The crack of the spatial tear faded in the outer courtyard.
Inside the meeting hall, the silence lasted only the time of a single breath. Jiàn Wúshuang and Mèng Lián's faces darkened. The formal atmosphere at the jade table gave way to raw survival instinct. Both leaders expanded their soul perception at the same time, sweeping the space outside the palace.
The invisible wave crossed the stone walls and struck the group that had just arrived.
What returned left the Mistress of the Celestial Crane confused. Her perception found no oceans of energy or dangerous auras. The signal that returned was completely empty. She felt only five people. No pressure of Qi. No apparent spiritual foundation. Just five hearts beating at the calm rhythm of mortals.
Mèng Lián's eyebrows drew together.
"He is… an ordinary person?" she asked, her voice low in the middle of the dome's silence.
Before Jiàn Wúshuang could respond, the immense stone doors of the hall simply ceased to exist. The thick rock vanished without a sound, throwing the entrance open to the peak's wind.
Zhì Yuǎn stepped onto the clear marble of the hall.
Yù Qíng, Yù Méi, Mò Yán, and Bái Wǎn entered right behind him. Unlike the man's heavy boots, the four women were barefoot. The pale, immaculate skin of their feet did not touch the dust of the hall. The Suspended Lotus kept them hovering, isolating the family from any contact with the floor of that world.
On the ground, near the table, Zhào Fēng remained on his knees, trembling without raising his head.
Jiàn Wúshuang looked toward the vanished entrance and then at the five outsiders. The thousands-year-old leader did not panic. The Hegemon's mind quickly calculated the anomaly. He felt no power, but the doors had disappeared and one of his allies was kneeling. To the veteran swordsman, that was an extremely high-level illusion.
He rose from the jade chair and drew his sword.
The air in the dome froze. The Profound Silver Rift, the ancestral inheritance of his peak, emanated a sharp, cutting hostility.
"An interesting trick," Jiàn Wúshuang said, his voice cold and loaded with authority. "But if you think you can invade the central meeting of the sects with illusions to frighten us, you are underestimating the laws that govern this world. Surrender, or I will personally cut through this farce."
Yù Méi stopped hovering.
The word "justice" he had used earlier still echoed in her mind. The memory of the fire devouring Qīngshān crossed her thoughts in a fraction of a second.
She did not draw any weapon. She simply advanced through the air.
The girl's body cut across the hall before Jiàn Wúshuang could blink. The Hegemon tried to bring down the ancestral blade in an instinctive defensive arc, but the young woman's bare hand rose and grabbed the edge of the stellar silver mid-swing.
The movement stopped. Jiàn Wúshuang tried to pull the relic back, but the weapon did not yield a single millimeter.
Yù Méi tightened her fingers. The Profound Silver Rift, which carried the weight of tens of thousand years of orthodox slaughter, could not withstand the density of the body forged in Primordial Gold. The sacred blade shattered into dozens of pieces and fell onto the carpet like broken glass.
Before the old man could release the useless hilt, Yù Méi's bare heel swept through the air in a swift side kick.
Jiàn Wúshuang's knees bent in the wrong direction. The bones burst under the skin. He collapsed onto the marble, falling face-first into the pool of blood beginning to leak from the exposed fractures.
Yù Méi descended until she stopped directly above his face. Her voice came out low and heavy, carrying an ancient revulsion.
"Justice…" she murmured. "You people always use that word."
She tilted her head, watching the blood run across the marble.
"When you want something, you take it. When someone stronger appears, you speak of justice. When you burn an entire village because someone there offended you, you call it punishment. But when someone stronger does the same to you… then it becomes a tragedy."
She lowered herself a little more, until her bare foot almost touched his nose.
"I saw my family burn. I saw people who never cultivated in their lives thrown into the fire because they were 'in the way.' And everyone who did that also spoke of justice. You understand nothing of justice. You only understand when the fist is bigger than your own."
She raised her gaze toward Mèng Lián and the others frozen at the jade table. Her tone remained low, but now colder:
"And now that someone with a bigger fist has appeared, you don't even know how to react. Pathetic."
Yù Méi turned her face and spat on the floor, right beside the swordsman's head.
"The only reason I'm not crushing all of you right now is because my husband needs you."
She raised her eyes and met Zhì Yuǎn staring at her with one eyebrow slightly raised. Yù Qíng watched in silence. Mò Yán and Bái Wǎn were mute.
The youngest lowered her head for a moment. She gave her own cheeks two light pats with her palms, as if trying to wake herself up. When she raised her gaze again, her usual spoiled and familiar expression had returned.
"I'm sorry, my love…" she said, her voice returning to its usual sweet and drawn-out tone. "I… lost control again. It won't happen anymore."
Zhì Yuǎn did not change his expression.
"Go back," he said, his voice rustic and calm.
Yù Méi smiled, took a step, and appeared floating beside Mò Yán.
Mèng Lián looked at Jiàn Wúshuang's blood spreading across the marble. The strongest man on the continent had been broken in seconds by a girl who had not even used Qi. Her mind worked quickly.
Monstrous strength… but the girl acts on impulse. Unresolved trauma. Weak Dao Heart. How can someone with this level of power still carry such raw wounds? They don't seem like cultivators from this world. They're young. Inexperienced with the rules here. Maybe… descendants from a higher plane? The first to descend?
Cold panic gripped her chest.
If that's the case, they still don't understand how this world operates. I can use this. Before he decides to experiment on me.
She straightened her posture and hid her fear.
"You Lord has proven his strength," Mèng Lián said, her voice polite and controlled. "But destroying the continent will leave a vacuum. Brute force conquers territory, but intelligence governs it."
Zhì Yuǎn looked at her with the same boredom with which he would look at dust on the floor.
"Who said I want to govern this dry land?"
The answer shattered the Mistress of the Crane's logic. Panic finally leaked through the woman's eyes. Seeing that intelligence no longer guaranteed her life, her survival instinct appealed to the oldest weapon.
Mèng Lián bent her knees and fell to the marble floor. Her trembling hands rose to the collar of her crimson dress. She pulled the silk aside, exposing her shoulder and the deep curve of her cleavage.
"If the world doesn't interest you, perhaps my body will," she whispered. "I have a thousand years of practice in the arts of the bedchamber. My pure Yin has never been given. I can warm your bed and serve you however you Lord wishes. Let me live, and I will be yours."
Beside the table, Bái Wǎn felt a jolt of revulsion. Mò Yán, on the other hand, felt the bitter taste of her own hypocrisy rise in her throat.
For a brief instant, she saw herself on the floor.
She had also bent her knees. She had also pulled the collar of her own dress. She had also offered her body to survive and escape stagnation. The difference, her mind hurried to construct, was that she had offered herself to a god. Not to multiple old monsters and patriarchs over the years. Not for power or alliances. But out of blind passion.
When I knelt, I offered my soul. This woman is merely trying to make a deal with a used piece of meat.
The justification came quickly, almost desperately. It worked… for two seconds.
Right after, terror struck her like a cold blade to the chest.
And if I hadn't been favored by the Eldest Sister?
If she had been rejected like this woman was now… would she, one day, also be kneeling on the floor of some decaying hall, offering whatever remained of her own dignity to some disgusting old man just to avoid being discarded?
The fear of that possibility made Mò Yán raise her gaze to Zhì Yuǎn's broad back. The devotion and dependence that already existed in her chest burned even stronger. She had been lucky. An absurd kind of luck. And now she understood, with an almost painful clarity, that this man was the only thing separating her from becoming that woman kneeling on the marble.
Zhì Yuǎn did not respond to the Mistress of the Crane's offer. He did not even look at her exposed cleavage.
The navy-blue silk of Yù Qíng brushed through the air. The first wife slid across the hall and stopped exactly in front of the kneeling woman. She hovered, looking down with a sweet and perfectly polished smile.
Mèng Lián raised her face, trying to hold the eldest's dark gaze — a gaze that seemed out of place on that young and unremarkable face.
Yù Qíng spoke first, her voice velvety and calm:
"You think your body is your greatest treasure. And you try to buy your own life with the same tool you have used to buy alliances and security for a thousand years."
Mèng Lián felt her blood run cold.
What the fuck… this brat can read minds?
Seeing the woman's transparent reaction, Yù Qíng continued, her gentle smile remaining on her face:
"I don't know how to read minds, old woman. But my husband does not collect used toys. Our altar does not make deals. It only accepts offerings. And you have absolutely nothing he wants."
Yù Qíng tilted her head slightly, looking at the woman's open neckline on the floor.
"Close your dress. It's embarrassing."
Silence swallowed the main hall.
Mèng Lián's face lost all color. For the first time in a thousand years, her most valuable currency had been treated like trash. The Mistress's hands rose slowly. Trembling with real terror, she pulled the crimson silk collar back over her shoulder, covering her own skin while lowering her head. Her ego and "Face" had been destroyed without a single physical blow being dealt.
Near the door, Mò Yán watched the scene and slowly exhaled. The diplomat looked at the first wife's back with renewed and frightening respect.
Zhì Yuǎn ignored the exchange between the women.
He passed by the cowering Mistress on the floor and walked to the edge of the round jade table. The hall was in absolute silence. Dozens of leaders from the continent's greatest powers watched without daring to move.
Zhào Fēng remained on his knees. Jiàn Wúshuang writhed in his own pool of blood. Mèng Lián stayed bowed on the marble.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped in front of the three. His tone was calm, almost casual.
"I read about what you call Nascent Soul," he said. "I understood it more or less. When you start messing with Laws, your soul is too fragile to handle it. So you create a little box inside your chest to store it. A Nascent Divinity."
He tilted his head slightly, looking at Jiàn Wúshuang's chest with genuine curiosity.
"It works. But it's very limited. With this little box, you can only properly exercise one Law."
The silence that followed those words was different.
Several older leaders felt a chill run up their spines. What that man had just said so simply was something most of them had only understood after centuries of painful cultivation. Comprehending even a single Law was already absurdly difficult. It required isolation, constant meditation, and risks that many did not survive. Even the greatest geniuses on this continent took decades to stabilize a single Law. And even after all that effort, what they achieved was to properly exercise only one.
Hearing someone speak of it as if it were an obvious limitation generated a feeling of absurdity and deep discomfort in many of those present.
Jiàn Wúshuang clenched his teeth. He still did not understand how his body had not yet healed from such a "light injury." He had previously had parts torn off that regenerated on their own in a matter of minutes, but here… nothing. There was no residual energy interfering. Even so, he — a cultivator at the peak of what this world allowed — was recovering worse than an ordinary mortal.
Zhào Fēng was sweating coldly. Mèng Lián… well, she still could not lift her gaze, both from shame and from the terror she still felt.
Zhì Yuǎn took a step forward, stopping beside the Hegemon's mutilated body. He raised his right hand, fingers slowly opening toward Jiàn Wúshuang's chest. The movement was slow, almost playful.
"I'm going to throw you out of this world," he continued, his tone light. "Don't worry. It will be very beneficial for your cultivation."
His finger continued its slow approach toward the old swordsman's chest.