The hall held no more secrets, and that somehow felt wrong.
After a mummified True King had disintegrated into mana particles, after Alex had carved apart a parasitic duplicate pretending to be Bīng, and after one of the four cracked fragments of the Secret of Weapons had settled into her possession, Team Nemean searched the temple hall with the tense thoroughness of people who had learned that ruins rarely gave only one answer.
Dominic checked the altar while Emma studied the formation lines around the dais. Jack examined the pillars carved with serpents, tortoises, soldiers, and weapons. Joanne kept watch with her revolver low but ready, muttering that if any more "ancient eyeball nonsense" crawled out of a wall, she was billing Phong for emotional damages.
Jake tapped bronze lamps with the tip of a dagger until Janet told him to stop disrespecting possible dead people. Séline and Camille searched the corners where shadow collected.
Alex stood near the altar, still feeling the echo of the mana memories inside her. Zhen Wu Pavilion, the Emperor Eye, the True Irises, and the crystallized bodies outside that were not merely victims but a sect's final refusal to be worn as meat.
There was nothing else.
They found neither a hidden compartment nor a weapon rack full of True King heirlooms. There was no manual wrapped in immortal silk or convenient pill bottle with "eat this to become terrifying" written on the side.
Only cold incense burners, old ash, broken banners, and the empty place where Thiên Võ Chân Vương's body had sat for an age, baiting a trap that had finally closed.
Dominic looked to Alex. "Anything?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
Emma exhaled. "Then we leave before this ruin remembers another tragedy."
No one disagreed.
They gathered near the exit, but Alex paused.
The others noticed because Alex rarely paused without reason.
She turned back toward the altar. "I need a minute."
Joanne softened immediately, though she hid it under a shrug. "Make it a good minute. I'm allergic to temples that try to eat us."
Alex ignored that and walked back to the incense table.
There were old sticks there, brittle with age and probably useless. She took one anyway, only for it to crumble between her fingers.
For a second, she frowned.
Emma, understanding faster than most, opened a small utility pouch and offered a lighter. When asked, she simply shrugged. "What? Important people smoke a lot."
Alex accepted it with a nod and lit another stick.
The scent was faint, sandalwood or something close enough for the dungeon to translate as reverence. Alex placed the incense before the empty altar.
She was Christian, and her religion demanded that no respect or tribute be offered to anyone but their God. Yet after seeing the first Emperor of Humanity point a sword at gods and call them bystanders, she doubted reverence would ever feel simple again.
But respect was different.
Thiên Võ Chân Vương had failed on the Road of Imperial Ascension. He had grown obsessed, cracked one of the Nine, and doomed his sect to a final trap. He had made mistakes of ambition and pride.
But at the end, he had refused the Emperor Eye. His people had turned themselves to crystal rather than become hosts.
That deserved incense. At least according to Phong's culture, they deserved to be remembered with incense smoke and a silent prayer.
Alex bowed once, not deeply, but enough.
Then she turned and left with Team Nemean.
The temple doors opened without sound.
They expected the inner sect halls. Instead, they found a garden beneath the quiet of night.
The sky outside had turned dark while they were inside, though whether real time had passed or the ruin had changed its face again, none of them knew. The moon hung bright above the courtyard, too large and too white, its reflection trembling in a shallow pond beside old stone paths. Pale flowers bloomed where dead bushes had been before, each petal edged in faint silver. Wind moved through bamboo that had not been there earlier, and somewhere, water dripped with the patience of centuries.
Near the center of the garden stood a well.
Beside it was an old man.
He wore loose robes the color of faded smoke. His hair was white and thin, tied with a simple cord. His back bent slightly, but not with weakness. It looked more like a bow that had been strung for so long that stillness itself had become tension. In his hands was a long pole, which he had stuck down into the well.
He moved it slowly and carefully, as if trying to fetch water with a pole instead of a bucket.
The image was so strange that no one spoke at first.
Yue Ting was there too.
She stood nearby, half-shadowed by moonlight, one hand held near her sleeve while the other crept toward the old man's gourd.
The gourd hung from his waist. It was half blue and half red, with the image of a sword carved into its side.
Team Nemean knew immediately.
It was a relic.
The way the gourd bent attention around itself made greed unnecessary. It had weight in the world, the same kind of impossible importance as the vajra, Eyeless Heaven, Wings of Ascension, and the fragments of ancient power they had already encountered.
But Yue Ting had found it first.
By their agreement, it belonged to her.
Dominic's shoulders tightened, then relaxed. He did not like it, but he accepted it. Yue Ting had honored their agreement and had not attacked Alex for what she received from the True King. Whether she did so because of principle or because she was wary of their power was irrelevant to him. He was not about to let Team Nemean become a bully like Josh.
Emma's eyes lingered on the gourd for half a second longer than manners allowed. Joanne grimaced, while Jake looked as though he had physically swallowed a complaint.
Alex only watched Yue Ting's hand.
The Taoist master did not snatch the gourd immediately. Qián had likely told her something was wrong.
They were about to leave the garden quietly when the old man spoke.
His voice was dry, amused, and mournful all at once.
"The Road of Imperial Ascension admitteth but one emperor in each dungeon era. O mighty True King, why didst thou not seal thyself away for a second chance? Why didst thou accept death as thy fate?"
The words drifted into the moonlit air like a eulogy offered to someone who would never answer.
Yue Ting moved.
Her fingers closed around the gourd, and her head came off.
It happened so cleanly that her body did not understand at first.
One instant, Yue Ting's hand touched the relic. The next, her head spun into the moonlight, hair ribbon trailing and eyes wide but not dead. There was no visible blade, formation flare, or warning line.
Alex's mana surged as Dominic lifted Eyeless Heaven.
Then Yue Ting's head returned to its original place as if the previous event had been declared incorrect.
Her neck bore showed no blood, wounds, or scratches. Her expression, however, changed from composed calculation to cold alarm.
She snatched the gourd fully and leapt backward several steps.
The old man smirked.
"Ah," he said. "Young visitors from far away. Come, sit. Let me take you upon the Road of Imperial Ascension. Let us ascend all as one emperor."
He turned his head toward them.
Moons rested inside his eye sockets.
They were miniaturized moons, pale and complete, turning slowly in darkness. Craters shifted across their surfaces. Silver light spilled from them in thin threads, and every thread touched a formation line hidden in the garden floor.
The system flickered.
[Yuan Zheng Zi — Level 65 Boss]
Jake moved first.
"Yeah, no."
He blurred toward the moon gate behind them and hit invisible space hard.
The entire garden rang.
Jake bounced off nothing and crashed onto the stone path, swearing as silver formation lines bloomed across the air where he had struck. A dome revealed itself for one heartbeat, layered with circles, talismans, moon phases, and intersecting geometry, then vanished again.
Emma's face went pale with intellectual horror.
"He sealed the space."
Yuan Zheng Zi dipped the pole into the well again, still smiling.
"Yes... maybe I did seal this place. Couldn't remember clearly after eras of waiting."
Yue Ting looked from the gourd in her hand to the boss, then to Team Nemean. Her tone was flat and practical, the way Team Nemean expected from top-tier divers.
"Yuan Zheng Zi. Level 65 boss. You cannot beat him alone. I cannot beat him alone." She lifted the half-red, half-blue gourd. "Our only chance of survival is joining forces. I take the gourd. You take the boss drop."
Joanne scoffed. "Generous, considering you already stole the gourd."
"I found it first."
"Technically fair," Jake groaned from the ground.
Dominic stepped forward, shield rising. He knew that this was not the Yeak. The Yeak was a corpse raised by the parasitic True Irises. Yuan Zheng Zi, although he had lost his mind, was still very much in control.
"Agreed."
No one wasted more time. Yuan Zheng Zi lifted the pole from the well.
There was no water on its end.
There was moonlight.
He flicked it, and a formation appeared beneath Dominic's feet.
It manifested instantly, with no setup of flags or other anchors and no talisman that needed to be drawn. A simple circle of silver lines opened beneath Dominic, and from it rose twelve spearheads made of compressed moonlight.
Dominic slammed Eyeless Heaven down.
The shield swallowed the first wave, but the force drove him back three steps. The spearheads rotated, re-angled, and struck again, as attacking formations typically did. Unlike normal skills, they were persistent.
"Formation master!" Emma shouted. "But wrong!"
"No shit." Jake screamed, scrambling up.
"They should require preparation!"
Another formation appeared above them—a square from whose corners four blades descended.
Alex shattered two with telekinesis and cut the third with a Mindblade construct. Séline punched the fourth apart, but the broken moonlight splinters became needles and rained sideways toward Joanne and Janet.
Alexei blocked half of them with his shield.
Jack commanded a wall to rise between Joanne and the attack, protecting the Spell Sniper from the other half.
Joanne fired.
Her bullet struck Yuan Zheng Zi's shoulder.
A tiny circular formation opened at the impact point and swallowed the bullet's force, converting it into a ripple that flowed down his robe and into the garden floor.
The old man chuckled. "Good sound."
Then he tapped the pole against the stone.
Three more formations bloomed: one beneath Jack, one around Camille, and one in the air behind Emma.
Jack's instincts saved him. The Yeak bone in his leg pulsed, and a pillar of extreme cold erupted beneath him, freezing the formation before it fully activated. Even then, the half-born trap snapped shut, catching his left arm in a ring of gravity that nearly dislocated his shoulder.
Camille rolled through a field of crescent cuts, one slicing her side shallowly despite Séline intercepting the rest.
Emma was saved by Dominic's timely intervention.
Yue Ting vanished.
Qián guided her through the only safe route between three overlapping kill zones. She moved like a probability made human, each step arriving a fraction before disaster. Yet even she could not approach cleanly. Yuan Zheng Zi's formations opened around him faster than she could exploit them.
This was the nightmare difficulty version formation masters made flesh.
Formation masters were not meant to fight like duelists. Their class, by nature, belonged to "prep-time." Given time, space, materials, and a proper setup, they became Batman. Their formations drew mana continuously from the environment, powering themselves with the world. Fighting an active formation was not like fighting a person. It was like trying to overpower a piece of the world that had learned to hate you.
But they had weaknesses. Interrupt the setup, break their materials, or bring the fight elsewhere, and they would be ruined. A formation, once settled, could not be moved.
Yuan Zheng Zi ignored all of that.
He created simple attacking formations instantly. Deadly traps bloomed beneath their feet while deadly zones appeared in the air.
Angles of attack overlapped with no casting delay. Every mistake became punishment, every dodge led into another circle, and every block fed mana into lines waiting below the stone.
He had bypassed the central weakness of his class, which meant he had turned the entire garden into a weapon that did not need to reload.
"Dominic, keep him busy!" Alex shouted.
Dominic answered before anyone else.
He drove forward under a storm of moon spears, Eyeless Heaven absorbing impacts that would have skewered a lesser tank into white mist. His muscles strained and his boots cracked stone. Alexei joined him, shield beside shield, the two tanks forcing Yuan Zheng Zi's attention forward through sheer refusal to die.
Emma sang her songs.
The buffs washed over Team Nemean, increasing their strength, speed, control, and resistance. Forty percent did not make a level 65 boss fair. It did make the impossible last slightly longer.
Joanne used that window. Her revolver spun to life, tripling her output.
She fired three times, each bullet carrying a different stored effect: lightning, ice, then flame.
Yuan Zheng Zi spun the pole.
A triangular formation opened.
The lightning bent into one corner, the ice into another, and the flame into the third. The triangle inverted and spat all three back.
Jack threw himself in front of Joanne, raising three walls in an instant to absorb Yuan Zheng Zi's retaliation.
"Great. Just unlocked a new hate: formations!" Joanne yelled.
"Noted!" Jack grunted.
Alex called Bai Hu's storm.
Wind and psychic pressure twisted around her, but she kept it controlled. A full storm in a sealed formation space could rebound badly. Instead, she shaped psychic marbles and sent them in staggered arcs to test the old man's defenses.
Yuan Zheng Zi smiled wider.
Circles appeared around the marbles.
Each construct was caught, rotated, and fired back at Dominic.
Alex severed the connection and detonated them early.
The blast shook the garden, and moonlight rippled in Yuan Zheng Zi's eyes.
Yue Ting used that ripple to slip behind him.
Yuan Zheng Zi noticed.
A formation opened beneath her shadow, but Yue Ting stepped where death was not.
Another opened in front of her, and she tilted sideways.
A third formed around her wrist. She sacrificed a sleeve, letting moonlight blades shred fabric instead of flesh.
She reached the boss's back, then opened the gourd.
The half-blue, half-red relic made no grand sound. The carved sword on its side glowed once.
Yue Ting bowed.
"Please, relic," she said with perfect seriousness, "do the spin."
For one absurd heartbeat, even Yuan Zheng Zi seemed confused.
Then something came out of the gourd.
A thin humanoid figure made of cloud unfolded from the mouth of the relic, stretching taller than a man but narrower than one should be. Its body was mist, its limbs were long, and its head was featureless except for two fleshy eyes glowing in the dark, wet and alive against the cloud-body.
Those eyes fixed on Yuan Zheng Zi.
The old man's smile vanished.
He tried to turn, but it was too late.
The cloud figure reached both arms into him.
Its hands sank through his back, through flesh, through formation light, and through the boss's moon-filled existence. Yuan Zheng Zi stiffened. Every active formation in the garden flickered. Moon spears froze inches from Dominic's shield. Crescent blades paused in midair around Camille. Gravity rings cracked around Jack's arm.
The cloud figure pulled.
Yuan Zheng Zi's head came out with a pop, like a cruel child plucking a cricket's head from its body to see what would happen.
But the body did not simply fall.
For a heartbeat, it remained standing.
The severed head in the cloud figure's grasp did not go limp. The miniature moons in its sockets continued to turn, faster now, their light intensifying until thin cracks of silver spread across the cloud figure's arms.
The garden held its breath.
The sealed dome flickered, but did not fully break.
The formations only dimmed and paused, as if waiting.
Everyone stood in the sudden quiet, breathing hard.
Relief tried to come, but failed halfway.
Jake dropped onto his back anyway. "I officially hate old men. New rule. We never trust old men near wells. Ever again."
Joanne lowered her revolver. "I hate that the gourd solution was 'please do the spin.'"
Dominic let Eyeless Heaven drop a few inches, his chest heaving. "Is everyone alive?"
"Mostly," Jack said, rotating his nearly dislocated shoulder with a grimace.
Yue Ting corked the gourd immediately and tucked it away with the speed of someone who knew exactly how valuable a relic became after it casually decapitated a level 65 boss.
Then the silence stretched.
There was no system chime, EXP rush, or level increase. No boss-defeated announcement appeared, and no drop clattered onto the stone.
Emma's eyes narrowed. "Did anyone receive EXP?"
One by one, they answered.
Nothing.
Yue Ting's expression darkened.
Alex looked at the pooling moonlight, at the head still struggling faintly within the cloud figure's grasp, and at the formations that had not truly died.
The moon above the garden twisted into a crescent.
Then Yuan Zheng Zi's laughter rose from the well.