The colossal carriage of dark cedar and steel rolled heavily forward, drawing closer to the titanic shadows that swallowed the sun-bathed horizon.
The City of the Celestial Lance was no mere walled village — it was a leviathan of gray stone. Its immense walls rose hundreds of meters into the sky, scratching the low clouds, carved with defensive runes that pulsed in an electric blue. A kilometers-long line of travelers, bearded mercenaries, and exotic draft beasts stretched before the colossal bronze gates.
Inside the armored cabin, the air was warm and thick. The intoxicating scent of ozone, sandalwood, and nectar attested to the intensity of the carnal forging that had consumed the two long days of travel.
Mò Yán, seated at the edge of the velvet bench with her heavy silver-gray tunic perfectly aligned over her still-aching body, peered through the cabin's narrow window slit. The diplomat studied the crowd outside with her scarlet eyes half-narrowed, her trained mind dissecting what she saw for threats.
Then, abruptly, the young woman's breath faltered.
Near the gates, a manure hauler — an elderly man dressed in filthy rags, covered in soot and sweat — stumbled beneath the weight of a cargo cart transporting tons of raw ore. To prevent the vehicle from toppling, the beggar planted his bare foot against the ground.
Crack.
The solid stone of the road fractured beneath the impact of his heel. The thin muscles of his calves and arms swelled with a startling density, stabilizing the colossal load without the slightest use of any martial art — purely raw physical strength.
"By the love of our heaven..." Mò Yán whispered, turning her pale face toward the other wives in the dim cabin. "Elder sisters... look at that. That waste hauler... his flesh withstood tons without breaking a single bone. The dregs of this plane possess the resistance of the 3rd or 4th Mortal Stage."
Yù Méi leaned across the bench, peering through the slit over the diplomat's shoulder. The youngest's almond-shaped eyes gleamed with purely carnivorous interest.
"They are born breathing lead, Yán," Yù Méi commented, smiling behind her opaque veil. "What mortals down below spend an entire lifetime tempering, these people get for free just by existing in this heavy air."
Zhì Yuǎn, leaning comfortably against the dark velvet, showed no surprise. The explanation lay in the very atmosphere that had suffocated them days before. The Qi of the Higher Realm was so brutally massive that the mere act of being born and breathing that air from childhood forced the biological expansion of the body. What was considered an acclaimed martial genius in the lower world was, here, merely the beggar sweeping the streets.
The carriage finally reached the gates.
Two guards in metallic scale armor blocked the passage with crossed halberds. The coachman, Mò Zhōng — now displaying the vigor of a transcendent warrior in his forties — pulled the black horses' reins and waited.
The small hatch of the armored door slid open. As the family's treasurer, Yù Qíng extended her gloved hand. She deposited five low-grade spiritual stones — scarce ore they had plundered from the Shattered Sky Sect Master's coffers — into the guard's palm.
The soldier looked down at the milky stones. His hard expression twisted into a sneer of profound contempt.
"What kind of joke is this?" the guard growled. He closed his steel-mesh fist, and the frail stones crumbled to dirty dust between his fingers. "Dead dust? Filthy gravel? Do you think the Celestial Lance is a junkyard that accepts stones with no density? Pay the toll with real low-grade Spiritual Stones, or turn around!"
Inside the cabin, Yù Méi growled low, her hands already curling into fists.
"Patience," Yù Qíng murmured, touching the youngest's knee gently beneath the silk, a serene smile forming beneath her star-threaded veil. She watched the stone dust trickle from between the guard's steel-mesh fingers. The sneer that drew itself beneath the star-threaded veil was instantaneous. What the lower world called "Low-Grade Stones" was pure garbage here.
Yù Qíng sifted through the immensity of the jade ring her husband had taken from Lǐ Wēi, the Young Master he had pulverized in the forest. The ring's inner space was stuffed with riches. Yet the arrogant boy had been far too ostentatious to carry "small change." There were only small mountains of High-Grade Spiritual Stones.
Yù Qíng withdrew one of them. It was a jewel the size of a plum, pulsing with a crystalline, blinding, utterly pure Qi.
She extended her hand once more and let the stone fall into the soldier's palm.
The guard looked down at the treasure. The color drained from his face. The arrogance evaporated like water on fire, his eyes bulging so wide they nearly leapt from their sockets. That single stone held a purity that would pay his salary for half a decade.
The soldier's legs trembled. He pressed the stone against his chest and bowed in a manner that bordered on hysterical.
"P-Forgive the tongue of this blind dog!" the guard stammered, his voice cracking into a comically desperate pitch. "Noble Lords! Your boundless generosity has just fed my entire bloodline for months! The gates are open! Please, pass through!"
The hatch closed with a dry snap. Yù Méi huffed, crossing her arms beneath her tunic.
"Noisy insects," the Brutal Blade muttered, leaning her head against the upholstery. "They bark for dust and grovel for gravel, don't they, sister?"
"The world is full of them. They only differ in size," Yù Qíng replied, adjusting the thick folds of her garments.
They entered the city.
The organized chaos of the streets was deafening. The smell of magical beast meat roasting on spits mixed with dense soot. The thunderous sound of anvils forging Higher Realm steel echoed through the alleyways.
Mò Zhōng parked the immense carriage at the secure stables of a central inn, and the family descended into the outside world.
The "Rule of Shadows" came into practical effect. The three wives were submerged in heavy, structured, long tunics sealed from neck to boots, with opaque veils covering their faces. The thick fabric of Mò Yán's silver tunic scraped against her sensitive skin with each step, struggling to crush and conceal the voluptuous exuberance of her breasts and hips. Beside her, Yù Méi's rigid posture radiated a martial boredom encased in dark-gold silk, while Yù Qíng used the Void Lotus to hover millimeters above the ground, simulating perfect footsteps to conceal her ethereal locomotion.
No one paid attention to the obedient shadows accompanying the reserved man in the black cloak.
The environment was an assault on the senses. The smell of magical beast meat roasting on street spits mingled with dense soot. The thunderous sound of anvils forging Higher Realm steel echoed through the alleyways.
As they moved through the open market, a gigantic mercenary carrying a blood-stained axe on his back strode in wide, brutal steps, refusing to yield to any passerby. Confident in his size, he drove his shoulder squarely into Yù Méi, expecting the woman beneath the wide tunic to be thrown to the ground by the impact of his mass.
Instead, a dull sound echoed. Thud.
The brute staggered two steps back, clutching his own shoulder with a grimace of pain, feeling as though he had just rammed into the corner of a lead mountain. He looked at the woman in gold, who had not swayed a single millimeter. The predatory aura that leaked from Yù Méi's almond-shaped eyes above the veil made the mercenary swallow his own curses.
"A-A thousand pardons, my lady," stammered the giant, bowing hastily before vanishing into the crowd.
Yù Méi smiled beneath the black fabric, exchanging a quick, amused glance with Mò Yán, satisfied with her own density.
Meanwhile, Yù Qíng did not waste a moment. Gliding between the stalls, the priestess silently absorbed the cries of the appraisers. "Silver Boar core, eighty medium stones!" "Steel Wolf hide, thirty low stones!" Within minutes, Yù Qíng's mind had already tabulated the local market's inflation. She stopped discreetly at the stall of an elderly scholar and used her own ocular charm, combined with an invisible threat, to make the man hand over a crumpled scroll containing the province's commercial compendium.
Informed and exhausted by the noise, they made their way to the guest district. With another stone from the obscene wealth of the dead Young Master, they rented the Patio of the Silent Cloud — the most isolated and expensive property in the sector, protected by thick stone walls and sound-blocking matrices.
The moment the heavy mahogany doors of the main courtyard closed, locking the city outside, the performance evaporated.
Yù Méi tore off her black veil and undid the buttons of the rigorous collar of the dark-gold tunic with a moan of relief, the sweaty skin of her neck finally receiving the cool air. Mò Yán let out a trembling sigh, removing the golden-thread covering from her face, her still-aching thighs brushing together beneath the thick tunic — the exhaustion of the long hours of possession during the journey collecting its biological toll.
Zhì Yuǎn walked to a wide noble-wood recliner at the center of the room and let himself fall against the cushions, relaxing his broad shoulders with a lazy sigh. The god's cold lethargy receded, giving way to the husband's ease.
He extended his large hand and pulled Yù Qíng by the wrist. The blue-robed priestess laughed softly, settling languidly onto his lap, her arms wrapping around his strong neck.
"I thought their heaven would be higher, Qíng," Zhì Yuǎn commented, his tone easy and warm, kissing his wife's pale cheek as his fingers slowly traced the curve of her waist beneath the heavy tunic. "The air is wonderfully heavy, but this city's knowledge smells of rust. The containment matrices I saw in the market are just as stagnant as the ones back below."
"They have plenty of Qi, my love, but no Wisdom," Yù Qíng purred, nestling her face against his warm neck. "But at least their market is organized. We have a mountain of High-Grade Stones from that fool you crushed, but trying to use those to buy bread will draw every vulture in the province. We need smaller currency."
The priestess raised her free hand and activated the jade ring.
Space rippled. Dozens of gleaming spiritual cores, sharp steel fangs, intact silver hides, and dense bones tumbled onto the room's plush carpet with a crash. It was not merely the Silver-Plated Beemoth's carcass. It was the complete spoils of fourteen days in which Yù Méi had wandered bored and bloodthirsty through the Silver Steel Forest. A true mountain of pure carnage.
Mò Yán's scarlet eyes flew wide at the pile of magical carcasses. Her lips moved in inaudible murmurs, multiplying the fangs and cores by the values she had overheard in the open market.
"By our heaven..." Mò Yán murmured, blinking repeatedly. She turned to the Brutal Blade. "Sister Méi, did you clean out half the forest's ecosystem? This isn't travel stock. Just the fangs of these beasts are worth a fortune in the auction houses. If we sell everything across the trading pavilions, we'll have enough local medium and low currency to move through the entire city like wealthy ghosts without ever needing to touch that dead boy's treasure."
Yù Méi sprawled onto a nearby sofa, plucking an apple from a fruit bowl and biting into it with relish.
"And I was still bored, Yán. The blood of those beasts was too thin," said the warrior with her mouth full, her almond-shaped eyes glinting with the anticipation of causing trouble in civilization. She pointed her chin at the mountain of bones and cores. "Pack everything into leather sacks. We'll pay the market a little visit this afternoon. And if some fat appraiser tries to fleece us because we look like three lost widows..."
Zhì Yuǎn laughed low, the sound vibrating against Yù Qíng's perfumed hair. He tightened his hold on the blue-robed priestess's waist, pulling her a little closer to his chest, as his dark eyes drifted from Mò Yán — who had already begun organizing the spoils with rigorous discipline — to Yù Méi's predatory smile as she sprawled on the sofa.
His Inner Universe turned within his own Dantian, vast and cold. The innate Wisdom that inhabited him demanded he spend the majority of his time dissecting the dead truths of the world — the stagnant matrices and the invisible currents of the Dao — with a cosmic indifference. Yet moments like this one always anchored him back to the ground. Surrounded by the strength, the loyalty, and the undeniable affection of those three women who belonged entirely to him, the god's lethargy receded to give way to the husband's contentment.
The Laws of gravity and time could dictate the weight of reality outside those walls, but the chaotic warmth of his family sealed within those four walls was, without question, the only truth he genuinely loved to contemplate.