The screams of the Azure Sparrow Sect's elders still echoed across the bloodied courtyard as Lin Moran stood atop Grand Elder Feng's crumpled body. The man's spine had snapped like kindling under his boot—a fitting throne for the Eclipse Sovereign's return. Disciples prostrated themselves in the mud, their foreheads pressed to shattered tiles still warm from Voidflame's kiss. Xia Qingyue's silver eyes burned holes into his back, but Zhuo Tianfeng did not turn. Sentiment had died with his last incarnation.
"Demonic filth!" A thunderous roar split the air as Elder Wu lunged from the crowd, his sword blazing with azure phoenix fire a technique stolen from the Frost Phoenix Palace archives. "You'll pay for Lin Wei's life!"
Moran sighed. Mortals never learned.
The Eclipse Codex stirred, its pages whispering secrets older than the stars themselves. Wu Jian, Age 278. Crippled left meridian from dual cultivation mishap. Fear: moths.
"Pathetic," Moran muttered. He flicked a finger.
Voidflame erupted not toward Elder Wu, but at a moth-eaten banner behind him—the sect's treasured "Heavenly Phoenix" relic. As the silken phoenix dissolved into ash, Wu froze mid-strike, his sword trembling.
"Y-You… how did you know?!"
Moran stepped over Grand Elder Feng's corpse. "Your whore of a concubine still laughs about it in the brothels of Redleaf City."
The blade clattered to the ground.
Before Wu could beg, a lilting voice cut through the tension. "So cruel, Sovereign~"
Bai Zhu'er emerged from the smoke, her nine tails reduced to eight ragged stumps. Slave chains hung broken around her wrists, their celestial steel links still dripping with her captors' blood. She knelt a parody of submission her vulpine eyes glinting with mischief older than the sect itself.
"You burned my cage," she purred, tracing a claw through the ash. "Should this humble fox repay you with… service?"
Moran's Voidflame-wreathed hand closed around her throat. The sect held its breath.
"Your ninth tail was severed during the Godfall Wars," he said, watching her pupils dilate. "Betray me, and the eighth becomes kindling."
A flicker of true fear crossed her face before she laughed—a sound like shattering ice. "Ah, but where's the fun in loyalty?"
The Eclipse Codex flared. Moran saw it then—the celestial brand on her soul, twin to the one that once bound his third disciple. Interesting.
He released her. "Fetch wine. The vintage buried beneath the Hall of Ancestors."
Her tails stilled. "That tomb was sealed for millennia. How could"
"You've grown slow, little fox." Moran turned toward the trembling crowd. "The wine or your heart. Choose."
As Bai Zhu'er melted into the shadows, Xia Qingyue finally stepped forward. Her sword gleamed with the Azure Sparrow's dying light.
"Was any of him left?" Her voice trembled—not from fear, but fury. "The boy who shared his rice… Did you devour him whole?"
Moran studied her. The moonlight in her eyes wasn't metaphorical—strands of the Moon Goddess's Dao threaded her meridians. So the Thousand Night Dynasty's hounds missed a prize.
"Lin Moran died the moment your elders poisoned his tea," he said, watching her flinch. "But if you crave sentiment…"
He snapped his fingers. The Voidflame coalesced into a dagger—an exact replica of the one she'd given Lin Moran on his fifteenth birthday.
"Strike true this time," he said, pressing the hilt into her palm. "Or kneel with the rest."
As Xia Qingyue's blade faltered, the ground trembled. Distant mountains cracked open, revealing a fleet of jade warships emblazoned with the All-Seeing Celestials' insignia—a flaming eye weeping blood.
Bai Zhu'er materialized at Moran's side, a dusty jug in hand. "Your wine, Sovereign." She grinned, fangs glinting. "Shall I poison their tea?"
Moran drank deeply. The vintage tasted of dead stars and forgotten promises.
"No." He crushed the jug. "Let them watch the skies burn."
Voidflame erupted—not from his hands, but from the ancient seals beneath the sect. The very ground became a furnace as the Eclipse Sovereign's laughter rolled across the burning land.
In the shadows, a spy from the Frost Phoenix Palace lowered her ice-mirror talisman. "The reports were true," Luo Xuewei whispered, her breath frosting with excitement. "The Eclipse has returned."