Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, Blue Wolf, and the others reacted immediately — the whole group surging to surround the silver-clad attacker from every direction.

Then something stranger happened.

The Windstill national ruler, who had taken a fist directly to the face, didn’t go flying. He swayed back, head tilting, body retreating at a natural angle as though deflecting rather than absorbing — the movement less like a man struck by tremendous force and more like a man who’d been startled. The silver figure didn’t linger. He vanished and reappeared beside the Freedom Queen’s prisoner cart.

A sword flash tore upward.

A single stroke, and the Freedom Queen’s head left her shoulders.

Before the Windstill national ruler, Tianzhu, or any of the others could close the distance, the silver man dissolved into a streak of light and was gone — a meteor dragged across the sky, moving at a speed that left even trained eyes with nothing to track. In a breath, he had ceased to exist at any point visible to anyone present.

His true target had been the Freedom Queen.

“That was the Revenge Domain Emperor,” Wanjiao declared, voice rising. “It had to be the Revenge Domain Emperor.”

“Are you all right?” The Dragon Emperor moved first to the Windstill national ruler.

“Face took a fist. Three-tenths of his strength at most — minor wound, no toxin, no curse, nothing special.” The national ruler touched his cheek. The feint had been clean: strike first to draw attention, then go for the real target. His nose was broken and one ear was bleeding from the force of the concussion, but he was a national-ruler-tier Sky-rank cultivator. Minor injuries like this would heal quickly without lasting consequence. If the attacker had hit him at full strength, he might not have been simply injured.

At that speed — the opening feint, then the split-second pivot to the assassination — this was no national-ruler-tier fighter. Not close.

The Dragon Emperor and the Underworld Emperor would not have backed themselves two-against-one against someone like that.

Tianzhu walked over to inspect the Freedom Queen’s body.

The assassination had succeeded. Head and body separated.

And then the Windstill national ruler started laughing.

As he laughed, the headless body on the ground began to shift — reverting, reforming, resolving into the figure of a woman with green skin. A slug-tribe woman. Her severed neck began leaking green fluid in thick, writhing streams, the fluid carrying a sharp and deeply unpleasant smell. It moved as though alive — flowing toward the severed head, gathering around it, forming itself into a lattice of green tubes connecting head to neck.

The tubes contracted rapidly.

When the connection was complete, the slug-tribe woman pushed herself upright from the ground, apparently untroubled by what had just happened to her.

“What in the—” Wanjiao and Luoluo stared.

“She’s one of my attendants,” the Windstill national ruler said, still smiling. “You wondered why I brought so many women along to the central island. This is why — I needed a decoy. The real Freedom Queen, I had the Titan Young Lord place in his storage ring for safekeeping long before we set out. She was never out here to be assassinated.”

“Brilliantly done,” said Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth, with genuine admiration.

“You even fooled us,” the Dragon Emperor acknowledged. “The resemblance was remarkable.”

“Using a double is smart,” Blue Wolf said, “but you should have told us. My heart nearly stopped just now. The Freedom Queen is the key to breaking the curse — if she’d actually been killed, what would we have done?”

He was relieved, but he was also right to complain.

“The Freedom Queen is safe, that’s what matters,” Wanjiao said, “but we shouldn’t lose sight of what this means. A very dangerous enemy has just revealed himself. If that was the Revenge Domain Emperor, and he’s waiting ahead of us at the central island — how do we proceed? He’s made it clear he intends to stop us.”

“Are you certain it was the Revenge Domain Emperor?” the Dragon Emperor asked.

“Who else has that speed and that sword technique?” Luoluo said.

“If it really was the Revenge Domain Emperor,” the Underworld Emperor said quietly, “then why didn’t he kill the Windstill national ruler? He could have killed the national ruler, then killed the Freedom Queen, and there would have been nothing any of us could do about it. So why appear, strike once, and retreat? What was the point?”

Luoluo had no answer.

“Maybe someone wants to frame the Revenge Domain Emperor,” the Dragon Emperor said. “Draw our hatred onto him. And I’ve started to wonder — whoever is behind all this, are they running the same play from the other side? Committing acts in our names that are turning the Revenge Domain Emperor against us? That might explain why we specifically had to come to the central island. Someone wants all of us in the same place, with reasons to fight each other.”

Tianzhu had one question. “What’s actually on the central island?”

“Legends say a god fell in the Windstill Swamp roughly ten thousand years ago,” the national ruler said. “But in the ten thousand years since, other than the windless law, nothing unusual has been found. Every generation has searched the central island. Nothing. Aside from a spatial fracture that connects to various locations throughout Tianhua Domain, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about it.”

He shrugged. Just a legend, unverified.

“Let’s wake the Titan Young Lord and get moving,” Wanjiao said. “We need answers, and they’re not out here.”

The Windstill national ruler glanced at him. “Why is it you, both times, who immediately named the Revenge Domain Emperor as the culprit?”

Wanjiao’s face went red. “Are you saying it wasn’t him? Fine — if the first attack was a frame-up, what about this one? Same power, same speed, same sword style, and you think someone is still framing him? After we’ve already seen through it once? We’re not idiots. How many times do you think the same trick works?”

He jabbed a finger forward. “And don’t look at me like that. I’m under the curse too. I was at the birthday banquet too. I need to reach the central island as much as anyone else here.”

“Zhifeng, Wanjiao — we need each other right now.” Blue Wolf stepped between them, voice steady. “Whatever’s happening, we can’t afford to fall apart.”

“He’s right,” Luoluo agreed, turning to Wanjiao. “Put it away. The national ruler has had his home invaded, his woman taken, his divine blood stolen, and nearly died tonight. Some suspicion is understandable.”

“I won’t apologize,” Wanjiao said, pulling back, “but I can still fight beside you. Because we have no choice.”

The Windstill national ruler exhaled through his nose, and swallowed the rest of his temper.

He couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not yet. They still had the Titan Young Lord, Tianzhu, and the others. The situation was not hopeless.

Later, he pulled Tianzhu aside and offered a quiet apology. “It’s fortunate the Titan Young Lord was resting. Otherwise I would be beyond forgiveness.”

Tianzhu said nothing.

The Dragon Emperor accepted the apology on Yue Yang’s behalf and said something brief and reassuring.

The night passed without further incident.

The Titan Young Lord, who believed strongly in adequate sleep, did not emerge until nearly noon the following day.

Wanjiao and Luoluo seethed in silence — only the fact that this was who this was prevented either of them from saying anything. Let it be anyone else keeping dozens of Sky-rank cultivators waiting through an entire morning, and that person would have been consumed long before lunchtime.

Yue Yang stepped out, yawned, and looked around.

“You’re all up early,” he observed. “Did anything interesting happen last night?”

“Someone attacked the camp. Assassinated the Freedom Queen.”

“Impossible. The Freedom Queen is asleep in my storage ring.” Yue Yang shook his head and waved a hand, drawing the Freedom Queen out of the ring with one gesture and releasing her from her rest. “Where’s the assassin? Did you catch them? I’ve heard that the smell of a branding iron on human flesh is similar to roasted donkey hide — quick, drag them out, I want to verify this experimentally.”

Silence.

Several people’s mouths opened and closed.

This young lord’s interests are genuinely unique.

Though, to be fair, he’d apparently grown up somewhere so refined and sheltered that he’d never even witnessed a proper interrogation. That was the most charitable explanation available.

If there had been a captured assassin, the Windstill national ruler would have been delighted to provide the experience. Unfortunately, the opportunity did not exist.

When he explained the assassin had escaped, Yue Yang immediately looked wounded. “What? Escaped? An assassin makes the effort to travel all the way out here, and you let them leave? I am deeply disappointed in all of you.”

The group stared at him.

The Windstill national ruler began gently explaining the realities of the situation to this sheltered and clearly very unworldly young lord, beginning with a sympathetic expression: “Titan brother, if the assassin comes again, we will certainly—”

He didn’t finish.

Because a sword flash bright as the sun had already crossed the distance and was aimed directly at Yue Yang’s back.

The national ruler lunged forward to shove Yue Yang aside — and watched helplessly as the blade outpaced his hands, slipping through his fingers, burying itself in Yue Yang’s back, the point driving through his chest from behind.

But that wasn’t all.

What came after the sword was worse: a flying needle, gleaming like a sliver of starlight, pressed by a figure of overwhelming celestial power into the back of Yue Yang’s skull. That a being of this magnitude — someone whose presence hit the air like a second sun — would resort to a coward’s needle-strike felt like finding a dynasty’s richest lord rooting around in a pig trough. And still it wasn’t finished: the attacker, unhurried, produced a Soul-Shattering Bead, crushed it in his palm, and let the wave wash through Yue Yang’s soul — destroying any hope of resurrection through any method.

The national ruler threw himself at the attacker in fury. One kick sent him flying. Tianzhu and the Dragon Emperor drove in from both sides and were deflected with both hands simultaneously.

The figure shot upward, volcanic in its force and contemptuous in its ease, ascending until it became a golden star in the sky.

Then it was gone.

“The real target,” the Windstill national ruler realized, staring at where Yue Yang had fallen, “was the Titan Young Lord all along. It always was.”

The enemy had succeeded. What followed would be catastrophic — the rage of a great celestial clan descending on Tianhua Domain, and every soul in it.

Regardless of whether it was the national ruler himself or the three domain emperors — no one would survive that reckoning.

Even if the Titan Young Lord’s family chose mercy and declined to punish the innocent, the Central Divine Hall would seize the name of justice and use it to scour Tianhua Domain clean.

And with that justification in hand, what life in Tianhua Domain could survive?

The Windstill national ruler didn’t spend long on this line of thought. He raised his right hand, formed a fist, and prepared to drive it through his own skull — to die here, to follow the Titan Young Lord as a companion in death, which was the only thing left that he could offer.

“Wait.” Tianzhu caught his arm.

“The Titan Young Lord treated me as a true friend.” The national ruler’s eyes were wet. “I couldn’t protect him. If I don’t follow him in death, I cannot bear what I’ll carry.” And it was true — in his entire life, before and after the title of national ruler, no one had treated him the way this young lord had. No agenda, no expectation of return, nothing but genuine goodwill. To watch a friend like that die in front of him and feel nothing but guilt — how could he live with it?

“The thing you should do,” the Dragon Emperor said, stepping forward, “is avenge him.” He was smiling, gently. “Trust your friend, Windstill national ruler. If the Titan Young Lord were as easy to kill as that, would we be letting him wander around out here?”

“…What?”

The entire group went still.

The Freedom Queen had been a double. But Yue Yang could produce the Freedom Queen from his storage ring — which meant the real Yue Yang had been out there. Hadn’t he? A double couldn’t do that. It had to have been the real person.

Blue Wolf, Wanjiao, and Luoluo all crossed to where the body had fallen.

The body dissolved.

A shadow shifted.

Yue Yang strolled out of it, holding a steaming soup dumpling, taking a bite. He saw the expressions on every face turned toward him, and waved cheerfully with his free hand.

“Don’t look at me like that. That was just my phantom projection. Nobody assassinates me through my life-guardian war beast and my innate abilities — ha! I’m quite good, actually.” He took another bite. “I will say, though — that was genuinely exciting. Points to whoever planned that.”

The group exhaled collectively as the pieces clicked into place.

So the Titan Young Lord had a phantoming ability — some form of body-substitution technique that created a perfect decoy, complete enough to fool an assassin with divine-tier presence, and switched places at the critical moment.

“I nearly—” The Windstill national ruler’s hand went to his chest. He had only just noticed that his heart was beating again. At some point during the past few minutes, it had stopped.

“Thank heaven the Titan Young Lord is safe!” Wanjiao pressed forward with the rest of them, relief all over his face. “That must have been terrifying—”

“I’m perfectly fine, naturally,” Yue Yang said pleasantly. “You, on the other hand, may be about to have a problem.”

Wanjiao blinked.

Before he could respond, the Windstill national ruler, Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, and the rest had already closed around him in a ring. Yue Yang stepped out of the circle as it formed, and called back over his shoulder:

“Everyone go ahead — don’t hold back on my account. The harder the better. I insist.”

“This — there has to be some mistake!” Wanjiao’s face had gone the color of iron. He was shouting now. “Whatever you think happened, you’ve got it wrong—”

“Traitor!”

The Windstill national ruler’s voice came out like a volcano that had been waiting for exactly this moment.