The tower roof became their world, a stage of shattered tiles and swirling energies under a oppressive, starless sky. Below, the fierce battle between the Phoenix Guard and Ye Fan's companions raged, a distant symphony of clashing steel and roaring elements. But here, atop the world, there was only mother and son, trapped in a dance of devastating power and profound sorrow.
Ye Fan, at the Half-Step Nascent Soul realm, was a tempest of raw, burgeoning divinity. His energy, honed in the secret realm and fueled by a righteous fury, was a blazing sun. Each movement of his Crimson Cloud Sword released techniques that would make elders gasp:
· "Falling Star Annihilation!" A meteor shower of condensed fire qi, each star burning with the purity of his resolve.
· "Nine Heavens Thunder Judgment!" Lei Gang's signature technique, but amplified by Ye Fan's deeper cultivation into a crashing dome of divine lightning.
· "Void-Severing Flash!" A technique of absolute sharpness, learned from a fragmentary jade slip in the secret realm, that attempted to cut the very space between him and his mother.
Su Wan, her power rooted in the fake Nascent Soul—a direct conduit to the Ancestor's will—fought with the cold, elegant precision of a master artisan. Her energy was not her own, but it was vast and terrifyingly refined. She was the Phoenix Empress, and her techniques were imperial decrees:
· She did not dodge the Falling Stars; she waved her fan and unleashed a "Phoenix Wing Vortex," a spiraling barrier of silver flames that consumed the meteors and spat out harmless ash.
· Against the thunder dome, she pointed a single finger, and a "Moonbeam Pillar" of concentrated Yin energy lanced down, piercing the lightning and grounding it with a sound like shattering glass.
· The Void-Severing Flash was met with a technique of exquisite complexity, "Thousand-Layer Phoenix Feather Ward." Dozens of ethereal, glowing feathers materialized and overlapped before her, each one deflecting a fraction of the spatial cut until it dissipated entirely.
For a dozen breaths, a hundred exchanges, the air crackled with their clashing techniques. It was a display that would be legend, a breathtaking tapestry of elemental fury and divine grace. Yet, Ye Fan was losing. His power was explosive and potent, but hers was an endless, deep ocean, constantly replenished from a source far beyond her. He was fighting not just his mother, but the reflected power of a Peak Soul Transformation expert.
"Stop this, Fan'er!" Su Wan's voice was strained, the Ancestor's programming warring with the gut-wrenching pain of fighting her own child. "Can you not see? Your power is wild, untamed! It is being stolen! That spirit in the jade uses you! She fears our reunion!"
The planted lies, delivered with a shred of genuine maternal distress, were poison to Ye Fan's concentration. He roared in frustration, his attacks becoming more ferocious, less precise. He was being outmaneuvered on every level—martial, spiritual, and emotional.
Seeing his agitation, a flicker of triumph crossed Su Wan's face—a expression that was both hers and the Ancestor's. "You leave me no choice, my son. I must show you the strength of the Dynasty you defy. I must show you the source of my power—the power that will one day be your brother's, and yours, if you would only kneel!"
She raised her arms to the heavens. The Lewd Crest on her navel, the mark of the Ancestor's claim, blazed with unholy light. The fake Nascent Soul within her dantian spun furiously, no longer mimicking but acting as a blazing beacon, a conduit.
Above the entire Netherwater City, the sky ripped open.
It was not a spatial tear. It was a manifestation of something far more profound: the collective Qi, the fortune, the very Luck of the Eternal Dragon Phoenix Dynasty.
From this rip in reality, a colossal head emerged. It was a dragon, but not one of flesh and blood. It was woven from shimmering strands of golden karma, swirling eddies of spiritual belief, and the coerced tributes of a subjugated land. Its eyes were twin pools of molten ambition, and its body, still mostly hidden in the rift, was vast enough to coil around a mountain range.
The Qi Luck Dragon of the Dynasty.
This was the Empress's trump card. The reason a mere fake Nascent Soul could command such immense power. She was the Dynasty's heart, and she could call upon its very soul to crush its enemies.
The Dragon opened its maw, and it did not roar. It sighed. A wave of palpable, existential pressure descended upon Ye Fan. It was the weight of an entire realm's forced order, its stifled will, its subjugated destiny. It was the opposite of the destiny arrays that had blessed Ye Fan; this was destiny chained and weaponized.
Ye Fan's knees buckled. The Crimson Cloud Sword's light guttered. His own nascent soul, still half-formed, trembled under the immense pressure. This was beyond technique. This was a force of cosmic inevitability.
"Fan'er!" The voice of Yao Chen, the beautiful master in the jade pendant, was sharp with alarm and strain. "This is... imperial karma! You cannot face it head-on! Your will must be purer than its coercion! Remember the secret realm! Remember the peak you stood upon when you comprehended your Dao!"
The Dragon's sigh intensified, seeking to erode his spirit, to make him accept defeat as inevitable.
But Yao Chen's words sparked a memory. A moment of absolute clarity atop a mountain in the secret realm, where he had understood his path was not one of domination, but of liberation. His will hardened. He wasn't fighting for power. He was fighting for his mother's soul. For Chu Ling's freedom. For the right of every cultivator in the land to choose their own fate.
His Half-Step Nascent Soul flared, not with greater power, but with purer resolve. A golden light, the color of true, unyielding will, erupted from him, pushing back against the oppressive golden-grey of the Luck Dragon.
He could not destroy the Dragon. It was too vast. But he could, for a moment, reject its claim on him.
He met his mother's gaze, his eyes now clear of rage, filled only with a heartbreaking love and determination.
"Mother," he said, his voice carrying over the Dragon's psychic sigh. "This isn't your power. It's his chains, made beautiful. I will break them. I will set you free. I promise."
For that one, fleeting instant, the Ancestor's programming faltered. The sight of her son, standing unbroken against the manifested will of an empire, his words a vow of liberation, struck a chord so deep within Su Wan that the silver fire in her eyes flickered.
And in that instant, Ye Fan moved. Not to attack her, but to retreat. He threw a glance at his companions below—a signal.
The battle was lost. But the war was not over. He had seen a crack in the Empress's armor. And he had survived the Dynasty's ultimate weapon.
As Luo Ying, with a final, desperate effort, tore open a temporary spatial rift, Ye Fan and his companions vanished into the void, leaving the Qi Luck Dragon to roar its frustration into the empty night, and the Phoenix Empress standing alone on her tower, one hand pressed to her chest where a mother's heart had, for a single second, beaten freely beneath the layers of control.