Radeon stood there with his head caved on one side, one eye ruined, one arm gone, and tongue cut off.
For a heartbeat the world could not decide if he was meant to be in it.
Heaven itself seemed to glance past him. His existence flickered, thinning and returning, as if he were a candle in a draft.
No one had time to gawk. Not when their own bodies began to betray them.
Small beads of crimson gathered at their pores, quiet as sweat.
There was no sting, no warning. They did not even feel it coming.
Then the first drop slid down a jaw and touched cloth.
It bloomed dark at once, a stain that spread like spilled ink.
Another followed. Then another.
The righteous cultivators froze, eyes snapping to sleeves and collars, to one another.
The calm broke hard, replaced by sharp breaths and startled curses, hands coming up too late to wipe away what was already marking them.
"Blood technique. This is a gods-damned trap!"
"Don't fucking shout! Form the group array, now!"
"Can't… breathe… Sen…"
Pain slammed into Radeon so hard his gums split as he gritted his teeth.
Blood filled his mouth, hot and salty, and for a moment his vision threatened to fold in on itself.
The ritual did not like being hurried. That brief slack was still a chance.
He forced qi into the array plate strapped to his back.
The glider answered with a dull boom, then lunged forward, skimming through the windless tunnel as if it had found its own breath.
He risked a look behind him through his divine eyes.
The sight made his stomach tighten. He saw what should not be seen.
The soil below, already soaked black with blood, began to move. Not flowing. Not sliding.
It was being pulled, drawn toward a single point as if the earth itself had grown a hungry mouth.
The pull spread fast, widening with every beat.
Radeon cut the ability off at once. No more looking. Not now.
He locked his mind on one thing only and drove the glider harder toward the tunnel's only mouth.
The lone opening set dead center in the path ahead.
No guards waited there. No sentries.
That absence felt like a warning more than mercy.
Radeon shot up through the hole in a burst, fast enough that the change of air made his ears pop.
He did not stop until stone gave way to open space.
Then he looked back.
Behind him the sky had begun to move. Not clouds drifting.
The whole vault was twisting, a slow, grinding spiral, like a lid being turned.
It churned and brewed with a cold intent, as if Heaven meant to purge something from the realm and had finally found where to aim.
'Tribulation. Why is there one here? Was it Jekyll?''
Radeon had thought it was Jekyll. The shape of it. The timing of it.
Yet what he had seen on the man did not fit a simple trap.
Jekyll was a madman, that much was plain, but he was not stupid.
More living beings beneath a tribulation only stirred the heavens harder.
It drew the thunder down thicker and meaner, as if the sky took offense at every extra heartbeat under it.
If this was being done on purpose, then someone wanted the storm angrier, not calmer.
Radeon was not tempted to learn who was enduring the tribulation. Names did not matter when the sky was in that mood.
He drove the glider hard, cutting away from the reach of the lightning and angling toward the direction he needed.
It was not the river yet. Not the place where he and Fay were meant to meet.
One last push. One last chance to take what could be taken.
His aspirations were not the sort you paid for with coins, and he had already started paying in flesh.
It did not take long before the clash reached him, not as sound at first but as a harsh shimmer through his sight.
Metal rang and screamed. Blade light cut arcs through the dark. Blood barriers rose and burst.
Teams held tight in array formation, colliding like grinding gears, each impact spraying sparks and red.
Radeon tucked himself behind a thick spruce, sap sharp in his nose, needles brushing his cheek, and watched for the moment the battle bled value.
His cloak would hold only a few more cheap incense at best. The thought of wasting it made his teeth ache.
'Better to save it. Better to risk being seen and pick my own moment.'
Behind the righteous line, the men and women who had been bound into the soul grinding array were dragged away in clumsy heaps.
A dedicated ship hovered low in the rear. Its captain, Todd, hauled dazed cultivators aboard one by one, barking orders while his eyes kept sweeping the field.
He was searching. Not for stragglers. For the old man, Sail Knife. Radeon himself.
His gaze slid farther back and caught something on the largest frigate spirit ship in the rear.
A great steel sword stood planted upright like a monument, towering a hundred feet over the ship's deck.
Around it, all gilded core, men and women moved in a tight pattern, they rode their blades in a pattern that even an outsider could read.
A plum blossom in motion. Five arcs opened in the air like petals, each one lit by a different breath of power.
Heat shimmered on one, another crackled faint with metal sharpness, another carried the damp bite of water, another the weight of earth, the last a clean cutting wood.
For a heartbeat the bloom hung there, perfect and cruel. Then the petals fell away.
The swords withdrew as if the blossom had shed its own beauty, leaving only killing intent behind.
At the center, the sword grandmaster held the great weapon by its hilt, not as a display but as an anchor.
He poured his energy into it with steady purpose, gathering the dance into a single point, ready to drive it forward and lead the charge.
The air around them felt sharper, as if it could cut a thought in half.