The mountain clearing between the safe hall’s stone walls and the hovering shadow of the Nine-Ghost Blood Soul Cauldron was so quiet that the faint hiss of falling pine needles sounded like burning grass.
Thousands of eyes—both the anxious beastfolk peering from behind the low roof walls and the surviving demonic officers clutching their bruised ribs in the holding pens—were locked upon the lone sapphire orb resting on the open turf.
Lin Xiao didn’t prepare a defensive ward. He didn’t draw a magic charm of unbending stone. He didn’t issue a blood-soaked proclamation promising to sever the demonic elder’s limbs and mount his skull upon the castle gates.
Instead, with a delightfully elastic bounce, he hopped forward thirty paces into the very center of the no-man’s-land. The churned loam, still damp from Xiao Long’s morning downpour, gave a soft squelch beneath his floating mass.
With a graceful flick of an azure slime arm, Lin Xiao accessed his internal spatial storage.
A low, polished tea table crafted from fragrant golden sandalwood materialized upon the grass. Its dark grain was rubbed to a satiny finish with beeswax, resting upon four stout carved legs shaped like resting badgers. Beside the table appeared a square woven mat of dry mountain rushes and a small, unglazed red clay fire bowl filled with glowing peachwood coals that gave off a clean, sweet aroma of summer fruit.
From his dantian void, Lin Xiao produced a slender, pear-shaped flagon of glazed celadon fine china and two matching wide-rimmed drinking cups. He even set down a small bamboo dish holding five crisp, salted lotus seeds, arranging everything with the careful, deliberate care of an experienced tea master hosting an afternoon gathering.
“Master...” Su Ling’er whispered from the low roof wall, her fingers hovering over her silk ribbons, her nine tails twitching with anxious wonder. “Is he... Setting out afternoon drinks?”
“That’s our Sovereign, alright,” Tie Shan muttered. He leaned both elbows on the top of his ten-thousand-jin shield with a wide, rumbling chuckle that rattled his breastplate. “Faced with a five-hundred-foot demon pot that boils souls, he pulls out the celadon fine china and snack plates. You’ve got to admire a man who knows what matters in life. Iron and blood rust away, but good vintage is forever.”
Behind the wooden bars of the detention enclosure, several captured demonic fighters peered through the slats. Their bruised eyes were wide with total incredulity.
“Is... Is that blue monster insane?” one demonic lieutenant stammered, rubbing his throbbing neck. “Elder Han Gu has flayed three sects alive! He once wiped out an entire mortal mountain county. That was because their tea tribute had too many stems! You don’t serve Elder Han drinks... You kneel and beg for a quick death!”
Lin Xiao carefully uncorked the celadon flagon.
The sweet, glowing bouquet of Aged Jade-Dew Spirit Wine burst into the morning air.
Brewed from spirit peaches harvested on the eastern slopes, mixed with cold springwater drawn from the deepest rock underground water beds and fermented for three seasons in sealed cedar casks, the wine carried a pure, crystal-clear aroma. It instantly cut through the skin-burning, rotten-egg grease hanging beneath the demonic cloud platform. It replaced the stench of ancient slaughter with the gentle fragrance of blooming orchards and mountain honey.
Lin Xiao tipped the flagon. He poured a stream of pale emerald liquid into the first celadon cup. The wine caught the filtered sunlight, shimmering with delicate jade ripples.
He looked up into the churning crimson sky. There, Elder Han Gu was still hovering with his dragon-bone staff raised in mid-threat.
“Elder Han Gu, right?” Lin Xiao’s telepathic voice floated upward, calm, mellow, and entirely devoid of fear or posturing. It carried the polite, hospitable rhythm of a village shopkeeper welcoming a weary traveler on a rainy Tuesday. “Look, friend, it’s a lovely morning. The sky is clearing, the birds are starting to sing again. My friends down here have just finished breakfast. Do we really need to scream and throw lightning bolts at each other?”
Han Gu didn’t move.
The skeletal elder stood frozen atop his blood cloud, his jaw slightly open. His sunken black eyes stared downward in sheer, blank confusion. He had spent three hundred years in the eastern continent’s bloodiest sect. He had negotiated with poisonous demon monarchs and faced righteous sect grandmasters who spat righteous scripture before drawing swords.
Never in three hundred years had an opponent sat down on the battlefield and poured him a drink.
“I mean, just look at that cooking pot of yours,” Lin Xiao continued in his warm deep. He gestured with a fluid tentacle toward the five-hundred-foot bronze behemoth hanging by its ghost-iron chains. “It really is a marvelous piece of kitchen equipment. Around here, we have thousands of hungry mouths to feed every day. We’ve got fresh turnips from the lower terraces, giant river fish from Xiao Long’s lakes, and wild mountain herbs growing on every ridge.”
Lin Xiao paused, taking a moment to refill his own cup with a happy, bubbling sound.
“If you’re tired of living in damp caves, sleeping on piles of dried bones, and drinking cold blood that probably gives you awful parasites,” Lin Xiao said with total sincerity, “you could just retire here with us. We could set up your cooking pot in the central plaza. You could help Tie Shan and Ling’er simmer giant batches of hearty noodle soup for the whole valley! You’d have a warm cedar bed, clean clothes that don’t smell of rotting flesh, three hot meals a day. You could soak in the upper stone springs every single evening. Wouldn’t that be a hundred times nicer than whatever misery your demonic sect has been making you do?”
A deep, choking silence dropped over the valley.
Even the mountain wind seemed to hold its breath. A young badger cub on the wall dropped his practice wooden stick, the wood clicking against the stone with startling clarity. Down in the holding pens, several younger demonic students looked at each other with sneaky, longing glances. After years of being beaten, poisoned. Then he fed corpse-broth by their masters, the idea of three warm meals a day and hot spring baths sounded like total paradise.
For three entire heartbeats, Elder Han Gu didn’t make a sound.
His skeletal face went through a terrifying metamorphosis. The pale, parchment skin over his temples turned from white to mottled purple. His sunken black glass eyes bulged until thick red veins spiderwebbed across the whites. And his jaw began to shudder with such violent intensity that his yellowed teeth sounded like clattering bone dice.
Then, the storm broke.
“YOU... YOU INSOLENT... SHAPELESS... PUDDLE OF SLIME!”
Han Gu’s voice erupted not as speech. But as an ear-splitting, world-ending shriek of shattered ego and psychotic outrage. The sheer sonic pressure tore the crimson clouds above him into ragged shreds. It sent blast waves rolling across the valley floor that knocked loose roof tiles from the lower barns.
“A SLIME! A PATHETIC, BRAINLESS WATER MAGGOT DARES OFFER THIS ANCESTOR TEA?!” Han Gu screamed, blood spraying from his withered lips as his throat strained to its total limit. “YOU DARE SUGGEST THAT I—ELDER HAN GU OF THE SACRED BLOOD SEA SECT, REFINER OF SEVEN CITIES, FLAYER OF A HUNDRED THOUSAND SOULS—SHOULD RETIRE TO CHOP TURNIPS AND BOIL NOODLE BROTH FOR MONGREL BEASTS?!”
His dragon-bone staff shuddered wildly in his grip. Its weeping skull spat streams of black, acid-burning fire.
“I HAVE SLAIN SECTOR KINGS! I HAVE DRUNK THE MARROW OF RIGHTEOUS SECT PATRIARCHS!” Han Gu shrieked, his voice climbing to an unnatural, screeching crescendo. “YOU WANT ME TO WEAR AN APRON?! YOU WANT ME TO LADLE NOODLES INTO WOODEN BOWLS?!”
On the turf below, Lin Xiao let out a soft, fluid sigh.
He lifted the celadon cup with a tiny slime arm and poured the emerald wine into his own semi-clear blue core, savoring the crisp peach notes as the liquid was absorbed into pure essence.
“Well,” Lin Xiao murmured to himself. He watched the demonic elder froth at the mouth in the sky. “I gave him an honest, generous offer. Making noodle soup for a thousand happy people is an honorable, deeply satisfying profession. It brings joy to hungry folks and gives you honest work in the fresh air. If he insists on being miserable, angry, and covered in dried blood, I suppose we have to do this the hard way.”
“Diplomatic channel conclusively closed, Host,” the Dao Spirit chimed within his mindscape, her dry tone carrying a hint of potion-made finality. “Elder Han Gu’s psychological balance has deteriorated past the point of rational mental function. Target is currently channeling eighty percent of his Nascent Soul sea of mind directly into the Nine-Ghost Cauldron’s main burning chamber.”
“Understood,” Lin Xiao replied, sweeping his sandalwood table, the celadon flagon, the snack plate, and the red clay fire bowl back into his spatial storage with a clean, fluid sweep. “It’s always a pity when someone refuses a good vintage. But if he won’t share the wine, he definitely shouldn’t be allowed to play with that pot.”
High above, Han Gu thrust his dragon-bone staff straight into the center of the giant bronze vessel.
“Wake up, NINE GHOSTS OF THE SANGUINE Deep pit!” Han Gu shrieked, slicing his own palm and letting a waterfall of black Nascent Soul essence cascade into the cooking pot’s mouth. “DEVOUR THIS VALLEY! LEAVE NOT A BLADE OF GRASS UPON THE EARTH!”
The nine bronze dragon-heads around the rim of the five-hundred-foot vessel roared all at once, their hollow sockets blazing with world-ending, emerald soul-flame.