Chi Xiaodie was the next one he pointed out.
Ling Feng paused, Chaos Sense still flowing through Dao Land like a second, invisible set of eyes, then tilted his head toward a distant ridge where the frozen sea had buckled up into jagged hills.
"Xiaodie."
The Lion's Roar princess cracked one eye open from her meditative stance, annoyance and eagerness mixing in her gaze.
"What now?" she asked. "If you tell me to go sit on a rock and contemplate clouds, I refuse."
He laughed.
"Relax," he said. "I wouldn't waste you on clouds. See that ridge over there? Under it is something that likes loud, stubborn people."
Her eyebrow twitched. "…Loud and stubborn?"
"Mm. A buried battlefield of sound dao. War drums, lion roars, chanting armies… all melted together and pressed into the bones of the land. The old ghosts here never stopped shouting. Dao Land didn't like the noise, so it stuffed the echo underground."
He lifted a hand, sketching a lazy line in the air.
Beneath the surface, a path lit up in his perception—layers of frozen dao sliding aside, revealing a narrow spiral leading down into a hollow.
"Follow that," he said. "At the bottom, there's a 'drum' that isn't really a drum. Sit on it. Tell it your roar is better."
Chi Xiaodie's lips curled.
"So you finally found a place that understands me," she said dryly.
He spread his hands. "Took me long enough, right?"
She snorted, but the light in her eyes sharpened. She cupped her fists toward him.
"I'll come back with another Fate Palace," she said. "Then I'll make you listen to my roar properly."
"I'm looking forward to it," he replied.
She turned and leapt away, following the invisible spiral he'd pointed out. Soon her figure vanished among the ridges.
…
Bai Jianzhen stood a little apart from the others, sword on her back, white robes unmoved by the strange winds of Dao Land.
She didn't ask.
She just waited.
Ling Feng liked that about her.
"Jianzhen," he called.
Her eyes lifted, clear and calm as a polished blade.
He pointed toward a stretch of the frozen sea that looked… wrong.
There, the "ice" wasn't smooth. Massive chunks of black-grey ore jutted out of the ground, each one split, pitted, or pierced through as if something had once tried to escape from within. Faint sword-hums leaked from the cracks—no melody, just fragments of killing intent, clashing against one another in a buried chorus.
"That," Ling Feng said, "is your place."
Her fingers brushed the hilt at her shoulder. "A sword grave?"
"A sword mine," he corrected, smiling. "Ores that remember every blade forged from their veins. Tempering scars, slaughter, betrayal… all compressed into raw material. If you sit in the middle and listen long enough, they'll admit you're the sharpest thing to ever stand here."
He glanced sideways at her.
"Don't force them," he added. "You don't need their history. Just let them prove yours."
Bai Jianzhen bowed once, deeply.
"Understood."
She didn't waste words.
She walked toward the ore field, her steps light, but every movement leaving a faint sword mark on the frozen sea. As she drew near, the scattered hums changed—discordant noise starting to bend, to align, as if countless buried swords were all turning their attention toward this one woman.
In the distance, she stepped between the ore pillars and sat down, sword across her knees. Sword-light flickered around her like breathing.
Ling Feng watched for a moment, then turned away.
He didn't check.
He didn't need to.
…
After that, he went alone.
The women sank into their own trials, each wrapped in unique dao light—ghost snow, solar sunfire, flowing rivers, storm-clouds, jade chimes, blood springs, severing sword marks. They scattered through Dao Land's strange terrain like a constellation spreading across a night sky.
Ling Feng walked.
He didn't rush.
He strolled.
Dao Land's "ground" was an ocean frozen mid-wave; every step fell on glassy crests that still carried faint traces of collapsing grand dao. Overhead, incomplete laws drifted by—shards of fate, smashed cause-and-effect, broken time lines—flickering like half-remembered dreams.
Chaos Sense flowed out of him in silence.
He didn't probe aggressively. He just let it breathe.
Ruins passed beneath his bare perception—buried palaces, broken dao fields, shriveled medicine gardens that had once raised emperor medicines. Remnants of obsessions that had refused to leave even after their owners had turned to dust.
"Dao Land, huh…" he murmured.
In his ears, the world was quiet.
Inside his chest, Chaos Force hummed softly, comfortable. This kind of place, where failed paths and incomplete laws gathered, where geniuses had died trying to scratch new roads across the sky… it suited him.
He smiled to himself.
"If I had come here first," he said lazily, "I would've grew even faster."
Far away, on another layer of Dao Land, something else was moving.
...
In a pocket of twisted space where the frozen sea curved into a bowl and the broken dao overhead tangled together like a net, a lotus slowly rotated in midair.
It wasn't the lotus of the living.
Its petals were made of pallid ghost-light, edges rimmed with cold, dim halos. Buddhist chants whispered from it in a low, droning murmur—but if one listened closely, the syllables were wrong, ripped, and re-stitched, as if monks and ghosts had argued over each line and never agreed.
On that lotus sat a bald youth in monk robes.
His eyes were half-closed. Ordainment markings crawled from his brow down the side of his neck like living sutras. Behind his head, ghostly halos rose and fell, each one bearing images of skulls prostrating before Buddhas, of chanting temples built above mass graves.
Ghost Monk.
Beside him, the air trembled.
A golden skeleton stood with arms folded, flames burning calmly in its eye sockets—Golden Child. Not far away, a youth wrapped in divine flames hovered, rings of light revolving behind his back—Divine Spark Prince, face still faintly pale from past humiliation. Next to him stood a young man surrounded by phantom clans—Hundred Clans Child—gods, beasts, ghosts, and humans murmuring silently in a ring around him.
Further off, crescent moon light arced around a tall figure in sacred armor—Titanic Crescent Saint Child—while a thin, pale youth in dark robes lounged lazily, insect shadows crawling over his sleeves: Ghost Insect Evil Child.
Their auras pressed against the bowl of the pocket realm, warping Dao Land's already twisted laws.
"It seems," Ghost Monk said gently, "that our little friend is going deeper."
His ghost-lotus rotated once.
Images rose above the petals—Ling Feng walking alone, women scattered across Dao Land in various trials, threads of dao connecting them all.
"Separated," Ghost Monk went on, voice placid. "His wives sink into enlightenment. His main body wanders. Even if he senses something, it will be troublesome to move all of them at once."
Divine Spark Prince's eyes burned.
"Then it is now," he snapped. "We should have done this at Nightsea. Today, I'll make that human kneel and beg."
Ghost Insect Evil Child chuckled softly, the sound like bugs gnawing on bone.
"No," he said. "Today, we catch his weakness. He is surrounded by women. Humans are the same everywhere—kill their friends, they grow mad. Threaten their women, they lose their dao heart."
He flicked his sleeve.
Ghost insects poured out—transparent larvae woven from dao lines, each one carrying a stolen aura from Necropolis: scents of Snow-Shadow cloaks, fragments of elder runes, a dried speck of blood from Elder Zhi.
"The Snow-Shadow chief," Ghost Insect Evil Child continued, eyes narrowing with cruel interest. "Qiurong Wanxue. Ghost Monk, you wanted to play with her, didn't you? To make the chief of a tribe chant zen scriptures while kneeling?"
Ghost Monk's smile didn't change.
The ghost lotus turned.
"In Buddhism, there is compassion for all beings," he said serenely. "But those who obstruct the path… must be ferried away."
He lowered his hands.
Ghost lotus petals unfolded.
Zen Law and ghost dao braided together, forming a complex pattern in the air. The insects dove into that pattern, devouring and regurgitating aura traces, reshaping them. Elder Zhi's handwriting, stolen at Necropolis, reappeared—every stroke of the brush, every tiny tremor faithfully reproduced.
Insects crawled through that writing, injecting illusions.
Words shifted.
Help. Danger. Surrounded. Only the chief can be contacted.
The runes twisted once more, aligning with Snow-Shadow's ancestral talisman language. To any Snow-Shadow ghost, this would smell like home, look like home, feel like home.
Golden Child watched quietly, golden flames flickering.
Titanic Crescent Saint Child's expression was calm, but his fingers tightened ever so slightly on his crescent seal.
"Is this necessary?" he asked. "So many of us to lure one woman?"
Ghost Monk's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"Not for her," he answered. "For him."
He lifted his head, gazing through the layers of Dao Land at some distant point where Ling Feng walked alone.
"This human is not Di Zuo, nor Tian Lunhui, nor any competitor we have seen before," Ghost Monk murmured. If he continues to walk, the Sacred Nether World's balance will shatter faster than we like."
Hundred Clans Child's jaw clenched.
"Our ancestors will not tolerate a human walking on their heads," he said coldly. "If he refuses to bend, he must be broken. Better now than when he holds the Heaven's Will."
Divine Spark Prince snorted.
"He dares to say my sister and Di Zuo are 'minor ants'. He dares to call me dog—" He stopped, teeth grinding. "Today, I will burn his woman's soul in front of him."
Ghost Insect Evil Child smiled, eyes thin.
"Then let us invite our guest," Ghost Monk said softly.
The ghost lotus closed its petals around the talisman.
When it opened again, a slim, snow-bright charm floated above it—marked with Snow-Shadow runes, saturated with Elder Zhi's aura, humming with a faint thread of Ghost Zen Law and Insect King illusion.
Ghost Monk flicked a finger.
The talisman vanished.
It began to fly.
…
Far away, beneath the watchful gaze of an incomplete ghost-wood Fate Palace rising behind her Niwan, Qiurong Wanxue drew a slow, steady breath.
Her trial at the Ghost Ancestral stump had ended.
The world of white roots retreated, folding back into the stump's hollow. Dao Land's basin rushed back in—frozen sea, cracked basin, whispering shadows.
Behind her, the new Fate Palace hovered in her inner void—a palace of ghost-wood and snow, doors carved from solidified soul-light. Within, her tribe's ancestral shadow rested, no longer just a burden from the past, but a seat she could sit upon as chief.
Snow-Shadow's light gently flickered behind her shoulders.
Wanxue opened her eyes.
A streak of snow-light shot toward her from the sky.
She tensed, hand rising.
The streak stopped before her—a talisman shaped like a slender snow-feather. Snow-Shadow runes flowed over its surface, Elder Zhi's handwriting unmistakable. A faint, familiar aura spilled out, that of the elder who had once stood in front of her when Divine Spark's people pressed too far.
Her heart jolted.
The talisman unfolded.
"Chief," Elder Zhi's voice gasped, broken by static. "Ambush… Crossing—no, Dao Land… Divine Spark… Ghost insects… We are barely holding them off…Chief, we only had enough time to send this to you…"
The voice cut in and out, as if passing through a storm.
"We will hold… as long as… can. Please… come…"
The message ended with a flash of distorted light.
The talisman pointed in one direction.
Wanxue's fingers tightened.
Snow-Shadow's new Fate Palace pulsed behind her, ghost roots settling around her heart. Ling Feng's warmth still lingered in her bones, in the Chaos-tinged snow that had helped her push open that palace.
Her gaze drifted across Dao Land.
She could sense the others from faint resonances—Lan Yunzhu submerged in river illusions, Xu Pei walking amidst storm-grass, Baojiao roaring in a blood pit, Shangyuan in a jade cavern, Yuxia before a severing cliff, Su Yonghuang in a blazing armor field, Chi Xiaodie and Bai Jianzhen at their trials. Each one had found a place perfectly matched to them.
Time was of the essence, and she didn't have a way to contact Ling Feng right now.
Her throat tightened.
Snow-Shadow's ghosts, her people, her elders…
"I…"
Wanxue closed her eyes for a breath.
Then she opened them, clear and firm.
She pressed the talisman to her heart.
"Snow-Shadow never abandon its own," she whispered.
She turned, ghost light flaring behind her, and followed the talisman's pull.
...
The "Dao Field" awaited her at the edge of Dao Land's structure.
From the outside, it looked like a crack in reality—a place where frozen waves bent inward, forming a perfect ring. Within that ring, the air was still, the incomplete dao in the sky woven together more tightly than anywhere else, like a plateau of stabilized law amidst chaos.
Wanxue stepped through.
The moment she crossed the boundary, the world shifted.
The frozen sea fell away, replaced by a circular field paved with age-worn slabs. Dao lines crawled across those stones, forming intersecting diagrams that had once recorded cultivation paths. Broken stone pillars ringed the field, some toppled, some standing, each bearing the faint shadow of some forgotten powerhouse's Dao.
In the center of the Dao Field, a lotus floated.
Ghostly.
Silent.
On it sat Ghost Monk.
Around him, the others waited.
Golden Child—golden skeleton wreathed in dim flames, bone joints shining like tempered divine metal.
Hundred Clans Child—surrounded by phantom clans bowing and roaring, god-phantoms pressing against the invisible sky.
Titanic Crescent Saint Child—wrapped in crescent moon halos, each arc heavy with the weight of an Immortal Emperor's lineage.
Divine Spark Prince—divine rings whirling, divine flames licking his robes, eyes burning with vengeful hate.
Ghost Insect Evil Child—with his faint smile and crawling insect shadows, sleeves full of hidden venom.
Qiurong Wanxue stopped.
Her snow-white brows drew together for an instant.
Then her expression smoothed.
She stood straight, Snow-Shadow's dignity wrapped around her thin frame.
Ghost Monk's hands came together.
"Amitabha," he intoned, voice soft and polite, his eyes like twin pits in which ghost fires burned. "Saintess Wanxue, you are truly loyal. To your tribe, to your ghosts. Good. That loyalty can serve one more purpose… before you die."
Wanxue's fingers tightened where they hid inside her sleeves.
"The Snow-Shadow elders?" she asked, voice calm.
"Safe," Ghost Monk said, smiling. "For now. We only used a small trace of their aura. Buddha does not kill lightly."
Divine Spark Prince snorted.
"Why bother with so many words?" he snapped. "Wanxue, hand over the human's treasures and kneel. Maybe then I will consider leaving your tribe half a road of life."
Ghost Insect Evil Child licked his lips.
"The human isn't here," he murmured. "But his women are. Once we break you, we'll go one by one… I'm curious how long it will take him to collapse when he returns and finds nothing but ashes."
The divine flames behind Divine Spark Prince flared higher.
He stepped forward, unable to hold himself back any longer.
"So much nonsense," he spat. "First we capture her. When that human comes, we'll see if he laughs then."
Divine rings burned into blinding halos.
He thrust his hand forward.
Divine flames condensed into chains—luminous shackles bearing godly runes, lashing toward Wanxue's body and soul at once, trying to bind her in one stroke.
Wanxue moved.
Ghost snow exploded from around her feet, spiraling up into a vortex. Her newly opened Fate Palace roared to life—behind her, in the realm of her inner world, a ghost-wood palace of snow rose, roots digging into the river between life and death.
The ghost chains struck ghost roots.
Divine flames met ghost snow.
A boom shook the Dao Field.
Divine Spark Prince's eyes narrowed.
For the first time since stepping forward, he met resistance that didn't immediately crumble.
Wanxue slid one foot back, the impact sending cold ripples down her spine, but her knees did not bend.
Her hands danced through ghost seals—ancient Snow-Shadow mudras updated through Ling Feng's foreign dao. Frost blossomed along the divine chains, turning bright godfire into frozen sculptures that hissed and cracked.
For a moment, she held him.
Divine flame and ghost snow crashed together, neither willing to give way.
Divine Spark Prince's face twisted.
"You think because you clung to that human's leg, you can stand equal to me?!" he roared.
Divine halos erupted behind him, forming rings upon rings—gods and buddhas, phoenixes and war chariots, all burning, all roaring. The divine chains multiplied, splitting into a net that descended from the sky to crush everything at once.
Ghost Insect Evil Child moved.
Insects streamed from his sleeves, tiny and translucent, each carrying a sliver of law. They dove into Wanxue's ghost snow, attempting to eat her dao from the inside, to turn her new Fate Palace into a nest.
Hundred Clans Child lifted his hand.
Clans-phantoms rushed forward, each offering its own way of killing—mountain beasts' brute force, ghost tribe curses, god-race beams of light.
Titanic Crescent Saint Child raised his crescent seal.
A half-moon appeared in the sky, its light folding the Dao Field's space. Every path Wanxue might take to retreat fell under that curved blade.
Ghost Monk's ghost lotus opened wider.
Zen chants surged.
A lotus shadow appeared beneath Wanxue's feet, petals forming from ghost light, trying to close over her legs, to drag her soul down.
Wanxue's breath caught.
Her ghost snow raged, layers of frost racing outward. The ghost tree behind her spread its branches, roots groping through the interstice between life and death, trying to anchor her Fate Palace inside Dao Land's core.
For a heartbeat, she still held on.
Ghost snow swallowed divine fire.
Ghost roots tangled crescent light.
Ghost chants clashed with Ghost Zen illusions.
Then the scale slipped.
Her shoulders sagged under the weight.
Bone-deep cold, lordly divine pressure, insect venom, clan techniques, crescent moon's decline—all bore down at once.
"Ling…" someone whispered in the back of her heart.
She didn't have time to finish the name.
She felt something else instead.
A hand.
Invisible, familiar, sliding into the weave of laws around her like a key sliding into a lock.
…
From far away, Ling Feng already sensed it. He wonders if those idiots would try something, and it seems he was right. He was never worried about Quriong Wanxue or any of his women getting actually hurt. He more so wanted to see how would they would deal with a difficult situation.
The moment Wanxue had stepped into the Dao Field, Chaos Sense had marked her.
The moment Ghost Zen Law and Insect King illusions wrapped around her aura, that mark had shuddered violently. The time for testing was over.
Ling Feng's eyes went cold.
The relaxed smile vanished.
Dao Land's fractured sky reflected briefly in his irises—then shattered as Chaos Force surged.
"Chaos Control."
The words were soft.
The world listened.
Time around Wanxue flowed into molasses.
Divine Spark Prince's roaring face stretched, each sneer lengthening into a grotesque mask. Divine chains slowed to a crawl, each flicker of godfire a separate painting. Insects hung in the air like specks of dust. The ghost lotus's petals closed grain by grain.
Space folded.
Ling Feng stepped once.
Dao lines beneath his feet warped, the frozen sea bowing beneath the weight of a foreign dao. He reached out—not with hands, but with Chaos, grabbing the fragment of world that held Wanxue.
The Dao Field buckled.
To those outside Chaos Control, everything happened in one impossible blink.
Wanxue's form flickered.
She tore free of ghost lotus shadow, divine chains passing through a dissolving afterimage. Snow scattered where her body had been an instant before.
Then she was gone.