Beichenzi's scalp prickled. "Su Yan! This is life or death! If you can't fight, we all die!"
He didn't know what breaking the seal would unleash. He'd only inherited this duty from predecessors who'd grown too old. Legends spoke of the sealed boy's power, but legends were wine-soaked lies told by dead men.
Lightning struck Su Yan's crown. Again. Again.
Behind him, his Xiyi Domain manifested — not the humble realm of a Gate-Breaking cultivator, but something vast. Bronze peaks rose from shadowed depths. A cosmic tree swallowed stars. Beasts of impossible size prowled nebulae. Each thunderbolt made the visions more solid, more *real*.
The feather-clad demon hesitated. Then it charged, splitting into dozens of identical copies.
Su Yan's axe left his belt.
One swing. The copies vanished. The real demon's forehead split open, the axe buried to its cheek,煞气 shattering the thing's consciousness. The immortal corpse spasmed, a black shadow nearly tearing free from the flesh.
*How?* Beichenzi thought, frozen in horror. *He's still Gate-Breaking third heaven. His cultivation hasn't changed at all.*
But Su Yan moved like water knowing the shape of stone. Every strike found the gap between muscle and bone, the weakness in divine armor, the moment before defense became reaction. He wasn't stronger than the demon. He was simply, impossibly, better.
The demon roared and swelled, muscles ballooning, trying to overwhelm him with raw mass. Su Yan's left hand formed a seal — a bronze mountain peak compressed to palm-size — and pressed it to the demon's chest.
The膨胀 flesh imploded. Bones cracked like dry twigs. The corpse exploded into a thousand squirming pieces, and from the ruin a writhing black mist shot toward Su Yan's brow.
He caught it.
The black qi hammered against his fingers, desperate, ancient, *terrified*. Su Yan's face showed nothing. His fist closed. Fire erupted from his palm, and the mist burned to ash.
But the lightning didn't stop.
The vortex above widened, pouring more power into Su Yan's manifested realm. Beichenzi understood with sudden, soul-deep fear: the demon hadn't been the target.
He was.
Beichenzi's fingertip ignited with true fire, reaching for the altar's extinguished incense. If he could rekindle it before —
Su Yan's palm slapped down. The flame died. Beichenzi's ribs shattered. He flew backward, crashing through the paulownia's splintered stump, rolling to a stop with blood in his throat.
"I won't let you escape!" Beichenzi screamed.
His chessboard fell from the sky, a realm of green mist. His Primordial Spirit manifested, one finger reaching like a mountain toward Su Yan —
The axe rose. The finger fell, severed.
Su Yan's blade danced through the chessboard, and Beichenzi watched his fingers drop away one by one, each lost to a strike that used his own masterpiece against him. He collapsed to his knees, his spirit mirroring him, weeping blood.
The axe turned for his neck.
Red light flashed. The lady in red caught Beichenzi and his spirit, rolling them clear as the blade split earth where he'd knelt.
"Your yellow robe led us here," she gasped. "Not too late."
Beichenzi coughed blood. "Careful. He's not human. He's a monster..."
Su Yan spun. The sorrowful elder stood at the altar, a second talisman in one hand, Pure Yang Fire in the other, reaching for the incense.
Su Yan's fingers flicked. Ten beams of light pierced the elder's mirror defenses, punched through his body. The elder fell from the altar, ten holes smoking in his chest.
Su Yan leaped for the incense —
The red lady wrapped her arms around his waist. The incense glowed. Smoke curled into the talismans. Their characters lit up, darkening, sealing.
"No!" Su Yan's arms flared, breaking her hold, snapping her bones. He reached the altar.
The sorrowful elder crawled into his path, and Su Yan's hand punched through his chest, closing around his heart.
The elder looked up, prepared for death.
Su Yan's fingers loosened. His eyes went blank — the fire fading, memories sinking beneath dust, centuries of experience burying themselves in shadow.
Behind him, the incense burned steady. The talismans drank the smoke.
The seal held.
Su Yan sank to his knees, clutching his head. "Where... who am I?"
The three elders stared at each other, broken and bleeding and grinning like fools.
"Peace," Beichenzi whispered. "For a few more years, at least."
None of them noticed the lightning-shaped mark on Su Yan's brow slowly dimming, hiding beneath his skin, waiting.