The jellyfish-man wanted to kill himself. Unfortunately for him, death had become a luxury — something to be desired but entirely out of reach.

He didn’t know whose hands he’d fallen into, but he knew, with absolute certainty, that falling into the silver-masked young man’s hands meant he was finished. What made it worse was that his capture could mean the unraveling of everything his people had spent thousands of years carefully building in White River City.

“Same as what you just told him — you don’t have a second option either. Not that I actually need you to say anything. A small fry like you couldn’t possibly know more than the basics.” The silver-masked man who had spent an entire night shadowing Xijiu to ferret out information was, naturally, Yue Yang. He grabbed the trembling jellyfish-man by the collar, tossed him directly into the Demon-Suppressing Tower, and left him there to sit for a while. He’d figure out later whether the creature was worth studying further.

“You — you—” Xijiu stared at Yue Yang, torn between shock and disbelief at the self-proclaimed new Prison Emperor.

“I considered leaving you to your own devices, because your performance back there was, how to put it — the sort that makes a person want to slap you. That your father only stopped short of breaking both your legs says something about his restraint. That said, you’re young, and young people are always a bit impulsive. Given that you at least showed some backbone at the end, I’ll grudgingly forgive you this once. Be aware — I rarely forgive the same person twice.”

Yue Yang reached out, plucked Xijiu up like a man lifting a small animal by the scruff, and stuffed him into an already densely packed storage ring the way you’d fit one last sardine into a can. Then he activated the Three Realms Compass and was gone in an instant, arriving at the blood-altar platform on the fifth level of the Sky Stairway.

He said a brief word to Ye Kong and Sea Fatty and the others, then pulled Xijiu out of the ring and dropped him on the ground like a worn-out sack, without ceremony or particular concern for where he landed.

Then he left to continue his rounds. Three transport runs a day via the Three Realms Compass had him feeling like a low-level trade character in some online game, grinding routes with no one to complain to.

With the reluctant logistics operator Yue Yang gone, Sea Fatty and the others closed in around Xijiu with grins that did not inspire confidence.

Xijiu broke into a cold sweat. Death didn’t frighten him. But what those grins were suggesting very much did.

“What are you planning? Where is this?” Xijiu scanned the surroundings with the trained eye of a tracker — directional sense and regional familiarity were foundational skills, and he was confident he knew every corner of the Tianhua Domain, except for the hidden fog zones, the smoky sea, and the submerged ancient ruins. But this place had no water in it anywhere. It didn’t feel like the Tianhua Domain at all. And if it wasn’t — then the powerhouse who called himself the new Prison Emperor had transported him out of the Tianhua Domain in a single instant. What kind of terrifying ability was that? Was this person actually one of the divine beings from the old legends?

“This is the Sky Stairway.” Sea Fatty beamed at him. “Which, if you want to use the term your lot back in the Sky Realm prefers, would be the Sky Tower. So naturally, that makes us the locals. Pretty handsome locals, wouldn’t you say? Bet you’ve never met a local as good-looking as me.”

The smile was so deeply, specifically unsettling that Xijiu began sweating harder.

“The Sky Tower?” Xijiu’s mind went blank. He could not begin to process the fact that he had just been transported, in an instant, to the Sky Tower — the place his people had spent thousands of years unable to return to.

“Anything you’d like to say?” Sea Fatty’s formidable hand settled on Xijiu’s shoulder.

“I — I — I’m — I belong to the man who just brought me here. He took me on. I’m one of his people. I’m a descendant of Sky Tower members who were stranded in the Sky Realm. I was tracking down traitors when the Prison Emperor rescued me just now.” Xijiu got the whole story out at maximum speed. He could tell these people weren’t going to kill him — but if he didn’t make himself clear, and this disgusting fat man decided to do what those eyes were threatening, he’d have no one to appeal to. For the sake of his own dignity, Xijiu decided that a bit of creative framing was entirely justified.

“You’re actually one of the young master Titan’s new people?”

Several of those present immediately pushed to the front, grabbed Xijiu’s hand, and shook it with fervent enthusiasm.

“He really just recruited you?”

“Welcome! I have been waiting for this — I have been counting the days—”

The warmth was so overwhelming that Xijiu was nearly moved to tears. The one who’d introduced himself as Jinyun was shaking with visible emotion, actually crying, pumping Xijiu’s hand again and again and pulling him into repeated embraces.

Sky Tower people were unbelievably warm. That was his first thought.

Through the excited, somewhat disorganized, but undeniably heartfelt welcome and round of introductions, Xijiu gradually assembled a picture of who these people were. The fat one with the deeply dubious smile who looked every bit the degenerate he appeared to be called himself Hai Dafu — and while he claimed to be the leader of the group, Xijiu didn’t quite buy it. The cold, silent one called Snow-Hungry Wolf felt considerably more likely. Beyond those two, the elegantly mannered, courteous, impeccably composed one was the Tianra Prince — clearly the group’s strategist. The one with blade-sharp eyes and a lean, tall frame that nonetheless radiated the solidity of a mountain was called Ye Kong, and he read as the deputy, the person who handled logistics for the Prison Emperor. Liqie and Ligua were obviously bodyguards — the devoted, unshakeable kind. The tearful Jinyun and the one who’d been first to embrace him, named Fengji, were scouts and advance men, clearly. A few others rounded out the group with varying cultivation levels — the ones named Zhongguan, Heitu, Baima, and several more seemed to belong to a different unit, their cultivation noticeably higher.

“Thank you. I don’t know what to say. You’re all so—” Xijiu’s heart was genuinely full.

This really is what the old stories said. People of the homeland.

They’re just so warm.

Sea Fatty slung an arm around his shoulder and shook his head, laughing. “You haven’t experienced the full extent of it yet.”

He didn’t finish the sentence before Ye Kong’s fist connected cleanly with Xijiu’s nose.

The punch dropped Xijiu out of his moment of profound feeling and directly into stars-and-nosebleed territory. Sea Fatty followed immediately with a devastating shoulder throw, sending the new arrival crashing down hard on the uneven rock floor.

Before Xijiu could even cry out, seven or eight feet came down on him in quick succession. He felt as though he’d been run over by a herd of wild aurochs. Every bone in his body was articulating its displeasure.

He noticed that the one hitting him hardest was Jinyun — the same man who, moments ago, had been shaking his hand with tears of joy streaming down his face.

Fengji, who’d been the first to embrace him, was giving equally solid effort. Xijiu was willing to bet with complete confidence that if this man had brought even a fraction of this enthusiasm to his actual work, he would be the greatest employee in the history of any organization.

“What — why — ow — what are you doing?!” Xijiu began to wonder if there had been some kind of misunderstanding.

“This is the welcome ceremony!” Sea Fatty explained, face perfectly solemn, delivering a firm kick while he did so — as though failing to hit hard would somehow misrepresent the depth of his affection for the new arrival.

“Can we maybe—” Xijiu was starting to feel that the group could perhaps express their welcome in ways he’d find more comfortable than this. Handshakes and hugs, while unusual, compared rather favorably.

“We bear absolutely no prejudice against any new member whatsoever! Come, let us bring our greatest sincerity to welcoming this new comrade among us. Let us honor this beautiful tradition and never let it die! Fatty — what are you doing, why did you stop?!” Ye Kong stared at Sea Fatty, who had stepped back from the circle with apparent purpose.

“Keep going without me, I need to eat something first. I can’t maintain proper ceremonial energy on an empty stomach.” Sea Fatty’s response made Xijiu want to weep openly. The beating he could accept. But eating a full meal mid-beating in order to resume with greater vigor was a level of dedication to the process that felt genuinely excessive.

He did not weep. Jinyun, however, did.

He was crying and hitting at the same time.

“I’m just — I’m so overwhelmed. I have been waiting for this day — I don’t know how long I’ve waited — why was I the last new person? Why does Young Master Titan never recruit anyone? I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in darkness with no one new to welcome. And then today — today, finally — can you blame me for being happy?”

Xijiu was beginning to understand the situation with uncomfortable clarity.

New members get hazed by the old ones.

Whoever invented this welcome ceremony was a genuinely evil person.

After an hour of this, the group was tiring out and called a general rest break — food, water, a moment to breathe. Only Fengji and Jinyun, the two most recent additions before Xijiu, pushed on with inexhaustible dedication. They seemed to feel that until they had returned every bit of their own welcome ceremony onto someone new, a hundred times over, they could not rest in peace.

“Brothers — maybe take a short break and continue after?” Xijiu had made a certain peace with his situation. He was the new person; this was simply how things were. But watching Fengji and Jinyun push themselves to near-collapse was starting to provoke something almost like sympathy. The two of them declined his suggestion with dignity, expressing that no matter how tired they became, they would persevere — because failing to leave a new member with a truly unforgettable impression was, for a veteran member, the deepest possible personal failure.

“One question, then.” Xijiu directed this at Sea Fatty and the others, who had refreshed themselves and were circling back in. “When’s the next new person expected?”

“Eventually there will be one, don’t worry. Somewhere between a month or two and half a year, most likely.” Sea Fatty answered this with genuine helpfulness.

Xijiu absorbed this information and arrived at despair. Revenge in the short term was clearly not on the table.

“Fine. Hit if you must — but could you leave the face alone?” The words were barely out before everyone present immediately identified the face as the obvious and correct point of focus.

Absolute disaster. Learn to keep your mouth shut.

Another hour passed. Yue Yang had by now completed three full runs — from the southern Sky Realm’s Nightless City, to the Sky Stairway’s Yue family stronghold, to the western Sky Realm’s Greenvalley City — and returned to the fifth level of the Sky Stairway. This time, he was bringing everyone to White River City. People like Sea Fatty, left to their own devices, would never develop if they weren’t pushed out into the field now and then.

Xijiu, meanwhile, had returned to the Whale’s Drink Tavern. His face was swollen to dimensions that bore a striking resemblance to a pig’s head, and Ganquan very nearly failed to recognize his own son. It was only when Xijiu spoke that Ganquan registered, with a start that aged him ten years, that this particular pig-head was in fact his child.

Ganquan hauled Xijiu into the inner room. “What happened to you? Why are you back? I told you to leave.”

He assumed Xijiu had been caught fleeing and had fought his way back through some pursuit.

Xijiu looked at his father with tears running freely down his face, and then dropped to his knees. “Father. I was wrong.”

At those words, a killing intent flashed through Ganquan’s eyes and was gone. He stared at his son with an edge like a blade. “You betrayed your people?”

He had concluded that Xijiu had been captured and tortured into giving up the clan’s secrets.

Xijiu shook his head frantically, tears still falling. “Father — no. This is good news.”

He told the whole story without omitting anything — the jellyfish-man among the cursed fishfolk detecting him, the capture, Yue Yang’s sudden appearance and rescue, the journey to the Sky Stairway, everything that had followed. Ganquan’s initial reaction was disbelief. But then Yue Yang and Sea Fatty and the others were simply there, in the Whale’s Drink Tavern, and when Yue Yang produced the Prison Emperor’s divine seal, every last doubt Ganquan had dissolved.

It was like a dream. A beautiful dream.

The Sky Tower — the place they hadn’t been able to return to for thousands of years — could be returned to now. When the Prison Emperor had fallen, the passage connecting the Sky Stairway to the Sky Realm had been sealed, and every member of the Sky Tower lineage left stranded in the Sky Realm had become, in the truest sense, a lost army — without anchor, without support, without hope. That despair had lasted thousands of years. And now, at last, there was light.

Not only could they return — but there was a new Prison Emperor, someone who had inherited the will of those who came before.

Ganquan wept.

He wept like a child.

He had been born in the Sky Realm and had never once seen the Sky Tower. But the homesickness of his ancestors had shaped every year of his life.

No matter how fine the Sky Realm, it is not your homeland. It is not where your roots are.

That line, he had never forgotten — not for a single day. And he had never forgotten something else either: his great-grandfather stepping forward without hesitation to shield the clan’s retreat, fighting to the death against the leader of the defectors, and saying as he fell, The only regret I carry is that my bones cannot be buried in the soil of home. If they could, I would die without any.

And now, at last, someone from home had come. Home had risen. His great-grandfather’s final wish could be fulfilled.

“To every member of the Sky Tower bloodline stranded in the Sky Realm — you have not been forgotten. The Sky Tower, our home, has not forgotten you.”

Elder Nangong, who had come along, took Ganquan’s hands in both of his, and his voice was full.

“Welcome, kinsman. Welcome home.”

“…I can’t—” Ganquan broke down completely, shedding more tears in that moment than he had in all his previous years of life combined.

In that instant, he understood, completely and for the first time, why his parents and grandparents had been so consumed by the thought of home. Because it was only with a home to return to that a home truly existed — and only with a home that a heart long adrift could find its roots.

Yue Yang handed the whole matter over to Elder Nangong and went back to his guard captain duties.

After an entire night of discussion with Elder Nangong, Ganquan walked out of the room the next morning looking like a man reborn — shoulders back, energy crackling, as though the slow aging of his bones had simply reversed itself. The thousands of years of effort his people had poured into this work hadn’t been wasted at all. And his body, which he had lately thought was beginning to fail him, felt as though it had another few hundred years in it without question.

“Father.” Xijiu was hovering outside the door, visibly hesitant. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to suggest… that you consider joining the Titan company.”

Ganquan stopped.

Then, with extraordinary speed for a man who’d just spent the night in philosophical conversation, he became very, very angry.

You little wretch. You got beaten half to death as a new recruit, and now you want to nominate your own father so you can watch it happen to him?

He turned on his heel and went directly for the kitchen.

Where the cleaver was.

Xijiu took one look, made a swift assessment of his prospects, and ran for his life.