The Crimson Blood Celestial River came down like a waterfall from the ninth heaven.

It hit Yueyang and drove him hundreds of meters into the frozen earth, the impact gouging a massive crater in the permafrost. The crimson blood pooled in that crater and boiled, hissing, consuming the frozen ground around it — the hard earth dissolving into magma as the blood burned through everything it touched. Storm Valkyrie looked down at her own arm: a single droplet of the blood had landed on it, and where it touched, even her ice-cold skin ignited, the droplet burning clean through in a small, precise hole.

One droplet. That was all it took.

Yueyang was at the bottom of a pool of the thing.

Xiao Wenli had not moved from above the blood pool. She hadn’t thrown herself in to rescue him — which, under any previous circumstances, she absolutely would have done. She floated there, watching the pool with an expression of complete stillness, and when Storm Valkyrie swept closer to check, Xiao Wenli shook her head once, gently, and signaled her back.

Storm Valkyrie didn’t understand. But she understood one thing: when Yueyang wasn’t available, this small serpent-demon girl was in charge.

On the other side of the battlefield, something had gone wrong for Chitian River.

His hands fell.

Both of them. From the air. Disconnecting from his body and dropping toward the ground with the slow inevitability of things that have been separated from where they belong.

His expression was that of someone confronting an impossibility. He had a divine body. Divine bodies did not get severed. He did what the body does when the mind stops working — reached for the falling hands automatically, leaning forward, arms extended to catch them, forgetting in the shock of the moment that arms which have been removed cannot catch anything.

The reaching motion pulled at his wounds.

His remaining leg went silently, cleanly at the knee — the Wheel of Apocalypse’s work, faster than any blade, so precise the wound didn’t even bleed before it sealed. Chitian River toppled. He hit the frozen ground with the expression still on his face, and only then fully understood what had happened to his leg.

His severed hands landed in the boiling crimson blood pool.

White smoke rose from where they touched the surface.

And in the same moment, Yueyang erupted from the pool — completely unclothed again, rune formations blazing across every surface of his skin, grasping one of the severed hands in each of his own. The crimson blood was still attacking the exposed skin between his rune patterns, burning and eating, but something inside him — the World, or some unnamed force the primordial rune formation had given him — was consuming it as fast as it arrived.

“Impossible,” Chitian River said. “You cannot damage a divine body. This is impossible.“

“You said that already.” Yueyang caught something else too — the mass of divine blood that had been in Chitian River’s hands when the Wheel came through. He closed his fingers around it.

Chitian River rolled, armless, and drove his severed leg like a battering ram at Yueyang’s midsection.

Yueyang’s left hand produced the Sovereign Velocity sub-divine artifact ring, slipped it on, and stepped out of the strike’s path.

Then he took the divine blood and pressed it against the Prison Emperor Divine Seal.

The Metal Beast — currently in Heaven-Piercing War Blade form — looked at the blood on the Seal.

Forgot about the battle entirely.

Reverted to its original small-beast shape and began licking the divine blood off the Seal with focused enthusiasm before the Seal could absorb it. It got at least half before Yueyang, wearing the expression of a man whose allies are testing him, grabbed it and threw it into the blood pool. Then he braced himself, accepted the full force of one of Chitian River’s kicks with his body, and drove his entire spirit and will into the Seal in the blood’s wake.

If he couldn’t get the Prison Emperor Divine Seal to recognize him now, it would have to be destroyed. The timing would never be better — Chitian River to deal with next, then the snake-haired sorcerer, then the Devil Valley trial. Divine artifacts mattered most before you reached the divine sovereign realm yourself. After that they became decoration. The window was now.

Light erupted from the Seal like arrows — hundreds of millions of rays simultaneously, pouring through Yueyang’s body until the rune patterns on his skin were the only things still solid, everything else between them illuminated to transparency.

The final contest with the Prison Emperor Divine Seal had reached its critical threshold.

Chitian River understood what was happening. He threw himself at Yueyang — armless, one-legged, spent from the forbidden technique, operating on the understanding that if this human successfully bonded the divine artifact today, there was no tomorrow for Chitian River worth speaking of. He launched himself off the ground, deflected Storm Valkyrie and Xiao Wenli with his stumps, and came down on Yueyang’s head with everything remaining.

Normally Yueyang would have moved. Right now his mind was somewhere else entirely, locked in the final struggle with the Seal, and moving wasn’t an option.

His body took it like a nail being driven in. Then a kick that sent him airborne. Chitian River pressed the advantage without hesitation — he knew what was at stake, and dignity had stopped mattering.

“You want to bond the divine artifact? Not today.” He got in close, pivoting, driving the stump of his right arm into the back of Yueyang’s neck with the force of a falling mountain. Blood burst from Yueyang’s mouth. It splattered across the Prison Emperor Divine Seal, covering it.

“You die.“

The divine sword arrived through space itself — barely within the range of what time would normally permit — and came down on Chitian River’s head with the force of someone who had been running back across an ice field for exactly this moment.

Qianqian had returned.

Chitian River took the strike and bled from it. Not enough to stop him. He was already past the divine sword before she could take it back, broken arm-stump slamming down toward the sword she still held — her hands took the impact through the hilt, both of them split at the grip, blood running down the weapon. Chitian River in killing-fury, stripped of everything except the drive to end this, was still strong enough to be unstoppable.

He rotated his shoulder and drove the elbow into her arm.

The sound wasn’t good. The arm nearly broke. Only the divine sword absorbing the worst of it kept her standing.

Xiao Wenli’s cross-slash opened a line of blood across Chitian River’s back before he could turn. Her tail caught him and hurled him a hundred meters away from Yueyang and Qianqian.

Storm Valkyrie was in the air before he landed. Both fists together, dropping onto him like a hammer as he hit the ground. Chitian River went in deep — half his body buried in frozen earth, only the stumps of his legs visible above the surface.

Storm Valkyrie grabbed those legs and pulled him out.

And then she used him to hit the ground. Repeatedly.

The permafrost acquired a new topography of craters and fractures. Blood was everywhere.

Chitian River was not dead. In the moment Storm Valkyrie lifted him high for the next slam, he found one last angle — a headbutt that connected with Storm Valkyrie, making her stagger. He tore free, dove under Xiao Wenli’s incoming slash, went underground through solid frozen earth, and came back up from beneath — aimed directly at Yueyang, who was still deep in the contest with the Seal.

Qianqian stood over him. She brought the divine sword down, but it wasn’t enough to stop the impact completely.

Chitian River hit.

Her shoulder absorbed most of it. The internal damage was real — organs jarring, something tearing loose. She and Yueyang both went flying, and she didn’t let go of him. She couldn’t hold it; the blood coughed from her mouth caught the air, and half of it landed on the Prison Emperor Divine Seal still in his hands.

Her blood hit the Seal.

The Seal went dark for one moment.

Then it detonated light.

Not attack-light. Recognition-light. Golden light in quantities that had no adequate description — reaching Yueyang, Qianqian, Xiao Wenli, Storm Valkyrie, and continuing past them, past everything, until the entire sky and the frozen earth beneath it were the same color as the Seal.

Qianqian sat down on the ground and did not get back up. Her legs had stopped working.

Chitian River felt what had happened and understood it. He had not broken the enemy. He had, through some combination of events he couldn’t fully reconstruct, helped the enemy finish bonding the divine artifact.

Nothing left but one option.

He threw himself at Yueyang with every remaining fragment of what he was. No strategy, no technique — just the weight and force of a being that had decided if it was ending here, it would end with everything given. Storm Valkyrie was too far. Xiao Wenli caught the bow wave and was blown clear. Qianqian, still on the ground, saw it coming and couldn’t run.

She turned Yueyang in her arms so her back was toward Chitian River.

There wasn’t time to think about it. She just did it. If it helped, it helped. If it didn’t, at least she’d tried.

BOOM.

The world moved. The remaining ice peaks fell. Space cracked in several places at once. The blood pool’s contents and all the loose energy in the area were swept into a crimson vortex that rose and spun and finally dissipated.

The only thing standing upright on the battlefield was the Prison Emperor’s divine sword.

Divine artifacts maintained themselves.

After a while, Qianqian opened her eyes.

She wasn’t dead. She checked herself for new damage: arm, shoulder — but her spine felt nothing. She hadn’t been hit there at all. She sat up, confused, and found Yueyang half-draped across her shoulder. He had one hand pressed to her shoulder, the other holding the Prison Emperor Divine Seal, and beneath the Seal—

Chitian River. Head caved in where the Seal had connected.

Chitian River’s final charge had been stopped by Yueyang, who had caught the impact with the Seal and put it directly between them.

Qianqian sat back down on the ground completely and didn’t try to stand.

Chitian River’s face was unrecognizable under the blood running from every feature. His eyes were still moving.

Then his stumps began swinging — wild, blind — and Yueyang was knocked backward. What remained of Chitian River wasn’t fighting. It was running. Whatever clarity came with near-death had arrived: severely damaged, with the Prison Emperor Divine Seal fully bonded to his enemy, without Storm Valkyrie and Xiao Wenli being neutralized — he would not survive this. Not in any configuration.

He turned.

Light flashed in the sky.

The Wheel of Apocalypse came back.

It had never actually stopped. It had completed its arc and returned, still carrying the same momentum, still turning with the same absolute purpose it had left with.

Chitian River made it a hundred meters.

His body split cleanly down the center and both halves fell onto the frozen earth.

Both halves were still moving. Still reaching. The two pieces of him were trying to drag themselves back together, to reconnect, to have one more chance—

The situation did not permit it.

Yueyang came down from the sky with the Prison Emperor Divine Seal in one hand and White Frost Bloom blazing in the other, and the look on his face was the look of someone who has been at this for a long time and is ready to be finished.

The battle had been long, and brutal, and uncertain from the first moment to nearly the last.

Chitian River fell.