The silence didn't last.
The Alliance General, his face still pressed into the dirt by the weight of existence, let out a strangled, rage-filled scream. The terror was being burned away by a cultivator's monumental pride. With a surge of desperate qi, he forced his head up an inch, veins bulging on his forehead.
"Who… are you?!" he snarled, blood flecking his lips. "Some fool in a clean robe? This is not your affair! Die!"
Liang Chen did not look at him. He had already dismissed him. His eyes were on the boy behind him.
He half-turned, just enough to see Liang Jian's face. The boy was pale, gripping his sword so tight his knuckles were white, staring at the back of the white-robed figure with a mixture of shock, awe, and deep, instinctual confusion.
Liang Chen's voice was calm, conversational, as if asking about the weather. "That third transition in the Verdant Zenith form. The pivot from 'Green Willow Bends' to 'Mountain Stands Firm.' Who corrected your footwork?"
Liang Jian's mouth opened. No sound came out. The question was so absurd, so specific, and landed in the midst of such cataclysm that his mind short-circuited.
The General saw the turned back. The opening. A manic glee filled his eyes. He poured every ounce of his Core Formation cultivation, his life force, his hatred, into one technique—the "Mountain-Sundering Earth-Dragon Strike." The ground erupted around him as a phantom dragon of rock and molten energy coalesced around his remaining dao blade, its maw wide enough to swallow the entire plaza. He thrust forward, aiming to obliterate the man in white and the boy behind him in one glorious, vengeful blast.
Liang Chen continued to look at Liang Jian, waiting for an answer.
The Earth-Dragon reached them. It was close enough that Liang Jian could feel the heat sear his eyebrows.
Liang Chen raised his right hand. Not a fist. Not a palm. Just his index finger, lifted slightly, as if to make a point.
He tapped the air.
There was no clash. No explosion.
Where his fingertip met the space in front of him, reality developed a flaw. A tiny, perfect point of absolute nothingness.
The Earth-Dragon, the raging qi, the serrated dao blade, and the General's outstretched arm—all of it flowed into that point like water down a drain. They unraveled from the outside in, transforming into streams of harmless, glittering light-motes before being siphoned into non-existence. It was silent. It was clean. In less than a heartbeat, the terrifying attack and the arm that wielded it were simply gone.
The General stared at the smooth, unmarked stump where his right shoulder ended. He opened his mouth to scream.
Before sound could emerge, the flaw in reality touched him.
He followed his technique. His body, his ornate armor, his core, his nascent soul—everything that was him—dissolved into a brief, beautiful shower of golden sparks. They shimmered for a moment in the frozen air, then winked out.
The strongest expert in the invading army had been erased by the weight of a single, disinterested finger.
The oppressive aura Liang Chen had been holding back, the one that had frozen the battlefield, now leaked.
It wasn't a blast. It was a slow, heavy exhalation of supreme authority.
Every cultivator in the valley below the Nascent Soul stage felt their knees give way. It was not a choice. It was a biological imperative, like a mouse before a descending hawk. Hundreds of Alliance soldiers and Verdant Sword disciples alike crumpled to the ground, not in worship, but in pure, animalistic incapacity. Their lungs forgot how to draw breath. Their hearts quailed.
The towering, crystal-powered siege ladders at the valley's mouth trembled, then cracked from top to bottom, collapsing into piles of inert, lifeless dust.
Liang Chen finally took a step forward. Then another. His footsteps on the bloody flagstones were the only sound in the world.
With each step, he spoke a quiet sentence. They were not commands. They were declarations. Amendments to the local laws of reality.
"No flying," he stated, his voice soft.
Every Alliance cultivator who had been hovering on swords or techniques, from Foundation Building experts to a few Golden Core captains, immediately dropped from the sky. They fell like stones, but the impact was gentle, harmless—the earth itself was forbidden from harming them by the same decree. They landed in undignified heaps, gasping.
He took another step.
"No violence," he murmured.
Every weapon held by a hostile hand—swords, spears, daggers, talismans, magical bows—shattered simultaneously with a sound like a thousand bells breaking. Shards of metal and wood fell around the helpless cultivators like metallic rain.
At the far edge of the plaza, two figures managed to remain standing, though they trembled violently. Two Nascent Soul Elders of the Alliance, their auras like guttering candles in a hurricane. Their ancient eyes were wide, pupils dilated with a terror that went beyond fear of death. It was the terror of recognition.
One of them, a woman with hair of living flame, stammered, her voice a dry rasp. "This… this presence… this authority… H-Heavenly… Emperor?"
The words, whispered with ultimate dread, rippled through the paralyzed silence.
Liang Chen stopped walking. He looked at them. Not with anger. With the mild disinterest of a gardener noticing two specific weeds.
"Leave," he said. The word was flat, final. "Find the one who leads you. Tell them the Verdant Sword Sect is under my protection. Its history is mine. Its future is mine. Its stones are mine."
He paused, letting the absolute ownership in the words sink into the fabric of the world.
"If you or any other return with hostile intent," he continued, his tone never changing, "your souls will not pass on. They will fuel the lanterns of my outer palace. You will burn, aware, for ten thousand years. Now. Go."
The decree took hold.
The crushing pressure lifted from the Alliance forces. Not as a mercy, but as a dismissal. A swept-floor is not under pressure. The instinct to flee, pure and primal, overwhelmed every other thought. They scrambled to their feet, not as an army, but as a stampede of terrified animals. They tripped over each other, abandoning everything, flowing out of the shattered gates and down the mountain paths in a screaming, chaotic river. Within sixty seconds, the only Alliance cultivators left in the valley were the two Nascent Soul Elders, who bowed so deeply their foreheads touched the ground, then vanished in streaks of panicked light.
Silence returned, thick and heavy, but now empty of malice. Filled only with awe.
Liang Chen turned.
He finally faced the survivors of the Verdant Sword Sect. Dozens of disciples and the remaining elders were picking themselves up slowly, their eyes glued to him with a reverence that bordered on terror. The gravely wounded Sect Master was being helped to his knees by an elder, tears of gratitude and shock cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "B-Benefactor… Heavenly Emperor… this unworthy one…"
Liang Chen's gaze passed over him. It passed over all of them.
It landed on her.
She stood at the top of the Grand Hall steps, where she had been directing the inner disciples' last stand. Her robes, simpler than the elders', were immaculate green silk, unmarred by blood or soot. Her black hair was swept up in a severe, elegant knot. Time had touched her only to add a sharp, dignified maturity to the stern beauty he remembered. Her posture was straight as a blade.
Xiao Ling.
Her eyes met his. There was no gratitude in them. No awe. No tears. Only a deep, complex, and utterly unreadable storm. A lifetime of discipline held her expression still, but in her eyes, he saw echoes of the past: the stern master, the shared struggle, the silent moments, and the final, unspoken goodbye centuries ago. He saw pride, resentment, sorrow, and a fierce, protective fire that had never gone out.
The silence between them stretched, becoming its own universe.
Around them, the entire sect held its breath, forgotten.
Liang Chen looked at her. He looked at the defiant, brilliant boy now standing uncertainly beside him, who shared his eyes, his jawline, his instinct for the sword.
The emotional bomb, long buried by centuries of conquest and celestial solitude, was now ticking loudly in the ruins of his first home.
He had ended a war with a finger. He had scattered an army with a word.
But facing the quiet storm in a single woman's eyes, the Heavenly Emperor felt, for the first time in a millennium, completely unprepared.