For three days, Ye Xia was lost. Her body lay in a trance, her mind a battlefield where she struggled to comprehend the Star-Severing Sword Intent. It was mathematics and poetry, creation and destruction, all fused into a single, lethal concept. The 90% chance of failure was a constant, screaming pressure.
What kept her anchored was not thoughts of revenge or power, but a single, simple memory: the feeling of Mo's hand in hers on New Year's Eve. The promise of an "ours." It was a value that could not be calculated by any system, a reason to survive that was worth more than any qi or currency.
On the third day, she understood. Not the full technique—that was beyond any mortal—but a sliver of it. Enough.
She emerged from her trance, her eyes blazing with a cold, stellar light. She looked at the world and saw not objects, but the lines of spiritual force that held them together. She could see the weak points.
She didn't need an army. She didn't need a plan. She had the final equation.
She contacted Mo. His face was still pale, but he was upright. "Ye Xia? What happened?"
" It's over," she said, her voice echoing with a new, terrifying authority. "I'm ending it."
She walked out onto the balcony of the Yun estate, high above the city. She raised her hand, not with a weapon, but with her index finger pointed towards the distant Kunlun Mountains.
She focused on the thread connecting the Sigma strain to its source, the vile umbilical cord she had seen with the Eye of the Void. She poured every ounce of her will, her Kai, her very life force into that single, perfected sliver of the Star-Severing Sword Intent.
She didn't say a word. She simply made a small, cutting motion with her finger.
In the hidden cavern deep beneath the Kunlun Mountains, the Necro-Soul Sect's elders were preparing a new, even more desperate ritual. Suddenly, a line of absolute nothingness appeared in the center of their altar. It didn't explode; it un-existed. The line expanded silently, severing every spiritual formation, dissolving every cultivator it touched, erasing the very memory of their existence from the fabric of reality. The Sigma strain, cut off from its source, instantly became inert across the globe.
In a single, silent gesture, the Necro-Soul Sect was wiped from existence.
Ye Xia collapsed on the balcony, utterly drained, on the verge of death. But as she felt her consciousness fading, she heard the system's voice, filled with something akin to reverence.
[Emergency Quest Complete. Reward: 10,000 Kai awarded. System Level 12 Unlocked. Technique: 'Star-Severing Sword Intent' integrated into host's soul.]
[Ding! Host has achieved a feat of cosmic significance. The System's final evolution has been triggered. Stand by...]
She had paid the price. She had won. And as darkness took her, she knew the world was safe. And she knew Mo was waiting for her.