The plan was one of precision, not power. Feng Zhi's infiltration had yielded a critical vulnerability: a scheduled rotation of the Blackscale Guards at a remote spirit stone relay station on the edge of the Netherwater City. It was a seam in the Dynasty's armor, a momentary gap in their omnipresent surveillance. The target wasn't the station itself, but the encrypted command talisman used to authorize the rotation—a key that could be reverse-engineered to create a temporary flaw in the Citadel's perimeter alerts.
Under the cover of a moonless night, the air thick with the promise of rain, Ye Fan and his companions moved like wraiths. Lei Gang's knowledge of the terrain let them avoid the patrol routes. Luo Ying's spatial affinity masked their approach, bending the light and sound around them. They were a needle, poised to prick the giant.
But the giant was waiting.
As Luo Ying's fingers danced through the air, unraveling the first layer of the station's defensive formation, the night erupted.
Not with the station's guards. With something else.
From the shadows of the surrounding rocks, from the very earth itself, figures clad in not the standard obsidian of the Blackscale Guard, but in armor of crimson and gold emerged. Their helms were fashioned into the fearsome visage of phoenixes, and their aura was not one of disciplined menace, but of fanatical, burning zeal. They moved in perfect, silent unison, a hundred strong, their power—a fusion of their own cultivation and a borrowed wisp of divine Phoenix energy—forming a cage of crushing pressure around the rebels.
The Phoenix Guard. The Empress's personal retinue.
Standing atop the relay station's tower, her figure silhouetted against the faint glow of the city beyond, was Su Wan. The Phoenix Empress. She was not in her grand court robes, but in a lighter, lethal version of her battle armor, a masterwork of crimson spirit-metal and articulated gold. In her hand, she held not a spear, but a commander's fan, each leaf a sharpened blade of condensed moonlight.
Her eyes, glowing with silver fire, found Ye Fan in the darkness below. There was no recognition in them. Only the cold calculus of a ruler eradicating a pest.
"The Emperor foresaw your gambit," her voice rang out, clear and imperious, devoid of the warmth that had once sung him lullabies. "You seek to pick at the threads of our tapestry? We will burn the entire hand that dares to try."
The trap was sprung. Feng Zhi's intelligence had been a plant, a carefully laid piece of misinformation fed through the bureaucracy he had so confidently infiltrated.
"Mother!" The word was torn from Ye Fan's throat, raw and anguished, a reflex he couldn't suppress.
A flicker of something—a spasm of pain, a ghost in the machine—crossed Su Wan's face. It was gone in an instant, buried under the Ancestor's will and her own programmed identity. "The Empress does not acknowledge rebels as kin," she stated, her voice hardening. "Phoenix Guard. Cleanse this blight."
She snapped her fan shut.
The world exploded into motion and light.
The Phoenix Guard did not shout a battle cry. They hissed it, a sound like a furnace igniting. They moved not as soldiers, but as extensions of a single will. Blades of solidified fire lashed out, forming a net of incineration.
"Scatter!" Ye Fan roared, his own energy erupting. The Crimson Cloud Sword appeared in his hand, blazing with a righteous fury that pushed back against the oppressive Phoenix heat.
Lei Gang met a charge with a thunderous clap of his hands, a dome of lightning deflecting a volley of fire arrows. "They're faster than the Blackscales!" he grunted, the force of the impact driving him back a step.
Feng Zhi became a blur, his spatial dagger not attacking guards, but slicing at the formations they tried to erect, disrupting their coordination. "Their tactics are different! They don't defend; they just attack!"
Lin Xian'er's hands wove in the air, erecting barriers of healing light that sizzled and cracked under the relentless assault. She was trying to purify the fanatical energy, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean with a sieve.
Bai Wei and Elder Sister Lian fought back-to-back, their sword arts a dance of death. Bai Wei's sharpened sword intent cut through armor, while Lian's moonlight techniques sought to disrupt the spiritual link between the guards. But for every one they felled, two more stepped forward, their zeal unbroken.
Luo Ying was the key. While the others held the line, she was trying to tear a hole in the spatial lockdown the Guards had enacted. "I can't… it's reinforced with something… a higher power!" she cried, sweat beading on her forehead.
The battle was a brutal stalemate of shocking intensity. Ye Fan's group, empowered by their secret realm trials, were individually superior. But the Phoenix Guard fought with a suicidal, fanatical fervor, their power amplified by their connection to the Empress and through her, to the Ancestor. They were not trying to win; they were trying to exhaust, to overwhelm, to drown the rebels in sheer, relentless force.
Ye Fan carved a path through the flames, his eyes locked on the tower. He had to reach her. He had to make her see.
He burst through the final line of guards, leaping onto the tower roof, landing a dozen feet from his mother.
"Mother, please! It's me! It's Fan'er!" he pleaded, his sword lowering. "He's done something to you! You have to fight it!"
Su Wan looked down at him, her expression one of cold, regal disdain. But deep within, behind the silver fire in her eyes, a war was raging. The Ancestor's programming fought against the primal pull of a mother's soul.
"The only one who has done anything," she said, her voice trembling slightly, "is the witch who whispers in your ear. The parasite in the jade that turns a son against his mother."
The words, implanted by the Ancestor, struck Ye Fan like a physical blow. How could she know about Yao Chen?
His hesitation was all she needed. Her fan snapped open.
"I will free you from her, my son," Su Wan said, and this time, her voice held a terrifying mix of cold command and twisted maternal love. "Even if I have to break you first."
She attacked. Not with the full power of a Soul Transformation expert, but with the refined, precise fury of the Phoenix. Blades of moonlight shot from her fan, weaving a pattern of certain death.
Below, the battle raged. The decisive confrontation had begun, not as a war between armies, but as a heartbreaking duel between a mother and a son, on a tower under a starless sky, while the fate of the region hung in the balance. The Ancestor's most cruel design was unfolding perfectly.