Neither Xiyan nor Taohua saw the chaos coming during those quiet moments before the calm shattered and mayhem took its place in the dimness of Wujing Yuan's first layer. It was as if a silent order had passed between the Demons, and before they knew it, those wicked things charged at them from all directions, without warning.
They stood back to back and fended off wave after wave of growling lower-rank Demons, but keeping up with the rate at which the Demons came at them became increasingly harder for each passing second. Standing their ground required as much will as it did strength. Still, they fought on, moving as though they were one entity, shifting to cover each other's backs.
Despite the rising weariness as well as confusion clouding their minds at how abruptly their situation had changed for the worse, they countered each attack without catching their breaths, not until a flicker of shadow moved faster and swifter than the rest and took them by surprise. A lower-ranked devil burst from the shadows in the rocks, slipping forth like an invisible shadow, merging with the surrounding darkness.
Xiyan spun too late to notice it charging at her, not before it was too late to rue the day, and she steadied herself for the deadly strike with the pride of a warrior who bowed to neither death nor fate. Although she had long severed her ties to Yueluo Gu and the Tuos, she could not deny that they had shaped her into who she had become today: a survivor who would rather meet death on the battlefield than live as a laughingstock among Mortals.
But the deadly strike never came.
Taohua threw himself between her and the devil and caught the blow full-on. The impact hurled him backwards, as it did the devil that was hurled off course, and when he crashed against the blackened stone walls, he slumped, bleeding from a gash across his chest – unable to move without groaning from the stinging pain.
Rushing towards him, Xiyan's expression twisted into something between disbelief and anger, but no words escaped her lips as she watched him struggle against the pain. Her hardened expression then shifted, replaced by the softness or perhaps the fear of losing someone she had known since she was wet behind the ears.
Taohua managed a weak smile as he caught the hint of concern in her misty eyes, as though he wanted to assure her that he was fine, that he was still in one piece and not severely hurt despite the crippling pain. But this smile only caused the flicker of concern in her eyes to fade and give way to anger once more.
But before she could berate him for doing such a reckless thing, before the breath had even left her lips, the air around them darkened – the sounds hushing to an eerie silence as if some force had descended upon the first level of the abyss in mere seconds.
The Demons suddenly halted their advance and began to retreat, slipping away with a strange pull as if they were responding to a call that neither she nor Taohua had yet to catch or hear for themselves.
Xiyan blinked, stunned, and slowly rose from where she had crouched beside the injured commander. Her eyes grew wider by the second as she observed the Demons descend deeper into the lower levels with unprecedented speed. Still, her hand hovered over her sword, unsure whether to sheath it or brace for another wave of attack. What exactly was going on?
She turned to Taohua, who was struggling to rise too, grimacing through clenched teeth. But before she could voice her unease, two figures emerged as if from thin air, figures she knew at once, and a soft sigh of relief escaped her lips as she finally allowed herself to sheath the blade.
From the haze descended Wei Lan and Guo Lan. Their robes were torn and blackened with soot, and dark blood stained their sleeves. Yet they stood, alive, eyes wide with the same bewilderment that flickered across Xiyan and the commander's faces.
"What's going on?" Xiyan asked. "Why did they stop, just like that?"
Wei Lan exhaled, still panting. It took him a few seconds to respond, to catch his breath as well as gather his scattered thoughts.
"They've sealed the fourth level. I tried to force my way through, but… it's no ordinary array. Even my full strength couldn't breach it."
The group exchanged troubled looks, and an invisible dread settled over them, a shared understanding that something was indeed off. If the fourth level was sealed, it could only mean one thing: Master Kaolin had been cut off from the rest of them, trapped by the Demons and Devils for reasons they did not yet know but eventually would.
Xiyan's face drained of colour, and her eyes darkened as the weight of that realisation dawned on her. "We can't just stand here and do nothing!" she burst out. "There must be a way to breach it – there has to be!"
"You'll just get yourself killed trying," Taohua growled, forcing himself upright against the jagged stone walls, his breath ragged from the searing pain.
"Then what?" she snapped. "Stand here and watch those things kill the only person who can get us out of this prison?"
"He won't die that easily. Haven't you realised that by now?"
Still not satisfied, Xiyan turned to Wei Lan for support, but he only crossed his arms with a resigned nod, agreeing with the commander.
"I'm afraid I have to agree with Taohua on this one, Xiyan. Whatever those things are planning, Kaolin's not someone they can break. If we draw too much attention to ourselves, we may become bargaining chips instead, and that is a fate we cannot afford. Our best course is to remain hidden… and wait. It's safer that way. For him. For all of us."
Xiyan clenched her teeth and folded her arms tightly across her chest. She then let out a slow, annoyed breath before turning her back to them. Her foot tapped harshly against the stone, and her brow knitted with thoughts she tried to block, but doing so was harder than it looked. Deep down, however, she knew that both Taohua and Wei Lan were right. Should they get caught, they might become pawns at the demons' mercy, and that would indeed be a disaster.
Right then, Guo Lan, who had remained quiet up until this point, suddenly stepped forth and said something that arrested them all due to how unexpected those words were, especially coming from someone as timid and fragile.
A low-ranked cultivator born from a healer's clan, Guo Lan had tended to more wounds than he had faced demons in battle, until just moments ago, that is. Yet beneath his quiet demeanour, Guo Lan harboured knowledge deeper than he let on, absorbing Kaolin's every word as if it were etched into his very soul. And this hidden wisdom, guised by his quiet nature, was perhaps the very reason Kaolin brought him along wherever he went, despite his low cultivation level.
"Master Kaolin once told me that every art has a flaw, even the Demonic Arts. If we can discover even the smallest fissure within its design, the weakest link that binds it to its root, we might find a way to slip through unnoticed."
Taohua, "And how exactly do we do that?"
Guo Lan turned to Wei Lan, whose gaze flickered restlessly, countless thoughts fighting within his mind. His hand came to rest on his lower lip, fingers trembling with the weight of uncertainty. He understood what Guo Lan was trying to say, yet doubt gnawed at him. Would Kaolin want them to simply wait here or want them to seek out the Demonic Array's hidden flaw in a desperate attempt to find him? No matter how he twisted and turned the matter over in his mind, it was the first option his heart settled on.
"Wei Lan, did Master not teach you the demonic scriptures? Maybe you can find the root of the array and help us break through?"
"Even if that is indeed possible, I'm afraid I can't. Like I said, staying here is safer for all of us – for Kaolin. If we get caught—"
Xiyan's hand moved almost instinctively to her forehead, her fingers tracing the faint dragon qi sigil etched there. Without a word of explanation, she then pushed off the ridge, her form dissolving into demonic light, her silhouette flickering through the darkness in rapid, fleeting flashes.
"Xiyan!" Taohua called out, struggling to stand but losing his balance. Before he could fall, however, Guo Lan caught him and helped him steady himself against the shifting ground.
But the commander was not the only one alarmed by what had just happened; Wei Lan, too, clenched his jaw and watched her rapid descent towards the demonic array on the fourth layer in complete disbelief. But not for long. With a shout, he too vanished into the choking darkness, chasing her trail.
"You two stay here! I'll go bring her back!"
As Wei Lan plunged into the haze to catch up with Xiyan, he caught sight of something that hadn't been there before, something that made him slow down and doubt his eyes: a small but narrowing gap had appeared in the heart of the demonic array. Xiyan had somehow managed to find the root of the seal and broken through the array.
Although startled by this insight, he did not have much time to ponder how this could even be possible, for as he was having these bewildering thoughts, the gap began to close and dark strings of infernal fire writhed and twisted, weaving themselves back together and sealing the breach below him.
He surged downwards with a last burst of spiritual energy without a second's delay and crashed hard against the blackened, jagged surface below. His eyes then shifted upwards, just in time to witness the final fragments of demonic light vanish as the array closed and sealed the fourth layer away from the upper levels.
But Xiyan had already vanished and her form swallowed by the endless shadows as if the abyss itself had taken her. No trace of her lingered within his mind's eye, however much he tried to locate her; in its place was a surge of ancient power causing the blackened stones to tremble beneath him.
His eyes came into focus as the weight of that dark presence revealed itself to him in all its ominous clarity, originating from a force long-forgotten yet older than Shenzhou itself, one that had stirred awake from its deep slumber when it shouldn't have, the words slipping from his lips before he knew it.
"The Demon God…"
Without delay, he moved his hands in controlled patterns passed down through centuries of cultivation. Each formation shone with pale light, etching glowing scriptures in the air that pulsed with the rhythm of his qi, and the energy surged, coiling around him like the wind, warped with rising heat as his spiritual core thickened and his robes snapped violently around his distraught frame, weighed down by untold burdens.
Then, with a sharp cry and a forward thrust of both palms, he released the energy; the blast howled through the air and slammed into the jagged stone walls ahead, so that they cracked and turned into dust beneath the weight of his power. As the dust faded and bared the path before him, the broken threshold to the Demon God's palace came into view, and in front of it, thousands of Demons and Devils had gathered, their gazes turned towards something he couldn't see from this angle, but whatever it was, it had managed to capture their full attention.
He surged into the air.