In the sky, war was a dance of flashes and echoes.
The woman in black clashed with Qin Chun, her long coat tattered at the edges, her blade ringing desperately against his. She fought with resolve, unrelenting but she was outmatched.
Qin Chun's sword moved like a whisper before a storm, sharp, precise, faster than thought. Every clash carved the air, and though the woman blocked or evaded many strikes, her injuries were mounting. She bled from a wound along her ribs; her shoulder was scorched from a burst of qi. Still, she held her ground.
Whenever the tide threatened to turn fully against her, she would vanish, blinking across the battlefield in a ripple of distorted air, reappearing at another vantage point. This was not her power. It was Cheng Nan's.
Qin Chun's gaze flicked across the sky. Cheng Nan was everywhere and nowhere, deflecting blades, bending distance, relocating not just the woman but squads of gray-clad soldiers mid-charge. All while being besieged by the Qin clan's sixth-step cultivators.
"Astonishing," Qin Chun murmured, genuine admiration laced with disdain. "Not the strength of ordinary sixth-step cultivators."
He pressed harder. Though the woman's blade was slower, her defense was tight, precise. She fought not with brute force, but training honed to a needlepoint. And yet—it wasn't enough. Qin Chun could feel her Dao, burning sharp and proud, but merely a sixth step. There was still a mountain above it.
He, Qin Chun, stood on that mountain.
The gap between sixth and seventh was not one of strength alone—it was one of essence. Of being. And he had already crossed that gap.
Again his sword slipped past her guard—this time slicing across her side. She flinched, began to teleport—
Qin Chunmoved.
The old technique of the Qin clan, simple but deadly.
A void-step.
He appeared behind her before the shimmer of teleportation could finish.
His sword arced.
A single, clean stroke.
Her head fell.
Time seemed to stop.
For a heartbeat, she remained upright, headless, her body suspended mid-air.
Qin Chun's breath slowed, eyes narrowing.
But then—
The severed head, mid-fall, her mouth curled up.
A mocking grin.
And as it dropped, the body spasmed. Metal creaked beneath false flesh. Gears whirred.
Qin Chun's eyes widened. "A puppet—?!"
The body exploded.
A brilliant white flash. The sky cracked. The shockwave rippled through clouds and formations alike, sending cultivators reeling.
Smoke filled the heavens. Embers drifted like falling stars.
And Qin Chun, though unscathed, was frowning.
Because the real battle… had only just begun.
In the air, where clouds should've been but never were, Cheng Nan danced on threads of broken space.
Three blades hunted him—three cultivators of the Qin family, all at the sixth step, veterans of war and blood. Their coordination was tight, refined through years of battle beneath the same banner. One struck high, another low, the third cast arrays mid-air to block his escape.
Cheng Nan did not fight back.
He couldn't.
He twisted through the gaps, his cane tapping nothing, carving paths through warped air. With every breath he shifted, shimmered, blurred. He was not faster than them. He was not stronger.
He was equipped with an immortal artifact.
Yet even then, it was not enough to overpower them.
The best he could do was endure. Dodge. Distract.
And assist.
Below him, the battlefield burned.
Gunshots cracked like thunder. Soldiers of the Republic, clad in their gray uniforms, surged forward under the protection of formation fire. Mechanical constructs held key ground, engaging the outer guards. The air stank of iron and burning talismans.
Cheng Nan's true role was not to defeat his opponents, but to keep the pressure off others. He watched through distorted lines in the sky, his mind split across a dozen flickering portals. A barrage aimed at a platoon? Redirected. A cultivator diving toward the slaves? Pulled sideways into a wall of musket fire.
It was madness.
It was working.
But every trick, every miracle, cost him more than just energy. Sweat beaded at his collar. One sleeve was torn, blackened at the edges. His breath grew shorter. The runes on his gloves began to dim.
And then he felt it.
A tremor.
His attention snapped east, toward the heart of the sky.
There, Kai Lin, the woman in black, clashed with Qin Chun.
She was losing.
Even from this distance, Cheng Nan could feel the rhythm of her disadvantage. Her swings with that oversized sword were powerful, controlled, but Qin Chun was faster. Sharper. Relentless. And yet—she kept evading the killing blows.
Because Cheng Nan was pulling her away each time—a flicker of space, a shift, a twist.
It was unsustainable.
His brows furrowed.
And then it happened.
Qin Chun's sword vanished in a streak of light. Cheng Nan saw it—too late.
A blink.
A clean slash.
Kai Lin's head fell from her shoulders.
The body cracked and burst in flame—a puppet. Mechanical. Hollow.
Cheng Nan's tensed:
"It's time."
Cheng Nan reached into his coat, gripping the artifact they had buried all their hopes in. A black stone etched with silver, humming with latent force. A spatial trigger, tied to a dead realm. A place abandoned, sealed. A dead realm where no cultivator could return.
The only way to banish a man like Qin Chun… was to let him defeat himself.
The Qin technique, their family's pride, was an art of instant movement. Near limitless, but not truly so. It drew on stored reserves, spiritual charge, and left a window—narrow, small, for those who understood it to strike.
The explosion had been the signal.
Now.
Cheng Nan moved. Space bent around him. A thread of black light unspooled from his hand, drawn from the artifact. It shimmered behind Qin Chun—silent, unseen.
The three Qin cultivators pressed harder, emboldened by what they thought was a death.
Still, Cheng Nan did not falter.
His thoughts stayed focused, methodical.
On the ground.
People fought hard. It was chaos. Corpses dropped from the sky from both sides, the dead falling like rain. Huang Ke tried to make sense of the situation, tried to find a path out of this hell—but every street was a battlefield. Fire surged through the alleys, buildings collapsed under stray attacks, and the air was thick with smoke and qi.
Huang Ke hugged walls, crouched low, crawled beneath ruined carts and broken roofs, doing everything he could not to get caught in a stray blast. But it was near impossible. Cultivators fought with large-scale techniques that split the ground. The Republic soldiers, though organized, fought with inaccurate muskets and siege artifacts. Every step was a gamble.
It was bad.
Really bad.
Oliver was still locked in combat with the Qin cultivator who had tried to break the flame wall. Huang Ke couldn't help—he could only pray.
Then came the explosion.
It shook the sky like a gong from the heavens. A loud shockwave roared overhead. Something fell.
Huang Ke reached up on instinct and caught it.
A head.
Metallic. Heavy. Still faintly glowing.
It was mechanical. It wasn't human. But it looked human enough in that instant to freeze his blood.
He stared at it.
Then the sky darkened.
Not like clouds. Not like weather.
It turned black.
All light fled. The air warped. Something—someone—was unleashing a power far beyond anything Huang Ke could comprehend.
A streak of starlight tore through the darkness like a lance.
It was Cheng Nan.
A single attack, aimed directly at Qin Chun.
And somehow—
Somehow—
Huang Ke caught the stray.
Pain lanced through him. Light flooded his vision—too much of it. All color, all sound, every sense turned inside out.
His mind screamed.
Nausea surged, and then the world twisted—
—And he was gone.