The air screamed with tension. Dust, blood, and raw Qi filled the ravine like an open wound in the world.
Yi Meixue had been ambushed before she could destroy the keystone. A hidden cultivator cloaked in stealth talismans dropped from the crags above, nearly running her through. She barely parried in time, but now the alarm had been raised.
The battlefield erupted.
Foreign cultivators surged into new positions, and the defensive perimeter closed in—trapping Huang in the center.
The masked leader of the enemy laughed.
> "Bold of you to separate from your allies. Now die with your arrogance."
Huang didn't reply. He raised his sword—but the air around him was shifting.
Two peak Silver Seal cultivators charged from opposite sides. Behind them came a third—clearly mid-Silver—whose spirit aura twisted like coiled fire.
Huang's blade danced, a flurry of movements built from a dozen styles—refined, relentless. But their pressure mounted.
One strike nicked his side. Another shattered the rock beneath his feet, staggering his stance.
> "You're skilled, boy," one of them sneered, "but Bronze Seal is still Bronze Seal!"
Huang stood firm, blood slipping down his cheek, and murmured aloud,
> "Fei. I need it. I need more."
Jiang Fei's voice echoed inside the sword.
> "You're not ready for the Third Layer... but the Second? Maybe."
Huang closed his eyes.
The battlefield faded—replaced by the feel of a sword in a world without sound. Not steel, not flame, but meaning.
> "Sword Intent—Layer Two: Rending Reality."
When he opened his eyes, a violet storm burst from his form.
The cultivators flinched as the ground beneath Huang cracked in a perfect circle, as if the world itself feared his presence. His sword glowed deeper than purple now—dark like the sky before a divine storm.
One of the Silver Seal attackers stepped forward—then vanished.
No blood. No scream. Just… gone.
The other two struck, but Huang was no longer where they swung.
His voice rang out across the battlefield.
> "You speak of seals and stages. I speak of death and decisions."
He reappeared behind them both—his sword sheathed.
> "Ruling Blade: Silent Vein."
Their bodies collapsed in unison, each sliced through the meridians. Not dead. Not yet. But crippled.
The battlefield paused.
Even the beasts stopped howling.
And then the mountain answered.
From the depth of Scorpions Pass came a pulse—a thunderous heartbeat not of a man, but of a beast long hidden. The Qi of ancient blood stirred.
> "What did you just do?" the masked leader gasped.
Fei whispered inside the sword,
> "You tapped the Second Layer in full combat. You shook the terrain's foundation."
And the terrain responded.
The beasts awoke.
The ground split as a colossus rose from a hidden burrow—its back a spined fortress, its limbs dragging centuries of dust. A Thousand-Year Landshifter Beast—long thought extinct—howled to the sky.
From the cliffs came others: fanged drakes, cloud-serpents, and winged horrors that had slumbered in silence for eras.
The entire pass began to churn with movement. Chaos surged.
> "Huang!" Lan Qin called from the other side, two disciples slung over his shoulders.
> "We freed them! What now!?"
Huang stood amidst dust and corpses, his aura still seething. He gripped the sword tighter.
> "We run. Everyone. Now!"
Yi Meixue appeared near the shattered keystone, bruised but standing.
> "They're trying to flee too!"
Bao Yun shouted, "Let them! The beasts will kill whoever stays!"
Huang turned to face the masked leader, who looked both terrified and awed.
> "Tell your sect… The Empire is not weak."
Then Huang's blade slashed the air—not to attack, but to draw a sigil. Fei pulsed within.
> "A spatial slash! You've unlocked more than just intent..."
A tear in space cracked open, leading back toward the outer canyon.
> "GO!" Huang ordered.
His students and the rescued disciples rushed through the tear—Bao Yun barely holding it open from the other side.
Huang was last.
As he stepped through, he turned back once—and saw a black-feathered beast descending from the clouds, its wings wider than a village square.
> "You'd better keep sleeping," he muttered, stepping through the rift as it collapsed behind him.
They survived. But now the whole empire would feel the echoes of what was unleashed.
The sun was beginning to set behind the jagged cliffs of Scorpion's Pass, casting long orange rays across the bloodied earth. The group moved quickly, pushing past the outer edges of the ravine until they came upon a half-buried shack—its wood old, scarred, but held together by force of will and spirit-stained nails.
No beasts followed. For now.
Lan Qin kicked the door open.
> "Abandoned, but standing. Good enough."
Inside, Yi Meixue swept away cobwebs while Bao Yun helped lay the rescued disciples down gently, their faces pale, bodies trembling. Core damage. Qi depletion. Soul erosion. Any one of those could leave a cultivator crippled—forever.
Huang said nothing. He pulled out a scroll bound in black silk—taken from the Immortal Tomb. Without a word, he drew a circle on the floor, his fingers glowing with steady light as he carved radiant, flowing runes into the dirt.
As the formation took shape, the entire shack pulsed.
The cultivators paused.
Lan Qin stepped back instinctively. "This... this doesn't feel like Qi."
Yi Meixue's brows furrowed.
> "It's cleaner. Purer."
Huang spoke, finally.
> "This is not a sect formation. It's an Immortal-Grade Restorative Array. It doesn't just draw Qi—it draws Divine Essence, refined by the world itself, left behind by higher beings for mortals who have suffered unjustly."
> "From the tomb?" Bao Yun asked, stunned.
Huang gave a single nod. "Meant to stabilize mortals during the Immortal Ascension process. For cultivators like us... its effects are beyond miraculous."
He pressed his hand to the final sigil. The array pulsed once—then began to hum, low and rhythmic like a heartbeat. Radiant light spread slowly across the floor, engulfing the wounded. Their breathing calmed instantly. Trembling stopped. Even the faded color in their lips began to return.
The entire room smelled suddenly of blooming flowers after rain.
Yi Meixue whispered, "Their soul cores... they're repairing."
Lan Qin, eyes wide, knelt beside one of the girls they rescued.
> "She was barely clinging to her cultivation. But now—it's like she never fought at all..."
> "No ordinary healing," Huang murmured. "Divine Essence soothes the mind, replenishes spirit energy, and helps realign fractured cultivation paths. It even softens soul trauma."
Bao Yun swallowed. "If our enemies knew we had this..."
> "They won't," Huang said, standing slowly. "This technique is not from this world. It belongs to the dead, and to me."
When the worst of the injured were stabilized and placed in peaceful sleep, the group gathered near the firepit. Huang set a privacy ward and placed a dim Soulfire Lamp in the center.
Yi Meixue pulled out a scroll and unrolled it across the floor.
> "Now that we've bought time, we need to plan. This is the last confirmed map of Scorpion's Pass Inner Layer."
She pointed to a jagged, mist-covered section.
> "The Vermilion Chasm—this is where the Beast Crown was last traced before it vanished a century ago."
Lan Qin's tone turned grim.
> "Rumor says a powerful Beast King died there and left the Crown as its legacy. Only someone who survives the beasts' judgment can claim it."
> "And whoever controls it can command a thousand spirit beasts," Yi Meixue added. "Enough to shift an entire war... or forge a new empire."
Bao Yun sighed. "Great. So it's both priceless and deadly."
> "And we're not alone," Huang said, lifting his Spirit Jade Talisman.
He infused it with his soul signature and whispered a coded phrase to Elder Deng. The talisman glowed brightly—then vanished into a streak of gold, racing toward the heavens.
> "I told the Sect the mission is a success... but also that multiple thousand-year-old beasts have awakened. Not just one. Scorpion's Pass is no longer stable ground."
Lan Qin leaned back against the wall. "If that many stirred... then something deeper is going on."
> "Agreed," Huang said. "Which is why we find the Crown first. Not to use it. But to keep it from those who would."
They fell into thoughtful silence.
From far in the distance, deep in the ravine's forgotten places, an earth-shaking roar echoed through the stone.
> "Let's rest tonight," Huang said, his voice low. "Tomorrow, we enter the Chasm."
Outside, the wind carried whispers through the stone.
And deep beneath the ground, something ancient began to stir.