The Demon God nevertheless kept making them need more.
It struck Xiangyin's spear hard enough to make the repaired wrist bend before she could completely release, then stepped through Yanfei's Frostfire with enough power that the altered stone collapsed without carrying the leg far from its intended path. Haotian moved toward the knee again, but the enlarged body had already shifted enough weight through the hip to turn his intervention into another close-range exchange. He touched the outside of the joint with the left palm and followed the movement through the Dao of the Universe, changing the angle just enough for the spear to return, while the Demon God's arm came down toward him before he could leave.
Yinxue's Sword Dao caught that arm across the shoulder. The pressure did not stop the strike, but it delayed the descent enough for Haotian to move the injured right side away and let the forearm pass outside his ribs. The heavier Abyssal Dao rose immediately beneath Yinxue's restraint, and the backlash ran through the damaged meridians around her shoulder before she released the pressure and shifted it toward another region. Haotian reached the outside of the arm during that short interval and struck the ribs with his left palm before the Demon God could recover the movement completely.
The retaliation forced him away again, but another current had already entered the edge of the Eyes of the Universe from behind the fight.
Liora's Life Dao was withdrawing from Lianhua.
Haotian did not turn toward the backline. He could see enough through the Eyes of the Universe to know that the treatment had reached the point Liora wanted. The disturbed flow around Lianhua's ribs had stabilized, the damaged tissues were no longer tightening with every breath, and the medicinal energy circulating through her body had settled into the repaired region instead of being consumed merely to keep it from worsening. Lianhua rose while the Demon God drove through another line of Frostfire, tested the side once through a controlled turn, and began moving toward the battle without needing anyone to make room for her.
She returned into an exchange already in motion. Haotian had redirected one of the Demon God's arms away from Xiangyin while Ziyue attacked the exposed flank, and Lianhua entered along the opposite shoulder with Cloud-Sundering Steps carrying her through a deeper turn than she had been able to use before withdrawing. Voidpierce Sword Sutra narrowed Space along the blade and opened the weakened covering near the shoulder, forcing the Demon God to pull sacrificial reinforcement away from the ribs just as Ziyue's sword reached them again.
Yueru moved nearer the Sky Piercer scar when the transfer began. The Demon God reacted by drawing reinforcement back toward the chest, and the competing demands left the upper body unable to restore every wound with the same density. Haotian remained close enough to follow those movements while they happened and used the new opening around the ribs instead of chasing the chest, striking where Ziyue had already broken the outer layer and forcing the Demon God to spend still more of the sacrificial reserve there.
With Lianhua back inside the fight, the burden across the others changed almost immediately. Ziyue no longer had to cross every time Yueru approached the chest because Lianhua could occupy one of the guarding arms herself, while Yanfei could keep Frostfire concentrated beneath fewer likely landing points because Xiangyin and Lianhua together reduced the number of clean routes the Demon God could take through the lower and upper body. Yinxue's Sword Dao no longer had to preserve every opening for the full duration of an attack, and Haotian gained several exchanges in which he could attack a weakened region instead of throwing himself into the gap left by someone whose injury had shortened a movement.
For a brief stretch, the difference was enough to make the Demon God yield ground. Xiangyin forced a step outward with the spear, Yanfei collapsed the landing point beneath it, and the resulting turn exposed the shoulder to Lianhua while Ziyue cut the flank from the other side. Yinxue burdened the guarding arm just long enough for Yueru to move near the chest, and the sacrificial reinforcement shifted toward the Sky Piercer scar before Lightning ever appeared. Haotian watched the lower ribs thin under that transfer and entered there, driving Fist of Ruin through a layer that had already been weakened by repeated redistribution.
The blow reached flesh. Dark blood ran beneath his fist, and the Demon God's torso turned farther than it intended before its greater strength restored the stance. Haotian left before the guarding arm could trap him against the body, while Lianhua crossed through the opposite side and deepened the shoulder wound with another spatial cut. The repaired ribs carried the turn cleanly, and for several exchanges she moved with enough freedom that the restriction from the previous chapter seemed to have disappeared.
It had not disappeared.
It had been repaired enough to function.
The distinction became visible only after the Demon God forced another violent correction through the upper body. Lianhua used Cloud-Sundering Steps to turn around the arm and reached the shoulder from behind, but the second change of direction pulled harder across the recently treated side than the first. She shortened the final portion of the movement before the strain could deepen, leaving the cut shallower than she originally intended while Ziyue adjusted around her and attacked the flank instead.
No one stopped because of it. Lianhua simply changed the next angle, just as Xiangyin had changed the way she held the spear and Yanfei had changed the size of her Frostfire fields. The family remained dangerous precisely because none of them needed to be told how to preserve an injury without surrendering the fight.
The Demon God remained more dangerous because it could force them to make those compromises faster than they could recover from them.
Its next step drove through the region Yanfei had altered and struck Xiangyin's spear hard enough to send a new jolt through the repaired wrist. Xiangyin released before the joint twisted farther, but the hand took longer to return to the shaft afterward, which forced Yanfei to widen Frostfire across the route the spear had not completely closed. The broader circulation tightened her treated shoulder, and before the technique reached its full width she drew the outer edge inward again, accepting a smaller field rather than damage the joint more severely.
Haotian moved through the route she could not cover. His left palm struck the Demon God's knee and carried the change into the hip, while the weakened right hand touched only long enough to establish the angle before withdrawing. The movement put him close enough that the Demon God's returning elbow still crossed his shoulder when the leg powered through the correction, and he yielded with the impact rather than allowing both damaged arms to take the full collision.
Yinxue placed Sword Dao across the same shoulder to prevent the Demon God from following immediately. Abyssal Dao rose beneath her pressure, and this time the backlash reached deeper before she released. Her injured arm remained close to her side, but the fingers tightened involuntarily and did not relax at once after the pressure ended.
She widened her distance.
Not enough to leave the fight.
Enough to reduce how much of the Demon God's Dao reached her whenever she pressed against it again.
Lianhua and Ziyue compensated without looking toward her. Lianhua took more of the arm that Yinxue could no longer hold for long, using Voidpierce to cut along the forearm whenever the Demon God tried to return it toward the chest, while Ziyue remained closer to Yueru and attacked whichever side lost reinforcement when the Sky Piercer scar was protected. Haotian moved between the lower and upper body, helping Xiangyin and Yanfei control steps when their injuries shortened the reach of their techniques, then returning to the ribs or shoulder whenever the sacrificial covering thinned enough to justify an attack.
For several more exchanges the seven-person pressure continued to work. The Demon God accumulated cuts it could no longer hide immediately beneath reinforcement, and the Sky Piercer scar remained a constant demand on the finite sacrificial reserve. Yueru did not need to strike the wound every time she approached it; simply forcing the Demon God to keep the chest protected weakened other regions enough for the rest of the family to keep drawing blood.
The damage did not slow the Demon God enough.
When too many pressures accumulated at once, it forced more power through the stable Immortal Emperor circulation and broke through them. A heavy step crushed Yanfei's Frostfire and drove Xiangyin's spear aside, while a surge of Abyssal Dao tore through Yinxue's pressure before Lianhua had fully completed her attack. The guarding arm recovered sooner than expected and struck Lianhua's sword during her turn, forcing the recently healed ribs through a sharper movement than she intended.
Lianhua moved with it and remained on her feet, but the side tightened afterward.
Ziyue reached the arm before it could continue, taking part of the force across her own sword and injured shoulder while Haotian entered beneath them to disturb the Demon God's stance. His palm reached the outside of the knee, but the enlarged body drove through the adjustment and struck him with the hip before the Dao of the Universe could carry the change fully upward. Haotian was thrown several paces and landed on the side he had been trying to protect, adding another shock through the ribs and left shoulder before he could roll out of it.
The Demon God continued forward while he recovered, and the family around it had to compress without him for several breaths. Xiangyin shortened the spear line even farther to protect the wrist, Yanfei narrowed Frostfire enough to keep the shoulder from tightening completely, and Lianhua stayed near the upper body despite the renewed discomfort along her ribs. Ziyue covered the side Yueru needed for another approach, while Yinxue increased Sword Dao pressure from farther out to keep the guarding arm occupied.
The stronger Abyssal Dao pushed back through her.
Yinxue released before the backlash became severe.
The pressure disappeared sooner than Lianhua expected, and she had to change her route while the Demon God's arm recovered. Ziyue moved into the opening created by that adjustment, but the returning hand reached her sword and drove enough force through the shoulder to push her several paces farther than before.
Haotian returned before the movement could become a pursuit. His right hand had regained enough sensation to touch the wrist briefly, while the left palm carried the actual redirection and moved the arm outside Ziyue's body. The Demon God continued through the altered line and struck Haotian across the shoulder with the upper arm, but the interruption had already given Ziyue enough time to leave.
The impact forced Haotian back into the range of Xiangyin's spear, and she adjusted around him without breaking the weapon's line. The repaired wrist trembled when she moved the shaft across another step, forcing more of the control into the healthier hand and forearm. Yanfei saw the smaller angle and extended Frostfire slightly farther to compensate, only to draw the technique back when the treated shoulder tightened beneath the increased circulation.
The gaps did not remain gaps for long because someone always filled them.
That was also why the injuries kept spreading.
Whenever Xiangyin protected the wrist by shortening the spear line, Yanfei or Haotian had to cover more ground.
Whenever Yanfei protected the shoulder by narrowing Frostfire, Haotian had to enter another step directly.
Whenever Yinxue released Sword Dao before the backlash became dangerous, Lianhua or Ziyue had to remain close to the Demon God's arms longer.
Whenever Lianhua avoided a deeper turn through the recently treated ribs, Ziyue crossed farther around the body to preserve the opening.
The Demon God did not have to identify any of those relationships deliberately. Its pressure simply made the cost of preserving one injury appear somewhere else.
Yinxue felt that cost again when Yueru finally found an approach worth threatening with Lightning. Xiangyin and Yanfei had forced the Demon God's lower body into a compromised step, Lianhua and Ziyue had opened both sides of the upper torso, and Haotian remained near the ribs where the sacrificial layer was already thin. Yueru moved toward the Sky Piercer scar, and the Demon God brought the nearest arm across the chest while reinforcement thickened over the wound.
Yinxue placed Sword Dao against that arm.
The pressure needed to last only long enough for Yueru to determine whether the scar was truly reachable.
The Demon God drove Abyssal Dao against it.
Yinxue held.
Pain entered the injured meridians before Yueru reached the final step.
Yinxue continued holding because releasing immediately would free the arm directly into Yueru's path.
The Sword Dao trembled.
Yueru saw the scar protection thicken too quickly and abandoned the attempt, leaving the reach before Lightning committed fully.
Yinxue released at once.
The backlash had already travelled through the shoulder.
Her injured arm jerked beside her body, and the fingers closed hard enough that she had to deliberately relax them while widening her distance.
Haotian saw the damaged meridians contract through the Eyes of the Universe as he struck the Demon God's exposed ribs. He also saw the medicinal residue from Yinxue's earlier pill still circulating through those same pathways, doing exactly what it was meant to do by stabilizing inflammation and preserving function. The problem was that each new collision of Dao pressure damaged the network again before the previous strain had completely settled.
The Demon God forced Haotian away from the ribs and turned toward Lianhua. She met the forearm with Voidpierce, cut the outer layer, and changed direction before the enlarged shoulder could follow, but the recently treated ribs tightened during the retreat. The movement still completed. The next one was shorter.
Ziyue entered beside her and took another strike across the sword, while Xiangyin and Yanfei continued trying to keep the Demon God's feet from settling cleanly enough to drive directly through them all.
Yinxue formed another Sword Dao line.
It was stable when it began.
The Demon God pushed against it.
The pressure broke sooner than the previous one.
Yinxue released instead of forcing the damaged meridians to hold, then formed another line farther away when the arm turned toward Ziyue. That one lasted only long enough to change the attack slightly before the Abyssal Dao forced her cultivation back again.
The Demon God did not need more.
The guarding arm moved freely enough to catch Ziyue's blade and drive pressure through the shoulder she had already injured while covering Yueru. Ziyue yielded with the weapon, but the impact still pushed her out of the flank and gave the Demon God a cleaner route through the upper body.
Haotian entered it.
He reached the wrist, shifted the elbow, and turned the arm outside Lianhua and Ziyue, using both hands despite the pain because there was no longer enough support from Yinxue's Dao to make a one-sided redirection sufficient. His right shoulder weakened first, forcing the left to carry more of the movement, and the Demon God powered through until Haotian had to release and move with the strike to prevent either arm from being trapped.
The forearm passed his chest.
The returning shoulder hit his side.
Haotian was driven away, but the others used the space he bought to reset around the Demon God before it could follow.
Yinxue remained farther out.
She reached for a healing pill while the others occupied the enlarged body, swallowed it, and circulated the medicine through the damaged shoulder without leaving the battlefield. The medicinal current entered the strained meridians and reduced the tightening enough for Sword Dao to settle around her weapon again, but the recovery did not return the network to the state it had held when the chapter began.
She continued supporting from range.
For a few exchanges the pill was enough.
Her Sword Dao once again burdened the Demon God's shoulder while Lianhua attacked the forearm, and it delayed the guarding arm long enough for Yueru to move closer to the chest. But when Abyssal Dao pressed directly against her cultivation, the backlash still entered the same damaged pathways, forcing Yinxue to release before the pressure had lasted as long as the others needed.
Lianhua changed her attack.
Ziyue covered.
Haotian crossed the opened route.
Xiangyin moved the spear.
Yanfei altered the ground.
The fight did not collapse because Yinxue's pressure shortened.
It merely demanded more from everyone else.
Several exchanges later, Yinxue tried again and felt the meridians tighten even beneath the medicinal current. She released immediately, and the Sword Dao around the Demon God's shoulder dispersed before the guarding arm had fully committed to the movement she was trying to burden. The arm came free sooner than Lianhua expected, forcing her to shorten another turn through the ribs, while Ziyue absorbed the following pressure through a shoulder that was no longer uninjured.
Haotian crossed toward them and redirected what he could, but he no longer possessed two healthy arms with which to replace everything Yinxue's Dao had been doing. The Demon God's forearm clipped his left shoulder as he moved through the exchange, and the pain spreading down that arm made the next palm strike shorter when he reached the ribs.
He still drew blood.
The Demon God still drove him away.
By the time Haotian regained his footing, Yinxue had widened her path around the battle rather than moving back toward the position she had been holding. She continued forming short pressures wherever the others genuinely needed them, but she no longer remained close enough for the Demon God's Abyssal Dao to settle fully against her cultivation before she released. The pill was keeping the damaged meridians functional; it was no longer giving her enough stability to continue the same job she had been performing.
No one told her to retreat.
She had not committed to retreating yet.
She was simply moving toward the only part of the battlefield where retreat would become possible when the arm stopped being useful.
The Demon God kept forcing the others to fight while that decision approached. Xiangyin's wrist bent under another spear collision, Yanfei's repaired shoulder tightened when she widened Frostfire to cover it, and Lianhua's recently healed ribs pulled sharply when she turned out of an arm that Yinxue's Sword Dao had been unable to delay for long enough. Ziyue moved through the spaces those injuries created, taking another heavy contact along the sword while Haotian remained close enough to redirect the worst of the follow-up.
Yueru continued threatening the Sky Piercer scar from the outside, preserving her Lightning arm until the others could create something worth attacking. Her restraint kept the chest protected and forced sacrificial reinforcement away from the rest of the body, allowing the family to continue opening wounds even as their own repaired injuries began deteriorating again.
The Demon God was bleeding more.
That did not make the family healthier.
Haotian followed the next shift of reinforcement toward the chest and entered the weakened flank with Ziyue, while Lianhua attacked the shoulder and Xiangyin forced the lower stance toward Yanfei's Frostfire. Yinxue supported the movement from farther away, placing Sword Dao over the guarding arm only long enough to slow it before the Abyssal pressure reached too deeply into the injured meridians.
The pressure broke.
Yinxue did not immediately form another one.
She kept moving toward the outer battlefield while the medicine worked through an arm that was becoming less responsive with every direct clash.
Haotian saw Liora behind them, still recovering from the treatment she had only just completed on Lianhua.
Then the Demon God drove through the opening Yinxue could no longer hold, and Haotian turned back into the fight before there was room to think about what would happen when she reached the healer.
Yinxue reached Liora without ever fully turning her back on the battle, maintaining only the lightest Sword Dao pressure she could sustain until the ruined ground between her and the Demon God finally widened enough for her to let the technique disappear. The healing pill she had taken kept the damaged meridians around her shoulder from worsening immediately, allowing her to send Sword Dao back toward the Demon God whenever one of its arms threatened to close over Lianhua or Ziyue, but those pressures no longer remained in place for more than a brief exchange. Each time the heavier Abyssal Dao pushed back through them, Yinxue released before the backlash could settle deeply into the same pathways, and the family adapted around the shorter support without interrupting the battle. Haotian found himself moving closer to the upper body as a result, filling the space Yinxue's Sword Dao could no longer occupy for long while Xiangyin and Yanfei continued struggling to keep the enlarged Immortal Emperor's lower body from finding an uncontested route through them.
The Demon God forced another step through the shortened spear line, and Xiangyin's repaired wrist bent before she could completely release the shaft. She kept control through the healthier hand and turned the weapon from the hips, but the point no longer travelled far enough to deny the whole angle, which forced Yanfei to extend Frostfire into the opening. The broader technique reached the broken stone in time, though the shoulder Liora had treated tightened as the heat followed the cold across the wider area, and Haotian had to enter beside the descending knee when the far edge of the Frostfire formed too slowly to carry the same density as the section nearest her. He struck the outside of the joint, followed the shifting weight through the hip with the Dao of the Universe, and felt his left shoulder strain as the enlarged Immortal Emperor simply drove through the correction and forced more of the contact back into Haotian's body than the battered arm wanted to bear.
Lianhua and Ziyue were already moving around the upper body while Haotian gave ground, keeping the Demon God from following him without first answering their blades. Lianhua's Voidpierce Sword Sutra entered along the forearm as she turned through the side Liora had treated, while Ziyue reached the flank where sacrificial reinforcement had thinned around a wound opened too many times to disappear completely between exchanges. Neither woman remained there after the first cut, because Lianhua's ribs tightened when the turn deepened and Ziyue's shoulder no longer accepted the returning force as cleanly as it had before, yet their movement kept the Demon God occupied long enough for Yueru to remain near the chest and force another concentration of dark essence around the Sky Piercer scar. Haotian used that transfer to return from below rather than chase the chest, striking into the thinner ribs with his left hand while his right remained close enough to the body that the injured shoulder would not be loaded unless there was no other choice.
The Demon God answered by turning through the entire pressure instead of trying to restore every wounded region first. Its forearm drove Lianhua away from the shoulder, the widening body forced Ziyue to abandon the flank before the injured joint could be trapped beneath another collision, and the lower half stepped through Xiangyin's shortened spear line before Yanfei could completely rebuild Frostfire under the new footing. Haotian remained nearest and had to redirect the arm that followed toward Yueru, using the left palm to turn the wrist while the right hand touched beneath the elbow only long enough to prevent the strike from changing too sharply. The movement carried Yueru outside the attack, but the Demon God's upper arm still crashed into Haotian before he could leave, driving him several paces across the broken ground and sending another ache through both shoulders while the healing pills already circulating through him tried to stabilize ribs, back, hip, and arms at the same time.