The dust was settling in the Grand Arena, but the legal hustle never stopped.
Down in the competitor's staging area, Lo Yu was happily packing a burlap sack full of mid-grade spirit stones. The betting parlor had paid out flawlessly. The cross-eyed goat sat faithfully by his side, actively chewing on the shattered, discarded pieces of Synergy Chen's corporate spreadsheet jade.
"Another flawless execution of contractual liability," Lo Yu rasped to himself, his missing-tooth smile gleaming under the arena torches. "The firm's operating budget is officially out of the red."
"Senior Lo."
The voice was breathy, high-pitched, and laced with absolute goblin energy.
Lo Yu turned around. Standing in the entrance of the tunnel was Junior Sister Gou-Na.
She was no longer the flat-chested, baggy-sweatpants-wearing shut-in from the registration desk. The Twin-Peak Expanding Lotus pills had executed a hostile takeover of her anatomy. Her crisp, blue Jade Water Sect uniform was currently screaming in structural agony. She was carrying two massive, gravity-defying Yin-spheres that forced her to lean slightly backward just to maintain her center of balance.
She looked like a stiff breeze would topple her over, but her eyes burned with the manic, predatory glint of an elite gooner who had finally acquired high-tier assets.
"Ah, Fairy Gou-Na," Lo Yu said smoothly, tapping his bamboo pipe against his palm. "I see the pharmaceutical settlement was to your liking. Your aerodynamic profile is completely ruined. Congratulations."
"Save the lawyer talk, old man," Gou-Na panted, taking a step forward and resting a hand against the stone wall to steady herself. "I saw what happened out there. I saw the Dao of the End-User. That corporate gladiator didn't use a forbidden martial art. Your Junior Associate planted a cursed legal scroll in the locker room to shatter his kneecaps."
Lo Yu's single visible eye narrowed. He casually slid his hand toward his walking stick.
"That sounds like an allegation of match-fixing, Fairy," Lo Yu purred, the temperature of his aura dropping. "Extortion is a Class-Three tort. What do you want? Hush money? A cut of the betting pool?"
"I don't care about your spirit stones!" Gou-Na hissed, her cheeks flushing a vibrant, greedy pink. She took a step closer, her newly acquired chest heaving. "I want the Junior Associate. I want He Lu."
Lo Yu paused. He slowly let go of his walking stick. "You... want my Junior Associate?"
"I saw the Adamantine Pillar," Gou-Na whispered, her eyes glazing over with degenerate lust as she recalled the neon-pink tent from the arena floor. "I saw the sheer, unadulterated hydrostatic pressure. I am officially top-heavy, Senior Lo. I require a structural counterbalance. I want a private, highly rigorous, hands-on legal consultation with He Lu. Tonight."
She pointed a manicured finger directly at Lo Yu's face. "You set up the meeting, and I keep my mouth shut about the rigged EULA manual. I'll even ensure he gets a favorable bracket in the semi-finals."
Lo Yu stared at the heavily breathing, top-heavy goblin. He processed the threat, the demand, and the absolute lack of moral integrity in the entire exchange.
A slow, terrifyingly greedy smile spread across his wrinkled face.
"The Lo & He Law Firm is always eager to satisfy a client," Lo Yu rasped, pulling a fresh contract out of his robes. "However, the firm strictly enforces a thirty-percent matchmaking contingency fee on all dual-cultivation settlements. Sign here, Fairy. I will have the boy delivered to your pavilion by midnight."
Miles away, deep within the gilded, labyrinthine hallways of the Imperial Palace, I was fighting for my life.
My legs felt like overcooked noodles. I stumbled out of the heavy, gold-leafed doors of the Dowager Empress's private audience chamber, practically falling onto the plush velvet carpet of the corridor.
My Cowper's Meridian was a barren, desolate wasteland. The Empress's vintage-smoky drawl and her absolute, filthy mastery of the unwashed Dao had drained my leaky bucket entirely. I had no Qi. I had no stamina. I felt like a juice box that had been violently squeezed dry by a thousand-year-old hydraulic press.
"I need a lawyer," I wheezed to the empty hallway, leaning heavily against a marble pillar and desperately trying to re-tie the belt of my cheap grey trousers. "I need to sue the monarchy for excessive workplace extraction."
CLATTER.
A sudden, sharp metallic noise echoed above my head.
I looked up. The ornate brass ventilation grate near the vaulted ceiling was swinging loosely on its hinges.
Before I could even process the architectural anomaly, a figure dropped from the shadows of the rafters, landing on the velvet carpet with the muffled, graceful thud of an apex predator.
I scrambled backward, instinctively reaching for my wooden practice sword.
It was Senior Sister Ho Li-Fan.
But she looked entirely wrong.
The pristine, unapproachable Ice Beauty of the Jade Water Sect was gone. Her immaculate blue uniform was wrinkled. Her dark hair was plastered to her forehead with thick, heavy sweat. Her flawless face was flushed a brilliant, burning shade of scarlet, completely matching the crimson tapestries on the palace walls.
And the heat. The sheer, suffocating heat radiating off her body was staggering.
There was no biting scent of winter pine. The Ice Dao had completely failed. A thick, furious cloud of white steam actively billowed from the collar of her robes, fogging up the polished marble pillars around us. She smelled like melted frost, peppermint, and a deep, agonizing, violently suppressed arousal.
She stood there, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling in rapid, jagged gasps. She glared at me, but her icy blue eyes immediately, involuntarily darted straight down to my crotch, then violently snapped back up to my face.
My modern, Earth-realm survival instincts instantly bypassed any logical thought process.
"I knew it!" I shrieked, pointing an accusing, trembling finger at her steaming form. "I knew you were tailing me! You're a Fed!"
Ho Li-Fan flinched, her hands balling into fists. "He Lu, keep your voice down—"
"You hid in the ceiling!" I yelled, my paranoia achieving critical mass. "You voyeuristic cop! You sat in the rafters and watched an undocumented mortal get illegally interrogated by the Sovereign of the Scarlet Lotus!"
"It was an official surveillance operation!" Ho Li-Fan hissed desperately, taking a step toward me. She was trying to sound authoritative, but her voice cracked, completely betraying the fact that her lower Dantian was currently having a catastrophic meltdown. "I was monitoring you for... for unsanctioned meridian enhancements!"
"You were watching me get milked!" I countered, backing away down the hallway. "That is a gross violation of privacy! I demand to see the warrant! You can't use anything you saw in that room against me in a court of law!"
Ho Li-Fan squeezed her eyes shut. She grabbed the fabric of her own robes right over her heart, looking like she was physically trying to hold her soul inside her body.
"I am not going to arrest you," Ho Li-Fan choked out, her face burning so hot I could practically feel the radiation from three feet away. "I just... I needed to assess the hydrostatic pressure. The volume. The sheer volume of Yang-Essence you deployed. It defies the Heavenly Dao."
I froze. I stared at the steaming, flushed, heavily breathing Law Enforcement officer.
My sleep-deprived, paranoid brain processed the data. She was sweating profusely. She was cornering me in an isolated hallway. She was aggressively questioning the capacity of my Cowper's Meridian.
"Oh, I see what this is," I sneered, crossing my arms defensively over my chest. I tapped my temple with a smug, knowing grin. "This is the classic 'Sweat-Box' interrogation tactic."
Ho Li-Fan blinked, utterly bewildered. "The... what?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Officer!" I declared loudly. "You intentionally deactivated your Ice aura! You're trying to raise the ambient temperature in this hallway to break my resolve! You think if you corner me in a localized sauna, I'll start sweating and confess to tax evasion and illegal EULA distribution!"
Ho Li-Fan's jaw actually dropped. She stared at me, completely paralyzed by the sheer, unfathomable density of my stupidity.
She had just spent the last hour hiding in a rafter, aggressively suppressing her own feral grool while watching the Dowager Empress deep-throat my Adamantine Pillar. She was physically melting from pent-up, violently repressed sexual frustration.
And I thought she was trying to give me heatstroke for a tax audit.
"You..." Ho Li-Fan whispered, her voice trembling with an unholy mixture of pure, agonizing sexual tension and absolute, murderous rage. "You think I am sweating... to interrogate you?"
"I know all the Fed tricks!" I beamed, thoroughly convinced of my own legal brilliance. "But the Lo & He Law Firm does not crack under thermal pressure! I plead the Fifth! I do not consent to this humidity!"
A low, dangerous humming sound began to emanate from Ho Li-Fan's core.
The white steam pouring from her collar suddenly stopped. The air in the hallway didn't just drop in temperature; it violently flash-froze.
A thick layer of jagged, razor-sharp ice exploded across the velvet carpet, climbing up the marble pillars and freezing the golden lanterns solid.
The Ice Beauty had snapped.
"He Lu," Ho Li-Fan said. Her voice was no longer a crackling, flustered whisper. It was a terrifying, sub-zero death knell. Her icy blue eyes lost all trace of warmth, replaced by the dead, unforgiving stare of a woman who had decided that murder was the only path to inner peace.
"You are the single most dense, infuriating, tragically broken object in the mortal realm."
"I am a master of maritime law!" I squeaked, my breath pluming into white clouds as the hallway turned into an arctic tundra.
"Run," she commanded softly.
I didn't need to be told twice.
I spun on my heel and sprinted down the gilded hallway as fast as my jelly-like, freshly-drained legs could carry me, slipping and sliding wildly on the frozen velvet carpet.
Behind me, the sound of cracking ice and furious, heavy footsteps echoed through the Imperial Palace. I had survived the Dowager Empress, but I was currently being hunted by a heavily-aroused, violently angry cop with a severe lack of emotional regulation.
Just another Tuesday for the Junior Associate of the Lo & He Law Firm.