The wind of the high altitudes roared in Mò Yán's ears as the wide plank of black metal cut through the sea of gray clouds toward the northwest.
Maintaining her posture perfectly erect on the left side of the artifact, the white‑haired young woman paid no attention to the desolate landscape of the Remnants. While the Great Elder injected his vast eighth‑stage Qi to keep the platform flying, the genius's analytical mind worked at dizzying speed, dissecting the information they had gathered at the Serene Wind Plateau.
The scene of the Misty Peak Sect's defeat was a terrifying puzzle.
Fifty elite swordsmen. A Sect Master and a Great Elder at the eighth stage. All crushed without a single drop of blood spilled by blades, without suppression matrices, without poisons. Mò Yán replayed Zhào Fēng's trembling account in her head. Pure Qi density. An atmospheric oppression so brutal it broke the flight resonance of an entire sect.
This was not the work of mere border thieves. Those three people—the silent man focused on the stars and the two lethal women—were calamities walking through the mortal world.
They decoded the Astrolabe of a Thousand Bridges and are heading to our central pillar, she deduced, her deep scarlet eyes fixed on the misty horizon. Why? What are they seeking in the ruins of Shattered Heaven? Authority? No. Someone with this level of raw power does not care about the politics of ants.
Mò Yán's disciplined mind began to formulate strategies. A direct confrontation was absolutely out of the question. If the woman in blue could bring two eighth‑stage masters to their knees merely by exuding her presence, fighting would be the end of Shattered Heaven. The only viable path was total diplomacy.
I must offer unrestricted passage, she planned, carefully reviewing the words she would use. Greet them with the highest degree of respect. We will not demand the artifact back, for by right of force it now belongs to them. Instead, I will offer the archived knowledge of our sect. If they seek the secrets of the Spatial Matrices, we can guide them through the galleries mortals dare not tread. An exchange of favors. They gain facilitated access and our servitude; we gain the chance to survive and, perhaps, glimpse the truth of the Dao they carry.
It was a perfect plan. Pacifying, logical, and mutually beneficial.
Mò Yán glanced to the right. On the other side of the flying plank, Hán Léi puffed out his chest, an arrogant, covetous smile on his lips as he threw furtive glances at the curves the wind tried to tear from her silver tunic.
Mò Yán's fair skin tensed beneath the thick silk. A drop of unwanted cold sweat ran down the back of her neck.
If that idiot opens his mouth, we will die, she thought, feeling a deep disgust churn her stomach. I must take the lead as soon as we land. The Great Elder is wise enough to understand the danger, but Hán Léi… lust and pride have blinded him completely to reality.
"There!" the Great Elder's rough voice cut through her thoughts, pointing downward.
Mò Yán followed the old man's finger.
Below them, moving with a rhythmic rumble over one of the region's largest black‑rock plateaus—a wide stretch of solid ground before the road demanded a return to the suspension bridges—was the colossal carriage. Four pure‑blood black horses pulled the fortress of wood and steel.
The Great Elder forced the Qi flow downward, and the heavy metal plank plunged toward the stone road.
They landed thirty paces from the vehicle, blocking the path. The impact of the landing kicked up a cloud of ancient dust. Mò Yán stepped gracefully from the dark metal onto the ground. Her traditional wooden sandals touched the black stone with a hollow sound. As she set down the weight of her Refined Body, the edges of her pale, immaculate feet gained that subtle, provocative pinkish hue of pressure. The Great Elder cut the Qi flow with a wave, and the artifact quickly shrank to the size of a talisman, disappearing into the old man's sleeves.
The carriage stopped with a loud neigh from the horses.
Mò Yán raised her scarlet eyes and felt her breath catch for a fraction of a second.
On the carriage's driver's seat, the blonde young woman did not seem the least bit concerned about the arrival of imposing cultivators from the sky. Forced by her sister to discard the torn green tunic before embarking on this new leg of the journey, she now wore a stunning golden silk dress, masterfully sewn from the luxurious fabrics they had acquired with gold in the Golden Prairies. The thin, cool fabric embraced the voluptuous curves forged by years of fire, exuding an elegance that did not seem to belong to an assassin.
She was lounged forward in a posture of pure boredom, her elbow propped on her thigh and her face resting lazily on her palm, while the other hand held the reins in a completely slack manner. The relaxed curvature of her body made the neckline of the golden dress dangerously yield, revealing the generous, pale curve of her heavy breasts. The silk skirt, pulled taut by her careless position, left one of her long, shapely legs almost completely exposed, swinging into the void in a hypnotic way.
The involuntary sensuality of that full body draped in gold created a bizarre, terrifying contrast. Thanks to the deep Qi manipulation she had received from her brother‑in‑law, the skin of her fingers and the joints of her hands were immaculate and perfectly healed, showing not a single trace of swelling or the blood she had spilled the night before. She looked like a pampered, untouchable goddess at rest.
Yet Mò Yán's hyper‑acute hearing and instincts captured the driver's true aura in an instant. It's a monster, the restrained flower's mind screamed in horror. The girl in gold does not exude the refined, polished Qi of a sect; behind that perfect skin, she exudes the brutal, predatory density of a colossal beast—a physical vigor that utterly eclipses the peak Mò Yán herself had spent her entire life achieving.
The Great Elder of Shattered Heaven took a subtle step back, crossing his hands in the wide sleeves of his lead‑gray tunic. He too had felt it.
"Yán'er," the old cultivator murmured, his voice so low that only those of his sect could hear. "The driver's Qi is as dense as that of an ancestral beast. And there is something unfathomable locked in that cabin. I sense no fluctuation coming from inside, and that is what frightens me most. Diplomacy is yours. Measure the depth of these waters before we jump."
Mò Yán nodded minimally. Her delicate shoulders under the silver‑and‑gold silk tensed with the weight of her clan's survival, but her aristocratic face maintained the serenity of a frozen lake. She had her words prepared.
She took three steps forward. Her impeccable posture stretched the golden embroidery over her bust and wide hips, but her aura was purely reverent. Mò Yán bowed in a flawless salute, her hands joined before her body.
"Greetings, honored travelers," Mò Yán's voice rang out, melodious, polished, and unshakably formal. No arrogance, no mockery. Only etiquette and absolute prudence. "I am Mò Yán, a central disciple of the Shattered Heaven Sect. This is our Great Elder. We have noted the marks of your passage through Misty Peak. Our clan seeks no enmity. If your destination is the central pillar, we offer our servitude and knowledge of the ancient pa—"
The soft click of the armored cabin interrupted her perfectly calculated speech.
The door opened slowly. Yù Qíng glided out, stepping onto the carriage's veranda.
The cold plateau wind swayed the priestess's navy‑blue tunic and made her long black hair dance like ink spilled into the air. Mò Yán's eyes widened slightly, struck by the transcendent beauty of the woman before her—a beauty that did not seem made of the same stagnant flesh that composed the rest of mortals.
Yù Qíng's black, astute eyes fixed immediately on Mò Yán.
The priestess's calculating mind dissected the white‑haired young woman in a fraction of a second. That extreme modesty, the respectful voice, the intelligent gaze that sought to avoid bloodshed. And contrasting with that saintly purity, structured clothing that failed miserably to contain an absurd voluptuousness. The pure Yin circulating in Mò Yán's meridians was dense, clean, untouched.
Perfect, the thought echoed in Yù Qíng's mind, a dark, sweet, poetic smile beginning to bloom on her lips. Silent. Intelligent. Diplomatic. A wonderfully disciplined soil, simply begging to have its roots shattered and corrupted by the weight of my husband.
Mò Yán was about to resume her speech, about to seal the peace agreement that would save lives, when a heavy boot clattered loudly against the black rock beside her.
Hán Léi had taken two steps forward, passing Mò Yán and completely ignoring the Great Elder's silent order to retreat.
The Outstanding Disciple's breathing was erratic, a disgusting smile on his face. He had looked at the savage Yù Méi on the driver's seat, and his eyes had risen to Yù Qíng. The sight of that woman in blue, with her porcelain skin and cosmic beauty, had melted the already rusted gears of his common sense. Blinded by his own lust and inflamed by being at the peak of the sixth stage, Hán Léi did not feel the invisible threat in the air; he saw only a wonderful spoil of war traveling in a carriage that, to his mediocre vision, belonged to lucky peasants.
"What a waste of saliva with formalities, Martial Sister Mò!" Hán Léi mocked, spreading his arms with scandalous arrogance. His gaze avidly roamed over Yù Qíng's curves. "They are the lineage‑less rats that humiliated the weak old men of the border. Look at their cart. You want to make peace deals with plebeians who stole an ancient treasure that, by right, belongs to the Central Pillar?"
The immaculate skin of Mò Yán's neck heated violently. Her heart missed a beat. All her speech, her strategy, her salvation… destroyed in a single second by the mouth of a lustful animal.
Idiot! Shut up! Shut up!, the restrained flower's analytical mind screamed in pure internal panic, her white lashes trembling as she pressed her joined hands together so hard her knuckles went white. He doesn't see that they emit no Qi because it is so dense?! He doesn't realize we are standing before the abyss?!
But Mò Yán, bound by the strict rules of clan hierarchy and the duty of modesty, could not grab her colleague by the neck and break his jaw in front of the outsiders, no matter how much her soul begged for it.
The Great Elder opened his mouth to intervene, sweating cold beneath his heavy robe, but Hán Léi was already drunk on his own ego. He pointed the tip of his longsword toward Yù Qíng.
"Listen well, scum of the prairies," the young lecher declared, a presumptuous smile shining on his stupid face. "You have the Astrolabe of our domain. Hand it over to the Shattered Heaven Sect now, and we will spare your pathetic lives. And as compensation for the time you made us waste coming here… the two beauties will come with me to my pavilion. I will be a very… generous master."
The plateau plunged into a silence so deep that even the sound of loose stones rolling off the edges of the black rock pillar seemed to die.
On the driver's seat, Yù Méi tilted her head to the side. She looked at Hán Léi, looked at the extended sword pointing at her sister, and slowly, a wide, euphoric, utterly unhinged smile tore across the Untouchable Petal's face. Her knuckles began to crack in a rhythmic symphony.
A peacock begging to be plucked alive, Yù Méi thought, the brutal Qi of her body beginning to leak through the green silk.
Yù Qíng did not change expression. She did not seem offended by the grotesque audacity of the boy. In fact, she did not even grant Hán Léi the honor of looking in his direction. To her, his words were the buzzing of a blind insect that had landed on the wrong plate. Her black, piercing eyes remained fixed on the tense, terrified, mortified figure of Mò Yán, delighting poetically in the despair the restrained diplomat exuded.
The priestess in blue brought her hand to her lips, letting out a low, velvety laugh laden with a darkness that froze Mò Yán's blood in her veins.
"Little flower," Yù Qíng murmured, her voice sliding across the black stone plateau like sweet poison, echoing in the absolute silence. "The noisy trash is soiling the purity of the snow before him. Clear the path."
Yù Méi leaped from the driver's seat in a single bound, the shadow of her body eclipsing the sun.
"With the greatest pleasure, sister."
Hán Léi still maintained his arrogant, blind smile. But Mò Yán, whose red eyes were now fixed on the unbridled monstrosity emanating from the blonde girl, closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. The restrained flower of Shattered Heaven knew with absolute certainty that diplomacy had died there, and the bloodbath was about to begin.
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