On Great Zen Temple's platform, Yuan Kong's scalp tingled so violently it felt as if his skin were trying to crawl off his skull.
His Buddha light flickered. Prayer beads trembled between his fingers.
So this is the current Divine Phoenix Island…
He forced air into his lungs, each breath feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Around him, the other abbots had gone pale under their saffron robes. Their eyes were wide, complex emotions surging within—shock, wariness, a faint, bitter relief that they hadn't made the mistake of stepping forward earlier.
Across the other platforms, no one dared to breathe too loudly.
Deep Earth Sect's hall masters, with their hard, earth-brown auras, stared with stiff faces, feeling cracks appear in their confidence.
Storm Valley's elders, who had always prided themselves on their tempestuous power, suddenly felt like small gusts before a divine hurricane.
Arctic Ice Palace's ice-robed figures looked even whiter than usual, their breath frosting in front of their faces as they realized their palace's defensive formations would not stop a Vermillion Bird like that.
Golden Bell Mountain's old bell master clutched his staff tighter.
Verdant Wood Sect's patriarch swallowed.
Sunfire Sect's burning true essence dimmed, like torches caught in the glare of a star.
Seven Profound Valley's elders stood like carved statues.
"This…" one of them whispered hoarsely, voice barely audible even to those at his side, "…this is still… a martial meeting?"
Thundercrest Sect—
Lei Jingtian's face had lost all color.
His lightning true essence, so fierce and domineering a short while ago, now felt thin and scratchy in his own senses. Before, he had feared Ren's strange Heaven and Ling Sen's terrifying spear.
Now, watching Mu Yuhuang erase a Life Destruction master with a raise of her hand, he felt something simpler:
Despair.
Even if we throw everything at them… we can't win.
His mind ran through alliances, backing, the South Sea Demon Region's promises.
South Sea's emissary had just been burned like trash.
What backing could he count on now?
Before that despair could settle into the bones of every watching sect, Ren laughed.
Not loudly.
Just a soft, amused sound that somehow threaded through the crushed atmosphere and reached everyone's ears.
He turned his head, gaze sliding lazily toward Great Zen Temple's platform.
His eyes met Yuan Kong's.
The abbot's heart lurched.
Ren smiled.
"You," he said mildly, voice light, as if they were exchanging pleasantries over tea, "if you want to jump out and prove we're demon trash too, I don't mind."
The words were calm.
They fell like blades.
A few Great Zen Temple disciples stiffened, faces flushing with anger.
But Yuan Kong's lips did not move.
None of them spoke.
Ren's gaze drifted along the other platforms.
Deep Earth Sect. Storm Valley. Arctic Ice Palace. Golden Bell Mountain. Verdant Wood Sect. Sunfire Sect.
Seven Profound Valley.
Everywhere his eyes passed, people dropped their gazes instinctively, backs straightening, breaths becoming careful.
No one wanted to be the next one he pointed at.
On Thundercrest's side, Lei Jingtian's jaw clenched until his teeth ached.
He didn't say a word.
Ren's smile curled a little higher.
Then he turned toward the Divine Phoenix side.
His gaze met Mu Fengxian's.
The oldest phoenix ancestor—young again, body reforged, old arrogance returned with interest—snorted softly through her nose, eyes still fixed on the drifting ash where Yin-Yang's people had been.
"You…" she said, lips quirking, "want to go further than this, don't you?"
Ren's shoulders lifted in the faintest shrug.
"Divine Phoenix Island is going to dominate this region sooner or later," he answered, tone conversational. "Might as well be sooner, right?"
His eyes slid back toward the empty Yin-Yang platform, then higher, as if looking through mountains and clouds to something far away.
"And since that so-called 'number one sect' showed such enthusiasm for today's events…" His smile sharpened. "It would be rude not to leave them a present."
Mu Fengxian's phoenix eyes narrowed in amusement. Still, she hesitated for a breath.
"From here?" she asked quietly. "You mean to strike their main headquarters from this mountain?"
Her tone wasn't doubt in his ability so much as an old sovereign instinctively gauging the scale of what he was suggesting.
Ren's gaze returned to her.
He stepped a little closer, his presence warm, familiar. In front of the other sects, in front of the world, his smile for her softened almost imperceptibly.
"Don't worry about how," he said. "Just focus on showing them what Divine Phoenix Island's highest ancestor looks like when she's serious."
Mu Fengxian's lips curved.
Her Vermillion Bird laughter—rich, low, unrestrained—spilled into the air.
"Very well," she said. "I'll burn them for you."
Ren lifted his hand.
The already-strained heaven and earth seemed to shiver again.
Above the mountain, the sky darkened—not with storm clouds, but with patterns. Dao lines, demonic smears, formation runes, all the marks of the earlier battles, flickered and then bent as if some invisible hand had grasped the world's canvas and twisted.
Light warped.
For a moment, everyone saw their own reflections in the air—platforms, disciples, flames, ash—all stretched and bent.
Then the heavens split.
A vast projection unfolded overhead, taking up the entire dome of sky.
On one half: the mountain itself.
Every platform. Every sect. Mu Yuhuang's floating figure, Mu Fengxian's youthful body wreathed in phoenix fire, Ren standing with hands loosely tucked into his sleeves, smile faint and relaxed.
On the other half: a hazy, distant land.
The image swam for a breath, blurred by distance.
Then it clarified.
Mountain ranges. Rivers. Cities clinging to cliff faces like clusters of stone lanterns. Above them all, floating islands and palaces rotating slowly around a central axis of light.
Profound Province.
At its heart, bathed in black-and-white brilliance, stood a vast palace complex.
Twin yin-yang fishes swam endlessly around it, their bodies formed of true essence light. Scarlet Flame burned in the white fish's eye. Dual cultivation towers, shaped like intertwining bodies, rose skyward. Arrays latticed the air, countless seals of dual extremes covering every stone.
Yin-Yang Profound Palace's main headquarters.
Gasps rippled across the mountain.
Great Zen Temple's monks went rigid.
On Yin-Yang's now-empty platform, the few scattered attendants who had remained felt their souls shrivel.
Every sect in South Horizon felt their hearts sink as one thought crashed through them:
He's showing us this.
In real time.
"Impossible…" someone from Storm Valley whispered, throat dry. "How can he project such distance…"
Even miles away, within the Great Zen Temple, Baimei's face tightened. Whitebrow's brows drew down, his namesake brows trembling faintly. Konghe's gaze flickered, a rare ripple of unease disturbing his Buddha-heart.
If Ren Ming can reach across provinces like this…
Ren then his attention returned to Mu Fengxian.
His left hand remained raised toward the sky, maintaining the projection. His soul force reached into center of his eyebrows.
The Immortal Soul Bone stirred.
He closed his eyes for an instant.
On the projected half of the sky showing Profound Province, the image zoomed in.
Past outer mountains.
Past guardian arrays.
Past the palace walls.
Into the inner courts, where yin-yang true essence circulated in carefully controlled loops.
Ren's Immortal Bone drank it in.
Temperature. Pressure. The taste of Yin-Yang Profound Palace's Sect Protecting Array. The rhythm of their disciples' cultivation. The signature pulse of their foundations. Every "sensation" their sect gave off was quietly copied, layered, folded, refined.
Then Ren turned his hand.
The gathered sensations, stripped of unnecessary detail and reduced to a pure, burning mark, flowed along his meridians like a brand.
He reached out without touching, fingers hovering a whisper's breadth from Mu Fengxian's forehead.
A thin thread of light leaped between them.
Mu Fengxian's eyes fluttered closed.
Her spiritual sea rippled.
The mark sank in like a drop of dye into water, sending ripples through her consciousness. In an instant, she could feel it: the oppressive duality of Yin-Yang Profound Palace, the spin of their sect-protecting formations, the stench of Scarlet Flame entwined with lustful dual cultivation methods, the very "flavor" of the Profound Province's heaven and earth around them.
"Profound Province…" she murmured. "Yin-Yang Profound Palace."
Her Vermillion Bird flames stirred.
They sensed an enemy a million miles away as if it were standing right in front of her.
Mu Fengxian opened her eyes.
They burned.
She took a step forward, out into the air beside Mu Yuhuang—another phoenix sovereign walking above the mountain.
Behind her, Vermillion Bird fire roared.
Her phantom swelled.
Larger.
Brighter.
Every feather stretched, each one the length of a ship, then a mountain. As the Vermillion Bird climbed higher in the projection sky, its wings spread until they seemed to brush against the very dome of heaven, crimson light flooding the world.
But this was not simple fire.
Every feather, from its base to its tip, was a lotus petal.
Dark petals, edges lined in dim rainbow light.
Grandmist seeped from each one, heavy and deep, distorting space. Fire, Wind, and Thunder Laws coiled along the feathers, each one refined to an extreme that, to the South Horizon's eyes, felt almost divine—a level of perfection they associated only with legends from the Divine Realm.
Whispers died before they could be born.
At that moment, Paths moved.
Ren's Heaven stirred.
The world didn't see the internal details. They only felt space twist, reality's "distance" bending.
Somewhere high above the Sky Fortune Kingdom, invisible roads that normally lay dormant in void—Paths connecting far-flung lands, fissures between provinces, forgotten ancient routes—shivered and shifted.
For a heartbeat, the Path between South Horizon and Profound Province overlaid.
Two distant heavens leaned toward each other.
"Go," Ren said softly.
Mu Fengxian's lips curved.
She raised her hand and thrust it toward the projected Profound Province.
The Vermillion Bird screamed.
Its wings snapped once.
It moved.
To most eyes, it vanished.
In truth, it shot along the overlaid Path, a streak of lotus-edged flame at a speed that made "light" feel sluggish. The phantom left a long, rainbow-tailed scar in the projection sky, then pierced right into the image of the distant Yin-Yang Profound Palace.
The two halves of the sky became one.
...
Inside Yin-Yang Profound Palace, the day had already turned stormy.
In the great main hall, yin-yang pillars rose like black-and-white dragons, coiling up to a domed ceiling painted with scenes of dual cultivation—men and women entwined, yin and yang merging, the Scarlet Flame of desire burning between them.
Today, that flame felt cold.
Elders and core disciples knelt or stood in rows, faces pale.
At the center of the hall stood two figures.
A man in black-and-white robes with a sharp, aquiline face twisted by rage.
A woman in matching robes, hair pinned in an elegant coil, eyes like venomous snakes.
Xing Ji.
Xing Can.
Husband and wife. Dual cultivation partners. Together, they formed the current spine of Yin-Yang Profound Palace's Life Destruction power.
Their auras boiled. The jade connected to Xing Yan's life had just shattered.
"Divine Phoenix Island dared to kill my son," Xing Ji hissed, voice shaking, "in front of the entire South Horizon Region?!"
"Those ants…" Xing Can's fingernails dug into her palm hard enough to draw blood, yin-yang true essence swirling around her like a storm. "Our sect's name will become a joke if we do not drown them in blood!"
Their killing intent surged.
"Mobilize all Revolving Core and below!" Xing Ji snapped. "Pass down the orders—"
He stopped.
The world dimmed.
There was no natural sign. No distant thunder, no physical cloud.
The sky outside simply… darkened.
A shadow fell over the palace, heavy and ominous.
"What—"
Xing Can's eyes snapped up.
The hall's open arches framed a slice of heaven.
That slice had turned crimson.
A vast shadow blotted out the sun.
The projection in the sky above Seven Profound's mountain zoomed without any conscious control from the watching sects. It focused on Yin-Yang Profound Palace, each detail becoming painfully clear:
The fusion of black-and-white light above the palace cracked.
Guardian arrays roared awake—giant yin-yang diagrams spinning into existence, dual-colored light curtains rising from the ground to wrap the sect in layers of protection. Symbols of dual cultivation—intertwined men and women, fish chasing each other's tails, burning hearts—lit up one after another, feeding power into the defenses.
The Vermillion Bird did not slow.
It fell like a second sun.
The first layer of defense—an enormous Taiji curtain swirling with yin-yang Power—rose to meet it.
The bird's beak struck.
To those watching through the projection, it looked like a collision of colors—black and white against crimson-gold.
For a moment, the curtain bulged, straining.
Then the lotus lines along the Vermillion Bird's feathers brushed the curtain's core pattern.
The Taiji diagram stuttered.
The delicate alternation of yin and yang shivered as grandmist touched it, tugging at its remembered "form" and whispering that it was nothing more than energy arranged in a pattern.
The Law at its heart forgot how to be a barrier.
The entire curtain shattered like painted glass.
Fragmented yin and yang fell away as harmless motes of light.
The Vermillion Bird plunged deeper.
Secondary arrays rose—dual-colored pagodas of light, nets woven of Scarlet Flame and yin-yang chains, rotating seals covered in obscene characters. Each tried to intercept, to bind, to divert.
Each one, when touched by the grandmist-infused Vermillion fire, faltered, its Laws peeled apart and burned into nothing.
Inside the main hall, the world shook.
The domed ceiling cracked, lines spiderwebbing across painted lovers and swirling yin-yang fishes. Dust fell like gray rain.
Xing Ji and Xing Can's faces drained of color.
"Outside!" someone screamed.
They never made it.
The Vermillion Bird crashed through the ceiling.
Stone exploded outward, pillars crumbling. Light vanished, replaced by a blinding, all-consuming crimson glow as the bird folded its wings tight, turning its entire body into a spear of flame.
Xing Ji and Xing Can reacted on instinct honed over centuries.
"Yin-Yang Profound Law—Great Cycle!"
"Dual Heart Crimson Flame!"
Their voices overlapped.
Yin-Yang Power surged from Xing Ji, black and white turning in tight circles, compressing the hall into a spinning Taiji domain. Scarlet Flame rose from Xing Can's body, twisting along the yin-yang cycle, their dual hearts synchronizing as their cultivation joined, birthing a combined defense that had once allowed them to withstand even 3rd-stage Life Destruction assaults.
Black and white spiraled.
Scarlet burned in both fish's eyes.
The Vermillion Bird opened its beak.
It screamed.
The sound was not loud.
It didn't need to be.
It was a command—a Heaven-bending cry carrying Mu Fengxian's threefold Life Destruction will, the imprimatur of Divine Phoenix's lineage, the tug of Heavenly Demon Lotus and the weight of Ren's Heaven.
The rotating yin-yang cycle shuddered as the bird's cry struck.
Grandmist-infused flame poured into the pattern, dissecting it at the root. The elegant cycle, once a perfect symbol of balance, was forced to confront something that didn't recognize "balance" as anything more than a transient shape.
Yin lost its place.
Yang lost its place.
The cycle came apart.
The yin-yang domain burst like a bubble, the entire defense collapsing into harmless mist that evaporated under the pressure of the Vermillion fire.
Weapons cracked.
Defensive artifacts that had followed the couple for centuries screamed as their spirits were burned out. Jade pendants crumbled. Flame shields were devoured. Life-saving talismans, left by seniors in haste and concern, flared once and then vanished like sparks.
Then the Vermillion Bird hit.
A sun of Vermillion Bird flame detonated in the center of the hall.
For an instant, everything froze.
Then the explosion ripped reality apart.
Xing Ji and Xing Can were hurled away like broken dolls struck by a god's palm. Their bodies smashed into opposite pillars; the stone columns shattered under the impact, breaking into powder. Bones snapped with wet cracks; Life Destruction true essence tore inside them, cultivation realms collapsing like shattered stairways.
They slid to the floor, half-buried in rubble, mouths full of blood, unable to even lift their heads.
The elders and disciples within the hall—
They did not even have time to scream properly.
Those closest to the impact were erased instantly, their bodies turning into outlines of ash that held their last terrified postures for a heartbeat before the shockwave scattered them.
Further away, people were thrown into walls, flesh burning, meridians rupturing, dantians shattered. Those who somehow survived the initial blast, crawling and gasping, were swept up a heartbeat later as the Vermillion fire rolled back through the hall, devouring every trace of life.
The projection above Seven Profound's mountain shook.
Everyone watched as a massive portion of the central Yin-Yang Profound Palace collapsed in on itself.
Buildings that had stood for centuries, symbolizing the pride of a fifth-grade sect, crumbled into smoking ruin. The core of their palace complex—the very heart of their sect-protecting formations—had been turned to ash in seconds.
A fifth-grade sect's foundation had been crippled.
Completely.
In the time it took to draw a few breaths.
Within the Great Zen Temple, Baimei's lips parted, but no sound emerged.
Whitebrow's hands tightened on his staff until the wood creaked.
Konghe's Buddha light flickered violently, as if a wind had blown through his heart.
Even with their deep inheritance, even knowing their sect's might, they understood one thing very clearly:
If that Vermillion Bird had come for Great Zen Temple rather than Yin-Yang Profound Palace…
Their own sect-protecting arrays would not have fared any better.
In the ruins of Yin-Yang Profound Palace's main hall, the flames did not fade.
They twined upward, swirling together, compressing.
Above the shattered hall, above the broken yin-yang diagrams and cracked dual cultivation towers, Vermillion fire gathered into a new shape.
A gigantic Vermillion Bird silhouette formed once more.
This one was made entirely of fire and lotus petals. Each feather burned with Fire, Wind, and Thunder, edged with dim Grandmist. Its eyes glowed like twin suns.
From its beak, Mu Fengxian's voice rolled out.
"Yin-Yang Profound Palace."
Her tone was calm, almost mild.
Every living cultivator in Profound Province heard it.
Every watching sect on Seven Profound's mountain heard it.
"Today's blow is a greeting."
The burning bird's head tilted slightly, gaze falling on the near-dead forms of Xing Ji and Xing Can, their bodies broken, blood soaking the rubble around them.
"Your Young Master died trying to bite what he could not swallow," she continued. "Your elders schemed with demons."
Scarlet light flared in the bird's eyes.
"From this moment on, you have two paths."
The Vermillion Bird's shadow stretched, its burning gaze sweeping across the entire ruined palace, then, through the projection, sweeping across every platform on Seven Profound's mountain.
"Submit to Divine Phoenix Island…"
The words were not a shout.
They were a decree.
"Or become our enemy and be burned out of South Horizon's history."
The flames crackled.
Mu Fengxian's will pressed down like a mountain.
On Yin-Yang's ruined grounds, the remaining elders and disciples hiding at the edges of the sect-protecting formations trembled. Those who had thought, even a moment ago, of vengeance and pride, now only felt fear and a creeping, instinctive urge to kneel.
On the mountain, the burning bird's voice echoed, carried back through Ren's Heaven and the projection link, each word cutting deeper than any blade.
Storm Valley's elders felt their knees weaken.
Arctic Ice Palace's cold-faced masters gripped their sleeves hard enough to tear fabric.
Sunfire Sect's patriarch swallowed, throat dry, suddenly very aware that his Sunfire could not compare to Vermillion Bird flame entwined with Grandmist.
Verdant Wood Sect's proud experts, who had always looked down on "little" Divine Phoenix Island as a mere regional power, found their pride melting away like frost under a midday sun.
Golden Bell Mountain's bell master thought of his sect's supposedly impregnable bell arrays and realized, with a sinking feeling, that they would also shatter like thin glass under that Vermillion Bird's beak.
Deep Earth Sect's hall masters imagined the bird burrowing into their earthen halls, erupting from underground, reducing centuries of careful accumulation to slag.
Seven Profound Valley's elders—
They could only stare.
When they had agreed to host a martial meeting…
They had imagined watching talented juniors clash, forging relationships, gaining face.
They had not imagined watching a fifth-grade sect being crippled, live, in front of their own mountain.
Within the Great Zen Temple, Baimei, Whitebrow, Konghe, and the others went pale beneath their Buddha lights.
Even with all their scriptures, all their cultivation, there was no denying the simple, brutal truth:
If they chose to stand openly against Ren Ming and Divine Phoenix Island now…
Their own temple could end the same way as Yin-Yang Profound Palace's main hall.
As for demon collusion?
As for whether Divine Phoenix's methods were righteous enough?
Who dared to speak of such things now?
The demonic patterns around Divine Phoenix's platform had been burned away by Mu Yuhuang's fire. The South Sea Demon Region's elder had been annihilated in the same strike that erased Yin-Yang's people.
And the sect that had just hastily cooperated with that demon…
Had just been turned into a smoking ruin in front of the entire South Horizon Region.
Any words about "demonic collusion" would now only sound like bad jokes.