The world was woven from gentle shades of grey and the soft, percussive whisper of falling rain.

Dawn was still a hesitant promise on the eastern horizon, a faint, milky blush that had yet to muster the courage to bleed into the deep indigo of the receding night. Here, high in the remote spine of the Whispering Peaks, the air was thin and clean, rich with spiritual energy, and carrying the crisp, almost medicinal scent of ancient Spirit Pines and the cool, damp fragrance of stone that had known a thousand years of such mornings. A light, steady drizzle descended from a sky the color of polished slate, each droplet a tiny, transient jewel that clung to the dark needles of the pines, traced silver paths down the curved, moss-kissed tiles of the pagoda roofs, and beaded on the surface of meticulously raked sand gardens.

This was the Azure Cloud Sect, a bastion of tranquility carved into the very heart of the mountain. Everything here was a testament to age, to order, to a peace so profound it seemed to have seeped into the very bedrock. The wind, as it moved through the high mountain passes, played a gentle, mournful melody upon the bronze wind bells that hung from the eaves of the Grand Meditation Hall. Their chimes were a soft, resonant counterpoint to the quiet pitter-patter of the raindrops — a sound designed to soothe the spirit and guide the mind towards contemplation of the Dao.

Below, in the outer training courtyards, a few of the most diligent disciples were already awake, their movements slow and deliberate in working through their training taolu forms in the pre-dawn gloom. Two junior disciples, their faces young and earnest, practiced a basic sword form, their breath pluming in the cool air, their cheap iron practice swords whispering as they cut through the mist. They moved in a synchronized, meditative rhythm, their focus absolute, their world narrowed to the familiar sequence of stances, the feel of the worn leather grip in their hands, the pursuit of a perfection they might spend a lifetime chasing.

A bit further away, a senior disciple sat in perfect lotus posture on a rain-slicked stone platform. His eyes were closed, his spirit reaching out — not with force, but with a gentle invitation — to greet the day's first, purest wisps of Ling Qi from the coming dawn. For him, in this moment, there was no past, no future — only the serene, eternal now.

It was a scene of timeless, monastic peace. The quiet, inexorable turning of a great, ancient wheel.

And then, a shadow fell over it all.

It was not the passing of a cloud. It was a shadow both physical and spiritual: a sudden, oppressive weight of boundless malicious intent that seemed to suck the very warmth from the air and curdle the pure Ling Qi into something heavy and sour. High above the main gate, a lone figure hovered against the bruised, lightening sky, a stark, impossible silhouette against the dawn.

She was an imposing, muscular, seven-foot amazonian titan of muscle and sorrow. The light rain plastered strands of her practical, cropped black hair to her high cheekbones, her handsome face a mask of such profound, icy calm that it was far more terrifying than any overt expression of rage could ever be. Her slightly-unstable late-stage Foundation Establishment aura was not a controlled, disciplined sea of power — it was a chaotic, churning storm, a vortex of fury and anguish contained by the thinnest, most fragile shell of will. Her qi pulsed around her with her heartbeat, a visible distortion in the air, a silent scream that made the ambient aura of the mountain recoil in a kind of sympathetic terror.

The first to notice were the birds. The cheerful, melodic birdsong that had heralded the coming day faltered, then ceased altogether — replaced by an abrupt, unnatural silence that felt louder than any sound.

The second to notice was the senior outer disciple in meditation. His eyes snapped open, wide with a sudden, inexplicable terror as he felt the oppressive, alien spiritual pressure suddenly descend upon the mountain like a physical weight. The serene harmony he had been communing with was shattered, replaced by a dissonant, screaming static that made his Dantian ache and his meridians burn.

The third to notice were the two elite guards at the sect's main gate: they were disciples granted the honor of serving as the gate guardians, who had reached the very peak of the Qi Gathering realm. They looked up, their faces paling, their hands instinctively flying to the hilts of their swords, their mouths opening to shout a challenge that would never be voiced.

The figure in the air did not descend. She did not bother to speak. She simply… acted.

The very air around the gatehouse complex suddenly shimmered violently, as if the world itself were a tapestry and its threads were suddenly being pulled taut to the point of breaking. Then, from the empty sky, hundreds of phantom spear tips materialized—not as crude illusions, but as semi-solid constructs of pure, condensed Spear Intent, each one a perfect, shimmering replica of the deadly, imposing weapon strapped to the woman's back.

For a single breathtaking, terrible instant, they hung in place in a constellation of impending death, glowing with a cold, merciless light… before rapidly descending in a silent, merciless deluge.

The guards' defensive talismans flared — pathetic, momentary sparks of light that were snuffed out like fireflies in a hurricane. The massive, spirit iron-banded gates, which had withstood a century of wind, weather, and even the occasional spirit beast assault, were shredded into a million splinters in less than a single breath. The guards themselves became grotesque pincushions, their bodies lifted from the ground and torn asunder by the sheer force of a hundred simultaneous impacts; their dying screams swallowed by the worsening rainstorm before they could even begin to form.

Before the echoes of that brutal assault could even fade, she attacked again.

Her calloused hand swept before her in a practiced blur of motion, releasing a flurry of paper talismans into the air. They were Jiang Li's gifts, and each one was a masterpiece of intricate, potent seals that pulsed with a power far exceeding their humble medium.

A veritable storm of elemental fury erupted over the gatehouse and the training areas beyond.

Gouts of incandescent fire warred with lances of razor-sharp ice, turning the falling rain into a hissing, chaotic symphony of steam and crackling frost.

Rivers of molten lava flowed over stone, their heat causing the very rock to glow cherry-red.

Clouds of cloying, poisonous mist, the color of old bruises, swirled and mixed with arcs of hungry-looking, crackling lightning that danced between the shattered rooftops.

A large part of the entire Outer Complex, beginning with the proud symbol of the Sect's entrance, was utterly consumed in a rolling, ground-shaking cataclysm of destructive energies. The local attack alarms, which had just begun to blare their discordant clang, were silenced in a wave of fire and thunder.

As the lesser disciples in the outer courtyards stared in wide-eyed, uncomprehending horror at the roiling chaos where their gatehouse had once stood, the airborne cultivator made her last statement. She produced a single, final talisman.

And this one was different, being the personal hand-drawn work of a Talisman Grandmaster whose skill level surpassed all others. It was drawn not on paper, but on a thin, almost translucent sheet of spirit jade, its surface covered in a single, impossibly complex glyph that seemed to writhe with a barely-contained power.

High-grade talisman! One capable of unleashing energies an entire tier above the mid-grade ones she had been using gratuitously thus far.

She activated it without a second thought.

… And it unleashed a single, focused, perfectly silent beam of pure, white-hot, annihilating energy. The attack lanced downwards, sucking the very sound and light out of the air as it passed, leaving behind a momentary, perfect void.

The beam struck a tall, elegant pagoda near one of the peaks: a structure that had stood for over three hundred years as a beacon for traveling disciples returning from missions. The shields of defensive formations flared briefly before shattering like broken glass, and then, the building simply… vanished.

Stone and wood alike were atomized into nothingness, leaving behind only a perfectly circular, glassy crater in the ground that sizzled in the rain.

And the beam did not stop!

The attack continued its silent, inexorable path, carving a deep, smoking black scar into the flank of the mountain itself, sending a profound, groaning tremor through the very rock beneath its denizens' feet.

This was judgment. A declaration of war delivered with the cold, impartial fury of a god.

In the aftermath, a new, deeper silence fell over the mountain. The gentle birdsong, the calming chime of wind bells, the peaceful whisper of the rain—all of it was gone, replaced by a deafening, terrifying quiet, broken only by the distant, horrified screams that were just beginning to erupt from the outer pavilions.

Alarms blared again.

This time, the main source was the deep, resonant clang of the great bronze bell in the central sanctum, a sound of pure, panicked desperation. It was not the measured toll of a drill but a jagged, frantic rhythm that ripped through the mountain's fragile peace, a sound that spoke of invasion and the imminent, unthinkable end of the Sect.

Disciples poured from their simple, unadorned wooden dormitories like disturbed ants from a kicked hive, their faces a chaotic mixture of sleep-addled confusion and dawning, stark terror. They were young, most of them little more than boys and girls, their dreams of cultivation glory still clinging to them like the mountain mist, now rapidly curdling into a waking nightmare. The more senior disciples, their faces grim and pale, barked frantic, contradictory orders, trying to impose some semblance of their training, of order, onto the escalating chaos, their voices cracking with a fear they could not conceal.

The attacker descended from the sky, not with a gentle landing, but as a meteor strike. A dark star of vengeance. She hit the central training plaza with a ground-shaking impact that sent flagstones not just cracking, but rippling outwards and shattering into dust, a shockwave of displaced air and murderous intent radiating from her.

And she was wreathed in a gratuitous, almost obscene halo that illuminated the rain-slicked courtyard like a premature dawn. More than two dozen mid-grade defensive talismans, each one a complex work of art worth a small fortune, orbited her at impossible speeds. They were a shimmering, constantly shifting wall of force and golden light, interwoven with crackling arcs of lightning and swirling shields of ice, that effortlessly deflected the panicked, disorganized spray of attacks from the braver disciples—pathetic fire darts and weak wind blades that fizzled out against her shield like raindrops against a forge.

She did not walk through the courtyards; she flowed. She was a phantom, a blur of motion, a whirlwind of death that was everywhere at once. One moment she was a distant silhouette amidst the swirling mist, the next she was a terrifying, intimate presence, a whisper of displaced air and the scent of ozone.

For the disciples, it was a bloody, waking nightmare.

A young man clad in an inner disciple's robes, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, his hand slick with sweat on the hilt of his sword, saw her flicker into existence before him. He swung his sword with a desperate cry, a movement born of pure reflex, the finest technique his master had taught him — only to have the blade pass through a grey after-image that dissolved like smoke. A sudden, searing heat blossomed on his left flank. He looked down in confusion, a scream dying in his throat as a perfectly circular hole, its edges cauterized and glowing, appeared in his side, an unseen attack having already passed through him to strike a target beyond.

A group of senior disciples, their faces set with grim determination, managed to form an improvised formation wall, their own low-grade defensive talismans creating a flimsy, wavering barrier of interlocking light. It was a brave, disciplined, but utterly futile gesture. They were preparing to face a frontal assault, their eyes fixed on the chaos before them… But the attack came from above and behind them. A dozen lances of razor-sharp ice materialized in the empty air from mid-grade talismans thrown casually by a figure who was already fifty paces away, engaging another group. The shield wall collapsed with the wet, tearing sound of a dozen bodies being simultaneously impaled.

It was not a battle; it was a culling, executed with the terrifying, impartial efficiency of a predator moving with impunity through a herd of panicked sheep. While the younger outer disciples in their plain robes were mostly ignored, a gesture of contemptuous mercy, not a single figure wearing the more senior, embroidered robes of an inner disciple was spared. The attacker was a phantom flitting between terrified groups, her movements a deadly dance of destruction. As she moved, she unleashed a relentless storm of mid--grade offensive talismans, her hands a constant blur, scattering the priceless paper charms like a farmer sowing seeds — seeds that sprouted only death.

The air became a chaotic symphony of desperate screams and elemental destruction—the roar of fire, the crackle of ice, the shriek of wind, the groan of tortured earth. It soon became clear that the attacker intended to systematically, mercilessly, cleanse the mountain of all life, her expression a mask of cold, beautiful, and absolute sorrow. More often than not, anyone who saw her face up close was already dead before they even realized what had happened.

However, as the woman carved her bloody path toward the administrative padoga, a tremor ran through the very air. Three streaks of light—one a furious emerald green, one a solid, earthy brown, and one a crackling, incandescent blue—suddenly descended like wrathful meteors. They landed with a trio of ground-shaking impacts in the central training plaza, their combined auras — each of Peak Foundation Establishment power — were a tangible, crushing wave that momentarily halted the attacker's relentless advance.

The three remaining Elders of the Azure Cloud Sect had arrived!

The first was a wizened old man, his form almost lost within his flowing emerald robes, his long white beard whipped about by a personal vortex of wind that constantly swirled around him. His eyes were the piercing, unforgiving grey of a storm cloud.

The second, a stern-faced woman with arms as thick as small trees, hefted a massive warhammer whose head was a single, unadorned block of granite. The earth around her feet was cracked and buckled, a testament to the sheer weight of her Earth-aspected Qi.

The third was a silent, lean man whose body seemed to flicker in and out of focus, arcs of brilliant blue lightning dancing between his fingertips, the air around him thick with the smell of ozone.

The first elder spoke, his voice a cutting gale that sliced through the now-pouring rain. "I know not what grievance brings you to our doorstep, madwoman, but I swear upon the honor of my ancestors, you will not leave this mountain alive!"

The attacker, her advance finally halted, threw her head back and laughed. It was not a sound of mirth, but a sharp, broken, ugly thing, like shards of glass grinding together.

"Escape? Escape? Oh, such a thing was never the plan, old man," she spat, her voice dripping with a venom that seemed to poison the very air. "But… I do thank you for saving me the trouble of hunting all of you down individually."

The fight began in a burst of sudden and brutal violence. The Elders attacked as one, their movements a symphony of destruction honed by decades of training together. The Wind Dao elder created a disorienting, shrieking vortex around the attacker, filled with razor-sharp blades of air designed to flay flesh from bone. Simultaneously, the Earth Dao elder slammed her hammer into the ground, causing the flagstones beneath her target's feet to erupt into treacherous, grasping spikes of stone. And through it all, the Lightning elder became a blur of motion, his every strike a blindingly fast arc of pure, destructive energy.

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Individually, any one of them should have been at least a match for any single intruder at the Late Stage of the Foundation Establishment realm. Together, they should have been a formidable, almost insurmountable, force.

The Elders' initial, combined assault — a roaring, coordinated wave of wind, earth, and lightning qi — crashed against the attacker's orbiting defensive talismans. The shimmering shields flared brilliantly, held for a single, defiant instant, and then… shattered like brittle glass.

A flicker of grim triumph lit the Elders' eyes! They surged forward to press their advantage—

—only to stop dead, their faces masks of stunned disbelief.

Before the glittering dust of the shattered talismans had even settled, three layers of new ones — every bit as potent as the last — suddenly flared to life around their target, forming fresh, shimmering, and utterly unblemished mid-grade barriers. They watched in horror as she casually used rare, life-saving treasures worth a small fortune as disposable, single-use shields.

The muscled madwoman's counter-attack was a display of impressive skill combined with sheer, insane profligacy.

She didn't just use talismans either! The spear user began hurling low and mid-grade spirit artifacts from her storage rings as if they were common throwing stones.

An ornate gourd that spewed clouds of corrosive poison mist.

A flight of six poisoned, homing spirit daggers that flew at them with vicious speed before being contemptuously discarded.

A net woven from pure golden light that crackled and hissed as it sought to ensnare the Earth elder.

A spectral battle axe seemingly formed out of phantom fire that roared towards the Wind elder with deadly accuracy.

It was a constant, overwhelming, and mindbogglingly expensive barrage of treasures that forced three Peak Foundation Establishment experts into a desperate, chaotic defense. They were skilled. Powerful. Their techniques were refined over a century of cultivation! But… they lacked comparable talismans and artifacts of their own and were forced to bleed Qi at an alarming rate just to defend — their every technique was focused entirely on simply surviving the seemingly endless, demoralizing onslaught of deadly wealth directed towards them.

The battle devolved into a brutal ballet of attrition, and the attacking cultivator was a masterful, merciless choreographer. Her movements were a constant, flowing river of violence, her speed a terrifying weapon in itself. She never stayed still, a phantom flitting across the rain-slicked flagstones, her every action calculated to divide and conquer. Every blow and dodge was calculated to position her opponents at just the right (or wrong) angle for the next flowing attack.

A barrage of explosive fire talismans, thrown with seemingly casual disregard, forced the Wind elder to retreat, his protective vortex flickering violently as it absorbed the searing heat. This left the Lightning elder momentarily exposed. Before he could react, She was on him, her spear a blur of black light. A feint, a quick thrust that forced him to parry, leaving his flank open for a split second. In that instant, a poisoned dagger, thrown from her other hand, left a shallow but venomous gash on his arm. He hissed in pain and anger, his lightning Qi flaring to try to burn away the poison… but the momentary distraction had cost him dearly.

The Earth elder roared, bringing her massive hammer down in a ground-shaking arc, trying to crush the spear wielder where she stood. The latter didn't even bother to fully evade. A fresh defensive talisman flared to life, absorbing the brunt of the impact with a deafening CRACK — the shield flickering but leaving her unharmed. She used the shockwave of the impact to propel herself backwards, creating distance, her eyes already calculating her next move.

She is herding us, the Elders were beginning to realize.

Slowly but surely, using manual attacks and the seemingly endless supply of talismans and treasures, the three Foundation Establishment experts were being forced closer and closer together.

Compressing their defensive perimeter.

Limiting their options.

And making them vulnerable to powerful, large-scale attacks!

Poisoned, battered, bleeding Qi, and their spirits increasingly demoralized, the Elders finally saw the trap closing.

The Lightning elder, his face pale, the poison still a faint, sickly green in his veins, unleashed one final, desperate bolt of pure, concentrated lightning. It screamed across the courtyard, a blinding arc of power.

The attacker met it head-on. Her latest defensive talisman flared, held for a glorious, defiant instant, then exploded in a shower of harmless golden sparks. The residual energy washed over her, lighting up the gorgeous Azure-Scale Armor she was wearing — a veritable portable fortress of interlocking spirit materials and defensive formations whose aura flowed in an otherworldly, silvery script across its surface.

Predictably the weakened lightning technique did absolutely nothing in the way of actual damage — after all, it was facing off against an Armor artifact that was probably worth more spirit stones than the entire Sect currently possessed in its treasury.

The attacker smiled viciously, her eyes blazing with a cold, triumphant fire. She had them now! Exactly where she wanted them. Battered, exhausted, and clustered together.

A perfect target.

From the depths of one of her many, storage rings, she produced the final act of this tragedy. It was a single talisman of spirit jade, its surface covered in a glyph of an impossible, terrifying complexity.

The moment it appeared, the rain falling around her hand turned to hissing steam. The air itself suddenly growing thin and sharp.

The Wind elder's eyes widened in dawning horror. He was the most knowledgeable of the three in the more esoteric arts, and he recognized the structural principles of the glyph, if not its precise purpose.

"A high-grade talisman!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with terror. "This will be a Golden Core-level strike! FLY, YOU FOOLS!"

But it was too late.

There was no time to erect a new defensive formation, nor time enough to flee.

The talisman activated in less than a single breath, the world itself seeming to slow to a crawl as the Elders stared into the face of their approaching annihilation. A silent, terrifying gathering of energy sucked in the ambient Qi, the light warping around Jiang Yue's hand as if before a black hole.

At that exact moment, a vast, weary, but extremely powerful aura descended upon the battlefield like a falling mountain. A massive, semi-transparent hand formed of pure, golden Qi materialized from the heavens, appearing between the attacker and her intended victims. It was not just a simple construct; this was the Buddhist Palm — an intricate, living formation of interlocking golden runes, a manifestation of the Dao so profound that it felt as solid and absolute as the mountain itself.

The spear cultivator's attack struck the center of the golden palm. There was no sound, only a silent, blinding explosion of white light that bleached all color from the world. The golden hand shuddered violently, visible cracks appearing in its structure as if it were stressed porcelain. The strain of containing such a blow was immense, and even a Golden Core expert was clearly being forced to exert himself; a testament to the crafter -- Jiang Li's -- incredible talisman crafting skill.

Though the primary attack was nullified, a concussive shockwave of pure, untamed force erupted outwards. It slammed into the three battered and exhausted Elders, and they were sent tumbling through the air like broken dolls, their robes shredded, their bodies battered, coughing up blood as they crashed into the rubble of a nearby pavilion.

For the moment, they were alive — though immobilized and grievously wounded, their fighting spirit utterly broken.

The Sect Master, a man so ancient his face seemed carved from wrinkled parchment, appeared in the air, hovering between the attacking woman and his defeated subordinates. His expression was not one of anger, but of profound, soul-deep sadness.

And then, the true battle began.

The old man attacked, unleashing a genuine Golden Core-level technique. The very air grew thick and heavy, as if turned to syrup, a massive, oppressive gravitational field designed to slow and crush opponents in a wide area. The woman's incredible speed was hampered, her muscles straining against a force that felt like a mountain pressing down on her. Through that crushing pressure, a rain of a thousand golden needles, each a sliver of pure, condensed Qi, descended upon her.

Roaring in defiance, the woman abandoned all pretense of conserving resources. With a flick of her wrist, she activated one of the custom high-grade movement talismans.

The world seemed to warp around her.

In the instant before the gravitational field could fully lock her in place, she vanished, leaving behind only a shimmering after-image that was instantly shredded by the thousand golden needles.

The Sect Master's eyes widened fractionally. This level of speed was not something a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator should be capable of!

The woman reappeared a hundred paces away, already moving, a blur of violence against the rain-swept sky, and the battle became a chaotic, deadly game of tag across the breadth of the sect compound.

The Sect Master, his face a mask of grim determination, was a force of nature. He was a Peak Golden Core powerhouse, his Qi reserves an ocean to his opponent's lake, his every technique carrying with it the weight of a world. He unleashed massive, wide-area attacks — great crushing palms of golden Qi that flattened entire courtyards, swirling vortexes of golden needles that shredded through solid rock and tore ancient Spirit Pines from the earth. He was several times stronger, several times faster, his crystallized Qi immeasurably more potent.

But he was also quite old.

His stamina, a finite resource, was not what it once was.

And his Low-Grade Golden Core — a source of deep, private shame — meant that his techniques, while unquestionably powerful, lacked that certain speed, refinement, and… finesse of a true expert.

And as for his opponent? She was a creature of youth, of boundless stamina, and… of frankly ludicrous, seemingly inexhaustible wealth. She used high-grade movement talismans with the kind of casual profligacy that might have made even an Imperial Prince weep. She blinked and teleported, weaving through the Sect Master's overwhelming attacks, often evading his crushing blows by a hair's breadth. The two of them became blurs of light and shadow, their battle a path of absolute destruction.

They crashed through the Grand Mess Hall, the impact of their passing sending tables, chairs, and precious porcelain scattering like children's toys.

They tore through the Manuscript Pavilion, a repository of the sect's accumulated wisdom. A stray blast of the Sect Master's golden Qi ignited some of the ancient, valuable scrolls, centuries of knowledge turning to ash in an instant.

For every attack she couldn't dodge, a fresh high-grade defensive talisman would flare to life, a shimmering shield of interlocking runes that would manifest in the air and absorb the blow with a ground-shaking BOOM… And, as for those glancing blows that did get through… they were absorbed by her incredible armor.

And incredible may have been an understatement for what that armor was.

It was a masterpiece of a mid-grade artifact, a full suit of interlocking scales that shimmered with a faint, internal azure light reminiscent of a mythical Azure Dragon's celestial hide. Crafted not from a common spirit metal, but from an entirely unknown Qi alloy, refined using unknown and unparalleled techniques, each scale was perfectly fitted, flowing like iridescent, rainbow-colored moonlight over her powerful form. Complex, flowing silver formations were visibly, intricately etched across its entire surface – the majestic chest plate depicting a soaring dragon, the protective pauldrons shaped like fierce dragon heads, the sturdy greaves, the encompassing helmet – all pulsing constantly with a powerful, contained defensive aura so potent it made the very air around her feel heavy and -- somehow -- stable. The artifact radiated a palpable presence of ancient protection, of… invincibility, its power conveniently fueled not by the wearer's own Qi, but by the direct consumption of spirit stones.

The defensive artifact held up impressively well against even Golden Core level attacks — but the strain was immense! Already, spiderweb cracks were spreading across its azure scales, and the woman had to frequently tap the breastplate with one of her storage rings, a fresh flood of mid-grade spirit stones pouring into the armor's core formations with each touch, desperately keeping its defenses online as the existing fuel reserves were repeatedly turned to dust by the old man's relentless assaults.

She was visibly wounded now, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth, her body aching with the sheer strain of controlling such immense, borrowed powers.

But her relentless, high-speed assault; her constant, unpredictable teleportations; and the endless barrage of mid-grade artifacts and mid and high-grade talismans she continued to use… the pace of it all was all visibly wearing the old man down too.

The Sect Master, his breath coming in ragged, soul-deep gasps now, his ancient face etched with a weary resignation, raised a hand, a universal gesture calling for a parley. The golden Qi around him subsided, leaving him looking frail and terribly old as he floated above the rain-swept, ruined courtyard.

"Enough!" he said, his voice a hoarse rasp, heavy with the weight of centuries. He looked at the carnage, at the burning Manuscript Pavilion, at the bodies of his disciples lying broken in the rain, and a profound, soul-deep weariness seemed to settle over him.

"Your power… your talent… are beyond anything I have witnessed in my five hundred years. You fight with the ferocity of a cornered spirit beast and the stamina of a demon-possessed corpse puppet. You are no simple Foundation Establishment cultivator. This Venerable one's name is Yun Wuxian. Just who are you, young warrior?"

Jiang Yue floated lightly above the shattered roof tiles opposite him, the rain plastering her hair to her face, a trickle of blood a stark crimson line against her pale cheek. Her chest heaved with exertion, but her eyes blazed with an unquenchable, grief-stricken fire.

"My name… is Jiang Yue," she spat, the name a curse. "Of Yuhang City's Jiang Clan."

The Sect Master's ancient eyes widened slightly.

"Jiang…" He paused, a flicker of something — regret? understanding? — in his gaze. "And why did you decide to attack my Sect, Fellow Daoist Yue of the Jiang Clan?"

"Because your Sect murdered the man I was growing to love," Jiang Yue's voice was a low, broken thing, raw with a grief that was more terrible than any rage. "....as well as my favorite cousin. My little brother."

The old man was silent for a long moment, the only sound the patter of the rain on the rubble around them.

He nodded slowly, a gesture of profound, weary acceptance.

"A blood debt then," he murmured. "I understand. In this world of ours, there can be no other response. I would not even insult you by denying the charge."

He let out a long, shuddering sigh, looking away into the storm clouds above.

"Six months ago, Elder Yue Qingxue and her attendant, Lu Mian, vanished from Yuhang City's compound without a word. We have neither seen nor heard from them since."

His gaze became distant, lost in memory.

"Young Qingxue… was always the ambitious one. Too ambitious for her own good. I would not be surprised if she turned to the forbidden demonic arts in her pursuit of a powerful Golden Core. I know not where she is, or whether she is even still alive… But I swear this to you, upon the Sect's honor: if she ever dares return, she will surely be expelled from this Sect as an outlaw and a renegade! We can even discuss compensation to your Clan for the harm she caused, and the losses you have suffered."

He looked at her, his expression pleading.

"There is no reason for this… disagreement… to become a full-blown war to the death between our powers. You have surely spilled enough blood today to satisfy any honor debt."

Jiang Yue laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "I have culled your future generation! Are you truly willing to let it go? Just like that?"

"You have killed a handful of youths with mediocre talent," the Sect Master countered, his voice flat and pragmatic. "The Sect can always rebuild. Desperate, talented youths are a dime a dozen in these poor provinces. The loss is certainly regrettable, but far from catastrophic. As long as our Elders still live, the Sect endures. In a mere decade or two, we can yet rise to be even greater than we were before."

He met Yue's gaze with an earnest expression. "I appreciate the fact that you came alone. That you did not hire mercenaries to help you settle your grudge. That shows a rare righteousness. Integrity. A warrior's honor. But now… your point is made. Let our quarrels end here. Leave this mountain with your life while you still can."

For several fleeting heartbeats, Jiang Yue considered the offer.

The rain mingled with the sweat and blood on her face, a cool, cleansing sensation.

She looked at the devastation she had wrought — the burning library, the bodies of youths who had, only that morning, likely dreamed of glory. A ghost of her old self, the pragmatic explorer who weighed risks and rewards, who valued life, surfaced in the depths of her grief-stricken soul.

Was this not enough?

Had she not made her point?

Yun Wuxian's offer was reasonable. Logical. It offered an end to the bloodshed, a path back to a world that made sense.

But then she saw their faces, projected onto the canvas of her imagination by the torment of the last six months.

Little Li, his expression of shock and betrayal as Elder Yue Qingxue captured him for Heavens-only-knew what purposes, his life snuffed out before it had truly begun to blaze.

And Zhang Wei — that brave, honorable, utterly foolish man — his lifeblood staining the sky as he fell, sacrificing everything for a friendship he had only just discovered.

They hadn't been offered a truce.

They had likely been offered only treachery and a cold, merciless death.

The Sect Master's offer was an insult to their memory. A convenient, pragmatic sweeping-under-the-rug that would allow the world to forget they had ever existed. But she would never let that happen.

The flicker of hesitation in her eyes was extinguished, replaced by a glacial certainty. The weariness in her shoulders straightened into a column of unyielding iron. Her hand, which had relaxed slightly on the haft of her spear, now gripped it so tightly her knuckles turned white. The storm in her heart, which had momentarily calmed, began to rage anew, colder and more focused than ever before.

"No," Jiang Yue whispered, the word a promise of annihilation. "I appreciate the offer. But one of yours dared to murder people I care about. And I will not stop until this Sect, and every memory of it, has been wiped from existence."

Sect Master Yun Wuxian sighed again, the last of his hope seeming to die in his ancient eyes.

"Be reasonable, child," he urged, his voice heavy with a final, paternal warning. "Take a good, hard look at yourself! You cannot have many of those high-grade talismans left. Your formidable spirit armor artifact — for all of its admitted magnificence — is visibly cracking! You cannot possibly have enough spirit stones left to keep feeding its defensive formations. How many more of my attacks can it even take? One? Two? And what will you do to meet the third? The fourth? The fifth? Do you truly believe me so weak that I cannot even manage to beat you once you run out of your tricks? Do not throw your life away for an empty vengeance that has already been served!"

Jiang Yue, bleeding and panting, gave him a savage, broken grin that was all bloody teeth and fury.

"Oh, but you're wrong, old man. The one thing I don't lack—"

In a blur of motion that was almost too fast for the Sect Master's weary eyes to follow, the cracked, failing armor dissolved into motes of azure light. In its place, a brand new, pristine, and utterly flawless Azure Scale Armor materialized around Jiang Yue in a flash, its defensive aura pulsing with renewed, unyielding power. Simultaneously, six new high-grade talismans flared to life in rapid succession, orbiting her like vengeful stars — two shimmering with the spatial distortions of an immobilization array, and four others crackling with the raw, untamed power of fire, lightning, frost, and poison elements.

"—is wealth!" she snarled, her voice a promise of death.

The old Sect Master's eyes widened in sheer shock and horror.

…

And, as the two figures closed for their final, cataclysmic clash, a young disciple, hidden amongst the rubble of a collapsed pavilion, looked on with a face that was a mask of grief and cold, hard, all-consuming hatred.

Lin Feng had seen it all. And he would not forget.

Nor forgive.

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