The Patio of the Silent Cloud breathed an unreal peace, shielded from the soot, the mercenary shouts, and the hammering of anvils of the City of the Celestial Lance. Beneath the shadow of the wide leaves of a metallic peach tree in the inner garden, the crushing tensions of the Higher Realm died outside the heavy runic walls.
In the intimacy of the courtyard, the wives were barefoot. The crude contact with stone had become obsolete; the three women's immaculate feet rested softly against the flagstones or hovered millimeters above them, sustained by the invisible breath of space.
Zhì Yuǎn reclined in lethargic ease on a wide noble-wood recliner. The charcoal-gray tunic was slightly open at the chest, revealing the man's warm skin. The infinite void turning at the center of his being remained silent, in no hurry to devour the world.
Centimeters from the upholstery, Yù Qíng floated in her habitual aerial seiza.
The blue goddess was positioned in a perfectly enveloping manner. The priestess's pale, bare thighs framed Zhì Yuǎn's head, which rested at the nape against the warm, soft space between her legs. Leaning her torso forward, Yù Qíng rested the full weight of her breasts directly atop his head.
With the tips of her cold fingers, she held a large, deep-purple grape — freshly washed — and let it slide between her husband's parted lips.
Zhì Yuǎn accepted the fruit, chewing slowly. The sweet juice stained the tips of Yù Qíng's fingers. The god's dark gaze rose to his wife's abyssal irises and, in a slow and scandalously possessive motion, his warm lips closed around her immaculate fingers. He sucked the pale skin, his rough tongue tracing her wet phalanges in a raw provocation.
An electric shiver whipped down the priestess's spine.
The biological reflex was immediate: Yù Qíng's thighs contracted, crushing Zhì Yuǎn's head in a warm and trembling embrace. A hoarse sigh tore from the goddess's throat, her gaze clouding instantly at that wet touch.
A low, deep, satisfied laugh vibrated in the man's chest, the resonance echoing directly against her flesh.
A few steps away, Mò Yán lowered her face, a thick flush igniting her pale neck.
The snow-haired young woman was preparing the teapot at the stone table, but the sight of the husband sucking her sister's fingers and the visible tightening of Yù Qíng's thighs around his face made the Dantian in her womb throb violently. The hyper-dense energy of the 9th Stage of Condensation of the Void seethed, and the diplomat's untouched Yin contracted in a delicious and painful way beneath the silver-gray silk, begging for a friction she could barely disguise.
On the stone floor, Yù Méi grumbled loudly, breaking the bubble of tension.
The youngest rolled onto her back, her long legs swinging in the air, the thin golden cotton tunic pulling across the scandalous fullness of her bust. She tossed a metallic peach leaf into the air and struck her bare heel against the flagstone, subtly cracking the rock.
"My heaven, I can't stand being still any longer," Yù Méi complained, rolling her almond-shaped eyes. "We came to the Saint Realm. I thought we'd be kicking down doors or crushing the local market. But here we are, sinking into grapes and tea like a bunch of retired elders. My hands have been tingling since yesterday!"
Mò Yán approached with the silver tray, her steps measured, and set the porcelain on the side table beside Zhì Yuǎn without producing a single clink. The heat radiating from him struck her body like an invisible furnace.
"The dregs of this plane aren't going anywhere, Méi." Zhì Yuǎn closed his eyes, savoring the softness of Yù Qíng's legs around his face. "Let them accumulate their own fears out there. No dust of this world dictates our time."
He raised his hand and rested his large palm directly against Mò Yán's lower abdomen, over the silver silk.
The thermal impact made the diplomat's knees falter subtly. She gasped, her white lashes trembling.
"The condensation in your core is at its limit, Yán." His deep voice filled the courtyard, his Wisdom dissecting the storm seething within her. "The Mill has ground away the last mortal impurities. Your cage is boiling. Two more days, and gravity will break the wall of mortality for good."
Yù Qíng loosened the grip of her thighs, her fingers sliding through her husband's dark hair with adoration. The priestess smiled at the snow flower.
"And when your wall falls, you will not need to fear this world as the insects here do, sister Yán," Yù Qíng said, her voice taking on a venomous poetic quality. "We have seen the market scrolls. The cultivators of this empire crystallize their own souls into Nascent Divinities out of sheer terror. They cage a single thread of Law because they dread that their own flesh will burst beneath the weight of the Dao."
Yù Qíng raised her free hand, and the space centimeters from her fingers folded, light swallowed by an absolute gravity.
"But our foundation does not fear overflowing. I do not hold the Law of Devotion... I am it. The density of our universe drowns their dust."
Yù Méi uncrossed her legs on the floor, her boredom evaporating into pure martial pride. The girl closed her fist, her knuckles cracking with loud, dry snaps.
"Let them play with crystal souls!" Yù Méi exclaimed, her irises sparking gold. "They fly on swords and hurl little gusts of wind. My Rupture doesn't care about long-range spells. I strike, and my target's own flesh turns to dust from the inside out."
The praise to her core, the touch of his hand against her belly, and the magnitude of those Laws being discussed in such intimate terms were the tipping point for the restrained flower.
The diplomatic armor Mò Yán wore in the streets did not exist in here. Without the slightest hesitation, she abandoned the tray. With a fluid and blindly famished boldness, the snow-haired woman climbed onto the wide wooden recliner.
Mò Yán slid her long legs around Zhì Yuǎn's hips, settling directly onto her husband's lap. The silver silk pressed heavily against his dark trousers. She leaned her torso forward, her full thighs coiling against his, and rested both hands flat against the god's bare, warm chest. Her pale fingers played against his rigid skin, while her wet, throbbing center pressed itself deliberately against his dormant length.
"And what will my Law be, husband?" Mò Yán whispered, her full lips nearly grazing his mouth, her scarlet irises overflowing with a devout and intoxicating desire. "What grows in the dark of my sea?"
Zhì Yuǎn caressed his wife's waist with his thumb, feeling her skin burn beneath the silk.
"An absolute authority," he answered, his voice dropping to a hoarse timbre that made her shudder. "A Law of Mandate. It will force the reality around you to bend and obey your dictates... yet, ironically, it will exist solely to serve and enforce my will. The exact nature of its implications is still in the dark, Yán. But it will be relentless."
Mò Yán gasped, her purest Yin melting completely within her at that promise of subjugated power.
Zhì Yuǎn waited no longer. His large hand rose to the nape of the snow-haired girl, burying itself in the white strands, and he pulled her down, claiming her lips in a deep, voracious, and possessive kiss. His burning tongue invaded his wife's mouth, savoring her bold surrender, while Yù Qíng's hands resumed massaging his dark hair in perfect synchrony. The entire courtyard seemed to drown in the warmth of that intimacy.
Until, in the silence of the morning, Zhì Yuǎn's Inner Universe wavered.
He stopped mid-kiss. The lethargy in his gaze froze.
"Hm?" the god murmured, separating his lips from Mò Yán's, who released a soft whimper at the loss of contact.
Yù Qíng stopped massaging his hair. She tilted her head forward.
"What is it, my love?" the priestess asked, her velvety voice carrying an immediate and gentle concern.
Zhì Yuǎn did not release his hold on Mò Yán's waist, nor did he lift his head from the eldest's soft thighs. His Wisdom dissected the sky above the canopy of metallic leaves. Descending from the clouds — invisible to mortal eyes — a thread black as pitch, thin and pulsing, groped through the air, desperately trying to anchor itself to the spiritual signature they had left in the forest days ago.
"Someone is pulling the threads of the Law of Karma," Zhì Yuǎn noted, his tone casual. "A tracking search for the elder I crushed."
Yù Méi leapt up from the floor, landing on her feet with a dull thud. Her almond-shaped irises blazed in vivid gold, a purely carnivorous ecstasy warping the boredom on her face.
"Finally!" Yù Méi yanked at her tunic collar, her knuckles cracking with sharp, dry pops. "The family of that insolent little brat found us? Wonderful! Let them come! I'll tear the gates of this city off with my teeth and turn the entire guard into a meat paste!"
Zhì Yuǎn let out a mild sigh against Mò Yán's flushed face.
He had absolutely no intention of interrupting the comfort of his bold wife's lap, or Yù Qíng's soft massage, merely to wash insect blood off the white walls of his resting courtyard. He wanted the afternoon to continue exactly as it was.
Without taking his eyes off Mò Yán, he raised his right hand into the empty air.
Without forming seals or reciting incantations, the Law of Destruction infiltrated itself surgically into the very concept of that black thread descending from the sky.
Snip.
The invisible karmic thread was brutally obliterated from the fabric of fate. The energy simply dried into nothing, erased at its root.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand and returned to squeezing the white-haired diplomat's waist.
"The thread was cluttering the view. Handled," he murmured, pulling Mò Yán's face back down and devouring her mouth in an even heavier and deeper kiss.
On the stone floor, Yù Méi's shoulders sagged. The Brutal Blade kicked the air in indignation and threw herself back onto the rug, hugging her own knees with the sulky grumble of someone who had their prey snatched off the table before they could even draw the knife.
---
Dozens of kilometers away, in the shadowy epicenter of the Silver Steel Forest.
The Commander of the City Guard marched with heavy steps, his metallic scale armor clinking, flanked by twelve elite trackers at the Transcendental apex. They had already been scouring that hellish region for over an entire day.
They had finally found Elder Gu.
The Commander stopped before the roots of a steel tree, his stomach turning. On the black, damp ground rested a perfect, smooth, and bloody cube — exactly thirty centimeters across. The flesh, purified bones, and silk robes of the powerful Protector — a veteran at the apex of the 4th Transcendental Stage — had been crushed and compacted from the outside in by a terrifying gravitational force.
"Where is the Young Master?" the Commander growled, sweeping the clearing's shadows with wide eyes, his hand instinctively on the hilt of his sword.
One of the elite trackers crouched near the mud, sniffing the earth and feeling the fallen metallic leaves.
"Nothing, Commander. The blood is limited to the cube. Young Master Lǐ Wēi's spiritual trail simply vanishes here," the tracker raised his face, pale. "Not a single piece of clothing, not a fragment of bone or ash."
The Commander ground his teeth. His military instinct drew the most obvious and terrifying scenario possible.
"They took the boy," the guard leader concluded, his voice taut and heavy with fury. "They crushed the Protector at the peak of his Resonance of Laws to send a message, and kidnapped the heir without leaving a trace in the forest. They're waiting for Lord Lǐ to pay the ransom with the Celestial Lance's treasury."
Swallowing bile, the Commander raised the heavy Vitality Compass.
The priceless artifact — forged from dark bronze and spiritual glass — pulsed. The runic needle, bathed in the residual blood of the flesh cube, had captured the signature of the old protector's final karmic connection to the aggressors. The compass spun hysterically and locked in place, unshakeable, pointing directly toward the great walls of the City of the Celestial Lance.
"They didn't flee! The audacity of these bastards!" the tracker exclaimed, his voice trembling with indignation at the sight of the needle. "They're holding the Young Master captive inside our own walls!"
The Commander gripped the artifact, his face contorted in pure fury.
"The Compass has locked onto the trail. They're in the southern district. Prepare the tro—"
Crack.
The compass's thick crystal shattered in the air with a sharp sound. The bronze needle melted abruptly, evaporating into dead smoke, and the light extinguished itself with a funereal hiss.
The investigative relic had turned into a piece of rusted scrap in the man's hands in less than a second.
"Commander?! The trail is gone!" the soldier shouted, stumbling back.
The Commander stared at the smoke rising from his steel gauntlets, his face turning red with rage. He shook the useless bronze and hurled it violently against the trunk of the nearest steel tree. The piece shattered on the ground.
"Overpriced millennial junk!" the Commander cursed, spitting on the ground, his tactical mind refusing to stop. "The energy matrix of this old relic rotted out right when we needed it most! The durability gave way!"
He turned to the squadron, his eyes blazing with blind determination, completely ignoring the shattered artifact.
"It doesn't matter that the needle broke! We saw the initial direction!" the military leader ordered, drawing his own sword. "Collect the remains of Protector Gu. We march back right now! We will report the exact position to the City Lord. Lord Lǐ will seal every centimeter of those walls! We will lock down the gates, scour the southern district from end to end, and drag those kidnappers into the street before they dare lay a finger on a single hair of the Young Master!"