Inside the ancestral shrine, the recorded voice cut off abruptly.
A thin, breathless silence followed, lasting only a few heartbeats.
Then Gu Ying's eyes sharpened.
She realized it in an instant: the "attendant" was Lin Yaochen in disguise.
Her expression twisted. She lunged forward, palm snapping toward the Yao Compass at his waist.
"Give it to me!"
Yao-energy condensed into a blade. The air shrieked as it split.
In that same moment
the ground trembled.
A wall of earth and stone surged up from the floor with a thunderous roar, slamming into place and blocking her strike. Debris exploded outward. Dust swallowed sight.
Lin Yaochen stepped forward, planting his left palm against the ground. Yao-energy spiraled through his veins as the power of Earth Yao coiled around him like chains, heavy and unshakable as a mountain.
"If you want the Compass," he said steadily, "you'll have to get past me first."
Gu Ying's face turned vicious, ready to strike again.
But then a sharp shout came from beyond the shrine's high wall.
"Luo Yan, raise the fire formation!"
A burst of flame shot into the hall, twisting like serpents as it spiraled downward along the beams.
Luo Yan slammed both palms to the floor.
Fire Yao surged up from beneath his feet like a tide, racing across wooden posts and stone tiles, spreading in an instant until a red-gold formation flared into existence.
The Fire-Refining Wildfire Array.
"My turn!" a woman's voice snapped through the air like an arrow.
Ge Zhiyao, clad in golden Yao-battle armor, vaulted in from the rear courtyard wall. Her longbow was already drawn to its limit, her Yao-crossbow mechanism humming with stored force.
"You poisonous woman," she hissed, "trying to steal my father and my family's craft. Did you even look at what I'm holding?"
She loosed.
A bolt of Gold Yao screamed through the air, splitting into three arrows like a string of shining beads, driving straight for Gu Ying's brow.
Gu Ying jerked back. Too slow.
One arrow slashed her shoulder guard. Blood sprayed. Her face turned iron-blue with fury.
Then the shrine's rear wall exploded.
Tiles and rubble blasted outward as a shadow stepped through the dust.
The air went cold.
Everyone's breath caught.
It was him.
Lin Zhaochi.
He folded his hands, Yao-markings flashing across his palms. His voice dropped into a low incantation.
"Water Yao. Drowning Flame."
Boom.
A ring of deep blue power surged outward like a flood, carrying a bone-deep chill. In the blink of an eye, Luo Yan's fire array was extinguished across a wide radius, the flames collapsing as if the air itself had been stolen from them. Damp cold flooded the hall.
Luo Yan's expression changed sharply.
"You!"
Lin Zhaochi's lips curved. With a sweep of his sleeve, Water Yao condensed into a blade and shot toward Luo Yan's chest.
At the critical instant, Lin Yaochen thrust up another earth wall between them.
The water blade struck, exploding into a spray of mud and shivering Yao remnants.
Zhiyao reacted instantly, already drawing again from the side. Three arrows snapped out, sealing Lin Zhaochi's retreat.
But Water Yao flowed and shifted.
A thin membrane of blue-green water formed before him, and the arrows dissolved before they could even reach his shadow, swallowed by the current.
The shrine's broken walls still wept moisture.
Tie Ye stepped forward.
His half-armor caught the torchlight, and the fire coursing through his meridians roared like a crimson sun. Stone tiles cracked beneath his feet.
Lin Zhaochi turned, amusement unmoved.
"Marquis Tie Ye," he said coolly. "So the rumors are true. Chosen by fate. Dual Yao power: Gold and Fire."
"No wonder you've held that seat for so many years."
Tie Ye's eyes burned like forged steel.
"And you," he answered, voice cast in iron, "have sunk so low you'd become a dog for outsiders, daring to rot the foundation of our Yao Realm."
His palm snapped out.
Gold Yao flared, cutting like a slanted blade aimed straight for Lin Zhaochi's brow.
Lin Zhaochi lifted a hand.
Water shaped itself into a shield, dense as frozen ice, stopping the strike.
In the next breath
Gold and fire collided.
Water surged.
Gold Yao split the water shield, still driving forward. Fire Yao followed, a scorching wave that slammed toward Lin Zhaochi's face.
Lin Zhaochi's expression tightened for the first time. He shifted back half a step, rotated his palm, and a reverse vortex array spun into being, swallowing the flame into a spiraling current.
Boom!
A shockwave detonated where the forces met.
The shrine's crossbeam cracked. Tiles and stones rained down.
Lin Yaochen and the others retreated quickly, the blast tearing dust and broken timber into a rolling storm.
Luo Yan forced his stance steady, heart hammering, cold sweat seeping at his temple.
His eyes locked on the two figures trading blows.
Tie Ye, Marquis of Yao, his power blazing like molten iron and slicing like gold steel.
Lin Zhaochi, Water Yao roaring, a tidal reverse flow that felt capable of devouring mountains and rivers.
"This… this level of battle," Luo Yan murmured, voice trembling with fear, and something else he couldn't name. "We can't even step into it."
Yet his gaze stayed fixed on Tie Ye.
That familiar back, wrapped in fire.
Left hand igniting Yao-flame, right palm shaping Gold Yao into a blade.
His movements were brutal, clean, unstoppable.
It was his father
and yet not the father he knew.
Luo Yan's fingertips trembled. Fire Yao flickered in his palm as if responding instinctively to the blood in his bones. His lips parted, the words barely audible.
"So… this is how strong your Yao power really is."
A flash crossed his eyes
shock, awe
and… admiration.
But beneath that admiration, another emotion smoldered quietly, deeper in his chest, too complicated to name.
Firelight and Yao-energy twisted together.
The shrine wall collapsed with a roar.
Stone and splintered wood fell like rain.
Lin Yaochen and Luo Yan staggered back under the impact.
Mozi shifted to guard them, jaws opening to warn
when Zhiyao suddenly stopped, brows knitting.
She sensed it.
Something behind her
wrong.
In the same instant, a shadow darted like a snake, carrying faint water-damp and the sharp scent of medicine, striking for her throat.
"Watch out!" Luo Yan shouted.
But Zhiyao had already moved.
Her sleeve flicked and a hidden blade snapped free, cold light cutting the dark.
It was Gu Ying.
Her eyes were venom. She had tried to seize Zhiyao as leverage, or rip the schematics from her mind.
She hadn't expected the counter.
Zhiyao twisted aside, yanking a short hand-crossbow from her waist.
"You really underestimated me," she snapped.
Her steps crossed sharply.
A bolt flashed.
Bang!
The mechanism cracked like thunder. The arrow skimmed past Gu Ying's ear. Gu Ying jerked away, but Zhiyao was already in close, driving her knee into Gu Ying's abdomen while her left palm slammed down on Gu Ying's energy center.
Yao-energy surged.
Gu Ying choked on a muffled groan. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed unconscious.
Luo Yan stepped in, checked her pulse, and his gaze chilled.
"She was going to take you hostage."
Mozi flicked his eyes over Gu Ying's limp form, voice cold.
"Bind her. Don't kill her. Keeping her alive gives Tie Ye a witness to present."
In the next breath, Tie Ye drew his blade back into its sheath.
He inhaled deeply.
Gold Yao surged into his limbs, his presence sharpening into a force like a sword ripping the sky, like mountains splitting open.
"Gold Yao. Sever-Flow, Seal-the-Meridians!"
His palm struck.
Gold Yao shot outward like chain-saws of light, slicing into the core of Lin Zhaochi's water array.
Crack!
The water froze mid-motion, violently halted as if severed in half.
Lin Zhaochi's face finally changed.
He blurred backward, Water Yao snapping back around him, forming a defensive shell.
"You think you can keep me here?" he growled, hands slamming together. "Water Yao. Shatter-Meridians, Escape-the-Flow!"
A ring of water burst outward.
Mist and flying grit erupted, swallowing vision whole.
"He's escaping!" Zhiyao shouted.
Lin Yaochen threw up an earth barrier, forcing his Yao power into a wall to block the path
but the water-escape was thin as thread, slipping through the smallest seam in his Earth Yao boundary.
In a blink, Lin Zhaochi's silhouette was already a fading shadow beyond the shattered wall.
"Don't chase," Tie Ye ordered, voice low and absolute, eyes fixed on the aftershock as the mist began to thin.
"He's wounded," he said quietly, gaze pinning a patch of wet traces left behind.
Lin Yaochen stared at the direction Lin Zhaochi had fled.
"He's my uncle," he said. "But if he's willing to hurt this many people for his ambition… then he's no family of mine."
Tie Ye stood beside him, gaze still sharp, but his voice softened just a fraction.
"Blood doesn't decide allegiance. Only where your heart stands does."
Lin Yaochen nodded slowly, then asked, "Will he really return to the Third Continent?"
"He belongs there," Tie Ye answered, voice heavy as iron. "For their so-called 'future,' he's willing to betray the Lin line, betray the imperial bloodline…"
"…even sacrifice the entire Yao Realm."
Mozi stepped forward, eyes on Gu Ying's unconscious body, tone grim.
"If you hadn't prepared the mechanism early, we might have been wiped out tonight. This isn't the end."
"It's the opening move."
Luo Yan approached, eyes still cold.
"She wanted to use Zhiyao as a hostage, and she still dares talk about loyalty to the Court. She's a snake."
Zhiyao wiped blood from her temple, voice low.
"Good thing she underestimated me…"
"…and underestimated all of you."
Lin Yaochen drew a deep breath, turning to face the ruined shrine behind them and the shattered fragments of his earth barrier. His voice was steady, but something new was taking root inside it.
"This is only the beginning."
"He wants the Compass. He wants the weapons. He wants power."
"Then we'll teach him that none of it is taken easily."
The upheaval at the shrine had paused, but the storm hadn't passed.
The shadow of the Third Continent had already sunk deep into the Yao Realm.
And Lin Yaochen and his companions
would now walk their true path of seeking the Five Yao
through turmoil, blood, and flame.