Aboard the floating flagship Sky-Cleaver, the polished sandalwood deck creaked under the furious pacing of Grand Elder Xuan Ji.
The old grandmaster looked like a corpse dredged from a frozen marsh. His luxurious white-and-gold daoist robes were rumpled and stained with spattered black bile. His ancient, liver-spotted hands trembled so wildly that the golden tassels on his sleeves chattered against each other. Across his sallow forehead, dark purple veins pulsed erratically as the toxic dirt piled up in his spirit veins fought against his agitated heart.
Fourteen years.
That was all the time he had left before the cold hand of mortality dragged his soul down to the Yellow Springs. Three hundred years of training, twelve failed breakthrough attempts, and thirty thousand high-grade spirit stones burned up in bitter seclusion. All of it had yielded only brittle bones, hardened channels, and the terror of oblivion.
The Ancient Genesis Spring of the Lonely Forest was his final gamble. If he seized the spring, cleansed his withered dantian with pure ancient water. Then he stole the formula for Jade-Dew Wine, he could shatter the bottleneck of Peak Nascent Soul and step into the immortal radiance of the Soul Formation Realm. Another eight hundred years of youth, power, and life!
And now, down in the defile below, his holy crusade had degenerated into a public outdoor picnic.
“Look at them...” Xuan Ji wheezed, his breath rattling in his dry chest like dry leaves inside an empty tomb. “Look at my students! Consorting with beasts! Dipping bread into demon soup! Slandering the sacred name of Heavenly Sword Manor before the whole world!”
Behind him on the quarterdeck, the heavy thrum of golden spiritual qi announced the arrival of Abbot Hui Lun.
The venerable abbot of Pure Lotus Abbey stepped off a floating lotus petal of golden light, his saffron robes billowing in the mountain wind. His nine-ring bronze staff struck the deck with a single, ringing note that cut through the hysteria choking the bridge.
“Grand Elder Xuan Ji,” Hui Lun said, his voice solemn, deep, and devoid of the righteous frenzy that had driven them across the border. “I have witnessed the valley floor with my Buddha-eye. There’s no blood altar. There are no captive mortals. The beings below are living in harmony. They have met our blades not with slaughter, but with warm bread and medicine.”
Xuan Ji turned his bloodshot eyes upon the abbot. His lips curled into a feral, poisonous sneer. “Harmony? Medicine? Hui Lun, you blind old bald fool! That’s demonic glamor! The creature is an Ancient Chaos parasite! It poisons the minds of our young men with sweet honey and foul illusions to harvest their souls!”
Hui Lun closed his eyes, slowly turning his sandalwood prayer beads between his calloused fingers.
“The truth is plain to any soul whose eyes aren’t blinded by worldly greed,” Hui Lun replied softly. “You didn’t summon thirty thousand righteous fighters to purge evil, Xuan Ji. You summoned us to slaughter a peaceful safe hall so that you could plunder their spirit springs to prolong your own dying breath.”
The words struck the deck like a physical hammer blow.
Surrounding captains, deacons, and ship officers froze in total horror. Elder Liu Chen of the Azure Cloud Sect, who had just stepped onto the quarterdeck alongside Elder Mo Qian of the Mystic Talisman Hall, gasped. Then he took a half-step back.
“Hui Lun!” Xuan Ji shrieked, his voice rising into a cracked, frantic crescendo. “You dare speak treason on my own flagship?! Pure Lotus Abbey swore a sacred blood promise to purge the western border!”
“The promise was sworn to eradicate demons who slaughtered human caravans,” Hui Lun said firmly. He opened his calm, dark eyes. “It wasn’t sworn to butcher an enlightened sovereign who feeds our students when they’re helpless. Pure Lotus Abbey shall not draw steel against the Myriad Spirit Safe hall. By the power of the Golden Lotus Vow, my four thousand monks hereby withdraw from this campaign.”
With a sweep of his saffron sleeve, Hui Lun turned his back on the Grand Elder, preparing to leap down to join his chanting monks on the grassy knoll.
“Withdraw?” Xuan Ji whispered, his voice shaking with a terrifying, poisonous intensity. “You think you can walk away from my crusade? You think you can leave me to rot while you stance as saints?!”
Xuan Ji lunged forward, plunging his right hand into the hidden inner lining of his golden robe.
When his hand emerged, he was clutching a box-shaped magic charm of black fiery jade, carved with seven blazing star-patterns of crimson red stone. The magic charm thrummed with an evil, choking slaughter-qi that made the surrounding heat on the deck drop twenty degrees in an instant.
Elder Liu Chen’s face turned paper-white. “The... The Seven-Star Annihilation Core Tally?! Grand Elder, no! That magic charm is the old family emergency decree reserved only for the total destruction of grand demonic kingdoms!”
“I’m the Grand Elder of Heavenly Sword Manor!” Xuan Ji roared, spitting blood onto the jade slab. “My will is the will of the Righteous Path! Captains of the fleet, heed the old family tally! Align the Seven Star War-Galleons! Deploy the Seven Star Annihilation Array!”
Elder Mo Qian rushed forward, his hands outstretched in desperate protest. “Grand Elder, hold your hand! Five thousand of our own core students are down in that defile! Sword Elder Bai Chong is down there! Students of Azure Cloud and Crimson Flame are trapped in the center! If you unleash the Seven Star Array, the entire canyon will be erased! They will all be burned up!”
Xuan Ji turned his wild, bloodshot eyes upon Mo Qian, his face twisted into the ugly mask of a madman who had crossed beyond the boundary of reason.
“Then they shall die as glorious martyrs for the sect!” Xuan Ji screamed, his spittle flying across the deck. “Their names will be carved upon the Hall of Heroes! Their deaths will be blamed entirely upon the demonic beast monster! When the ash settles, who will dare question the righteous victory of Heavenly Sword Manor?!”
A sickening silence fell over the bridge.
The sect elders stared at the ancient grandmaster, their hearts turning to lead. In his desperate, clawing terror of his own impending death, Xuan Ji had abandoned every scrap of human empathy, every moral precept. Every shred of traditional honor. He was willing to butcher five thousand of his own young students just to turn to steam the evidence of his humiliation and claim the spirit spring for himself.
“Captain Zhao,” Xuan Ji whispered. His voice turned dead and poisonous as he pointed the glowing tally at the trembling flagship commander. “Lock the main helm into the Starry Septagram formation. Link the spiritual furnaces of all seven main galleons through the master channel. Any helmsman who hesitates for half a breath shall have his soul pulled out and burned in the fire core.”
Captain Zhao’s hands shook wildly against the brass helm spokes. He looked down through the watching viewport at the five thousand young students eating turnip soup below. He knew that his own youngest nephew was among the trapped vanguard. But under the blood-soaked power of the old family command tally, refusal meant immediate total ruin for himself and his entire mortal lineage.
“Furnaces... Furnaces engaged,” Captain Zhao choked out, tears of shame burning behind his eyes. “Opening spirit-stone reserve vaults one through six. Seven galleons entering attack formation.”
Across the sky above the Grand Defile, the huge golden warships began their dark maneuver. Massive bronze gears groaned within their hulls, and long runic pylons extended from their keel plates, linked with one another through crackling beams of packed golden starlight.
Down in the meadow, the air changed with terrifying abruptness.
The pleasant scent of turnip broth and roasted scallions was suddenly overpowered by the sharp, ozone-heavy stench of high-yield spiritual burning. Students who had been happily dipping flatbread stopped chewing. They looked up into the sky, their eyes widening in sudden, numbed dread as they recognized the telltale sharp-angled posture of their own sect’s supreme siege formation.
“That... That’s the Seven Star Array,” a young Heavenly Sword student whispered, his bowl slipping from his numb fingers and shattering against the clover. “They’re not aiming at the ridges. They’re aiming right at the center of the defile! They’re aiming at us!”
“Grand Elder Xuan Ji is going to kill us all!” another swordsman wailed, scrambling backward into the soft marshmallow jelly in sheer panic. “He’s firing the core fire! He’s sacrificing the entire vanguard!”
Panic threatened to erupt into a stampede. But the gentle, soothing spiritual aura of the safe hall held them anchored.
Over by the circular sword fence, Gu Qingfeng rose slowly to his feet.
The old Sword Saint didn’t look drunk anymore. The bleary amusement in his eyes had vanished, replaced by an ancient, terrible sorrow that chilled the air around him. He looked up at the Sky-Cleaver, his fingers lightly brushing the green willow twig tucked behind his ear.
“Xuan Ji, you terrible dog,” Gu Qingfeng murmured. His voice as were cold as deep winter ice. “You were a coward two hundred years ago, and you’re a coward today. To turn old family cannons upon the children of your own sect because your withered bones fear the grave... You have spit upon every master who ever held a blade in Heavenly Sword Manor.”
A soft, sorrowful chime echoed through Lin Xiao’s mindscape down in the meadow, registering the dramatic shift in hostile command:
Down in the clover, Lin Xiao paused with his brass ladle halfway to another bowl of broth.
He felt the sudden, sickening surge of destructive energy streaming from the fleet above. It wasn’t the clumsy fire of Yan Lie, nor the disciplined, clean metal-qi of Bai Chong’s students. It was the rancid, desperate malice of an old man who valued five thousand young lives less than his own pride.
Lin Xiao handed the brass ladle to Su Ling’er.
“Ling’er,” Lin Xiao said softly, his voice devoid of its usual teasing playfulness.
The nine-tailed fox maiden looked at him, her ruby eyes steady and calm despite the rising pressure in the sky. “Yes, Sect Master?”
“Have Uncle Xiong and the aunties guide the disarmed students toward the cave entrance behind the watchtower,” Lin Xiao instructed quietly. “Keep them calm. Hand out the leftover scallion pancakes. Tie Shan, ensure the underground shock baffles are locked in place.”
“Aye, little boss,” Tie Shan called down from the ridge, his deep voice grim and steady. “The shelters are heavy with three layers of dark rock. Not a pebble will fall on them.”
“And you, Master?” Su Ling’er asked gently, her white tails resting against his forearm in quiet affection.
Lin Xiao reached down and untied the sash of his azure scholar robes.
“An old man up there has fully lost his manners,” Lin Xiao murmured. He watched the golden hulls of the seven largest war galleons lock into a huge sky septagram above the clouds. “He’s about to break a lot of expensive kitchenware if someone doesn’t bounce him back into his seat.”