The midnight sky over the Central Imperial Capital did not belong to the stars.
It belonged to the terrible, boiling glare of the five Heaven-Shatter Towers.
Constructed eight hundred years ago during the high golden age of the Crimson Dragon Dynasty, each tower was a colossal, three-hundred-foot monolith forged from refined solar iron, dark obsidian, and thousands of spirit-bound array plates. Suspended in mid-air by massive floating keystones, the five structures hovered in a precise pentagonal formation directly above the central avenue that led to the Golden Dragon Bridge.
From afar, they looked like five ancient, burning spears thrust into the firmament. Thousands of glowing crimson runes crawled up their steel surfaces like venomous centipedes, channeling endless streams of raw, violent fire Qi directly from the dragon veins deep beneath the city.
The heat radiating from the five towers was so severe that the clouds for ten miles around were scorched into ragged, bloody ribbons of mist. The night air warped and twisted, creating phantom heat mirages that made the distant towers appear to writhe like living monsters.
Standing at the absolute apex of the central Heaven-Shatter Tower, dressed in long robes woven from golden dragon silk, was Grand Imperial Scholar Minister Lin Divine-Calculus.
In his left hand, he held the ancient imperial astrological board—a circular slab of black jade inlaid with nine star-gems that constantly shifted and clicked against one another. In his right hand, he held a long iron brush dipped in the boiling blood of a Stage-4 fire-beast.
Minister Lin's face was grim, his eyes bloodshot, and his long white beard fluttered violently in the hot updrafts rising from the tower's furnace core.
"Check the spatial resonance again!" Minister Lin bellowed, his voice amplified by spiritual Qi so it echoed across the five floating platforms. "Align the third and seventh solar matrices! If there is even a hair-thin gap in the array grid when he enters the kill-zone, I will personally throw the array masters into the molten core!"
"Reporting to the Grand Scholar!" a junior array master shouted, kneeling nervously on the scorching iron deck behind him, cold sweat evaporating from his skin before it could even drip. "The five Heaven-Shatter Towers have achieved ninety-eight percent resonance! The solar Qi stored in the core matrices has reached thirty million spirit-units! It is enough to vaporize a Stage-5 High-Grade Sovereign in less than half a breath!"
"Not enough!" Minister Lin snapped coldly, his eyes flashing with deep, lingering anxiety. He looked down at his astrological board, where three of the nine star-gems had suddenly cracked into fine dust just moments ago. "You fools did not see what happened in the Southern Mist District! That man did not just defeat Patriarch Yan; he erased him from the fabric of space! If we treat him like an ordinary Stage-5 Peak, every single person on this platform will die before sunrise!"
"Minister Lin speaks the truth," a deep, thunderous voice boomed from the skies above.
RUMBLE—!
The heavy air groaned as three massive, radiant pressure fronts descended upon the central tower.
The space around the tower's crown distorted, revealing three imposing figures who stepped out of the boiling solar heat as if walking down invisible marble stairs.
To the left stood Sect Master Iron-Grip of the Mountain-Crushing Sect—a nine-foot-tall giant clad in dark, spiked iron armor. His exposed arms were as thick as ancient tree trunks, covered in glowing, bronze-colored body-refining runes. Across his massive back rested a thousand-pound, square-headed war hammer that dripped with wet, black dragon-grease.
To the right hovered Grand Elder Crimson-Feather of the Vermilion-Bird Sect. She appeared as a strikingly beautiful woman in her late thirties, dressed in an elegant, feathered crimson dress that burned with gentle, golden flames. Yet her eyes were completely devoid of human warmth, replaced by two whirling pools of lethal, bird-like fire.
And standing directly in the center, hovering two inches above the scorching metal deck without touching it, was Palace Lord Shadow-Moon of the Eclipse-Blade Pavilion. Wrapped in a shifting cloak woven from absolute darkness, he carried no physical weapon, but the terrible, slicing aura radiating from his body caused the very air around his head to crackle with tiny spatial fissures.
Three Stage-5 High-Grade Sovereigns! The absolute pinnacle protectors of the empire's three grand vassal sects!
"Sect Master Iron-Grip, Grand Elder Crimson-Feather, Palace Lord Shadow-Moon," Minister Lin immediately bowed, his hands clasped before him with deep respect. "Your presence brings stability to the ancestral court."
Sect Master Iron-Grip let out a heavy, metallic snort, his voice sounding like two mountain boulders slamming together. "Save your pleasantries, old scholar. We came because the Prime Ancestor issued the Ancestral Blood-Seal Order. But tell me... is the intelligence really true? Did Blood-Gouger and Yan Crimson-Heaven really fall in a single breath?"
"It is beyond true, Sect Master," Minister Lin said grimly, holding out his cracked astrological board. "Marshal Zhao Dragon-Crest's meridians are forty percent destroyed by lingering spatial frost, and Elder Wise-Sky's cultivation base has been completely shattered. That nameless wanderer carries a domain that bypasses ordinary physical and spiritual defenses."
"A domain of absolute chill..." Grand Elder Crimson-Feather murmured, her feathered dress fluttering as her delicate hand touched the hilt of her crimson rapier. "In my two hundred years of cultivation, I have never heard of a frost domain capable of shattering a Stage-5 Peak's celestial avatar without a direct clash of secret techniques. Could he be using a forbidden artifact from the Northern Abyssal Sea?"
"It matters not what he uses," Palace Lord Shadow-Moon spoke, his voice sounding like cold steel sliding out of a sheath. His shadowy face was entirely hidden beneath his hood, but two cold, piercing white points of light shone from within the dark void. "He is one man. He carries a mortal child whose bloodline is actively drawing energy from the central dragon vein. That child is a anchor—a vulnerability. A man who must protect a weak link cannot wield absolute freedom in battle."
"Shadow-Moon is right," Sect Master Iron-Grip laughed gruffly, slamming the haft of his massive war hammer onto the iron deck, causing the entire three-hundred-foot tower to tremble! "Let him come to the Golden Dragon Bridge! My Mountain-Crushing Body has reached the sixth level of the Diamond-Iron Realm! Even if his frost is sharp, I will hold his blade for three seconds! And three seconds under the Heaven-Shatter Array is enough to turn him into ash!"
"Do not underestimate him!" Minister Lin shouted, his brush shaking as he pointed toward the southern horizon. "The astrological board shows that the stars of the Crimson Dragon Dynasty are dimming! The Prime Ancestor himself has unsealed the 'Nineteenth-Level Sun-Bound Formation' at the Golden Dragon Gate, and the Imperial Guard Directorate has mobilized twenty thousand Sun-Shield Knights along the lower bridge!"
Minister Lin's voice rose with intense, desperate fever: "This is no longer a simple hunt, gentlemen! This is an imperial stand! If he crosses the Golden Dragon Bridge tonight, the ten-thousand-year heritage of our Central Capital will be torn to ground!"
The three Stage-5 Sovereigns fell silent, their gazes shifting down toward the quiet, dark city below.
From their high vantage point atop the floating tower, the Central Capital looked like a colossal, sleeping dragon forged from black stone and golden tiles. But tonight, that dragon was trembling. The silence in the streets below was not the calm of peace, but the heavy, suffocating silence that precedes a cataclysm.
"Look," Palace Lord Shadow-Moon suddenly whispered, his shadowy form leaning slightly over the edge of the tower's railing.
The other three immediately turned their eyes toward the southern avenue.
Three miles from the base of the Golden Dragon Bridge.
The street was eighty yards wide, paved with thick slabs of white dragon-scale granite that had been polished by millions of feet over thousands of years. On either side stood grand, three-story pavilions, ancient auction halls, and high-walled noble residences.
Every door was bolted with heavy iron bars. Every window was covered with dark wooden shutters. Behind those shutters, thousands of high-ranking clan elders, young masters, and hidden old monsters held their breath, their spiritual senses stretched to their absolute limits as they stared down at the street.
Along the center of that wide, empty white avenue, two figures walked.
The silence around them was so absolute that the light, crisp sound of Xiao-Yue's small, cloth-bound shoes hitting the stone floor sounded like a slow, rhythmic drumbeat in the quiet night.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Beside her, Li-Wen stepped forward with the calm, measured rhythm of a traveler taking a midnight stroll through a quiet village. His dark, traveler's coat rustled softly against his boots, the plain cloth showing no signs of dirt, blood, or damage despite the horrific battle he had fought just hours prior. Across his back, the massive, cloth-wrapped heavy blade was perfectly still, its abyssal presence locked deep beneath the ancient wrappings.
In Xiao-Yue's right hand, the pink lotus lantern emitted a warm, gentle ruby glow that illuminated a small, five-foot circle around their feet. With every step she took, the ruby flame flickered in a rhythmic, three-tiered rhythm, casting soft, dancing lotus shadows against the cold white granite floor.
"Brother Li-Wen," Xiao-Yue whispered, her small voice sounding remarkably clear in the quiet street. "The big buildings are watching us."
"They are not watching us, Xiao-Yue," Li-Wen replied, his voice calm, low, and steady, carrying through the quiet street with an effortless, deep resonance. "They are watching their own fears."
"Are they afraid of the dark?" she asked, tilting her head up to look at him.
"They are afraid of the light that reveals what they have hidden beneath their floors," Li-Wen said smoothly.
As they reached the edge of the Fourth Commercial Avenue, the straight street ahead suddenly opened up into a colossal, circular stone plaza—the Grand Imperial Plaza.
And spanning across the vast, five-hundred-yard chasm between the Grand Plaza and the Inner Palace was the Golden Dragon Bridge.
The bridge was a masterpiece of imperial engineering. Supported by nine colossal stone arches carved in the likeness of soaring golden dragons, the bridge was wide enough for fifty armored horsemen to ride abreast. The handrails were made of solid volcanic bronze, carved with thousands of protective sun runes that radiated a continuous, low hum of spiritual force.
However, the bridge was no longer empty.
Arrayed across the entrance of the bridge were twenty thousand elite Sun-Shield Knights—the true iron core of the Imperial Guard Directorate.
Clad from head to toe in heavy, interlocking volcanic bronze plate armor, each knight held a six-foot tower shield made of refined solar steel in his left hand, and an eight-foot heavy dragon-spear in his right. They stood in thirty interlocking rows, forming a literal wall of bronze and steel that completely choked the five-hundred-yard width of the bridge.
Behind the twenty thousand knights sat three thousand Sun-Knight Archers, their heavy composite bows drawn tight, the iron arrowheads glowing with volatile, boiling dragon-fire oil.
And hovering twenty feet above the center of the knight wall, sitting atop a massive, iron-armored battle-platform drawn by four Stage-4 Fire-Rhinos, was Grand Commander Marshal Zhao Dragon-Crest.
His ruined silver armor had been replaced by a heavy, dark-red battle cloak that concealed his bandaged, frost-damaged chest. His shattered dragon spear was gone, replaced by a massive, eight-foot wide-headed executioner's broadsword that he rested against his knee. His face was pale, his lips still blue from the lingering spatial chill in his meridians, but his sharp, veteran eyes were fixed on the solitary figure walking toward the plaza.
"HALT—!" Marshal Zhao's hoarse, thunderous voice roared across the vast stone plaza, carrying the heavy weight of an imperial military command!
Li-Wen did not halt. He did not slow his pace. He continued walking toward the center of the plaza, his dark eyes looking straight ahead, completely ignoring the twenty thousand spears pointed at his chest.
"Nameless wanderer of the North!" Marshal Zhao bellowed, his voice trembling slightly despite his desperate effort to appear commanding. "You stand before the Golden Dragon Gate of the Central Imperial Empire! Beyond this bridge lies the Ancestral Palace and the Supreme Prime Ancestor! Step back now, leave the Fire-Lotus child behind, and the Imperial Court will grant you safe passage out of the Southern Continent!"
The twenty thousand Sun-Shield Knights simultaneously slammed the bases of their six-foot tower shields against the white granite floor!
THUD—!
A deafening, earth-shattering boom echoed across the plaza, sending a visible shockwave of dust and heat racing across the stone floor! The three thousand archers above pulled their bowstrings to their absolute limit, the boiling dragon-fire arrowheads creating a blinding, roaring line of flame across the sky!
High above the bridge, atop the five floating Heaven-Shatter Towers, the array runes flared to their absolute peak!
HUMMM—!
Five massive beams of crimson solar light shot out from the tips of the towers, intersecting three hundred feet directly above Li-Wen's head, forming a colossal, rotating sun-seal array that covered the entire plaza in a crushing gravitational field! The pressure was so intense that the white granite floor beneath Li-Wen's feet began to crack, spiderwebs of fine fissures spreading out in every direction!
Yet, amidst the roaring fire, the deafening armor slams, and the world-crushing gravity array, Li-Wen continued to walk.
He entered the Grand Plaza.
The heavy gravitational field hit his dark coat, but his body did not even bow an inch. The boiling solar heat radiated off the twenty thousand bronze shields, but as soon as the heat reached within ten yards of Li-Wen, it collided with an invisible, absolute chill and died instantly, dissolving into harmless puffs of pale steam.
Li-Wen stopped thirty yards away from the front line of the Sun-Shield Knights.
He looked at the thirty rows of bronze armor. He looked at the three thousand glowing dragon-fire arrows. Then, he raised his quiet gaze toward the five floating Heaven-Shatter Towers in the sky, and finally rested his eyes on the pale face of Marshal Zhao Dragon-Crest.
"You brought twenty thousand men to defend a bridge," Li-Wen spoke.
His voice was not loud. It was not a roar like Zhao Dragon-Crest's, nor was it a scream like Patriarch Yan's. Yet, his soft, low words cut through the roaring thunder of the Heaven-Shatter Array with absolute clarity, echoing directly inside the ears and souls of every single soldier and commander present.
"Do you truly believe," Li-Wen continued calmly, "that bronze and iron can stop the winter?"
Marshal Zhao's knuckles turned white as he gripped his broadsword. Cold sweat poured down his back beneath his cloak. He knew—better than anyone on this bridge—that the man standing thirty yards away was not bluffing. He had seen ten war-barges turn to dust in a single step. He had seen two Peak Sovereigns erased in three inches of a blade sweep.
"Sun-Shield Knights!" Marshal Zhao shrieked, his voice breaking with sheer, desperate panic! "Lock formations! Activate the Dragon-Vein Barrier! DO NOT LET HIM STEP ONTO THE BRIDGE!"
"ROAR—!"
Twenty thousand elite knights bellowed in unison! Their volcanic bronze shields burst into roaring, golden flames, their individual spiritual energies fusing together through their interlocking armor to form a colossal, fifty-foot-tall wall of solid solar energy that sealed the entire width of the Golden Dragon Bridge!
At the same time, atop the central Heaven-Shatter Tower, Minister Lin Divine-Calculus raised his iron brush high into the sky!
"Heaven-Shatter Artillery!" Minister Lin screamed, his old eyes wide with manic fury! "Target the plaza! FULL DISCHARGE—!"
BOOOOM—!
The sky split open!
A colossal, fifty-foot-wide column of concentrated, white-hot solar energy shot down from the intersecting tips of the five floating towers! The beam was so hot, so destructive, that the air itself was incinerated, creating a vacuum tunnel that roared like a dying dragon as it raced straight toward Li-Wen and Xiao-Yue!
The power of thirty million spirit-units! A strike designed to obliterate an entire army or vaporize a Stage-5 High-Grade Sovereign in a microsecond!
The clan elders watching from the distant pavilions gasped in terror, many covering their eyes, unable to look at the blinding, world-ending glare of solar fire!
Standing in the center of the Grand Plaza, directly beneath the falling column of apocalyptic solar destruction, Li-Wen did not dodge. He did not run.
He reached down, gently releasing Xiao-Yue's small hand.
"Xiao-Yue," Li-Wen said softly, his voice calm amidst the roaring inferno above.
"Yes, Brother Li-Wen?" she answered, holding her lotus lantern close, her eyes filled with absolute, unshakeable trust.
"Hold your lantern high," Li-Wen murmured.
Xiao-Yue nodded, raising the pink lotus lantern high above her head with both hands.
As she raised the lantern, Li-Wen took a single, slow step back with his right foot, bending his knees slightly into a low, stable stance. His right hand moved smoothly behind his right shoulder, his calloused fingers wrapping around the thick, dark hilt of his heavy blade.
He did not draw the blade.
He merely lifted the fully wrapped, dark, six-foot heavy blade off his back, keeping it completely encased within its thick layers of ancient cloth!
Holding the wrapped blade with both hands like a massive, blunt iron column, Li-Wen looked up at the fifty-foot column of white-hot solar destruction dropping from the sky.
Then, with a simple, clean upward thrust, he drove the blunt tip of the wrapped heavy blade straight into the air!
"Northern Blade Art: Zero Stance—Sky-Pillar Frost."
HUMMM—!
There was no explosion. There was no thunderous clash of forces.
The moment the tip of the dark-wrapped blade met the fifty-foot solar column, time itself seemed to stutter!
An invisible, absolute wave of deep sapphire spatial frost erupted from the wrapped tip of the blade, expanding upward into the sky like a colossal, reverse waterfall of blue crystal light!
The fifty-foot column of white-hot solar destruction—capable of melting mountains—was caught in mid-air!
Before the eyes of ten thousand horror-stricken soldiers, the roaring, white-hot fire was instantly frozen solid! The energy was not deflected or scattered; its molecular structure, its kinetic velocity, and its atomic heat were completely locked in place, turned into a fifty-foot-wide, three-hundred-foot-tall pillar of solid, translucent blue crystal ice suspended motionlessly in the sky!
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The blue spatial ice rapidly climbed up the column, racing straight back toward the sky at mind-numbing speed!
In less than a single breath, the icy wave reached the five floating Heaven-Shatter Towers!
"WHAT?!" Minister Lin Divine-Calculus shrieked, his iron brush dropping from his hand as he watched the blue frost race up the solar beam! "NO! BACKWARD ENERGY FLOW?! DIVERTS THE ARRA—"
He didn't even finish his sentence.
SNAP—!
The blue spatial frost hit the central Heaven-Shatter Tower!
The three-hundred-foot monolith made of solar iron and obsidian didn't just freeze—its entire structural integrity was instantly atomized by absolute zero! The thousands of glowing red runes on its surface flickered once before turning into pale blue dust!
Then, before the eyes of the three Stage-5 Sovereigns standing on the deck, the central Heaven-Shatter Tower shattered into millions of fine, glittering blue ice particles, completely dissolving into the night air!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The remaining four Heaven-Shatter Towers suffered the exact same fate simultaneously! One by one, the colossal floating fortresses turned into solid blue ice before crumbling into powder, their massive weight vanishing into the wind like dry leaves!
"MY TOWERS!" Minister Lin shrieked in absolute, blood-vomiting despair, his body falling through the air as the platform beneath his feet dissolved into nothingness! "EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OF IMPERIAL HERITAGE... ERASED IN ONE THRUST?!"
High above the falling dust, the three Stage-5 Sovereigns—Sect Master Iron-Grip, Grand Elder Crimson-Feather, and Palace Lord Shadow-Moon—were forced to unleash their full spatial flight abilities, retreating three miles backward into the cloud layer, their faces turned as white as sheets!
"He... he didn't even unwrap his blade!" Sect Master Iron-Grip gasped, his nine-foot-tall body trembling violently as cold sweat soaked his spiked armor. "He stopped the Heaven-Shatter Beam... with a wrapped, blunt weapon?!"
"That is not ordinary frost!" Grand Elder Crimson-Feather cried out, her fiery feathered dress flickering weakly as the residual cold in the air threatened to extinguish her flame. "He froze pure energy! He turned three million units of solar fire into physical ice!"
Down on the Grand Plaza, the fifty-foot-wide, three-hundred-foot-tall pillar of frozen solar ice stood like a grand, glittering sapphire monument connecting the earth to the sky.
Li-Wen slowly lowered his wrapped heavy blade, resting its blunt tip against the white granite floor.
THUD.
The gentle touch of the wrapped blade against the ground sent a subtle, horizontal ripple of blue spatial light racing across the floor of the plaza!
It hit the twenty thousand Sun-Shield Knights standing on the Golden Dragon Bridge.
CHILL—!
The fifty-foot-tall wall of golden solar fire protecting the bridge flickered once, then turned into a thin, brittle curtain of blue frost before shattering into tiny ice crystals!
The volcanic bronze armor of the twenty thousand knights instantly turned pale blue. The heavy tower shields in their hands became so brittle from the extreme cold that they crumbled into dark metallic sand under their own weight! The three thousand dragon-fire arrows drawn by the archers snap-froze in their bows, their iron tips turning into useless frost-dust!
CLATTER! CLATTER! CLATTER!
Twenty thousand elite imperial knights dropped their ruined weapons, falling to their knees in mid-air and on the stone bridge, their bodies shivering uncontrollably as they looked at the solitary man in the dark coat with eyes of pure, crippling terror!
Not a single soldier fired an arrow. Not a single knight raised a spear. The entire military force defending the Golden Dragon Gate was completely disarmed without a single drop of blood being spilled!
On his battle-platform, Marshal Zhao Dragon-Crest sat frozen, his hand holding his executioner's broadsword dropping limp against his side. He looked at the twenty thousand disarmed knights, then looked at the crushed remnants of the five Heaven-Shatter Towers, and finally closed his eyes in utter, absolute defeat.
"We... we never had a chance," Marshal Zhao whispered, his voice empty, broken, and hollow. "He is not fighting an empire... He is merely clearing a path."
Li-Wen did not look at the kneeling knights. He did not look at the trembling Marshal.
He turned to his side, gently taking Xiao-Yue's small hand once more into his own.
"Let us cross the bridge, Xiao-Yue," Li-Wen said calmly, his voice flat and indifferent as he stepped onto the white granite floor of the Golden Dragon Bridge.
Xiao-Yue nodded happily, her pink lotus lantern shining with a rich, radiant ruby glow that illuminated the dark, empty path ahead. "Okay, Brother Li-Wen!"
Together, the solitary traveler and the small girl stepped past the twenty thousand kneeling, terrified soldiers, walking calmly across the grand bridge toward the floating gates of the Inner Imperial Palace.
High above the clouds, inside the deep subterranean vault of the Golden Dragon Palace, the Imperial Prime Ancestor, Yan Sun-God, slowly opened his burning golden eyes.
His withered hands trembled as he gripped his wooden walking stick, a dark, murderous, and deeply desperate look appearing on his ancient face.
"He has crossed the bridge..." the Prime Ancestor whispered, his voice echoing in the dark cavern like a death knell. "Unseal the Nineteenth-Level Sun-Bound Formation... Bring the Nine-Sun Heaven-Burning Spear to the main gate! Today... either he dies, or the Crimson Dragon Dynasty ends!
See you in next chapter...