The sky above the Grand Desolate Forest began to groan under the weight of fifty thousand burning spirit stones.
High above the clouds, seven huge golden war-galleons belonging to Heavenly Sword Manor completed their dark sky-high posture. Each warship was over three hundred paces in length, its gold-trimmed cedar hull armored with plates of cold-forged starlight bronze. From the keel of each vessel, massive runic pylons forged from meteor-iron dropped like clockwork talons. It extended hundreds of feet into the thin mountain air.
With an ear-splitting, metal screech that echoed across forty miles of rugged peaks, the seven warships locked together.
Beams of packed solar-starlight shot between the pylons, weaving a blinding sharp-angled septagram across the upper air. The seven main floating keels formed the seven apexes of the ancient Big Dipper Annihilation Matrix, their intersecting lines of gold-white star-fire pulsing with an unnatural, violent rhythm that tore the high-sky cirrus clouds into ragged shreds of white fleece.
Down in the Grand Defile, the surrounding spiritual pressure climbed with choking speed.
The sunlight vanished, replaced by an artificial, blinding golden twilight. The sheer crushing weight generated by the linked hulls caused the canyon air to compress into a dense, stifling sky soup. Hundred-year-old pines along the northern cliffs cracked and bent toward the ground. Pebbles on the canyon road began to jitter and float an inch above the dirt before being crushed into powder by fluctuating gravity waves.
“Hurry, into the shelters!” Uncle Xiong’s deep bellowed from the forest mouth.
The burly bear smith, along with dozens of beastfolk wardens and mortal artisans, was actively ushering the five thousand disarmed crusaders toward the arched dark rock entrances leading down into the underground grottoes.
The young students of Heavenly Sword Manor, Crimson Flame Pavilion, and Azure Cloud Sect didn’t resist. They stumbled forward, their faces pale, their eyes filled with hollow heartbreak as they looked back up at the golden septagram burning in the heavens.
“They’re firing the Big Dipper core...” a core student whispered, clutching a warm mantou bun against his chest like a holy relic. “My Master is aboard the second galleon... He knew I was down here. He knew all of us were down here.”
“Don’t look up, young brother,” a gentle fox-maiden said softly. She took his trembling elbow and guiding him through the heavy stone portals. “Our underground caverns were carved by Master Tie Shan from solid dark rock. There are three layers of shock-absorbing timber and warm ginger tea inside. You’ll be safe.”
Tears slipped down the young swordsman’s cheeks as he stepped into the cool, protective darkness of the grotto.
Within ten minutes, the floor of the Grand Defile was entirely empty of mortal life.
The food carts had been wheeled away. The cooking pots had been secured in the hillside kitchens. The disarmed swords had been stowed safely in the heavy storehouses.
High on the southern ridge, Gu Qingfeng sat cross-legged on a flat granite slab overlooking the tiered arena. The Sword Saint had his chipped gourd propped between his knees, his green robes fluttering in the searing downdraft. Beside him, Tie Shan stood leaning against his five-hundred-jin meteor-iron hammer, his thick iron-gray fur bristling with static charge.
“Old Bear,” Gu Qingfeng murmured, squinting up at the blinding sky septagram. “Heavenly Sword Manor’s Seven Star Array was designed during the ancient beast wars to crack mountain fortresses. Fifty thousand high-grade spirit stones channeled through seven master keels... That’s enough packed metal-qi to boil an inland sea into dry salt.”
Tie Shan let out a low, rumbling chuckle that rattled the granite pebbles beneath his paws.
“Let ’em fire, Brother Gu,” Tie Shan replied, patting his hammer’s heavy face with broad satisfaction. “I’ve watched that little blue ball take a direct swing from my five-hundred-jin titan hammer when we were testing his membrane thickness last spring. You know what happened? My hammer bounced back and nearly took my own whiskers off. Meanwhile, the little boss didn’t even drop his peeled grape. If Xuan Ji thinks raw striking force is going to pop an ancient water-god, the old fool is in for a very expensive surprise.”
Down near the tree line, Xiao Hei lay sprawled across a bed of cool pine needles, fully calm by the whistling gale. The great wolf’s front paws were crossed, his massive black chin resting comfortably on the moss. His plumy tail gave two rhythmic thumps against the earth. To Xiao Hei, the roaring golden armada was merely noisy scenery. Whatever his master chose to do was simply universal law taking its natural course.
Only one figure remained in the center of the vast, clover-carpeted tiered arena.
Lin Xiao stood alone beside his low cedar tea table.
He looked down at his sleeves. The azure linen scholar robes that Su Ling’er had woven with such care were fully clean, fully flawless by the soot of Yan Lie’s dragons or the honey-silk of Tie Shan’s nets.
“Ling’er spent three whole days hemming these cuffs,” Lin Xiao muttered to himself. He ran a thumb over the delicate silver thread. “If thirty billion jin of golden starlight singes even a single corner of this linen, she’s going to cross her arms, twitch her nine tails, and give me that quiet, deeply disappointed look for the rest of the autumn.”
Lin Xiao gave a small, resolute nod. “Let’s not ruin nice clothes over an old man’s temper tantrum.”
With a soft, shimmering pulse of sky light, Lin Xiao undid his linen sash. In a fraction of an instant, the scholar robes, the undershirt, the stitched belt. His cloth travel slippers dissolved into shimmering azure specks and vanished into the bottomless storage outer edge of his Ancient Chaos Void dantian.
At the exact same moment, the skeletal and muscular strength of his human avatar relaxed.
His limbs softened. His shoulders curved inward. His torso smoothly melted into a plump, perfectly ball-shaped droplet of pure sky fluid. Within three seconds, the slender eighteen-year-old scholar had happily collapsed into his favorite, most comfortable form: a semi-clear, sapphire-blue slime forty inches in width, resting comfortably upon the green clover.
He dropped onto the turf with a heard, rubbery gloop.
Lin Xiao let out a long, luxurious sigh that rippled through his fluid mantle like waves across a calm garden pond.
Ahhh. So much better.
Having knees and elbows was wonderful for holding teapots, eating dumplings with chopsticks, and patting Xiao Hei on the head. But a four-billion-jin moving death beam was dropping from the stratosphere. Then, having bones was an unnecessary load-bearing debt. Bones could crack. Joints could dislocate. Spines could compress.
A sphere of pure ancient fluid, on the other hand, had no bones to break. It had only water’s skin, internal thickness, and infinite stretch.
Lin Xiao squished his blue mass downward, flattening into a wide, rubbery pancake against the grass. Then popped back up into a perfect round ball with a cheerful shhk-pop. He rolled two paces to the left, rolled two paces to the right. Then sprouted two small, semi-clear pseudopods to stretch his fluid core like a morning exerciser loosening up before a light jog.
Directly above him, the golden septagram in the sky reached critical starting.
The seven war-galleons shuddered wildly as their core spiritual furnaces dumped fifty thousand spirit stones into the master total ruin channel. From each of the seven keel pylons erupted a pillar of blazing bright golden-white star-fire three hundred feet in width. The seven pillars came together at the central focal node of the septagram. He condensed into a single, blinding sphere of tightly packed starlight that burned brighter than ten noon suns.
The surrounding heat in the upper air skyrocketed past ten thousand degrees. The sheer sky shifted weight generated a sonic pressure wave that stripped the leaves from trees three miles away.
Inside Lin Xiao’s mindscape, the cool, sweet-sounding voice of the Omniscient Dao Spirit chimed with clean, cold and exact clarity:
“Host. The Seven Star Annihilation Array has achieved one hundred percent charge capacity. Spatial targeting map points are locked exactly upon your current fluid epicenter.”
A crisp, semi-clear blue screen materialized before Lin Xiao’s spiritual sight:
Lin Xiao examined the tracking data with mild, cheerful interest. Three point eight billion jin of striking force. That’s quite a solid thud. Dao Spirit, what’s our optimal rebound angle?
“Counts indicate that an internal non-Newtonian membrane hardening tuned to eighty-two point four degrees of surface curve will achieve ninety-nine point seven percent moving glow,” the Dao Spirit replied smoothly. “The downward vector will be transformed entirely into an upward curved rebound, with negligible heat fading away into the local soil.”
“So basically, like bouncing a tennis ball off a stone driveway?”
“Exactly, Host. Though in this instance, you’re both the tennis ball and the stone driveway.”
Lin Xiao wobbled his jelly in amused agreement. “Splendid. Let’s make sure we bounce it high enough that it doesn’t knock over Tie Shan’s laundry lines.”
High above on the prow of the Sky-Cleaver, Grand Elder Xuan Ji leaned over the railing, his bloodshot eyes bulging with manic, fanatical triumph.
He held the glowing Seven-Star tally high into the blinding golden light, his voice screaming above the roar of the charging array:
“See the righteous judgment of Heavenly Sword Manor!” Xuan Ji shrieked, his face lit up by the blazing bright glow of the dying sun. “Let the earth be split! Let the mountains be leveled! Fire the Total ruin Beam! Turn the demon and this entire valley into cosmic dust!”
With a sound like the tearing of the heavens themselves, the central focal node blew up.
A huge column of blinding golden-white starlight, eighty yards thick and burning with three point eight billion jin of packed moving fury, plummeted from the stratosphere straight toward the tiny blue blob sitting in the clover.