Abbot Three Lives' face drained of color. While his disciples lunged like sacrificial lambs, he clawed at the mercury throne's armrests. Earth Evasion Art sigils glowed beneath his feet—a coward's escape route.
"Kill them! Protect the sanctum!" His roar shook dust from rafters even as his body sank into stone.
The hall erupted. Sword glares crisscrossed like vengeful stars, talismans detonating in prismatic bursts. Zhao Rui stood immobile, a calm eye in the storm.
Dun Che yawned.
His aura flexed.
An invisible tsunami flattened disciples mid-charge. Blades shattered. Pillars imploded. The temple's outer wards—forged over centuries—crackled and died like old fuses.
Through the collapsing roof, dawn light revealed Three Lives' disciples pinwheeling through open air, their screams swallowed by valley winds.
"Gone." Zhao Rui's gaze pierced bedrock. "But not far."
Half-buried beneath three meters of granite, Abbot Three Lives trembled. His Earth Evasion Art had carried him deep into Wanshou Peak's heart—yet the mountain itself now quaked.
Thrum.
A vibration. Then—
*BOOOOOOM—*
The world inverted.
Dun Che's Soulflare Beam struck like divine wrath. Millennia of compressed stone vaporized instantly. The Abbot's final shriek joined the symphony of annihilation as Wanshou Peak ceased existing—replaced by an ascending mushroom cloud of pulverized quartz and regret.
Zhao Rui hovered above the devastation, robes flapping in superheated updrafts. "Clean work."
Dun Che spat rock dust. "Tastes like chicken."
They departed as Qiyun Mountain's remaining sects swarmed—crane-riding elders and sword-soaring adepts gaping at the mile-wide crater where arrogance once stood.
"Three Lives Temple… gone?"
"Even the bedrock's melted!"
Whispers spread like wildfire: Judgment descended. Demons in human skin.
Ten li east, a bloodied hand clawed from scree.
Abbot Three Lives crawled—mercury-poisoned veins bulging black, left leg a mangled ruin. The True Monarch's Grotto gates loomed ahead, carved from a single jade monolith older than written history.
"Sanctuary…" he croaked, collapsing before stone guardians. "Warn Hua Yang…"
The sentinel statues stirred. Obsidian eyes tracked his twitching form.
Within the Grotto's heart, Hua Yang Zhenjun sipped moon-brewed tea. The shattered jade shard on his table pulsed in time with distant aftershocks.
"So," the True Monarch murmured, "the game pivots."
His fingertip ignited—a wisp of Three Lives' stolen soulfire dancing above nail. "Come then, Raksha's heir. Let us measure heaven's width."
Outside, thunder walked the land.