Lan Yue saw her fall.
But seeing was a distant, secondary sense. She felt it. Through the golden threads of their Soul Bond, she experienced the moment the Void beam struck Xue Lian as if it were her own flesh. It was not pain. Pain was a clean, sharp thing. This was an invasive, soul deep unmaking. A freezing, parasitic chill that began to drink the light and warmth from their connection, leaving behind a gnawing, absolute nothingness. The bond, which had been a symphony in her soul for a decade, screamed a single, discordant note of pure agony.
In that instant, the calm, strategic warrior vanished. The serene Saint was consumed, shattered, and reborn as something terrible and ancient.
The dormant might of a fallen deity, a power she had kept carefully restrained since her reincarnation, did not just surge it detonated. The air in the vast cistern grew heavy, the pressure dropping as if at the heart of a storm. A visible, incandescent aura of silver white light erupted from Lan Yue, cracking the flagstones beneath her feet. Her eyes, no longer the color of the night sky, became twin supernovas.
"GET. HER. OUT!" she screamed, her voice no longer her own, but a multi toned, divine command that resonated in the very bones of her allies and shook the foundations of the cistern. "NOW!"
Jax and Ren didn't need to be told twice. They had served their Empress for centuries and had never felt a power this absolute, this terrifying.
Lan Yue didn't wait for a response. She raised Nightfall Crescent high above her head. She was no longer a duelist executing a form; she was a celestial body gathering its stellar fire. The ambient spiritual energy of the entire Undercity, the faint light from the crystals in the ceiling, the very moisture in the air it was all drawn towards her, coalescing into the blade until it shone with a light more brilliant than the sun.
Feng's madness was, for the first time, eclipsed by a primal, instinctual terror. He stared at the woman before him, no longer seeing a righteous cultivator, but a divine executioner. "What... what are you?" he stammered, scrambling backward.
She did not strike. She simply unleashed her power.
'Final Form: Supernova.'
It was not a sword technique; it was a judgment. An event. A single, blinding, omnidirectional wave of pure, white light and celestial fire erupted from her, turning the vast, dark chamber into the heart of a newborn star. The sound was not an explosion, but an absolute, deafening silence as the celestial fire consumed all noise, all shadow, all thought. The heat was immense, the light so absolute it felt like a physical weight.
In the chaos of that single, brilliant second, Ren wove a cocoon of impenetrable darkness a sliver of the Netherworld's own shadow around the wounded Empress and the hulking form of Jax. It was a perfect, desperate gamble, using absolute darkness to shield them from absolute light. When the light faded a moment later, they were gone.
Lan Yue stood alone in the center of a circle of scorched, glowing, and cracking stone. Her breath came in ragged, painful gasps, her own life force dangerously depleted. The supernova had taken a terrible toll. Opposite her, Elder Feng was on his knees, his robes incinerated, his skin blistered and burned, howling in a mixture of pain and rage. He was alive, protected by the dark resilience of the Void artifact, but he was grievously wounded.
Before he could recover, Wei Chen, his face a mask of grim, suicidal resolve, charged him. This was not a duel for victory; it was an act of atonement. It was the only thing he had left to give. Their battle of traitors began anew, a personal, desperate clash to the death.
Lan Yue did not stay to watch. A wave of dizziness washed over her. Her duty was singular, absolute. She turned and vanished into the dark tunnels of the Undercavity, her senses locked onto the faint, fading, and agonizingly cold thread of her bond with Xue Lian.
She found them in a dark, forgotten passage, a place that smelled of stagnant water and old stone. Jax had Xue Lian cradled in his arms as if she were a fragile doll, his massive form trembling with a helpless rage. Ren stood beside them, her hands glowing with a dark, flickering energy as she desperately tried, and failed, to contain the creeping corruption.
Xue Lian's face was as pale as death, her breathing shallow and labored. The Void's corruption was spreading from her shoulder in a spiderweb of black, crystalline veins, a creeping death that was actively devouring her demonic energy.
Lan Yue rushed to her side, falling to her knees, her heart a block of ice in her chest. She took Xue Lian's hand. It was terrifyingly cold. She poured her own depleted celestial power into her, a desperate attempt to fight the encroaching darkness. It was like pouring water onto a chemical fire; the Void hissed and recoiled but continued its inexorable spread.
Xue Lian's eyes fluttered open, the brilliant amber now clouded with pain. It took all of her remaining will to focus on Lan Yue's face. Her first thought, even now, was not for herself. "The… crystal…" she whispered, her voice a strained, broken rasp. "Is it… safe?"
With a trembling hand, Lan Yue pulled the still glowing Memory Weaver from her robes. Its crystalline surface replayed the silent, damning images of Feng's confession. "It's safe," she said, her voice a low, deadly promise. "We have him. His words. His face. Everything."
She looked at the woman she loved, wounded and vulnerable in her arms, and then back down the dark tunnel from which they had fled. Her grief, her confusion, her fear it was all burned away in the heart of her supernova, leaving behind a cold, absolute, and terrifying certainty. The time for subtlety was over. The time for hiding was over. Feng and the lies of the righteous sects had taken a piece of her soul.
Now, she would take everything from them. The celestial light in her eyes, once serene as the moon, now banked into the hard, unforgiving glare of a dying star.
"Now," she said, her voice devoid of all warmth, a vow made to Xue Lian, to herself, and to the heavens that had watched them suffer. "I'm getting you home."