Phoenix Fire Touches Heaven
The instant the dragon-shadow entered and the tide of battle tipped, Qi Jianfeng's eyes—eyes that had until now still held a measure of cool appraisal—finally darkened in earnest.
Before, when he had pressed Feng Hong, he had been pressing her footwork, her breath, the little breaks that still remained between the arts of the Phoenix Dance Palace, not yet fully joined into one. When Long Tianxiao cut into the fight, he had merely taken him for one more opponent willing to meet him head-on—a trial of a dragon added to a trial of a phoenix, no more than that. But the moment the young man in blue cut off his leg-work with a hard palm, and Feng Hong used that half-inch of space to flip in from the side and rear, the two of them one before and one behind—his palm heavy, hers light as talons, the dragon holding the center, the phoenix skimming the edge—something new bit into place between them.
It was not the kind of combination they had practiced a thousand times.
Nor was it the harmony of fellow disciples trained in the same lineage, breathing to the same inner method.
And precisely because it was neither of those things, it dragged the heart down even harder.
Qi Jianfeng saw it clearly. Long Tianxiao's palm-work was deep and forceful, best at driving a man back inch by inch through sheer weight. Feng Hong, meanwhile, was astonishingly fast. Her footwork, finger-work, claw-work, and grappling all linked together, and once she was allowed to slide into the gaps opened by Long Tianxiao's palm-pressure, she was like flame slipping into a crack—the narrower the gap, the deadlier it became.
Had he been facing Feng Hong alone, he could have crushed her steadily into the ground.
Had he been facing Long Tianxiao alone, he might not have truly put him in his eyes.
But now the two had come together in the same instant.
One rigid, one elusive. One upright, one perilous. One sinking, one swift.
And from that pairing there emerged, faintly but unmistakably, the sense of dragon and phoenix feeding one another's force.
His white robe stirred.
Qi Jianfeng said nothing. He merely shifted his footing once, lightly, and moved in again like a snow-ridge sliding level across the ground, pressing back between them. Compared with the slow, layered pressure with which he had earlier forced Feng Hong back, there was now something missing in the line of his legs.
Not mastery.
Not control.
But room.
Long Tianxiao felt it first.
He had just hard-blocked two of those legs, and even now a faint numbness still ran along his right arm. The breath at his dantian felt as though someone had struck it with a muffled hammer, leaving it rolling and unsteady. Yet the instant the white-robed cult leader moved, Long Tianxiao still sank both palms and locked Dragon Walks the Nine Palaces beneath his feet, not giving ground by even half a step, nailing shut the small patch of space before him.
Feng Hong felt it at the same moment.
Her red shadow turned. The footwork that had begun to fan outward suddenly drew back in tight. She did not immediately raise Flying Phoenix Finger or let Rending Feather Talon go first. Instead, she lifted her body-art first, skimming left and right along the edge of Long Tianxiao's palm-force like the tremor of a fire-wing, waiting to see from which side that most dangerous line of pressure would truly descend.
The next instant the white shadow was already there.
The kick Qi Jianfeng sent out was strange.
It did not come in layered waves as before. Nor was it like Qi Zhenyue's style, all violent eagerness to kick a man flat with brute force. The kick was not high, nor outwardly dramatic. If someone blinked, he might not even catch its rising line clearly. Yet once it came close, Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong both felt the same sudden sinking in the heart—
it was not a leg.
It was the shadow of a whole mountain, shearing down level across them.
It did not look fast.
And yet somehow it enclosed every possible path around them at once.
With a sharp shout, Long Tianxiao struck out with both palms. Instead of flinging his force wide, he drew it half an inch deeper into the centerline, gathering everything into a single narrow line before hurling it forward. Feng Hong used the sliver of space his palms opened, dropped low in a flash, her red sleeves skimming the floor, and drove Flying Phoenix Finger diagonally toward the dead angle at Qi Jianfeng's knee.
Bang.
Palm and leg collided first.
Hiss.
The wind off her fingers almost skimmed the white robe at the same instant.
Qi Jianfeng's leg had already been held for half a breath by Long Tianxiao's palm. Feng Hong's finger had all but entered the blind angle at its side. Yet within that half-breath, the Sacred Unicorn Cult leader seemed to find another half-inch of ground beneath his feet. The line of the leg, already fully engaged against Long Tianxiao's palm, twisted as though out of thin air—bleeding three parts of the frontal force, then lifting slightly at the knee before sinking again, sealing off Feng Hong's finger-road completely.
Before her fingertip could land, a heavy gust of force had already pressed her whole arm numb and tight. Her finger-force could go no farther. She had no choice but to snatch the hand back and turn through a Crimson Firmament Twist in midair, the red shadow rolling out just barely clear of the edge of that white silhouette.
But the instant she turned, Qi Jianfeng's second leg had already arrived.
This one was heavier still.
And it was not aimed at her.
It was aimed straight across at Long Tianxiao.
Long Tianxiao's eyes flashed. His left palm came up like a sinking wall, and instead of retreating he stepped straight into it with a move from the Myriad Dragons Palm—Dragons Contest the Shore. There was nothing fancy in the strike, yet the palm-shadow did not scatter. Instead it layered itself through the three feet before him, like several dragon-shadows charging the centerline at once to bar Qi Jianfeng's leg outside the gate.
Leg-shadow and palm-shadow struck line after line. The blows came muffled and dense, like heavy stones hammering against a closed gate—one harder than the last, one deeper than the last. Long Tianxiao felt the bones in both arms ringing from the impact, the broken dust beneath his feet whipping away to either side, and yet he still held that centerline nailed dead in place.
Feng Hong flipped back in through the opening.
This time she no longer used only the finger, nor only the claw.
Flying Phoenix Finger rose—and in the middle of the motion changed into Heavenly Phoenix Grasp. Her fingers brushed the edge of Qi Jianfeng's robe, then turned at once to lock onto the ankle-bone. The grip failed to settle fully; in the same instant her foot touched once off the ground and she slanted up through the air, Rending Feather Talon coming down from above straight at his shoulder and throat.
The whole sequence was astonishingly fast.
And astonishingly dangerous.
Even Feng Hong herself had no time to think it through.
She knew only that the man before her was too deep, too stable, too crushing to breathe beneath. If she broke the fight down move by move, she would only be ground to death by him a little at a time. So she could only force everything she knew out at once—finger if not claw, claw if not grappling, grappling if not body-art, never letting her movement leave his outside line for a single instant. She had to tear a living road through the thickest, heaviest part of that white shadow or die there.
Qi Jianfeng had meant to crush Long Tianxiao first and only then turn to drive Feng Hong back along with him. But after the two of them joined together, the young Palace Master's attacks grew not only faster and more agile, but more ruthless, more reckless of death itself. The various arts of the Phoenix Dance Palace, which in her had each possessed their own brilliance, were now being forced by mortal danger into one single twisted strand. It was still far from true perfection, still far from seamless unity—but already, faintly, it had begun to show the outline of one road.
That outline was very faint.
But in Qi Jianfeng's eyes, it was enough.
The last trace of detached appraisal in the white-robed cult leader's gaze finally cooled away, little by little.
Feng Hong, however, did not notice.
She only felt herself growing faster, and the faster she grew, the more perilous it became—and the more exhilarating. Whenever Long Tianxiao's palms drove straight in through the front, she cut in from the flanks and behind, again and again finding herself able to carry footwork, finger-work, grappling, and claw-work along the half-inch of space his force had opened for her.
It felt as though the things that had previously been scattered through her limbs and frame—things that had always seemed separated from one another by some invisible layer—were suddenly being lifted by something swifter, more dangerous, higher, in the middle of blood surging and life hanging by a thread.
It was not understanding.
It was not mastery.
It was only as if, somewhere in the highest heavens, the shadow of a true phoenix had swept past overhead, and she, standing down here amid blade-light and fire, had glimpsed for half an instant the outline of its wings.
Biting down hard, Feng Hong's red robe flared.
Her footwork passed through Startled Swan Skims the Shadow, but instead of settling there, she borrowed half a breath more from the trailing edge of Long Tianxiao's palm-wind. Her right hand sent Flying Phoenix Finger toward Qi Jianfeng's throat. Her left was already twining silently toward the tendons outside his knee. The finger had not yet arrived when her body-art folded again, and in midair she changed once more. Rending Feather Talon slashed down at an angle, five fingers like blades, the killing wind of it enclosing elbow, wrist, shoulder, and throat all at once.
The shift came too quickly.
So quickly that even Long Tianxiao felt his heart jolt.
Because he saw it clearly: this pounce no longer looked like her earlier movements, with the seams still visible between one technique and the next. Finger, grappling, claw, body-art—within that instant they all seemed to have become four streams of fire suddenly braided into a single line. At first glance the red figure in midair was still only Feng Hong. But if one looked closer, it almost seemed as though a true phoenix of fire had swept its wings open behind her, its radiance filling the ruined hall.
In the darkest angle behind a collapsed beam, Fang Yingjie, already half-deafened by the clash of palms and legs, suddenly saw the red shadow flare. For a heartbeat it looked to him as though a spread of fire-feathers had truly crossed the air. His heart leaped. He almost thought the injuries and exhaustion had turned his eyes false—but when he looked again, it was still only Feng Hong in the hall.
Qi Jianfeng's leg-line stalled.
For the first time, his expression truly changed.
"This is…"
He paused.
Then, with the chill in his eyes deepening still further, he let out four low words:
"Phoenix Dance Through the Nine Heavens…"
Of course, it was not yet the full thing.
What Phoenix Dance Palace called Phoenix Dance Through the Nine Heavens had never been a single move. It was the overarching path by which Phoenix Dance Body Art, Flying Phoenix Finger, Rending Feather Talon, and Heavenly Phoenix Grasp were to be trained until they fed one another, answered one another, and rose and fell as a single current. Only then could one truly glimpse the gate of the grand synthesis.
Feng Hong was still too young. Her fire was not yet there.
And yet in that moment, at the edge of life and death, she had clearly forced those four arts into one line for the span of a single breath. That line was faint. Unstable. Terribly dangerous. It dissolved again the next instant.
But in Qi Jianfeng's eyes, it was enough to show him the shadow of the gate.
And at once, killing intent surged.
If Phoenix Dance Palace had bowed its head, if Feng Hong had accepted the marriage, then this line might still have been drawn under his hand one day.
But tonight she had rejected the match in public.
And under the pressure of death she had just revealed this much of the path.
If he let her live, if he let her grow, then the hegemony the Sacred Unicorn Cult had spent years building might well break first at the hands of this little girl.
If she could not be turned to his use,
then she absolutely could not be allowed to live and grow any further.
Beneath the white robe, the right leg that had until now remained so steady it was almost cold finally took on unmistakable killing intent for the first time.
White Snow Cuts Through Red
The instant that thought passed through him, the whole atmosphere in the ruined hall shifted.
Before, when Qi Jianfeng had pressed Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong, the pressure had already been heavy enough to leave the chest tight and the bones cold—but within it, there had still been a trace of testing. That testing had not been gentle. It had not even been merciful. But it had not yet been the kind of iron cruelty that meant to take a life at once. Now the last of that room was gone. Beneath the white robe, the faint chill of appraisal in his eyes hardened inch by inch into true frost.
Long Tianxiao saw it first.
Because he was the one holding the center.
The Myriad Dragons Palm was always, above all, a palm-art of momentum. When the enemy's momentum changed, the palms felt it first. Before, Qi Jianfeng's leg-shadows had pressed in heavy, dangerous, and immense, like a whole mountain-shadow being driven level across the ground. But now, with no more than a slight shift of foot, Long Tianxiao felt at once that a new line had emerged inside that vast pressure—
not something that wanted to drive him back,
but something that wanted to cut.
Cut through the palms.
Cut through the body-art.
Cut through the flow of breath.
Cut through life itself.
"Palace Master Feng—careful!"
The warning had barely left him when Qi Jianfeng moved.
This time there was no hint of delay, no layered tightening. The white shadow shot in. His right leg swept flat—not high, not low, straight for the line across Long Tianxiao's chest and abdomen. Long Tianxiao sank both palms. The strike had only just begun to rise when Feng Hong was already flipping in from behind and to the side, Flying Phoenix Finger going for the ribs, Rending Feather Talon turning up along the way, meaning once more to bite into the rhythm through the half-inch of space Long Tianxiao's palm-force created—
and that, precisely, was the moment Qi Jianfeng had been waiting for.
The sweeping leg stopped in mid-motion.
The pause was so brief that even the lampflames did not have time to sway.
But within that half-pause, the leg-shadow that had been cutting across Long Tianxiao's centerline suddenly folded on the diagonal. It was like a knife of white snow flashing out of the middle of a blizzard and slashing straight toward the half-inch gap in Feng Hong's body-art as she entered from the side.
Her heart turned cold.
She had been advancing along the rhythm they had only just managed to bite into together. Now Qi Jianfeng had seen through the weakest point in that very step. The leg came too fast, too true, aimed exactly for the instant when her body-art had not yet fully landed, and her finger and claw had not yet become one. She had no choice but to force the movement short and fold her red shadow out of it by a hair's breadth.
That one retreat broke the line.
The half-beat of dragon and phoenix, which had only just begun to lock together, snapped apart.
And that was all Qi Jianfeng wanted.
The instant that half-beat broke, he drove in again.
The white robe flared.
The second leg followed at once, and this time it did not go for Feng Hong at all, but straight for Long Tianxiao. Long Tianxiao shouted low and hard. He brought both palms out in linked sequence, palm-shadows layering across the line before him with Dragons Contest the Shore. He meant to shut the white figure out from the center once more.
But he had only just fought Qi Zhenyue to the limit. He had never truly recovered his breath after that. Now he had already met Qi Jianfeng's legs several times in succession. The numbness had not yet left his arms, and the breath in his energy center had begun to surge upward toward his throat. Qi Jianfeng's kick came heavier than before, and trickier too—not falling at the moment Long Tianxiao's palms were strongest, but precisely at the instant his breath was trying and failing to settle.
Bang!
Palm met leg once more.
Long Tianxiao felt both arms go dead-heavy, as though instead of flesh and bone he had just met a thousand-pound stone slab dropped against his chest. The hem of his blue robe shuddered violently. Broken dust blew outward from beneath his feet. He still did not retreat—but the line of his palms, which had held so whole before, finally stalled by half an instant under the crushing weight.
That was exactly what Qi Jianfeng wanted.
First cut through Feng Hong's body-line.
Then crush Long Tianxiao's centerline.
The linked momentum they had only just created, one before and one behind, one borrowing the other's force, was split apart by those two legs in two moves.
Qi Jianfeng no longer cared how much residual force Long Tianxiao's palms still held after the collision. He turned with that very impact. The white shadow slid almost along the edge of Long Tianxiao's palm-wind. In a flash he was already before Feng Hong again.
She had only just changed position to avoid that cutting leg. The instant she did, the line by which she had briefly forced the four arts of the palace into one was already half-dissolved. That line had always been faint, unstable, and perilous. It existed only because mind, blood, palm-wind, and body-art had all bitten together in one suspended instant. Now Qi Jianfeng had split it, and it flew apart like a thread of fire only just kindled and already torn by the night wind.
She knew at once that something was wrong.
Flying Phoenix Finger shot out at once in a rapid scatter toward brow, throat, and shoulder-well, hoping to check him first.
Qi Jianfeng ignored the strikes completely.
His right knee lifted. The whole leg unwound from below to above. It was no longer the slow, pressing weight he had used before, but the killing sweep of a blade of avalanche snow, aimed for the point between waist and shoulder where the body was hardest to recover from once struck.
Feng Hong's chest seized.
Her red shadow twisted. Startled Swan Skims the Shadow was only half-complete when the force of the leg already pressed her body sideways by half a foot. Flying Phoenix Finger had not landed. Rending Feather Talon had not fully turned. Her whole body was already caught in the line of the kick.
Qi Jianfeng's eyes were ice.
Now.
The girl had indeed touched the shadow of that gate a moment ago. But a shadow of the gate was still only that—a shadow. She was not there yet. At the edge of life and death she had briefly forced the four arts into one line. But she could not hold that line long and steadily. Break her once. Press her once. The thread of the grand synthesis would scatter on its own. And once it scattered, she was still only an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Palace Master.
Then let her die.
The white robe snapped.
His leg-shadows rose in sequence.
This time there was no trace left of the slow, layered pressure with which he had tested her. Speed, weight, severing force, pursuit—they came all at once, leg after leg biting into the next, as though he meant to crush every road of escape beneath her feet before that glimpse of the gate could gather again.
The first leg forced her to change position.
The second forced her to change breath.
The third went for her life.
Feng Hong retreated three steps.
The first she could still barely evade with body-art alone.
In the second, Flying Phoenix Finger no longer landed with the wholeness it had possessed before; it only managed to deflect the edge of the kick by half an inch.
By the middle of the third, she already felt as though shoulder, ribs, waist, and knee were all being pressed at once by that heavy, murderous leg-intent. There was no longer any place left in her body from which she could raise a full line of force.
Only then did she truly understand:
Qi Jianfeng had indeed held back before.
And now he was truly trying to kill her.
In another corner of the hall, Feng Zhu was still locked so tightly with Qi Zhenyue that the red and white shadows seemed braided together. How could she possibly free herself? Farther off, Bai Suling and Feng Jiuyi were still engaged in the rapid crack of finger-wind and concealed nails, neither able to break loose. Near the west, Long Boyuan and Helian Chi were forcing palm to palm until bricks were breaking and dust flying. Along the eastern line, the red- and blue-robed disciples were already being pressed to the edge of collapse by the white-robed formation.
In the whole hall, there was no one free to spare a hand.
Long Tianxiao's eyes went red.
The earlier collision had never truly left his body. His chest still had not settled. His palms had been broken half out of their line. But the instant he saw Feng Hong drawn completely into Qi Jianfeng's killing web, how could he think of anything else? With a violent shake of his blue robe, he forced down the turmoil inside him and drove himself in again.
"Qi Jianfeng—!"
The shout tore out of him rough and ragged, nothing like his usual steadiness. On the tail of that roar came Dragon Battles in the Wild, exploding forward from the center. The palm was harder, fiercer, and more desperate than before. Long Tianxiao knew perfectly well that if Qi Jianfeng's chain of kicks continued, Feng Hong would truly die here. So the strike sought no variation and no finesse. It was simply the open, kingly pressure of Azure Dragon Isle's palm-line, crashing straight into the killing flow to smash it apart by force.
But Qi Jianfeng had expected him.
The third leg that had nearly reached Feng Hong did not fully land. Instead, with the smallest half-inch of turn, the white-robed cult leader slid his whole body along the edge of Long Tianxiao's palm-wind and met the palm head-on.
Boom!
This collision was heavier than any before it.
Long Tianxiao felt his whole right arm ring hollow from shoulder to wrist. The breath he had been forcing down into his chest and dantian convulsed and turned over again. A taste of blood surged into his throat. This time he could not quite keep it in. A line of red seeped from the corner of his mouth. Yet he still swallowed the rest back down by sheer will, and with his blue robe unmoving beneath him, he drove his left palm out as well, meaning to force Qi Jianfeng away from Feng Hong once more.
The chill in Qi Jianfeng's eyes deepened.
This boy, too, could not be left alive.
But between the two, Feng Hong was still the more urgent kill. Long Tianxiao's palm-force was still fierce, but the flow inside it was already disordered. He could no longer hold that steady centerline as before. One more press would leave him barely able to fend for himself. And Feng Hong, just struck and shaken, was now the one most easily killed.
The thought passed through him.
His leg rose again.
This time not toward Long Tianxiao, but skimming straight past the crossing of their palms, along the edge of Long Tianxiao's own palm-wind, and back toward Feng Hong.
She had only just taken the glancing force at the shoulder. Her whole half-body still felt numb. The white shadow was already there again. A cold shock went through her. She knew that if she gave another half-inch now, she truly would die beneath the next sequence of legs. So gritting her teeth, she drove herself forward instead of back. Flying Phoenix Finger, Rending Feather Talon, Heavenly Phoenix Grasp, body-art—all of it came out together, not because she truly believed she could stop the line, but because this was the only road left.
It was almost a suicidal pounce.
But this time the exhilaration she had felt before was gone.
The line of the gate had already broken. Her mind was no longer whole. Her breath was no longer whole. When she forced herself back into it, she only drove her already disordered inner force further apart. The thread of the synthesis did not return.
Qi Jianfeng's face was cold as carved stone.
This was exactly what he had been waiting for.
The white robe snapped once. His right leg came up from below, like a white wave shearing upward through empty air, aimed straight for the half-open line between Feng Hong's ribs and shoulder. The kick came too fast, too heavy. Feng Hong's finger had not landed. Her claw had not completed its turn. Her body-art could only shift her by the smallest fraction—
Smack.
The sound was not loud.
But Feng Hong's body reacted as if struck by lightning.
Her red robe flared high. She was swept bodily sideways and hurled straight into a broken pillar at the side of the hall. The impact shook her from shoulder to ribs. It felt as though bones and sinews alike had been torn half apart in that line of the body. Sweet blood surged into her throat. She could not stop it this time. It sprayed out in midair and scattered bright across the blue-grey bricks below.
Then came the second impact—her body hitting the pillar.
She slid down it and fell hard to one knee among shattered bricks, half her body pitching forward. One hand clamped to her ribs. Blood ran from the corner of her mouth in a steady line, dripping onto the front of her robe so that one could no longer tell where cloth ended and blood began.
"Feng Hong—!"
Long Tianxiao's voice changed entirely.
There was panic in it, raw and tearing. He saw that red figure swept through the air, strike the pillar, slide down, drop to one knee. Something in his chest burst like fire. His blue robe flared. He meant to rush to catch her at once—
and Qi Jianfeng gave him no such space.
The white shadow turned.
Killing intent was fully on him now.
The leg came too fast. Long Tianxiao had only just started to turn when it was already before him like a mountain collapsing. He had no time to bring out a full palm-line. He could only cross both arms over his chest and meet it there.
Bang!
The leg landed solidly.
Long Tianxiao felt as though both arm-bones were about to snap. The force drove him staggering backward, step after step, until he almost hit the ruined pillar behind him. Only just did he steady himself. The blood he had swallowed down moments earlier surged up once more, and this time he could no longer contain it. A line of red spilled from the corner of his mouth.
But he still did not fall.
He lifted his head.
Past the white shadow, he looked straight toward the red figure at the base of the pillar—Feng Hong, one hand braced against the stone, trying little by little to force herself up again. But her legs had gone weak. She had barely pushed herself half up when she dropped again. She bit her lip hard, refusing to make a sound, but her eyes were bloodshot with pain and urgency alike.
Long Tianxiao drew in one breath and forced the blood back down.
Then, slowly, he straightened again and raised both palms.
The line of the palms was no longer the deep, steady thing it had been before. If anything, it trembled. But the refusal to yield in it was heavier now than at any previous moment.
He stood before Feng Hong.
Though wounded all over.
Though his breathing was already breaking apart.
Though he could hardly stay upright any longer.
He still stood before Feng Hong.
Qi Jianfeng looked at him.
At the blood on his lips.
At the faint tremor in the raised palms.
At the red figure behind him that could no longer stand.
The white-robed cult leader said nothing.
He simply lifted his right leg again, slowly. The white robe did not flare. Yet the firelight in the hall seemed to drop lower with the motion. Wind poured in through the broken eaves and shook every lamp-flame at once.
This time, he meant to kill them both.
The Dragon's Roar Shields the Phoenix
So pressing was the urgency that the blood surging through Long Tianxiao's chest nearly burst out of him for good.
He still did not retreat.
Qi Jianfeng's white robe turned. The leg-shadows came like an avalanche collapsing overhead. Long Tianxiao's eyes were red now. His blue robe shook once. He forced the taste of blood down his throat again and sank both palms before raising them once more. This time the palm-line held none of his earlier reserve. There was instead a terrible, stripped-bare ferocity in it. Once more he hurled out Dragon Battles in the Wild.
This palm was fiercer still.
And heavier still.
Not to win.
Only to protect.
Boom—!
The collision sent the whole hall into turmoil again. Broken brick, ash, snapped wood—everything blasted outward in a rolling wave. Long Tianxiao felt the joints in both arms ring wildly, the line from shoulder to back hammered inward, his chest clamping shut for half a breath. But Qi Jianfeng's leg-shadow, which had already been driving toward Feng Hong again, was still forced sideways for that half-breath.
And that half-breath was enough.
Feng Hong had been half-kneeling, pain splitting her shoulder and ribs apart. But the moment she saw Long Tianxiao throw himself against that killing line without a thought for his own life, something inside her jolted hard. Blood still marked her lips. The red robe flared. She forced herself upright again despite the injuries.
The instant she gained her feet, the white shadow was already descending once more.
Clearly Qi Jianfeng had not expected the girl to rise after taking such a kick. The cold in his eyes deepened. Half-still locked with Long Tianxiao's palms, he shifted. The leg that should have stayed on the frontal line was already changing. Without sound, his left leg rose and sliced sideways toward Feng Hong's knee and waist.
The move was not expansive. Not dramatic. Yet the instant Feng Hong saw it, her whole heart chilled.
What she feared most now was no longer the great, crushing pressure from before.
It was precisely this sort of cold, short, ruthless, exact killing move.
Her chest was in disorder. Her body-art could no longer turn as lightly as before. If this landed, she would not stand again tonight.
And before she could evade it, Long Tianxiao had already cut in front of her.
The blue robe flashed once.
He had almost thrown himself physically into the gap between two lines of force. The kick that should have swept straight across her waist instead struck first against the line of his side and the edge of his palm.
Bang!
The impact made Long Tianxiao's whole body sway. The hem of his blue robe snapped outward. Yet he twisted with it, forcing his waist through the blow, and drove a reverse palm on the slant, barely forcing the leg off line by half an inch.
That half-inch was enough to pull Feng Hong back out of the death-line.
Her breath caught.
All her life she had trained, entered the inner court of the Feng family, and later become the young Palace Master of Phoenix Dance Palace. She was used to being deferred to, obeyed, watched, feared. But never before, at a true edge of life and death, had someone thrown himself again and again into the heaviest, ugliest line of danger for her without pausing to think first.
Something hot struck her heart.
"Are you—"
"I'm fine."
Long Tianxiao's voice came low and raw. He did not even turn his head.
"You keep moving. Don't mind me."
At that, something in Feng Hong's chest burned. Even the cracking pain in her ribs seemed to ease by a fraction under the heat of it. She bit down hard and sent herself back in. This time she stopped worrying about forcing her own close-range kills. Flying Phoenix Finger first went for Qi Jianfeng's eyes. Rending Feather Talon did not rush his throat but cut instead toward the most delicate, smallest line in the flow of his kicks, forcing him, every time he meant to finish Long Tianxiao, to spend half a degree of force dealing with her first.
The three shadows in the heart of the hall—white, blue, red—began to wheel and twist together in a storm of kicks, palms, finger-force, and claw-lines so violent that the last lamps near them seemed ready to go out altogether. Long Tianxiao guarded with brutal intensity. Feng Hong clung to the edges of the line with equal ruthlessness. Both were already injured, both already exhausted, and yet between a refusal to retreat and a refusal to die, they somehow managed to hold back Qi Jianfeng's killing pressure for another short span.
Only for a short span.
Because their opponent was still Qi Jianfeng.
The longer he fought, the colder his eyes became. These two young ones were indeed extraordinary. Long Tianxiao's palm-work was deep, his bones and spirit both first-rate. Feng Hong was still more troublesome—already injured, yet still able to bite at the flanks of his leg-force without letting go. Given a few more years, the Dragon and Phoenix lines would very likely produce true figures again. And precisely for that reason, tonight they could not be allowed to leave this old hall alive.
Elsewhere, Feng Zhu too had reached the point of collapse.
She was still locking Qi Zhenyue down and giving him no inch of room to spare. Several times he tried to break away and throw himself into Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong's side of the fight. Each time she dragged him back with Heavenly Phoenix Grasp or Rending Feather Talon, forcing the white and red shadows to knot together again at the side of the hall. The more Qi Zhenyue fought, the more violent he became, his leg-shadows raging across the floor as though he meant to sweep this troublesome woman aside in one strike and be done. Feng Zhu only grew heavier and more stubborn in response. She did not seek the initiative. She did not seek to reverse the pressure. She sought only to use the injuries in her own body and the breath still left in her to nail him to that place.
But with every shift of her feet, the pain in her back dug deeper and deeper. At last the blood she had been forcing down could no longer be held. It spilled lightly from the corner of her mouth and sank into the front of her red robe, swallowed so quickly by the cloth that one could hardly see it. She did not even wipe it away. She only stared at Qi Zhenyue, her gaze growing colder and colder, like a strip of iron that no fire could soften.
"Move!"
Qi Zhenyue roared. His leg-shadow dropped sharply into Earth-Splitting Soul-Chaser, aimed at her lower body and knees. Feng Zhu barely managed to turn the line aside with a variation of Heavenly Phoenix Grasp, but the impact still drove her back two full steps and into a broken pillar. Shattered brick rained down. Her face went still paler. The blood at her lips darkened. But still she did not yield the line.
Outside the hall the wind wailed through the broken eaves. Near the west, Long Boyuan saw clearly what was happening.
He had been forcing Helian Chi steadily toward the worse end of the exchange. The man's heat-heavy palm-force was strong, but Long Boyuan's was the tide itself, and little by little he had the advantage. But the moment he saw Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong truly caught under Qi Jianfeng's killing pressure, Long Boyuan's heart sank. He no longer wished to remain in that fight for even one exchange more. With a hard draw on his breath, he drove his palms down and out, the weight in them suddenly doubling, meaning to throw Helian Chi off and go at once to aid the young lord of the isle.
Helian Chi was indeed shaken by the palm and forced back half a step.
A sharp light flashed in Long Boyuan's eyes. He was about to break away—
"Elder Long, why the hurry?"
The cold laugh came from the side and rear.
A white shadow cut across.
It was Xue Wuli.
Moments earlier he had been driven badly by the Feng sisters. Now, with Feng Zhu trapped by Qi Zhenyue and Feng Hong drawn into the center killing-line, he had finally torn himself free. How could he let such a moment pass? The man himself had scarcely arrived when the fist-wind was already exploding outward. Sacred Unicorn Crushing-Peaks Fist drove straight toward Long Boyuan's flank, clearly meaning to take him badly the instant he turned.
Long Boyuan's face darkened. He could only break his own line in mid-motion and meet the blow.
Wham!
Palm and fist met in a burst of dust.
And Helian Chi was already in again. The white robe turned. Blazing Unicorn Palm came crashing down over him. One line hot and scorching, the other dry and violent, they drove in from front and back together. However strong Long Boyuan was, no man could treat two opponents of that level lightly once they pressed from both sides at once. In an instant the advantage he had held became a hard, grinding defense. His blue robe was wet with sweat. The veins at his temples stood slightly. Every palm he sent out was heavier than the last, but the patch of ground beneath his feet was still being forced backward inch by inch.
And along the eastern line, the red- and blue-robed disciples were now truly suffering.
The white-robed disciples already had overwhelming numbers, and on top of that the Hundred Unicorns Pay Homage Formation advanced and tightened with terrifying coherence. However desperately the red and blue disciples fought, all they could do was keep themselves from breaking. Now and then one was thrown back. A sleeve tore. Blood showed. A red-robed young woman had one whole arm soaked through and still used Flying Phoenix Finger with the other hand to keep the white-robed line from closing. Beside her, a blue-robed disciple had already shattered the edge of his saber and simply abandoned it, using his palms instead, though the edges of his hands were already rubbed raw and bloody. Still he did not retreat by half a step. But the white-robed line closed in layer after layer, narrowing the space beneath the feet of the red and blue disciples until barely half their original room remained. Everyone there knew: once they gave way, the white-robed line would grind them to death where they stood.
And yet for all that, the single most dangerous point in the hall remained the knot at the center.
Qi Jianfeng drove one leg to force Feng Hong back, then another to shake Long Tianxiao off. The white-robed cult leader moved like a whole cliff-face of snow descending from above, killing intent no longer concealed in the least. Long Tianxiao could feel the white shadow before him thickening line by line while Feng Hong's breath behind him grew more ragged and broken. If they continued like this, in another few dozen exchanges, one of them would die and the other would fall soon after in the same ruined hall.
He could not go on like this.
In the darkest corner, Fang Yingjie, the roar of palms and legs already making his ears ring, still forced himself to keep his eyes open. He could not follow every change in every move. But he could see the blood at Long Tianxiao's lips growing heavier. He could see the blue figure trembling now from strain and still never once giving back even half a step. His throat tightened.
That thought had only just risen when something sharp lit in Long Tianxiao's eyes.
The next instant he forced one palm out hard enough to tilt Qi Jianfeng's leg-force by half an inch, and then, instead of falling back, he suddenly drove in. The blue robe flared. Under Dragon Walks the Nine Palaces he crossed several positions in a row. The palms no longer came in those dense, layered, central lines of before. Instead, in one flashing instant, they opened wide—
as if a true dragon, which had until then been chained beneath the centerline, had suddenly torn free and thrown itself skyward.
Feng Hong's heart jolted.
Long Tianxiao's palms were no longer rising one layer at a time.
It was as though they were erupting from every side of him—front and rear, left and right, above and below. The palm-wind came before the strikes themselves. The whole hall seemed suddenly full of dragons: dragons in the lamp-light, dragons in the shadow of the broken pillars, dragons in the dust and broken tile. In an instant the hall was flooded with palm-shadows so violent that one could no longer tell which was true, which false, which would arrive first and which after. It felt as though he meant to overturn the whole ruined temple with one strike.
Qi Jianfeng's gaze sank at once.
"Dragon Host in Turmoil?"
This was the most exhausting, most dangerous, and hardest-controlled killing line in the whole Myriad Dragons Palm.
Long Tianxiao was barely twenty. His mastery could not possibly be complete. And though his Transformation Dragon Art was deep for his age, it was still nowhere near enough to truly support this sort of all-hall killing technique. To force it out now meant wrenching the half-settled breath from his body and spending it all in one surge.
It was not victory he was betting.
It was both their lives.
Long Tianxiao said nothing.
Both palms had already opened completely.
The first wave of palm-shadows rose like dragons turning at the corners of the hall, forcing Qi Jianfeng to guard the centerline.
The second came in from left and right together, like a whole dragon-host charging the middle gate at once and dragging even the white-robed cult leader's sure footing into the flood.
By the time the third wave rose, every lamp in the ruined hall had gone wild. Dust, shattered tile, broken wood, torn hangings—everything was caught up and flung into the air. To the eye there was nothing left but dragons. To the ear nothing but the roar of dragon-voices.
Even Fang Yingjie, crouched in shadow, felt the violence of the move slam into his hiding place. Dust rained from above. Broken tile struck his shoulder and he hardly noticed. His heart was hammering wildly. He had never seen such a palm-art. He had never seen anyone wager his life on a single move like this.
And for all that, Qi Jianfeng could not ignore it.
The line of the Divine Unicorn Leg changed for the first time from an advancing pressure into a true defensive structure. The chain of flying leg-shadows no longer pressed level but turned and folded, cutting, blocking, and shedding force against the dragon-palms crashing in from all directions. But Long Tianxiao had already ceased caring for his own life. Palm after palm rolled over the hall more savage than the last, wave after wave of them, until he had truly forced the white-robed cult leader back three steps.
Only three.
But it was enough to drag Feng Hong back from the edge of death.
At once she felt the pressure before her chest loosen. The suffocating force that had been pinning her breath shut opened by half a crack. She looked up and saw Long Tianxiao standing amid the storm of dragon-shadows, blue robe blood-marked, face going faintly white, and yet still refusing to let the palms collapse. It was as though he would rather bleed out every last breath than allow Qi Jianfeng one more half-step toward her.
Something in her chest tightened sharply.
And just as sharply she saw what was wrong.
This move might have been overwhelming, but the cost of it was now visible everywhere in him. The veins along his brow and throat stood out. Blood that he had been forcing back now finally seeped through the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the front of his blue robe, one drop, then another. Dragon Host in Turmoil had indeed forced Qi Jianfeng back. But the price was already climbing out of his body and onto his face. The pallor there had gone from white to bluish-grey. Cold sweat soaked him. Yet he never blinked.
Long Tianxiao knew it better than anyone.
The moment the move began to run out, it felt as though whole sections of the breath inside his chest had been gouged hollow. The dragon-shadows had not yet fully faded, but inside his dantian and lungs there was already the frightening sensation of something close to breaking—of the whole body emptied out until only a frame remained, still standing by force of will. Yet he still held the last line of the move, still pinned Qi Jianfeng half a step farther back.
Because he knew that the instant he let go of that breath, Qi Jianfeng would be upon them again.
And the only thing he could still do was buy Feng Hong half an instant more.
Dragon-shadows crossed the hall.
The white robe retreated under them.
For a moment it even looked as though the Sacred Unicorn Cult leader had truly had his killing edge broken by that one desperate technique.
But beneath the shock spreading through the hall at Dragon Host in Turmoil, the chill in Qi Jianfeng's eyes only deepened.
Because he had seen it.
Long Tianxiao's breath was almost spent.
The Black Tortoise Aegis Breaks the Deadlock
At last the dragon-shadow began to scatter.
Yet what scattered was not calm.
It was like the aftermath of a tidal wave striking a cliff—the main force spent, but the echoes still enough to frighten the heart. Broken tiles still rattled down from the eaves. Lamps throughout the hall still shook. Dust and splinters turned in the air and took a long time to settle. Long Tianxiao stood in the fading storm of palms, blue robe whipping, chest heaving, both hands still forced into the tail-end of the posture. But the breath inside him had reached its true breaking point.
Qi Jianfeng saw it as clearly as daylight.
This white-robed cult leader had indeed been forced back three steps by Dragon Host in Turmoil, his robe snapping violently in the palm-wind. Yet each of those steps had landed without disorder. By the time the third touched down, the chill in his eyes had sharpened to a single line.
Because he knew:
the move had spent the boy.
However fierce Dragon Host in Turmoil might be, that was precisely why a youth of Long Tianxiao's age had no business forcing it out. Had he possessed the vast, armored foundation of the Black Tortoise lineage to support it, perhaps he might still have weathered the cost. As it was, he had only Transformation Dragon Art and the raw blood-heat of youth. To spread such a killing move across the whole hall and still drive Qi Jianfeng back three steps was already astonishing. But once the move ended, the breath had ended with it. The palm-line would scatter. The chest, the energy center, the meridians—somewhere in all of that there had to be a gap.
Among true masters, it is often only such a gap that decides life or death.
Qi Jianfeng's foot paused.
The next instant, he vanished.
Not truly vanished.
Only too fast for the eye.
He moved like a line of white lightning splitting a snow-night. One blink earlier he had still been three steps away. The next he had already cut straight through the seams of the fading dragon-shadows and entered Long Tianxiao's body-line from the front.
Long Tianxiao's heart sank.
Of course he knew a gap must follow this move. So the instant the palms began to scatter, he was already trying to force the chaotic breath back down into the dantian. But Dragon Host in Turmoil had emptied him too completely. The moment that breath tried to sink, his chest went hollow first. Then sweet blood surged straight upward. The whole line of his meridians and limbs felt as though someone had scraped through them from within with a blunt blade.
And in that shortest, most fatal instant, Qi Jianfeng was already there.
Long Tianxiao only barely managed to lift a palm.
Qi Jianfeng's kick gave him no time to fully set it.
The white hem flared once. The line of the leg cut straight through the thinnest part of the fading palm-shadow, not at chest or belly, but at the lock between shoulder, neck, and collarbone—the place hardest to turn, hardest to absorb, hardest to borrow force through. Long Tianxiao saw the white shadow flash. The next instant it felt as though a broken monument had slammed into him head-on.
Bang!
The sound was deep and heavy enough to shake the lamps.
A grunt tore out of Long Tianxiao's throat. His blue robe flew back. The whole of him was swept sideways two steps. The first he barely managed to plant. On the second, broken brick underfoot cracked apart. He could no longer hold the blood down. It welled and spilled from the corner of his mouth in a thin red line.
"Long Tianxiao!"
Feng Hong cried out at once.
The moment she saw him struck, she understood in full—he had indeed reached the end of that one desperate move. Her red robe flashed. She flung herself forward without a thought.
Yet Qi Jianfeng did not give her any path at all.
He had seen the gap.
He meant to end it there.
The white shadow rose again, and this time the leg descending over Long Tianxiao's head came not in layers, but like a whole cliff-face of night coming down with it.
If it landed, there would be no saving him.
For one instant the thought in Long Tianxiao's mind was utterly clear.
So this is where I die.
His palms could not gather.
His breath could not gather.
He could only see the white shadow falling.
And then a flash of red entered between them.
Feng Hong.
She knew she was injured. Knew that rushing in now was little better than throwing away her own life. But once the thought rose, the body had already moved. Her red robe flared. She was before him at once, Flying Phoenix Finger, Rending Feather Talon, and Heavenly Phoenix Grasp all rising together. She did not truly expect to stop the kick. She meant only to buy him half an instant.
Qi Jianfeng's eyes were iron.
You would block it?
Then die with him.
The line of the leg did not change.
If anything, it grew heavier.
And just then—
a strange, low tearing sound ripped through the hall.
Not like a needle.
Not like a sleeve-arrow.
Not like any ordinary hidden weapon.
It was a rounded, weighty, spinning sound, as though some thick-edged object were rolling and slicing through the wind. The sound had barely entered the ear when Qi Jianfeng's whole body tightened. The leg that had all but descended over Long Tianxiao's head shifted half a line in midair.
Clang!
A burst of sparks flew.
Something the size of a man's palm, black and cold-edged, struck the leg-shadow dead-on and knocked the killing line away by half a foot.
The thing was shaped like a small buckler of tortoise-shell form—four corners rounded, the middle slightly raised, the edge thin and keen as a blade. After crashing into Qi Jianfeng's leg it did not fall. It spun once through the air and flashed back into the darkness at the northern side of the hall.
For the first time, Qi Jianfeng's expression truly changed.
"The Black Tortoise Aegis!"
The words shook more than one heart in the hall.
Long Boyuan, who had been pinned in a hard fight against Helian Chi and Xue Wuli, had already begun to feel his heart turn cold seeing Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong about to die under Qi Jianfeng's legs. Feng Zhu was still bleeding and still locking Qi Zhenyue in place. Feng Jiuyi and Bai Suling were still in deadly contention. The eastern line of red and blue disciples was already near breaking. Yet this single small black aegis flashing out of the dark had cut open the boiling pressure in the hall at its deadliest point.
The next instant, a voice drifted lazily out of the darkness at the northern side.
"Well now, Brother Qi. You're a cult leader, not a butcher. Why so serious over a pair of youngsters?"
The voice was not loud, and there was no majestic authority in it. If anything, it carried a lazy, wine-soaked drawl, as though the speaker had only just taken another swallow from a flask and had not yet quite swallowed it down. At first hearing, seven parts of it sounded like idle amusement, and only three like actual mediation.
Yet the moment those words fell, the chill in Qi Jianfeng's eyes deepened instead of easing.
Because he knew the voice.
From his hiding place in the broken shadows, Fang Yingjie—his ears still ringing with the clash of blows—heard that lazy, almost drunken tone and did not know whether to breathe in relief or stare. He looked toward the north.
And there, in the darkness that had until then stood empty, a figure had appeared.
The man wore no black robe marked with tortoise-patterns, no grave attire befitting a senior of the True Martial Sect. He wore instead an old grey Daoist robe washed almost white with use, the sleeves stained here and there with spots that might have been wine or mud. The sash at his waist hung loose and crooked, as though he could not be bothered to tie it properly. His cloth shoes were caked with mountain dirt. In one hand he carried an old wine gourd still gleaming with oil from long handling, the mouth of it still damp from a recent drink. He leaned there all askew, looking less like a martial expert than some half-lost old drunk of a Daoist who had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong hour.
Fang Yingjie blinked.
This was the man who should have been in the northern seat?
And yet for all that, Qi Jianfeng did not move.
Not only did he not move—
the leg he had raised to kill them both withdrew.
"Xuanzhenzi."
Qi Jianfeng spoke slowly, his voice cold enough to frost over.
"You've come at a most convenient time."
The whole hall gave the smallest start at the name.
Very few people knew that formal Daoist name. Most only called him Old Daoist Xuan. He called himself little else. The name Xuanzhenzi belonged to a much older time, one almost no younger generation had ever touched.
But Old Daoist Xuan did not answer the greeting. He tilted his head, looked at Feng Hong still half-kneeling and coughing blood, then at Long Tianxiao, whose breath had clearly broken and yet still would not let him fall. He clicked his tongue and sighed, looking less like a sect elder than a man who had just seen two fine antiques smashed before his eyes.
"Tsk, tsk. Look at this."
"Two perfectly good youngsters, and you've battered them into this state. It really does spoil the scenery."
As he spoke, he raised one hand. The small black aegis spun out of the darkness and dropped lightly back into his sleeve. The motion was clean. But the moment he had it, he lifted the wine gourd again and took another swallow before finally adding, in that same unhurried, blurred tone,
"An old sacred assembly opens on old Tianmen ground, and before it's over, we've got people trying to kill each other in the middle of the hall."
"If word of that gets out into the martial world, Brother Qi, it won't look especially handsome."
He spoke slowly. Casually.
Yet everyone in the hall understood exactly what he meant.
Qi Jianfeng laughed coldly.
"What does or does not look handsome is not for anyone else to decide on my behalf."
Only then did his gaze truly leave Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong and come to rest on the old Daoist.
"Now that you're here, speak plainly. Are you here tonight to protect those two?"
Old Daoist Xuan took another swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and still looked thoroughly unpresentable. Yet the answer he gave was impossible not to take seriously.
"Protect them? Not quite."
"I had a bit too much to drink, the feet weren't listening to the mind, and I came wandering about looking for somewhere out of the wind to sleep. Somehow or other I blundered into all this excitement."
"But since I've blundered into it, it's a bit hard to pretend I'm deaf and blind. If word gets out later that the True Martial Sect won't even look after the youngsters right in front of it, where exactly am I supposed to put my old face?"
A sharper line of frost appeared in Qi Jianfeng's eyes.
"Then let us see."
The words had not yet finished when the white robe rose again.
This time he moved more directly than before, more domineeringly than before. There was no testing in it now, no turning. The white shadow drove in like a level-moving avalanche. His feet shifted once and the leg-shadow was already within three feet of Old Daoist Xuan, the line of it still the straight, heaviest, most orthodox crushing force in the Divine Unicorn Leg. Before the whole hall, he clearly meant to stamp this shabby old wine-drunk Daoist's force into the floor as well.
The hall went still.
Because by every appearance, the man did not look remotely like someone who should have been able to take such a kick.
Old Daoist Xuan did not dodge.
He did not even put the wine gourd down.
He simply raised one hand.
The palm was not fast.
It was not large.
It did not carry the great, overawing grandeur of Long Tianxiao's line of palm-force.
And yet, the moment it rose, everyone in the hall felt the same strange thing:
it was not like a man striking.
It was like a great stone gate, buried beneath the earth for a hundred years, being pushed open at last by half an inch.
The moment the palm rose, the inner force behind it rolled out from his sleeves in a deep, immense flood. Even the lamps nearest him seemed pressed lower beneath its weight.
Boom.
Palm met leg.
The sound lacked the explosive violence of Long Tianxiao's head-on clashes. It lacked the wild spread of Dragon Host in Turmoil. Yet somehow it was the deepest impact of the whole night. It was like two mountains striking one another in the dark beneath the earth, making the chest itself go heavy.
Qi Jianfeng's white robe trembled.
The old grey sleeve of Old Daoist Xuan stirred lightly.
The wine gourd in his hand tipped—and not one drop spilled.
Neither man retreated.
But after that collision, the look on Qi Jianfeng's face finally changed in earnest. Because he now knew with certainty that the old Daoist before him was nothing like the drunken ruin he appeared. And not merely because he had thrown the Black Tortoise Aegis well. The depth of this man's Golden Armor Divine Art had indeed reached a frightening height.
Old Daoist Xuan, for his part, had just measured Qi Jianfeng's Divine Unicorn Leg in turn. His heart sank slightly. Yet on his face there was still only the same half-drunken, almost ridiculous expression, and he even smacked his lips before saying,
"Tsk."
"Brother Qi's legs have gotten a lot heavier in the last ten years."
For half a breath, the whole hall fell quiet.
Even the bloodiest knot of white-, red-, and blue-robed disciples along the eastern line eased, however slightly, beneath the weight of that one exchange. Because everyone understood: after this point, the people who could truly decide tonight's outcome were no longer Long Tianxiao, Feng Hong, Qi Zhenyue, or Feng Zhu.
It was these two.
Slowly, Qi Jianfeng withdrew his leg.
The killing intent under the white robe did not dissipate, but it no longer held the single-minded insistence that Long Tianxiao and Feng Hong be crushed to death at once. Because he knew now that with Old Daoist Xuan standing there, however strong he might be, the two youngsters would no longer be so easy to kill before the whole hall. More importantly, once the northern seat of the True Martial Sect had entered the fight, tonight could no longer be called a clash of three gates. The fourth had arrived.
Old Daoist Xuan did not press the advantage. He only drew his sleeves together and leaned there against a broken pillar as though he might fall asleep at any moment, and yet somehow became a wall no one could truly pass.
He looked at Qi Jianfeng and took another swallow.
"If you still want to fight tonight, I'll keep you company. That's not hard."
"But if we go much farther, I doubt it's only this old hall that'll collapse."
Qi Jianfeng did not answer at once.
Bai Suling had already withdrawn her talons and stepped back to the white-robed line. Feng Jiuyi did the same from the other side. Helian Chi and Xue Wuli, seeing their cult leader no longer pressing in, each gave half a step and released Long Boyuan from the dead pressure between them. Along the eastern line, the full murderous crush had not entirely stopped, but it too was beginning to settle.
Only Qi Zhenyue still stared at Long Tianxiao as though fire meant to burn through him.
Even he did not move again.
Because his father had not.
The wind still blew through the ruined hall. Firelight still flared and dimmed over the broken images in the four corners. Dust, shattered brick, broken wood, smashed tile—all of it lay scattered beneath the hall's chaos. Yet the killing web that had seemed about to swallow everyone in it only moments earlier had, at last, been forced to stop.
After a long pause, Qi Jianfeng laughed coldly.
"Very well."
"Tonight, for Brother Xuan's sake, we leave it here."
"But this debt will be settled one day."
The words were very light.
And very heavy.
Because everyone in the hall understood:
this was not an end.
It was a mark set down in the ledger.
Old Daoist Xuan only tucked his sleeves together and leaned there before the northern seat like some crooked, impossible door that no one could force open. Qi Jianfeng's gaze passed over Feng Hong once, then Long Tianxiao, and the chill in it had not eased. If anything, he looked as though he were engraving both their faces into memory.
Then the white robe snapped once and he turned away.
Bai Suling, Helian Chi, Xue Wuli, Qi Zhenyue, and the fifteen white-robed disciples all followed suit, drawing back in layers. Even in retreat they still carried the pressure of snow-driven cold. It was like a white tide rolling back into the mountains—not gone, only no longer immediately before one's eyes.
Only after the Sacred Unicorn Cult had truly withdrawn several zhang did Feng Hong finally lose the strength to hold herself steady. Her body swayed once.
Long Tianxiao caught her at once.
She had still meant to force herself upright through sheer pride, but the pain in her shoulder and ribs surged again under the movement. Blood rose once more to her lips. Long Tianxiao himself was hardly better—Dragon Host in Turmoil and Qi Jianfeng's two heavy kicks had already thrown the flow of his meridians into near-chaos—but the hand that caught her was still steady.
"Don't move."
His voice had gone hoarse. His breath was ragged. The hand did not loosen.
Feng Hong looked up at him.
The young lord of Azure Dragon Isle before her was even paler now than before, blood still marked the edge of his mouth, and the traces of Qi Jianfeng's leg-force still showed at his shoulder and side. But his eyes were still bright.
Something in her chest turned suddenly soft and sour at once. She opened her mouth. There were many things she might have said. In the end all that came out was one low sentence:
"Are you mad?"
Long Tianxiao blinked, then somehow managed the faintest trace of a smile.
"Not yet."
"If I were truly mad, I'd have done more than take a few blows for you."
By rights she should have snapped at him.
And yet she did not know why, hearing that line, the hard flame in her eyes—so tight and cold till now—only wavered once under the night wind and softened by half a degree.
Elsewhere, Feng Zhu, one hand braced on the broken pillar, at last managed to let the blood-ridden breath in her chest go. Feng Jiuyi hurried over to support her, fury and aftershock still plain on her face. Long Boyuan, now free of the front-and-back pressure from Helian Chi and Xue Wuli, looked at Long Tianxiao with eyes so dark they almost seemed to drip. In the end, however, he said nothing. He only bowed first to Old Daoist Xuan.
"Many thanks, Senior Xuan."
Old Daoist Xuan waved a sleeve.
"What are you thanking me for? It's not as if I came here specially to save anyone."
"I drank a bit too much last night, my feet took to wandering, and somehow I wandered all the way here."
As he spoke, though, his gaze flicked once—very quickly—toward the heap of broken wood and shadow in the corner of the hall.
The look was so fast almost no one noticed it.
Then he took another swallow, muttered something nobody could quite make out, and leaned crookedly against the broken pillar again as though about to doze on the spot.
And in that heap of broken wood—
Fang Yingjie had fainted.
He was too badly hurt and had held out too long. From the fall, to the stream, to the ruined hall, to this old sacred assembly drenched in blood and fire—he had gone without water, without food, without rest, and had stayed awake by sheer force of will to the end of it. The moment Qi Jianfeng withdrew and Old Daoist Xuan appeared and the killing intent in the hall finally loosened, the breath Fang Yingjie had been holding onto at last failed him.
In the blur before blackness took him, he thought he heard the wine gourd knock lightly against the pillar with a dull thunk. After that the lamps, the broken hall, the white robes, the red figure, the blue robe—all of it was swallowed layer by layer into the night.
And so this ruined hall, abandoned for centuries, took into itself one more memory of the Four Sacred Gates of Tianmen: their descendants turning on one another, testing one another, trying to kill one another, and shielding one another all in the span of a single night.
The Black Tortoise Aegis broke the night.
The broken covenant turned to ash.
Poetic Coda
Phoenix fire reached heaven; white robes stirred the killing star.
All through the ruined hall the dragon's cry rolled wide.
A thousand palm-shadows guarded blood-bright wings through the dark.
The Black Tortoise Aegis split the wind and returned to the northern seat.
Blue robes stood blood-marked at the center of the hall.
From this night on, the old alliance was ash.
The Four Sacred Beasts said nothing—
And watched the darkness deepen.
(End of Chapter Eighteen)