The Windstill Swamp. The central island.

It was not a small island. Its surface area was enormous — at minimum a hundred times the size of Greenvalley City, if not more.

There were no trees, no grass, no living things of any kind. What the eye found instead was ruin in every direction — a landscape of collapsed walls and ancient foundations, baffling in its desolation. Whatever civilization had existed here had been formidable. The remnants that showed through the rubble spoke of extraordinary sophistication: celestial rune formations, energy-control infrastructure, technological achievements that surpassed anything the lower realm’s various domains had managed in the present age.

From the ground it was impossible to fully appreciate. Standing at any elevation and looking inward, the island revealed its true center: a sea.

Not a large sea, and not, on the surface, a remarkable one. It was perfectly, profoundly still.

Most of the Sky-rank cultivators in the group noticed it without being particularly unsettled.

Yue Yang, playing the role of an escort blending into the background, was quietly staggered.

He had never seen water like this. But he had encountered something with the same quality before — something that wore the same absolute stillness like armor.

The Ground-origin Yin Flame.

The fire that would detonate into a thousandfold catastrophe if its energy equilibrium were disturbed by even a breath. This sea had the same character. The same total balance. The same sense of something enormous held in the thinnest possible suspension. Different attribute — one fire, one water — but the principle was identical.

Who created this? Whose power did this?

The thought settled in him and stayed. If he could understand the control method behind this, extracting the Ground-origin Yin Flame from the Grimoire World would become feasible. A technique that could handle this sea could handle that fire. It would be one more layer of protection before he ever set foot in the divine ruins above the Sky Stairway.

And it wasn’t just the sea. The entire island pulled at him. Whatever ancient civilization had built here — if even one piece of it could be recovered and understood, the value would be difficult to overstate.

“This sea has a name,” Ming Rihao said quietly, stepping close. “The Still Sea. Nothing floats on it. No vessel, no wood, not even a feather — anything that touches the surface sinks immediately and completely.”

“Windstill above, the Still Sea below,” Yue Yang murmured. A killing ground. The enemy chose well.

“You’re not wrong,” Ming Rihao said, shifting to a private transmission only Yue Yang could hear. “I’d be very careful from here. I’m sensing something I don’t like — at minimum one opponent at my actual tier has arrived, and beneath that person, several more whose power is in the same neighborhood.” A pause. “Our best possible situation is that these people are enemies of each other. If they’re all working together — we run. I’m serious. Trying to fight that would be stupid.”

“Do you think an enemy that went to all this trouble setting this up is going to let us run?” Yue Yang said, with a cold edge.

He acknowledged the logic internally. Against overwhelming odds, retreat was sound. Dying in a fixed engagement served no one.

But the attempts — the layered conspiracies, the consecutive assassination efforts, the careful and elaborate trap — had kindled something in him that didn’t respond well to the idea of backing away.

He had always believed that the people who could chew through the hardest obstacles were the ones who laughed last. Tactical withdrawal was a real concept. But a cultivator who only ever withdrew, who never planted their feet against something larger than themselves, would find their growth had a ceiling they couldn’t see until they hit it. The harshest environments produced the strongest warriors. The north wind made the Viking raider. That was the principle.

Yue Yang’s fastest growth had always come from pushing his limit, not staying inside it.

Today, with powerful enemies waiting in the shadows, if he chose to fall back — what happened the next time the enemy was stronger? And the time after that?

He didn’t say any of this. His expression was calm, almost neutral. But his resolve was completely settled: whatever came at him, strong or weak, he wasn’t going to spend his energy looking for the exit. He was going to look for the way through.

Crush this wave. The next wave comes harder. Crush that one too.

That was Yue Yang.

It was the thing that most separated him from Ming Rihao — not power or intelligence, but a fighting spirit that simply did not contain a retreat setting.

Every enemy who had ever believed themselves unbeatable had eventually become another step beneath his feet. Every one of them had contributed something to where he stood now.

“Do what you want,” Ming Rihao said. “But let me be direct with you: given where my recovery currently stands, I can handle one opponent at my tier. Maybe. One. If there are more than that, you’d better start planning what to inscribe on my memorial tablet. You understand this, right? Even at full strength, my level doesn’t handle two simultaneously.”

Ming Rihao at Perfect Innate Sovereign tier eight. If several enemies were operating at that altitude, the arithmetic was genuinely uncomfortable. And the Windstill Swamp’s spatial energy was too chaotic for reliable teleportation — even the Three Realms Compass couldn’t guarantee a clean return to the Sky Tower from here. The Still Sea at the island’s center only made the spatial situation worse, its extreme equilibrium state warping any attempt to open a transit path. And even if he could return — the Night Empress and the Supreme were tens of thousands of steps up the Sky Stairway. Reaching them and coming back would take time the battlefield wouldn’t provide.

He was, in all likelihood, facing multiple elite opponents with whatever he had here.

Yue Yang exhaled quietly. That was fine. He’d managed worse odds than the math suggested he should have, and he expected to continue doing so.

Ming Rihao clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Tell you what — if we actually win this, you can have the Divine Codex. I’ll take the fallen god’s remains. That’s a fair trade for Old Hao, taking the worse end of the deal.”

Yue Yang stared at him.

This man’s audacity. With that comprehensively inadequate intellect, the absolute nerve to try to extract a favorable exchange in the middle of a crisis briefing—

He raised two fingers in a gesture of profound disrespect.

“Get lost.”

The Windstill national ruler coughed once, drawing attention back to the practical.

The slug-tribe woman who had previously impersonated the Freedom Queen was now wearing Wanjiao’s face. She stood behind the national ruler, flanked by Blue Wolf and Luoluo, presenting the appearance of Wanjiao still moving with the group. The Underworld Emperor’s ability completed the illusion — from the outside, the false Wanjiao was convincingly indistinguishable from the real one. Only direct contact would break it.

Tianzhu and the Dragon Emperor had shifted to full readiness. They had been briefed alongside Yue Yang and Ming Rihao on what was likely coming — they understood the enemy’s strength more clearly than anyone else in the group. Yue Yang had not wanted them in this fight. The probable threat level meant genuine risk of death, and losing any of them would be a blow to the Sky Tower that would take years to absorb.

Tianzhu and the Dragon Emperor had refused to stay out.

Beyond the matter of self-advancement through genuine combat, there was a simpler reason: Yue Yang was too important. If the Sky Tower was going to rise, he was the pillar it rose on. Every other member of the group could fall and the structure would survive. If Yue Yang fell, the structure was gone.

They couldn’t do much in a fight at this level. But in a single critical moment — if one of them could step into a gap, buy one second, take a hit that was meant for him — then Yue Yang and the Three Realms Compass had a chance to find a way out.

One second. That was what they were there to provide.

Above the Still Sea, standing on the surface of water that would admit nothing — not wood, not feather, not ship — a figure floated.

He was tall and thin-limbed, and his hair had been arranged into two enormous curved horns, the tips secured by peculiar caps with pompoms — one black, one white, swaying slightly as he surveyed the assembled group below. His mask matched his hair: split precisely down the center into two halves, one expressing mockery, the other expressing agony, the combination producing something that was difficult to look at directly.

A blood-red cloak hung from his shoulders. Beneath it, silver-grey fitted clothing, and at the bottom, a pair of high-shafted pointed boots.

What held every Sky-rank cultivator’s gaze was the weapon in his hand.

A scythe. Enormous — larger than the man who carried it by a factor of three, at minimum. Utterly black, matte as void, with the quality of something that had stopped reflecting light some time ago and had no intention of starting again.

Even at rest, it gave the impression of having already bisected the sky.

“Quasi-divine artifact,” Tianzhu said, voice flat.

The words came out because the pressure from this enemy was so heavy that some form of release became necessary.

Yue Yang’s transmission reached Tianzhu privately: This one is yours.

Both of them understood what that meant. Tianzhu’s current power versus this enemy was, genuinely, not favorable. Yue Yang said it not because it was an easy assignment but because sometimes an assignment is given not because it’s winnable but because it’s the most the person can be asked to carry — and because believing they can carry it sometimes makes the difference.

Tianzhu understood. His fist closed slowly. His head moved in a single nod.

“He’s at least Perfect Innate Sovereign tier six,” Ming Rihao murmured, barely audible, fingers brushing Yue Yang’s sleeve. “Possibly tier seven. And that scythe.” A pause. “Sending Tianzhu at this alone is a death sentence.”

“He can do it,” Yue Yang said. Quietly. With certainty.

Ming Rihao said nothing more.

Tianzhu had heard him.

His body tensed once, and then the tension resolved into something deeper and calmer — a fighting spirit that had found its edge and stopped shaking. He pressed his fist harder, containing it.

The figure above the Still Sea appeared unbothered by all of this. He swept one contemptuous gaze across the Windstill national ruler, the assembled cultivators, the whole group — the look of someone examining subjects — and then spoke, his tone unhurried and coldly impersonal:

“National rulers. I am the Arbiter for this proceeding. The grievances between your parties may be resolved through the agreed terms. I will not favor any side. I will remain until all matters are concluded. Should any of you raise objections at any point, bring them to my attention — provided they meet the required conditions, I will address them through due process in the most impartial manner available.”

No one present needed clarification on where the Arbiter came from.

Every blind person in the group could have identified the origin.

The Central Divine Hall.

There was nowhere else an Arbiter arrived from. No other institution in the world produced individuals with that particular quality of arrogance — the kind that had long since stopped distinguishing itself from righteousness. No other place produced people who stood above a kill zone with a quasi-divine scythe and called themselves impartial with a straight face.