Su Yan rose from the Fusang's branches, and Jiang Qi felt something he had never experienced in six thousand years — fear dressed as awe.
This was the creature from the Minor Mysterious Heaven's repeating nightmare. The thing that had killed him a hundred and four times without effort or malice, as casually as breathing. And now it looked out from Su Yan's eyes.
Yuan Qi scrambled from Su Yan's Inner Realm, trembling. He had seen this before — when Beichenzi unsealed a fragment of Su Yan's memory, the boy's back had erupted with impossible visions. Bronze peaks piercing heaven. Abysses swallowing the Great Dao. Trees that shaded stars. And something worse — something that made the ancient gods look like children.
Now those visions stirred again, half-awake, half-dreaming.
"Worthless," Su Yan said, glancing at the shattered treasure-array at his feet. He held Heaven's Punishment loosely, as one might hold a practice sword.
He flicked the blade. The bell's bent rim straightened with a sound like a sigh. Then Su Yan traced new characters across its bronze surface — bird-seal script, eight of them, sealing and binding.
The bell shrieked. "What did you write? These are my master's marks! You can't just — Qi, look at me! Am I still pure?"
"Relax," Yuan Qi said, squinting at the characters. "He wrote 'imprison, confine, seal, restrict.' Eight wards. Nothing to worry about."
"I am ruined! Three thousand years of pristine bronze, defiled! How will I face Li Xiaoke?"
Su Yan ignored the tantrum. He turned to face Longyuan's charging horde. The Celestial had shrunk to a mere thousand zhang — compact, furious, and still lethal beyond measure. A hundred serpent-mouths opened, each large enough to swallow a city.
One mouth closed around Su Yan. Teeth like mountain ranges ground together.
Then light erupted from within the serpent's neck. Blade-light spiraled through flesh and bone, cutting a path toward the canyon-wound at Longyuan's back. The Celestial's other heads turned and tore their wounded brother apart, trying to stop the intrusion — but too late. Su Yan emerged at the edge of the canyon, and his sword swept once.
Every serpent-neck gushed blood. Every head screamed and fell.
Su Yan plunged into the canyon. The wound was not a wound at all. It was a mouth — a vertical maw lined with teeth, the true face of the Celestial's hunger.
"At last," Longyuan's voice boomed from the flesh. "You walked into my stomach."
The mouth closed.
* * *
Jiang Qi stared at the sight, then shouted, "Fly! Now!"
He poured everything into the Fusang. The tree shot toward the stars, roots trailing, refugees weeping and praying.
Behind them, Longyuan shrank further and gave chase. Gaining.
Jiang Qi stopped. He turned to face the approaching god. His ruined Inner Realm flickered into existence behind him.
"Go on without me. Head that direction — you'll see Yuan Shou soon."
He was calculating his odds. Flee now, and he survived. The Celestial was wounded. Weakened. A full retreat was possible.
But the people on the tree had nothing. No cultivation. No power. No hope.
Jiang Qi tore open his robes. "I am the emperor's preceptor! I am absolute reason!"
He screamed. His Primordial Spirit rose, broken and bleeding, and stood at his back.
"Today — I am a man!"
He charged.
Longyuan laughed. "Another fool who dies for insects."
Then light erupted inside the Celestial's body. Not one blade-stroke but ten thousand, crosshatching through flesh and sacred bone. Longyuan's form bulged, distorted, and detonated.
Su Yan walked from the rain of god-blood, sword reversed in his grip. He handed the weapon to Jiang Qi.
"Am I bloody?"
Jiang Qi looked at him. Clean. Spotless. Smiling.
"When I fall unconscious," Su Yan whispered, "a man will come flying on a stone. Show him what I wrote on the bell."
He collapsed.
Jiang Qi caught him. And from the void, a young man in black robes with a red sash drifted past on a stone the size of a meditation cushion. A scar by his left eye flared crimson.
"Xu Fu," Jiang Qi called.