Black Void Space.

Vivienne listened to Yueyang’s description without speaking. She kept her expression controlled — but something moved in her eyes regardless, a brightness she couldn’t fully suppress.

A way out. After all this time, there was finally a way out.

It might take time. It wouldn’t happen overnight. But the light at the end of it was real.

She was quiet for a long moment after he finished. She didn’t praise the audacity of the plan, didn’t thank him for it. There was no need for any of that. They shared something at the level of souls — whatever moved in her heart, he could feel it, just as she could always read what was in his. Words between them, in moments like this, were beside the point.

Vivienne opened her arms and pulled him close.

Xiao Wenli, beside them, felt the warmth of it and reached out too — wrapping herself around both of them, her small face pressed against them, content. It was the first time, in this lightless sealed space, that she had smiled with her whole self.

“If I were stronger,” Yueyang murmured, “I wouldn’t need anyone else’s help to get you out.” He kissed her cheek — the place where tears had fallen once, absorbed instantly by the black void, dissolved into nothing. He kissed it as though he could reach the memory of those tears and take them back. As though he could kiss away every shadow the long imprisonment had left on her.

“Don’t say foolish things.” Vivienne turned the comfort back on him with easy grace, one ivory hand tracing the line of his nose, her lips brushing his. “You’ll surpass me someday. That’s never been in question — it’s only a matter of time.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” he asked.

He felt Xiao Wenli tugging at him from below, little face tilted up with expectation.

He bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Fair was fair.

Xiao Wenli rewarded him with two loud enthusiastic kisses in return, delighted. She only showed this side of herself in Vivienne’s presence — outside the Grimoire World she was his silent, merciless little guardian, the small demoness who walked at his side. Here she could be a child.

Vivienne watched with laughter in her eyes. “You’re going to spoil her completely.” But she leaned in and rained her own kisses down on Xiao Wenli’s brow and eyelids until the girl squirmed with embarrassment, then recovered her full composure in an instant — the Conqueror Queen, as though she had never been anything else.

She considered Yueyang’s question.

“If the situation is truly as promising as you’re describing,” she said, “then I find that I’m actually not in a hurry to leave.”

Yueyang stared at her. “…What?”

Xiao Wenli’s hands flew to Vivienne’s sleeve, tugging urgently, pleading without words.

Vivienne laughed — full, unguarded. “I’ve endured this black void for so long. You think I’d be satisfied simply escaping it? Perhaps you understand already. Yes — that’s exactly what I mean. I don’t want to leave this space. I want to conquer it. Make it mine, entirely, governed by my will alone.” Her voice had taken on something absolute. “This place was my prison. If I leave it by borrowing someone else’s power, that’s not victory — that’s just parole. I am Vivienne, the Conqueror Queen who set out to bring the heavenly realm to its knees. If I walk out of here like this, then this moment is the highest I will ever reach. And I refuse to accept that ceiling.” She met his eyes, and what was in hers was not desperation — it was direction. “I want to climb alongside you, Yueyang. To pursue the limits of the divine sovereign realm, the limits of the martial path itself. To create worlds and govern everything within them. I want what you want, and I want to reach it on my own feet.”

She straightened.

“This black void is my starting point. If I can’t transform even this, then everything else I’ve dreamed of means nothing. Escaping is no longer the goal.”

“I understand — but—”

“And even if my attempt fails,” she said, with a calm certainty that admitted no doubt, “you’ll grow strong enough to pull me out yourself before long. I’m sure of it.”

Yueyang was quiet for a moment. Then he let the objection go.

She had out-thought him again. Of course she had. She had imagined something bolder, more expansive, more fundamentally hers than anything he had framed — and she was right.

“You’ve convinced me.”

“You would have done the same.” She smiled. “We both have that in us — the recklessness, the refusal to accept any ceiling that someone else set. With your support—” She closed her hand into a fist, and the gesture carried the weight of an oath witnessed only by the two of them and Xiao Wenli: “—I will not lose again. This cage will become my world. My dominion. My home.”

Ten thousand years ago, when she had first set foot in the heavenly realm, she had made an oath with the same quality of certainty.

What had followed was the Conqueror Queen that made the heavens tremble.

At the foot of the ice mountain.

When Yueyang returned to the outer world, he called Qianqian and Wuxia out of the Grimoire World and told them everything.

“That’s the plan.” They understood at once.

“Any additions? Anything I’m missing?” He valued the precision they brought to things he was inclined to charge at directly.

“First question.” Wuxia was methodical. “When you guide the ice mountain’s energy into the Black Void Space — is there any danger to you personally?” If the answer was yes, she would oppose the plan regardless of what lay inside the mountain. She was certain Vivienne would feel the same, not knowing the outside situation. She needed to ask on behalf of everyone. When Yueyang gave a firm nod — no personal danger — she let out a quiet breath and moved to her second question. “Do you need to do this alone, or is there a role for us?”

“The two of you are enough. And I’d prefer to keep this quiet — I don’t want too many people worrying.”

Not even Fourth Mother.

“Third. Time. If this is going to take a very long time, I’d recommend setting it aside for now.” She looked at him steadily.

“I genuinely can’t estimate that. I don’t know how the Black Void absorbs energy at the scale we’re talking about. Could be a second. Could be a year. I have no standard to measure against.”

Qianqian, who had been standing quietly to one side, stepped forward. “Let me try something.”

Her six-sense talent was not simply a matter of sharper eyes and ears. At its depths, it was the strongest sixth sense possessed by any woman in the world — true precognitive intuition, not inference.

She rarely used it formally, and almost never directed it at Yueyang. She preferred to be his fierce and bickering princess rather than someone who read ahead in the story of him. But that preference had never diminished the ability itself. If anything, the time she’d spent cultivating at the World Tree — the shared moment of spiritual transcendence — had grown it beyond what it had been.

When everything was uncertain and tangled, her instinct cut through better than any other tool.

This would be the first time she had ever formally directed it at him with full intention.

To amplify it, she stopped thinking about anything at all and kissed him — reaching into the contact for the energy and soul-resonance she needed, drawing on the heart-link between them, letting her sixth sense expand into its fullest expression.

The heart-link ribbons moved between them like drawn swords.

They danced and wove through the cold air, tracing patterns that had no name in any language—

When Qianqian opened her eyes, she took a moment to come back fully.

Then she didn’t speak.

She simply stood still for three seconds.

“Qianqian.” Yueyang was on alert. She had blocked him from sharing the resonance, insisted on sensing alone — had something in the vision hurt her? “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” She gathered herself. “I felt the ice mountain crack open. I felt Wuxia gain something from this. I felt the outcome exceed what any of us are expecting.” A pause. “I also felt myself crying. Maybe from being moved? I don’t know. But none of us were in danger — this is a good outcome, I’m sure of it.”

She said all of it plainly, holding nothing back from them.

Yueyang and Wuxia looked at each other. Neither could make sense of the crying. The rest of it — overwhelming success, the mountain breaking open — that all tracked. But Qianqian crying? She almost never did. And what connection did that have to any of this?

“Rest first,” Yueyang said. He was protective of her, unwilling to let even the faintest shadow remain. “We’ll try another reading once you’ve recovered.”

There was no rush. Setting it aside for now was the right call.

Perhaps after rest, the impressions would come clearer.

Wuxia opened her Book of Truth and attempted her own reading of the situation. Nothing came through. Whatever lay beyond the reach of ordinary prophecy, it truly did require Qianqian’s sixth sense to touch.

Facing the ten-thousand-meter ice mountain, the three of them pressed down the excitement in their chests and made camp at its foot — a small tent pitched in the shadow of something that had been accumulating for millions of years. They lay side by side inside it, four hands linked in adjacent pairs, exchanging energy in the quiet way that required no technique and no effort, simply presence — and stayed with the faint sensation at the edge of awareness, hoping to catch the next flash of clarity before it passed.

Night deepened gradually around them.

Yueyang was the first to surface.

In the Grimoire World, Xiao Nu had everything ready — dinner prepared, hot water drawn for baths, the small reliable acts of care that she had always handled without being asked. She couldn’t stand beside him in a fight. She could make sure he had no reason to spare a thought for anything else.

When they returned from the Grimoire World, Yueyang set aside every hesitation. Wuxia and Qianqian looked at him and nodded — fully in, both of them, whatever came next.

They ate well. Soaked in the hot water until the cold of the ice world had been driven completely out of them. Brought themselves back to their best.

Then the two women glanced at each other behind his back, each took one of his hands, and fell into step with him.

Guiding the energy of this ice world into the Black Void Space — it might prove to be the most difficult thing any of them had ever attempted. But they had already decided. Whatever Qianqian’s sixth sense had shown her, whatever was coming — they would meet it with everything they had, and they would meet it together. The ancient rune formation had stopped being the primary goal. Something larger was in motion now.

Yueyang raised both their hands above his head in a small salute of defiance.

“We’re going to do this.”

“We are,” they said together, and meant it.

This was his first attempt to reach into the Black Void’s seal from the outside.

What would happen?