Yueyang broke into a cold sweat.

This woman had been cut off from the Sky Stairway for tens of thousands of years, insulated from all the tangled rumors and misdirection that had accumulated around his name. That isolation had left her judgment cleaner than almost anyone else he’d encountered. She had come closer to the truth in a single moment of intuition than people who’d been studying him for years.

He was not going to confirm anything. Whatever she suspected, whatever she concluded, the secret held — that was the absolute minimum, regardless of whether she could ever leave this place. And her instinct raised a separate concern that settled into him like cold weight: the warriors of the heavenly realms, and particularly the people of the Central Temple, operated without the confusion of the Sky Stairway’s internal myths. They would not be misled by the Third Young Master of the Yue Clan persona. Were they already investigating?

The Central Temple, with access to heaven’s full resources — if they decided to look into something, they would find it.

He would need to be considerably more careful from this point forward. The Ancient Demon King was no longer a threat. But the Crimson Emperor remained an unknown. If the Crimson Emperor had gone into hiding under a new identity, away from Central Temple’s notice, that was manageable. What Yueyang was more concerned about was whether the Crimson Emperor knew the Joker — and whether the Joker had any traceable connections to the Sky Stairway’s traitor clans, or to the Wing Clan of the Radiant Continent. A single thread pulled in the right direction could unravel everything.

If his identity was exposed prematurely, it was effectively a declaration that the Sky Stairway had begun its rise — and the Central Temple would move to crush it immediately. The Sky Stairway was growing, but it was still a seedling pushing through hard soil, barely a first leaf above the surface. Before the Trials were cleared, before Vivienne broke her void-space seal, before the Sky Stairway had grown into something that could withstand real pressure — he needed the Central Temple looking the other way.

“I am a member of the Yue Clan, one of the four great families of the Longteng continent,” Yueyang said, with the composed deference of a young man who took his family’s honor seriously.

“The four great families of the Longteng continent?” The umbrella-woman smiled. “I’ve only heard of the four great families of the heavenly realms.”

Yueyang arranged his expression into one of long-suffering resignation.

She obviously hadn’t heard of the Longteng continent’s great families — she would have had to, for that to mean anything — but the polite fiction was more useful than any alternative he had available.

The umbrella-woman seemed to read something in his expression and made a small placating gesture. “I meant no disrespect to your family. Any house that could produce someone like you — however it compares to the heavenly families — is clearly extraordinary. Young man, would you tell me why you’ve come? What brings you to this hourglass world?”

Yueyang straightened.

Good. This is what I came for.

She believed he was from the Longteng continent, which was what mattered. If she’d been convinced he was from the heavenly realms, this conversation would have been considerably more complicated.

He bowed with genuine courtesy. “Senior — I came following the guidance of several elders, hoping to learn the true history of Buried Sword Valley. I wonder if you knew someone called Grandma Sha? Or the Wind Master, or the Rain Elder?”

The umbrella-woman shook her head. “I don’t recognize those names. They’re likely all juniors of mine.” She paused, then gave him the short version:

“It was the six divine artifacts — the ones the Buried Sword Immortal spent an entire lifetime creating — that began all of it. The Inferno Sovereign used them as a pretext to bring celestial warriors down on us, and they broke through Buried Sword Valley’s defensive formation and attacked the manor directly. My husband, to repel them, used his own life as the catalyst — pouring everything into the divine artifacts the Five Divine Bell and the Six Divine Seal — and struck down two of the celestial world’s most powerful figures on the spot. The enemy was driven back. I succeeded in capturing the critically wounded Inferno Sovereign. At that time, he feigned remorse and contrition, deceived me and the manor’s allies, and I released him, banishing him from our territory in hopes of ending the feud. He returned almost immediately.” She paused. “After my husband’s death, there was no one left who could fully wield the six artifacts. The Five Divine Bell vanished after he fell — without it, the full defensive formation could not be assembled — and the enemy broke through.”

“A heavenly warrior named Tianyu, from the Central Temple, along with his disciple Ji Wuri, took the Four Divine Armor from among the six. Another celestial warrior of unknown identity seized the Three Divine Mirror. When more enemies moved to divide the remaining three — the One Sword Divine, the Two Divine Staff, and the Six Divine Seal — a reclusive master of the Sky Stairway who had never shown himself was moved to fury. He used a transcendent artifact, the Five-Color Divine Radiance, and struck down the majority of the three thousand enemies assembled there. Then, for reasons I never understood, it triggered heavenly tribulation. That reclusive master used the Five-Color Divine Radiance against the tribulation. In the end, the artifact shattered — and its fragments scattered across the Longteng continent.”

“The Five-Color Divine Radiance — it truly scattered across the Longteng continent?” Yueyang pressed immediately. This was information of the first importance.

“I can’t say for certain. Some pieces may have been seized by celestial warriors before they fell. But in that moment, I saw it break apart — brilliant streamers of colored light arcing across the sky in every direction. What happened next—” She shook her head. “The fighting had grown so catastrophic, so close to destroying the land entirely, that an ancient ancestor intervened. Buried Sword Manor was cut apart — the whole site fractured into separate spatial pockets, each one containing a different form of the destructive energy that had been released. I don’t know what became of the others. I know that the Inferno Sovereign and I were both sealed into this hourglass world at the same time.” The sapphire umbrella turned slowly in her hands. “Fire on one side, water on the other. Three months, then the turn. Ten thousand years of observation to work out the pattern.” A faint smile, with something regretful underneath it. “I had, at that point, accepted the idea of destroying the entire land if it meant killing the Inferno Sovereign. If I had not been in such despair — perhaps it would not have come to that.”

“I understand,” Yueyang said, and meant it. He also privately suspected the Longteng continent had been destroyed and rebuilt more than once — each time leveled, each time reconstructed by whatever strength remained. “And the continent survived.”

“I’ve been imprisoned here for tens of thousands of years — I know nothing of the outside world. My physical body and possessions were destroyed when the seal was placed. Only this, which I made myself, remained.” She gathered the deep-blue sub-divine artifact umbrella and extended it toward him. “Take it. It’s not a divine artifact, but it’s a worthy treasure. Leaving it here serves no purpose. In the hands of someone like you, it might still do some good.”

“Senior, I can’t accept your umbrella.”

Beside him, Gray Wolf stopped swimming and stared.

The master is turning down a treasure being handed to him freely. Something is very wrong.

“This umbrella is wasted on me. I give it to you because I want to find a successor. I will never leave this world — I have no remaining regrets except that I have no one to pass my legacy to. I hope you will go out and find a young woman of exceptional ability — someone like yourself — and have her inherit what I have to give.”

She extended the umbrella a second time.

Yueyang waved it aside again. “The matter of a successor — let’s come back to that. I can’t promise I’ll find someone who would meet your standards immediately. When I do find a suitable candidate, I’ll bring her, and you can pass everything on at that time.”

The water-woman nodded slowly. “I understand your thinking. Though I should say — I don’t want my successor to enter this hourglass world. If she came here, she might be trapped as I am, and that would be no inheritance at all. In fact, everything I know is recorded inside this umbrella. If the umbrella accepts someone, she becomes my successor without ever needing to come here. There’s no need for us to meet. The formalities of the world are all surface — if she inherits my power and knowledge and goes on to accomplish something with it, that’s the most I could hope for.”

“You don’t want her to come here?”

The immortal smiled slightly. “After you leave, I intend to sleep again. A thousand years, perhaps ten thousand. I have no more attachment to what happens outside. Only in dreams, meeting the traces of my husband’s spiritual will that he left behind — that is enough.”

A woman of great misfortune and greater devotion.

That was Yueyang’s quiet assessment. The misfortune was not hers by nature — it had come to her through the six divine artifacts the Buried Sword Immortal had left behind.

He turned the thought over for a moment, then accepted the umbrella from her hands. The weight of the responsibility that came with it settled in alongside the physical weight of the object. He had no idea which of his people the Qiluo Umbrella might choose to accept — but with so many remarkable women around him, surely at least one would be right.

He considered for another moment. Then, as the umbrella-woman began to lower herself back into the water, he reached out and stopped her.

“I came here with two purposes. I only knew the first one before I arrived — but after hearing the history of Buried Sword Valley, I believe the second has become necessary. I’ve acquired three artifacts. I’d like to ask you to examine one of them and tell me whether it belongs to the six divine artifacts of Buried Sword Manor.”

Xiao Wenli, reading his intent before he finished speaking, produced the Prison Emperor Divine Seal — the artifact that had always withheld its full acknowledgment from Yueyang, never quite accepting him completely.

“The Six Divine Seal?”

The umbrella-woman went completely still.

“This is one of the six divine artifacts? The Seal?” Yueyang’s eyes lit up.

“I don’t know what happened in the tens of thousands of years since I’ve been here. This artifact has changed — significantly. Many battles, perhaps, or some form of evolution and transformation. It is almost entirely unlike what I remember.” The water-formed arms extended, fingers reaching out with the tenderness of a parent touching something precious. She touched the Prison Emperor Divine Seal as though greeting an old friend, and her eyes were full of warmth. “Whatever it has become, I can say with certainty: it is one of the six. My husband used it to cut down the celestial world’s greatest warriors.”

“We call it the Prison Emperor Divine Seal now, in memory of a senior called the Prison Emperor. That senior — at a moment when the Sky Stairway faced annihilation — used it alongside two other artifacts to defeat the enemies that had come to destroy us. The Sky Stairway that exists now exists partly because of what he did.”

The understanding settled into place cleanly. The Seal had not been failing him — he simply had not yet earned its full recognition. But it could cut down the celestial world’s greatest warriors. The Prison Emperor’s feat of sealing three celestial titans was historical corroboration of exactly that.

If he earned the Seal’s full acknowledgment — if he could wield a hundred percent of what it contained — Ji Wuri’s arrogance would not look so imposing. The heavenly realm’s great figures would not look so far beyond reach.

And if the Prison Emperor Divine Seal was one of the six, the next step was clear.

Yueyang called Qianqian and Wuxia out of the Grimoire World to meet the Qiluo Immortal — a senior whose story had begun tens of thousands of years before either of them was born.