Yue Yang turned his palm once more.

What spread before everyone’s eyes was a wasteland — shattered, ruined, every surface broken stone and dust. Not a drop of water anywhere. No sea in sight. In the distance, a ravine ran along the base of a cliff that had half-collapsed.

The Silent King looked around and found his bearings. The spot where Yue Yang was standing was a blood-red altar, and rising from it was a headless goddess statue radiating power so deep it bordered on imperceptible. If everything up to this moment could still theoretically have been illusion, the instant the Silent King laid eyes on that statue, he knew: every person here, himself included, had genuinely left the Storm Sea. They were standing exactly where Yue Yang had said — the Sky Stairway.

How Yue Yang had done it, the Silent King could not explain.

But he didn’t doubt it either.

The reason was simple: there was no way Yue Yang could have fabricated the power emanating from that statue. It wasn’t aggressive — it held no offensive intent whatsoever — but the depth of it was genuinely terrifying. The Solar King, the Grand Hall Master Dongfang, even the Divine Hall Supreme himself would bow his head beneath it. This was the work of a deity from a forgotten age. How a statue could house such power was beyond understanding, but the fact of it was undeniable.

Until a person reached that level themselves, they could not produce this.

“This place —” The Dwarf among the Eight Generals suddenly cried out. “There’s a terrible aura here. I can smell it.”

“Ah, that would be death-energy,” Yue Yang said pleasantly, as though he were explaining why the windows were left open. “The Nine-Radiance Empress died here. Some of the residual energy probably hasn’t dissipated yet.”

The Lion King and Golden Crown King both felt their hearts sink a little further. He mentioned killing the Nine-Radiance Empress the way you’d mention stepping on an insect. Without the Solar King — with only the Silent King to hold this — could they actually manage?

The Silent King’s brow had drawn together. He had just understood something. Why had Yue Yang abandoned the contest with the Solar King and come back to face him instead? The answer was obvious now: to drag him here, into Sky Tower, and cut off his route back to the Divine Hall. To stop the intelligence from being delivered.

You think stopping me stops the report?

My war beast has already gone.

The Silent King said nothing — just noted it inwardly, with the satisfaction of a man who had been careful. Long years with the Solar King had taught him to handle these things without being told. He had not gone back himself, but he would never have neglected to send word.

The Mudskipper Hound had departed long before the chaos. It wasn’t fast in a fight, but it moved like lightning and nothing outside its master’s death could kill it. Simple as its mind was, it wasn’t just a tracking beast — it was the finest intelligence courier in the Solar King’s service. Its very appearance was a message, because only a Hall Master or above held the right to own one.

Not even the Lion King or Golden Crown King had been granted a Mudskipper Hound.

Only the Solar King and himself.

The moment it showed up at its destination, every resource available would quietly mobilize to escort it straight to the Divine Hall. Go ahead and detain me, the Silent King thought, something cold and satisfied moving through him. If you think stopping me is the same as stopping the message, you are very, very wrong.

Smack.

Xiao Wenli stepped forward from behind Yue Yang and tossed something down.

The black shape hit the stone heap hard and let out a sound that was half-yelp, half-whimper.

Then it scrambled upright and bolted toward the Silent King — fast as lightning, frantic as a lost dog that had finally spotted its owner after weeks of wandering.

The moment the Silent King registered what it was, it felt like a fist had driven straight into his chest. The air went out of him. His breathing stopped.

Yue Yang, for his part, looked perfectly relaxed. “Not a bad watchdog you’ve got,” he said cheerfully. “Runs very fast — I thought about sending my own dog after it, but honestly that one underestimates people and got off to a slow start, couldn’t catch up in time. Fortunately my little treasure here is quite capable. Took about a hundred consecutive teleports, but she brought yours back.”

The more warmly Yue Yang smiled, the more the Silent King felt like he’d swallowed something bitter.

He wanted, genuinely, to kill his own Mudskipper Hound.

But when he thought it through, he knew it wasn’t the Hound’s fault. It was the serpent-demon girl who had simply been operating at a level no one had anticipated. He had initially assumed the earth-attribute divine beast was the greatest threat. But this small, quiet snake-demon — she might actually be the real danger.

A miniature Conquest Queen?

When the Lion King and Golden Crown King watched Xiao Wenli hand the Mudskipper Hound back, every face in the group changed.

“What do we do?” the Lion King said. He was not a man given to anxiety — but after blow after blow landing in succession, it would have been dishonest to say there was nothing stirring in his chest.

The Silent King made a series of hand signs.

This was a gesture-language the Solar King had established before their departure — a private code developed within the Sun God Palace, designed to pass orders secretly even in front of enemies without fear of being deciphered. The Silent King signed, and the Lion King and the others read it immediately. More than that: this was the final contingency the Solar King had drilled into them before the operation began — the one that only came out when things had broken down past the point of recovery.

It meant: the situation has collapsed entirely. Abandon all original objectives. Find your own way out. Every person for themselves — as many escape as can.

He signed again.

I stay to hold Yue Yang here.

Lion King and Golden Crown King assist me as rear guard until the Eight Generals are clear, then follow.

The Eight Generals already knew — from the Divine Hall’s accumulated intelligence on Sky Tower and the Jester’s more recent updates — that staying inside the Sky Stairway meant death. Nothing in here led out. The only viable exit was the tenth floor of Sky Tower, where a spatial rift opened onto the celestial realm. There was also the celestial gateway that opened once every hundred years, but that route was indistinguishable from a death sentence unless you already had the power of a quasi-divine sovereign — the broken void between here and there would tear apart anyone weaker, unless the Divine Hall sent an escort force to meet you partway, which required them to know you were coming.

The Generals were still watching him. The Silent King felt a spike of rare frustration.

He swept his hand out and blasted the Poet and the others a full ten thousand meters away.

According to the Jester’s intelligence, Sky Tower’s only serious threats were Yue Yang and, slightly above the Supreme and Night Empress, essentially no one else. The Tower was newly risen — warriors at even the peak of the Ground-rank were uncommon, let alone Sky-rank fighters. With the Eight Generals’ power, as long as Yue Yang wasn’t chasing them down personally, they could cut through Sky Tower without breaking stride and return to the celestial realm at their leisure.

Even if the Supreme and Night Empress tried to intercept, at least some of them would make it.

All it took was one. One person reaching the Divine Hall with Yue Yang’s identity and nature — the new Prison Emperor, what he was capable of — and the Divine Hall would mobilize everything it had. No price too high.

The Poet was the clearest-headed of the group. Rattled as he was by being transported to the Sky Stairway, his mind was still running. He stepped forward and led the others away.

A short distance out, he began to worry about Yue Yang disengaging from the Silent King and pursuing. He pulled aside the White-Bearded Elder — most senior — and the Lazy One — most powerful — and made a quick decision: split up.

“I’ll take the rear.” The Lazy One’s habitual langour had evaporated entirely.

“Meet at the tenth floor.” The White-Bearded Elder agreed to the split. He took the Fat Man and the Dwarf on one route. The Poet took the Tribesman and the Hanged Man on another.

Three groups, three directions. Even if Yue Yang gave chase, at least two groups would survive.

And the Silent King, Lion King, and Golden Crown King were still back there.

By all accounts, Sky Tower held no Sky-rank warriors besides Yue Yang, the Supreme, and the Night Empress. A single national-ruler-tier warrior from the celestial realm could rampage unchallenged through a place like this — and they had seven of that level right here. Except for the new Prison Emperor, Sky Tower had been declining for years. What was there to fear?

The Poet offered a few parting words of encouragement, and then they scattered.

Even so — this wasn’t the celestial realm. This was unfamiliar ground, and strange things happened on unfamiliar ground. Best not to get arrogant. The last thing any of them needed was Yue Yang deciding they were a more interesting target than the Silent King.

They moved quickly and without fanfare.

The Poet’s group advanced along the ravine. They hadn’t covered a hundred kilometers before the battle behind them erupted — a sound like the world coming apart at the joints, shockwaves rolling outward, carrying stone and grit in a curtain that blotted out everything.

Then, through either luck or fate, the Poet — who had been turning over every scrap of the Jester’s intelligence without finding a transport formation — spotted something ahead.

A fat young man. And behind him, perhaps a dozen humans of various ages, running toward them from a distance.

Hostages. The thought arrived instantly. Grab them, use them as guides, let them lead the way to a formation. These people — weak enough that their power levels barely registered — were exactly what the situation called for.

Before the Poet even raised a hand, the Tribesman and the Hanged Man had already charged.

“Oh hell!” The fat boy at the front went white the moment he clocked them. His voice cracked like a rooster being strangled. “Quick, everyone, now’s our chance — there are enemies here! These two are at least Sky-rank tier six, you — you lot, get up there!”

“Why aren’t you getting up there?” The lean young man beside him shoved him irritably.

“Me? If I go up there, I die!” The fat boy had a very accurate assessment of his own abilities.

“They’re more than Sky-rank tier six.” A cool-looking young man stepped forward from the group. Something about him reminded the Poet of Tianzhu — that same quality of being distinctly, inexplicably different — though he was younger, and his power was nowhere near Tianzhu’s.

“Of course they are,” the Poet said. He had sized up the group with a sweep. Not a single Sky-rank fighter among them. He stepped forward without hurrying. “My power exceeds most warriors who’ve comprehended divine sense, but the Divine Hall’s rule that you can’t be called Sky-rank tier six without quasi-divine sense and tier seven without complete divine sense means I don’t yet carry the official title — although in practice I outclass most who do. You may call me the Poet. I am an elite warrior of the Sun God Palace, Central Divine Hall.”

“Does having divine sense mean you’ve comprehended sovereign intent?” a girl’s voice called from the back.

“I believe so,” the lean young man said quietly. “Different terminology.”

The Poet had already identified her — without asking, he could read the social dynamics of any group. The girl asking that question held the highest actual standing here. Some kind of imperial bloodline. Possibly a princess.

“I comprehended sovereign intent at the Rebirth Gate,” the girl said. She stepped forward through the crowd, small fists closing. Her power level was clearly not yet at Perfect Innate Sovereign tier — just beginning. Quasi-divine sense, in the Poet’s framework. But she looked at him without any fear whatsoever, and said: “Warrior from the celestial realm. Fight me. Let’s see whether your quasi-divine sense is stronger, or my sovereign intent that hasn’t been broken.”

“Bingbing, we don’t need a duel — there are enough of us to swarm them,” the fat boy and several others said at once, trying to pull her back.

“You?” The Hanged Man let out a cold laugh.

“Take the girl — she’s the most valuable hostage,” the Poet said.

The Hanged Man’s movements were a blur of wrongness — angles that didn’t line up with normal bodies moving at speeds that made tracking difficult. In the space of a heartbeat, he had vanished from where he stood and reappeared directly behind the girl, fingers curved like talons reaching for the back of her neck.

He was already preparing his contingency: if her companions tried to intervene, a circular shockwave would clear them all. If he’d been going for a kill rather than a capture, he had counted a hundred different ways to do it in the time this was taking.

“Hah!“

The Hanged Man felt the world tilt sideways.

He was airborne — hurtling — and then the ravine wall hit him like a door slamming shut, and he was embedded in it, ears ringing, not entirely clear on how any of this had happened.

Was it Yue Yang? That wasn’t possible — he was clearly still fighting back there —

The Tribesman stared. The Hanged Man had just been punched through a stone wall by that girl. Like a thrown doll. It blinked — then raised its enormous fist, intending to simply end this, one strike, done. But in the fraction of a second before the fist came down, the girl — the one who had shown no hint of real power until this exact moment — was suddenly inside its guard, one palm pressed flat against its chest and abdomen.

BOOM.

The Tribesman’s massive body skidded backward. Its legs hit the stone floor and sank into it, but the force behind the palm didn’t care — it kept pushing, dragging its legs through the rock and carving two parallel trenches a hundred meters long before it finally, barely, stopped.

The Tribesman — whose body was supposed to be comparable in durability to a dragon’s — opened its mouth and vomited.

Green blood.

The Poet stared. His eyes had gone round. This is impossible. This is flatly, categorically impossible.

“Brother was right,” the girl — Bingbing — said, sounding slightly dazed herself, staring at her own hands with an expression caught between surprise and delight. She had knocked back two of the Generals with a single exchange each, and even accounting for the fact that they’d been careless, it was a result that clearly exceeded her own expectations. She bounced on her heels. “Attacks that carry sovereign intent strike the soul directly. Outside force can’t resist them.”

“Don’t underestimate them,” said a beautiful woman in fine clothes, resting a hand gently on Bingbing’s head. “Their actual power still exceeds ours. Those hits only landed because they were completely unprepared — we barely scratched them.”

Floating in the air nearby, sitting cross-legged on a spirit mirror, a veiled young woman smiled with warm encouragement: “Bingbing, if you add your ancient rune power on top, the effect would be even better. Still — being able to exchange blows with Sun God Palace warriors at this stage? I’m not sure I believe it myself.”

“I’ll work harder!” Bingbing made a small, fierce fist.

The Poet turned all of this over in his mind and still couldn’t reconstruct how those two attacks had happened. This girl — this physically unimpressive human girl — how was she one-shotting the Hanged Man and the Tribesman?

“There are only three of them,” the veiled woman on the mirror said, looking around. “The numbers are wrong. These clever people split up partway. Some of them got through.”

“The Heaven Devil Hall and the Demon Abyss people love to fight — they’ll handle the other groups.”

“Are you sure that’s enough for them?”

“Divine Punishment and Divine Calamity both headed that way. It’s fine.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” The fat boy was already pointing and assigning targets with great enthusiasm. “Luohua, you take the Poet. Inan and Bingbing take the one with the dead eyes. Everyone else, we gang up on the big stupid one!”

The Poet had been watching this entire time and still couldn’t parse it. These people were Ground-rank. Collectively. What could they possibly think gave them the right to be talking like this? When had warriors of the Sun God Palace’s elite — Central Divine Hall’s finest — started taking mockery from Ground-rank fighters?

“Die!” The Hanged Man wrenched himself free of the stone wall and came diving at Bingbing from above, vicious and fast.

“Life’s Forest.”

The Poet watched the girl summon her Grimoire without any sign of panic.

It was a high-tier Platinum-rank Grimoire. The kind that many elders, clan patriarchs, sovereign lords, even deputy hall masters went their entire lives without seeing.

The moment the Grimoire opened, a barrier flared into being — and the Hanged Man, who had been certain he would punch straight through it and take the girl out in the same instant, found himself suddenly unable to move.

Rune-formed vines. Ancient trees the height of mountains. They erupted from the ground around the girl in every direction, and in the span of a breath they had formed a primordial forest without visible end — a Forest Domain that wasn’t just a Domain but a link between heaven and earth itself. To shatter it would require shattering the world.

The girl let out a sharp cry. Energy detonated outward from her small body. Something vast and immovable poured through her — a sovereign intent so complete it had taken on a physical quality — and it bore down on the Hanged Man like a falling mountain.

Two tree-warrior soldiers erupted from the Domain and came down on the Hanged Man with their full weight, stamping. Before the Hanged Man had processed that, a life-guardian war beast was already in motion, and under the girl’s reinforcement the Forest Domain surged another several levels, and the sovereign intent pressing outward from that small body hit absolute maximum — so much so that the Poet, standing outside the combat radius entirely, felt it strike him and took an involuntary step back.

“What — how — this hidden power —” The Poet’s voice had broken open with shock. He understood it now. He understood why this girl had challenged him without hesitation. She had Sky-rank tier six equivalent output. A Ground-rank fighter, seals off, running at something close to Sky-rank tier six strength. That was insane. More insane still was that she had comprehended sovereign intent without being Sky-rank at all — and the quality of it, standing here comparing it against his own quasi-divine sense, was not significantly below his.

The implications arrived one after another and each one was worse.

Then the final piece clicked into place, and the Poet shouted: “You — I understand now. You’re Yue Yang’s sister!”

There was no other explanation. Outside of that abnormal genius himself, the Poet could not imagine a second candidate.

Only his sister could be this strong.

The very irritating fat boy, upon hearing this, broke into a sunny grin. “Got it in one! But here’s the follow-up question — can you guess who I am? Brace yourself. Don’t let me frighten you off your feet. Standing before you, in all his magnificent, imposing, elegant, heroic, dashingly handsome, distinguished, rooster-among-chickens glory — the jade-faced young master Hai Dafu. That person you call ‘Yue Yang Titan’? He is, in fact, my little brother. As his senior, I really have no choice but to show you a little something. I’m about to use my secret move. If you burst into tears, that’s not my fault.”

The Poet stared.

His jaw hit the floor.