The air turned to ash before Commander Feng even swung.
The heat rolling off the obsidian executioner's blade was foul, thick with the stench of charred bone. It was nothing like Ye Chen's primordial fire; this was corrupted Yang, twisted to butcher rather than create.
"Move!" Yue cried, her voice cracking for the first time.
She wrenched her palm against Ye Chen's grip, desperate to sever the Qi thread. But the Celestial Key within him was greedy. Awakened by the influx of her refined lunar Yin, it clung to the connection, drinking deeper, locking their meridians together like melted glass.
"I can't break it!" Ye Chen ground out, every tendon in his neck straining. The golden lines under his skin were turning blood-red under the pressure.
Xiao Mei didn't hesitate.
Still shivering from the purged bile, her knees shaking beneath her torn skirt, she threw herself directly between Ye Chen and the advancing commander. She drew the small bronze harvesting sickle from her sash, holding it with both trembling hands.
"Xiao Mei, get behind me!" Ye Chen bellowed, lunging forward, but the rooted energy circuit pinned his feet to the stone.
"You saved me twice today," she whispered without looking back, her voice fiercely steady. "You don't get to die while holding another woman's hand."
Commander Feng sneered behind his silver viper mask. "A mortal ant playing shield."
The massive black blade came down in a contemptuous arc. It wasn't an attack meant for an equal; it was a downward butcher's sweep meant to cut Xiao Mei in half and cleave straight into Ye Chen's chest. A wall of black fire surged ahead of the edge, howling through the rain.
Crack!
A streak of pale grey lightning flashed across the mud.
Elder Li materialized in the blade's path. The fragile-looking ironwood pipe met the two-handed executioner's sword with a deafening gong that blasted the surrounding puddles into steam.
The old man's patched robes shredded under the impact. He took the shock through his knees, sinking shin-deep into the wet earth. Blood sprayed from his mouth, misting the silver viper on Feng's armor.
"Old dog," Feng hissed, pressing the blade down with effortless, crushing weight. "You left the capital fifty years ago. You think you're still a Grand Elder?"
"Never said... I was," Elder Li rasped through bloody teeth. His amber eyes burned with reckless, desperate madness. He turned his head slightly, glaring at the frozen trio. "The core needs two poles, brat! Not a crowd! Choose one and sever the rest, or die a pig in a pen!"
Ye Chen's vision flared crimson.
Elder Li's bones were creaking, the black fire eating up the length of his pipe, inches from his weathered throat.
Choose.
Yue possessed the ancient knowledge, the pure, unyielding cultivation that could elevate the Key into an unstoppable force. But Xiao Mei—Xiao Mei was the beat of his heart, the one who had stood in the rain with cold hands and whispered that they would burn the mountains together.
Ye Chen didn't look away from Yue's wide, violet eyes.
"Sever it," he commanded, his voice cold as iron. "Now."
Instead of feeding her Yin, Ye Chen violently inverted his flow. He slammed his Yang against hers, intentionally misaligning the harmonic rhythm.
The backlash was savage.
A muffled explosion erupted between their joined palms. Yue gasped as the concussive burst threw her five yards back into the bamboo brush, her white robes fluttering like wounded crane wings. She hit the ground, coughing, clutching her wrist where a purplish ring of scorch marks burned.
The circuit shattered.
Ye Chen was free.
He lunged forward, catching Xiao Mei by the waist with his left arm. With his right, he ripped the scout's curved saber from his belt and slammed his palm against the flat of the steel.
"Xiao Mei! The river leap—feed the strike!"
She understood instantly. She didn't question how or why. She slapped her palm flat against Ye Chen's back, pouring every ounce of her newly awakened, bile-cleansed Yin straight into his dantian.
The balance snapped into place.
It wasn't refined like Yue's. It was raw, frantic, and violently alive. The golden Yang and azure Yin coiled around the cheap iron saber, transmuting the mundane steel into a brilliant, blinding beacon of twin-colored lightning.
Ye Chen stepped into the strike, driving the glowing blade directly toward Feng's exposed flank to break the elder's deadlock.
Clang!
The combined blast detonated against Commander Feng's obsidian lamellar armor.
The shockwave blasted the silver viper mask from Feng's face, revealing a pale, gaunt countenance etched with dark, pulsing corruption runes. The impact shoved the massive commander back three full paces, his boots tearing deep ruts in the hillside.
Elder Li collapsed into the mud, clutching his fractured shoulder, his ironwood pipe shattered in two.
Commander Feng wiped a thin line of black blood from his split lip. He stared down at the small tear in his heavy armor, then up at Ye Chen. The casual arrogance in his amber eyes was entirely gone, replaced by chilling, lethal focus.
"Twin-fish resonance... without an elder's seal," Feng murmured, his voice deadly quiet. "You are more dangerous than your father ever was."
Feng raised the executioner's sword with both hands, his corrupted aura erupting into a roaring pillar of black smoke that blackened the sky above the ridge. The trees began to rot where they stood.
"No more games," Feng said.
"Ye Chen!" Yue's voice rang out from the brush.
She rose to her feet, wiping blood from the corner of her lips. She held the silver lotus hairpin in her palm, its petals glowing with blinding white light.
"The gorge behind you!" she cried, pointing toward the roaring White Serpent River. "Jump into the current! The First Gate's downstream barrier is already open—he cannot cross the water array!"
"He'll butcher the elder!" Ye Chen shouted back, his saber smoking in his hand, the metal already warping from the energy it had channeled.
"Go, you fool!" Elder Li wheezed from the mud, slapping his palm against the ground. A cloud of thick, blinding sulfur smoke exploded beneath Feng's boots. "The dead don't pay debts! Run!"
Feng roared in fury, his black blade carving through the sulfur smoke with a sonic boom that split the earth open.
Ye Chen grabbed Xiao Mei, pulled her tight against his chest, and turned toward the cliff's edge. He met Yue's gaze for a split second across the clearing.
She didn't run. She leaped toward the precipice alongside them, her silver robes whipping in the violent wind.
"Together!" Yue demanded, her hand reaching out to grasp Xiao Mei's shoulder as they reached the ledge. "If we hit the water without a tri-fold barrier, the rapids will break your spines!"
Xiao Mei glared at her, but clamped her hand onto Yue's wrist, completing the triangle.
The three of them vaulted off the edge into the howling abyss.
Above them, the black fire of Feng's blade cleaved the cliffside where they had stood a fraction of a second before, sending tons of shattered stone plunging into the raging river after them.