Yue Yang was smiling.

Not the tight smile of someone holding themselves together. Genuinely, unreasonably calm — and then, before anyone could process that, he started clapping.

“For the first time in my life, I’ve met someone who knows me this well and cares this much about me. If only you were an incomparably beautiful woman — what a shame you’re not.”

Ming Rihao came very close to an involuntary interaction with the floor.

We are in a life-ending situation. The Solar King is standing in front of us. And your brain went there.

The Rage Domain Emperor and the Radiance Domain Emperor, who had both been watching the exchange with expressions suggesting they were reassessing several things simultaneously, were now watching Yue Yang with expressions suggesting they were reassessing several more.

The Solar King had walked past Ming Rihao — Ming Rihao, who had just sent the Two-Faced King through the floor of the stone world — and directed his full attention at this person. The new generation’s Prison Emperor. The one who had defeated the Nine-Radiance Lord and the Void Sovereign. The Conquest Queen’s disciple.

This person, who had apparently decided that the appropriate response was to wish Lie Changkong were a beautiful woman.

Hidden under all the different layers of thought passing through the domain emperors’ minds was the same one: We completely failed to see this coming.

Zhongguan and the other escorts already knew Yue Yang’s identity, but some of this was new even to them — the Conquest Queen’s disciple, specifically, and the three divine artifacts. Fengji and Keen-Eye Jinyun had simply stopped functioning as people and were standing very still.

Gold-Tooth and Steward Ye’s brains, encountering the phrase “new generation’s Prison Emperor,” performed a controlled shutdown. Both of them hit the floor.

Blue Wolf and the others were engaged in the private activity of feeling deeply foolish for every time they’d entertained the idea of outmaneuvering this particular young man.

Even the Poet, the white-bearded elder, the Hanged Man, and the others — who had known they were setting a trap for the three domain emperors — had not known the Solar King’s actual primary target was the person they’d been treating as peripheral. The new Prison Emperor, the Conquest Queen’s disciple, standing right there in the middle of their operation. With Ming Rihao beside him.

The Four Kings alone — the Silent King, the Lion King, the Golden Crown King, the Two-Faced King — would not have been quite enough for this situation.

Thank heaven the Solar King came personally.

The Poet and the others exhaled quietly.

“If the Titan Young Lord would be willing to visit the Central Divine Hall as a guest,” the Solar King said, allowing a small understated suggestion to enter the conversation, “I believe even the Grand Hall Master Dongfang would come to the door to welcome you.”

Yue Yang threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling.

“And if the Solar King were willing to visit the Sky Tower, the Conquest Queen would receive you as an honored guest in return.” He settled back into his easy posture. “The Central Divine Hall — I’ve been wanting to visit for a long time, actually. I just haven’t found a suitable gift. Showing up empty-handed would reflect poorly on the new Prison Emperor’s courtesy, and we do have standards. You upper-realm types might laugh at the country boy with no manners.” He waved a hand. “Besides, the current fashion is authenticity — rustic, unaffected, genuine. Why not set aside all that tedious pretension and manufactured righteousness and come visit us in the countryside instead? We’ve had years of development. The new rural landscape is quite changed. Plenty of fresh produce. And our detention facilities are particularly well-appointed — guests have been known to find them so comfortable they lose all interest in going home.”

“A worthwhile recommendation,” the Solar King said pleasantly. “I’ll make a point to visit when time permits.”

His tone was completely unbothered. The cold amusement in Yue Yang’s words had passed through him as though it weren’t there.

“Oh — you’re from the Sky Tower?”

The snake-haired sorcerer, Dugu Changfeng, had regained enough function to produce words. He was still lying where he’d been set down, coughing blood between sentences, but his brain was clearly operational.

“And you are?” Yue Yang frowned, apparently working very hard at something.

“He is the ‘supposedly your friend’ Dugu Changfeng,” Ming Rihao said, because watching this particular performance any longer was producing physical discomfort. His cooperation was reluctant and visibly pained.

“Ah.” Yue Yang nodded as though this had resolved something. Then immediately shook his head with absolute certainty. “No. Can’t be. Everyone I know is either beautiful or handsome.”

“That,” Ming Rihao said slowly, “is the first thing you’ve said that I genuinely agree with.”

The escort unit, which had been making themselves as small as possible in the corner of the star realm space, came back to life at a collective level. Several of them located reflective surfaces. Others began attending to their hair. The general expression adopted was one suggesting they had each woken up that morning already aware of their own attractiveness and had simply continued from there.

Dugu Changfeng, held by the collar and actively coughing blood, found this treatment considerably less than dignified.

“The hell is wrong with you people? I look perfectly fine, thank you — not that it matters, because none of this ‘I don’t know him’ business is going to work. The Solar King is not someone who changes his mind because someone said a thing. Everyone here is going to die today, including you, you idiots—”

His voice caught slightly at the end.

He hadn’t expected it. The saving attempt was transparently useless — anyone could see it wasn’t going to work — and yet Yue Yang had done it anyway. That meant something, even if the gesture was also, objectively, one of the worst plans he’d ever witnessed.

We haven’t even met properly yet, and you’re trying this.

The Solar King listened to all of this.

His expression remained what it had been: pleasant, focused, entirely untroubled.

He nodded, gently, as though acknowledging a point made in a reasonable discussion.

“When I commit to something, I’m not easily moved from it — that’s true. Just as I committed to finding the Titan back when I had nothing to go on. Years of effort. Enormous resources invested for returns that amounted, at first, to almost nothing. Then fragments, slowly accumulated. Then today.” A pause, with the quality of someone describing something they found genuinely satisfying. “Patience and persistence, in the end, produced what all that early failure couldn’t.”

“You sound confident,” Yue Yang said, tilting his head with an expression of genuine curiosity. “If you’re that confident — why are you just standing there?”

“Dealing with a formidable opponent requires care. Nearly every powerful person who has ever been defeated was defeated because they underestimated something — because they assumed their advantage was complete and stopped paying attention to the details they’d missed. I’ve watched it happen to too many people who should have won. Once a result is set, it can’t be undone. The loss can’t be reclaimed.” His gaze on Yue Yang was direct and without pretension. “And according to everything I’ve gathered about you — your power, your mind, and most significantly your luck — you are precisely the kind of opponent who ends the careers of people who thought they had this won. The Nine-Radiance Empress, whose clan fell on the Sky Tower with everything they had, ended up in a defeat that by any reasonable calculation should not have happened. You produced that.” A beat. “Given all of that — why would I be careless with you?”

It was completely sincere. The Solar King was not performing. He was describing, with the same steady directness he had applied to everything else, exactly how he thought about this.

Ming Rihao, listening, felt cold sweat accumulate in ways he found undignified.

How does something like this exist? Absolute power, and the discipline to not rely on it. The patience to spend years on an intelligence target that returned almost nothing, and the confidence to keep going. Both domains — strength and cunning — at an extreme, in the same person. His sister had said most difficult opponent. His sister had been right in a way she perhaps hadn’t fully intended.

Dugu Changfeng’s smile had gone bitter. Compared to this man, the upper-realm prodigy widely described as exceptionally mature and rational was discovering that prodigy was a relative term.

The Rage Domain Emperor and the Radiance Domain Emperor had stopped feeling large.

Yue Yang held his smile in place through a sustained act of will.

His hands were at his sides, relaxed in posture, because he could not allow them to be anything else. A fist would shake. He knew it would. And he couldn’t let that happen here.

If Vivienne were here. If the Supreme were here. The first thing Yue Yang would have done was find somewhere private to have a comprehensive emotional breakdown, because the game that had been set up for him today was the kind where you’re told you have a full party and arrive to find the healer slots empty.

He was levels below where he needed to be for this encounter, the dungeon difficulty was set for a final boss, and the respawn had been disabled.

But Vivienne was still in the Black Void Space. The Supreme was tens of thousands of steps up the Sky Stairway. And the Three Realms Compass — he’d already taken it out, placed it in front of Ming Rihao, said nothing because nothing needed to be said. The spatial interference in this place was intentional and thorough. If running were possible, he would already be gone without a word of ceremony.

He understood, now, something he’d only intellectually known before about how the Prison Emperor must have felt in that final confrontation — alone, outmatched, with nowhere to go and no choice except to hold.

“Leave,” Ming Rihao said suddenly.

His voice had changed. Something in it that hadn’t been there a moment ago — the quality of a decision that had finished being made.

His hand came down hard on Yue Yang’s shoulder. The force of it was, objectively, rude. “Don’t put on an act for me. Get out. Now. Find somewhere to disappear, build up what you need to build, and come back for us when you’re ready. And if you do anything to my sister—” The hand tightened. “—I’ll haunt you from beyond the grave and it will not be pleasant.”

“Go, Young Lord. We’re just ants here.” Zhongguan and the others went to their knees — all of them, including Fengji and Keen-Eye Jinyun who had only recently joined and had not, technically, signed up for this particular moment. None of them hesitated.

“Dying here isn’t the worst outcome,” said Spotted Pattern. “We at least got to see a divine body.”

“Just make sure the tradition continues,” said Baima. “We got the short end of that deal ourselves, but it really is a good tradition.”

“All of you shut up,” Yue Yang said, without heat. He held up the Three Realms Compass and set it down in front of Ming Rihao. “Do you see this? The enemy calculated this. There’s law interference blocking transit. You said run — where exactly? If running were an option, I’d already be gone and I wouldn’t have said a word to any of you about it.”

A silence.

“I’ve had the feeling,” the Solar King said, and there was something that might have been genuine delight in his voice, “that the Titan Young Lord has some final card that hasn’t been played yet. I can’t guess what it is. But I don’t think the calm is false. And that’s precisely why I’ve been standing here being careful.”

Yue Yang’s expression flattened.

“If I ever get my hands on you,” he said, with a feeling in it that had nothing performed about it, “I’m going to take it out of you one slice at a time.”

The Solar King smiled.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he said pleasantly. And then, with the tone of someone confirming a long-held conviction: “From the day I first heard your name — that’s exactly what I’ve been planning to do.”