I lay in the center of the glassy crater, my body a map of smoking ruins and glowing black scars. The air around me was still ionized, tasting of scorched earth and the metallic tang of blood. My vision was a fractured kaleidoscope. Through my left blue eye, the world was a blur of moonlight and grey ash. Through my right red eye, the Heaven-Piercing Demon Eye, I saw the world as a skeletal structure of fading energy threads, pulsing with the rhythmic, dying heat of the stone.
Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. My obsidian Core was silent, locked in the "Tenth Fold" stasis, wrapping the stolen Black Tribulation lightning in a tight, volatile embrace. I was a man of lean muscle and iron will, but at this moment, I was nothing more than a broken vessel waiting for the end.
The end arrived with the soft, synchronized crunch of boots on gravel.
Three figures stood at the lip of the crater, silhouetted against the clearing sky. They wore the indigo robes of the Heaven's Gaze Pavilion, trimmed with silver threads that shimmered like spiderwebs in the dark. Their porcelain masks were bone-white and expressionless, save for the single, lidless black eye painted in the center of the forehead. To a normal observer, they were nightmares. To me, they were the architects of my clan's extinction.
"Lower Core Condensation," the lead assassin said. His voice was a dry, thin rasp, like parchment being torn. "He did not just survive; he stole the Edict. Look at the scars. He is no longer just a vessel. He is a catalyst."
The man on the left was massive, his robes straining against shoulders that seemed wider than a temple door. He carried a heavy, serrated cleaver that hummed with a low, brown Earth Qi Element. The man on the right was shorter, his movements twitchy and predatory, his fingers clicking together like the mandibles of an insect.
"The Pavilion Master will be pleased," the massive one rumbled. His voice vibrated in the pit of my stomach. "We take the head and the eyes. The body is irrelevant."
They began to descend, their movements measured and arrogant. They knew I couldn't move. I tried to command my Qi, but my meridians were flooded with the cooling "ash" of the lightning, paralyzed by the sheer volume of celestial power I had forced into them.
Just as the massive assassin reached the halfway point, his heavy cleaver raised to split the air, the temperature dropped.
It wasn't a gradual cooling. It was a sudden, violent theft of heat. My breath hitched as a wall of frost surged across the glassy floor of the crater, turning the scorched stone into a slick, lethal mirror.
"Step back," a voice commanded.
It was a voice I recognized calm, cold, and possessing the weight of a glacier. Shen Yuerin stepped from behind a jagged shard of stone at the crater's edge. She looked different than when we had parted at the Silver Web. Her pale blue robes were now reinforced with dark leather bracers, and a faint, crystalline aura of white-blue frost drifted from her skin. Her ice-blue eyes were fixed on the lead assassin with a lethal, calculating focus.
"Strategist Shen," the lead assassin hissed, his twitchy companion halting mid-step. "You are interfering in a purge authorized by the High Heavens. The governor of the Silent Peaks has no authority to block the Gaze."
"I am not here on behalf of the governor," Shen Yuerin replied. She raised her hand, and the air around her began to swirl with snow that hadn't been there a second ago. "I am here on behalf of a debt. And I find your presence... untidy."
The massive assassin laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "A Spirit Sea girl and a fugitive boy. You think you can stop three Core masters?"
He lunged. His heavy cleaver carved a brown arc of Earth Qi through the air, intending to shatter Shen's frost shield in a single blow.
But he never reached her.
A figure emerged from the shadows behind Shen Yuerin, moving with a speed that made the Heaven-Piercing Demon Eye throb in my skull. He didn't run; he simply was there.
He was tall, draped in a heavy, charcoal-grey cloak that seemed to absorb the moonlight. When he raised his hand to catch the massive cleaver, I saw the tattoos intricate, glowing gold geometric lines that spiraled up his fingers and disappeared into his sleeves.
The cleaver, backed by the full weight of a Core master's strength, stopped dead against the man's open palm. There was no explosion, no shockwave. The man simply absorbed the momentum as if it were a light breeze.
"Your gaze is narrow," the man said. His voice was deep, echoing as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. "You look at the boy and see a prize. I look at you and see a stain."
He pulled back his hood. My heart nearly stopped.
He was handsome in a rugged, ancient way, his face marked by the same golden tattoos that circled his eyes. But it was the eyes themselves that held the horror and the beauty. They were solid, liquid gold. No pupils, no irises, just two burning pools of molten sun.
The massive assassin tried to pull his cleaver back, but his face suddenly contorted in agony. I watched through my red eye as the man's golden Qi didn't just block the attack it began to rewrite the massive man's Qi flow. The brown threads of Earth Qi were being forcibly unraveled, turning into grey, lifeless smoke.
"A Heaven Piercer!" the lead assassin screamed, his arrogance vanishing in an instant. "Impossible! The lineage was purged!"
"You missed one," the man said.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent the massive assassin flying backward. The man hit the crater wall with such force that the stone liquefied around him, pinning him like an insect in amber. The Heaven Piercer didn't even look at him; his golden gaze turned toward the lead assassin.
"The boy belongs to the Truth," the man declared, his presence expanding until it filled the entire valley. "And you... you belong to the dust."
The lead assassin didn't wait to fight. He knew the legends. He grabbed his twitchy companion and threw a silver sphere onto the ground. A cloud of thick, indigo smoke erupted, and by the time the frost-wind blew it away, they were gone, fleeing toward the horizon.
The golden-eyed man didn't pursue them. He turned slowly, his gaze falling on me. The pressure was immense not a physical weight, but a spiritual one, as if he were looking through my skin, through my bones, and directly at the Heaven-Piercing Demon Eye hidden within my soul.
"Jian Longwei," he said, his voice softening. "You have played a dangerous game with the sky."
He began to walk toward me, and for the first time since my clan died, I felt a different kind of fear. This wasn't the fear of a hunter. It was the fear of a mirror.