The Shidow platform hummed beneath them as it rose from the peak, carrying them into the thin, corpse-cold air. Liang stood firm beside Gen, his jaw set.
"You don't have to come," Gen said, his voice raw but no longer breaking.
"Yes, I do," Liang replied, not looking at him. "Someone has to make sure your stupid doesn't get you killed before you even start."
The words were simple, but the truth behind them was a warm stone in Gen's frozen chest. Madame Su said nothing, her face a mask of controlled dread, her energy focused solely on maintaining their ascent toward the seated figure who blotted out the wounded sky.
Zeph did not acknowledge their approach. He sat cross-legged in the void, his faceless helm beside him, his ancient eyes closed. He was a statue of indifferent judgment.
The platform stopped a hundred yards away. Any closer and the pressure of Zeph's passive aura made the disc of energy ripple and groan.
"Zeph!" Gen's shout was swallowed by the vast silence. "I need to talk to you!"
No response. The old man might have been asleep.
"ANSWER ME!" Gen screamed, the fury and grief giving his voice power. "You gave your sentence! At least have the honor to face the son of the man you killed!"
Zeph's eyes opened. They were weary, depthless pools that focused on Gen without interest. "There is no 'honor' in the execution of duty. There is only the mandate. You are a child of this world, a variable within the equation. I do not converse with variables. Leave."
"I'm not leaving until you talk to me," Gen stated, planting his feet on the trembling platform.
Zeph regarded him for a long, silent moment. Then he sighed, a sound like a distant landslide. "Very well. If your will is so strong, come to me. We will talk." He raised a single, gauntleted finger.
From his fingertip, a narrow path of shimmering, silver-white light extended through the air, bridging the gap between them. It was beautiful and insubstantial, like solidified moonlight. It was also a test. A cultivator who had not mastered Shidow or a flight technique could not walk on air. This path was a concession—and a trap.
"No!" Madame Su's control shattered. "Gen, you cannot! It's a trick! The energy is unstable, it could dissipate at his whim!"
Liang grabbed Gen's arm. "He's right. This is suicide."
Gen looked at the path. He looked at Zeph's impassive face. The stubborn, unyielding fire that was his core, the same one that had driven him to leap from windows and challenge every disciple, now burned with a darker, more desperate fuel. He shook off Liang's hand.
"I'm going."
He stepped off the platform onto the luminous path. It held, firm as stone.
He took one step.
A sliver of light, sharper than any blade, materialized from the path itself and flashed upward. The light struck before he could move. Gen's Jingdao roared to life on instinct, reinforcing his shoulder, trying to turn the blade. It made no difference. The light was not physical; it was a concept given edge. It passed through his reinforced flesh and bone as if they were mist.
Pain. A clean, absolute, and terrifying pain he had never known. Not the ache of a sparring blow, but the sensation of his very existence being neatly divided. He gasped, staggering, but did not fall. A shimmering, sword-shaped wound glowed in his shoulder, bleeding light and a few drops of shockingly red blood.
"GEN!" Liang shouted.
Without a second thought, Liang jumped from the platform onto the path behind his friend.
Another step. Another sword of light. This one took Liang through the thigh. He cried out, stumbling to one knee, his face white with shock.
Madame Su watched, her hands pressed to her mouth, tears streaming silently. Every maternal instinct screamed to pull them back, to shield them. But she saw Gen's face—the pain, the shock, but beneath it, the furious, unbroken will. This was a trial he needed to pass, not to prove something to Zeph, but to prove to his own shattered soul that he could still move forward, even when the path itself cut him. To interfere now would break him more surely than Zeph's swords.
Step by agonizing step, they advanced. The path offered no more slivers; it conjured full, short swords of solidified light that pierced them with impersonal precision. Through Gen's side. Through Liang's forearm. Each wound was a lesson in scale, a brutal demonstration that their Jingdao, the foundation of their pride, was like paper against the reality Zeph commanded.
By the time they stood, trembling and bloodied, before the seated executioner, each had five glowing sword-wounds pinning their spirit to their flesh. They did not collapse. They stood, breathing in ragged, wet gasps, their blood dripping onto the luminous path that had tortured them.
Zeph observed them, his ancient eyes showing no surprise, only a faint, grim approval. "Had you turned back," he said, his voice quiet, "I would have vaporized you and your guardian below. It would have been an insult to the sacrifice of the one you call father, to spawn a coward."
Gen forced his head up, meeting that depthless gaze. "Why?" he demanded, each word costing him. "Five years. It's a stupid game. You have the power. You could end it now. Why wait?"
"You are a child," Zeph repeated, but there was a slight shift in his tone, a hint of something like pity. "You see power as a hammer to smash. I have seen empires of hammers rise and turn to dust. The mandate is a scalpel. Your world's sin was pride. Its punishment is hope, stretched over five years and tempered by despair. It is… an experiment. One I conceded." He looked past them, at the fading scar in the sky. "Five years will pass for you like a rushing river. For me, it is a blink. Use the time or waste it. It is of no consequence to the end result."
Liang, leaning heavily on his good leg, found his voice. "How… how are you so strong? I've felt the Immortal's pressure. But this… it's different. It's absolute."
Zeph's eyes flicked to Liang, the 'Jade Anchor'. "Strength is not a wheel you learn, boy. It is a path you walk, and most turn back when the road cuts their feet." He gestured to their bleeding wounds. "Unless your will is as determined as it was to walk this path of swords—unless you are willing to die on it every single day—you will never reach a height where you can even perceive the generals you must defeat, let alone challenge them."
Gen didn't care for philosophy. The pain was clarifying, burning away everything but the essential. "I don't want your advice," he spat, blood on his lips. "I want you to know something. If you're as wise as you pretend… you should kill me right now. Because if you don't, I swear on the ashes of my father and my home, I will be the one to find you when this is over. And I will kill you."
The air froze.
The five swords of light still embedded in Gen's body flared, burning hotter. Liang and Madame Su held their breath, their blood turning to ice. They had just seen what a fraction of Zeph's power could do.
Zeph was silent. The ancient eyes studied Gen, measuring the vow not against its likelihood, but against the quality of the will that forged it. He saw the shadow of the father in the son's defiant, broken stance.
A slow, almost imperceptible smile touched the old man's weathered lips. It held no warmth, only a spark of cold, intellectual interest.
"Go," Zeph said, the word a dismissal that carried the weight of a reprieve. "Walk your path of swords, Gen Jiang. I will be waiting here, at its end. I am… eager to see what height, if any, you can reach."
The luminous path beneath them dissolved. Gen and Liang fell, but Madame Su was already moving, her platform shooting forward to catch them before they could plummet. She gathered them in, her energy washing over them in a frantic, healing wave, staunching the glowing wounds that bled resolve as much as blood.
She did not look back at Zeph. She turned their platform and fled downward, away from the silent, waiting judge, carrying her wounded, furious, and now irrevocably changed charges back to the shattered earth.