Fire.
Not the crude burning of torches or campfires.
The concept of fire. The law beneath it.
In his inner world, the Heretical God Force pulsed in quiet, steady tides. The first level of Fire, he had already picked apart and rebuilt—Burning Heat, the most basic attribute of flame, the acceleration of yin–yang particles until they screamed. The second, Annihilation, flickered like a dark blade across his perception.
Now, in this gray world where Hungry Ghosts howled with endless hunger and could never be satisfied, he looked at fire again.
What was it, really, to burn?
...
In the distance, Na Yi's soul force flared—cold witch-light surging out from her spiritual sea, hardening into spears that pierced ghost torsos. Each time she thrust that light, her soul ached, fibers fraying at the edges… but like muscle torn and reborn, it grew thicker, cleaner, more resilient.
Na Shui's soul power came in ragged bursts at first, waves that stuttered and broke. Her will lashed out, stumbled, nearly collapsed—
And every time, the modified Heretical God Force turned underneath it like a hidden gear, catching the recoil, smoothing it, turning each wobbly pulse into something sharper, more focused.
Those two lights, shining stubbornly in the Hungry Ghost world, were flames too.
Not of wood or oil.
Of will.
Ren watched them with his inner eye, sitting cross-legged on cracked gray stone as the ghosts prowled just outside the loose circle of his presence.
The first Fire law: Burning Heat—movement of particles, heat as speed.
The second: Annihilation—collapse into nothing, all things returning to silence.
But fire wasn't only destruction.
The Sorcerer's smelting trial itself was proof. Its core idea: through burning, something better could emerge. A body and soul walked into Hell, Hungry Ghosts, beasts, and calamity, then came out… changed.
Destruction and rebirth.
His consciousness turned, tracing runes that did not yet exist.
Inside his inner Heaven, the stars of many worlds watched in silence. Martial World's star smoldered with thick, heavy laws; another glowed with devils and angels and dragons; distant ones slept, unopened. Between them, thin threads of neutral chaos twisted like veins, roads his Dao had carved across realities.
He reached into the strand tied to Martial World. The "flavor" of this universe's laws slid across his senses—familiar by now, but not his. Not originally.
He smiled faintly.
"Let's see how far I can bend you," he murmured to himself.
His Fire law runes, once simple red essence representing Burning Heat and darker streaks of Annihilation, stirred. A third color bled into them—not Lin Ming's future blue-green Creation, but something of his own: molten gold tinged with dusk, like sunlight at the edge of night.
His road was different. His Dao was different. But the level… was the same.
Fire that destroyed and forged at the same time.
The third step of Fire Laws—Creation—rose beneath his fingertips like a sword leaving its sheath.
Origin energy flocked to him.
The Hungry Ghost world noticed.
The gray sky above them darkened, then lit with veins of red-gold light. The air grew hot—not in physical temperature, but in pressure, a dense, suffocating weight that made the ghosts' wails rise in pitch.
Flames that weren't flames gathered at the edges of reality, trembling like embryonic stars. They drew in threads of origin energy from the pagoda's entire inner tower, each strand bending toward Ren as if he were the natural center of all burning here.
Outside, beyond this fractured world, the Sorcerer Pagoda shuddered.
Ancient runes along its surface—dormant for millennia, merely decorative by now to most eyes—flared to life for a single heartbeat. Crimson radiance spread through their lines, pulsing once like a heart remembering its first beat. Ripples of scarlet light washed out through the swamp, startling beasts and tribesmen alike.
Yan Mo's eyes snapped open.
"This fluctuation…" he whispered, stunned. "Inside the Hungry Ghost trial? At his realm?"
Within the Magic Cube, Mo Eversnow went very, very still.
In the gray, dead soul-ocean that surrounded her, something new sliced across the pressure—a thread of law cutting through fog, headed straight for the man sitting cross-legged in the Hungry Ghost world.
…Again?
She had watched geniuses touch laws before. The Divine Realm was full of them—monsters who grasped a single concept over decades, and were praised to the heavens for it.
Ren Ming moved like someone who already knew the destination and was just… sightseeing through other people's methods on the way.
He wasn't wrestling with comprehension.
He was choosing how to arrange it.
Her cold, beautiful eyes narrowed as she focused on him.
Within his soul, the old runes of Fire—Burning Heat's vivid red and Annihilation's darker, devouring lines—shimmered, then rearranged into a more complex pattern. A third layer slid over them, molten gold shot through with dusk-purple, forming an intricate web.
That light didn't spread outward.
It converged.
Fire that melted and remade in a single breath.
An aura that touched the third level of Fire Laws—Creation.
You're in the Body Transformation phase of this world's system, she thought, shaken. And you're casually playing with laws Divine Sea powerhouses would bleed for.
Her gaze sharpened.
No.
Not "what" are you.
Who are you?
...
Runes burned into being above Ren's head.
They weren't words. They were the bones of a law.
Twelve strokes wrote themselves into the gray sky, weaving slowly into a circle. At its center, an invisible flame burned. It did not radiate outward; it drew in.
Everything near it leaned toward that center—fire, killing intent, soul force, even the vague, hungry will that animated the ghosts.
Ren exhaled.
"Martial Intent… Fire," he murmured.
Martial intent was the distilled will to fight, fused with a concept. It wasn't something recorded in manuals. It was something carved from life-and-death battles, polished across countless brushes with despair.
Most martial artists, even in great sects, never touched one in their entire lives.
His, like everything else about his path, ignored common sense.
This was not some gentle, supplementary intent that merely increased comprehension.
This was a battlefield furnace.
Within its field, any flame—true essence fire, blood vitality heat, even the spark of a martial artist's will—would be compressed, purified, and forced to burn at a higher order. He tuned it so the consumption of true essence wasn't fatal, knitted in subtle limiters his "inner governor" could manage.
In its newborn state, even barely formed, it already promised to push someone a full great realm above their base cultivation below Divine Sea.
Dangerous. For an ordinary martial artist, using it recklessly would be like strapping explosives to their dantian and hoping the fuse burned just right.
But for those whose bodies and meridians he'd personally fine-tuned…
A small, satisfied smile crossed his lips.
The Hungry Ghosts sensed the change.
They were beings of hunger. Anything that promised more energy—even in a form their dim minds didn't truly understand—drew them like starving wolves. They flooded toward him in a howling tide, pale hands stretching, empty mouths gaping.
Ren opened his eyes.
The red-gold rune-wheel behind him turned once.
The world caught fire.
It wasn't physical flame.
The sky itself split, revealing a dome of ruddy-gold light. Ghostly figures that touched its edge ignited without sound—not in ordinary burning, but in something deeper. The hungry instinct at their core flared, then inverted, burning itself out from within.
One by one, their howls cut off, their forms fracturing into motes of ash that swirled toward the rune-wheel's center, swallowed and refined by that invisible furnace.
For a long, breathless moment, Na Yi and Na Shui forgot how to breathe.
This was the oppressive aura of peak Pulse Condensation martial artists in this world—the kind of crushing pressure that could melt lesser cultivators where they stood.
Yet the man at the center of it all… still only "felt" like a Body Transformation martial artist if you glanced at his cultivation.
The contrast made their skin prickle.
Ren flicked his fingers.
The red-gold field contracted.
The rushing tide of Hungry Ghosts froze in place, suspended mid-lunge, like moths trapped in amber. Their bodies were caught between cohesion and dissolution, faces twisted in soundless screams; only their eyes rolled wildly in terror.
Ren turned his head, looking at the sisters.
Their souls were frayed, worn thin from constant fighting. Threads of witch-light clung to them like sweat, tasting faintly of bloodline and old sorcery.
But their eyes were clear.
Their Dao Hearts had not cracked.
"Good job," he said softly. "Now…"
His tone shifted, light but precise.
"Let's borrow this, just a bit."
He lifted his hand.
The rune-wheel of Fire Martial Intent rotated again, shedding countless tiny rune-strokes like sparks. They drifted down slowly, drawn to Na Yi and Na Shui's spiritual seas.
"Relax," he murmured, the roughness of his casual tone softened at the edges for them. "Don't try to grab it. Let it move through you. Just watch how it flows."
Within Na Yi's soul, the phantom of the Sorcerer's blessing that had always lurked in her blood stirred.
Her witch heritage—bone-deep imprints from an ancient Divine Kingdom—recognized something in this martial intent. Not its origin, that was alien beyond words, but its structure.
A law that refined and burned. Very much like the Sorcerer's own smelting trials, but cleaner, more ruthless. Less "ritual", more "axiom".
The runes sank into her spiritual sea.
They did not force themselves into place. They traced paths.
They showed her how fire could be more than heat—how it could be will, architecture, rebirth. They threaded through the hereditary witch-runes in her marrow, tying them together the way gold wire bound jade pieces into a single artifact.
Na Yi shuddered.
Her soul sea shook, the phantom shadows of her tribe's totems appearing and dissolving around the new paths. For the first time, she felt that her witch inheritance wasn't just a curse that chained her to a broken Divine Kingdom.
It was a language.
And Ren… was teaching her a more complete law.
...
Within Na Shui, the runes hit something raw.
Her soul had always been the weaker of the two; years of fear and humiliation had carved cracks through it like dry riverbeds. Under normal cultivation, those cracks would have widened with each breakthrough until she eventually snapped.
Now, Fire Martial Intent's runes flowed into those cracks like molten metal, not to cover them, but to show her how to shape them.
Her fear of Hungry Ghosts, of being devoured, of cannibals' laughter echoing over her tribe's bones—that fear ignited. Under the subtle guidance of Heretical God Force and Myriad Origin loops, it was drawn into the rune tracks, burned, distilled, and exhaled as something sharper.
Resolve.
Her trembling didn't vanish.
It… changed direction.
Mo Eversnow watched, stunned.
He wasn't forcing his martial intent into them. He wasn't "donating" his comprehension directly.
He was letting them watch its circulation in his own Dao, then trace their own copies—like apprentices copying calligraphy from a master's scroll, stroke by stroke, until their hands remembered.
"This…" she breathed. "Even in the Divine Realm, there are few who can guide others to comprehend martial intent like this. Much less a martial intent that can raise someone a great realm below Divine Sea."
Her mind raced, calculating.
If someone could mass-produce martial intent seeds like this, give them to armies…
No. Even the Divine Realm's carefully maintained balance would crack.
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone glowed faintly along his spine in his inner Heaven, its cold radiance calculating stress lines and safety margins. He could have flooded them with enough intent to crush their meridians instantly.
He didn't.
He kept the amount of Fire Martial Intent they could touch to a razor-thin layer—just enough to form a seed, just enough to give them a rudimentary grasp over First-level Fire Laws.
A thin scar of light, not a full brand.
"You two keeping up?" he asked after a long moment.
Na Yi's brows knit in concentration. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the lack of physical heat.
"…A little," she said hoarsely. "It feels like trying to hold a sun with one hand. It wants to slip away."
Na Shui's lips trembled.
"It's like… like I'm trying to hold your fist with mine, but my fingers keep slipping," she muttered, frustration coloring her voice.
Ren's smile warmed, easy and unhurried.
"That's fine," he said. "You're not supposed to grab the whole thing in one go. Just remember the taste. The way it sharpens your soul."
He snapped his fingers.
The frozen Hungry Ghosts twitched.
"Now," he said, eyes curving. "Refine it."
The rune-wheel behind him shrank, its overwhelming domain withdrawing. The crushing pressure that had frozen the ghosts vanished, leaving only the thin filaments of Fire Martial Intent lingering in the sisters' souls.
The Hungry Ghosts screamed and surged toward them once more.
This time, when Na Yi thrust her will outward, fire answered.
Not the cold witch-light she'd used before, but a line of red-gold radiance that carried structure. Runic scaffolding wrapped around her intent, turning a simple spear of soul power into a refined instrument.
It pierced the ghost in front of her.
Where it passed, the hungry instinct inside the phantom did not merely burn—it combusted along predetermined lines, like dry tinder stacked for maximum heat. The ghost dissolved into ash, its energy rushing toward her.
But unlike before, that energy didn't flood her randomly, leaving hidden residues.
It ran along the rune paths she had just learned, slotting smoothly into the skeleton of Fire Martial Intent.
Na Shui's soul force flared in jagged bursts.
The intent seed caught each burst and forced it into a narrow channel. Her strike didn't explode clumsily; it sliced. Her will lashed out in a thin crescent, a red-gold arc that cut through three ghosts at once like a hot knife through wet paper.
Shockwaves rippled across the gray plain as spirits shattered.
Their combat prowess spiked.
Before, they'd been fighting across boundaries only because of their new bodies and Ren's modified Heretical God Force—barely clinging onto the edge of the smelting trial's expectations.
Now, with Fire Martial Intent aligning their soul force to a powerful Fire-Martial Intent, they were punching at least a full great realm above their base.
Against these Hungry Ghosts—creatures that were now beneath their "pay grade"—the difference was brutal.
Mo Eversnow could only watch in silence.
"…Impossible," she whispered. "Even for Divine Realm geniuses, this should be impossible at their stage. Even some Empyreans would not dare to say they could mass-produce martial intent like this…"
Yet he was doing exactly that.
Calmly. As if he were tinkering with a formation, not reworking destinies.
Ren leaned back on his hands, watching his "cute disciples" carve through ghosts with widening eyes and feral grins. Their fear thinned with every kill, replaced by something tougher.
He didn't look proud in the ordinary sense.
He looked… satisfied. Like an architect watching a blueprint become reality without a single misplaced stone.
"Not bad," he murmured as Na Shui's flame arc decapitated a cluster of phantoms. "We'll polish the rough edges later."
...
When the last Hungry Ghost fell, the gray world shook itself apart.
Soul force that had been torn and stretched snapped back, condensing. Na Yi felt her spiritual sea deepen, its walls hardening. The witch-light inside no longer flickered like a breeze-tossed candle; it sat like a hearth fire, steady and contained.
Na Shui's soul stopped feeling like a cracked cup.
It was still a little battered. A few lines remained. But it held.
A door of pale light opened ahead, cut into the dissolving horizon.
Na Shui swayed.
"I feel… like I've been hit in the head by Sister's fists a hundred times," she muttered.
Na Yi half-laughed, half-groaned. "You underestimate how hard I hit," she said dryly.
Ren rose smoothly, brushing imaginary dust from his clothes.
"You two did well," he said, voice light. "Consider yourselves… fine-tuned."
Na Shui squinted at him suspiciously. "Fine… what?"
He just smiled, that relaxed, modern amusement slipping through.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Point is: your soul force won't crumple the next time someone snarls at you."
Na Yi cradled the faint ember of Fire Martial Intent in her heart. It was small, barely more than a spark, but it was hers. When she breathed, it pulsed.
"…Thank you," she said quietly.
Na Shui nodded vigorously, braid bouncing. "Really… thank you," she echoed, voice softer than usual.
Ren waved a hand as if brushing away smoke.
"Don't thank me yet," he said. "We still have beasts to wrestle, witch slaves to bully, and some very arrogant 'envoys' to knock down."
His eyes curved, a glint of mischief and ruthlessness blending together.
"Come on," he said. "The rest of the furnace is waiting."
They stepped through.
...
The next three worlds blurred together in a whirlwind of steel, blood, and bone.
But the blur had structure.
In the Beasts trial, the sky was low and greenish, air thick with a wild stench. They fought creatures that made swamp crocodiles look like pets—horned tigers that spat poisonous mist, apes covered in bone plates, birds whose screeches shattered stone.
Each beast was a refining hammer.
Each kill poured raw physical power into their limbs, a crude influx that would have left hidden injuries in ordinary warriors.
Under Chaotic Virtues' modified patterns and the Heretical God Force's spiraling circulation, that energy melted into their flesh instead of lodging as damage.
Na Yi learned to trust her new frame.
She stopped fighting like a desperate witch girl throwing everything into a single spell and started moving like a warrior whose bones finally matched her will. She let her weight follow through fully, drove power from hip and spine, not just shoulder and arm. Her strikes grew fewer… and more decisive.
One blow to crush a beast's ribs instead of three.
One step to get inside a predator's bite rather than scrambling as prey.
Na Shui learned to move low and fast.
Her smaller size, once a disadvantage, became an edge. She slipped into blind spots, rolled under claws, darted along a beast's flank. With Fire Martial Intent threading through her True Essence and her physical blows, every punch that landed didn't just bruise—it ruptured joints from within, burning tendons and ligaments along the rune paths.
The first time she shattered a beast's entire foreleg with a single, clean strike, she froze for a heartbeat, staring at her fist.
Then she grinned.
"I like this art," she told Ren seriously.
Ren chuckled. "Good," he said. "It likes you too."
...
In the Witch Slave trial, they faced something very different.
An enormous humanoid abomination loomed before them—a giant stitched together from the grievances and power of countless ancient witches. Its skin was a patchwork of runes and scars, its eyes two dull orbs that glowed with the hatred of a forgotten era.
Its hide was nearly impenetrable.
Its fists could pulverize stone mountains.
Its purpose was simple: test and temper defense.
A week ago, the mere pressure of its aura would have flattened them.
Now, with their bones reforged and their flesh strengthened by Hell, Hungry Ghosts, and beasts—with Heretical God Force spiraling to distribute impact—they could meet its blows head-on.
Ren mostly watched.
When the Witch Slave's fist came down with enough force to crater the platform, he moved only a little. A thread of invisible Dao slid between that massive force and the sisters' bodies, diverting just enough of the impact to keep their organs from liquefying.
He did not remove the pain.
Pain lanced through them, bones shrieking, muscles tearing. Na Shui tasted blood; Na Yi felt something in her ribcage crack.
Heretical God Force seized those fractures.
Spiraling, refining, it treated every impact like a forging strike. Their flesh rebuilt itself stronger each time, bones knitting thicker.
The abomination roared, its voice a chorus of a hundred lamenting witches, and slammed its fist down again.
Na Yi braced, witch bones humming. Na Shui gritted her teeth, Fire Martial Intent flaring to reinforce her core.
Again and again, the giant struck.
Again and again, they climbed back to their feet.
From the outside, it looked cruel.
From the inside, it was a conversation between force and flesh, between death and refusal.
At the end, when Na Yi's arms finally caught the giant's descending palm without buckling, when Na Shui's counterpunch staggered the construct for the first time—it began to crumble.
Their bodies, carved by that trial, no longer felt like patched-together survivors.
They felt like weapons.
...
In the Mortals trial, they stood across from eighteen martial artists.
They weren't illusions.
They were condensed echoes of real warriors from the Sorcerer's age, their techniques and wills preserved like insects in amber. Twelve at the peak of Bone Forging, six at Pulse Condensation.
Men and women who had once stood under the same Divine Kingdom sky, now reduced to trial guardians.
Na Yi and Na Shui faced them not as prey… but as peers.
The first clash was brutal.
A Bone Forging spearwoman charged them, true essence swirling around her like a storm, spear-light drawing afterimages in the air. Beside her, a fist cultivator stepped forward, body honed like an iron pillar, bones ringing as he struck.
Na Yi met the spear.
Her bones, tempered by Witch Slave and beasts, vibrated under the force. For a heartbeat, her old instincts screamed at her to retreat, to cast witch spells from afar and let others stand in front.
She ignored them.
Her witch heritage surged instead, runes in her marrow hooking into Fire Martial Intent, wrapping her physical blow in structure.
Steel crashed against meat and bone.
The spear shuddered, point glancing off her forearm instead of piercing through. Red-gold light crawled along the metal, igniting and dismantling the true essence structure.
Na Shui intercepted the fist cultivator, slipping to the side and driving a short, brutal hook into his ribs. The impact detonated inside his chest, Fire Martial Intent burning along his meridians, scattering his control.
Their opponents staggered.
This time, the sisters pressed.
..
They did not win easily.
They bled. They endured broken fingers, dislocated shoulders, crushed toes. The Mortals echoes fought with practiced intent, no wasted movement, no mercy.
Under Ren's gaze, under Chaotic Virtues' endless circulation, under Heretical God Force's spirals, the sisters adapted.
Na Yi started stealing pieces of their footwork, their angles, their timing—her witch heritage and martial intent letting her record and replay patterns on the fly.
Na Shui learned to read micro-movements in shoulders and hips, reacting half a beat earlier each exchange, until she met a spear thrust before it fully formed.
Cultivation surged.
As they cut down the last of the Pulse Condensation echoes, the trial's power surged into them like a tidal wave.
Their bones vibrated, then cracked—not in failure, but in metamorphosis. Refining power from the shared field hammered their skeletons, breaking old limits and reshaping their inner structure. Muscles tore and rewove along cleaner lines; tendons thickened, meridians widened.
Na Yi's cultivation, which had hovered at the peak of Viscera Training, crossed into Altering Muscles—the fourth stage of Body Transformation. Her muscles sang as they rearranged, strength settling into her frame like a drawn bow.
Na Shui followed half a step behind, her own body ripping and reknitting. She gasped as tendons snapped and reformed, as new channels opened in her limbs.
Ren, standing at the edge of the battlefield with arms folded, let the trial's design do most of the heavy lifting. Whenever he sensed energy about to flood into the wrong place—about to leave behind a crooked meridian or an uneven bone—his Immortal Soul Bone flashed, and tiny threads of Dao nudged it into the proper path.
No wasted opportunities.
No wasted injuries.
The Mortals trial did not only temper them.
Ren rode that wave as well.
He had never truly bothered to follow Martial World's true essence cultivation path before. His body and Dao were far beyond it; his inner Heaven's stars made Martial World's heavens feel small. But the Sorcerer's trial carried the imprint of a man who had once built a Divine Kingdom atop this system.
It would've been rude not to accept that hand reaching back from history.
As the trial's reward flooded into him, he let the pagoda's branded methods touch his dantian.
True essence within him—previously kept compressed and simple, a neutral engine tied to his broader Dao—reshaped itself. The first proper cyclone of Pulse Condensation spun quietly into existence, denser than anything most early Houtian practitioners could dream of.
He threaded his own Dao through it—Fire Creation's golden dusk, chaos-neutral loops, echoes of other worlds—while keeping the outer signature neatly within this world's rules.
To the pagoda, he had just "broken through" to Pulse Condensation.
To himself, it was simply another coat thrown over a sky that had long since outgrown such labels.
Outside, Yan Mo watched ghostly runes on an ancient stone slab flare brighter.
"…The two girls have reached Altering Muscles already," he murmured. "Their foundations are cleaner than most champions. And this outsider…"
He trailed off.
On the slab, Ren Ming's name flickered, shifting as his cultivation "advanced".
On paper, he had only stepped into the Houtian realm's true beginning.
In reality, Yan Mo could sense that this was merely that monstrous inner sky agreeing to wear another of their world's masks.
"…Master would have liked you," Yan Mo said softly.
...
Light twisted.
The Mortals battlefield—shattered flagstones, fading martial echoes—blurred, then folded away like a painting rolled up and stored.
The three of them stepped into a dim, high space that felt like the inside of a bell.
A stone platform stretched beneath their feet, smooth and black, suspended in a boundless emptiness. Far above, a dim sun hung, its light filtered through layers of mist until it fell like pale dust.
Around the platform, pillars of translucent jade rose and sank, appearing and vanishing as if the space itself was breathing.
Na Shui swallowed.
"…It's like standing in the middle of the temple," she whispered. "But… older."
Na Yi's gaze sharpened.
The pressure here was different from the raw, elemental assaults of the previous worlds. It was heavier, more structured. It felt like that moment when the tribe's elders had once walked into the sacred hall—an invisible weight pressing down, measuring everything.
Ren stood with his hands tucked into his sleeves, head tilted back as he studied the unseen dome overhead.
His expression was relaxed, but his eyes were deep.
"Celestial Envoy," he said mildly. "This is where your ancestors proved they could stand in front of someone at Houtian and not break."
Na Shui's heart stuttered.
Houtian.
Na Yi drew in a slow breath, her witch instincts sifting through old legends.
"This is the sixth test," she murmured. "The stories said… only those who could cross a great realm had the right to aspire to be kings of the Southern Wilderness."
Ren glanced at her, pleased by how quickly she connected the dots.
"Exactly," he said. "The Sorcerer didn't want heirs who bullied weaklings. He wanted people who could punch above the label on their back."
He stepped away, moving toward the edge of the platform.
"I won't interfere," he said. "Not once."
Na Shui's head snapped toward him. "What—"
"Shui." Na Yi's voice cut her off. Not harsh, but firm.
"We walked into a smelting trial," Na Yi continued quietly. "If Master's test is to cross a boundary… then if we borrow his back now, we'll fail in truth, even if the world lets us pass."
Ren's mouth curved.
"Listen to your sister," he said. "I'm just here to make sure the test doesn't cheat—not to take it for you."
He nodded toward the center of the platform, where faint, intricate patterns were starting to appear, like breath condensing on glass.
"Get your breath," he said softly. "Cycle Heretical God Force once. Run the body art through bones and flesh. Then walk forward together."
They sat cross-legged without argument.
In Na Yi's spiritual sea, Heretical God Force's first-layer ring turned exactly once. Not roaring like a wild beast, but pulsing like a strong, steady heart.
It took the scattered tension in her chest, the leftover tremors in her muscles, and twisted them into a single, tight spiral of intent. Modified Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians hummed along her bones, opening and closing pores, aligning muscles and tendons.
In Na Shui's sea, the same ring turned—slightly faster, more uneven at first. Each pulse smoothed the shaking in her hands. The Fire Martial Intent seed glowed faintly in both of them, its rune-paths syncing with their breathing.
Na Shui's trembling eased.
Na Yi's eyes grew clear, like polished black glass.
They rose.
The moment they stepped toward the center, the world answered.