Behind her, Little Flame gave a low, questioning chirp.
Mu Qianyu turned just as the small Vermillion Bird hopped closer, flames rustling around its body like feathers made of sunset. The thunderstorm's glare reflected off those scarlet wings, but close up she could still see the singed patches, the broken quills where purple lightning had torn through its defenses.
Ren Ming looked over his shoulder at them.
"All right," he said, voice easy, a lazy smile tugging at his lips. "Your turn too."
The Vermillion Bird met his gaze.
Little Flame's eyes burned with the stubborn pride of a Saint Beast; even wounded, it refused to lower its head. Yet its steps were honest. It padded forward through the crackling stone until it stood in front of Ren, chest rising and falling with each hot breath.
It lowered its head the slightest bit.
Not in submission.
In trust.
Ren's smile softened. He lifted his hand and placed his palm against the Vermillion Bird's feathered chest.
Thunder answered.
Fire answered.
The storm above roared, and for a moment the entire Thundercrash Mountain seemed to hold its breath.
Violet threads of thunder that had burrowed into Little Flame's flesh stirred restlessly. The remnants of the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder—an earth-step thunder soul born from a Saint Beast that had devoured the mountain's lightning for ten thousand years—clung to bone and blood like burning chains.
Mu Qianyu felt it through their contract.
The pain flared again, that familiar biting, metallic agony that ate along Little Flame's meridians and threatened to crack its bloodline foundation. Even after the dragon died, its thunder still tried to brand its will into anything that touched it.
Little Flame trembled once.
Then something else moved.
Ren's Ancient Ming Bloodline stirred.
To Mu Qianyu's perception, it was like watching a deep ocean open its eyes. A faint, invisible tide rushed out of Ren's palm and into Little Flame. It wasn't gentle. It was hungry.
Her spiritual sense brushed the boundary of that power and shivered.
The purple thunder that had refused to yield to her own Divine Phoenix inheritance—thunder that had nearly killed her and Little Flame both—suddenly lost its arrogance. That violent remnant met the Ancient Ming Bloodline and was swallowed without ceremony, devoured and broken down into purer, cleaner Law patterns.
Impurities vanished.
The excess violence was stripped away like dross skimmed off molten metal. What remained was thunder in its most refined form: sharp, cold, merciless—but no longer wild.
At the same time, another power moved within Ren.
The Immortal Soul Bone.
Within his body, countless tiny Dao lines lit up like a star map. The Immortal Soul Bone took the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder's remnants apart rune by rune, tracing every pattern, every branching path, calculating how best to bend them into something that wouldn't tear their host apart.
He wrapped the thunder.
He refined it.
He fed it back into Little Flame's bloodline like medicine.
Phoenix blood roared.
Mu Qianyu's breath caught.
From Ren's palm, a tide of blazing power surged into Little Flame's chest. That power wasn't just thunder. It was Fire, Thunder, and Wind Laws braided together.
The Purple Flood Dragon's remnant thunder became a tempering hammer, striking Little Flame's Vermillion Bird bloodline again and again. Each strike didn't shatter; it awakened.
A phantom cry echoed in the air.
It was faint, distant, like a memory coming from the other side of heaven and earth—but the moment it sounded, every flame on the ledge trembled. Mu Qianyu felt it in her marrow: the echo of an ancient Divine Phoenix, calling through the bloodline.
Little Flame threw back its head and cried in answer.
Crimson-gold flames erupted from its body, reaching several zhang high before Ren's will smoothed them down again. Purple lightning ran along those flames like veins of light. For an instant, the Vermillion Bird's small body was like a furnace where thunder and phoenix fire fused.
Mu Qianyu clutched at her chest.
Their life-bound contract pulsed so fiercely it almost hurt. The link between them—always strong—deepened in an instant; what had once been a single thread became a braided rope.
She could feel every beat of Little Flame's heart.
She could feel the thunder in its bones, the way the Purple Flood Dragon's tyranny had been melted into fuel for its growth.
When Ren finally took his hand away, the thunder traces that had plagued Little Flame were gone.
Not scattered.
Refined.
The singed feathers that had covered its body had already begun to fall, replaced by new growth. Fresh vermillion plumes pushed through skin in a wave, smoother and glossier than before. At the tips of each feather, a delicate violet sheen shimmered, like lightning buried under the surface.
Little Flame shook itself.
Flames surged around its wings. Its aura leapt half a small boundary, then steadied, no instability, no backlash. The Vermillion Bird hopped in a small circle, testing its new strength, its joy flickering through the contract bond like warm sparks.
Mu Qianyu's eyes shone.
She had watched Divine Phoenix Island's elders nourish life-bound Vermillion Birds with ancient pills, secret arts, and years of personal guidance. Even so, such leaps in foundation were rare and always came with risk.
Ren had done it in the time it took for an incense stick to burn.
He rolled his wrist once, shaking off the last tingling traces of thunder that clung to his fingers.
"All right," he said, tone casual. "That's that."
Mu Qianyu rose slowly.
Her robes still carried the soot and blood from the earlier battle, but her back was straight. A proud Saintess of Divine Phoenix Island did not bow to anyone lightly—but in this moment, her eyes were bright with respect, awe, and a quieter emotion she didn't yet want to name.
"Ren… Ming," she said.
For once, she discarded all titles.
"Divine Phoenix Island will remember this favor."
Ren lifted his hand and brushed her words aside like smoke.
"Didn't I tell you?" he said, smiling. "No need for that kind of heavy talk."
He turned away a little, looking past the jagged ledge and out over the sea of clouds below. The storm-scarred slopes of Thundercrash Mountain dropped away beneath them, disappearing into rolling mist lit violet by lightning.
"Besides," he added, the corner of his mouth curling, "my real reward is still coming."
Mu Qianyu blinked, thrown off. "…Your real reward?"
Ren glanced back over his shoulder.
His eyes glinted with quiet amusement, that relaxed, modern warmth that felt so wildly out of place in this world of sects and bloodlines—and yet seemed to fit him completely.
"Watch," he said. "You'll see."
He didn't explain.
He simply stepped off the ledge.
Mu Qianyu's heart lurched despite herself.
Ren's figure dropped into the storm.
Wind howled up to meet him, tearing at his cloak. Thunder crashed all around, tens of thousands of bolts weaving a net of violet light above and below. Any ordinary Houtian martial artist would have been reduced to ash before finishing a single breath.
Ren hovered in midair as if he'd just stepped off a stair.
Fire, Thunder, and Wind origin energies rushed toward him like old friends who'd just found their favorite drinking partner.
His eyes half-closed.
Beneath his feet, the air rippled. A red-gold rune-wheel slowly manifested, spinning lazily in the void. Flames etched themselves into the wheel's spokes, each arc of light carrying the imprint of a battle, a hardship, a moment of comprehension.
Ren's Fire Martial Intent.
Compared to the crude, embryonic intents scattered across the lower realms, this one was a fully formed sovereignty. Within its field, all flame—true essence fire, blood vitality heat, even the subtle spark of a martial artist's battle will—would be compressed and purified, forced to burn at a higher order.
Above him, tiny vermillion birds of fire began to appear.
One after another, they hatched from sparks, shook off embers like water, and took wing.
Some burned like pure destruction—fierce and devouring.
Some flickered gently, the warmth of hearthfire that nurtured life.
Some carried a clean, white-hot edge, flames that purified corruption and refined metal and bone alike.
Others rose upward in spirals, transformation flames that burned away the old to make room for the new.
At first glance, their flight was chaotic.
They crisscrossed the sky in bright streaks, sometimes colliding and merging, sometimes diving and exploding. But the longer one watched, the more an underlying order emerged.
The vermillion birds flew along invisible lines.
They traced out patterns that reminded Mu Qianyu of Divine Phoenix Island's most precious jade slips—ancient diagrams of Fire Laws written by the sect's founding ancestors. Circulations that had once been obscure, like tangled silk threads, now unfurled in front of her as living runes.
Her breath caught.
He isn't just letting me see Fire, she realized.
He's showing me Fire's path.
Her Divine Phoenix cultivation method stirred in response.
Golden-red phoenix flames rose from her dantian, coiling around her meridians. The Vermillion Bird life-bond contracted gently in her soul as Little Flame reacted to the sight of so many flaming bird shadows.
The tiny vermillion birds that circled Ren were each an answer to a question she had wrestled with for years.
How does flame attach to air?
How does it cling to fuel?
What does it mean for fire to purify, to devour, to transform?
The runes in the feathers of each fiery bird mirrored the hidden diagrams in Divine Phoenix Island's secret manuals—but where those manuals were deep and obscure, heavy with the weight of generations, Ren's demonstration was… simple.
Clear.
As if someone had taken those abstruse jade slip diagrams and pulled out the core truths, then woven them into a single living painting.
Mu Qianyu's lips parted.
"This…" she whispered. "This is… easier than…"
She stopped herself, biting off the comparison—but the thought still rang in her mind.
Easier than any teaching diagram on Divine Phoenix Island.
Ren's gaze flicked up, meeting hers through the rain of fire.
"Stay as long as you want," he called, voice carrying easily through wind and thunder. "I'm going to be here for a while. Once I finish using this place to forge a new Martial Intent… and something for a few disciples back home…"
He smiled faintly.
"Then I'll leave."
Disciples…
Mu Qianyu remembered the pressure that had blanketed Thundercrash Mountain when he casually suppressed the Purple Thunder Flood Dragon. The divine feeling in his Fire, Thunder, and Wind Laws. The way he had casually taken that Saint Beast's thunder soul into his own body, then calmly cleaned her meridians and strengthened Little Flame's bloodline as if performing some light massage.
This sort of person is… tempering a Martial Intent in a small Martial House in some minor kingdom.
She couldn't imagine what those disciples would become.
Her fingers rose unconsciously, brushing the skin of her wrist where his hand had held her earlier. There, warmth lingered. Phoenix fire and thunder intertwined quietly within her body, chasing each other along her meridians.
She recalled the pressure of his Wind and Thunder Laws—the way, even when he wasn't trying, they gave off that same divine sense as his Fire. If she could just observe a bit more…
Mu Qianyu's decision settled in her heart like falling snow.
"I will stay," she said softly.
She sat down again on the ledge, cross-legged. Little Flame curled up beside her like a living, fiery cloak, its newly violet-tipped wings wrapping around her back.
Ren's mouth curved in satisfaction.
"Good choice," he said.
He turned back to the storm and sank deeper into Fire, Thunder, and Wind.
As he moved, subtle shifts in his aura made the vermillion birds change their flight patterns. New paths opened, small angles of approach that revealed hidden layers of Law—small gifts thrown up to the red-clothed Saintess watching above.
Every so often he tossed a comment upward between circulations.
"Don't just stare at the pretty feathers," he called once, leisurely. "Watch how the flame clings to the air."
Mu Qianyu's lips twitched despite herself.
"…Who is staring at… pretty feathers," she muttered, cheeks faintly warm.
Another time:
"If you get lost, follow the hottest path," he said lazily. "Fire always likes to make a scene."
She huffed, turning her face away.
But the laughter in her eyes couldn't be hidden.
The tension from the earlier life-and-death battle slowly melted, replaced by something warmer, stranger.
Thundercrash Mountain's days were never truly quiet.
Even when lightning rested for a moment, the air still hummed with residual power. Clouds flickered with buried light. The wind carried the faint ozone scent of ten thousand years of storm.
To most martial artists, this place was a land of trials and death.
To Ren, it became… a little vacation.
...
The first day after he saved Mu Qianyu, the ledge filled with the smell of roasting meat.
Thunder beasts were lean and tough, their flesh threaded with metallic essence and latent lightning that made an ordinary martial artist's teeth ache. Mu Qianyu had eaten them before on expeditions—mostly as emergency rations charred over rough campfires.
In Ren's hands, skewered over a controlled phoenix flame borrowed from Little Flame, that same meat turned tender and crisp.
"Here," he said, offering her a skewer.
The vermillion flame he used to cook was strange. It wasn't his own—he had drawn it from Little Flame and wrapped it in his Fire Martial Intent, compressing and smoothing its violence. The thunder within the meat flared once as the fire touched it, then sank down, half-refined.
Mu Qianyu hesitated only for a breath.
Divine Phoenix Island's Saintess had eaten spirit beast banquets cooked by palace chefs whose culinary techniques were themselves martial arts. Even so, when she bit into Ren's cooking, her pupils shrank in surprise.
The outer layer crackled pleasantly.
Inside, the meat fell apart under light pressure, juices flooding her mouth. The thunder essence that would normally jolt meridians had been braided into the fat; each bite broke into warmth that slid along her meridians like a mild tempering bath.
"…You infused Fire Laws into the cooking?" she asked, dazed.
Ren grinned.
"If you're going to eat thunder," he said, "might as well make it listen first. Let your Phoenix flames chew on what's left."
He took a bite himself, chewing with obvious enjoyment, like a man on a lazy afternoon rather than a terrifying cultivator sitting halfway up a forbidden mountain where Saint Beasts had died.
The contrast made Mu Qianyu's heart sway.
Cultivators came to Thundercrash Mountain to walk on the edge between life and death. She'd expected days of tense meditation on cold stone, every breath focused on survival and comprehension.
Instead, she found herself sitting on a ledge with the man who had punched a Saint Beast to death, listening to him complain, half-smiling, that the local spirit wine was "tragically weak" and nowhere near deserving of the word "wine" at all.
Whenever she grew too serious—brows knitting, thoughts dragging back to the Purple Flood Dragon's roar and the moment its thunder had nearly turned her to ash—Ren would casually prod that mood apart.
Once, as she stared at the distant horizon, mind drifting to Divine Phoenix Island's responsibilities and the web of expectations waiting for her, a warm weight settled on her head.
His hand.
"You'll wrinkle your forehead that way," he said. "And then I'll feel guilty."
Mu Qianyu stiffened. "You—"
She reached up on reflex, intending to push his hand away, but he'd already withdrawn it. His fingers flicked a stray ash from her sleeve instead.
"See?" he said, eyes laughing. "Much better."
Another day, while she cultivated with Vermillion Bird flames coiling around her in a ritual pattern, she opened her eyes to find Ren leaning nearby against a boulder, one leg stretched out, one knee bent, posture loose and unhurried.
He held a thin sliver of thunder ore between his fingers.
"Your Phoenix art runs like this," he said, tracing a graceful loop in the air.
Fire essence followed his motion, leaving a red trail.
"Steady. Elegant. Very Divine Phoenix."
Then, with a flick, he added a sharp twist to the loop—seemingly breaking the circulation, only for the path to reconnect at a tighter angle.
"If you want that Thunder-Phoenix flame to bite harder," he continued, "let part of your fire move like thunder. Shorten the path. Add a snap at the end."
He glanced at her, voice mild. "Or ignore me. It's your Dao, not mine."
Mu Qianyu's lips pressed together.
She'd seen references to this in Divine Phoenix Island's most obscure texts—cryptic lines about "let Phoenix cry with thunder's tongue" that her master had said she might glimpse at the Divine Sea realm.
Here, this man had sketched the core truth in two casual strokes.
Her pride resisted for a heartbeat.
Then her martial heart answered.
She tried it.
She let her Phoenix fire circulate along its usual arc… and then, at the last moment, she cut the path short, snapping it along a jagged line like lightning.
Thunder answered.
Inside her dantian, the Vermillion Bird's cry changed pitch. Flames that had always risen in sweeping arcs now bent into sharper, explosive lines. She extended her hand; a plume of red-gold fire flared into being, its edges lined in faint violet tongues that crackled quietly.
Thunder-Phoenix Flame.
Not an embryonic concept, but a true fusion of Laws. The flame in her palm felt heavier, more incisive, as if it wanted to carve rather than simply burn.
Her breath caught.
She looked up.
Ren's gaze met hers. Calm. Deep. And in that depth, a warmth that eased the violent fluctuations of her breakthrough.
"Good," he said softly. "You're listening well."
Her face warmed.
"…You say it so easily," she muttered. "As if such gains are nothing."
He shrugged, smiling. "For you, they aren't nothing. For me…"
His eyes curved with a teasing light.
"Teaching a beautiful woman how to burn the world more elegantly? I'd call that a hobby."
The shamelessness of those words made her ears heat, but there was no greasy intent in his tone. It was as natural as his breathing, as natural as the way his eyes softened whenever they rested on her.
Day by day, a rhythm formed.
Morning: he demonstrated.
Afternoon: she watched, eyes narrowed, spirit sense stretched taut to capture every trace of Law.
Evening: he corrected her, sometimes stepping behind her, hands briefly touching her shoulders, adjusting the tilt of her wrist as she shaped Phoenix flame.
"Don't force it," he murmured once, voice low by her ear. "Your fire already knows the path. You just have to get out of its way."
His breath stirred a few loose strands of her hair.
Her heart skipped.
The flame in her hand wavered—then steadied, hotter, purer, a thread of thunder coiling at its core.
At night, when thunder rolled like a distant drum and mountain winds howled through the peaks, he would cook or simply sit beside her, talking about nothing and everything.
He asked about Divine Phoenix Island's customs: the Vermillion Bird Faction, her master, how disciples first learned to dance with flame as children beneath the sect's towering pillars.
He listened carefully, giving each of her words weight—not because she was a Saintess, but because they were hers.
In turn, she asked about his "small Martial House."
Ren spoke of a minor kingdom far from here, of Seven Profound Martial House tucked away in the Sky Spill Continent's corner. But when he spoke of his disciples, his tone was a mixture of fondness and quiet amusement.
Murong Zi, stubborn as a spear, always trying to pierce the sky.
Qin Xingxuan, neat and pristine, hiding a fierce, unyielding heart beneath her calm.
Na Yi and Na Shui, feral and gentle in turns, dragons in human skin who had curled up at his side and decided not to leave.
When he talked about them, his eyes grew softer, but never indulgent. There was a firm belief there: he had chosen to pull these girls up a mountain he could climb alone.
"You care for them deeply," Mu Qianyu said once, quietly.
Ren stretched, fingers lacing behind his head as he leaned back against the stone.
"They're good girls," he replied. "Stubborn. Prideful. Worth the effort."
His gaze slid sideways, brushing her profile.
"Same as someone else I know."
Her hand tightened unconsciously around the cup of spirit tea he'd brewed.
"…I don't know what you mean," she said, looking away.
"Of course you don't," he murmured, smile widening.
Her days under his guidance were supposed to be calm cultivation.
Instead, they became a relentless sequence of small shocks.
Every morning when she opened her eyes, her Phoenix flames were stronger. Her Thunder-Phoenix Flame grew more stable with each circulation. Little Flame's wings shed old feathers and regrew them with faint violet tips; its Vermillion Bird cry gained an undercurrent of thunder that made the mountain's lightning hesitate for a fraction of a breath.
The obscure diagrams in Divine Phoenix Island's jade slips—the ones she had stared at for days with no progress—now unfolded in her mind like scrolls being unrolled in bright light.
The one unrolling them sat only a few steps away, lazily spinning a piece of thunder ore between his fingers, bare feet planted on the stone as if this forbidden land were just another courtyard in a tiny Martial House.
Ren, for his part, was anything but idle.
While Mu Qianyu meditated and tempered her flames against the mountain's storms, his consciousness sank into a different battlefield entirely.
Thunder crashed in the distance.
Inside Ren's inner world, that sound came as a low, steady rumble—like a sleeping beast turning over.
The sealed space in his dantian was a starless void.
At its center coiled a small purple dragon no longer than his forearm, its body made of pure lightning runes. It twisted restlessly, jaws open in a silent roar, arcs of violet light scraping uselessly against chains of hazy True Essence that bound it.
Opposite the thunder dragon hung a miniature sun.
The Earthcore Crimson Flame he had refined in the Southern Wilderness: a medium-grade human-step Flame Essence whose heat came not from sky-fire, but from the world's bones themselves. Layers of dark red flame folded in upon themselves, each pulse sending out a pressure so heavy it seemed to warp the void.
Even in this sealed space, its heat felt like molten rock flowing through deep, narrow veins.
Ren stood between them, hands folded behind his back.
"Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder," he murmured, gaze on the chained dragon.
The words tasted of metal and ozone.
That thunder soul was the distilled tyranny of a Saint Beast that had eaten Thundercrash Mountain's lightning for ten thousand years. Its nature was cruel, domineering. It existed to pierce and shatter.
"Earthcore Crimson Flame."
He turned his eyes briefly to the miniature sun.
Opposite extreme.
Flame drawn from the planet's heart, stable and enduring. It did not dance wildly like sky-fire; it smoldered, burned with the stubbornness of stone. In Martial World's terms, a Flame Essence that allowed one to nurture their own fire source, evolving True Essence fire toward higher orders.
Between thunder and earthfire, three Laws spun in quiet galaxies: Fire, Thunder, and Wind, all at the fourth level.
He drew a long, slow breath.
"All right," he said to himself. "Let's do this properly."
He lifted his right hand.
The chains binding the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder loosened.
Not much. Just enough.
Violet lightning surged, trying to rush out, to tear apart this tiny inner world, to reassert its nature as a force that nothing short of heaven's wrath could control.
It slammed into his waiting will.
Ren's eyes opened in his inner world. In his pupils, a vermillion firebird's shadow flickered; twin arcs of thunder crossed its wings; the faint outline of a transparent roc spread beneath.
"Come here," he said.
The thunder soul shuddered.
Fourth-level Thunder Laws stirred. Lightning in this domain stopped being raw power and became pattern—countless thin lines, every branch of every bolt laid bare like an open book.
At the same time, the Earthcore Crimson Flame's miniature sun trembled. Streams of dark red fire peeled away, coiling toward Ren's outstretched hand.
Thunder and earthfire gathered.
Around them, Fire, Wind, and Thunder Laws aligned with frightening ease. At this level, Law wasn't just comprehension—it was instinct. Slight error meant crippling backlash.
Ren did not rush.
He let the three Laws braid together first.
Fire gave eruption and transformation.
Thunder gave judgment and tearing force.
Wind gave vector—direction, flow, the shortest line between two points.
Under his will, the three braided into a single luminous strand.
Then he fed the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder into that strand like molten metal poured into a mold.
The tiny thunder dragon fought.
It tried to explode into chaotic arcs, to punch a hole in his inner world and escape. The True Essence chains tightened, grinding away its beastly awareness, scraping off instinct and leaving behind only the pure core of its law pattern: a compressed, furious will to pierce and shatter.
The Earthcore Crimson Flame followed.
The miniature sun opened like a flower, petals of flame folding inward. He stripped away excess heat and sluggish earth-attribute stability, removed the heavy, slow-burning aspects that had once helped him survive its tempering.
What he kept was density.
Flame that did not disperse once ignited. Flame that clung and bored inward, advancing whether the world liked it or not.
Fire.
Thunder.
Wind.
Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder.
Earthcore Crimson Flame.
They sank together.
In his dantian, True Essence roared. The Modified Heretical God Force stirred; its "inner governor" monitored strain while the opened gates hammered power in precise spirals. Instead of exploding outward, his strength was compressed inward again and again, like a massive invisible hammer striking a glowing bar of metal on the same point, forging instead of detonating.
Outside, on Thundercrash Mountain, thunder rolled like an army on the march.
On the ledge, Mu Qianyu's eyes flew open.
She felt it.
Not as sound, but as pressure.
A chill ran down her spine. The Phoenix flames that had always risen proudly in her bloodline—flames that bowed only to Divine Phoenix Island's ancient inheritances—suddenly trembled, feathers flattening like a proud bird sensing an unseen predator.
Little Flame's wings flared wide, violet-tipped feathers puffing unconsciously. The Vermillion Bird crouched low, Saint Beast instincts screaming of coming calamity.
In front of them, Ren floated in midair.
He hadn't moved.
His body sat cross-legged above the sea of clouds, cloak unnaturally still in the shrieking wind. But the air around him…
The air had changed.
If earlier his Fire, Thunder, and Wind had been swirling streams, now everything had gone silent.
A breath.
Two.
Then—
The world… cracked.
It wasn't sound.
It was feeling.
Between heaven and earth, a line appeared.
Around Ren's body, a sharp, multi-colored violent aura condensed. From his heart, a thin strand of multi-hued light stretched out and stabbed through the storm.
It wasn't a blade or a spear or any recognizable weapon.
It was Intention.
It cut everything.
It ignored wind.
It ignored rain.
It passed through clouds, thunder, the invisible weave of heaven and earth's origin energy, then pierced the void beyond without slowing—like a single stroke of a brush across a blank scroll that refused to stop at the paper's edge.
Mu Qianyu's breathing stopped.
It felt as if that line had pierced straight through the center of her brows, continued through her heart, then kept going, unstopped, toward the horizon.
Her Revolving Core trembled violently.
For a horrifying instant, she felt as if her core might crack just from being "seen" by that Intention.
Little Flame flattened itself against the stone. Its Vermillion Bird aura, which had screamed defiance even at a Saint Beast, sank as low as it could, as if trying to hide under the mountain itself.
"What… is this?" Mu Qianyu whispered.
Her voice was hoarse.
In front of that line, her proud Phoenix flame felt… small.
Like a lantern held under the noonday sun.
The entire Thundercrash Mountain reacted.
Lightning that had always struck without rest hesitated. Bolts hung half-formed within thunderclouds that suddenly faltered, as if some higher law had overruled their right to fall.
Thunderclouds trembled.
Some scattered.
Others condensed into thin threads, all drawn irresistibly toward that single line.
In Ren's inner world, the fusion completed.
The strand of coiled Laws, thunder soul, and earthfire had been hammered and compressed until it was as fine as a hair. Any more pressure would have shattered it.
Ren smiled.
"Good enough," he said.
He loosened his control—not to let it explode, but to let it extend.
The multi-colored violent line he had drawn through the storm… thickened.
Its presence deepened.
It did not become wider.
It became real.
Around it, the world's Laws warped.
Wind that had always flowed easily suddenly felt clumsy compared to the speed contained inside that thin strand.
Thunder's natural paths bent. Bolts that should have fallen vertically now hooked along invisible routes, aligning themselves to that Intention like iron filings to a magnet.
Flame gathered along its edges, then sank in, disappearing without a trace—ink absorbed into paper.
Mu Qianyu watched, breath shallow.
She had learned Martial Intents since childhood. Divine Phoenix Island's elders had taught her that Martial Intent was the reflection of one's understanding of a path—how it could increase one's combat power, how a martial artist who comprehended a single-grade Martial Intent could fight half a small realm above.
She had seen geniuses.
But this…
When that multi-colored line fully took shape, she knew.
If it slashed toward her now—
She would die.
Not "might." Not "would be gravely injured."
Die.
Her Vermillion Bird flames surged to their peak, Thunder-Phoenix Flame roaring in her meridians. Her Revolving Core spun madly. Every inheritance Divine Phoenix Island had given her answered her desperate instinct to live.
The verdict was the same.
Death.
In his inner world, Ren studied the Martial Intent.
It hovered before him: a line etched into emptiness.
Fire, Thunder, and Wind had faded from obvious sight, but their influence saturated the line's existence. The multi-colored violent radiance around it glared as if it wanted to overwhelm all concepts.
Speed.
Power.
Piercing.
In battle, this Intent would—
Compress Fire, Thunder, and Wind Laws to the limit on every strike.
Fold space along the shortest path between his will and the target, shaving away wasted movement.
Ignore 40% of an opponent's Laws and True Essence, boring through them unless their foundation was overwhelmingly higher than one's own foundation.
Enhance perception to the point that their minds think dozens of times greater than lightning speeds.
Ren quietly tested its properties.
"Average foundation," he murmured. "If they only grasp small success…"
Images formed in his mind.
A young Revolving Core martial artist from a small sect: average-grade elemental realm, mediocre techniques. With this Martial Intent, even a shallow comprehension would make their strikes sharper, faster, harder to defend. They could threaten fighters a great realm higher.
"Someone like Mu Qianyu…"
His gaze slid outward, through flesh and bone, to where she sat on the ledge.
Her foundation was excellent—a Divine Phoenix Island Saintess, Revolving Core solid, Fire Laws at second level, life-bound Vermillion Bird now touched by thunder.
"With this Intent," he murmured, "even at Revolving Core small success… she could fight six or sevenfall Divine Sea experts head-on. If they lack a top-grade domain or heaven-defying inheritance, she might even suppress them."
For those born from Empyrean lineages in the Divine Realm, with terrifying inheritances and bloodlines, the effect would be even more exaggerated. An Empyrean descendant at Revolving Core with this Intent could easily skip a great realm and half even against other Empyrean descendants.
His thoughts turned inward again.
Modified Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians.
Modified Heretical God Force.
He remembered how he'd reshaped those arts—how Heretical God Force no longer simply flung open gates, but refined and guided eruptions; how Chaotic Virtues taught the body to record force as Dao Fruits.
"Stack them together…"
His mind ran the numbers out of habit.
A peak Revolving Core powerhouse who cultivated this Martial Intent to large success, whose body had been tempered by his version of Chaotic Virtues, whose True Essence was driven by the six layers of his Heretical God Force…
Against eightfall Divine Sea masters, as long as the other side lacked something on the level of Empyrean artifacts or near-True Divinity manifestations, it wouldn't be impossible to fight evenly.
If their combat sense matched their cultivation, they could slaughter across realms.
"And this is just the start," Ren said softly.
He smiled, eyes crinkling.
"Not bad for a little lower-realm vacation."
He flicked his fingers.
A faint ripple moved along the line.
Violet arcs crawled along its length. Earth-red flame sank into its core. A transparent wind halo wrapped it.
Then all visible signs vanished again. His sharp multi-hued aura vanished.
Only a lingering pressure remained.
He thought for a moment.
"Speed to arrive before defense," he murmured. "Power to crush whatever it touches. Piercing that refuses to be stopped."
He chuckled under his breath.
"Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent," he said. "Good enough name."