The cutting wind of the high altitudes lashed the three figures tearing through the sea of clouds toward the northwest.
They did not fly on individual swords. As cultivators who had not yet reached the eighth stage—the Opening of the Dantian—Mò Yán and Hán Léi possessed bodies forged at the mortal peak, but their energies were still locked within their own flesh. Emitting Qi to the outside world and flying on their own was an absolute physical impossibility for them.
For this reason, they depended entirely on the Great Elder of the Shattered Heaven Sect. The elderly eighth‑stage cultivator led the formation, standing at the tip of a wide plank of black metal lined with veins of oxidized jade—a troop transport artifact of the sect. With his hands clasped behind his back, the elder exhaled his vast Qi directly into the plank's matrix, propelling them across the abyss.
The platform was wide enough to comfortably accommodate six people, allowing the two disciples to travel behind the Elder. To the right stood Hán Léi. And to the left, maintaining a rigorously calculated distance, Mò Yán.
The violent wind was a relentless enemy to the twenty‑five‑year‑old's modesty. The air pressure pressed the heavy silver‑gray tunic against her body, gluing the silk to her curves and highlighting, against her will, the generous curve of her breasts and the ample width of her hips. Her long white hair whipped behind her like a storm of pure snow.
Hán Léi did not look ahead. The Outstanding Disciple kept his eyes fixed on Mò Yán's body. There was a crooked, shameless smile on his lips, greed shining openly as he appraised the curves the wind revealed.
Taking advantage of the plank's sway, he took two slow steps across the black metal, crossing the platform and dangerously closing the personal space between them.
"The wind on the borders is always so aggressive, Martial Sister Mò," Hán Léi said, his voice loud to overcome the air's hum, laden with a drawn‑out, suggestive tone. "If the turbulence is too heavy for you to keep your balance on this artifact, my body is steady. I wouldn't mind serving as support for you to lean on."
Mò Yán did not turn her face toward him. Her scarlet irises remained fixed on the Great Elder's back ahead. She felt the dirty gaze and the disciple's proximity crawling over her skin, and a silent disgust churned her stomach. But her posture remained impeccable. She would not stoop to showing anger.
With millimeter control of the physical strength of her Refined Body, Mò Yán planted her wooden sandals firmly against the plank's metal. She took one irrefutable, polished step to the left, restoring the proper distance.
"Your posture is incorrect, Martial Brother Hán," Mò Yán replied. Her voice held no poetry, no metaphor, no fury. It was melodious, polished, and cold as cut ice. "Keep your eyes on the route and your feet planted. Walking about on the plank destabilizes the artifact's weight and disturbs the Great Elder's Qi flow. Your lack of discipline is a risk to this mission."
Hán Léi scoffed, his arrogant smile faltering for an instant before that impenetrable wall of formality.
"So much coldness…" he grumbled, reluctantly stepping back to the right side of the plank. "Let's see how long this saintly posture lasts when we meet real enemies."
Mò Yán ignored him completely.
A few minutes later, the sharp peaks of the border emerged through the mist. They had arrived at the Misty Peak Sect.
The black metal plank slowed, preparing for the usual reception spectacle. Normally, Misty Peak's sentinels would buzz around them like agitated bees, displaying their cheap flying swords in a demonstration of exaggerated formality to compensate for the frontier sect's inferiority complex.
But the air was dead. No bells. No guards in the sky.
The Great Elder frowned and forced the artifact's matrix downward, initiating a steep descent toward the Serene Wind Plateau, the area designated for Honored Guests.
As soon as the plank landed heavily on the white‑stone courtyard, the three descended. The Great Elder cut the Qi flow with a wave, and the metal artifact quickly shrank to the size of a talisman, disappearing into the old man's wide sleeves.
And then the smell hit Mò Yán. The enhanced hearing and smell of her seventh stage caught the iron scent of blood that the servants were still trying to wash from the stones, using buckets of water and straw brushes. The women trembled so much they could barely scrub the ground.
The pavilion lay in silent ruin. Tables had been overturned. Shards of shattered porcelain gleamed on the floor.
From the main pavilion doors, two figures emerged.
The Great Elder of Shattered Heaven narrowed his eyes. He had known the Sect Master Zhào Fēng and the Great Elder Lín Wújiàn for decades. They were proud men, strutting peacocks who walked with their chins raised. But the two men walking toward them now seemed to have aged two centuries in a single night.
Lín Wújiàn walked hunched, his eyes dull and lifeless, as if his very soul had been torn from his body. Zhào Fēng wore a gray face of exhaustion and terror.
"Zhào Fēng," the Great Elder of Shattered Heaven's voice thundered across the courtyard, laden with the authority of one who represented the heart of the South. He offered no greetings. "The Ruin of the Throne in our central pillar resonated this morning. Space trembled. What happened on your mountain? Who activated the ancient matrix?"
Zhào Fēng stopped a few paces away. He swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the bloodstains on the ground before meeting the Shattered Heaven emissary's gaze.
"The foundation of Misty Peak…" the Sect Master's voice failed, hoarse and pathetic. "Was stolen. The Astrolabe of a Thousand Bridges was taken and activated."
Hán Léi stepped forward, letting out a harsh, incredulous laugh.
"Stolen?" the young man mocked, looking around. "A band of thieves entered the highest mountain on the border and took your inheritance, and you're all alive to tell the tale? Where were your elite disciples?"
Lín Wújiàn, the broken grandfather, finally lifted his face. His eyes were bloodshot.
"It was not a band. It was three," Lín Wújiàn hissed, humiliation mingling with dread. "A man and two women. The man… the man did nothing but spin the artifact in his hands. It was the woman in blue."
"A woman in blue?" The Great Elder of Shattered Heaven frowned heavily. "What artifact or technique did she use to subjugate your fifty elite swordsmen all at once? A sonic suppression matrix? Some colorless poison that paralyzed their Qi?"
"No technique," Zhào Fēng answered, his hands trembling at the memory. "There were no hidden artifacts. No martial postures or seals. She simply… released her own Qi. The density of her energy was so absurdly high that the physical air itself became denser than mercury. She crushed the resonance of my disciples' swords, dropping them from the sky to the ground, merely with the raw weight of her presence. We could not breathe. We could not stand."
Hán Léi burst into loud, scandalous laughter, the sound echoing disrespectfully across the ruined courtyard.
"A traveling peasant and his two concubines?!" Hán Léi wiped a fake tear from his eye, shaking his head in utter disdain. "You stagnant old men let the name of the southern sects be trampled by trash using gravity tricks? Ah, this is ridiculous. If that rat and his whores cross my path, I'll rip his head off and teach the two women what a true cultivator of Shattered Heaven can do—"
"Silence, Martial Brother," Mò Yán's voice cut through his laughter like a razor.
Hán Léi stopped laughing, irritated.
Mò Yán did not look at the lecherous disciple. Her scarlet irises were fixed on Zhào Fēng's terrified face. The young genius's analytical, rigorous mind processed the information at terrifying speed.
Purely oppressive atmospheric pressure, she thought, her shoulders tensing under the silver silk. No elements. No martial seals. A density of Primordial Qi capable of nullifying the flight of fifty elite cultivators and forcing two eighth‑stage masters to their knees simultaneously.
She knew the limits of mortal flesh. She was the very peak of mortal flesh of her generation. And what the Misty Peak Master had just described simply did not exist within the Nine Realms.
"Where did they go, Master Zhào Fēng?" Mò Yán asked, her voice strictly formal but laden with an urgency she rarely displayed.
Zhào Fēng pointed southeast with a trembling finger.
"The man decoded the Astrolabe before us. He said the primordial matrix rested on the central pillar," he answered. "They are going to Shattered Heaven."
Mò Yán felt an extremely rare chill run down her perfect spine. Hán Léi was still smiling, sharpening his ego's arrogance against a threat he was too stupid to comprehend.
But the restrained flower of the Central Pillar knew the truth. This was not a group of road bandits. An unfathomable calamity had crossed the border, and it was marching directly toward her father's home.
"Before we set out on the trail of this calamity, Master Zhào Fēng," Mò Yán's voice rang out, polished, cutting through Hán Léi's mockery. The young woman's analytical mind left no loose ends. "If they are heading to our central pillar, how do they travel? A group with this density of Qi must use a formidable spirit beast or a high‑level flying vessel."
Zhào Fēng lowered his head, embarrassment compounding his terror.
"A carriage," the defeated leader answered. "A colossal carriage of dark wood and steel, pulled by four pure‑blood black horses. They travel across the ancient bridges like… mortal nobles on an evening outing."
Hán Léi could not contain himself. The Outstanding Disciple let out a roar of laughter, slapping his own thigh.
"A cart! The great nightmare that toppled Misty Peak travels in a cart pulled by farm horses!" Hán Léi wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, overflowing with arrogance. "Martial Sister Mò, I think we won't need our swords. Just startling the horses will send them tumbling into the abyss."
Mò Yán did not smile. She ignored her colleague's stupidity and merely recorded the information in her rigorous mind. A black carriage. Traveling on the ground. The hunt had begun.
---
Dozens of leagues away, oblivious to the pursuit forming in their wake, the colossal carriage advanced across the immense iron chains and ancient suspension bridges connecting the stone needles above the sea of clouds. The journey to the Shattered Heaven Sect would take about three days at this leisurely pace. There was no hurry. No concern. For them, the world was merely a backyard waiting to be explored.
On the carriage's driver's seat, holding the reins loosely, Yù Méi radiated an unusual energy.
The deep tension and muscle knots that had locked her shoulders had completely vanished, melted away by her brother‑in‑law's hands and warm Qi. The sensation of lightness was intoxicating. The cold wind of the high altitudes hit her face, but she felt only a comforting, residual warmth tingling beneath her skin.
She looked at the edges of the wide plateau of black stone the carriage was crossing at that moment—a brief stretch of solid ground embedded in the top of a pillar before the route launched them back onto the suspension bridges. There, small, rustic gray flowers managed to sprout from the cracks in the dead jade. They were ugly flowers by ordinary standards, but absurdly resilient, withstanding the crushing pressure of the mountain wind without losing their petals. Yù Méi smiled, a small, genuine smile, identifying with them. The Untouchable Petal was finally blooming after years of fire, and the world seemed incredibly lighter now.
Inside the luxurious dark cabin, the atmosphere was one of dense calm and profound intimacy.
Zhì Yuǎn continued his silent meditation, his unfathomable black eyes tracing the spatial flows beyond the windows. Yù Qíng was not in a separate armchair. She sat between her husband's legs, her back resting comfortably against his broad, warm chest. Her legs were lifted off the floor, folded before her so that her thighs and knees rested comfortably over Zhì Yuǎn's thighs, in a position of absolute anchoring and belonging.
It was the couple's standard state of comfort—a constant physical union that rendered words unnecessary. Gracefully balancing her teacup in one hand, the priestess watched her sister's back through the carriage's small hatch.
The poetic, calculating smile bloomed on her lips.
Our little flower is almost ready, Yù Qíng thought, appraising her sister's pure Yin, which was being perfectly forged to, in the future, serve as an auxiliary furnace.
She raised the cup to her lips, her cold mind tracing the next steps of her absolute devotion. Her husband's Inner Universe was infinite, and his hunger for Primordial Qi was insatiable. Her ocean, vast as it was, had a limit. But an ocean could be fed by rivers. And a river was already flowing beside them.
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