The cave pulsed and rattled as the phasing continued. The walls breathed in and out, dancing between stone and light.
Mingyao and Mingyu felt their bodies grow lighter, their weight siphoned away. They rose steadily through the turbulence of the hot–cold phase shift, the surrounding air wrapped with heat and chill all at once. Suddenly, Mingyao's spirit treasure activated, glowing with a faint light. Within the cave, the air gathered into a small tornado, drilling a hole straight through the roof.
"Protocol... harmonization," The words resounded deep within mingyao's mind
Mingyao gritted her teeth, trying to anchor herself. She could feel the familiar currents of energy within—her spirit channels shifting between heaviness and lightness. Drawing on instinct, she forced her spirit into heaviness mode, grounding her drifting form. The pull of weight returned, her floating spirit beginning to stabilize.
But Mingyu…
He kept rising, carried away by an invisible gale. His body spun, panic streaking his face. The situation was unraveling fast.
Mingyao's body couldn't decide what to feel—one moment she was burning up, the next she was freezing. Fire and ice running through her veins, warring beneath her skin. Her bond with Mingyu flared up, tightening almost painfully. It felt like having a nonfunctioning limb —still part of her, but no longer something she could control. She feared she would be swept away with him as a result.
Amid the chaos and through the haze of pain, a thought struck her.
If he's part of me... then my treasure's power should reach him too.
She closed her eyes, tracing the faint spiritual connection between them. Her own energy rippled—silver threads of light spreading from her chest and along that link. The spirit armor's essence pulsed outward, but a faint resistance met her attempt.
"Open yourself to the energy!" she shouted, her voice cracking.
Mingyu's eyes widened, then he nodded, surrendering his resistance.
Instantly, the connection flared. The energy shot through him, wrapping his body in the same pale luminescence. The violent pull lessened—he began to sink, his weight returning.
A shaky smile touched Mingyao's lips. "It's working…"
It felt like they were finally getting somewhere. The huge hole above them, torn open by the still-raging tornado, no longer seemed like such a problem. They could deal with the rest once their spiritual energy was completely drained. For now, they just had to hold on and wait.
But just as Mingyao was starting to feel comfortable, her spirit treasure suddenly shifted. Almost instantly, her body followed—growing colder and colder by the second. Across from her, Mingyu's body began to emit steam as heat rolled off him in waves. Then, suddenly, a golden light flared on his forehead, and a mark started to form there.
"You… you have something glowing on your forehead!" Mingyu cried out.
"So do you!" Mingyao's voice trembled, eyes wide.
Then Mingyao's body began to rise, growing lighter and lighter as the tight string connecting her to Mingyu stretched thinner the higher she went.
She kept rising, watching Mingyu's figure grow smaller and smaller below. Soon, she passed through the human-sized hole carved out by the whirlwind. Outside, thunder cracked through the air as lightning flashed around her, bright and wild.
The sky above was dark, with only a single purple moon casting its glow across the horizon. Lightning flickered from nowhere, weaving through the heavy clouds that churned overhead.
Mingyao instinctively looked down as lightning thundered around her.
Her eyes fell on the surging sea below, churning violently around the cave. But the higher she rose, the calmer the waters seemed to become. She couldn't tell if it was just the distance softening her view, or if her weakening link with Mingyu was somehow calming the storm. Either way, her body's temperature kept dropping—she felt cold to the touch, like a corpse rather than a living being.
Then she heard a low, resonant sound—a pulse-like call. Whooom... Each time the wave of sound reached her, she could see ripples forming in the air, like waves across the sea. At first, it was faint and hard to make out, but the pulse kept growing stronger and clearer until she could finally recognize it—the call of a whale.
The sound deepened, slicing through the purple light until the world around her turned pitch black, a sea of stars blanketing the void. They looked like scars in space itself, struggling to close, yet each new wave of the call tore them open again.
By now, the lightning around her had stopped, and her ascent had slowed. She realized she was standing—though there was nothing beneath her feet. An invisible platform seemed to hold her weight.
Slowly, dark clouds gathered around her, swallowing the last traces of the purple light of the nether realm. Then, a burst of brilliance like sunlight flared beneath her feet, and the scene shifted into something dreamlike—she was standing above the clouds at dawn.
Mingyao's blue hanfu shimmered with the radiance of the moon, as if she were wrapped in its very light. Her skin was cloaked with the night sky itself, dotted with a sea of stars. Her eyes had turned from brown to pure orbs of moonlight, and her hair was pinned up by a delicate ornament shaped from seven stars.
She no longer looked human, but something far beyond—a mythical, godlike being.
Mingyao looked around, and a whale made of golden light drifted into her vision. She raised her hands to shield herself from the brilliance—then froze at the sight of her own skin. Darkness rippled beneath it, trying to spill free and swallow everything nearby. Her mind couldn't grasp what was happening; everything felt distant, silent, impossibly cold. It was like activating Absolute Stillness—only hundreds of thousands of times stronger.
A wave of exhaustion crashed over her. Her body gave out, and she began to fall. She reached out, trying to connect to anything, anyone—but there was nothing. She was plummeting toward the vast, open purple sea, the island nowhere in sight.
As she plummeted, the golden whale dove after her, desperate. It missed her several times, then finally caught the edge of her robes between its luminous teeth, halting her descent.
------
In the cave, Mingyu watched the brilliance that had been creeping up his skin slowly fade away. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do now.
The anchor he had relied on for so long had vanished—just like that. He didn't know how to survive without Mingyao. All his life, he had existed as a wisp within her—from a faint spark of life that could do nothing, to what he now was: a whole soul, if he could even call himself that.
Yes, he had harbored some resentment toward his elder twin sister. But now, alone—free from her control, her dominance over their shared body, her commanding presence—he felt something strange. Was this freedom? he wondered. Yet even as the thought surfaced, another feeling crept in: emptiness.
What was he supposed to do now? Search for his sister? Wait for the Nether Spirit?
He felt lost. His sister had shaped nearly every part of his existence, directly or indirectly, and now that she was gone, he didn't know who he was—only the mischievous "ghost sister" who used to appear in Mingyao's dreams when she was still Mingyu.
The area suddenly trembled, as if the whole cave were settling back into place. Mingyu felt the vibrations but didn't think much of them.
He looked around, taking in the aftermath of what had just happened. The air still hummed with traces of the potent energy waves that had swept through, though most of the chaos had finally calmed. The spring water where the two had been cultivating was now frozen solid, while the walls were blackened with scorch marks and streaked with icy trails. Rubble lay scattered everywhere—it was a miracle nothing had collapsed on them during the ordeal.
Mingyu glanced down at the faint spiritual thread extending from his body.
"She's still alive…" he murmured. The words were fragile
Then another thought struck—a darker one. If she dies… will I vanish too?
He walked toward the frozen spring. The rough ice mirrored his faint reflection—pale skin, disheveled hair, and a dim golden symbol glowing on his forehead. It wasn't silver like Mingyao's, but gold—softer, weaker, its light flickering at the edges as if struggling to stay alive. He stared at it thoughtfully. Was it fading because we're so far apart?
A soft stirring rippled through the air, and a single midnight-black feather drifted down from above.
"San Ming Yazu?" he whispered.
He raised his head, just as a sudden blast of wind tore through the cave. The force flung him backward toward the wall—but before he could collide, a strong hand caught him, halting his fall.
It was the crow, San Ming Yazu, in his human form—a tall, striking man with sharp features and an unsettling calm.
"What happened here? And where is the mortal girl?" the creature asked, his voice soft yet carrying a deep, resonant weight.
"I—" Mingyu hesitated, his throat dry. "I don't know."
Yazu's gaze swept over the cavern. His expression hardened as he took in the devastation—the rubble, the scorch marks, the frozen spring. His eyes lingered briefly on a massive tree in the corner, untouched by the destruction. Relief flickered across his face before his attention returned to the chaos.
Moonlight spilled through the gaping hole above, bathing the cave in pale violet hues. Yazu inhaled deeply, his eyes narrowing as if catching the scent of something rare.
"Divinity…" The word slipped out before Yazu even realized it. He turned to Mingyu, eyes narrowing as he caught a faint glimmer fading from the boy's forehead.
In a blink, he was right in front of him. His hands—surprisingly gentle—grabbed Mingyu's face, tracing the spot where the mark had been. But before he could make sense of it, it was gone.
He stayed there for a moment, silent, trying to figure out what he'd just seen. Mingyu had no idea what was going on, only that the man's eyes looked way too serious for comfort. Another tremor shook the cave then, weaker this time, just enough to send a few pebbles rolling.
"That was a Law's imprint, wasn't it?" Yazu said finally, letting go of him.
"Law's imprint?" Mingyu echoed, frowning, but Yazu wasn't listening. He rubbed his chin, eyes scanning the cave as if looking for invisible threads in the air.
"That would explain the abnormalities here… Was this the interference of a higher law? But which one?" he muttered, half to himself. "Lady Bailuo holds a second-tier Law, a Greater Law, an Authority. The only way someone could mess with this domain — her domain — would be if they commanded three or more Greater Laws… or a First-Tier one. A Grand Law."
His voice trailed off as he tried to piece everything together, thoughts spilling out faster than he could organize them.
Mingyu had no idea what the man was talking about. He understood the words on their own, but when strung together, they made no sense to him at all.
"Excuse me, Mr. Guardian!" Mingyu called out to the crow spirit, but there was no response. He tried again, louder this time—only for the man's eyes to suddenly lock onto him.
"What Law do you hold?"
Mingyu blinked, caught off guard, unsure how to even respond.
"What Law do you hold," the crow repeated, this time with authority in his voice. The pressure behind those words hit Mingyu like a physical force, making his knees tremble.
"I—I don't know," he stammered, gathering what little courage he had left. "I don't even know what a Law is."
"You don't know what a Law is?" Yazu asked skeptical.
"I truly don't," Mingyu said, as honestly as he could.
The crow studied him for a moment before finally speaking. "Tell me everything that happened."
Mingyu immediately began recounting everything—from their breakthrough to Qi Refining Tier 4, to the strange events that followed. Yazu listened quietly, not interrupting once. But when Mingyu mentioned the strange silver symbol he'd seen on Mingyao's forehead, the crow's calm shattered. His gaze sharpened.
"Can you remember what it looked like?" he asked at once.
Mingyu froze. "No," he said quickly, though it wasn't true. He could still picture it clearly—but seeing how serious the crow had become, he didn't dare tell him. What if that mark was something dangerous? What if, by revealing it, the crow decided he was better off dead?
The crow went quiet for a moment, like he was thinking something over. Then his eyes drifted to the frozen spring.
"I see… the divinity within the spring must have stirred the Law buried deep within you," he murmured. "If I use the spring again, I might awaken it—and catch a glimpse of your Dao mark."
Mingyu stiffened immediately. Before he could even react, the crow summoned flames that melted the frozen spring in an instant. He reached for Mingyu, ready to drag him into the pool, when suddenly…
A deep, booming sound like a war drum rolled through the cave. Golden light shot down and wrapped around the crow—a summon.
"We'll finish this after the convocation in the Pale Court," Yazu said, grabbing Mingyu's hand. In one smooth motion, wings spread wide, and they were off, flying into the air.