“I see it,” Yue Yang said. “When you use time-based abilities, you have an opening — you can’t move.”

“And do you have a way to exploit it?” the Solar King asked.

“No.”

Two people, standing across from each other, answering questions as though they were comparing notes on a problem they’d encountered together. Ming Rihao and the Revenge Domain Emperor, watching from the edges, felt cold move through them despite the recovery of their strength. This was the real fight. Not the exchanges of force and blood they’d been part of — this. Two minds at their absolute limits, searching each other continuously for the crack that wouldn’t close once it opened. No strike had landed. No direct clash had occurred. And it was the most lethal thing happening in the room.

If either of them found the opening, the other one was finished completely.

Yue Yang looked at the Solar King.

Then he turned and waved at Ming Rihao and the Revenge Domain Emperor, who was pulling himself off the floor in pieces. “Go. This battle isn’t yours. Only one person walks out of the stone world today — it’ll be me or the Solar King.”

Ming Rihao looked at Yue Yang. Looked at the Solar King’s flat, focused expression.

Then he drifted, tentatively, toward the passage exit.

The Solar King’s gaze remained on Yue Yang. He didn’t track Ming Rihao.

A Perfect Innate Sovereign tier eight — in the Solar King’s estimation, small prey. What swam in front of him was the large fish, still growing, not yet at its full size, which was precisely why it needed to be dealt with now. Ming Rihao, the domain emperors, every other cultivator in this space — none of them presented a terminal threat. The Central Divine Hall could deal with Ming Rihao whenever it chose to. What it could not easily deal with was this young man at whatever he was going to become.

The moment the Solar King had recognized what Yue Yang’s eyes could do — see through everything, update in real time, extract truth from the middle of a fight — the decision had finalized. This person died here. No other outcome was acceptable.

“I’m really leaving?” Ming Rihao called back, one last time.

The Two-Faced King and the Eight Generals all looked to the Solar King. Hold them? Or let them go?

“Let them leave.” He still hadn’t moved his gaze. “The rest of you — go to the Storm Sea and wait.” He said it the way someone clears a workspace before doing something that requires their full attention. With Yue Yang’s eyes already in possession of everything he’d shown, holding the others accomplished nothing. If he tried to hold them, Yue Yang would find a way to send them through anyway. Better to simplify.

“Yes.”

The Two-Faced King bowed deeply and led the Eight Generals out in the first wave. He had no intention of actually freeing anyone — what the Solar King didn’t have time to handle, they would handle in the Storm Sea. The Lion King and the Golden Crown King were already there. Ming Rihao was lightly wounded, the Revenge Domain Emperor had taken serious damage in that last exchange. The Rage Domain Emperor was occupied with the Lion King. The Radiance Domain Emperor was still an open question, but a domain emperor who hadn’t committed to this fight was unlikely to commit suddenly in the next one. The Freedom Queen had no combat capability. Dugu Changfeng was near death. Blue Wolf and the others couldn’t handle the Eight Generals. The calculus was clear.

The only genuine wildcard was Ming Rihao — and even Ming Rihao, lightly wounded and emotionally disrupted, might slip through in the chaos.

The Two-Faced King would be waiting.

The Sky-rank cultivators who’d been watching the whole thing felt the appearance of survival probability and moved immediately. Everyone knew the outside was going to be brutal — but facing the Solar King in this enclosed space at this current level of general depletion was certain death, while the Storm Sea still contained at least the theoretical possibility of escape. They poured toward the passage exit. Gold-Tooth carried Dugu Changfeng out. Steward Ye was trying to guide the wounded Windstill national ruler, on whose back the critically injured Lady Zhiguang was barely conscious.

The Freedom Queen declined to leave.

Zhongguan and the recovered escort unit knelt before Yue Yang in farewell, then went first — voluntarily, to draw enemy attention at the front.

Fengji and Keen-Eye Jinyun, the newest members, both had wet eyes. “Young Lord — we’ll be waiting outside. You have to come out.”

Ming Rihao hit each of them once across the face. Not gently. “Stop dramatizing. Worry about your own skin, not his.”

Yue Yang said nothing.

He waved once.

His eyes had not left the Solar King, because blinking felt dangerous. Any moment of internal relaxation, any fraction of a second where his attention slackened — and the Solar King would be inside that gap before it finished forming.

Ming Rihao led the procession out, the Revenge Domain Emperor taking the rear position. When they reached the spatial passage, before entering the Storm Sea, Ming Rihao stopped.

He turned and scanned the group.

“The rest of you go. Old Hao has a certain standing. And someone with that standing has to act accordingly.” He paused. “Right?”

“Even if you stay,” the Revenge Domain Emperor said carefully, “you can’t help him. You know that.”

“I know. But I didn’t say anything about helping.” His voice was light, almost unbothered. “He looked pretty pitiful in there, all by himself. I thought I’d keep him company. If I leave, the boy is definitely dead. If I stay — maybe there’s one chance in ten thousand.” He started walking back toward the stone world. “I’m not going to miss that ten thousand to one shot.”

The Rage Domain Emperor’s blood-light flared. He said something that functioned as profanity in several languages: “Thousands of years, and you haven’t changed a single thing. You’re still as infuriating as you always were.”

“Not planning to change,” Ming Rihao said, without turning around. “Don’t like it, don’t look.”

On the back of the Windstill national ruler, who was being helped out by Steward Ye, Lady Zhiguang’s eyes opened briefly — finding Ming Rihao’s retreating mountain of a back before they closed again. A glance, or perhaps a half-conscious survey of surroundings. Impossible to say.

Ming Rihao disappeared back into the stone world.

The Radiance Domain Emperor turned immediately into a streak of gold-white and was gone — straight into the Storm Sea passage entrance, moving with the urgency of someone whose mind had already been made up for some time.

The Revenge Domain Emperor’s face changed. “That’s not good — he’s going to turn coat.” He exhaled. “It doesn’t matter. He was always that kind of person.” He looked at the remaining group. “I’ll try to hold the Lion King and the Golden Crown King. Run as far as you can. If Yue Yang’s war beasts are still fighting out there, you have some chance. If they’ve already gone down — find one target and take it with you.”

“Revenge — you should go,” Dugu Changfeng said, the smile on his face carrying several different kinds of bitterness. “We’re wounded, we’re weak, there’s nowhere meaningful to run. The only one who can still do something is you.”

“This is because of me,” the Revenge Domain Emperor said, one hand on Dugu Changfeng’s shoulder. “If I hadn’t been involved, you and Yue Yang would never have come to Tianhua Domain.”

“I came because I was curious about the divine body. Not because of you. That’s just fate.” He met the domain emperor’s eyes. “Go. I have one ability left — I can hold the Two-Faced King for one minute. Use that window while the Lion King and the Golden Crown King are still tangled with Gray Wolf. You can make it out. You can make sure we’re avenged.”

He didn’t include the Rage Domain Emperor in his survival calculations.

He already knew.

The Rage Domain Emperor gave a single contemptuous sound and walked toward the exit with long, unhurried strides — as expected by anyone who knew him.

The Revenge Domain Emperor led the rest and followed. The time to break through was now, while their collective capability was still at its peak.

They entered the Storm Sea.

What they found made even the Revenge Domain Emperor’s composure fracture.

The Silent King had not left.

He stood at the center of the space, one hand holding the Radiance Domain Emperor by the collar, eyes fixed on the incoming group with the temperature of deep winter. Beside him: the Two-Faced King, the Lion King, the Golden Crown King, and all eight Generals.

And on the Storm Sea’s surface: Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, the Underworld Emperor, Gray Wolf — all down. War beast remains floating. The water carrying enough blood that the color of the sea had changed.

“Yue Yang?” Tianzhu pulled himself upright from the water with the specific difficulty of someone whose body has found several new and creative ways to be injured. He was painted red from crown to feet — not metaphorically, genuinely, the blood his own.

“Not far from the end,” the Two-Faced King said, with the smile that lived in that particular part of his face.

“Then we go in.”

Tianzhu’s roar had lost none of its authority despite everything that had been done to the body producing it. He dragged the Dragon Emperor — equally destroyed, equally present — out of the water, hauled the unconscious Underworld Emperor onto his back, and began moving toward the spatial passage entrance.

The Two-Faced King didn’t bother with the scythe. One finger extended. One beam of concentrated energy crossed the distance and went through both Tianzhu and the Underworld Emperor.

Tianzhu’s body swayed.

Couldn’t hold.

Began to go down.

The Dragon Emperor’s hands — exposed bone showing where the flesh had been, the palms a ruin — came up underneath him. Caught him.

The Dragon Emperor’s voice came out through a throat that should not have been capable of producing it:

“We are warriors of the Sky Tower. You can kill us. You cannot defeat us. Until we are dead, you cannot stop our feet or our will. The will of the Sky Tower does not break.” The hands pressed upward, forcing Tianzhu back into vertical. “Get up.”

The Silent King’s eyes went colder.

Cultivators this diminished, and they carry sovereign will? The Sky Tower — if it was going to produce people like this, it couldn’t be left standing.

Second beam.

Third beam.

The Dragon Emperor took the weight of three people and didn’t fall. The blood was running off all three of them in continuous streams, turning the sea surface red beneath their feet. The combination of Dragon Emperor and Tianzhu’s absolute refusal to acknowledge the situation had done something strange to the Storm Sea immediately around them — the water, which had been churning since the moment Tianzhu first hit it, lay flat in their immediate vicinity. The fury of the ocean had been quieted by two people who simply would not be moved by it.

Blood on the sea. Three of them walking. Leaving a path of red behind them. Still moving toward the passage entrance.

“Tedious persistence,” the Two-Faced King said.

The scythe moved. Hundreds of crescent blade-waves released simultaneously, blanketing the space, converging on the three from every angle at once.

A wolf’s howl split the air.

The surface of the sea transformed — the water rising into the shape of an enormous wolf’s head, jaws open, swallowing every single crescent blade before they could reach their targets. Every last one, consumed.

Something came up from the bottom of the Storm Sea.

A dog.

It was not a dog that any reasonable person would look at and call healthy. It had approximately no intact skin remaining. Bone was regularly visible. If you breathed too hard in its direction it would probably fall over.

It came up out of the water with the energy of something that had been briefly inconvenienced and shook the water off with the casual completeness of an animal that has decided it isn’t finished yet. Tucked into its tail, dragged up from the depths, was Taotie — consciousness scrambled, body too heavy to lift properly, pulled along like cargo.

The Two-Faced King stared at it.

The Lion King and the Golden Crown King exchanged a look of undisguised, unhappy respect.

“We tried everything,” the Lion King said. “That dog cannot be killed.”

They had deployed every method available to them, at full output. The Divine Beast they’d been attempting to eliminate had simply refused to conclude. It kept returning. It kept fighting. It had no legitimate reason to still be present in this exchange and was here anyway.

Tianzhu coughed blood — a meaningful quantity — transferred the Underworld Emperor’s weight to the Dragon Emperor, and straightened.

He raised his fist to his own chest and drove a pulse of electrical current directly into his heart. Which had stopped beating some minutes ago. The electricity hit. The heart objected. The heart resumed.

Combat intent came back into Tianzhu’s eyes like a flame returning to a wick.

Lightning gathered in his body, returning to the channels that had been running it.

He was near death in every technical sense of the phrase. His body had accumulated damage that, on any other person, would have ended the conversation several exchanges ago. He was standing in the middle of an enclosed Storm Sea surrounded by the Solar King’s command structure in its entirety, with two companions who were in comparable condition and a war beast that the Lion King of the Solar King’s Four Kings had described as impossible to kill.

He tightened his fists.

Looked at no one in particular.

And walked toward the stone world entrance.

When he and the Dragon Emperor and the Underworld Emperor passed through the group near the entrance — past the Revenge Domain Emperor, past Dugu Changfeng, past everyone who had been watching — something happened to the people watching them pass.

The Revenge Domain Emperor, who had fought at his absolute limit and taken a blow from the Solar King that had put him into the stone floor, felt his chest tighten.

Dugu Changfeng, near death and unable to fight, watched them go with something in his face that had no good name.

In terms of raw power, Tianzhu and his companions were not the strongest people in this space. They weren’t close.

But no one else present had what they had.

The will couldn’t be killed even if the body was. They might die today. They would not be defeated. That distinction — the one that lived below the level of power measurement, that had nothing to do with what any of them could do to the Solar King’s people — was the thing that separated Sky Tower warriors from the rest.

Not just Tianzhu.

Not just the Dragon Emperor.

Not just Gray Wolf, too broken to look at and still present.

And not just the young man still standing inside the stone world, against whom the Solar King of the Central Divine Hall had declared himself willing to spend his own life—