The second drop of black blood never reached the floor.
Before it could fall, the entire silver membrane of the water array violently imploded. Millions of gallons of the White Serpent River, choked with Commander Feng's corrupted miasma, crashed down toward the subterranean chamber like a collapsing sky.
"The pedestal!" Yue screamed over the deafening roar, her serene detachment entirely obliterated by survival instinct. "It's a spatial matrix! It can transit us to the Second Gate, but it needs a massive Qi ignition!"
Ye Chen didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Xiao Mei by the waist, using a burst of golden Yang to propel them both across the white jade floor. They slid into the center of the dais just as a chunk of the cavern ceiling slammed into the ground where they had been standing, sending a shockwave of shattered stone in every direction.
Yue was already there. She bit her thumb, dragging a smear of her own silver-tinged blood across the smooth white jade to forcibly unlock the ancient transit runes.
"I need power!" Yue commanded, dropping to one knee. "Maximum output, Ye Chen!"
Ye Chen slammed both palms flat against the pedestal.
He threw the floodgates of his meridians wide open, unleashing the Celestial Key without a shred of restraint. A blinding pillar of golden fire erupted from his chest, pouring directly into the jade stone. The runes ignited, tracing a massive circular array around them.
But the transit matrix was built for an ancient Grandmaster, not a teenage boy. The sheer volume of Yang Qi required began to cannibalize Ye Chen's life force. The golden lines under his skin turned a terrifying, bruised purple. Blood leaked from his nose and the corners of his eyes.
"You're burning out his core!" Xiao Mei shrieked.
She slammed her hands onto Ye Chen's shoulders, flooding him with her freezing Yin. But the array was drinking energy too fast. Her raw mist was instantly vaporized by the searing vacuum of the matrix.
"My Yin isn't dense enough to shield him!" Xiao Mei cried, her voice cracking with terror as the heat began to scorch her palms.
Yue looked up from the blood runes. Above them, the corrupted river was a hundred feet away and falling fast. Within the black water, the massive, spectral silhouette of Commander Feng's executioner blade was forming, aiming straight for the dais.
"Then we combine it!" Yue grabbed Xiao Mei's wrist with her left hand, and slapped her right hand flat over Ye Chen's. "Don't fight my current, sparrow! Let me compress your frost!"
Xiao Mei didn't argue. She didn't glare. She surrendered her untamed Yin entirely to the silver-haired Guardian.
Yue's ancient, refined technique acted as a terrifyingly efficient forge. She took Xiao Mei's vast reservoir of raw Yin, spun it with her own lunar precision, and slammed the compressed, absolute-zero energy straight into Ye Chen's failing meridians.
The tri-fold circuit achieved perfect, instantaneous synchronization.
Ye Chen gasped as the agonizing pressure in his chest vanished. The golden fire pouring from his hands turned a brilliant, blinding white. The transit matrix beneath them shrieked like tearing metal, fully charged in a fraction of a second.
"Got you," Commander Feng's voice boomed from the falling water, the spectral black blade swinging down to cleave the entire pedestal in half.
"Go to hell," Ye Chen roared back, pushing the final ounce of his Qi into the floor.
A pillar of tri-colored light shot upward, obliterating the spectral blade and punching a clean hole straight through the falling river and the bedrock ceiling above. The spatial matrix activated with a concussive snap that defied the laws of sound.
The river crashed into the white jade pedestal.
But Ye Chen, Xiao Mei, and Yue were already gone.
---
The sensation of spatial transit was like being pulled through a needle's eye while on fire.
Ye Chen slammed into solid ground, rolling violently across sharp, freezing gravel before coming to a halt. The air was bone-chillingly thin, tasting of sulfur and dry ice.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, coughing violently as the abrupt shift in altitude crushed his lungs. Next to him, Xiao Mei lay curled on her side, shivering, her breathing shallow but steady. Yue was a few paces away, her white robes stained with soot and blood, leaning heavily against a jagged black rock.
"Is everyone... alive?" Ye Chen rasped, forcing himself to his knees.
Xiao Mei reached out, her fingers weakly grasping the hem of his torn shirt. He immediately pulled her into his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around her trembling shoulders to share whatever body heat he had left.
"Where are we?" Xiao Mei whispered, her face pale, pressing her cheek against the faint green glow of his pendant.
Ye Chen looked up, taking in their surroundings.
They were no longer in the green, misty valleys of Willow Creek. They were near the summit of a towering, jagged mountain range. The earth was cracked and black. Instead of snow, thick gray ash drifted down from a bruised, overcast sky, settling over their shoulders like a funeral shroud.
"The Ashen Peaks," Yue said, her voice stripped of its usual haughty edge, replaced by grim exhaustion. She pulled herself upright, her violet eyes scanning the desolate, hyper-lethal environment. "The gateway to the Second Celestial Trial."
Before Ye Chen could process the victory of their escape, a sharp, metallic click echoed through the falling ash.
Ten paces ahead, standing on a ridge overlooking their landing zone, was a young woman dressed in dark crimson traveling robes. A slender twin-bladed dao rested casually against her shoulder. Her amber eyes narrowed as she looked down at the exhausted, bruised trio.
"A silver Guardian, a Yin vessel, and a boy carrying the Celestial Key," the girl in crimson said, her voice carrying a sharp, untamed vitality. She smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes. "You three just made a very loud entrance into my hunting grounds."