Refining the Twin Fish Ribbons wasn’t technically difficult — the problem was materials. The Golden Fleece he’d acquired in the Zodiac Palace had already been incorporated into the Scorpion Heaven-Piercing Blade. He needed something comparable, or better. Until that materialized, the Ribbons would wait. If he was going to do it, he was going to do it properly.

The Breaking Eye Dagger, on the other hand, had arrived at its moment.

Starting from Silver-rank — which, given where everything else in his arsenal had ended up, was embarrassing — Yueyang worked through it methodically. He inscribed the ancient rune formation “Truth” onto the blade, then layered in the heavenly rune formations “Illusion-Breaking” and “Void-Seizing.” To those he added Thunder Crystal Gold, Crimson Flame Crystal Gold, and the ancient dragon blood and dragon teeth he’d extracted from the two-headed black dragon in Beast Valley, fusing and refining the whole composition together.

The result: above Platinum-rank. A significant leap past the Crescent Blade’s previous ceiling.

The ceiling, however, was firm. Without a weapon spirit, the Breaking Eye Dagger could not cross into Sacred-rank regardless of what else went into it — the same principle that prevented a Sky-rank cultivator from reaching the Sovereign realm through effort alone. The fundamental nature wasn’t there to support it.

Still. An extremely beautiful above-Platinum-rank dagger was a legitimate tool for most situations. Yueyang hung it at his waist. For ordinary encounters — anything that didn’t require bringing out the Crescent Blade or the Gluttony Blade — the Breaking Eye Dagger was more than sufficient, and considerably more discreet. Producing a sub-divine artifact in a routine confrontation had two equally undesirable outcomes: enemies fled immediately, or enemies began scheming immediately to take it from him.

Platinum-plus kept the attention at a manageable level.

“How is the Black Void responding?” Qianqian asked, after one of their ice-absorption sessions. “The mountain is nearly gone.”

Yueyang looked at what remained of what had been a ten-thousand-meter structure. “We could fill several more mountains the same size and probably still not reach the limit.”

He shook his head. The ancient master who had sealed Vivienne — whoever they had been — had been something beyond his ability to fully conceptualize.

“Don’t lose heart,” Qianqian said, in the tone she used when she was deliberately being encouraging and slightly self-conscious about it. “The Sky Stairway alone has hundreds of ice worlds like this one. We have the method. The supply isn’t the problem.”

She was right. She was also being unusually gentle, in the way she got when it was just the two of them.

He’d noticed this. Without Wuxia present — without anyone for the competitive instinct to sharpen itself against — Qianqian’s default register returned to something warmer. The raised fists and the bickering were real, but they weren’t the whole truth. He filed this observation carefully.

The remaining ice within a thousand kilometers was absorbed by the end of the day through the uncontrolled dispersal method. Further absorption would have diminishing returns, and the unit world’s spatial fabric had been stressed enough that continuing risked collapse. Besides — he had things to do. The snake-haired sorcerer in White River City of the Tianhua Domain had been waiting since before the ice mountain arc began. That meeting was overdue.

Qianqian seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same time.

That evening she drew the bath herself instead of leaving it to Xiao Nu, arranged the bed without being asked, and moved around the space with the quiet efficiency of someone who had decided something and wasn’t going to make a production of announcing it.

The night that followed was what it was. In the morning she extricated herself from his arms, put her White Tiger Silver Armor back on, and reassembled the face of a martial princess who does not permit unauthorized hands.

Yueyang attempted to remain horizontal.

She took his ear.

“Stop performing death. I let you do whatever you wanted last night. Get up. We have a list.”

The hand that reached for her during this speech was redirected via over-the-shoulder throw.

They came out of the unit world, left Floor Ten, stopped at Thunder Fortress on Floor Six to pass instructions to Jude for Jun Wuyou, and returned to the Longteng continent on Floor One.

Jun Wuyou and Old Fox and Elder Yuehai had gone somewhere. Fengkuang, Xiahou Weijie with his Eagle Eyes, and the others were running training drills for the Dragon Rider Legion and Dragon Blood Guard recruits. As the founding figure whose existence the entire enterprise was built around, Yueyang stopped long enough to deliver two sentences of encouragement, accepted the roar of response with the expression of a man being chased, and extracted himself from the crowd at speed.

The adoration of large numbers of people, it turned out, was its own kind of pressure.

He located Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, and the Li brothers.

“Your cultivation has been solid,” he told them. “But the ceiling I set for you is the ceiling. With the ancient slaughter-king’s blood, Sky-rank was your limit. That works inside the Sky Stairway. In the heavenly realm, you’d be outclassed by any reasonably capable city lord.” He paused. “Which is why we’re changing it.”

He had, after the Chitian River battle, a pool of sealed crimson divine blood — the remains of the Crimson Blood Celestial River forbidden technique — plus the ancient dragon blood from Beast Valley. Divine blood was too volatile for Sea Fatty and the others to absorb directly; the power would simply destroy them. But replace the foundation entirely, use the dragon blood as the base, and add the divine blood as a catalytic accelerant—

It was not without risk. But his confidence in the method was genuine.

“This is definitely dangerous,” Sea Fatty said, reading the situation with the precision of someone who has survived many of Yueyang’s plans by correctly identifying which ones to be nervous about.

“Not at all,” Yueyang said. “I can guarantee you won’t explode.”

Sea Fatty visibly relaxed.

“You’ll dissolve long before that happens.”

Sea Fatty stopped relaxing.

“You might as well give in,” Ye Kong said, already resigned. Ye Kong had long since made peace with the fact that when Yueyang had a plan, the plan was happening.

Yueyang suspended the blood pool in the air and kicked Sea Fatty into it.

The sound Sea Fatty made was the sound of a man confronting injustice at a cellular level. “You said I wouldn’t explode!”

“Correct. Drink this.” Yueyang handed down a vial of dragon blood.

Sea Fatty drank it in desperate gulps. “What — why does it feel like there’s a fire in my stomach — something is very wrong — I think I’m about to become a volcano—”

“Now this one.” A second vial appeared. Purplish-blue contents.

“What happens if I drink it and die?”

“Then the experiment failed.”

“I’M NOT DRINKING IT.”

Sea Wind Seabird — nearly fully human-form by now, the last remnants of her original nature expressed only in the wings and the quality of her attention — had been watching Sea Fatty’s performance with the patient expression of someone who has seen this particular show many times. She reached over, grabbed his cheek, and poured the second vial down his throat while he was occupied with choking on the first one. What followed was a systematic application of physical correction that made Qianqian take a step backward.

After the sound of what might have been several ribs making new acquaintances, Qianqian leaned in and said quietly: “You’re sure that doesn’t cause permanent injury? I heard something that might have been bones.”

“He’s resilient,” Sea Wind Seabird said, shaking out her hand. “No lasting damage. Family discipline requires standards. If it’s too gentle, people talk.”

“Your family’s standards are quite something,” Qianqian said, with great care.

She privately wondered whether Sea Fatty’s legendary durability was less a natural gift and more the accumulated result of years of precisely this kind of educational intervention.

Ye Kong and the Li brothers accepted their doses with the composure of people who understood what the alternative to composure looked like. They probably didn’t know what was in the purplish-blue vials. It was better that way. If they’d known that Yueyang had taken a leaf from the Fire God Soul-Tempering Herb — a divine-grade herb he himself hadn’t yet used, that he’d been guarding carefully — and extracted its essence specifically for this procedure, they would have refused out of sheer guilt.

Old Fox’s investment priority list, had he been present, would have manifested as a physical object and struck someone.

In Old Fox’s judgment, the only person in the current generation worth truly exceptional resources was Yue Bing — she was rapidly approaching her ancient forest rune formation, she was growing at a speed that defied expectation, and she was the real long-term prospect. Sea Fatty and Ye Kong were loyal and capable and useful, and they deserved what scraps remained after the serious investments were made.

Yueyang’s assessment was different. People improved. Understanding improved. Potential that looked fixed had a way of expanding when the person inside it expanded. He’d run the numbers and decided.

Sea Wind Seabird had spotted the value of the purplish-blue extract — her cultivation was pressing Sacred Beast threshold and she could recognize what she was looking at. That was why her reaction to Sea Fatty’s hesitation had been so emphatic. He was being given something extraordinary and was responding by trembling.

Several hours and several periods of unconsciousness later, Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, and the Li brothers had all come through it.

The foundation change meant a temporary reduction in practical power — the old base was gone, and rebuilding on the new one would take time. Yueyang left them at the Sky Stairway rather than bringing them to Conquest City. The instruction was clear: work with the elders, especially Elder Nangong and the Elder Wisteria-Vine Woman and the other sage-class figures who had knowledge to transmit. The better the foundation, the higher the eventual ceiling.

Yueyang and Qianqian transferred through the Great Xia Imperial Palace to Tianra Palace and met with Fourth Mother.

He told her about the Chitian River battle in full.

She was displeased about the primordial rune formation — specifically about the part where he’d gone into a seal he hadn’t understood and nearly been destroyed by it — though something she wasn’t saying kept her from pressing the point in detail. She said only that he should never again make casual contact with divine artifacts, divine rune formations, or divine texts without understanding their nature first. Her tone suggested there was a reason behind this, and that the reason was not one she was ready to discuss.

Yueyang started to ask.

Qianqian kicked him in the ankle.

He didn’t ask.

Fourth Mother took little Shuang’er and went to rest.

He’d been hoping to bring Yue Bing along to the heavenly realm — he missed cultivating with his younger sister, and the timing felt right — but she and Inan had gone back to the Sky Stairway for another session. He found Yue Yu in the laboratory instead.

“Not me,” Yue Yu said, before he finished asking. “Take Qianqian. She deserves the trip more.”

“Come with us,” Qianqian said. “The Night Lady too.” She’d had the specific, slightly unnerving variety of six-sense intuition that told her this wasn’t optional — that Yue Yu and the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady were both needed for whatever was ahead, and that Yue Yu in particular was somehow central to how things would unfold. She wasn’t sure enough about the content to explain it, but the feeling was unambiguous.

She gave up the prospect of a two-person trip without apparent regret and went to collect them.

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady arrived with the ease of someone who had stopped pretending the invitation required deliberation. She pulled Yueyang aside while Qianqian was still convincing Yue Yu.

“You still haven’t helped Qianqian refine the divine sword?” She looked at him. “And you haven’t fully claimed her yet? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I am,” Yueyang said, with complete dignity, “a person of good character.”

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady’s expression suggested she found this claim ambitious.