Jiang Qi stared at Su Yan, uncomprehending. "You? Fight a Celestial?"
In all the legends, the Undying Immortal possessed no combat prowess. He was a specimen — caged, dissected, sold by the slice to nobles hungry for longevity. A creature of curiosity, not conflict.
"I don't remember my past," Su Yan said. He raised Heaven's Punishment, and its light filled the fish-world with merciless radiance. "But I know what I choose to be."
"Those people?" Jiang Qi gestured at the terrified villagers. "They have no value. No power. They're not worth dying for."
Su Yan smiled, bright and unshadowed. "I believe my heart is light. I cannot be so terrible a person."
Jiang Qi looked at that smile and felt something crack inside his chest. He knew the truth — the centuries of captivity, the butchery, the betrayal. This boy should have been ash and venom. Instead, he offered his life for strangers.
"If the elder insists on saving them," Jiang Qi said, bowing low, "this servant will serve to the death."
He rose and gathered the survivors. His ruined Primordial Spirit manifested above them, ancient and broken, yet still terrible to behold. "Your ancestors call! Climb the mulberry tree! Now!"
The villagers fled toward a sacred tree that rose thousands of zhang into the sky — a young Fusang, barely more than a sapling by the standards of its kind, yet vast enough to carry a nation.
Su Yan turned to Yuan Qi and the bell. "Let's go meet our guest."
"You're holding a divine sword," the bell said. "Not a winning ticket."
"I have experience."
"With what?"
"Being underestimated."
Su Yan shot upward through the tear in the sky. Outside, Longyuan rampaged among the titan fish, his hundred serpent-heads tearing through anything that moved. Blood rained across the gas giant's atmosphere.
Su Yan did not hesitate. He drove Heaven's Punishment toward the nearest serpent-neck, his voice ringing with the killing mantra of the Heavenly Dao.
The sword flashed. A head fell.
Longyuan roared. The remaining heads swiveled, multi-dimensional vision locking onto the speck of a boy darting between them. "Rebel Su Yan! You took my head at the Minor Mysterious Heaven! You made me relive that death a hundred times!"
"Was it this stroke?" Su Yan asked. His blade vanished — then reappeared, shearing through the maple-light where Longyuan's true neck should have been.
The Celestial recoiled in primal terror. That cut. He remembered that cut. The stroke that had ended his divinity and cast him into eternal exile.
* * *
Jiang Qi poured the last of his strength into the Fusang. Roots tore free from the fish's dying flesh. Branches wove a shield of living wood around the refugees.
"Hold on," he whispered. "We go home."
Behind him, light bloomed across the sky — Su Yan's sword, writing its answer to heaven in lines of blood and thunder.