“The Titan Young Lord has come all this way to enjoy the lower realm’s scenery — does he have a particular destination in mind?” Blue Wolf exchanged a look with his companions and decided to open the probing.

“Not really. Changfeng — the Dugu family’s man — invited me to White River City, so I’ll probably head there eventually. If Blue Wolf has interesting recommendations along the way, I’ve always enjoyed unusual things.” Yue Yang paired the denial with just enough specificity to make the cover story feel lived-in. He couldn’t simply say nothing, or no one would believe it. But I’m here because someone invited me, and I’m filling time until I go meet them was a story that fit the character he’d been performing all evening, and it had the additional advantage of being partially true.

“Changfeng — the Long Wind heir of the Four Great Clans?” Luoluo interjected, with the tone of someone who wasn’t entirely sure of his information and wanted the gap filled.

“You’ve met him?”

“Not personally. Though there was some talk of Four Great Clan representatives visiting the Divine Radiance Domain Emperor’s territory recently — I wasn’t certain of the details.”

“That sounds like him. That man wanders everywhere like someone with no sense of direction and a very flexible schedule. Nobody else from the Four Clans does it this much.” Yue Yang produced a slightly aggrieved expression, the kind appropriate for someone mildly inconvenienced by a friend’s lifestyle choices. “White River City is a significant journey from here, and there’s no transit portal. If there’s anything interesting to see along the way, I’d rather not spend the entire trip staring at clouds from a flying vessel.”

Blue Wolf, Wanjiao, and Luoluo heard this and arrived at the same thought through slightly different paths: an opportunity. If the Titan Lord was looking for things to do between here and White River City, that was an invitation — or could be shaped into one. The divine blood was spoken for. But a young man with pockets deep enough to produce divine blood as a casual birthday gift was a longer-term prospect than one evening’s theft.

“As for sights worth seeing in the lower realm — the Windstill Swamp is said to contain relics of divine beings from ten thousand years ago,” Blue Wolf offered, with the smooth enthusiasm of someone proposing something that happens to be entirely convenient for himself. “It may be legend rather than fact, but for someone with an interest in the unusual, the swamp has genuine peculiarities. I’d be glad to accompany the Titan Young Lord — we could see the sights, investigate the rumors, and reach White River City afterward without any detour.”

The Windstill national ruler’s expression went through a controlled sequence before settling on something that was technically still a smile.

You are a guest in my residence, he thought, openly proposing to my other guests that they leave with you instead of me, at my concubine’s birthday banquet, in front of me. He had strong feelings about this.

Lady Zhiguang’s hand rested lightly on his arm. The message was clear: don’t. We play this better from our own ground.

“When it comes to the Windstill Swamp,” she said, with the pleasantly diplomatic delivery of someone making a reasonable point, “who knows it better than its own lord?”

“Precisely — the swamp falls within my jurisdiction.” The national ruler’s composure returned fully, aided by the counterattack. He turned to Yue Yang. “If you’d like to see it, I’d consider myself a poor host if I let you explore my own territory without me. As for Blue Wolf’s domain—” he let a beat pass— “I understand there’s been ongoing unrest there. Remarkable that he finds time for sightseeing.”

Blue Wolf absorbed this with the equanimity of a man who has been insulted in a perfectly deniable way and has chosen to treat it as a compliment.

“Whether or not the divine remains are real hardly matters,” Yue Yang said, with the cheerfulness of someone who has been listening to hosts compete over him and found it mildly entertaining. “Unusual scenery is enough. Though I confess I’d find it hard to believe anything down here hasn’t been thoroughly searched already, if the stories are real.”

This was accurate. If divine remains actually existed somewhere in the swamp, the Central Divine Hall’s operatives — whose ability to detect valuable things was essentially olfactory in its sensitivity — would have located them centuries ago.

What the swamp actually contained was something different. Something that bent the laws of cultivation in ways that suggested a deliberate design rather than natural formation. That, Yue Yang found considerably more interesting than relics.

“After the celebration, I’ll personally guide you through the surrounding sights,” the national ruler said, committing to the host’s claim.

“We’d be glad to join,” Blue Wolf said, committing to the complication.

“More company makes for better travel,” Yue Yang said, with the diplomatic neutrality of a young lord who can’t quite refuse without being impolite, producing a slight hesitation before agreeing that left the national ruler quietly disappointed.

The celebration reached its high point as these things do: incrementally, then all at once.

Lady Zhiguang danced.

The word fails somewhat. She moved in the way that makes observers feel the music was written for exactly this, played at exactly this tempo, in exactly this room, for exactly this moment. The three uninvited national rulers watched her with expressions they had stopped managing, and exchanged glances that communicated a shared conclusion without requiring words. The national ruler watched them watching her and felt the specific satisfaction of a man whose possession is being coveted by people who cannot take it.

His personal guard captain, Fish Tide — tier four, loyalty absolute, perpetually refusing promotion to anything that would take him away from this specific post — had positioned himself in front of the main hall’s display area with eighteen Sky-rank generals and several dozen near-Sky-rank city lords at his back. The jade bottle sat on its display stand at the center of it all, visible to everyone, reachable by no one who didn’t want to announce their intentions to the entire room.

“My lord,” Lady Zhiguang said, when the dance concluded and the music settled, brushing aside the glow of exertion with the ease of someone accustomed to performing on demand, “should we not invite the Titan Lord to present the divine blood formally? Let all the honored guests witness the occasion.”

“It was only a small token,” Yue Yang said, with the expression of a young man who is very pleased to be publicly thanked and is performing modesty about it.

“A modest gift from the upper realm puts our entire collection to shame,” the national ruler said. He looked at Tianzhu, whose expression had not changed. He looked at the jade bottle, which remained where it was. He looked at the three national rulers, who were watching with carefully assembled smiles.

The calculation was clean: with Tianzhu, Dragon Emperor, and Underworld Emperor present, no one in this room was going to move on the divine blood during a formal presentation. Doing so would be a direct insult to the upper celestial realm’s nobility, which was the kind of insult that those three figures standing in this room would respond to in ways that nobody present wanted to experience. Blue Wolf and the others might be calculating, but they weren’t suicidal.

He stood and moved to Yue Yang’s side, prepared to receive.

Lady Zhiguang took her place behind him. The household staff arranged themselves. The assembled guests understood the choreography and settled into their roles as witnesses.

Steward Ye had been accorded the privilege of carrying the bottle, which he treated with the seriousness of a man who had been handed something that was going to define the story he told for the rest of his life. Fish Tide walked beside him. They passed each gift station in the main hall with appropriate acknowledgment, paused before the divine blood’s display with deep ceremony, and then Steward Ye lifted the jade box with hands that were technically steady and subjectively felt like they were carrying a mountain.

Ten meters. The shortest long distance Steward Ye had ever crossed.

He walked it with every gram of composure he had accumulated in decades of service, each step measured, each breath controlled, his face carrying the expression of a man doing something that mattered being done correctly.

He was perhaps three steps away from Yue Yang when—

“Halt.“

Tianzhu.

The word hit the room like a physical thing.

The air shifted. A transparent distortion, barely visible — the kind that good concealment techniques produce when something moving fast passes through occupied space — had entered from outside, crossed the main hall in less than a second, and was reaching for the box in Steward Ye’s hands.

Steward Ye didn’t see it. Not even close.

Dragon Emperor and Underworld Emperor had already moved. The invisible assailant took two simultaneous strikes from directions it hadn’t anticipated, and found itself pressed against the floor with both of them standing on it before the motion had fully resolved into something the other guests could follow.

Blue Wolf, Wanjiao, and Luoluo had tracked the whole thing. The two who were always just behind Yue Yang’s right shoulder, never named, referenced only in passing — Dragon Emperor and Underworld Emperor — had come out of concealment fast enough that the concealment had barely registered before the capture was complete.

Attempting to steal divine blood in a room full of this many sharp eyes.

Remarkable confidence, or remarkable desperation.

Either way, the attempt had failed before it properly started.

But the captured thief was still processing their situation on the floor when the second disturbance arrived — from an entirely different direction, with an entirely different character, and requiring immediate attention.