Ren let them squirm for a while, then eased his arms away, giving each of them one last light touch before stepping back.
He straightened his sleeves, expression turning a bit more serious, though the warmth in his eyes didn't fade.
"All right," he said. "Get ready. This won't be a long trip."
The quiet weight in those words settled over them.
They had just spent weeks watching their new foundations form. Feeling how casual their Daos had become when faced with Divine Emperor phantoms. Still, hearing him say that destroying a Divine Kingdom wouldn't be a long trip…
It made everything click.
Yaoyue thought of the phantom Divine Emperors she'd crushed with a single finger in his chamber. Sublime Smelting's emperors were weaker than those phantoms. Much weaker.
Meiyue felt the condensed spear-lotus pulsing behind her sternum. The idea of piercing Divine Seas and Divine Emperors no longer felt like a distant dream. It felt trivial—as if she were picturing herself stabbing through sand.
Yaoxi felt her curses, once chains around her own soul, now coiled like obedient spears waiting for a single thought. Killing Divine Sea elders was no longer something she had to plan for. It was something she could do between breaths.
Qingzhao remembered how her allure had blinded simulated Divine Sea senses so thoroughly they didn't know they were dead until their souls dissolved. Against real enemies… would it be any different?
Bi Ruyu flexed her hands, joints painless, curses looping along clean paths. Old "backlash" routes had been severed; every harsh edge of her Dao now pointed outward only. The image of crushing old geniuses into fertilizer—with ease—sent a savage thrill through her chest.
Ren lifted his head slightly.
His Immortal Soul Bone stirred.
Soul Laws extended without ripples, mapping the Central Region in a heartbeat. The Four Divine Kingdoms rose in his perception like mountains on a detailed map; one of them burned brighter than the rest, smelting arrays pulsing, metal rivers glowing like veins of molten light.
Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom.
His lips quirked.
He snapped his fingers.
Space folded.
It wasn't the crude distortion of a Divine Sea martial artist forcing a tear in reality. It was closer to a page being pinched and brought together: Grandmist currents twisted, Heaven-Piercing lines drew the shortest possible route between "here" and "there," and the world obeyed.
The chamber vanished.
—
Fire.
Heat.
Iron scent.
They stepped out into the sky above Sublime Smelting's imperial capital.
Endless furnaces belched scarlet and orange flame, their mouths like the gaping maws of ancient beasts. Rivers of molten ore flowed through engraved channels, carving glowing paths through the city like liquid metal dragons. Towers rose in the distance, every stone inscribed with refining arrays, every roof crowned with smelting formations that reached like grasping hands toward the heavens.
Even the air tasted different—hot, sharp, tinged with metal.
Cities wrapped the central capital like nested rings, each layer built around Divine-level smelting arrays that had once supplied heaven-step weapons to the entire continent. Nearly every martial artist here bore the tang of refined metals in their true essence, the mark of a nation where refiners were more common than farmers.
The balance of the Four Divine Kingdoms flashed through their minds:
Nine Furnace—strongest, famed for alchemy, richest in wood spirit jade and heavenly materials.
Sublime Smelting—second, unrivaled in refining, their lands riddled with rare ores and metals.
Asura—third, isolated and barbaric in reputation, lacking the same natural treasures.
Seven Star—fourth, the weakest on paper.
Sublime Smelting could stand in front of Asura only because of their Imperial Grand Uncle—Ouye Hua—and the Divine Sea elders around him. Those old monsters were the iron pillars that had let them glare at Asura and even trade blows with Nine Furnace.
Ren stood a step behind the five women, hands tucked casually into his sleeves. His Heaven folded tightly around him, pressure pulled inward until his presence felt almost mundane.
Almost.
He smiled faintly.
"Go wild," he said, voice mild, as if telling them to enjoy a festival. "Show them the power of my Asura wives."
That last word hit all five like a hammer and a caress.
Yaoxi gave him a sideways glare for "Asura wives," lips tightening.
But she was the first to move.
Of course she was.
She took a single step into the empty air.
Her Heavenly Demon Lotus flared in her Soul Sea. Heaven-Piercing lines threaded through curses that had once been tangled nets; now they straightened into threads of pure inevitability.
Her aura descended.
The effect was immediate.
The entire Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom trembled.
First, the weak.
Xiantian and frail Revolving Core martial artists, spread across cities and mines and sects, clutched at their chests. For many of them, there was no time to scream. Their hearts stopped; their souls, too fragile to withstand the sudden weight of a curse-laden Heaven, shattered like thin glass under a hammer.
They died as if someone had simply crossed their names out.
Stronger Revolving Core and early Life Destruction experts fared slightly better.
They staggered. Knees slammed into stone. Blood sprayed from mouths, noses, ears. Meridians shook; true essence went wild, then was forced back into submission only through desperate will.
High Life Destruction masters and peak experts barely maintained flight as they burst into the sky. Their true essence felt as though it were being pulled out of their meridians and fed into some unseen maw overhead. Every heartbeat felt like drowning.
Refiner formations across the kingdom flickered.
Flames in ancient furnaces dimmed as an unfamiliar darkness pressed down on them—not the ordinary shade of night, but a heavy, curse-filled dusk that tried to smother everything it touched.
Alarm bells ignited all across the kingdom.
Array beacons shot pillars of light into the sky, forming layers of defensive nets above the capital and major cities. Smelting towers roared awake; Divine runes lit up across their surfaces, calling up formations that had withstood foreign invasions in the past.
Those formations strained.
Yaoxi's Domain, bolstered by Grandmist from Ren's Heaven and sharpened by Heavenly Demon judgment, pressed down on them like a mountain deciding to sit.
Cracks spiderwebbed across some of the weaker city shields. One or two lesser towers shorted out entirely, their runes popping like overworked tendons snapping.
Within the imperial capital, pressure erupted.
Divine Sea auras burst out of seclusion, smashing open protective wards.
Old monsters shot into the sky: robed refiners whose metallic auras smelled of furnace smoke and quenching oils; battle-type Divine Seas whose bodies radiated heat like mobile volcanoes; elders whose souls were fused with their life-bound magic treasures.
And in the very heart of the capital, from a secluded palace wrapped in the strongest formations Sublime Smelting possessed, a roar shook the heavens.
"Who dares!"
Golden true essence surged upward.
The imperial palace doors exploded outward from the inside. A figure shot into the sky like a golden spear.
He was not young.
Wrinkles marked his face; his hair was mostly white, tied back in a simple style that belonged to an older era. But the body under his robes was still solid, the aura around him vast and domineering.
King Dragon Vein bloodline exploded in his veins.
Dragon shadows coiled around him, each scale shimmering with refined metallic Laws, as if a hundred thousand divine weapons had been melted down and forged into a single, living dragon.
His Divine Sea roared.
Golden essence poured out like an inverted waterfall, trying to push back against Yaoxi's oppressive field. Space around him twisted, as if reluctant to let him move but too afraid not to.
Ouye Hua.
Imperial Grand Uncle of Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom.
One of the legendary "great characters" who had stomped through all four Divine Kingdoms for thousands of years.
Behind him, several other Divine Sea elders surged into position.
One bore a massive hammer phantom, his aura like a rolling smelter. Another carried rivers of molten metal swirling around his body. A third wielded a long spear forged from countless heaven-step weapons, its tip buzzing with the killing intent of a thousand battlefields.
Each of them struggled just to hover beneath Yaoxi's Domain.
On instinct, their gazes swept the intruders.
Situ Yaoxi—Divinne Sea Asura princess, her old infamy rising from memory.
Situ Qingzhao—Another Asura princess of deadly allure, whose name had once shaken noble clans.
Situ Yaoyue and Meiyue—Situ Yaoyue who had vanished from public sight for a time, now returning with Darkness so deep it seemed to drink in the light. And Situ Meiyue, the lesser-known talent compared to her aunt, Situ Yaoyue.
Bi Ruyu—the old witch whose curses were whispered about even in Sublime Smelting's secret meetings.
The Asura Divine Kingdom's barbaric reputation resurfaced in their hearts—except now, instead of barely-contained disdain, what they felt was… dread.
Then their gazes slid further back.
To Ren.
To this young man hovering a step behind the women, hands in his sleeves, eyes lazy, no Divine Sea pressure leaking out at all. The fact they couldn't sense anything from him made Ouye Hua's heart tighten.
A bad premonition tried to coil in his chest. He forced it down.
He straightened, forcing Golden Dragon aura to flare, body wrapped in the majesty of an elder who had watched eras rise and fall.
He cupped his fists in the air, movements stiff under the pressure.
"Princess Yaoxi, Princess Qingzhao…" he said, voice deep, fighting to stay calm. "What meaning does the Asura Divine Kingdom have today? Why have you come to my Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom, covering us with such killing intent?"
He did not address Ren.
He pretended Ren was a subordinate—a follower, an escort, a junior.
A tiny shred of mental comfort.
Yaoxi looked down at them.
The curses coiling lazily around her fingers were nothing like the chaotic storm they had once been. Each black-gold glyph was sharp, clean, perfectly controlled, Heaven-Piercing lines glinting inside them like thin threads of multi-colored lightning.
The Heavenly Demon Lotus pulsed in her Soul Sea.
"Meaning?" she repeated, voice flat. "It means your kingdom falls today."
She might as well have been reciting the weather.
The Divine Sea elders' faces hardened.
For men who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with Yang Laotian and other peak figures, being spoken to that way by an Asura woman was beyond insulting.
Killing intent surged.
Golden true essence roared.
"Presumptuous!" Ouye Hua bellowed, rage cracking his voice. "Asura woman, today this Grand Uncle will teach you the difference between wild dogs and true dragons!"
King Dragon Vein divine body exploded outward.
Dragon scales rippled across his flesh, each plate glowing like tempered steel fresh from the forge. A giant golden dragon phantom unfurled behind him, scales overlapping, claws flexing, fangs bared.
He punched out.
His Divine Sea boiled; years of smelting Laws and battle experience converged.
Golden Laws compressed into a long spear of light—dragon-head at the front, scales forming the shaft, tail lashing behind like a comet. The attack screamed forward, not just as true essence, but as the manifested will of Sublime Smelting's strongest pillar: the belief that refined metal can pierce all.
Around him, the other Divine Sea elders erupted as well.
One swept his arm; rivers of molten metal surged forward, collapsing into a cascading wave of scarlet and white heat that could melt mountains.
Another's life-bound weapons flew out—heaven-step treasures forged over centuries, each one blazing with brilliance as they arranged themselves into a formation, a storm of blades that could shred Divine Sea bodies.
Their Domains slammed down in layers, trying to crush Yaoxi's curse-field by sheer weight. Refining Law, metal Laws, flame Laws—all stacked, all burning, all roaring at once.
The capital shook.
The air between the two sides warped under the converging might.
Yaoxi… didn't fully prepare.
She didn't need to.
She watched their build-up calmly, head tilting slightly, as if she were examining an old inscription for flaws.
"Annoying," she said quietly.
She lifted her hand.
The Heavenly Demon Lotus sigil flared on her palm—dark-rainbow petals unfolding in the air above her skin, their edges rimmed in sparks of Grandmist. Heaven-Piercing lines threaded through the lotus, thin and merciless, guiding her curses along the shortest path between "her will" and "their hearts."
She flicked her wrist.
There was no grand chant.
No loud roar.
Just a slender, dark arc of light that slipped into existence at her fingertips—a crescent of curse-light, rimmed in faint multicolored glimmers, moving so quietly that for one heartbeat it seemed almost harmless.
Then it moved.
It didn't fly like ordinary true essence.
It phased.
One instant, it was at her hand.
The next, it appeared in front of Ouye Hua's golden dragon spear.
Grandmist influence slid along the arc's edge. Heaven-Piercing intent dug into the dragon spear's core, peeling apart the refined Laws that held it together. The curse-light followed those freshly-torn paths with cruel efficiency.
Ouye Hua felt it.
His eyes widened.
"What—"
His dragon spear… softened.
The proud spear of gathered Laws, forged from countless battles and refined essences, became like wet clay pushed into an unfamiliar mold. Its structure unwound. Golden light shattered into loose motes, scattered by the curse-light as easily as dried leaves in a storm.
The spear imploded.
The combined Divine Sea attack buckled, folding in on itself. Curse-light dove into its heart, smashed its Law framework, then drank the collapsing energy like wine.
The arc did not stop.
It slid forward, deceptively thin.
It met Ouye Hua's body—his dragon sheath, King Dragon Vein bloodline, Divine Sea foundation—as if it were cutting through damp paper.
For a Sacred Lord-level refiner, for an existence "close to the highest under the heavens," the most terrifying part wasn't the pain.
It was the lack of it.
The curses didn't rip him apart from the outside in. They appeared inside his meridians, inside his Divine Sea, inside his Law foundation.
A billion tiny knives, each guided by a Heaven-Piercing line.
His dragon scales shattered into dust.
His meridians tore in a dozen places at once.
His Divine Sea, the ocean he had tempered for thousands of years, crumpled like an old furnace smashed by a hammer. Laws collapsed. True essence exploded, then was swallowed by the curse lotus' greed.
In that instant, his thoughts broke into frantic shards.
Impossible… I was… top under the heavens…
His eyes dimmed.
His body stiffened—
—then fractured from the inside out, flesh, bone, and true essence all exploding into a cloud of bloody mist.
The dark-rainbow arc of curse-light didn't even slow.
It split.
Heaven-Piercing lines branched it like lightning. Each branch followed a separate "shortest path"—the weakest point in a Divine Sea elder's Law, the hairline crack in an old refiner's Dao Heart, the overload point in an aged body full of impurities.
The other Divine Sea elders had just enough time to see Ouye Hua die.
Just enough time for terror to loosen their control.
They unleashed their emergency arts, trying to burn blood, trying to self-detonate, trying to trade life for life.
The curse arcs arrived first.
Rivers of molten metal turned into harmless rain, plummeting as dull iron droplets.
Heaven-step weapon storms froze, then shattered as their connections to their masters snapped.
Bodies jerked.
Curses bloomed inside them—small, contained bursts that precisely targeted Divine Seas, Life Destruction, and soul cores. No wasted energy. No wild backlash. Just neat, brutal execution.
One after another, Sublime Smelting's old pillars exploded into mist.
From the ground, from the lesser cities, from the furnaces and towers, cultivators looked up and saw a sight that would scar the continent's memory:
The golden dragon of Sublime Smelting's Imperial Grand Uncle disintegrating like rust under acid.
The shining stars of their Divine Sea elders flaring once, then going out forever.
All of it…
From one lazy flick of an Asura woman's hand.
The bloody mist drifted for a heartbeat.
Then even that was devoured—curse petals drinking it down, Heavenly Demon judgment erasing their lingering marks on the world.
The sky above Sublime Smelting went very, very quiet.
Winds on the ground stopped.
Furnaces guttered and dimmed, flames shrinking back into their mouths as if afraid to breathe.
Across the Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom—inside city forges, deep mine caverns, on floating refining platforms—millions of refining masters lifted their heads as one and stared at the sky.
Just moments ago, the Imperial Grand Uncle's dragon aura had split the heavens.
Now, all that remained was a fading stain of bloody mist and a strange, dark-rainbow shimmer that refused to disperse.
Dao Hearts cracked.
For countless refiners, Ouye Hua wasn't just a supreme elder; he was the iron pillar that defined "peak" in their hearts. The man whose name had once stood in the same breath as Yang Laotian and Old Man Good Fortune, one of the "existences close to the highest under the heavens" in the Sky Spill Continent.
Situ Haotian had once warned his daughters of that name with genuine solemnity. For the Asura Divine Emperor to admit fearing someone was rare enough that Yaoyue had never forgotten it.
That man… had died without even forcing Yaoxi to use both hands.
Silence rolled out after the last echo of his shattered dragon roar.
Ren broke it with a low whistle.
He let the sound trail off, head tilted slightly as if really considering the result. His eyes traced the empty space where Ouye Hua and the other Divine Seas had stood, then he gave a small, almost regretful nod.
"I expected that to be short," he said lazily, "but damn… they're really that fragile."
There was no gloating in his tone. No excited bloodlust.
It sounded more like a craftsman testing a so-called divine weapon and remarking that the steel was softer than advertised—a bored acknowledgement that the "highest under the heavens" in this corner of the world simply couldn't stand in front of his women anymore.
Yaoxi flexed her fingers once.
Curse-light still coiled around her hand in faint, dark arcs, Heaven-Piercing lines glinting inside the lotus brand at her palm. She shook her wrist as if she'd swatted a mosquito too hard.
"I held back," she muttered. "Or thought I did."
Ren's mouth curved.
He stepped up behind the five of them, his Heaven still folded in tight, making his presence feel almost ordinary amid the fading storm of Laws.
Almost.
"All right," he said, voice mild again. "Yaoyue, Meiyue, Ruyu—clear out the rest. Try not to break the furnaces; I've got uses for their refiners."
Their eyes lit up.
Yaoyue's violet gaze sharpened, the Extreme Violet Dantian within her stirring like a waking sea. Meiyue's lips pulled into a quick, eager grin, spear-lotus shadow trembling behind her sternum. Bi Ruyu's curses rolled up from her bones in a slow tide; the old witch licked her lips, joints painless, her body humming with the clean, outward-pointing routes Ren had carved into her Dao.
"Understood," Yaoyue said quietly.
"Leave some scraps," Meiyue added, already stepping forward. "I want to see how many fall to one strike."
Bi Ruyu just laughed, low and hoarse. "Old bones have been waiting for this."
Ren's fingers brushed lightly across Yaoyue's shoulder as they passed him, a brief, casual touch that still sent a tremor down her spine. To anyone watching, it was nothing—a small gesture.
To them, it was a reminder.
Go wild. I'm right here.
In the imperial capital, chaos had already broken out.
Ouye Qun's heart pounded as he shot through the sky on a stream of purple-gold light, true essence burning. Half-step Divine Sea cultivation roared in his meridians; the Inborn Purple Yang Meridians that had once been his pride pulsed like boiling rivers, heat spilling from every pore.
He had always imagined his first true step into the Divine Sea would be on the battlefield—standing beside Ouye Hua and the other old monsters, using fire and metal Laws to crush some foreign threat, then receiving the title of Supreme Elder with Heaven and earth as witnesses.
Instead, he was fleeing.
The curse-pressure still blanketed the kingdom. Every breath tasted of rust and dusk. He could feel countless weaker cultivators flickering out below him, lives snuffed like candle flames in a wind he couldn't even see.
"Asura… those Asura maniacs actually dared…!"
He gritted his teeth, aura flaring higher.
He would reach the outer city arrays, rally the remaining elders, bring Ouye Hua and—
A shadow bloomed in front of him.
Violet.
Soft, deep, and absolute.
Situ Yaoyue stood there in the sky as if she had always been part of it, violet-black aura wrapped close to her body. Her hair drifted in the lingering winds, eyes cool, the Extreme Violet Dantian within her condensed into a razor-thin Domain that sliced his perception as soon as he came within range.
He crashed into that Domain like a bird flying into invisible glass.
His Purple Yang heat surged on instinct, trying to burn a path open.
The heat was swallowed.
The violet "sea" of her true essence didn't even ripple. Darkness Laws sharpened by Heaven-Piercing threads flowed around the pressure of his bloodline, dissecting it, analyzing it, then ignoring it as irrelevant.
"Situ Yaoyue!" he snarled, face twisting. "You dare bring calamity here?! Even if the Asura Divine Kingdom recovered—"
"You were never on my level."
Her voice cut across his shout like a blade.
There was no anger in it. No arrogance. Just a simple statement of fact, spoken by a woman who had watched phantom Divine Emperors crumble under a finger in Ren's chamber and now found a half-step Divine Sea… small.
She raised that finger.
The Extreme Violet Dantian spun.
Violet darkness condensed at her fingertip, drawn from a sea that had once struggled against Asura's Heavenly Dao but now flowed along the faint pull of a greater Heaven. Heavenly Demon Lotus shadows unfurled behind her, petals tinted with grandmist; Heaven-Piercing intent laced through the spear of violet-darkness that birthed itself from her nail, thin threads of multicolored light glinting within.
She tapped.
The spear didn't fly like a beam.
It phased.
One breath it was between her fingers; the next it appeared in front of Ouye Qun's hasty defenses, following the shortest path between "her killing intent" and "his heart."
Purple Yang flames exploded, trying to block.
They parted like water.
The spear of violet-darkness slipped through his shields, through his meridians, through the half-formed Divine Sea thrashing inside him.
Ouye Qun's chest… opened.
There was no dramatic explosion from the outside in. For him, the world simply lurched; for a heartbeat, he saw a violet horizon rising over his internal Sea, Heaven-Piercing lines biting into the foundations he had spent his entire life building.
His Divine Sea cracked.
Then collapsed.
Impossible… Asura's hidden genius… how could she become… this…
The thought never finished.
His body fractured from the inside, turning into drifting dust in Yaoyue's Domain. When it scattered, not a single drop of blood dared stain her robes.
Below, in the capital, countless eyes widened.
That was Ouye Qun.
The man the Sublime Smelting Divine Kingdom had expected to become their next Divine Sea Supreme Elder, a sixth stage Life Destruction half-step powerhouse with Inborn Purple Yang Meridians, a genius they had always measured against Asura's juniors and found superior.
He had not even withstood one finger from her.
Yaoyue lowered her hand, face calm.
Inside, something she had carried for decades—a quiet, stubborn knot from the days when Asura had stood one step behind Nine Furnace and Sublime Smelting, always missing resources, always lacking a Ouye Hua—loosened and fell away.
"So this," she murmured to herself, "was what pressed their heart for so many years."
The answer drifted away as quickly as it came.
There were more to kill.
She turned, violet sea already flowing toward other fleeing lights.