Moonlit Ice Palace – Private Cryo-Wing, 09:17.
The chamber is a cathedral of ice and silence. Walls of living frost breathe slow clouds that swirl like galaxies. The cryo-bed beneath Liàn Xing is carved from a single block of ten-thousand-year profound ice; it should have frozen his blood solid the moment he lay down.
Instead, the ice is melting.
A thin ring of water spreads from his body, steam rising where silver starlight meets eternal winter.
Zhenxing floats above him in lazy circles, humming an ancient tune that makes the frost sing in harmony.
"You're glowing again, host. Like a budget supernova. Try not to vaporise the furniture; ice princess will bill us."
Liàn Xing opens his eyes. The ceiling is a dome of transparent ice showing the polluted sky far above—layers of ring-cities stacked like the nine heavens themselves. His new circuits have settled into steady constellations across his skin: Orion over his heart, Draco coiling down his spear arm.
He sits up. No pain. No fatigue. Only the low thrum of infinite starlight in his veins.
The door hisses open on rails of frost.
Lan Shuyin enters flanked by four silent guardians in white exo-robes, cryo-blades humming at their sides. She has changed into formal palace attire—layers of moon-white silk over reactive armor, the Moonlit Ice phoenix embroidered in living silver thread across her chest. The cracks around her eyes are gone. Her skin has a faint, healthy flush no one in the palace has seen in years.
She dismisses the guards with a flick of two fingers. They obey instantly.
"You slept five hours," she says. "The tribunal convenes in forty-three minutes. They have already voted 2–1 in favour of immediate dissection. My abstention bought us time, nothing more."
Liàn Xing stands. The melted ice runs off him like he's made of star-fire.
"And you?" he asks. "What do you vote?"
Lan Shuyin meets his gaze. For the first time the mask cracks—just a hairline fracture.
"I vote we burn the tribunal hall down and take the pieces we need from the ashes."
Zhenxing claps. "I like her. She's fun."
Before Liàn Xing can answer, every alarm in the cryo-wing screams at once.
Red warnings flash across the ice walls:
[UNIDENTIFIED CULTIVATOR BREACH – LEVEL 9 THREAT]
[Signature: Perfect Sword Dao Body – Zhao Shentian]
The far wall explodes inward in a perfect circle of molten gold.
A hover-bike screams through the breach, engines howling, trailing plasma fire. The rider is golden from hair to boots, white-gold hanfu whipping like battle standards. A living plasma sword the length of a man hovers at his shoulder, spinning lazily.
Zhao Shentian kills the engines mid-air, lets the bike drop twenty meters to the ice with a crash that should shatter the floor. It doesn't. The ice simply accepts the impact and reforms.
He steps off the wreckage grinning like a wolf who has finally cornered the moon.
"Found you," he announces to the room at large.
Lan Shuyin's killing intent drops the temperature another thirty degrees. Cryo-blades materialise in her hands—twin crescents of absolute zero.
" Heavenly Sword Court's golden child," she says, voice flat. "You just committed an act of war on Moonlit Ice territory."
Zhao ignores her completely. His eyes—pure molten gold—are locked on Liàn Xing.
"Red Lotus footage. Thirty-second clip. One thrust, no wind-up, erased a military-grade arm like it never existed." He laughs, delighted. "I felt it from Ring 3. The dao of the spear just woke up and screamed."
He draws a second plasma sword from thin air. Both blades ignite in perfect synchrony.
"Fight me. Right here. Right now. One strike. Winner takes the loser as rival for life. No interference."
Lan Shuyin steps forward, frost exploding outward in a wave. "This is my wing. You do not—"
Zhao finally glances at her. "Ice princess, your yin poison is stable for the first time in years. Thank him later. After I cut him a little."
Zhenxing floats between them all, hands raised like a referee.
"New rule! No killing. No maiming. First to draw blood wins bragging rights. Everyone else gets to watch the pretty lights."
Liàn Xing feels the Meteorfall Spear v0.0 unfold in his grip—black shaft threaded with flowing galaxies, tip shaped like a falling star.
He looks at Zhao Shentian and sees something he never expected: recognition.
Two monsters who have never met anyone worth fighting.
He nods once.
Zhao's grin widens until it threatens to split his face.
They move at the same instant.
Zhao becomes nine golden phantoms, each one swinging a different lethal arc—Heavenly Sword Court's Nine Phantoms Severing Karma.
Liàn Xing takes one step forward.
"Starlight Thrust."
A single straight line of silver cosmic light.
No flourish. No waste.
The nine phantoms shatter like golden glass.
The real Zhao barely parries with crossed blades. Plasma screams against star-metal. The shockwave flash-melts half the chamber walls and flash-freezes the rest in the same heartbeat.
They stand nose-to-nose, weapons locked, steam exploding between them.
Zhao's eyes are wild with joy.
"Again," he whispers.
Liàn Xing smiles back—small, sharp, real.
"Anytime."
Lan Shuyin watches them, cryo-blades still in hand, frost swirling like a living storm.
For one perfect second the three most dangerous teenagers in the Nine Heavens are all in the same room, and the universe holds its breath.
Then the tribunal alarms redline.
[VOID-NINE KILL ORDER OVERRIDDEN]
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: CELESTIAL SEED CONTAINMENT]
[ALL SECTS – CONVERGE]
Zhao lowers his swords first.
"Looks like playtime's over." He sheathes them with a flourish that turns the blades into golden fireflies orbiting his wrist. "But this isn't finished, Silver Ghost. Next time we go until one of us breaks."
He turns to Lan Shuyin. "You're keeping him alive. Good. I need him in one piece when I surpass him."
Then, to Liàn Xing:
"You're my rival now. No one else gets to kill you. Anyone tries, I cut them into pieces too small for the recyclers."
He throws something—a golden comm-beacon that hovers in mid-air.
"Call when you're ready for round two."
With that he leaps back through the hole he made, hover-bike reigniting mid-fall, and vanishes into the burning sky.
Lan Shuyin stares at the empty space for a long moment.
"Idiot sword brain," she mutters, but there is no venom in it.
She turns to Liàn Xing.
"The tribunal is coming. We have perhaps ten minutes before this wing is a crater."
Liàn Xing grips the spear tighter. Starlight flares brighter.
"Good," he says. "I'm done running."
Zhenxing laughs like breaking bells.
"That's the spirit, host. Let's go introduce the heavens to their new landlord."
In the distance, the combined fleets of three immortal sects blot out the sky.
The war for the Celestial Seed begins now.