In the days that followed, Heavenly Dao Academy held its breath.
Outside, the Eastern Hundred Cities boiled.
Rumors galloped from city to city, picking up lies and exaggerations the way a snowball picked up clinging ice—Heavenly Sovereigns beaten bloody, Ancient Kingdom geniuses crippled in front of their own banners, honored elders bursting like rotten melons, Old Daoist Peng drinking tea with the youth who had trampled all of them beneath his feet.
"Azure Mysterious' elders shattered."
"Brilliance's hidden altars cracked…"
By the time the stories reached the outer cities, Ling Feng had already become something else in the mouths of tavern storytellers—a calamity wearing human skin.
Within the academy, beneath the shadow of Everlasting Courtyard's ancient tree, that calamity did something truly outrageous.
He relaxed.
Under the Everlasting tree, the earth veins hummed quietly, echoing the slumbering pulse of the Realm God deep beneath Heavenly Dao Academy. The air here was thick with a subtle, ancient pressure.
Ling Feng sat on a stone bench as if this place were just a convenient park, one arm thrown across the backrest, the other hand lazily turning a porcelain cup between his fingers. Neutral chaos wrapped tight around his core; the tide of his cultivation had pulled back, leaving nothing but the calm surface of an ordinary young man enjoying tea in the shade.
Inside, his Dao flowed like a quiet, bottomless sea.
The academy's halls buzzed with nervous activity. Scouts came and went. Old formations were checked, rechecked, then checked again. The Seven Ancient Ancestors sank deeper into seclusion, connecting their Dao to the academy's foundations and the slumbering Realm God.
The entire Eastern Hundred Cities felt like a bowstring drawn to its limit.
Ling Feng took another sip.
He smiled faintly.
War was coming. He could feel it in the way the heaven-and-earth vein under the academy shook from time to time, like a colossus turning over in its sleep. But war had its own rhythm. Until the wave crested, there was no point in thrashing around.
In this short breathing space, he did what he was best at.
He sharpened the people around him.
...
Sword light wove between the stone pillars like cold lightning.
In Grand Era Hall's inner training field, Bai Jianzhen stood at the center, white robes fluttering, sword raised in one hand. Her aura was pared down to the bone—no wasted movement, no ornamental flourishes. Each swing was simple and direct, carrying the chill of someone who had walked to the brink of death with a blade in hand and never taken a step back.
Today, though, something new coiled around that straight sword.
A faint, almost imperceptible distortion.
Her blade cut out.
Two afterimages crossed the field at once—one where her sword had been, one where it would be. The stone pillar in front of her remained intact for a breath.
Then a thin line appeared.
Space itself shuddered.
The top half of the pillar slid off with quiet shame, as if embarrassed to still be standing.
"Not bad." Ling Feng leaned against another pillar with casual familiarity, arms folded, a small smile playing around his lips. "Your cut is starting to ignore distance. That's a good bad habit to have."
Bai Jianzhen slowly lowered her sword. Her chest moved just a fraction faster than normal, a delicate rise and fall that betrayed effort only to someone who knew how disciplined she usually was.
Her frosty gaze shifted toward him.
"…This sword is still lacking," she said. "In front of Immortal Emperor methods, it would be no more than an ant shaking a tree."
"Sure," Ling Feng said lightly. "If you swing it like everyone else."
He pushed away from the pillar and walked toward her, unhurried. The air around him remained calm, but the Dao patterns carved into the training ground stirred instinctively. Veins of light in the stone buzzed, like an old array spirit wagging its tail at a familiar master.
He stopped at arm's reach.
"Close your eyes for a second," he said.
Bai Jianzhen hesitated.
A sword did not close its eyes for others. Trust did not come easily to a blade that had cut its way alone through life.
But Ling Feng was… Ling Feng.
After a breath, she obeyed.
Cool lashes lowered, shutting out the training field. She could still feel him—like a quiet, absurdly confident presence sitting at the center of the world—but she let the external scene fade.
Ling Feng reached out and, with two fingers, gently nudged the angle of her sword.
"Your sword has always been 'cut what is in front of me,'" he murmured near her ear. "Cold, straightforward, very heroic. That's good. The problem is, the world isn't that polite. Emperors twist space, bend time, hide their heads in one era and their tails in another."
His fingertip tapped the flat of her blade with a soft, clear sound.
"So," his voice turned a touch indulgent, "let your sword be a little rude first."
"…Rude?" she echoed, eyes still closed.
"Don't aim at what's standing in front of you," Ling Feng said. "Aim at where their Dao has to pass. Cut the road itself. Even Immortal Emperors have to walk somewhere."
His spirit energy flowed along the sword, Chaos-tinged but carefully restrained, tracing the edges of her killing intent without smothering it. The Primal Chaos Genesis Physique stirred in his body; comprehension of space and Dao lines sharpened everything it touched, turning the world into strands and trajectories.
"Feel it?" he asked quietly. "Those faint threads under everything… the way cause and effect line up a moment before a strike? Put your blade there—not on their flesh. You don't need to 'reach' them. Make them walk into your sword."
Bai Jianzhen's breathing slowed.
She let go of the idea of "enemy" for a moment and simply felt.
The world around her turned into lines—straight, curved, broken. Sword marks that hadn't appeared yet. Places where Dao flowed cleanly, places where it snarled, places where it had no choice but to gather.
Her sword hung there.
It seemed ordinary. Even dull.
In her heart, something that had been tightly clenched loosened.
"…I see," she whispered.
"Good," Ling Feng said. "Next time someone with a big title tries to posture in front of you, show them what being 'rude' really means."
She opened her eyes.
For a heartbeat, the cold swordswoman simply looked at him. No one else in the academy saw this expression—calm still, but with a faint, subtle warmth buried deep, like a snowfield just starting to thaw under early spring sun.
"…Ling Feng," she said at last, voice very soft, "if you fall one day, this sword will… remember you."
He blinked, then huffed out a quiet laugh.
"Don't start writing my memorial yet," he drawled. "I still plan to see you cut some Emperors first."
The corner of her lips moved—too small to be called a smile, but enough that the Dao patterns in the field brightened involuntarily, as if the hall itself raised its head.
Bai Jianzhen lifted her sword once more.
This time, she didn't swing at the pillar in front of her.
Her blade cut out toward seemingly empty space.
Stone pillars across the field remained untouched for a breath.
Then, lines opened on all of them at once.
Chunks of stone slid down in eerie silence, surfaces smooth as mirrors, each cut aligned along invisible paths only her sword had seen. Disciples watching from the doorway went pale.
"What kind of sword dao is that—"
"It didn't even touch half of them…"
Ling Feng watched the falling stone rain with a satisfied smile.
"See?" he said lazily. "Rude."
...
On another peak, frost hung in the air like ground glass.
Bing Yuxia stood atop a thin spine of rock, blue robes snapping in the high wind.
Before her floated a jagged tablet fragment, gray and unassuming at first glance—yet every drifting snowflake avoided it instinctively. The Heaven Cutting Tablet's remnant gleamed faintly, like a star carved out of ice.
The cold around Bing Yuxia had changed since Ling Feng's last interference.
It was no longer just the chill of winter or the aloof frost of Ice Feather Palace. It had become a sharp, law-cutting cold, the kind that sliced through the sky itself if it didn't make way.
She drew her sword.
A line of sword light arced out.
The cloud bank below did not part.
It ceased to exist along that line—simply missing, as if reality had been carved open and a strip casually removed.
From a boulder behind her, Ling Feng let out a low whistle. An old gourd of tea hung loosely from one finger.
"See?" he called. "When you stop asking the tablet for permission and just cut, it listens a lot better."
Bing Yuxia's shoulders tensed.
"This young master is not 'asking' anything," she snapped, not turning. "I am simply… adjusting the edge."
"Mm." Ling Feng took a drink. "And that little 'adjustment' just shaved a piece off the sky. Not bad for a morning stroll."
She finally glanced back at him over her shoulder, eyes narrowing.
"You speak as if such things are trivial," she said. "What you showed me last time—that road of yours… it is too unreasonable."
"The world's unreasonable," Ling Feng said cheerfully. "You're just finally matching it."
He swung the gourd idly, gaze flicking from her sword to the Heaven Cutting Tablet fragment.
"You like unreasonable things anyway," he added. "You're the one who kept breaking your sect's rules because they annoyed you, remember?"
Her fan snapped open with a crisp sound, hiding the lower half of her face.
"…You talk too much," she muttered.
"Only when I'm enjoying the view," he replied.
The fan twitched.
The wind tugged at her hair; for a heartbeat, the sharp Bing Yuxia who flirted with beauties and picked fights with rules betrayed a faint flush at the tips of her ears. Then she snorted and turned away, robe sleeves whipping cold air aside.
She raised her sword again.
This time, as the Heaven Cutting Tablet's remnant floated before her, she didn't treat it as an external artifact that needed coaxing. Guided by Ling Feng's earlier prodding, her Dao lines reached out and wrapped around it, not bowing, but gripping.
Heaven-cutting intent flared.
The sky above the peak… tilted.
Space shivered along a single, terrifying line.
Snowfields far beyond the mountain's horizon were suddenly split by a razor-straight ravine, ice and stone sheared so cleanly that the fracture faces gleamed like polished mirrors.
Disciples on distant peaks looked up, faces draining of color.
"What kind of strike is that?"
"Idle Era Hall's Bing Yuxia… is she trying to split the continent?!"
Ling Feng watched the new scar on the world, feeling the way Bing Yuxia's Dao began to curve, not away from the Old Villainous Heaven's leash, but above it. Her path remained hers—aloof, freedom-loving, flirting with life itself—but now she had a blade that could cut the cage.
He smiled, eyes half-lidded.
"Not bad," he said. "At this rate, if an Immortal Emperor tries to act high and mighty, you can at least cut off their sleeves."
"Who wants sleeves?" Bing Yuxia scoffed, finally snapping her fan shut. "This young master will cut their faces."
"There it is," Ling Feng said, amused. "Now you sound like yourself."
Their gazes met for a fraction of a breath—her cold, mocking, bright with a dangerous curiosity; his relaxed, modern, utterly unafraid.
Bing Yuxia tossed her hair and turned away with a soft "hmph," but her next strike was cleaner, more decisive. The chill wrapped around the Heaven Cutting Tablet remnant became sharper, more absolute—as if she'd decided the heavens were there to be cut, not negotiated with.
Behind her, Ling Feng's presence remained like a quietly spinning whirlpool of chaos, turning war into opportunity.
...
Lion's Roar's princess did not cultivate under open skies that day.
Chi Xiaodie sat cross-legged in a quiet courtyard of Grand Era Hall, scrolls and memorials stacked neatly beside her. The faint glow of five Fate Palaces shimmered behind her back—each palace solid, carefully refined, more stable than most nobles would achieve in a lifetime. Ling Feng had already shortened her road once; now, she walked it step by deliberate step.
A brush moved between her fingers.
She paused over a tax report, delicate brows drawn tight.
"You're frowning so hard the paper's about to file a complaint," Ling Feng's voice drifted lazily from the shade of a gnarled tree.
Chi Xiaodie's hand jerked.
She had known he was there—his aura was too outrageous to completely hide—but his sudden comment still made her ears warm.
"This Chi is considering reallocating grain to the northern counties," she said, forcing her tone to stay even. "If we miscalculate, the people will suffer shortages this winter."
Ling Feng strolled over, hands tucked in his sleeves in an exaggerated imitation of some lazy old daoist.
"Then don't miscalculate," he said.
She gave him a flat look.
"Very helpful," she replied coldly.
He grinned.
"Alright, alright," he said, the corner of his mouth quirking. "You're doing fine. Just remember—if you spread yourself too thin, you'll help no one."
He reached out and gently knocked her forehead with a knuckle.
"You promised me you'd be greedy," he reminded her. "That includes being greedy with your own strength. Don't give all of it to ink and reports."
Her fingers tightened around the brush.
"…It is not so easy," she murmured. "Lion's Roar has many eyes on it now. On me. On you. After the matters of the Furious Immortal Saint Country and Tiger Howl, our name is tied to yours whether I wish it or not."
"All the better," Ling Feng said lightly. "Then let them watch."
He leaned down, just enough that his voice settled in the space between them, warm and steady.
"When the alliance comes, I'll stand in front," he said. "Your job is simple: make sure there's a country worth returning to once everything stops shaking."
Chi Xiaodie looked up at him, dark eyes carrying a tangle of worry and stubborn pride.
"…You speak as if war is already inevitable," she said quietly.
"It is," Ling Feng answered, without drama. "The heaven-and-earth vein is thrashing, the Realm God's breath keeps catching, and the scent of greed in the Eastern Hundred Cities is thick enough to choke on. They're already on their way. You trying to shoulder that won't stop it."
He tapped the stack of memorials with two fingers.
"I'm greedy too," he added with a faint smile. "I want you to stand at the peak later, still have the energy to argue with me, and still have a Lion's Roar banner to wave in my face whenever you're annoyed."
Her lips pressed together.
Then, almost against her own expectations, they curved.
"…Very well," she said softly. "This Chi will… trouble you again, then."
"Good," Ling Feng said. "Trouble me more."
He straightened and, without ceremony, ruffled her hair.
Her eyes widened; the princess of Lion's Roar, who had once stared down entire armies, sat there frozen for a heartbeat, cheeks slowly flushing.
"Finish that report," Ling Feng continued as if nothing were amiss. "Then come to the training field. Xiaodao's new shell still looks like a walking disaster. If I don't fix his posture, he'll trip over his own Heavenly Turtle in the first war."
From the corner of the courtyard, Chi Xiaodao—who had been practicing awkward forms with a heavy, shell-shaped artifact strapped to his back—nearly dropped his halberd.
"Big Brother Ling, I heard that!" he yelped, ears red.
"You were supposed to," Ling Feng called back, laughing.
The air remained heavy with distant storm, but here, for a moment, it felt lighter. War might be inevitable, but so was this: people still living, arguing, laughing under the academy's sky.
...
Days Like Sharpened Knives
Those days blurred together.
For everyone else, time moved at its usual uneven pace—too fast when they were content, too slow while they waited for disaster.
For Ling Feng, time was… full.
He moved between peaks and halls like a casual storm with hands in his sleeves.
One morning, he stood behind Xu Pei on a wind-swept terrace, hands resting lightly on her shoulders as lightning-laced storm-qi snarled through her meridians. Once, her power had been wasteful, lashing out in wild bursts that frightened even herself.
"Stop trying to blow everything up," he said, guiding the torrent with his own calm circulation. "You're not a bomb. You're a thundercloud. Coil. Stack. Make each strike land where it hurts."
Under his direction, the roaring storm-qi compressed, layer upon layer, until her next punch didn't just shatter a boulder—it sent a precise shockwave humming through the nearby formation, making the Grand Era training pillars resonate like struck bells.
Another afternoon, he walked side by side with Li Shangyuan under a quiet moon, discussing Pure Jade Physique refinements. Jade light rippled beneath her skin as she circulated her technique; his neutral chaos Dao teased out small imperfections in her foundation.
"Your jade is too polite," he told her. "It defends, supports, uplifts… very noble. But jade can cut too. Let it show its edge once in a while."
Occasionally, he leaned in just close enough that his breath brushed her ear when he pointed out a subtle flaw, and the proud, composed Li Shangyuan found her cheeks coloring in a way that had nothing to do with circulation speed.
On the Dragon Arbiter Stage, he sparred with Chen Baojiao beneath a sky streaked with sunset. The Tyrannical Valley Immortal Spring Physique within her devoured force greedily, drinking in every impact. Each time he sent a wave of strength surging into her, her body drank it, refined it, and threw it back twice as fierce.
She laughed aloud, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, eyes blazing.
"Next time," she panted between exchanges, "I'll punch an Immortal Emperor's shadow just to see how far it flies!"
"Good," Ling Feng said, stepping casually aside as her fist smashed a crater into the stage. "Tell him Ling Feng says hi when he looks back to see which brat dared to kick his imprint."
Under his hand, those around him grew sharper.
Bai Jianzhen's sword learned to cut the path instead of the man. Bing Yuxia's frost learned to carve the sky without permission. Chi Xiaodie's Fate Palaces grew denser even while she balanced grain reports and sect politics. Chi Xiaodao crashed into bottlenecks headfirst so often that Ling Feng started joking about charging him for rescue fees—and then kindly pulled him out each time, folding what should have been years of fumbling cultivation into shorter, straighter roads.
Grand Era Hall, once considered a dumping ground where students with low starting talent slogged along, began to quietly change. Under Ling Feng's shadow, its disciples' Dao auras firmed. Their gazes steadied.
Beyond the walls, Heavenly Dao Academy's apparent calm became… false.
Like the still air between two waves.
...
The day the alliance came, the sky changed first.
It was midday.
The academy's bells were silent; disciples were scattered across lecture halls, training fields, and the markets nestled at the mountain's foot. The Everlasting Courtyard's leaves rustled softly in an ordinary breeze.
Then, without warning, the light dimmed.
A golden radiance rose on the distant horizon—not the gentle gold of the sun, but the heavy, sacred brilliance of an Immortal Emperor lineage that had ruled for eras. At the same time, from another direction, an azure glow surged upward, cold and oppressive, suffused with imperial might.
Brilliance Ancient Kingdom.
Azure Mysterious Ancient Kingdom.
Their auras met above Heavenly Dao Academy.
They did not clash.
They interlocked—like two jaws closing around a throat.
"Heavenly Dao Academy…" an old elder of Sacred Era Hall whispered, face blanching as the pressure rolled across the clouds. "They actually sent their Life Treasures…"
Within breaths, banners pierced the horizon in every direction.
Behind those two Immortal Emperor heritages, more Life Treasures revealed their vague silhouettes—blades, pagodas, spears, mirrors—each veiled, each terrifying. Seven divine altars rose in the sky like stacked worlds, built from piled void fragments and Emperor runes. Each altar anchored a presence that even Heavenly Sovereigns would hesitate to approach.
The Anti–Heavenly Dao Academy Alliance had arrived.
Virtuous Paragons, Ancient Saints, Royal Nobles—countless cultivators stood upon flying palaces and war chariots, their formations arranged like a vast ocean swallowing the horizon. Imperial lineages that normally would never stand side by side shared the same sky today for a single purpose: to devour the academy that had guarded the human race for countless generations.
Somewhere within that ocean of power, hidden behind layers of formations and altars, eleven indistinct shadows crouched—old undyings whose Dao had long since stepped beyond ordinary life and death. Their auras were carefully repressed, but a sensitive cultivator could still feel them like nails against bone.
Heavenly Dao Academy's disciples looked up.
Many felt their knees weaken.
"That aura—"
"It's stronger than when the Heavenly Sovereigns came…"
"Immortal Emperor Life Treasures… seven of them… all at once…"
Sacred Era Hall's elders, Emperor Era Hall's proud teachers, even ancient ancestors who rarely showed their faces stood at the edges of pavilions and platforms, gazes fixed on the sky. Expressions grave. Hands behind their backs so no one could see how tightly their fingers curled.
In a high pavilion overlooking the main grounds, Old Daoist Peng stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking like an ordinary sloppy elder. His eyes were anything but ordinary.
They were like an old pine tree that had stood in winter storms for countless years—gnarled, stubborn, quietly defiant.
Behind him, the Seven Ancient Ancestors sat upon stone seats, their converged Dao pressures so restrained that the surrounding air seemed perfectly ordinary. No wind. No sound. Only the faint vibration of the academy's heaven-and-earth vein grinding beneath their feet.
"Alliance of Azure Mysterious and Brilliance," one ancestor murmured. "And the snakes behind them finally baring their fangs…"
The war that had once been only a line in secret records had come again.
The Great Calamity—this time, aimed at them.
On the foremost altar, divine light thickened.
A cold old voice rolled across heaven and earth, carried by the combined might of multiple Immortal Emperor Life Treasures.
"Heavenly Dao Academy," it intoned, slow and heavy. "Your Realm God is unstable. Its heaven-and-earth vein shakes. Your guardian is rotting. Instead of allowing that rot to spread through the human race… hand over your defining treasures. Dissolve your halls into our Ancient Kingdoms. We will 'preserve' your foundation."
The word "preserve" dripped with condescension.
On the ground, fury blazed in many juniors' eyes—but under the crushing Emperor pressure, they couldn't even raise their voices.
In Grand Era Hall's courtyard, Chi Xiaodao's knuckles turned white around his halberd.
In the Sword Training Field, Bai Jianzhen's hand slid to her hilt, pupils narrowing to pinpricks.
On her frost peak, Bing Yuxia stood atop her stone spine, cloak snapping in a wind that was no longer entirely natural. Heaven-cutting frost surged at her back, held in check by sheer will.
Chi Xiaodie stood on a balcony, scrolls forgotten at her side, gaze locked on the divine altars. She knew exactly what those words meant for Lion's Roar: if Heavenly Dao Academy fell, the fate of her country would be no more than a footnote in someone else's ledger.
Old Daoist Peng's eyes narrowed slightly.
Before he could step forward, the void in front of the alliance… rippled.
The world itself seemed to hesitate for half a breath.
Then a human figure stepped out of nothing, as if reality had simply decided to place him there.
No earth-shaking thunder. No blinding light.
Just one man.
Plain robe. Hands in his sleeves. Black hair tied back casually. His feet rested on invisible currents of Dao as if he were standing on level ground.
Ling Feng.
He stood alone between Heavenly Dao Academy and the gathered might of Ancient Kingdoms and old undyings, looking up at the seven divine altars and the stacked armies as if he were evaluating the menu of a slightly overpriced restaurant.