The moment Dou Yuemei's hands pressed against the ground, the entire roaring, raging tide of beasts — like a wave crashing backward against a cliff — came to an abrupt halt.
Every beast that could fly, including that flock of shrieking Yin-Yang Twin-Headed Eagles, flew about like a headless fly, or simply fled in panic into the distance.
Every beast that could not fly prostrated itself upon the ground, trembling ceaselessly.
It was fear from the most primal instinct of life — fear that even creatures without the slightest spark of intelligence could not resist.
Because... the mountains moved and the earth shook!
The entirety of Jade Balance towered into the clouds. Though not among the mightiest peaks of the land, it was vast enough.
And such a mountain, at this moment, from halfway up its slopes — more precisely, from the very point where Dou Yuemei's hands touched the rock — began to shake!
Boulders tumbled. Beasts shrieked in agony.
"Ah... ha!"
Dou Yuemei's brows slanted fiercely as an earthshaking surge of Dao essence burst from her.
Crack, crack! Rumble!
She rose slowly from her crouch, and lifted this Jade Balance from the middle of its slopes, splitting it into two!
Compared to Jade Balance, she was smaller than an ant.
Yet a single frail woman, with force enough to rip up a towering mountain, seemed a goddess made flesh.
This breathtaking sight would burn itself into the souls of countless onlookers for eternity!
...
"Mm."
Suddenly an aged sigh rang out. A single light exhalation, and it seemed to sigh into everyone's hearts at once.
"Enough. Let it end here."
That voice said so.
Boom!
Dou Yuemei's hands sprang apart, the earth quaked violently, and the mountain closed together again!
Terror filled her face as she looked up toward the summit of Jade Balance — the direction from which the voice had come.
Rising into the clouds, crowned by coiled beasts, there was someone on the summit of Jade Balance!
And a formidable one at that — so deep and unknowable, so terrible!
"I never imagined you could go this far on your own."
The voice repeated: "But let it end here."
Here was a terrible strong one beyond doubt — one who, without even showing himself, had stayed Dou Yuemei's hand in lifting the mountain, proving his invincibility.
But.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dou Yuemei shook off her first shock, her fists clenched tight, the seed of a divine skill in her fifth palace spinning madly: "And who in the nine hells do you think you are? That we go when you say go, and stop when you say stop?"
Sun Xiaoman walked up behind Dou Yuemei, the Mountain-Toppling Hammers in her grip.
Li Yun came up behind Dou Yuemei, Peach Branch held in reverse.
Zhao Tiehe came limping up behind Dou Yuemei.
Yang Xiong, Shen Nanqi, Huang Azhan, the cultivators of the Three Mountain City Academy, the city-army cultivators, even the cultivators who had come only for the bounty...
Everyone who still lived, everyone who could still fight, gathered silently to stand behind Dou Yuemei.
Even though the mysterious figure on the summit of Jade Balance was proving himself so mighty, so invincible.
This was a stance of... silent resolve!
"Mm!"
That aged voice sighed once more: "Some people spend their whole lives and still cannot touch even the fringe of a divine skill."
He lamented: "You had swum only halfway through your Sea of the Body, and already you sensed your seed of a divine skill. You have more potential than Sun Heng. What a pity..."
In his words, though the cultivators on Jade Balance were many, the only one who entered his eyes was Dou Yuemei alone.
No one could so much as see him, or know what he had done. Yet the spinning seed of a divine skill in Dou Yuemei's fifth palace simply... quieted, without a sound.
Dou Yuemei poured out all her strength against that formless pressure: "You, hiding on the mountaintop, keeping company with beasts, sitting by and watching them ravage the land — even sheltering them — what do you understand?
You have no idea of his strength!
No matter how strong you are, in my eyes you are only a weakling. You... you ancient fool!"
The mountain wind howled, carrying the echoes far away.
The voice fell silent for a moment, then spoke again.
"There are things you do not understand, and I do not fault you for it. Turn back now. Persisting brings no good."
"I am not looking to persist!" Dou Yuemei cried in anger: "But the countless cultivators of my Three Mountain City who died in battle, the countless common folk who were devoured... they will not agree!"
"This involves secrets of state. For now, you have no qualification to know them."
"No qualification?" Dou Yuemei, furious past all restraint, laughed aloud: "I am the lord of the Three Mountain City domain! The Jade Edict struck by the sovereign's own hand, the command seal forged by Zhuang Ting himself — the master of these mountains and rivers, the patriarch of every family in the Three Mountain City domain!
"Now you tell me that within this very domain of the Three Mountain City, there are secrets I have no qualification to know?"
"The State of Zhuang has three counties, and Clear River County holds thirteen cities. You are merely... the temporary steward of one of those thirteen cities — not its patriarch, not its master! The three thousand li of the State of Zhuang's mountains and rivers belong to a single master, and that is His Majesty the Sovereign! No more words. You will obey the command!"
This speech laid bare too much information. The most crucial point was that the presence of beast-kind upon Jade Balance was a thing condoned by the sovereign of the State of Zhuang.
Or perhaps more than merely condoned.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
Dou Yuemei laughed aloud — laughed until the tears ran freely down her face.
"My husband died on this mountain. My elder brother died on this mountain.
"My disciples, my friends, the ones I love, the ones who love me — they all died on this mountain.
"My daughter is barely fifteen, my son barely thirteen, and they both took to the field, fighting for Three Mountain City!
"Now you tell me that Three Mountain City does not belong to me, that it belongs to that sovereign who could not care less whether we live or die, who hides himself in the deep palace where no one sees him, looked down on from on high, doing only the Dao knows what... that rotten sovereign?"
"How dare you!" The owner of that aged voice seemed genuinely enraged. A horribly oppressive pressure descended from the mountaintop, and on the spot dozens of beasts bled from every orifice and died.
He held back in restraint; the pressure stopped at the boundary before Dou Yuemei.
But the whole of Jade Balance, with that one furious cry, fell into an extreme silence.
In that heart-chilling quiet, only Dou Yuemei's voice sounded — bleak and desolate: "From the day my man died, I have had no right to be timid."
There was a time when she, too, was a timid, fearful woman.
She would be afraid when she met a powerful enemy, would shrink back when faced with hardship, and would even scream at the sight of a mouse and hide in her husband's arms.
But after that man fell in battle, she could no longer afford any of it.
She had to raise her children, and carry an entire Three Mountain City on her shoulders.
Did she want to stand on the front lines swinging her fists? Did she want her voice to grow hoarse and her waist to thicken?
Who the hell would not rather live out quiet, gentle years, tending to flowers and grass?
But could she?
Dou Yuemei clenched her fists, gritted her teeth until they seemed about to shatter, and hurled herself ceaselessly against the force that bound her. Not for a single breath did she rest.
This time, the aged voice was silent for a long while. At last it said: "Come up."
As the surviving cultivators watched, Dou Yuemei walked alone toward the summit.
Under the press of some force, the beast tide parted silently into a road, and she walked on through it.
The heavy clouds at the edge of the sky, no one knew when, had been peeled open, revealing a sliver of the crescent moon. But soon, they closed over it once more.
The night is always dark.
In waiting, time seems unbearably long.
When Dou Yuemei's figure appeared in sight, every gaze fell upon her.
People hoped and longed, and feared and fretted.
She walked all the way down to the middle of the mountain, to the spot where she had lifted the peak — and only then did she seem to notice the crowd awaiting an answer.
She lifted her eyes and looked at them all, then turned and headed straight down the mountain.
"Disperse," she said.
Sun Xiaoman suddenly felt she wanted to weep, because she had suddenly realized that her beautiful, fierce-spirited mother, who had seemed she would never age... this time, truly seemed to have grown old.