Xiangyin covered the opening his displacement created with the spear, though the weapon was now moving differently from the way it had immediately after she returned from Liora. She kept the rear of the shaft closer to her torso, used the healthier hand and shoulder to carry most of each change, and allowed the repaired wrist to provide only enough control to guide the spearhead toward the Demon God's knee or hip rather than swing the entire weapon across broad angles. That adaptation preserved the joint until the Demon God struck the shaft near the head and sent the remaining force down its length before Xiangyin could completely release, at which point the injured hand opened and did not close again when she first tried to recover the grip. Yanfei widened Frostfire instinctively to cover the route the spear could no longer deny, but the broader circulation tightened the shoulder Liora had treated and forced her to draw the outer portion of the technique inward before the heat fully caught the cold, leaving Haotian to cross the unfinished ground himself as soon as he regained balance.
He entered the Demon God's next step already knowing the adjustment would be incomplete. The Eyes of the Universe showed the precise relationship between the foot, knee, hip, and torso, but the left shoulder that had begun deteriorating under repeated impacts no longer allowed his palm to carry the same force through the joint, and the right side could contribute only briefly before pain threatened the damaged arm. Haotian still altered the landing enough for Yanfei's concentrated Frostfire to catch the foot, but the Demon God powered through the unstable stone and brought its opposite forearm across his upper body during the correction. He turned the ribs away and received the collision along both arms, allowing the force to drive him backward rather than resist until either shoulder failed completely, while Xiangyin recovered the spear one-handed and kept the point near the Demon God's lower body despite the useless hand held close to her chest.
The absence of Yinxue was most obvious whenever the Demon God turned through Lianhua and Ziyue. Earlier, Sword Dao had repeatedly burdened the shoulders and elbows long enough for their blades to enter and leave without remaining beneath the full reach of the Immortal Emperor, but now every physical attack had to create its own exit as well as its opening. Lianhua cut the forearm and shortened the following turn when the recently healed ribs tightened beneath it, while Ziyue stayed close enough to cover that retreat and took another heavy contact down the length of her sword when the Demon God recovered the arm sooner than she could completely clear. The force reached the shoulder that had already begun to trouble her, lowering the sword several inches before she restored the guard, and Yueru had to abandon another approach toward the Sky Piercer scar because the arm Ziyue had been trying to delay returned too quickly for Lightning to be worth the risk.
Yueru let the gathered current fade before it fully discharged, but even that restraint did not prevent the numbness from returning through the same arm that had been repeatedly supported by medicine. She changed the sword into the healthier hand while retreating around the Demon God's reach, and Haotian moved toward the flank she exposed because the scar protection had already drawn sacrificial essence away from that region. Ziyue joined him despite the injured shoulder, keeping her sword below the angle that caused the most pain and letting Haotian's strike break the remaining dark layer before she widened the flesh beneath it. The wound remained open after they withdrew, dark blood continuing down the Demon God's side while the reinforcement struggled to answer the chest, shoulder, leg, and flank at once, but the Immortal Emperor's stable circulation still carried enough power for another step before any of those injuries could become decisive.
Haotian felt the movement begin and crossed toward Xiangyin because she could no longer restore the spear with both hands. She had braced the shaft along her forearm and shoulder and was using the weapon almost entirely through the healthier side, which kept the point dangerous but reduced how quickly she could shift from the knee to the hip when the Demon God changed direction. Yanfei extended Frostfire to compensate and immediately drew more strain through her own repaired shoulder, causing the technique to thin at the farther edge just as the enlarged foot descended toward it. Haotian reached that edge first, struck the knee, and turned the weight toward the denser Frostfire while the Demon God answered by driving the shoulder through him, sending him away hard enough that his left arm failed to rise cleanly until he forced cultivation back through the joint.
There was no room in the battle for any of them to stop because the injuries had not yet become complete failures. Xiangyin could still thrust one-handed, Yanfei could still shape Frostfire if she kept it close, Lianhua could still use Cloud-Sundering Steps as long as she avoided repeated deep turns, Ziyue could still fight with the sword below the height that aggravated her shoulder, and Yueru could still threaten the Sky Piercer scar if she waited long enough between Lightning attempts for sensation to return. Haotian could still see everything the Demon God was doing and could still alter enough of those movements to keep the family from being broken apart outright, but preserving each damaged fighter demanded another adjustment from someone else, and the additional burden kept migrating through the group faster than Liora could remove it from the person already behind the line.
Liora was still working through Yinxue's arm when Xiangyin's wrist failed again under another collision. The Demon God struck the shaft while she was changing the spearhead toward the supporting leg, and although Xiangyin released the repaired hand immediately, the joint had already taken enough new force that the fingers remained half-curled afterward and would not close around the weapon even when she tried to return them to the shaft. She shifted the spear completely into the healthier hand without looking toward the backline, because the only healer capable of doing more than a battlefield pill was already occupied and the lower body of the Demon God still had to be controlled somehow. Yanfei moved closer and tightened Frostfire around the route Xiangyin could no longer cover, while Haotian shortened the distance between them so he could enter whichever step escaped both the one-handed spear and the increasingly narrow terrain control.
That adjustment kept the Demon God from simply walking through the lower battlefield, but it made every exchange more expensive. Yanfei's shoulder had to carry more cultivation because Frostfire was now replacing part of Xiangyin's lost spear control, and the reserves Liora had restored during her own treatment began falling faster as the technique was rebuilt again and again beneath an opponent who could crush through it with raw Immortal Emperor power. Haotian had to remain nearer the Demon God's legs because neither the spear nor Frostfire covered as much ground as before, which placed his already damaged shoulders inside reach every time he used the Dao of the Universe to alter a step. When Lianhua and Ziyue attacked above, both women had to remain close enough to compensate for Yinxue's absence, and the injuries around Lianhua's ribs and Ziyue's shoulder returned sooner each time the Demon God forced them through another hard turn.
The Demon God did not need to change its approach to exploit any of that. It stepped through the ground Yanfei had weakened, struck Xiangyin's one-handed spear far enough aside that Haotian had to intercept the correcting leg himself, and drove an arm across the upper body while Lianhua and Ziyue were still leaving their attacks. Haotian turned the wrist away from Lianhua, but the left shoulder weakened under the movement and forced his injured right hand to remain in contact longer than he wanted, allowing the pressure of the larger arm to travel through both sides before he could release. Ziyue caught part of the follow-up along her blade to keep it from reaching Yueru, and the impact drove through her shoulder hard enough that the arm dropped lower after she escaped, while Lianhua's ribs tightened during a deeper turn taken only because someone had to keep the other hand away from Haotian.
Yueru moved near the Sky Piercer scar during the same exchange, forcing the sacrificial reinforcement to thicken there and weakening the flank once more, but she did not gather Lightning when she saw how little protection the others could provide if the Demon God turned on her. Instead, she remained close enough to keep the chest guarded while Haotian and Ziyue attacked the thinned side, their blows opening flesh that the sacrificial reserve no longer covered immediately. The Demon God bled more heavily than it had at the start of the chapter and carried wounds across the shoulder, flank, thigh, and chest that were becoming increasingly difficult to hide beneath the diminishing dark essence, yet none of that prevented it from continuing forward with enough strength to force the injured Lesser Immortal Lords farther across the ruins.
Haotian saw Liora's Life Dao finally begin settling more evenly through Yinxue's damaged meridians while the family gave ground. The healing was working; the tightened pathways were loosening, the inflammation around the shoulder receding, and the medicinal current from the pill integrating with Liora's treatment instead of merely holding the damage in place. Yinxue would be able to return if Liora had enough time to finish stabilizing the arm, but Xiangyin already needed the same healer again, Yanfei's repaired shoulder was deteriorating beneath the extra Frostfire she had been forced to use, and the ribs Liora had only recently treated in Lianhua were tightening under every turn required to replace Yinxue's missing pressure.
The Demon God drove them into another exchange before any of those recoveries could catch up. Xiangyin used the spear one-handed against the knee, Yanfei concentrated Frostfire beneath the route it forced, and Haotian entered when the Demon God powered through both, striking the outside of the leg and following the relationship upward with the Dao of the Universe while Lianhua and Ziyue worked around the arms. The left shoulder weakened during the correction and the Demon God's forearm caught Haotian across both raised arms, driving him backward through the ground Yanfei had just altered, but Xiangyin had already recovered the spear and Yueru remained close enough to the chest that the Demon God could not abandon its scar protection to pursue him freely.
Haotian regained his balance with both shoulders burning and looked through the next movement rather than toward the backline. Xiangyin's injured hand still would not close around the shaft, Yanfei's Frostfire gathered more slowly beyond the immediate ground beneath the Demon God, Lianhua's turns were shortening again, and Ziyue's sword remained lower because raising the injured shoulder too far weakened the arm. Yinxue was still under Liora's hands when the Demon God came toward them once more, so Xiangyin braced the spear beneath her healthy arm, Yanfei gathered another concentrated field of Frostfire, and Haotian moved back between them before the Immortal Emperor could take the space their injuries had left open.
Xiangyin kept the spear braced beneath her healthy arm as the Demon God came through the space between her and Yanfei, using the point to threaten the knee without asking the swollen wrist at her chest to control the shaft again. Yanfei had already compressed Frostfire around the only footing the spear still denied cleanly, and Haotian moved with both of them, following the Demon God's weight through the Eyes of the Universe until the descending leg committed enough for the Dao of the Universe to carry a small change through the knee and hip. The Demon God still crushed through the altered stone and forced its mass beyond the angle Haotian wanted, but the correction prevented the stride from passing directly through Xiangyin, leaving Yanfei enough time to draw the Frostfire inward before the repaired shoulder had to sustain another broad field.
The turn carried the Demon God toward Lianhua and Ziyue instead, and both women adjusted around the new angle while Haotian was still leaving the lower body. Lianhua's blade entered along the outside of the forearm with Voidpierce Sword Sutra, opening the thinner sacrificial layer without forcing the deepest turn through the ribs Liora had recently treated, while Ziyue came beneath the opposite shoulder and cut the flank where the reinforcement had not yet returned from the Sky Piercer scar. The Demon God accepted both wounds and continued rotating, its greater reach bringing the arm back toward them before either blade had completely withdrawn, and Ziyue had to lift her sword higher than the injured shoulder comfortably allowed to keep the forearm from crossing into Lianhua's retreat.
The impact travelled down the blade and into the joint before Ziyue could turn fully with it. She kept the sword outside her body and allowed herself to move rather than contest the Immortal Emperor's force, but the shoulder weakened enough that the weapon dropped several inches as she cleared the reach. Haotian saw the loss of height while shifting around the Demon God's ribs, and instead of following the wound he had intended to attack, he crossed toward the returning arm, placed his left palm against the wrist, and used the right hand beneath the elbow only long enough to carry the movement farther from Ziyue before his damaged shoulders took more pressure than they could safely bear.
The Demon God powered through the redirection and drove its upper arm into Haotian during the turn. He let the collision carry him away rather than holding the contact, but the force still tightened the ribs beneath the medicinal support and sent another deep ache through the left shoulder that had been compensating for the damaged right side since the previous chapter. By the time he recovered his footing, Xiangyin had already moved the spear back toward the Demon God's thigh with the healthier hand, and Yanfei was shaping another compact field of Frostfire around the route the weapon could still control.
Their adjustment held for the first step and failed on the second. The Demon God struck the spear near the head and forced the shaft outward farther than Xiangyin could recover with one hand, opening ground that Yanfei had not prepared because she had been conserving the shoulder. Yanfei extended Frostfire across it before the Demon God could take the route cleanly, driving cold through the broken stone and following with heat, but the broader circulation tightened the meridians Liora had already stabilized and made the outer edge of the field form more slowly than the section nearest her.
Haotian reached that weaker edge before the Demon God did. His left palm touched the knee, the Dao of the Universe carried the adjustment toward Yanfei's denser Frostfire, and Xiangyin brought the spear back along the other side to keep the leg from simply correcting away from both pressures. The Demon God forced its weight through the change and brought the opposite shoulder into Haotian before he completely cleared the step, throwing him sideways while the altered footing shattered beneath the enlarged leg.
Yanfei did not widen the Frostfire again after that. She pulled what remained close to the Demon God's feet and allowed the farther section to collapse rather than send another heavy circulation through the injured shoulder, while Xiangyin shortened the spear line until the point remained almost constantly in front of her torso. The two of them still denied enough ground that the Demon God could not simply walk through the lower battlefield, but every route they surrendered had to be covered by Haotian when he returned, and the Eyes of the Universe began showing him more openings than his battered body could comfortably reach.
The next one appeared when the Demon God shifted away from Xiangyin's spear and found the edge of Yanfei's smaller Frostfire. Haotian entered at the hip rather than the knee because his left shoulder had begun resisting full extension, used the Dao of the Universe to turn the relationship of the step instead of relying on a stronger palm strike, and let the movement carry him around the Demon God's side. That brought him close enough to the ribs for a shorter Fist of Ruin, and the blow broke through a region already weakened by Ziyue's earlier cut, forcing dark blood from the wound and drawing sacrificial reinforcement away from the chest.
Yueru moved as soon as that transfer began. She had kept the sword in her healthier hand while the numbness in the Lightning arm receded, and she approached the Sky Piercer scar only far enough to make the Demon God react before deciding whether the opening justified another discharge. The chest protection thickened before she reached the wound, so she widened around the guarding arm without gathering Lightning, preserving the strained meridians and allowing Lianhua to take the shoulder that had thinned during the transfer.
Lianhua's attack reached cleanly, but the retreat required more movement through her repaired side than the entry had. She completed the turn before the ribs could lock, yet Haotian saw the circulation around them tighten afterward, and the next time she moved toward the shoulder she chose a shallower route that kept more of the motion through the legs instead of twisting deeply through the torso. Ziyue compensated by moving farther around the opposite side, keeping her own sword low enough to spare the injured shoulder until the Demon God turned and forced her to raise it again.
This time the forearm reached her before she could find the same favorable angle. Ziyue caught the strike across the blade and rotated with it, but the damaged shoulder failed to hold the weapon as high as she intended, allowing the arm to press the guard closer to her body before she escaped. The joint remained functional when she recovered, though she no longer brought the sword above shoulder height unless the Demon God's movement made it unavoidable, and Yueru stayed nearer to her afterward so neither woman had to cover as much lateral ground alone.
Haotian remained between the lower and upper pressures, moving wherever the reduced range of another fighter left a route the Demon God could otherwise exploit. Xiangyin's one-handed spear still changed the first direction of a step, but if the Demon God struck the shaft away, Haotian had to reach the leg before Yanfei widened Frostfire beyond what the repaired shoulder could repeatedly sustain. When Lianhua shortened a turn through the ribs or Ziyue kept the sword below the injured shoulder, he entered nearer the arms because Yinxue was still behind them with Liora and no Sword Dao remained on the frontline to burden those limbs from a distance.
The Demon God's next advance forced all of those limitations together. It drove the spear aside, stepped beyond Yanfei's narrow Frostfire, and brought an arm across the space Lianhua had just vacated, forcing Haotian to redirect the wrist with both hands because his left arm no longer carried enough strength to do it alone. The right shoulder weakened under the pressure almost immediately, and Haotian released before the joint could fail, but the movement bought enough time for Ziyue to leave the returning arm and Yueru to move away from the chest without spending Lightning merely to escape.
The Demon God continued through Haotian's release and struck him across the upper body. He moved with the impact, yet the blow drove him several paces across the ruins and left the right arm hanging lower when he regained balance. The medicinal energy from his earlier pills flowed toward the shoulder and ribs, stabilizing the renewed strain without erasing any of the damage already accumulated there, while the Heaven Sundering Trinity Scripture kept the three cores synchronized enough that he could force the arm back into use before the Demon God reached the others again.
Xiangyin's spear met that advance first. The recovery pill she had taken earlier had reduced the swelling in the wrist enough that sensation had returned to the fingers, but when she tested them against the shaft the grip remained too weak to trust under another collision, so she kept the hand close to the body and continued fighting one-handed. The Demon God struck the weapon again, and although the injured wrist did not take the full impact this time, the shaft jarred through the forearm supporting it and made the half-healed joint tighten anyway.
Yanfei moved more Frostfire into the ground the spear had failed to close, but the shoulder resisted before the technique reached the same width she had used only a short while earlier. She narrowed the field while it was still forming and shifted the denser portion closer to Xiangyin, leaving the remaining route to Haotian instead of forcing a broader circulation that would have consumed both the joint and the reserves Liora had restored. The Demon God took that route, and Haotian moved into it because there was no reason to ask Yanfei to damage herself faster merely to spare him another exchange.
He met the descending leg with the left side of his body turned away from the strongest line of force. The Eyes of the Universe showed him the correction clearly, and the Dao of the Universe carried the change through the joint, but the shoulder did not complete the motion with the same speed as before, leaving the adjustment several inches short of where he wanted it. The Demon God drove through that imperfection and brought the hip across his upper body, sending him into the ground near Yanfei while Xiangyin shifted the spear around him and prevented the next step from landing directly where he had fallen.
Haotian rolled through the impact and came up on the healthier leg, but Yanfei had already been forced to spread Frostfire again to keep the Demon God from reaching Xiangyin while he recovered. The wider technique tightened her shoulder sharply enough that the flow around the joint became uneven, and she released the farther section the moment Haotian returned to the leg. She swallowed a recovery pill during the opening he created, allowing the medicine to move through the damaged meridians while she kept the Frostfire concentrated near the Demon God's feet rather than leaving Xiangyin and Haotian to hold the lower body without her.
The pill smoothed the circulation enough that the next field gathered properly, but Yanfei did not use that improvement to expand the technique again. She kept the cold and heat close, conserving both the shoulder and the dwindling reserves, while Xiangyin continued to threaten the leg with the one-handed spear and Haotian manipulated whichever step escaped between them. Their coordination remained precise, yet the space each woman could control had become small enough that Haotian had to remain inside the Demon God's reach for longer stretches, where every correction exposed his ribs, shoulders, or hip to another ordinary strike from a body a full realm above them.
Above him, Lianhua and Ziyue were running into the same problem with distance. Without Yinxue's Sword Dao to slow the arms, Lianhua's shorter turns left her too close whenever the Demon God recovered quickly, and Ziyue's injured shoulder prevented the sword from intercepting from the same high angles she had used earlier. The next time Lianhua cut the forearm and began leaving through Cloud-Sundering Steps, the Demon God turned sooner than expected, forcing Ziyue to lift the sword above the damaged joint to keep the returning arm from crossing into Lianhua's ribs.
Ziyue succeeded in changing the strike, but the shoulder weakened beneath the impact and the sword was driven backward until the guard nearly touched her body. She rotated with the arm and escaped before the joint could be trapped, though when she lowered the blade afterward the shoulder remained tight enough that raising it again produced a visible delay. Yueru moved closer to Ziyue's side and used the healthier arm to take more of the ordinary sword work, preserving Lightning for the scar while reducing how often Ziyue had to raise her own weapon into the painful range.
That movement left Yueru farther from the chest than she had been earlier, and the Demon God shifted some sacrificial reinforcement away from the Sky Piercer scar toward the flank Lianhua and Ziyue had been opening repeatedly. Haotian saw the redistribution while he was still near the lower body and moved upward through the side instead of following the next step, reaching the ribs just as Lianhua's sword cut the outer layer from the opposite angle. His palm struck through the weakened protection and forced the Demon God's torso to turn, while Ziyue attacked from below with a shorter cut that relied more on waist and footwork than the injured shoulder.
Yueru used the moment to move toward the chest again. The Lightning arm had recovered enough sensation under medicine for the fingers to close properly around the sword, and she gathered only after the other three attacks forced the Demon God to divide its reinforcement across the torso. The current reached the edge of the Sky Piercer scar before the dark protection fully returned, disturbing Alter's residual crimson lightning beneath the reconstructed pathways and producing a visible contraction through the enlarged chest.
Haotian saw the scar react and changed direction immediately, but the Demon God's guarding arm reached Yueru before he could reach the wound. Ziyue tried to intercept from below and found the injured shoulder too slow to raise the blade through the required angle, forcing Yueru to end the contact herself and withdraw before the arm closed over her. Haotian abandoned the chest and caught the wrist with the left hand, using the right beneath the elbow despite the damaged shoulder because Yueru did not have enough room to leave otherwise.
The Demon God's force drove through both of Haotian's arms. He carried the line outward with the Dao of the Universe until Yueru escaped, then released before either shoulder gave completely, only for the continuing rotation to strike him across the chest and send him back over the broken ground. Yueru widened away from the reach with the Lightning arm hanging lower after the recoil, and instead of trying to return to the scar immediately, she let the medicinal support settle through the meridians while using the healthier hand for the next exchange.
Haotian recovered on one knee and saw the Demon God already turning toward Xiangyin. The one-handed spear reached the leg and Yanfei's compact Frostfire gathered beneath the correcting foot, but the weapon could not change sides quickly enough when the Demon God altered the stride midway through the movement. Haotian forced himself back into the space and struck the knee before the step completed, allowing Xiangyin to recover the spearhead while Yanfei kept the technique narrow enough that her pill-supported shoulder did not have to carry another wide field.
The Demon God drove the foot through the Frostfire and struck Haotian with the forearm during the correction. He raised both arms, but the right shoulder could not hold its portion of the guard, leaving the left to absorb more of the impact before he yielded backward. The blow did not put him down, though the left arm shook after he separated and the right hand remained slow to close when he brought it back near the ribs.
Lianhua entered above him before the Demon God could continue. Her sword cut the forearm and forced the guarding arm outward, but the deeper turn required to leave the reach pulled against the treated ribs enough that her breathing shortened once she cleared. She adjusted the next approach through her legs and hips rather than repeat the same twist, which kept the injury from worsening immediately but reduced how far around the upper body she could move before the Demon God recovered.
Ziyue filled that reduced angle and took another impact through the shoulder as a result. She kept the sword low and used a diagonal cut rather than a high interception, but the Demon God's arm still caught the weapon near the upper third and drove enough pressure through the joint that her stance shifted several steps before she regained it. The shoulder no longer returned to neutral immediately afterward, and she held the elbow closer to the body when she moved back toward Yueru.
Haotian followed the changing geometry rather than watching any one injury for longer than the fight allowed. When Ziyue stayed lower, he moved closer to the upper arm. When Lianhua shortened the turn through the ribs, he redirected the wrist earlier. When Xiangyin's one-handed spear failed to cover the far side of a step, he shifted the knee toward Yanfei's smaller Frostfire instead of asking her to widen it. Each adjustment remained technically correct, but the Demon God kept forcing enough power through the resulting exchange that the burden simply moved from one damaged body into another.
The next sequence ended with Xiangyin's spear driven down hard enough that the shaft struck stone and kicked upward through her healthy hand. The impact travelled along the weapon into the forearm and jarred the injured wrist even without a proper grip, making the hand tighten against her chest while the pill controlled the swelling but could not restore the damaged joint. Haotian stepped into the space before the Demon God could follow the displaced spear, while Yanfei moved Frostfire under the descending foot and Lianhua and Ziyue pressed the upper body from opposite sides.
Yueru remained near the chest rather than gathering Lightning immediately, forcing the sacrificial reinforcement to stay concentrated around the Sky Piercer scar while the others attacked thinner regions. Haotian struck the ribs beneath Lianhua's cut, Ziyue widened the flank with a lower sword motion that spared the shoulder, and Xiangyin recovered the spear in time to pierce shallowly into the thigh when the Demon God shifted its weight away from Yanfei's Frostfire. The three wounds drew dark blood, but the Demon God forced itself through the pressure and used the next turn to scatter them before any one attack could deepen enough to threaten the core.
Haotian took the outer edge of a forearm across the back as he withdrew from the ribs. The blow sent him forward, and he caught himself with the left hand because the right shoulder could no longer safely take the impact, feeling the joint compress beneath his weight before he rolled aside and rose again. By the time he returned, Yanfei had already narrowed Frostfire around the Demon God's feet, Xiangyin's spear was back in the healthy hand, and Lianhua and Ziyue were fighting close enough together that each could cover the other's shortened movement without either woman needing to force her injured region through its full range.
The reduced spacing worked until the Demon God drove both arms through the upper pressure at once. Lianhua left beneath one strike, keeping the ribs from another hard turn, while Ziyue tried to change the second with the sword held below shoulder height and discovered that the angle did not move the forearm far enough from Yueru. She raised the blade despite the injury, caught the arm before it crossed the remaining distance, and immediately felt the shoulder weaken under the added leverage.
Yueru moved with her instead of waiting behind the guard. She struck the forearm from the side with the healthier hand, and the two swords together changed the attack enough for both women to withdraw, but Ziyue's arm remained low afterward and did not return to its former position until several breaths had passed. Haotian entered the space they left and used the Dao of the Universe to turn the Demon God's shoulder away from them, only to have the enlarged body continue through the movement and drive him back toward Xiangyin and Yanfei again.