Two sword-light shuttles wove through the mountains of New Territory, catching sunlight in brilliant flashes. One shot upward, arcing across the sky, and landed on Yuan Qi's massive head.
The sword-qi dispersed. Veyon stood there, chest heaving, face flushed with exhilaration.
She was exhausted. First-time sword-flight drained enormously, and her qi reserves ran shallower than Su Yan's. She excelled at divine consciousness manipulation, but without deep qi, complex techniques couldn't be sustained.
Su Yan was about to land when the sword case on his back hummed. The blade within sang with eagerness, wanting to fly free.
He touched it with his divine consciousness. The sword-qi leaped from the case, merging with his own.
His vision went black. Blood drained from his head to his feet. He'd accelerated four or five times faster, leaving white vapor cones behind.
Yuan Qi and Veyon screamed as he shot toward a mountain face. Su Yan wrenched the sword-qi sideways. He scraped past the cliff, shearing boulders from its side.
His heart hammered. The sword-qi had protected him completely. Not a scratch.
"Senior Yuan Tiangang's sword case is incredible!" he exclaimed. "Why is his sword-qi so violent? Did he forge his own temper into the blade to keep himself calm?"
Yuan Qi couldn't see his own head. "Is my head still there? Bell, knock it so I can hear—okay, stop, I'm dizzy!"
Su Yan and Veyon discussed improvements, refining their sword-flight formula from experience. Before they knew it, sunset colored the sky. The carriage hadn't left New Territory. Zhou Qiyun seemed lost.
The divine dragons tired. Zhou Qiyun stopped to let them rest.
They halted beside a lake. Yuan Qi slithered into the water, hunting fish. Su Yan examined their surroundings.
A small hill stood alone, thirty or forty zhang high, covered in ancient trees with dragon-scale bark. Some seemed ten thousand years old.
Su Yan walked to the base. Stone statues sat in the branches—some man-sized, some fist-sized. Thousands of them covered the hill.
He stepped closer. Whispers filled his ears.
The bell tensed, ringing once to burn the sound from Su Yan's mind. "A-Yan, don't move! Remember what I suppressed at the bottom of that well? That thing is here!"
Su Yan remembered—the great eye in the well, the whispers that had nearly driven him mad.
"Not one," the bell whispered, terrified. "I sense thousands... Even at my peak, I couldn't withstand this..."
Su Yan tried to use his Heavenly Eye. The mirror in his Inner Realm shattered. An alien force invaded—evil yet sacred, ancient and impossibly powerful, crushing his divine consciousness.
In that instant, his Heavenly Eye broke. His consciousness nearly collapsed.
The bell descended into his Inner Realm, ringing continuously, blocking the invasion. Pure Yang Fire erupted, burning the alien force.
The bell rang through Su Yan's eyes, across his Spirit Bridge, through his Jade Pool, down the Twelve Towers of his spine. It purified his five organs.
Su Yan's mind swam. Veyon pressed a cool finger to his brow. His consciousness stabilized.
"What happened?" she asked.
"He nearly died," the bell said grimly. "What did you see, A-Yan?"
Su Yan looked at the hill, shaken. "I saw divine light from every statue. Each beam connected to the sky, linking another realm. Then... they were looking at me. From that other world."
*They?*
"The thing I suppressed besides the girl in the coffin—a fallen god from the celestial realm." The bell was silent. "Now that I'm weakened, it's probably escaped like she did."
A god. From the world of heavenly Dao.
Su Yan glanced at Zhou Qiyun. "Since the patriarch stopped here, it wasn't random. Does this connect to the Underworld Court?"
Night fell. The hill began to glow. Light like candles pierced the clouds, reaching toward another world.
"The Emperor's chronicle records: the Emperor and three servants reached Cangwu, entered the underworld through Ghost-Child Ridge." Zhou Qiyun stood behind them. "The Supreme Emperor entered the underworld here, found the Underworld Court, and negotiated the unity of divine and imperial authority. In his later years, he grew foolish. The underworld broke the treaty and intervened in the living world."
Zhou Qiyun walked toward the hill. "Today I follow the Supreme Emperor's path. You may accompany me."
Su Yan followed. "Patriarch Zhou, do you intend to renegotiate the treaty?"
"If I were emperor, I would. But I am not. The current emperor lives. As his subject, I cannot overreach—that would be treason." He paused. "I come for myself."
He made no secret of his selfishness.
They entered the growing mountain. The sky's candlelight intensified. Divine light flooded down from above, pouring into the statues.
The statues grew. Ten thousand zhang tall, divine light blazing, seated in trees rivaling the pagoda tree itself.
They sat on branch-tips like birds, expressionless, watching Su Yan and the others.
"These are divine projections!" The bell's voice trembled. "In my master's era, no such place existed. What happened to this land in three thousand years? Why did cultivators vanish? Why do so many gods form a hall?"
"The chronicle calls it the Hall of Gods. The road to the Underworld Court." Zhou Qiyun walked ahead. "Ordinary people cannot come here. Divine majesty would drive them mad. I protect you from their influence."
His power was unfathomable, resisting the mental invasion of ten thousand gods simultaneously.
Su Yan followed. Below the cliff path, countless skeletal corpses crawled upward—dead but unaware, driven by divine will, climbing toward treasures piled at the bottom.
Su Yan shuddered. *If this is the Hall of Gods, is the Plague God here? The one I whipped?*
A tree-top statue slowly turned its head. Triangular. It looked down at him.