The group left the ruined pavilion behind and followed the white limestone walkways of the outer area. The midday sun beat down on the sect's bustling courtyards.
Zhì Yuǎn walked ahead. Right behind him, Bái Wǎn stumbled slightly in her own steps. With the karmic veil dispelled, she could barely pay attention to the path. Her brown eyes were fixed on the man's back ahead of her, her face still warm from the memory of what had happened minutes earlier.
"Sister Bái?"
The thin voice cut through the air. Bái Wǎn froze in her tracks and blinked, returning to reality.
Three junior disciples wearing the blue outer hall tunics stood at the edge of the walkway. They bowed their heads in genuine respect.
"Hm?" Bái Wǎn swallowed hard, trying to mask her surprise. "Greetings, junior sisters."
The three exchanged glances. One of them took a step forward, curiosity overcoming decorum.
"Sister Bái looks… different today," she commented, her eyes sweeping over the academic's flushed face and slightly quickened breathing. "You're brighter."
"Yes, yes!" the other two quickly agreed. "Did you perhaps find a suitor and that's why you're so happy?"
One of them discreetly pointed toward the group stopped a few steps ahead.
"We've never seen you with laborers before…" the third whispered, genuinely confused. "They're so dirty… Is Sister Bái perhaps taking them somewhere?"
The other two leaned their bodies forward, clearly interested.
"Is it to the Inner Peak? Is the mysterious suitor from there?"
Bái Wǎn felt her face burn. Blood rushed all the way to her ears.
"I-It's nothing like that!" she stammered, pressing her hands against her white tunic. "They're just… providing a transportation service for my grandfather."
The weak excuse had the opposite effect. The three juniors broke into excited smiles and began bombarding her with rapid questions, firing questions about how dirty they were, where they were going, and speculating whether the mysterious suitor was from some inner peak.
Zhì Yuǎn continued walking with his back turned, indifferent and perfectly bored by the mortal noise.
Mò Yán, however, took a step back.
The white-haired diplomat stopped beside Bái Wǎn. She did not alter the ordinary face the illusion projected, but her intent floated through her Law Sea. The Law of Mandate infiltrated the breeze along the walkway.
"Return to your duties and forget this conversation," Mò Yán's voice came out polite, gentle, but loaded with an authority that crushed human will.
It was not a request.
The three disciples' irises lost focus at the same instant. Their eyes became dull and empty. Without uttering another word or question, the juniors turned their backs in unison and marched back to their courtyards, their curiosity erased from their minds as if it had never existed.
Bái Wǎn let out the breath she had been holding in a long sigh of relief. She looked at the white-haired woman beside her.
"Thank you…" Bái Wǎn murmured, her voice trembling with gratitude.
Silence fell over the stone walkway.
Right ahead, Yù Qíng turned her face over her shoulder. The eldest's black gaze pierced into the newcomer. It was a sharp, heavy, and strictly expectant look. The woman in blue did not say a single word, but the territorial demand crushed the air between them. She was waiting for the title.
The second of silence was absolute and awkward. A dense heat rose up Bái Wǎn's neck, her face catching fire under that silent pressure.
"…Elder Sister Yán," the girl added, squeezing the words out quickly to fix her mistake.
Yù Qíng's smile bloomed at once, gentle and fully satisfied. The eldest turned her face forward again, approving the reverence, and continued following her husband's steps.
Bái Wǎn's chest warmed thickly. The tension of having made a mistake vanished, replaced by an intoxicating comfort. She had assumed her own place at the base of that hierarchy and had not been rejected; she had been accepted beneath the silent umbrella of the first wife.
Zhì Yuǎn resumed his march without looking back, turning into a narrow stone corridor that began descending into the bowels of the mountain. Bái Wǎn quickened her pace, following her new family away from the sunlight, straight into the abyss.
------
The tunnel ended.
The narrow corridor opened into an underground cavern illuminated by green moss. The smell of mud and stagnant water swallowed that of dry earth.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped.
Bái Wǎn froze right behind him. She leaned forward and peeked from behind his broad arm.
Blocking the irregular crack in the rock was a living mountain breathing. A colossal shell dozens of meters tall, covered in thick green scales, ancient hide, and stalactites that grew like trees. The beast looked more like a moving mountain than a living creature.
The Heavy Waters Dragon Turtle.
The ancestral beast opened its reptilian yellow eyes upon hearing the footsteps. The water around its legs vibrated. The air in the cavern grew dense, weighing on the newcomer's chest.
Bái Wǎn took a reflexive step back. She knew the untouchable myth of the sect's foundation. The beast's presence made the true objective of the invasion clear.
They were standing exactly at the entrance to the Secret Realm.
The Dragon Turtle roared.
The roar made the stone ceiling tremble. The moisture in the cavern condensed in the air and a black torrent of heavy water exploded from the beast's legs, sweeping across the ground toward the group like a liquid avalanche.
Bái Wǎn felt her legs weaken.
She recognized that colossal shell immediately. The Heavy Waters Dragon Turtle. The legendary guardian of the Celestial Mirror Hegemony. An existence that had existed even before the sect was founded. The elders said it was invincible — a calamity that no cultivator of this plane could face alone. Seeing it move was already enough to make her instincts scream to flee.
Zhì Yuǎn kept walking.
Without changing his pace. Without raising a barrier. Without even looking at the approaching torrent.
A dry crack of joints sounded beside Bái Wǎn.
Yù Méi passed by her like a gust of wind. The youngest cracked her neck to the side, her almond-shaped eyes shining with a mixture of boredom and predatory excitement.
"Finally," she grumbled, her voice hoarse. "Come to mama, little turtle."
She advanced without deviating. The torrent of heavy water collided against her body and flowed uselessly down her golden silk, as if it had struck a mountain.
Yù Méi stopped right in front of the beast. The turtle opened its colossal jaws, ready to swallow her in one bite.
The youngest pulled her arm back and punched the center of the shell.
There was no light. No technique. Only the sound of something ancient and powerful being broken from within.
The ancient shell burst inward. Bones, flesh, and organs imploded under the pressure. The living legend of the Celestial Mirror Hegemony exploded in a thick rain of blood, viscera, and stone fragments, painting the entire cavern red.
Yù Méi shook her dirty hand and wiped the blood on the side of her dress.
"I made a mess on the floor, husband…" she said with a small pout, glancing at him from under her lashes. "The beast was softer than I expected. But at least I cleared the way quickly." She ended with a faint, almost satisfied smile.
Bái Wǎn could not move.
Her eyes were fixed on the pool of blood and flesh that remained of the beast. That thing the elders called an invincible calamity… had just been turned into paste against the wall. Killed with a single punch. By a girl who looked bored.
She looked at Yù Méi, then at Zhì Yuǎn, who was already stepping on the fresh blood and crossing the rift as if nothing had happened.
For the first time, Bái Wǎn felt a true fear rise up her spine.
It was no longer fascination.
It was the belated realization that she had given herself to something far greater than she had imagined.
------
Zhì Yuǎn's boot crossed the stone rift. The smell of blood and mud from the cavern disappeared instantly, cut off by the spatial barrier transition.
The group stepped onto ground covered in soft, bluish grass.
Bái Wǎn stopped right behind the man. The landscape before them did not obey the logic of the mountain outside. Enormous pieces of earth and rock floated in the air. Crystal waterfalls flowed upward, rising from the islands toward a pale, cloudless sky. The air was so saturated with pure Water and Space Qi that breathing inside it cleansed the dust from one's throat.
Mò Yán took a step forward. The diplomat's scarlet eyes evaluated the banks of the floating rivers.
"Purifying herbs growing like common weeds…" she murmured, her logistical interest overflowing in her polite tone. "The concentration of resources in here is the real foundation that sustained your former sect's wealth, Sister Wǎn."
Bái Wǎn nodded slowly. She looked at the suspended islands with fascination.
"It's beautiful," the former academic whispered, marveling.
Zhì Yuǎn did not change his posture. He observed the ancient marvel with his hands loose at his sides.
"Wǎn'er."
The man's sudden, deep voice sounded in the clean air.
Bái Wǎn froze in her tracks. The girl turned her face toward him, her brown eyes blinking in pure confusion. A thick heat rose up the newcomer's neck, and the tips of her ears warmed at the same instant.
Zhì Yuǎn pointed his chin toward the floating vastness.
"It's a nice view," he said pragmatically, without a trace of wonder. "But it's a shame it looks so appetizing."
He looked at the water rising toward the turquoise sky. The emptiness in his eyes evaporated, suddenly swallowed by a hungry glint.
"And I'm very thirsty," he concluded.
Zhì Yuǎn turned his face back toward the red-eared girl.
"The trip will be worth it, Wǎn'er. There in the center of all this water, I found the core of this secret realm. It's exactly what I'm going to use to transform your Perfect Qi Sea into what I call a Law Sea."
Zhì Yuǎn's Inner Universe spun.
The air of the Secret Realm fell silent. The turquoise sky above them cracked from end to end with a dry snap.
Bái Wǎn fell to her knees on the blue grass, her breath caught in her throat.
The floating islands and crystal waterfalls stopped in the air. In the next instant, all the matter of the dimension was pulled backward. Thousands of tons of earth, rock, and pure water plummeted in a straight line toward Zhì Yuǎn. The matter shrank and vanished inside his chest.
He swallowed the Secret Realm in three seconds.
The light disappeared. The grass beneath Bái Wǎn's knees turned to dark dust. The ancestral paradise was replaced by a cold, black void, sustained only by the man's will.
In the center of the void, two palms from Zhì Yuǎn's face, only one thing remained: a single drop of deep-blue liquid floating alone. The cold it radiated made the air hiss.
Zhì Yuǎn held the drop between his thumb and forefinger.
The Fractured Sea Drop
He approached Bái Wǎn. The girl trembled on the dark dust, her arms hugging her own body. Her mind was in complete collapse. The untouchable marvel of her sect had just become his afternoon drink.
Zhì Yuǎn knelt in the dust in front of her. His shadow completely covered the newcomer.
"Your Perfect Qi Sea is clean, Wǎn'er," his voice sounded low and practical in the darkness. "But it takes up space. A cup cannot hold an ocean."
He pressed his left palm directly over her lower abdomen.
Zhì Yuǎn's force invaded her flesh without warning. Bái Wǎn's Qi Sea cracked from within. The foundation she had built over twenty-two years shattered and turned to dust. All the energy she possessed was erased at once.
The pain was sharp and brutal. Bái Wǎn arched her back, breath catching in her throat. Her small hands clutched tightly onto his gray tunic as a cold, throbbing emptiness spread through her insides.
The vessel was hollow.
Zhì Yuǎn kept his hand firm on her belly. His gaze descended to the gasping girl, then to the drop glowing between the fingers of his right hand.
"The vessel is empty. Now I'll fill it."