The sword master raised a hand, not in a seal, but in a gentle, releasing motion. From his own disintegrating form, countless points of light began to drift away like disciplined stars.
Within each mote, the flicker of a sword technique, the gleam of a slash move, the essence of a lifetime of mastery danced and shone. They streamed toward Yunny's fading soul, converging into a river of brilliant starlight, a Milky Way woven from pure will and sacrifice.
Yunny's flickering soul trembled, then steadied. The dissipating process halted, reversed. Her form grew brighter, more solid, glowing with a soft, nurturing light. Inversely, Krogh's remnant soul dimmed rapidly, flickering like a candle flame in a strong wind, its substance pouring into that stellar river.
Lordi watched, awestruck and horrified. The courtyard became saturated with a Sword Intent so potent it felt solid, pressing against his skin, ringing in his bones. It was as if ten thousand swords were singing a final, tragic, and glorious hymn at once.
In his mind, a series of rapid, overwhelming System prompt burst forth!
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
…
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> Detected external data.
> Analyzing...
> Pattern identified: [Unknown Sword Art Technique]
> Technique Recording initiated...
> Progress: 10%...
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> Detected external data.
> Analyzing...
> Pattern identified: [Unknown Sword Killer Move]
> Killer Move Recording initiated...
> Progress: 10%...
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> Detected external data.
> Analyzing...
> Pattern identified: [Unknown Sword Will Martial Art]
> Martial Art Recording initiated...
> Progress: 10%...
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
…
The river of starlight, now cradling Yunny's fully illuminated soul, began to rise, floating upward toward the cavern's ceiling. At that moment, Krogh's faint, flickering remnant grasped at the empty air. With a sound like a sighing bell, the ethereal form of the blood-red sword, Red Run, materialized in his hand—a sword ten years absent.
The swordsman did not wield it with force, but with a gentle, almost casual, upward flick.
The world held its breath.
The ceiling of the sunken courtyard… simply parted. A clean, impossibly smooth fissure raced upward, through layers of rock, splitting the entire mound of the rear mountain peak cleanly in two. The sword's energy did not stop. It soared into the sky, parting the thick, oppressive clouds as if they were mere curtains, swept aside by the hand of a transparent, ancient god.
Moonlight, raw and unfiltered, cascaded into the pit for the first time in centuries. A corridor of clear, starry night was unveiled.
And still, the sword's intent pressed on. At the zenith of its arc, under the newly revealed moon, the very fabric of space trembled and tore. A silent, dark fissure split the air, not of cloud or rock, but of reality itself.
The river of starlight carrying Yunny's soul floated gracefully into this impossible rift. The soul-light was swallowed, and the fissure sealed shut behind her, without a sound.
What the?!
He… he shattered space!
Lordi's mind screamed, his body frozen in terror and awe. The swordsman burned every last shred of his soul… to send the little girl home. To his own lower world.
Krogh, now barely a transparent outline, gazed at the spot where the rift had vanished. Then, he tilted his head, as if speaking to an old rival across vast distances, his voice a clear, challenging peal that echoed in the moonlit silence. "Wexford! I'll lend you a sword's worth of Dao Will. Do you dare to wield it?"
He then looked down at Lordi, who fell to his knees in profound reverence, pressing his forehead to the cold stone.
"Aye senior… Aye! Master Hanz!"
"This humble one offers his deepest thanks," Lordi said, his voice thick with sincerity. "To witness your sword part the very mountain of Dao before us... it is an honor that guides our every step. We who follow are in your debt."
The Red Run fell from the sky, not with weight, but with the gravity of legacy, settling gently before the prostrate Lordi.
His duty done, Krogh did not spare a glance for the monumental scene he had created—the split mountain, the parted heavens. He simply drifted, a wisp of fading intent, to the side of the unmarked grave bathed in moonlight.
The man who had never spoken a word of romance in his life, whose companions had been his sword and his will, sat by the headstone. His form was almost indistinguishable from the moonlight itself.
He leaned close, his voice the softest of whispers, a secret for her alone. He murmured, the words carrying a lifetime of unspoken tenderness. "Yunny's home. My path ahead… is clear now."
The moonlight pooled around the grave, serene and bright. Within its glow, Krogh Hanz's silhouette softened, blurred, and then gently dissolved, not with a sound, but with the quiet finality of a sigh merging with the night breeze, leaving behind only the split mountain, the silent grave, and a legacy written in starlight and sacrifice.
The scene held a sacred silence. Lordi watched, a profound sigh caught in his throat, as the last vestiges of Krogh Hanz dissolved into the moonlight over the unmarked grave. A true master of the sword, he thought, his heart heavy with a strange mix of sorrow and awe. His life was the sword, his death its final, flawless stroke. He walked a demonic path this life drenched in blood, yet his humanity spirit remained unblemished, his resolve transparent as diamond. Even in oblivion, he commands respect.
With solemn reverence, Lordi bowed deeply toward the simple grave, expressing his silent gratitude and farewell to the departed giant.
The torrent of system prompt in his mind—the violent, glorious inheritance of Krogh's final sword insights—finally began to ebb. Though some fragments were too vast, too alien to be immediately grasped, the harvest was immense.
He then looked at the steel of Red Run, now hovering gently before him. The devil sword, once a symbol of tyrannical fury and bloody conquest, felt… calm. Purified.
Krogh, in his ultimate act, had scoured it clean of its violent hatred and murder, leaving only the pristine essence of peerless swordsmanship.
Touched, Lordi bowed again, this time to the sword. "Thank you... Shifu…"
A deep, weary sadness settled over him. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the hollow ache of loss and the bone-deep fatigue of his injuries. He allowed himself a moment of quiet grief in the moon-splintered ruin.
——
It was then that a voice, sharp with tension and a familiarity of wary cultivator that froze his blood, sliced through the silence from behind him.
"Who's there?!"
Every nerve in Lordi's body tensed.
A cultivator? Here? Now?
His mind raced, panic and logic warring.
But how? Was it like Krogh Hanz? Did that Ju-On also leave some other vengeful soul remnant? No, that made no sense…
There was no time for coherent thought. Pure, honed instinct took over. In a quick motion, his left hand snatched the Hundred-Mile Escape Dao Fulu again from his storage pouch, his fingers tightening around the lifesaving human skin. His right hand swung the Blade of Life Hater behind him in a wide, vicious arc aimed at the sound's source!
BOOM!
The remaining section of the fractured cliff face where the voice originated exploded into dust and debris. As the shattered rock cascaded down, it revealed not another ghost, not a hidden foe, but a crumpled, familiar figure half-buried in the rubble.
She was, and yet she was not, the Ruru Rosa he had known.
Some unspeakable trial had recast her. The girl who had once been a blossom of youthful allure was gone, her beauty not faded but transmuted. The softness of maidenhood had hardened into the poignant elegance of a mid-autumn rose—still exquisite, yet touched by the frost. A lattice of faint wrinkles, fine as cracks in porcelain, now traced the corners of her eyes and mouth. But most shocking was her hair: the cascade of rich, dark violet that had once been her pride now flowed over her shoulders like a waterfall of pure, lifeless snow.
Her delicate green gown was drenched through. It clung to every curve of her slender form, translucent and heavy, as if she had just risen, dripping, from a dark pool. A violent shiver wracked her frame, the cold seeming to seep from her very bones. Her face was pale as a moon-bleached shell, utterly bloodless.
And there were the threads. A vile, living lattice of blood-red filaments, glistening wetly, pulsed where they entangled her. They bound her arms, snaked around her throat, and disappeared beneath the soaked silk of her robes, throbbing with a slow, hungry rhythm. But it was her eyes that struck the deepest chill—windows to a soul hollowed out. They were wide, empty, and terrifying, holding a depth of terror and a pain that spoke of a violation far beyond the physical.
"Senior Sister Ruru?" Lordi gasped, stammered, his mind reeling. Donovan had claimed no sign of her in the anceint stone well, and Lordi had assumed her dead, another victim of Dao conflicts cataclysmic clash between Krogh Hanz and Ju-On.
Yet here she stood, alive. The threads binding her—he recognized them with a chill. They were Life-Suppressing Threads of Fate from Krogh Hanz's Ju-On Dao Pillar, which once chained his body.
"You... you are... Lordi-kun? No... wait... who are you?" Ruru Rosa blinked, her expression dazed and confused. The questions tumbled out in a disoriented rush.
"What happened?"
"Why am I here?"
"Where are Senior Brother Blackthorn and the others?"
"Stop. Right. There!" Lordi barked as the lady took an unsteady step toward him.
"I ask the questions. You answer."
"Hey! Halt!" Lordi kept the Dao Fulu hidden behind his back, every muscle coiled, ready to vanish in an instant if something terrible happen.
"What are the full names of all the squad members who took on this Outer Sect task?"
Lordi watched Ruru Rosa, his initial shock hardening into a blade of wary assessment as he continued question.
"Originally, one more sect comrade was supposed to join this task with you. Who's that person? Give me the name."
"What was your relationship with that person?"
"What occurred on the very first day we arrived at the entrance of this Hanz Clan Estate?"
Lordi fired the questions in rapid succession, his gaze locked intently on her, searching for any flicker of deception. He had just buried Krogh Hanz with his own hands, farewell to the sword master's remain soul, but the Ju-On, the true architect of this chaos, was still unaccounted for. That evil entity had mimicked Krogh Hanz so perfectly it had fooled even the Sword of Red Run. Now, finding Ruru Rosa enmeshed in Threads of Fate, suspicion flared within him.
Was this truly his senior sister, or the Ju-On wearing her human skin like a mask?
However, the lady's pale, elegant face was a mask of confused distress.
Yet a cold, relentless logic began to assert itself against the tide of his fear.
Lordi stood at only the Eighth Layer of the Qi Refinement Stage, a mere insect in terms of raw power when measured against the supreme, Krogh Hanz level might of a Ju-On. Such an evil entity, having contended in the cosmic path Ascension Conflicts for the ultimate Dao, would possess strength beyond his comprehension, even if it had been lethally wounded or near diminished in its struggle.
The fundamental question crystallized in his mind with chilling clarity: why would such a being resort to this convoluted, fragile ruse? If the evil ghost sought his end, a direct and overwhelming assault would be infinitely simpler, a mere flick of its will against his insignificant existence.
Furthermore, Ruru Rosa's demeanor held none of the cunning calculation or subtle malevolence one would expect from a masterful imposter. Instead, she radiated the raw, unvarnished terror of a mind completely and irrevocably shattered.
Her account was not a crafted narrative, but a chaotic spill of sensory fragments—images, sounds, and feelings stripped of all context, cause, and effect, like pages from a book ripped apart and scattered to the wind. This haunted mountain estate had done more than attack her body; it had performed a thorough scouring of her psyche, leaving behind this beautiful, elegant vessel now filled only with splintered glass and echoing dread.
His suspicion, though ever-present, began to temper with a growing, grim concern. He studied her pale, dust-streaked face, the way her eyes refused to focus on any one thing for long. "Senior Sister Ruru," he probed, his voice deliberately soft, a low sound in the oppressive quiet, "how are you feeling? You don't seem... entirely yourself."
"I... I don't know?" she murmured, the words slurred and uncertain. A faint frown creased the flawless skin of her brow, a fleeting shadow of confusion as if she were groping at the insubstantial edges of her own consciousness. Then, like a sudden squall, panic surged back into her expression.
"No! This place..." The beauty gasped, her head whipping around to stare at the dark, looming mountain woods away as if they were closing in. "It feels wrong. No! It's dangerous. We have to leave. Now! Right now!" Her voice climbed, edged with a hysteria that was utterly convincing in its raw, unperformative terror.
Lordi remained still, a statue of wary assessment, his gaze locked on her for a long, silent moment that stretched between them. He weighed the palpable danger of the estate against the unpredictable variable she now represented. Every instinct screamed of risk, yet the logic of her broken state argued against malignant design.
"Alright," he finally agreed, the word a concession not to her demand, but to his own calculated decision. He moved to her side, offering support as she trembled.
With great care, he supported the unsteady, white-haired female cultivator, helping her ascend from the stone mouth of the well, a journey from the underworld of memory back into the faint, sickly moonlight of the ravaged surface.
As they emerged, the intricate network of crimson soul threads he had earlier observed wrapped around her form—those faint, ghostly tethers—began to shimmer with a faint internal light. Then, like mist burned away by a sun that never came, they dissolved into nothingness, vanishing without a sound or a trace, as if their purpose had been spent or severed by the very act of leaving that cursed hollow.
Witnessing this silent, inexplicable dissolution, Lordi's eyes narrowed into slits, a fresh and potent wave of caution chilling his blood. He opened his mouth, a new question about the threads forming on his lips, but Ruru was already moving. She pulled away from his supportive grip, striding with a sudden, brittle purpose away.
"Senior Sister, where are you going?" Lordi hurried after her, his boots crunching on the debris.
Her long, white hair swayed as she shook her head, a slow, pathetic motion devoid of true understanding. A single, perfectly clear tear welled in her eye and traced a glistening path through the pale dust caking her cheek, but it was a tear of pure, uncomprehending anguish, holding no answers, only the profound, existential terror of the utterly and hopelessly lost.
"...I don't know," the reply words hollow. She paused, her entire body rigid, her face a stark mask of vacancy. Then, a violent shudder wracked her frame, as if an icy wind had blown through her soul. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, clutching her own shoulders as if to hold the pieces of her mind together. "But I feel it... a terrible danger! A crushing pressure!"
"Senior Sister," Lordi said, moving to block her aimless path, "You mentioned Senior Brother Blackthorn earlier. Shouldn't we fine him first?" He used the name as an anchor, a test, a possible thread to pull her back to some semblance of reality.
"B... Bla... Blackthorn..." The name fell from her lips and seemed to echo in a hollow, empty chamber within her. She stared past him, into the middle distance of the ruined courtyard, her gaze seeing nothing of the present. "Yes... Captain Blackthorn... I think... I was supposed to find him... to report..." The ghost of duty flickered and died.
Her eyes snapped back to Lordi's, wide and childlike with genuine, devastating confusion. "But who is he?"
This is bad.
Lordi's frown deepened into a trench of worry. He continued his gentle, relentless interrogation.
Piece by agonizing piece, he assembled the grim, undeniable truth: Ruru Rosa's soul had not just been frightened; it had been damaged, perhaps permanently.
This female cultivator's memory was a scrambled mosaic, the tiles of experience shattered and mixed without order. The horrific events within the Hanz Clan Estate existed now only as isolated, terrifying fragments—a flash of blood here, a sensation of falling there, the sound of screaming—utterly divorced from chronology, cause, or consequence. She could not recall Garrick Blackthorn's role, his face, or even his full name, retaining only a vague, emotional imprint of a figure associated with authority and a dim sense of safety, now lost.
"Senior Sister Ruru," Lordi said, his tone softening further into something akin to pity, a dangerous emotion in this deadly place. "What about me? Do you remember who I am?"
She looked at him, her beautiful eyes swimming through the thick fog of her forgetfulness, searching his features as if seeing him for the first time. Then, a spark—brief, intense, and heartbreaking—flashed in their depths.
"I remember you!" she exclaimed, a faint, tremulous smile touching her lips, so at odds with the surrounding devastation. "You... you're… You saved me. Twice? You... you pulled me from the dark. You're important to me."
But when he pressed for details like "How did I save you? When? Where were we?"
The spark of her clarity guttered and vanished, drowned once more in the rising fog. She could only grasp at the warm, residual feeling of safety he provoked, not a single solid fact of their shared ordeal.
Lordi surmised with cold sorrow, seems like those rescues must have been moments of extreme, life-threatening to her that they had branded themselves onto the deepest instinctual layers of lady's psyche even as the rest of her memories crumbled.
The collapse was sudden. One moment Ruru stood shivering in her web of horrors, the next her legs dissolved beneath her, and she fell forward like a severed marionette.
Lordi's reflexes were honed by a lifetime of peril; he caught her, but a cold sweat instantly beaded his brow. His mind screamed trap—this was the classic feint, the calculated vulnerability before the killing strike. Was she a puppet now, her strings those vile, pulsing crimson threads? Would a blade sprout from her ribs, or would her teeth, sharpened by some curse, find his throat?
But the form that slumped against him, though frighteningly cold and wracked with tremors, felt disconcertingly real. There was no hidden rigidity, no mechanical intent. Instead, she was unsettlingly soft, almost boneless in her despair, as if her very skeleton had been replaced by a profound and weary grief.
A silent, shuddering vibration passed from her body into his. Then came the tears—not dramatic sobs, but a quiet, desperate overflow tracing gleaming paths down her death-pale cheeks.
Lordi remained rigid for a heartbeat, every instinct braced for betrayal. And then it came—a whisper of memory in the midst of the dank, bloody air. A similar, sweet scent from her hair, now stark white, found his nose. It was the same fragrance from days that felt like centuries past: the crisp mountain air rushing past as Ruru, vibrant and focused, piloted her flower petal flying artifact. He had stood behind her, the world a blur below, anchored by that very scent of blossoms and sun-warmed silk.
He did not embrace her, nor did he push her away. His hands, which could shatter stone, came up with awkward care. One remained a firm brace against her back, the other rose to gently, tentatively, pat her trembling shoulder.
"Calm down. Senior Sister, you're right. This place is indeed dangerous," he conceded, the words a grim affirmation. With Krogh Hanz's heritage secured and the storage pouches of all fallen sect comrades weighed heavy at his belt, the ruin of the Moon Reflection Mirror yielded nothing more. The Hanz Clan Estate, he was certain, had been stripped of its significant value. Its only remaining treasures were grief and ghosts.
After a moment's silent calculation, he made his decision. "Let's leave now. We're returning to the sect."
Supporting the listless Ruru, he dashed from the shattered hall, past the grotesque garden, and downward through the broken gates of what was once a twin-peaked hill's outer ring citywall.
Under a bleak sky, he rummaged through his spoils. His hand closed on what he'd taken from Garrick Blackthorn: the Blood Puppet Floats. It was a carved palanquin of dark wood and stained human skins and bones. With a quick, temporary refinement ritual—a few drops of blood smeared on its central sigil—he asserted basic control. He then guided Ruru inside the enclosed cabin, her movements those of a sleepwalker.
The float lifted with a soundless, eerie grace. The puppet-borne vessel carried them away from the silhouette of the cursed Hanz Estate, turning its prow toward the distant, formidable shadows of the Abyss Pit Sect.
The journey was profoundly quiet, broken only by the whisper of the wind through the float's grim adornments.
Lit only by the guttering green flame of a single spirit lantern, Ruru finally surrendered. The battle against exhaustion and the deep, gnawing corrosion of her spiritual wounds was lost. The fine tremors that had wracked her frame stilled, and her breath, once ragged and desperate, evened out into the shallow, troubled rhythm of a fitful slumber. She lay curled within the circle of Lordi's arms.
Seeing her finally unconscious, Lordi sighed, laid her down gently upon a cushioned seat. He adjusted his posture, the immediate tension easing by a fraction.
The beauty lay in deep, vulnerable slumber. Her features were softened, one porcelain shoulder gracefully exposed. Her snow-white hair fanned out like waterfall in winter moonlight, framing a beautiful face that even in unconsciousness held sorrow. In the depths of her dreams, something stirred; the rise and fall of her soft chest beneath her robes was a silent, restless tide.
It was a scene straight from the pages of a romantic epics, the kind where a single, fateful touch changes everything.
Good! It was time.
Lordi's hand slowly, deliberately, reached out.
His fingers did not brush the strand of hair artfully draped across her cheek. They did not trace the line of her collarbone.
No.
With the unwavering focus of a scholar locating a specific scroll in a dark library, his hand sailed past the sleeping beauty and homed in with unerring accuracy on the leather storage pouches across the table.
Yes.
He needed to take stock, to weigh the considerable gains against the horrific cost of this Outer Sect task. His hand moved toward his storage pouch, his mind already categorizing treasures and techniques.
But as his fingers brushed the sect pouches' fabric, the air inside the float shifted.
A plume of absolute black mist, cold and scentless, bloomed from the shadows at his feet. It filled the confined space in an instant, swallowing the dim light.
And there, on the seat opposite him where nothing had been a heartbeat before, a delicate figure materialized. She was simply there—without sound, without a ripple in the air, as if she had been carved from the darkness itself.
"Gri… Greetings, Lady Joanie!" The words leapt from Lordi's throat, sharp with startled deference.
His hand, which had been mere inches from his storage pouch, snapped back to his side as if scorched. In one fluid motion, he rose from his seat and dropped to a single knee upon the float's polished floor, his head bowed in a deep show of respect. The sudden movement caused the eerie vessel to sway silently on the night air.
He composed himself, forcibly smoothing the shock from his features.
"My lady, to what do I owe this honor? Do you have… instructions for this humble one?"
Even as the polite inquiry left his lips, a torrent of paranoid calculations flashed behind his eyes—a frantic inventory of his recent actions.
Thank the Abyss. I didn't do anything to Ruru Rosa...
Glancing at the storage pouches. Had she come to claim a share? Or worse, to reclaim them entirely?
"The Great Outer Sect Tournament," Joanie stated softly. Her voice was not loud, yet it filled the cramped space of the float completely, flat and dry as ash.
Lordi stared, his bewilderment cutting through his trained deference. The tournament? Well that was a known horizon, a bloody circus all Outer Sect disciples prepared for in time, but why was Lady Joanie mentioning it now? His mind raced, searching for a connection between the horrors of Hanz Clan Estate taskand the demonic sect's organized bloody combat.
"Secure first place in the Tournament," the Phantom Maid continued, her hollow, obsidian-black eyes boring into him with an intensity that felt less like being seen and more like being scoured. The command hung in the air, simple and absolute.
"Then there will be… a benefit for you."
Huh…? Win the tournament?
The directive was so sudden, so contextually dissonant.
Questioning was not an option; hesitation was a flaw. Swallowing the knot of confusion and sudden, immense pressure, he forced his voice into a channel of unwavering obedience.
"I… Aye! My lady!" he managed to make the words crisp and carrying!
Joanie gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, a motion so minimal it seemed less an approval and more a mere acknowledgment that his compliance had met the bare threshold of expectation. Her inscrutable gaze, like chips of polished void, then drifted past him to settle upon the sleeping form of Ruru Rosa.
"This female cultivator's soul is near shattered," she stated, her diagnosis delivered with finality of a judge passing sentence. "Even the most skilled medical-cultivators in the Outer Sect will not be able to fully restore her. The fractures are too deep, the essence too… drained. It saves me the trouble. The secret of the Cosmic Path Foundation Establishment Technique will remain contained with her silence."
A jolt of alarm shot through Lordi, colder than the touch of Ruru's skin.
What?!
She... knew?!
The thought screamed in his skull.
How much had she witnessed?
The confrontation with Krogh Hanz?
Krogh Hanz's dying warning echoed with terrifying new clarity—"a powerful presence observing from the side"—and now it had a name and a face.
Had Lady Joanie been a silent spectator to the entire, bloody affair at the Hanz Clan Estate, watching from the shadows as disciples slaughtered each other over treasures she now casually referenced?
Acting on an instinctive caution that bordered on terror, his hand moved with hurried reverence to his storage pouch. He produced the jade slip, its surface cool and faintly luminous, containing the coveted, universe-shaking method within.
"Lady Joanie," he said, his voice straining for earnest deference, "I intended to have Senior Brother Wexford respectfully present this Cosmic Path Foundation Establishment Technique to her highness, Fairy Lith, upon our return. It is, of course, a treasure far too profound for a mere Outer Sect disciple to presume to hold—"
"Unnecessary," Joanie interrupted, her glance at the priceless jade slip utterly indifferent, as if he were offering her a common stone.
"Winning the Tournament grants you a chance to apply as the formal sect disciple of one of the three Sect Successors, to be accepted into one of the Sect Owners' factions as her personal apostle under their patronage."
"Listen, Lordi Payne."
"When that moment comes, you, will speak my mistress's name."
She leaned forward slightly, a movement no more than a shift of shadow, yet it carried the weight of a mountain crashing down upon him.
"Kinson Wexford is nothing but a loyal hound to my mistress. Useful, but a servant nonetheless. Even the most esteemed and most powerful Inner Sect Bloodline Lords cannot presume upon my mistress's time without formal petition and approval. They queue for scraps of her attention."
Her words were a cold breeze reshaping the landscape of his ambitions.
"Once you have her highness's favor and are publicly acknowledged as her apostle," she instructed, her tone methodical, "you will then present the Cosmic Path Foundation Establishment Technique to her."
"Do so openly, in the full view of the entire holy sect, during the assembly court of the Tournament ceremony. Such a profound gift, from a newly champion apostle to his mistress, will not merely be a transaction. It will be a spectacle of status."
"This will magnify her highness's glory, demonstrate the quality of those who flock to her banner, and spread the renown of Fairy Lith's unparalleled marvels far and wide. The technique's value is not merely in its use, but in the narrative of its offering."
She settled back, her dark eyes holding his, pinning him in place. "This is not a command from my mistress. She is unaware of this conversation."
"It is an opportunity—a rare chance for you to earn her highness's genuine pleasure. I style you a clever young man. I trust you comprehend what must be done, and the silence in which it must be nurtured."
Lordi could only stare, his mind struggling to process the labyrinthine subtext of her words.
The political calculus was staggering. But...
Was… was Lady Joanie, the formidable and feared Phantom Maid, actually coaching him?
Was she outlining a step-by-step strategy, a covert campaign for him to not just win a tournament, but to court the attention, and potentially the favor, of that terrifyingly powerful, ethereally beautiful Sect Successor?
PS:
Hey
So… here it is. All 5,000 words of it—the final chapter of Book 2, delivered right to your screen. We've finally closed the chapter on that spooky, messed-up "haunted estate" Outer Sect task. What did you think? Did you have fun? Were you clutching a pillow at night, or just grinning at Lordi's latest clever—or terribly reckless—move?
Okay, real talk time.
This Book 2, I went on a little side-character spree. I love them! I want them to have lives, quirks, and moments to shine. But… uh… I might have gotten too cozy. Case in point: Krogh Hanz vs. Ju-on. Wow. That went on. And on. And ON.
Looking back, even I'm like, "Author, you bitch, just fking stop."
So, lesson learned! Future fights will be tighter, fiercer, and far less likely to make you check how many pages are left.
Also, can we laugh at this together? Our boy Lordi is still just in Qi Refinement Stage, and we're already sitting at a cool 420,000 words. I have the pacing of a leisurely snail, apparently. My "word count padding" skill is clearly still at the novice level!
From the bottom of my heart—thank you. Truly. The fact that you're here, reading my sometimes-clunky sentences and sticking with this wild ride… it means everything. I've loved writing every twist and turn.
Now, about that R18 tag on the cover… sweats nervously. Yeah, the main plot has been… surprisingly tame on that front, huh? In a moment of "oh no, I promised spicy!", I started some side stories to fill the, ahem, void.
Noticed many refused to lean into NTR territory, which… let's just say it wasn't everyone's cup of spiritual tea. Whoops! So, I'm turning the mic over to you. Want a different flavor of spice? Less drama, more… whatever you're imagining? Toss your ideas in the comments! This humble and average author is taking requests and will do her best to, well, deliver the goods.
But fear not—the main story is charging ahead! In the next arc, Lordi is going to see the Abyss Pit Sect in all its terrifying, magnificent scale. We're talking brutal tournaments, sinister geniuses, demonic rituals, and our kinda-of-clever low profile underdog trying not to get squashed in a world of monsters.
Thank you for being here. For every comment, silent read, or eye-roll at my tangents. You're the best.
Catch you in the Abyss,
Your Very Amateur but Enthusiastic Author 😉
P.S. Seriously, comment! What do you want to see? I'm listening.