The Whispering Gorges were no longer the silent, desolate scar in the mountain they had been just hours before. The aftermath of the 7th Layer Tribulation had transformed the cave into a sanctuary of lethal beauty. The rock walls were crystallized, etched with the jagged patterns of heavenly lightning, and the floor was coated in a layer of frost so absolute it felt like the touch of a dead god.
At the center of the cavern, Ye Chen stood perfectly still. The rags she had worn, the garments of a penniless, broken wife, had been disintegrated by the surge of her returning power. In their place, a gown of pure, woven lunar energy shimmered around her, translucent and radiant like starlight reflecting on a frozen lake.
Her eyes, which had been clouded by years of agony and the suppressive toxins of the "Bone-Piercing Nails," were now twin pools of terrifying violet light. She raised a single hand, and the air in the gorge let out a low, vibrating groan. Within a heartbeat, a thousand jagged ice swords materialized in the empty space around her, hovering with a single, lethal thought.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Ally 'Ye Chen' has undergone 'Ascendant Restoration'.] [Current Power Level: Peak of Foundation Establishment (Half-Step Golden Core).] [Status: Soul-Bond Resonance Active — Shared Mana Pool engaged.]
"They are here," Ye Chen said. Her voice was no longer a fragile whisper; it was a crystalline command that vibrated through the very marrow of the mountain.
"I know," Qin Feng replied. He stood at her side, his silhouette broad and imposing against the glow of the cave. He leaned heavily on the Eclipse Sunderer, which remained pulsing with a white-hot, violent heat from the absorbed heavenly lightning. The weapon was a sharp, dangerous contrast to the freezing aura emanating from his wife, fire and ice, sun and moon, perfectly balanced.
From the mouth of the gorge, a silhouette appeared, detaching itself from the natural shadows of the cliffs. He didn't walk so much as flicker, his body glitching through reality like a ghost. He was draped in the midnight-blue robes of the Shadow-Watch, the elite secret executioners of the Ninth Plateau. His cultivation was a suffocating weight, a 9th Layer Foundation presence that sought to crush the will of anyone beneath him.
"Ye Chen," the assassin rasped, the sound like serrated metal dragging over old bone. "The Elders in the high clouds said you were a cripple, rotting in a dirt-floor shack with a lowly miner. They will be deeply disappointed to see you've found the strength to struggle. But you know the law of the Moon Sect: we do not leave loose ends, and we do not permit traitors to breathe."
"The Moon Sect died the day they drove the nails into my soul, Shadow-Stalker," Ye Chen replied. She didn't move a muscle, yet the temperature in the gorge plummeted another twenty degrees, turning the very breath of the assassin into shards of ice. "Now, there is only the Eclipse. And the Eclipse does not forgive."
[QUEST UPDATED: The First Shadow.] [Objective: Defeat the 9th Layer Assassin.] [Bonus Condition: Capture him alive for intelligence on the Ninth Plateau's defenses.]
The Shadow-Stalker was a professional; he did not waste breath on further insults. He dissolved into a cloud of thousands of black, needle-thin daggers, launching a multi-directional strike that targeted every vital meridian and nerve cluster on Qin Feng and Ye Chen's bodies. It was an "Instant Death" formation, designed to end a fight before the victim could even blink.
"My turn," Qin Feng muttered, his eyes flashing with a violet-gold fire.
He didn't raise a shield or retreat. He stepped forward with the heavy, grounded gait of a man who had spent a decade fighting the weight of the earth. He slammed the head of the Eclipse Sunderer into the ground with the force of a falling meteor.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: Seismic Collapse (Spirit-Grade).]
The shockwave didn't just shatter the stone floor; it sent a pulse of inverted gravity surging upward. The thousands of black needles were caught in the gravitational field, their momentum stalled and then violently redirected. The Shadow-Stalker was forced to materialize, his eyes wide with a rare flash of shock as he was forced to parry his own redirected weapons.
"A miner's trick?" the assassin hissed, drawing two curved daggers forged from void-iron. "You're fast for a peasant, boy, but you're only at the 7th Layer. You cannot bridge the gap of two realms with raw strength alone!"
The Stalker moved with a velocity that exceeded human perception, appearing behind Qin Feng in the space between heartbeats. His void-iron daggers were aimed with lethal precision at the base of Qin Feng's skull, intended to sever the connection between his soul and his body.
But he hit nothing but a pocket of absolute-zero air.
Ye Chen had appeared in the gap, her Moon-Severing Blade catching the void-iron blades with a sound like shattering diamond. "You forgot your training, Stalker," she whispered, her voice a chilling promise in his ear. "He isn't fighting you alone. We are one."
[COMBINATION ART: Frozen Eclipse.]
Qin Feng didn't even have to look back. He spun on his heel, his fist wreathed in the violet lightning he had stolen from the Heavens. As Ye Chen's ice locked the assassin's feet into the bedrock, Qin Feng delivered a devastating blow directly to the man's sternum. The impact wasn't just physical; it was a spiritual detonation. The Eclipse Overlord Qi surged into the assassin's meridians, acting like a master-key that jammed every gear of his internal power.
The 9th Layer expert was sent hurtling back against the cave wall, his chest caved in and black blood spraying from his lips. He tried to summon his void-Qi to escape, but he found his internal world was a silent, frozen wasteland. He had been neutralized in less than ten moves.
Qin Feng walked toward him, the white-hot head of the Sunderer coming to rest against the man's throat. The heat sizzled against the assassin's flesh, a terrifying reminder of the power he had tried to extinguish.
"Ten years ago, I was a miner who couldn't even look a sect disciple in the eye without being kicked," Qin Feng said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Now, you're the one in the dirt, begging for air. Tell me: who sent you? And how many more are shadows are creeping up this mountain?"
The assassin looked up at the "peasant" and the "Empress," and for the first time in his long, blood-soaked career, he felt a primal, bone-chilling terror. He realized the Ninth Plateau hadn't just lost a prisoner; they had inadvertently forged a monster.
"You... you are already too late," the Stalker gasped, a bloody, defiant grin stretching across his face. "The Heavenly Selection Tournament begins in seven days on the Fourth Plateau. The Moon Sect has already placed your head as the grand prize. Every 'Genius' in the Central Continent is already sharpening their blades for you."
Qin Feng looked at Ye Chen, then back at the broken assassin. He didn't kill the man. Instead, he reached out and stripped the man's spatial ring and his cultivation base with a single, brutal pulse of the System's power.
"A tournament?" Qin Feng asked, a cold, hungry smile spreading across his face. "Perfect. I was wondering how I was going to find every traitor who hurt my wife in one place. It saves me the trouble of hunting them down one by one."
[DING! Quest Completed!] [EXP Gained: 80,000!] [New Target: The Heavenly Selection Tournament — Plateau Four Registration.]
"Ye Chen," Qin Feng said, looking down at the shimmering, golden lights of the city below them. "Let's go sign up. It's time the Central Continent learned how a 'penniless miner' pays his debts, with interest."