Veena's enlarged form drifts backwards through the clouds, the black cloak billowing like a tear in the sky.
Han Xue and Leng Qiujie press the attack without hesitation.
They know they cannot afford to give her time.
Han Xue moves first.
Her sword arcs downward, and the frozen sword qi does not merely cut—it freezes concepts. The space Veena retreats through crystallises, jagged ice laws locking together, compressing her movement. The temperature plunges further, and even the death mist around Veena slows, its flow thickening as if dragged by invisible chains.
Leng Qiujie follows.
The silver moon wolf clan head twists mid-air, claws carving crescent arcs of moonlit energy. Each strike carries lunar authority, sharpening her perception and synchronising her attacks with Han Xue's rhythm. The claw-shaped energies tear through the clouds, detonating pockets of death mist and scattering fragments of Veena's skeletal palm.
The skeletal palm fractures.
Bones shatter into ash.
Veena's massive form is forced back again.
For a moment, the two attackers gain ground.
Han Xue steps onto nothingness, ice forming beneath her feet with each movement, advancing like a goddess of winter. Her blade flashes again, sending a spiralling ice domain outward, attempting to encase Veena entirely.
Leng Qiujie howls.
The moon above brightens.
Her fur gleams, muscles swelling, claws extending further as she closes the distance, aiming not for Veena's core but her control points—the regions where death energy condenses most densely.
They are experienced.
They are coordinated.
And they are winning—slightly.
But only slightly.
Veena does not retreat in panic.
She retreats deliberately.
Inside the cloak, her hollow eye-fires burn colder.
Her inner field unfolds.
It is still incomplete, still empty in many places—but it exists.
The moment Han Xue's ice domain presses against her, Veena's inner field reacts.
The ice laws do not collapse.
They lose priority.
Within the range of Veena's field, death is no longer an outcome.
It is a rule.
The frozen space around her fractures—not physically, but conceptually. Ice cracks appear where no ice exists, spreading across Han Xue's domain like spiderwebs, weakening its cohesion.
Veena raises one bony hand.
"Death Cloud."
A vast shroud erupts outward, not as mist, but as layered death strata, overlapping zones of decay, silence, and stillness. The cloud does not explode—it expands with dreadful patience, swallowing sword qi, dimming moonlight, corroding the edges of Leng Qiujie's claw attacks.
Leng Qiujie slashes through it, snarling as her lunar energy burns away the death layers.
But her speed slows.
Not much.
Enough.
Han Xue thrusts forward, blade piercing the cloud, ice law roaring as she forces a path through.
Veena's other hand rises.
"Death Beam."
A thin, absolute line of death energy fires forward, piercing straight through the cloud and colliding with Han Xue's sword.
The impact is silent.
Han Xue is hurled backwards, blood misting from her lips as her sword vibrates violently, ice laws destabilising for a brief instant before she regains control.
Leng Qiujie takes advantage of that instant.
She lunges.
Her claws rake across Veena's cloak, tearing through layers of death energy and striking the skeletal form beneath. Bone splinters scatter, several ribs cracking apart.
For the first time—
Veena's form is visibly damaged.
But still, there is no blood.
No pain.
The broken bones dissolve into death particles and begin reforming immediately.
Veena's voice echoes from within the cloak, calm and distant.
"You have no follow-up."
She spreads both arms.
"Death Fire."
Black flames ignite across her body, not burning outward but inward, reinforcing her structure, purging instability, and sealing the damage Leng Qiujie inflicted. The flames lick outward afterwards, forcing both opponents to withdraw.
Han Xue steadies herself, breathing hard.
Leng Qiujie bares her fangs, eyes narrowing.
They can suppress her.
They can pressure her.
But they cannot break her.
Nyxarin did not give Leng Qiujie the knowledge beyond the third stage.
Han Xue's sword inheritance stops at Jin Dan logic—a path already abandoned.
Veena, meanwhile, is no longer climbing blindly.
She is building.
Her inner field stabilises further, death laws aligning more cleanly within it. The cloud around her thickens, the skeleton beneath the cloak growing denser, more defined.
She looks at them both.
"Continue," Veena says softly.
"Your resistance is… educational."
The clouds churn.
The moon flickers.
And the battle in the sky grinds on, locked in a deadly balance—one that slowly, inexorably, begins to tilt. The balance breaks without sound.
Not with an explosion, not with a scream—but with pressure.
Veena stops retreating.
Her vast cloak steadies, no longer billowing wildly but hanging as if pinned to an unseen frame. The battlefield below—snowfields churned by spells, shattered corpses, broken puppets, frozen blood—begins to respond to her presence.
Her inner field expands.
It does not spread outward like a domain.
It claims.
Death energy buried in the land, lingering in corpses, soaked into ice and stone, woven into shattered souls—all of it begins to stir. Threads of grey-black essence rise from the battlefield as mist pulled upward by gravity, converging toward Veena's form.
Han Xue feels it first.
Her sword hums uneasily.
The ice laws around her lose cohesion, as if something beneath them is being hollowed out. She tightens her grip, forcing stability through sheer will.
Leng Qiujie snarls.
Her silver fur bristles, lunar light surging as she resists the pull. The moon overhead flares brighter, pouring authority into her body.
Veena raises one skeletal hand.
Not to attack.
To write.
Within her inner field, symbols form—not runes, not arrays, but relations. Lines connecting life to the world. Death to continuity. Existence to obligation.
This is not a ninth-tier spell.
This is something beyond structure.
A prototype.
A low-level divine spell.
Veena names it instinctively.
"Death Scissor."
The world shudders.
Invisible lines appear—no one sees them with their eyes. They are perceived only as sudden, unbearable tension. Two vast blades of rule descend, not from above or below, but from causality itself, aligning around Leng Qiujie.
Han Xue reacts instantly.
Her sword flashes, ice laws surging outward in a desperate attempt to interfere. The blade strikes empty air—then screams as frost explodes across nothingness.
The Death Scissor cuts through rules, not matter.
It does not sever flesh.
It closes around Leng Qiujie's life line—the invisible tether binding her existence to the world.
Leng Qiujie howls.
Her lunar authority flares violently, silver light tearing at the death blades. The scissor stalls, trembling under resistance.
Veena exhales.
And burns her life source.
Her aura spikes—brief, violent, terrifying.
The inner field brightens with absolute clarity as death energy condenses to a razor's edge.
At the same instant, Han Xue hesitates.
Not out of fear.
Out of calculation.
Protecting Leng Qiujie fully would mean exposing her to the same fate.
That hesitation lasts less than a breath.
It is enough.
Veena's second hand rises.
"Death Ray."
A beam of condensed death essence erupts forward—not wide, not overwhelming, but precise. It pierces Leng Qiujie's chest cleanly, bypassing flesh, bypassing bone, plunging directly into her soul core.
Leng Qiujie's howl cuts off.
Her silver eyes dim.
The moon flickers—and vanishes.
The massive wolf form stiffens, then fractures into drifting motes of pale light and ash, her soul unravelling as the severed life line collapses inward.
Leng Qiujie is dead.
Silence falls.
Han Xue stares for half a heartbeat.
Then she shouts, voice sharp and absolute.
"Retreat!"
She turns without another word, ice laws detonating beneath her feet as she flees, abandoning the battlefield, abandoning her men.
The ice camp below erupts into chaos.
Martial artists scatter.
Undead surge forward.
Wizards press the assault.
Veena does not pursue.
Her massive form contracts, cloak folding inward as she drifts downward, death energy spiralling into her like water into a vortex. The battlefield feeds her—every fallen soul, every dissipating corpse, every fading trace of killing intent replenishing the life she burned.
The sun crests the horizon.
Golden light falls across the snow.
It touches Veena's form—and does not burn.
Instead, it glides along the edges of death, warming without opposing, illuminating without judging.
She hovers there, silent and whole once more.
The ice camp falls behind her.
The war continues.
After Veena kills Leng Qiujie, Han Xue withdraws without hesitation, her objective already fulfilled. On the battlefield, however, the consequences unfold more slowly. The accumulation of evil energy—blood, corpse, and killing intent—begins to thin. The rhythm of death no longer feeds the martial artists as it once did.
This disruption is not accidental.
Two martial artists, acting without the consent of the Nine Sect Leaders, attempt to break through to the third stage on their own. In doing so, they recklessly consume a large portion of the evil energy painstakingly gathered over months. Their gamble fails. Neither advances. Both perish beneath tribulation thunder, their deaths leaving nothing behind but dissipating resentment.
The loss is severe.
For the martial path, evil energy is not merely fuel—it is time, opportunity, and leverage. With that reserve wasted, the remaining sect leaders are forced to delay their own breakthroughs unless more can be harvested.
At the same time, the balance of the battlefield tilts further.
The wizard way has become the dominant force. The Demon Palace's entry reinforces the middle ranks, stabilising lines that once wavered. The Twilight Race openly supports the wizards, striking Night Dynasty positions without hesitation. Against prepared wizard formations, martial artists—no matter how fierce—find themselves at a disadvantage.
Pressure mounts.
In response, the martial artists made a decision they had long resisted.
They coordinate with the Night Dynasty.
A week earlier, an agreement is reached in silence: Veena must die. As the second-in-command of the wizard way, her removal would destabilise wizard forces and restore the flow of evil energy. The Night Dynasty agrees, providing intelligence, timing, and support.
The plan fails.
Veena survives.
Leng Qiujie, a third-stage existence of the Night Dynasty, dies instead.
For the martial artists, this outcome is… acceptable.
What they require is not allegiance, but death. A fallen third-stage being feeds the battlefield just as well, regardless of faction. The Night Dynasty loses a pillar. Evil energy floods the land anew. The calculation still balances.
And so the war moves on.
A day later, Veena personally leads the wizard army forward, breaking through contested ground and reaching a long-besieged wizard camp. The camp still stands—frozen, scarred, but unbroken—under the protection of Xue Rong, an innate demon of the Cold Moon Rabbit clan, whose presence blankets the battlefield in chilling lunar frost.
The front stabilises.
For now.
But beneath the snow, beneath the corpses, beneath the calm orders and disciplined formations, every side knows the truth:
The war has entered a phase where Great Wizards and third-stage beings are no longer exceptions.
They are becoming currency.