Meiyue moved like a thrown spear.
The moment Ren's casual order left his lips, she shot forward, violet true essence spinning into a spiraling lotus at the tip of her weapon. The spear-lotus she had polished over weeks of training responded eagerly, petals tightening into a killing drill, Darkness and thunder braided together around a core sharpened by Heaven-Piercing lines.
Ahead, several powerful auras were struggling to regroup.
Ouye Qingfeng and Ouye Qingyun—the twin prince and princess whose heroic figures had once drawn countless admiring gazes at the Nine Flowers Banquet—burned their blood, metal Laws flaring. The Great Smelting Prince stood with them, smelting intent coiling around his body like molten chains; other Life Destruction elites clustered close, heaven-step artifacts rising in a storm above their heads.
"Don't panic!" someone roared. "Form the refining array! Use the treasure formation—"
Too slow.
Meiyue flashed into their midst like a violet meteor.
Her spear thrust out.
The spiraling spear-lotus roared, not with sound but with compressed space. Heaven-Piercing intent folded the distance between her strike and Ouye Qingfeng's chest; all the elaborate shields he'd drawn from smelting arrays and refined armor became stacked obstacles on a paper-thin line.
The spear chose the weakest point in that stack.
It pierced.
For a moment, Qingfeng glimpsed his own Life Destruction Sea reflected in the spinning lotus—then the core shattered. Violet-darkness drilled through his Divine Sea foundation, Laws exploding like ore struck by a hammer too heavy for the vein to bear.
His body bent around the strike, then blew apart into radiant fragments.
"One thrust is enough."
Meiyue's words were almost conversational as she twisted her spear and stepped past where he had been.
The echo of that line—first spoken in Ren's chamber when she tested this very lotus against phantom enemies—rang through her blood now that she was driving it into real Divine Sea bodies.
Ouye Qingyun screamed, eyes bloodshot.
"Qingfeng!"
She detonated a life-bound artifact, thousands of refined blades whirling around her in a blinding cage of light. Smelting Laws fused, trying to grind Meiyue into dust, to turn her into slag under the pressure of their kingdom's proudest techniques.
Meiyue's spear-lotus tightened.
Darkness compressed around the blades, her Heaven-Piercing intent shrinking their formation into a narrow corridor where only her spear existed.
She thrust again.
Refined artifacts that would have made Divine Sea elders cautious shattered like cheap glass, Great Smelting Prince's support talismans tearing as they struggled to redirect the collapsing formation.
The spear stabbed through Qingyun's heart.
Her eyes dimmed, disbelief painted across her features as she fell apart into a rain of metal light.
Meiyue exhaled softly, not even winded.
Around her, other princes and elders reeled.
"Monster—"
"Impossible, they were supposed to be Asura's junior generation, how—"
She stopped listening.
Each time someone flared their true essence, the spear-lotus turned, Heaven-Piercing finding the exact axis along which their defenses were weakest. Life Destruction Seas cracked and blew out. Bodies burst like overfired ores in a furnace gone wrong.
Her laughter rose between thrusts, bright and sharp.
"One thrust is enough."
Another elder died.
"One thrust is enough."
A Life Destruction master who'd once boasted of forging heaven-step weapons with his bare hands collapsed in two halves.
With every kill, the shadow of chasing Yaoyue's back—a shadow that had trailed Meiyue since childhood—grew lighter.
Under Ren's lotus and this new Heaven, her own spear was carving a path that belonged to her alone.
Bi Ruyu chose different prey.
The Great Smelting Prince—one of Sublime Smelting's most exalted princes, famed nearly on par with Nine Furnace's Crown Prince—staggered amid the disorder. Smelting Laws burned furiously around him; his body was covered in armor forged from rare ores, each plate engraved with arrays that linked into a personal formation.
He had always been confident that as long as he stood beneath Ouye Hua's shadow, nothing could truly threaten him.
Now Ouye Hua was gone.
The shadow that fell over him belonged to an Asura witch whose name he remembered only as a rumor told in half-lit rooms.
Bi Ruyu drifted through the sky on bare feet, curse-light blooming with each step. The Heavenly Demon Lotus rooted in her bones and marrow pulsed, grandmist-laced darkness circulating cleanly along the paths Ren had carved—backlash routes cut off, every harsh edge of her Dao turned outward, toward prey.
"Prince," she crooned, voice rough with age and amusement. "You've grown fat on resources."
He spat blood, roaring, "Old witch! Today I'll—"
She snapped her fingers.
Curses birthed themselves from her true essence—loops of black-gold runes, each one carrying the weight of a thousand poisonous Dao Hearts. They spun out into the air, weaving around the Great Smelting Prince in a tightening sphere.
Smelting Laws smashed against the inner walls of that sphere, fire and metal and Life Destruction essence all boiling.
The ball shrank.
His screams shook the formation as he burned blood essence, trying to melt a hole through. Under normal circumstances, the backlash alone would have eaten into Bi Ruyu's soul, ravaging her meridians, shredding her lifespan.
Now, the backlash flowed into the Heavenly Demon Lotus instead.
Grandmist currents within it seized that wild force, devouring impurities and returning only clean, obedient power to her marrow. Her body didn't tremble; if anything, she looked more energized, more alive, than she had in the last hundred years.
Inside the sphere, the Great Smelting Prince's aura condensed until it felt like a small Divine Sea about to explode.
Bi Ruyu raised her palm.
The sphere—now no larger than a man's head—settled into it, writhing, a trembling ball of compressed Divine Sea energy and smelting intent.
"Too easy," she said.
Her fingers closed.
Light shattered like an over-tempered ingot.
Prince, armor, Life Destruction foundation—all crushed into nothing between her fingers. A pillar of Sublime Smelting's future vanished without even leaving slag behind.
She laughed, a wild, delighted sound that made nearby Life Destruction masters blanch.
For decades, she had watched younger generations rise over her, had been whispered about as an old witch more trouble than she was worth.
Now, under Ren's Heaven and lotus, she felt reborn as a hammer that could flatten Divine Seas into powder.
She reached for the next cluster of auras without hesitation.
While Yaoyue, Meiyue, and Bi Ruyu shredded the obvious pillars of power, Qingzhao slipped into the cracks.
She walked through the capital streets with her hands clasped behind her back, Darkness Law veils draped around her like layers of thin silk. The curse-pressure Yaoxi spread made weaker minds dull and heavy; on top of that, Qingzhao's own Dao flowed like perfume.
Smelting masters hiding in underground control rooms—hands flying across array flags, desperately trying to awaken dormant formations—saw her appear in front of them.
Sometimes it was a glimpse through a doorway.
Sometimes it was her reflection in polished metal, lips curved in a soft, almost apologetic smile.
They reacted as warriors.
True essence surged; hands moved to strike.
Her charm slipped in between heartbeats.
Not seduction in the worldly sense, but something subtler: a small pause in the killing intent, a moment of hesitation when old instincts whispered, Don't attack this one yet. Ask first.
That single moment was enough.
Heaven-Piercing threads lit up in her eyes. The illusionary Qingzhao in front of them wavered—and they realized, too late, that the real one was behind.
A blade of Darkness slid into the back of their souls.
No pain. No time to scream.
One instant they were controlling ancestral arrays, the next their Dao Hearts went dark, minds falling into a gentle sleep from which they never woke.
In forging yards, hidden elders who'd chosen to scatter into crowds rather than rise into the sky felt a soft hand brush their shoulders. They turned, ready to snarl, and saw a woman whose beauty could have stood beside any nine-branch imperial princess.
One word, spoken in a low, musical tone.
"Sleep."
Heaven-Piercing guided her voice; Darkness slipped into their Sea of Consciousness through the gap that word opened.
Their bodies slumped—somewhere between illusion and reality, smiling as they died, never realizing their souls had already been cut apart.
Qingzhao moved on, lotus-allure swirling quietly around her.
Her charm, which the old world had tried to twist into a weapon against herself, now flowed along her own Dao without compromise. She had reclaimed her beauty, kept it, and used it to crush a Divine Kingdom.
In the higher layers of the capital, the remaining elders tried to rally around ancestral arrays.
Several towering smelting pagodas blazed to life, each one housing formations that had once withstood foreign invasions. Light climbed their sides, etching Divine runes into the air; array diagrams unfolded across the sky, weaving into a net meant to cover the entire kingdom.
"If we activate the Divine Smelting Grand Array, we can still—"
Yaoxi lifted her hand again.
She didn't bother aiming at people this time.
Curse-light poured from her fingers in thin, elegant lines, each stroke like a brush across the heavens. Black-gold runes formed scriptless patterns—not words, but judgments. They sank into the glowing arrays not to break them from the outside, but to whisper to their cores.
You were never theirs.
The smelting arrays shuddered.
Lines of control that had always obeyed Sublime Smelting's bloodline snapped with small, crisp sounds. Array spirits that had slumbered in metal and stone for thousands of years woke to find a different Heaven pressing down on them.
Yaoxi's curses wrapped around those spirits, not crushing, but… reassigning.
The first warning came when a defensive barrier above a noble district suddenly inverted, turning all its pressure inward. The elders beneath it had a single breath to understand before the shield they'd activated crushed them into a smear.
Elsewhere, a tower's offense formation that had been prepared to bombard Asura intruders swivelled without warning, beams of molten light slicing through the Smelting Palace's own guard ranks.
Screams rose.
"You… you bitch!" an elder howled, blood spraying from his lips as he watched his own array refuse his commands. "What did you do?!"
Yaoxi glanced down at him from high above, curse-lines still trailing from her hand like lazy smoke.
"I asked your arrays who they'd rather serve," she said casually. "They gave a very honest answer."
He tried to activate a soul art in rage.
Her curse reached his Dao Heart first.
It didn't explode him; it seized him. His soul froze mid-chant, every thread of will bound by tight, invisible shackles.
All across the kingdom, similar choices played out.
Those who stubbornly resisted, trying to tear themselves free of the new Heaven pressing down, felt internal curses blossom; Dao Hearts seized, Life Destruction foundations shattered, souls dragged into the lotus-shadow and erased without drama.
Those who broke first—dropping to their knees, slamming their heads into the ground, begging for mercy—found the curses pausing at the edge of their souls.
Yaoxi's gaze swept across them once.
"Live," she said. "If you kneel properly."
Soul oaths descended—not some cheap binding, but threads that linked directly into Ren's distant Heaven and Asura's imperial lineage. Each oath branded itself into the kneeling cultivators' Sea of Consciousness, marking them as servants of Asura Divine Kingdom.
Some wept in humiliation.
Some stared blankly, Dao Hearts numb.
All of them accepted.
The alternative was to die like Ouye Hua.
By the time Yaoyue wiped out the last fleeing half-step Divine Sea and Meiyue finished skewering the last arrogant elder who dared raise his voice, Sublime Smelting's high-end combat strength had been gutted.
Imperial Grand Uncle Ouye Hua and the gathered Divine Sea elders—gone.
Ouye Qun, Qingfeng, Qingyun, the Great Smelting Prince, and other Life Destruction elites—slaughtered in the sky.
The remaining nobles and refiners saw the dark-rainbow lotus auras still hanging over their capital, felt the curse-pressure still crushing their chests, watched their proud arrays turn on their own masters, and understood something with chilling clarity:
They had no choice.
...
When it was nearing the end, Ren floated above the highest platform of the capital, hands tucked into his sleeves, expression relaxed.
"To make it simple," he said, voice carrying across the capital without rising, "from today, Sublime Smelting kneels under Asura."
He nodded toward the endless forest of chimneys and towers, toward glowing furnaces and river-like channels of molten ore.
"You keep your furnaces. You keep your forges. You work for my wives."
He did not mention fairness.
He did not speak of karmic debts or Ouye Hua's sins or Asura's past grievances.
He simply rearranged the board because it pleased him, because it solidified Asura's future, because it would give his women whetstones and resources, because in his Dao, moving a Divine Kingdom for their sake was no more dramatic than shifting a chess piece.
In the distance, if Yang Yun and that ancient devil on the Nine Furnace side sensed the shift and grew wary, so what? In Ren's eyes, with the Asura women walking beside his Heaven, those two were nothing more than insects that would one day be crushed underfoot.
Soul oaths were branded one after another.
Asura banners unfurled over the Sublime Smelting capital, demonic patterns snapping in the hot wind that smelled of iron and fear. Messengers sped out to subordinate sects and cities; those who submitted quickly had their lives and positions preserved, those who hesitated… did not.
Word spread across the Central Region with terrifying speed.
The "barbaric" Asura Divine Kingdom—the one always ranked third, poor in resources and rich only in ferocity—had descended on the second-strongest Divine Kingdom and erased its peak pillars in what witnesses could only call "a few minutes."
Asura's reputation twisted.
From a nation of reckless demons to a monstrous power that could casually extinguish Sublime Smelting's Imperial Grand Uncle and his Divine Sea elders, then calmly claim their people and furnaces.
---
Later, when the smoke had thinned and the cries had grown distant, the five women stood together on a high platform overlooking the surrendered capital.
Below, refiners and nobles knelt in ordered rows, heads bowed toward Asura's newly raised banner. The smelting towers that had once symbolized Sublime Smelting's independent pride now glowed with curse-lines and grandmist threads, tied into Yaoxi's network.
Above, the sky was still faintly stained by lotus auras—violet, dark-rainbow, curse-black, all blending into the grandmist Heaven which Ren kept only half-descended.
The women stood shoulder to shoulder.
They did not speak at first.
Each of them was listening—to the roar of furnaces now burning under their control, to the whispers of a new future unfolding along their Dao.
Yaoyue closed her eyes for a moment.
For decades, she had watched her father carry Asura's reputation on his shoulders—strong, yes, but always forced to bow his head slightly in front of Nine Furnace's Highest Divine Emperor and Sublime Smelting's Imperial Grand Uncle. The lack of special resources, the pressure from other Divine Kingdoms, the constant political maneuvering… it had all carved lines into Situ Haotian's back.
She had grown up in that shadow.
No matter how brightly her talent shone, no matter how high her cultivation climbed, there had always been those fixed peaks in the distance—Yang Laotian, Ouye Hua—existences she had been told were close to "the highest under the heavens."
Now Ouye Hua was dead, erased by one lazy flick of Yaoxi's hand.
Sublime Smelting's proudest juniors had died under a single thrust from Meiyue. Their princes and elites had scattered like leaves in a storm.
The old hierarchy that had weighed down her heart for so long shattered with them.
As she looked down at Sublime Smelting kneeling under a demonic banner, a strange lightness filled her chest.
Asura will not stand behind them anymore.
Her life, her Dao, no longer had to measure itself against someone else's ceiling.
Meiyue stared at her own hands.
They didn't shake.
The spear-lotus within her had settled into a warm, quiet spin, its petals still faintly stained with the remnants of Divine Sea Laws it had pierced. She could feel each kill imprinted along its edges, not as burdens, but as polishing marks.
In the past, every time she looked forward, she saw Yaoyue's back.
Asura's geniuses, the Central Region's young elites—everyone compared her to her aunt, sometimes with praise, more often with dismissive smiles.
Lesser talent. Slightly behind. Close, but not quite.
Today, when she recalled those words, she found herself… amused.
She replayed the image of Ouye Qingfeng and Qingyun dying under one thrust each. Of elders who had once looked down on Asura's "barbaric juniors" exploding like rotten ingots in front of her.
For the first time, when Meiyue looked toward the future, she did not see herself chasing anyone's back.
She saw a spear carving its own line through Divine Seas and Divine Kingdoms, through higher worlds and older Heavens.
Her spear.
Her Dao.
Yaoxi's expression was unreadable, eyes fixed on the distant horizon where Asura's lands lay.
Decades of feeling like "wasted talent" in a kingdom that had never truly known how to use her—those years lay behind her like a dark river. Her curse Dao had terrified Asura's elders, frightened their allies, offended their enemies in ways that brought more trouble than advantage.
More than once, she had been treated as a problem to be contained rather than a blade to be sharpened.
Today, she had erased, with casual ease, the nightmare that had pressed on Asura's destiny for thousands of years.
Ouye Hua. The Divine Sea elders. The smelting arrays that other kingdoms had feared.
All of them had been crushed between her lotus and Ren's Heaven like insects under a descending mountain.
Under that realization, the old bitterness felt… trivial.
What did it matter that she had been "underused" in the past, when now, under his Heaven, she was the blade that destroyed Divine Kingdoms?
She exhaled slowly, letting the last of those old grievances burn away in the curse-light.
Her Dao was no longer chained to Asura's fear.
It was chained to the man who had given her an entire Divine Kingdom to crush and reshape.
Qingzhao's gaze drifted over the kneeling refiners.
In the old world, beauty had been a double-edged sword for her.
Courtiers had wanted to use it. Enemies had tried to break it. Even allies had spoken of it in transactional terms—marriage, alliances, appearances.
Today, she had walked through a Divine Kingdom with Darkness veils wrapped around that same beauty, using it as a weapon that belonged entirely to her.
She had not sacrificed it.
She had not hardened herself into something austere and cold just to survive.
She had remained herself and still crushed a Divine Kingdom's hidden hands and array masters, strangling their resistance with song-soft words and lotus allure.
The impossible standard the world had once tried to force on her—be beautiful, but only in the way we approve; be powerful, but only in ways that serve us—shattered in her heart as completely as the souls she'd cut.
Now, every time she saw her reflection in polished metal, she would remember not court banquets… but the sight of Divine Sea schemes dying quietly behind her.
Bi Ruyu inhaled deeply.
The capital's air still tasted of fear and hot iron, but under it she sensed something else—the faint, acrid tang of old grudges burning out.
She had lived long enough to see entire generations rise and fall. She had watched juniors she barely remembered teaching surpass her and step into the limelight, while her own body creaked and her curses grew increasingly difficult to control.
Many had written her off.
A troublesome relic. An old witch whose value had peaked long ago.
Now, she had crushed princes and high elders like slag between curse-woven fingers. Her body felt younger than it had in centuries, her marrow hot, Heavenly Demon Lotus roots digging deeper into her bones.
All the bitterness of watching the world pass her by… suddenly seemed laughable.
Under this Heaven, with this man, she was not an old witch to be put aside.
She was a top hammer.
And they all realized something else.
At no point today had Ren spoken of "justice."
He hadn't once mentioned "paying back debts" or "balancing karma" or "righteousness."
He had not listed Sublime Smelting's crimes.
He had not tried to paint Asura as a moral avenger.
He had done this because:
It secured Asura's future.
It gave them whetstones.
It filled their coffers and broadened their paths.
It won their hearts by reshaping their world in a way no Divine Emperor, no "highest under the heavens," had ever done for them.
All of them had grown up in an environment where everything was transactional, political, or "for the Divine Kingdom." Even affection had often been weighed on scales of benefit.
Today, someone whose power felt like it belonged to old legends, to higher Heavens, had moved a Divine Kingdom casually—for their sake.
Not for some distant banner.
For them.
That sank into their Dao Hearts like molten metal poured into a mold.
They turned, almost at the same time, to look at him.