Sheathed, the sword was nothing. A rust-iron blade that might have gone for a silver coin at a weapon shop — and the buyer would have talked them down three coppers. The kind of thing hanging forgotten on a hook between the good merchandise.

Then the Revenge Domain Emperor drew it.

Every cultivator in the space who carried a weapon felt it simultaneously — a sudden constriction, as though their own blades had flinched. Not a physical sensation. Something deeper: the instinct that lives in prey animals when the predator appears, a recognition that precedes thought. A king’s authority, not earned through effort or constructed through appearances, simply present. Innate. Inescapable.

The Two-Faced King’s black scythe began to hum.

Low, sustained, hungry. Not a weapon’s warning resonance — more like the sound of something that has spent years waiting and has just recognized the thing it was waiting for. Even the Two-Faced King’s eyes had changed, something bloodthirsty stirring behind them that his will was working hard to contain. Not yet. Not the right moment. But it wanted to move.

The plain sword, once clear of its silk wrappings, transformed. Silver light flooded from it, casting the space in scattered brilliance — and the interior of the spatial passage shifted, the ceiling and walls now mapped with points of light like a night sky reproduced in miniature. When it moved, even slightly, the space around it showed hairline fractures, the passage structure beginning to question whether it intended to remain a passage.

And every Sky-rank cultivator present, minus the Two-Faced King, minus Ming Rihao playing oblivious, minus Yue Yang with his indestructible sovereign will — felt it touch them.

Not physically. The Radiance God Sword reached into the mind and cut something there. A sensation of bleeding that had no corresponding wound. Tianzhu felt it. The Dragon Emperor felt it.

This was the Revenge Domain Emperor’s primary weapon, and it had been in continuous use since the day he had chosen his purpose. It had never stopped cutting. It had never been cleaned. Every death it had been present for had left something in the blade, and the blade remembered.

Against the black scythe of the Two-Faced King — both quasi-divine artifacts, both instruments of killing refined over vast stretches of time — the comparison was not generous to the scythe. The Radiance God Sword was simply superior in the ways that mattered: killing intent, edge-quality, the particular authority that came from being held by someone who had never once drawn it for any reason other than to end something. Without the Two-Faced King’s domain and specific ability to augment it, the scythe could not compete.

“Your last words?” the Revenge Domain Emperor asked.

He was not being theatrical. He genuinely wanted to know, in the same way someone might ask a preference before beginning an unpleasant but necessary task.

“I’ll have some, before it comes to that. But not yet.”

Tianzhu stepped forward.

The Revenge Domain Emperor’s expression shifted — not much, but visibly. He had not expected someone to step out voluntarily.

“You’re not my match.”

“No,” the Dragon Emperor agreed, stepping forward alongside Tianzhu. “But there are three of us.”

The Underworld Emperor came forward as well.

Gray Wolf, recognizing a Domain Emperor and calculating odds, had been attempting to quietly reclassify itself as decorative. Yue Yang’s foot caught it squarely and launched it out into open space before this reclassification could complete.

Gray Wolf’s appearance drew a second look from the Revenge Domain Emperor. His brow shifted — barely, but there. A Divine Beast? I missed that.

Across the space, the Two-Faced King was staring at Gray Wolf too, with the private annoyance of someone who prides themselves on missing nothing.

One undeveloped Divine Beast changes nothing against a Domain Emperor. Especially a Domain Emperor holding the Radiance God Sword.

The Windstill national ruler and the others watched Tianzhu and Gray Wolf volunteer themselves with a complicated mixture of emotions. They wanted desperately to contribute. They knew contributing would mean getting in the way of people trying to survive and adding corpses to the count. They held still and looked at Yue Yang with the silent hope that the Titan Young Lord, scion of a great celestial house, might say something that would give the Revenge Domain Emperor pause.

Whatever ideological opposition existed between the factions, the Windstill national ruler’s group and the Revenge Domain Emperor had no actual material conflict. If Yue Yang interceded—

Lady Zhiguang was looking at Yue Yang with the same calculation, from across the space, with considerably more intensity.

Yue Yang opened his mouth.

“I’m all for fighting, but everyone should try to keep it controlled — no unnecessary property damage. Environmental protection is important. Even without children present, it’s not great to break things that don’t need breaking—”

The assembled group came very close to kneeling collectively.

This is the sheltered young lord of a great celestial house.

“Meow~!” said Gray Wolf, with tremendous enthusiasm.

It applauded. It gave a paw-thumbs-up. It located the conceptual equivalent of a shoe-polish kit and moved toward Yue Yang’s boots with unmistakable intent.

Gold-Tooth and Steward Ye exchanged a look of profound personal shame. The dog understood what was required. The dog was executing perfectly. They had been outperformed in loyalty and political acumen by an animal.

Both of them reached the same private resolution simultaneously, without consultation: going forward, take notes from Gray Wolf.

With Tianzhu handling the Domain Emperor, Yue Yang saw no reason to step into that particular unpleasantness. Let the people who enjoyed hitting things hit things. The interesting developments were happening on the other side of the room, where the Two-Faced King was doing something that required close attention.

He did extend one hand, though.

Shadow-giants manifested — towering silhouettes of concentrated power — and settled one by one onto Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, the Underworld Emperor, and Gray Wolf.

The effect was immediate. Power levels doubled, redoubled, kept climbing. When the resonance settled and the recipients adapted to the influx, each of them had surged by several dozen times their baseline. Gray Wolf, which Yue Yang had been developing from the beginning, hit a hundred times.

It threw its head back and howled at the ceiling.

Then it transformed — blurring, reshaping, emerging in the exact form of Taotie.

And then it released its presence.

Divine Beast sovereign will crashed outward. Sky-rank cultivators who hadn’t been actively bracing for it staggered. The black scythe rang. The Radiance God Sword rang back.

The Two-Faced King went briefly still.

The Windstill national ruler’s group forgot how to form sentences.

On the enemy side, the assassins collectively processed the information that a shadow-giant enhancement could provide a hundredfold boost and had a quiet crisis.

“Not bad,” the Revenge Domain Emperor said. He moved the Radiance God Sword, tip describing three small circles in sequence, indicating Tianzhu, Gray Wolf, and Taotie. His tone remained level. “I’ll meet you on the Still Sea. Survive a hundred exchanges without dying. I’ll call that sufficient reason to make an exception.”

He hadn’t missed the signal. These were not the Radiance Domain Emperor’s people. But a Domain Emperor’s pride didn’t allow for easy revision once a position had been stated — and a hundred-exchange limit was more concession than he had ever offered anyone.

“Be careful,” the Dragon Emperor said quietly to Yue Yang, as he moved to follow Tianzhu outward. Steady, as always.

At Yue Yang’s actual power level, the warning was technically unnecessary. But a visible display of protective concern toward the Titan Young Lord created useful misdirection — it kept the enemy estimating downward.

The Wild Bull Brothers had been vibrating in place since the moment it became clear that combat was imminent. The specific expression on their faces was one Yue Yang recognized from certain types of people who encountered certain types of substances. When no instruction came, they held — barely — and then began making the facial expressions of people who desperately needed to ask something but were afraid of the answer.

Yue Yang looked at them. Looked away. Looked back.

He waved a hand.

The Wild Bull Brothers erupted in gratitude. Bowing, thanking, practically luminescent.

Then they didn’t move.

Still standing there, looking at him with the specific quality of dogs who want something but aren’t sure the previous permission covered it.

“We were wondering, Young Lord, if we could also… possibly…” the Elder Brother began.

Yue Yang understood the full sentence before it finished.

He started laughing. “Everyone says you two are simpletons, but asking me for shadow-giant enhancement before you charge a Domain Emperor? That’s not simple at all. That’s practically strategic. Tell you what — I’ll give you two giants each. How’s that?”

The Wild Bull Brothers made sounds usually associated with winning competitions.

The assembly watched this with an awareness of what was coming.

Tianzhu, already exceptional, had found one shadow-giant difficult to fully control. The Wild Bull Brothers’ relationship with precision control on their best day was theoretical at most. One enhancement each would push their limits. Two each—

The power came through. Their strength escalated.

And then they tried to walk.

The effect was something like watching two extraordinarily powerful men discover that their legs had been replaced with legs belonging to someone with entirely different ideas about locomotion. They proceeded toward the battle in the manner of ducks who had made unfortunate lifestyle choices.

Fengji, Keen-Eye Jinyun, and Gold-Tooth watched them go and experienced the kind of sympathetic physical response usually produced by witnessing someone else’s misfortune in a relevant body part.

Cold sweat. The kind that arrives all at once.

Never. Get on his bad side. Never.

Outside, the battle was already in motion.

The Revenge Domain Emperor stood with his sword at rest. Tianzhu’s opening strike came in — heavy, committed, the full weight of his power behind a single punch.

The Revenge Domain Emperor caught it.

One hand. No dramatic effort. Then he pivoted and threw Tianzhu into the Still Sea.

Tianzhu’s body hit the surface.

The equilibrium broke.

What followed was not a splash. The Still Sea had been holding a thousand years of contained energy at a state of perfect tension, and Tianzhu’s impact was the breath that broke it. The release was not comparable to anything in normal experience — a volcano at a thousand times its force, unfolding in every direction simultaneously. The Still Sea became a Storm Sea in the span of a single heartbeat: waves that scraped the ceiling of the spatial passage, churning walls of water tall enough to swallow cities, whirlpools that opened beneath like the mouths of something ancient and hungry.

Gray Wolf came through the chaos — threading between wave-walls, vaulting a maelstrom — and drove directly into the Revenge Domain Emperor’s back. The trade had been intentional: Tianzhu absorbs the throw, Gray Wolf gets an uncontested strike. Executed cleanly.

The Revenge Domain Emperor turned his sword on Gray Wolf without looking, a single cut aimed at bisection.

Taotie arrived half a second late — too late to intercept the Domain Emperor, barely in time to open its own mouth and catch the blade on its teeth. The cut that would have split Gray Wolf in two instead ground against divine-grade enamel.

“Acceptable. Not nearly enough.” The Revenge Domain Emperor kicked both war beasts clear with his legs, one each, and spun his sword into a continuous sequence, driving the tip toward the Dragon Emperor’s throat with a speed that shouldn’t have been physically achievable.

“Gu.” The Dragon Emperor had assigned himself the defensive role. His Dragon Shield came up and took the thrust, absorbing it without shattering — and the moment the exchange created an opening, Tianzhu dropped out of the high air like a falling mountain, reversed in trajectory from his earlier throw, crashing back down toward the Revenge Domain Emperor with everything the enhancement had given him.

The spatial passage shook. The Storm Sea roared against its walls.

The whole structure felt like a question about its own continued existence.

The ‘impartial arbitration’ had not yet been formally declared open. The negotiation between the Windstill national ruler and the captors had just barely begun.

From the captors’ side, the golden-armored man who had been playing Revenge Domain Emperor stepped out of the crowd with a friendly smile, the kind worn by someone at a reunion catching up with an old acquaintance.

“Windstill national ruler. I’ve always held you and your fellow rulers in the highest regard. What happened at the banquet — I want you to understand we had no intention of causing harm. We simply needed to borrow your Star Realm Stone fragment. Use it, return it, fully intact. You have my complete personal guarantee.”

The Windstill national ruler’s face had gone the color of old iron. He controlled his voice with visible effort. “Who told you I have a Star Realm Stone fragment? Someone like me, owning something like that?”

A figure stepped out of shadows where no one had been looking.

Fish Tide.

His former guard captain. Wearing the same face he’d worn on the night of the betrayal, carrying himself with the ease of someone who had already made all the difficult choices and was simply living with them now.

“I told them.” His voice had changed more than his face had. “If I’m remembering correctly, Windstill national ruler — about six months ago, you acquired a treasure chest. Inside it was a fragment of Star Realm Stone. Am I wrong?” He tilted his head. “Men in your position aren’t meant to hold things like that. Even a fragment. I think you know the phrase — possessing a treasure invites disaster. The Star Realm Stone is beyond what you should have. Let it go. We forget this happened, you go home, you continue exactly the life you had — power in the morning, beauty in the evening, all the comforts of a national ruler’s existence.”

Lady Zhiguang heard this and broke.

Tears came fast.

“Your Majesty,” she said, her voice barely holding together, “my most beloved — please, give it to them. We can’t fight these people. Please.”

Under cover of the noise, Yue Yang quietly nudged Ming Rihao.

Star Realm Stone fragment. What is that exactly?