining Beast Cores at his waist, alongside The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth.
He unlocked the heavy iron door and ascended from the damp sublevels of the Iron-Blood Sanctuary.
When he reached the lobby, the burly, scarred matron was dozing behind her iron grate. As Shang Jue approached, her eyes snapped open. Her faint Qi Condensation aura instinctively flared, registering a profound, suffocating threat in the room.
She looked at the ragged boy, her jaw slackening. Three days ago, he had possessed a terrifying, freezing intent, but his foundation had been unstable, leaking chaotic energy. Now, his aura was perfectly contained, heavy and impenetrable.
"Your time is up, Young Master," she managed to say, her voice devoid of its previous haughtiness, replaced entirely by cautious reverence.
Shang Jue did not acknowledge her. He simply walked past the grate and pushed open the heavy front doors, stepping back into the frozen mud and biting wind of Blackridge Hold.
The frontier town was fully awake. The narrow streets were choked with mercenaries, scavengers, and low-level cultivators shouting over the din of commerce and violence. Shang Jue moved through the throng like a ghost. When he approached, the crowds instinctively parted, sensing the dense, predatory aura radiating from the boy in the white pelt. The shadows of the alleys remained empty; the wolves of the town had learned not to hunt this particular prey.
He followed the sharp, metallic tang in the air, his heightened senses filtering out the smell of roasting meat and cheap alcohol. He walked until the wooden shacks gave way to a series of soot-stained stone buildings on the eastern edge of the palisade.
The deafening ring of hammer against anvil echoed through the freezing air.
Shang Jue stopped before an open-air forge. The heat radiating from the massive coal furnace pushed the winter chill back a dozen yards. A towering man, bare-chested and glistening with sweat despite the freezing temperature, was bringing a massive steel hammer down upon a glowing ingot. The blacksmith possessed no Spiritual Qi—he was a mortal—but his arms were thicker than tree trunks, carved from decades of relentless, punishing labor.
This was not a Pavilion that crafted delicate, flying swords for arrogant young masters. This was a place that forged heavy, brutal instruments of slaughter for the frontier.
Shang Jue stepped into the heat of the forge.
The blacksmith did not stop hammering until the metal was shaped. Only then did he plunge the glowing steel into a barrel of foul-smelling oil, wiping the sweat from his eyes with a soot-stained rag. He looked down at the boy.
"This ain't a place for children," the massive smith grunted, his voice like grinding stones. "If you're looking for a carving knife, go to the market."
Shang Jue reached to his waist. He untied the frayed hemp rope and tossed the rusted iron axe head onto the blacksmith's anvil.
Clang.
"I need a weapon," Shang Jue said, his voice flat, completely unaffected by the searing heat of the furnace. "One that will not shatter when it drinks blood."
The blacksmith picked up the rusted axe head, turning it over in his massive, scarred hands. He snorted in derision. "Pig iron. Rusted through. And you've got teeth marks on it... big ones." He glanced at the Alpha pelt draped over Shang Jue's shoulders, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You want me to reforge this garbage?"
"No," Shang Jue replied. "I want you to melt it down. It is the only iron my father ever owned. Take it, and forge it into the core of something heavier."
The blacksmith stared at the boy's dead, black eyes. He had forged weapons for madmen, murderers, and fleeing cultivators, but there was an abyssal emptiness in this child that made the hairs on his massive arms stand up.
"Heavy costs money, boy," the smith rumbled, crossing his arms. "Steel, ironwood for the hilt, and the coal to burn it hot enough to merge this rusted trash with good metal. I don't trade in pelts or mortal copper."
Shang Jue reached into his tunic. He did not pull out the Spirit Stones. Instead, he pulled out a jagged, terrifyingly sharp object wrapped in a piece of torn linen.
He placed it on the anvil next to the rusted iron.
It was the largest fang he had extracted from the Alpha Frost-Tooth Direwolf. It was six inches long, curving like a vicious scythe, and even detached from the beast, it radiated a faint, biting chill that fought against the heat of the forge.
"The fang of an Alpha," Shang Jue stated calmly. "Pulverize it. Mix the bone dust into the steel when you fold it. It will give the blade an affinity for the cold, and it will not shatter when it meets Qi."
The blacksmith's eyes widened to the size of saucers. He reached out with a pair of heavy tongs to touch the fang, feeling the residual freezing energy creeping up the metal. To a mortal smith, working with demonic beast materials was the pinnacle of their craft—a chance to forge a pseudo-spiritual artifact.
"You want a sword?" the blacksmith asked, his voice suddenly thick with reverence for the material.
"A broadsword," Shang Jue commanded. "Single-edged. No crossguard. No ornaments. Make the spine thick enough to shatter bone, and the edge sharp enough to cut the wind. I do not need it to be beautiful. I need it to be absolute."
"How heavy?"
Shang Jue looked at his own small, metallic-sheened hands. "As heavy as you can lift with one arm."
The blacksmith let out a booming laugh, the sound filled with genuine, manic excitement. "You're either a lunatic or a monster, boy. But I am a smith. Give me until dusk. I will forge you a blade that will drag you straight to the underworld if you aren't strong enough to swing it."
Shang Jue nodded once. He turned his back on the roaring furnace and stepped out into the freezing streets of Blackridge Hold to wait. The rusted iron of his father's past was being destroyed, soon to be reborn as the instrument of the heavens' destruction.
But as he stepped away from the forge, the chaotic din of the frontier town suddenly died.
The mercenaries stopped drinking. The merchants stopped haggling. Every eye in the slums turned toward the massive, iron-reinforced gates at the entrance of the Hold.
A profound, suffocating spiritual pressure washed over the settlement. It was not the chaotic, freezing energy of a beast, nor the dense, heavy Qi of a rogue cultivator. It was pure, oppressive, and utterly arrogant.
Above the palisade, cutting through the gray winter clouds, three massive, silver flying ships descended toward the town. Their hulls were carved from pale spirit-wood, and immense banners snapped in the freezing wind.
Embroidered on the banners was the insignia of a silver sword piercing a cloud.
The Heavenly Sword Pavilion had arrived at Blackridge Hold.
### **Chapter 5: The Weight of Black Iron (Part 2)**
The descent of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion was not a mere arrival; it was a subjugation of the heavens themselves.
Three colossal flying ships, their hulls carved from pale, spiritual ironwood, hovered directly above Blackridge Hold. They blocked out the weak winter sun, casting the entire frontier town into a deep, oppressive shadow. The banners—a silver sword piercing a cloud—snapped violently in the wind.
But it was not the size of the ships that brought the lawless town to a grinding halt. It was the collective spiritual pressure. Dozens of Foundation Establishment auras, anchored by several terrifying, bottomless presences of Core Formation Elders, washed over the slums like a physical tidal wave.
In the muddy streets, the hardened mercenaries, the arrogant scavengers, and the fugitive rogue cultivators did not draw their weapons. They dropped to their knees. Mortal bodies trembled under the sheer gravity of the orthodox "gods."
Shang Jue stood in the shadow of the blacksmith's forge. The roaring heat of the furnace at his back was nothing compared to the fiery, abyssal rage that ignited within his chest.
*The Heavenly Sword Pavilion.* The image of his father's shattered back flashed in his mind. The cold, indifferent eyes of the jade-eyed cultivator who had called them "ants" burned into his soul. His right hand instinctively twitched toward where his rusted iron axe head used to be. The chaotic Qi in his Dantian flared violently, begging to be unleashed, urging him to draw upon the Path of the Origin and tear the arrogant disciples from the sky.
But Shang Jue did not step forward.
His severed heart was a furnace of vengeance, but his mind was a cage of absolute, chilling rationality. He was in the First Stage of Qi Condensation. He had killed a Demonic Beast and crushed mortal thugs. But the men in those ships could vaporize this entire town with a single, unified sword strike. If he stepped out now, he would not be a demon taking revenge; he would be a moth flying into a sun.
*Patience is the heaviest blade,* Shang Jue reminded himself, forcefully suppressing his violent Qi until his aura was as still as a frozen pond. *To tear down a mountain, one must first map its roots.*
He pulled the heavy Alpha direwolf pelt higher over his head, blending into the shadows, and slipped away from the forge.
He moved silently through the kneeling crowds, navigating the back alleys until he found a dilapidated, subterranean tavern known as the *Broken Chalice*. It was a haven for information, usually filled with loud boasting and drunken brawls. Today, it was deathly silent.
Dozens of rough men sat in the dim light of oil lamps, nursing cheap liquor, their eyes darting nervously toward the ceiling, terrified that a stray burst of Sword Qi might rain down upon them.
Shang Jue spotted his target in the darkest corner of the tavern. It was an old man, missing his left arm, nursing a cup of warm wine. The man possessed a faint, stagnant aura—a Cultivator stuck at the Third Stage of Qi Condensation whose foundation had been crippled decades ago. A man who had seen the Cultivation world but was rejected by it.
Shang Jue approached the table, his bare feet making no sound. He sat across from the old man.
The crippled cultivator looked up, his bloodshot eyes narrowing at the twelve-year-old boy in the blood-stained tunic and the terrifying Alpha pelt. He sensed the condensed, chaotic heaviness in the boy and instinctively pushed his cup away.
"I have no quarrel with you, young demon," the old man rasped, his voice trembling slightly. "Leave an old cripple to his wine."
Shang Jue reached into his tunic. He placed a single, glowing Low-Grade Spirit Stone onto the scarred wooden table. In the dim light, the pure spiritual energy of the stone was mesmerizing.
"I do not seek a quarrel," Shang Jue whispered, his dark eyes locking onto the old man. "I seek eyes and ears. You know this world. I want you to tell me about it."
The old man stared at the Spirit Stone. He licked his cracked lips. One stone could buy him enough medicinal wine to ease his crippled meridians for a year. He quickly covered the stone with his remaining hand, sliding it into his robes.
"What do you want to know, boy who smells of fresh blood?" the old man asked, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"The ships above us," Shang Jue said. "The Heavenly Sword Pavilion. What is their reach? How high does this world go?"
The old man let out a dry, hacking laugh that held no humor. "You are from the deep dirt, aren't you? Ignorant of the sky. Listen well, boy. We are currently standing on the absolute edge of the **Vast Heavens Continent**. It is a landmass so massive that a mortal could walk for a hundred lifetimes and never see the ocean."
The old man dipped a finger in his spilled wine and drew a crude circle on the table.
"The world is ruled by power," he continued. "At the pinnacle of this continent sit the Supreme Sects. The Heavenly Sword Pavilion is one of the Three Orthodox Pillars. They control the entire Eastern Domain. They possess tens of thousands of inner disciples, endless Spirit Stone mines, and profound sword manuals that can split rivers."
"Who are the other two?" Shang Jue asked, absorbing every word, mapping the battlefield of his future.
"The **Heavenly Bodhi Monastery** to the west, bald monks who cultivate their golden bodies and preach karma while hoarding the world's wealth," the old man spat. "And the **Nine Stars Daoist Palace** in the center, masters of arrays and the elements. But the Orthodox sects do not own the world entirely."
The old man drew a jagged line across the wine circle. "In the desolate lands, the Heretical Factions thrive. The **Crimson Blood Cult**, the **Myriad Poison Valley**... factions that use human lives as pill ingredients and cultivate demonic arts. The Orthodox and the Heretics have been waging a shadow war for ten thousand years."
Shang Jue stared at the crude map. "And the hierarchy of power? How strong are the leaders of these sects?"
"Stronger than you can comprehend," the old man whispered, a genuine look of awe and terror crossing his weathered face. "You and I? We are in the **Mortal Foundation** realm. Qi Condensation. Above us is Foundation Establishment, where Qi becomes liquid. Then, Core Formation, where the Qi solidifies into a Golden Core. Those Core Formation experts are the Elders commanding those ships right now. They can flatten Blackridge Hold with a wave of their sleeves."
The old man leaned in closer. "But the true masters... the Sect Leaders and the Ancestors... they have broken into the **Earthly Transcendence** realm. Nascent Soul and Spirit Severing. It is said they can abandon their physical bodies, teleport across space, and live for thousands of years. They are the true gods of the Vast Heavens Continent."
*Earthly Transcendence. Nascent Soul.* Shang Jue etched the terms into his mind. The cultivator who had killed his father was likely a Core Formation expert. A high elder, but not the absolute peak. The mountain was unimaginably high, but it had a summit. And if it had a summit, it could be climbed. And if it could be climbed, it could be conquered.
"Why are they here?" Shang Jue asked quietly. "Supreme Orthodox sects do not bring three warships to a mortal slum without a reason."
The old man looked around nervously, ensuring no one was listening, before leaning in until he was inches from Shang Jue's face.
"Rumors are flying on the wind, boy," the old man breathed. "Three days ago, a terrifying clash occurred in the skies above the Azure Cloud Province between a Pavilion Sword Master and a high-ranking Demonic Cultivator. The clash was so violent it destabilized the spatial fabric of the wasteland."
Shang Jue's eyes remained dead, though his heart hammered. He knew of the clash. He had buried the collateral damage.
"The spatial tear didn't just fade," the old man revealed, his eyes wide. "It forcefully ripped open an ancient seal hidden beneath the ice. A **Secret Realm** from the Desolate Antiquity has appeared fifty miles north of here. The Heavenly Sword Pavilion hasn't come to subjugate Blackridge Hold. They've come to turn this town into their base camp. They are sealing off the entire region to plunder the ancient tomb for themselves."
A Secret Realm. An ancient tomb from a lost era, filled with resources, ancient laws, and forgotten legacies.
Shang Jue leaned back into the shadows of the tavern. A profound, calculating coldness settled over his severed heart. The Heavenly Sword Pavilion wanted the treasures of the Secret Realm to further elevate their arrogant dominance.
*The Path of Plunder,* the ancient manual whispered against his chest. *Do not beg the heavens. Seize it.*
Shang Jue stood up, pulling the Alpha pelt tightly around his shoulders. He did not have the strength to fight the Pavilion directly. Not yet. But in the chaotic, lethal depths of an unexplored ancient tomb, where environmental dangers leveled the playing field, a predator born of the abyss could thrive.
He would go to the Secret Realm. He would steal the legacy from right under the noses of the false gods.
"Enjoy the wine," Shang Jue told the crippled cultivator, before turning and dissolving back into the shadows of the tavern, ready to claim his black iron blade.
Dusk fell upon Blackridge Hold not as a gentle fading of light, but as a suffocating shroud of gray, plunging the temperature to bone-cracking depths. The massive flying ships of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion hovered silently above, their hulls glowing with faint, arrogant silver arrays that illuminated the slums like indifferent, artificial moons.
Shang Jue arrived at the open-air forge just as the blacksmith plunged a massive slab of heated metal into a vat of freezing oil. A thick cloud of white steam erupted, hissing violently.
The towering mortal blacksmith turned, his scarred face pale with a mixture of profound exhaustion and absolute, manic awe. He gestured to a stone table.
Resting upon it was a monster of a weapon.
It was a single-edged broadsword, nearly as tall as Shang Jue himself. It possessed no ornate crossguard, no silken tassels, and no elegant engravings. The blade was a terrifying slab of matte, pitch-black steel, folded and hammered until it was impossibly dense. Running along the thick spine of the blade were faint, jagged white veins—the pulverized bone dust of the Alpha Frost-Tooth Direwolf's fang.
"I broke two hammers forging the spine," the blacksmith wheezed, wiping his brow. "The bone dust... it fought the fire. The metal is permanently cold. It is a butcher's tool, boy. It possesses no grace."
Shang Jue approached the stone table. He reached out with his right hand, the hand where he had forcefully blasted open the *Taiyin* meridian. His small fingers wrapped around the ironwood hilt, which had been wrapped in the rough, cured leather of a lesser direwolf.
He lifted it.
The blacksmith gasped. To a mortal, that sword weighed well over a hundred pounds. Yet, the twelve-year-old boy raised it with one hand, his posture not shifting a single inch.
Shang Jue channeled a thread of his chaotic, abyssal Qi into the hilt. Instantly, the black blade let out a low, resonant hum. The white bone-veins along the spine glowed with a faint, pale blue luminescence, and the ambient moisture in the air around the edge instantly crystallized into falling snow.
It was heavy. It was brutal. It was absolute.
"It is perfect," Shang Jue whispered, his dark eyes reflecting the cold edge. He strapped the massive blade to his back using the heavy hemp rope, the black steel resting diagonally across the white Alpha pelt. It looked absurd on a child, yet the terrifying, condensed aura he projected made the sight deeply unsettling.
He left the blacksmith without another word, melting back into the shadows of the frozen town.
The Heavenly Sword Pavilion had locked down the settlement. Patrols of pristine, white-robed disciples marched through the muddy streets, erecting boundary flags that pulsed with orthodox Sword Qi, establishing a perimeter to monopolize the newly discovered Secret Realm to the north.
But the Great Dao is vast, and shadows always gather beneath the brightest lights.
As Shang Jue moved through the slums, utilizing the passive, chaotic camouflage of his Dantian and the Alpha pelt to evade the arrogant patrols, his heightened senses caught an anomaly.
It was not a sound, nor a smell. It was a ripple in the fabric of the ambient Qi.
Three streets away, near the collapsed ruins of an old grain silo, the snowflakes were falling incorrectly. They were hitting an invisible dome and sliding down a curved, unseen surface. To the arrogant Sword Pavilion disciples, whose senses were tuned only to the sharp, aggressive fluctuations of Sword Intent, it was invisible. But to Shang Jue, whose Foundation was built by violently devouring the chaotic breath of the world, a pocket of artificially organized Qi stood out like a beacon.
An Illusion Array, Shang Jue calculated, his eyes narrowing. High-tier. Designed to conceal presence and mask spiritual pressure.
The Heavenly Sword Pavilion had no need to hide. This meant another faction had slipped into the frontier town right under the noses of the orthodox "gods."
Shang Jue did not retreat. The wheel of Samsara had taught him that chaos was a ladder. If the Sword Pavilion monopolized the Secret Realm, they would slowly and systematically clear its traps, taking all the supreme artifacts for themselves. Shang Jue needed a disruption. He needed a war.
He crept toward the ruined silo. He didn't try to break the array with force. Instead, drawing upon the Path of the Origin, he altered the frequency of his own chaotic Qi, matching the ambient, freezing background radiation of the winter storm. He became nothing more than the wind.
He stepped silently through the invisible barrier.
Inside the silo, the temperature was strangely warm. A small group of six cultivators stood in a circle around a glowing, floating topographical map composed of pure starlight. They wore deep midnight-blue robes embroidered with silver constellations.
*The Nine Stars Daoist Palace,* Shang Jue realized, recalling the crippled old man's words. The second Orthodox Pillar, masters of arrays and the elements, and bitter political rivals of the Sword Pavilion.
"The Sword Pavilion's blockade is too tight," whispered a young man at the center of the group, likely their vanguard leader. He possessed a dense, swirling aura at the Late Stage of Foundation Establishment. "They have deployed three Core Formation Elders to seal the main valley leading to the Secret Realm. If we try to breach it, it will trigger an all-out sect war, which the Palace Lord strictly forbade. We need a quiet entry point."
"Senior Brother Chen," a female disciple said, tracing a finger across the starlight map. "Our scrying arrays indicate a massive concentration of chaotic frost-veins beneath the Blackpine Ridge. If there is a subterranean backdoor to the tomb, it is hidden there. But the frost-veins severely scramble our spiritual senses. We would be marching blind into a labyrinth of Demonic Beasts."
From the shadows, the scraping sound of heavy black iron against stone echoed through the silo.
The six Daoist Palace cultivators instantly drew their weapons—intricately carved jade flutes, array compasses, and star-steel swords. Their spiritual pressure erupted, locking onto the dark corner of the ruins.
"Who goes there?!" Senior Brother Chen barked, his eyes blazing with starlight Qi. "Show yourself, or be reduced to ash!"
Shang Jue stepped out of the shadows.
The sight of a small, twelve-year-old boy, wrapped in an Alpha direwolf pelt and carrying a broadsword nearly as large as himself, momentarily stunned the elite disciples. But Chen was no fool; he felt the dense, terrifyingly heavy Qi Condensation aura radiating from the boy, and he recognized that the boy had completely bypassed a Grade-Three Concealment Array without triggering it.
"Lower your weapons," Shang Jue said, his voice flat, emotionless, and utterly devoid of fear. "If I were a Sword Pavilion dog, three Core Formation Elders would already be vaporizing this silo."
"Who are you, boy?" Chen demanded, his array compass glowing dangerously in his palm. "And how did you pierce our formation?"
"I am the abyss you are looking for," Shang Jue replied, his black eyes locking onto the starlight map. "You seek a path through the Blackpine Ridge. You fear the chaotic frost-veins. You fear the Demonic Beasts. I do not. I was born in that dirt. I have walked those ridges, and I possess the chaotic Qi to navigate the veins without scrambling my senses."
The female disciple scoffed. "A brat barely at the First Stage of Qi Condensation claims he can guide the elite vanguard of the Nine Stars Daoist Palace? Arrogance!"
Shang Jue did not blink. He drew upon the violently opened *Taiyin* meridian in his right arm, channeling a burst of his abyssal, direwolf-infused Qi into the black broadsword. A terrifying, freezing pressure exploded outward, heavily laced with the murderous intent of the Alpha beast. The temperature in the silo plummeted so rapidly that the starlight map flickered.
The disciples recoiled, shock washing over their faces. *Such density! Such brutal, unrefined killing intent! This is not orthodox Qi!*
"I can guide you through the subterranean backdoor of the Secret Realm," Shang Jue stated, reeling his aura back in to show absolute control. "I will bypass the Sword Pavilion's blockade entirely, placing you directly inside the ancient tomb before their Vanguard even finishes breaking the front gate's seals."
Senior Brother Chen narrowed his eyes, quickly calculating the immense strategic advantage. "And what does a rogue child want in return? Spirit Stones? A place in our outer sect?"
"I want chaos," Shang Jue whispered, the black ice in his severed heart shining through his eyes.
"I will guide you in. But once we are inside the Secret Realm, our transaction is complete. You will immediately launch a full-scale ambush on the Heavenly Sword Pavilion's inner forces. You will draw the attention of their Elders. You will fight them for the legacy, for the supreme artifacts, for your sect's glory."
Chen stared at the boy, realizing the terrifying intelligence hidden behind those dead eyes. "You want us to serve as your distraction. You intend to use the war between two Supreme Sects to mask your own plunder of the tomb."
"The Great Dao is vast, Senior Brother Chen," Shang Jue replied smoothly, mirroring the title with a cold edge. "There is enough wealth in a Primordial tomb for the Daoist Palace to claim a massive victory over your rivals. What a lone mortal boy scavenges in the shadows is of no concern to the Nine Stars."
Silence reigned in the silo, broken only by the distant, arrogant horns of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion's flying ships outside.
Chen looked at his disciples, then back to the boy with the black broadsword. It was a treacherous gamble. But to steal a primordial legacy from the very hands of the Sword Pavilion was an opportunity the Nine Stars Daoist Palace could not refuse.
"We have an accord, young demon," Senior Brother Chen said, lowering his array compass. "Guide us through the Blackpine Ridge tonight. If you lead us into a trap, I will personally extract your soul and burn it in starfire."
Shang Jue turned toward the exit of the silo, his hand resting on the heavy hilt of his new blade.
"If we encounter the Sword Pavilion," Shang Jue replied, his voice chilling the very air, "you will not have to worry about the fire. I will ensure they are buried in the ice."
The balance of power had been forcefully fractured. The mortal boy had just orchestrated a war between the gods, and the gates of the ancient tomb awaited his arrival.