Team Nemean readied themselves for phase two before anyone said the words.
There was no system notification, reward, EXP, or any real sign that the fight had ended. The moon above the garden turning into a crescent, the sealed dome still faintly alive around them, and laughter crawling up from the well were the only reminders that they had just finished fighting the level 65 old man.
Jake, still lying on his back, raised one hand without looking.
"I object."
Joanne reloaded her revolver with a vicious flick of her wrist. "Seconded. Motion to ban all old men, wells, gourds, moons, and whatever the hell phase two is going to be."
"Denied," Alex said. "Up."
"Rude."
Jake groaned and rolled to his feet anyway.
Dominic had already lifted Eyeless Heaven again. His breathing was heavy, his shoulders tight from the strain of absorbing Yuan Zheng Zi's instant formations, but his feet remained planted with the stubborn certainty that had carried the team through worse than fear. Alexei moved beside him, shield angled to cover Emma and Janet, while Jack flexed his injured shoulder and forced stone to rise into low layered barricades along their flanks.
Yue Ting did not waste breath either.
The Taoist master snapped her sleeve outward, and talismans flew like startled birds. They landed around her in a precise circle. Eight directions. Eight gates. A Ba Gua formed beneath her feet in dark ink and pale-gold light, each trigram locking into the garden stones with a faint click. From her storage pouch came several coin swords, old coins strung together by red thread into blade shapes. They hovered around her, rattling softly, their square holes catching moonlight like tiny windows.
Qián bent around her. It was not enough to make this safe, even for the holder of a copy of the Nine, but it was enough to make standing still less suicidal.
The laughter from the well stopped.
Water dripped once, then twice.
Then something flew upward.
A swollen head burst from the darkness of the well and hung beneath the moonlight.
It was Yuan Zheng Zi's true head, not the one whose eyes had been disguised as miniature moons before.
It had bloated grotesquely, skin stretched thin over swelling flesh. Boils of yellow mucus overgrew the cheeks, scalp, jaw, and neck stump, pulsing as though something beneath them was trying to breathe. His eyeballs were cracked, eclipsed by rot-yellow films, and his mouth hung open far too wide.
Between his teeth, he held a net.
The net bulged with eyes.
Hundreds of them.
Perhaps thousands.
Pale, veined, wet, and twitching.
The True Irises.
The same race of parasitic eyeballs Alex had seen in the True King's memory. The same lineage as the Emperor Eye. The same horror that had worn Yeak's corpse like a weapon. The same kind that Zhen Wu Pavilion had turned itself to crystal to deny.
The head laughed around the net while the eyes inside blinked in different rhythms.
Team Nemean attacked.
Joanne fired first, a lightning bullet cracking across the garden. Emma hurled the white vajra a heartbeat later, the relic vanishing and reappearing in jagged flashes. Alex's Mindblade constructs slashed forward while Jack's Elemental Requiem sent a pillar of flame roaring beneath the head. Yue Ting's coin swords followed, darting like golden fish through water.
Everything dissolved.
The attacks reached the swollen head only to lose themselves in a film of yellow mucus and moonlight. Lightning unwove into sparks. The vajra's path bent away, reappearing violently in Emma's hand. Alex's constructs softened into harmless fog. Jack's fire pillar turned into steam before it touched its target. Yue Ting's coin swords scattered, their red threads smoking as they returned to orbit around her.
Dominic watched the barrage disappear, his jaw clenched as he kept his shield raised.
Alex understood at the same moment Emma did.
"We can't interrupt it," Emma said.
The swollen head drifted down toward the standing body.
Yuan Zheng Zi's headless corpse, still upright beside the well, convulsed.
Flesh split across its back.
Two wings forced their way out.
They were fleshy, grotesque, bulging, and bloodied.
The wings unfolded wetly from his spine, expanding wider than the well, wider than the path, wider than the old man's body had any right to support. Their pale-grey membranes stretched thin between finger-like bones.
Across each wing were thousands of holes.
Sockets.
The head bobbed closer, jaws grinding around the net.
The True Irises inside shivered.
"Preserve mana," Alex ordered. "Heal now."
No one liked it.
Everyone obeyed.
Sympathy Enoki packets came out of belts and pouches. Phong's handwriting marked some of the small wrappers with one annoyed warning:
Do not heroic-moron this. Chew before swallowing.
Joanne ripped hers open with her teeth and muttered quietly enough that Yue Ting could not hear.
"If we live, I'm telling Phong his mushrooms taste like moral obligation."
"They are keeping your hands steady," Janet replied, swallowing her own.
"I said what I said."
The Sympathy Enoki eased pain, steadied shock, and softened the jagged edges of the first phase's injuries without pretending to be a miracle. Jack's shoulder stopped trembling quite as badly. Camille pressed a strip over her cut side. Dominic ate his dose without lowering his shield.
Alex took hers last.
Her eyes never left Yuan Zheng Zi.
His true head snapped into place.
Then the net tore apart.
The dead True Irises poured out.
He shoved them into the holes across his wings.
Not delicately.
Not ritualistically.
Both hands trembled with terrible hunger as he grabbed clusters of eyes and forced them into empty sockets. They squelched into place. Tendrils burst from each eye and sank into the wing membrane. Dead eyes shuddered awake. Some resisted, their pupils rolling in panic. Others burst under the pressure and were absorbed as yellow-black paste.
The process should have taken minutes.
Perhaps hours.
It should have been a grotesque ceremony of parasitic integration.
Instead, it happened between breaths.
Time itself behaved dishonestly. One blink left half the sockets empty. The next revealed a thousand eyes staring from his wings.
Alex felt the wrongness in her teeth.
Qián flickered around Yue Ting in alarm, future paths stuttering as though the process had skipped steps fate itself expected to exist.
The swollen head settled.
The neck sealed.
Yuan Zheng Zi rose.
He had become the very thing the old man might once have hated.
His robes hung open around a chest pocked with formation scars and parasite veins. Yellow mucus dripped from his jaw. His rotten eyes turned toward them, dark pits ringed with pale silver.
Behind him, the wings spread fully.
Every eye opened.
"Fools," he rasped.
His voice sounded like a hundred throats buried in a well.
"Receive my blessings. Ascend with me to the throne of emperor."
The wings shrieked.
Thousands of eyes screamed together.
The sound tore through the garden.
Stone cracked. Talismans flapped wildly. Janet cried out and forced her Valkyrie buffs outward, catching the team's panic before it became a rout. Dominic's shield rang like a bell beneath the pressure. Alexei staggered. Yue Ting's Ba Gua flared as several talismans burst into ash.
Alex's ears rang.
Blood ran from her nose.
Secrecy had become a luxury Team Nemean could no longer afford.
She summoned bīng.
The cracked fragment of the Secret of Weapons appeared above her palm, incomplete yet undeniable. The air bent around it as its meanings shifted continuously through weapon, soldier, blade, command, formation, and war.
Yue Ting's eyes snapped toward it.
Alex ignored her.
"Dominic!" she shouted. "Shield up!"
Dominic never questioned her.
Eyeless Heaven rose.
Alex shaped mana before herself.
A psychic construct unfolded into the shape of a shield.
Its outline matched Eyeless Heaven.
Not perfectly. Not truly, too. Her copy lacked the ancient weight, the full mystery, and the strange hunger of the original relic. But bīng gave structure to memory. It allowed the psychic construct to hold the concept of a weapon she had witnessed and understood in battle.
A copy of Eyeless Heaven floated before her.
Dominic saw it and, for one absurd half-second in the middle of a nightmare, looked personally offended on behalf of his shield.
Then he punched the back of the real Eyeless Heaven.
"God's Roar Cannon!"
Blue destructive force erupted forward.
Eyeless Heaven had been forged to fight the True Irises. Now, with Yuan Zheng Zi decorating himself in parasitic eyeballs like grotesque jewelry, that ability became several times stronger.
Alex kicked the back of her psychic copy.
The construct roared.
A second God's Roar Cannon exploded from Alex's position.
Shock rippled across the battlefield.
Emma actually looked away from the boss to stare at Alex.
Joanne shouted, "Since when can you do that?"
"Just now!"
The twin cannons slammed into Yuan Zheng Zi's chest and wings, ripping holes through mucus, formation light, and parasite flesh. Dozens of True Irises burst. The boss reeled but did not fall.
Formation circles bloomed across the eyes in his wings, spinning into existence like an orchestra tuning itself for murder.
Alex dissolved the shield before the strain bit too deeply.
Two axes appeared around her instead. It was the psychic copies of Tara's Wings of Ascension.
Bīng strained immediately.
One relic copy at a time was her limit.
The shield vanished completely before the axes stabilized. Twin blades spun at her sides, rougher than Tara's originals, but still contained enough of its essence.
Two wings rose from Alex's back.
Bai Hu's wind and psychic force roared outward, amplified by the ascent concept contained within the copied axes. Lightning-white pressure crawled through the air as her storm grew sharper, more vertical, and hungry for height.
Alex launched upward.
Her body became a descending storm.
The twin axes spun around her like a top of death, dragging wind and psychic force into a corkscrewing dive. Yuan Zheng Zi lifted one wing as hundreds of eyes opened layered formations in defense.
Alex hit them anyway.
The impact shattered seven circles and carved a trench through one wing.
True Irises screamed as their sockets burst.
Below, Team Nemean unleashed everything.
Emma threw the vajra again and again, every cast becoming a flash of white lightning that cracked through the garden night. The relic vanished, struck, returned, and vanished once more, forcing Yuan Zheng Zi to split his attention between direct assault and unpredictable divine lightning.
Joanne's revolver spun hot.
Every bullet carried a stored punishment.
Fire, ice, lightning, wind.
She no longer wasted shots trying to overpower the barrier of formations around the old man. Instead, she learnt how to disrupt the one who was forming, creating openings for her teammate instead.
Jack planted himself beside her and spammed Elemental Requiems through the Yeak bone in his left foot until the ground alternated between black scorch marks and hoarfrost. Walls rose to serve as anchors for his spells. Pillars of fire erupted beneath formation clusters. Blasts of extreme cold froze parasite tendrils long enough for Camille to cut them apart.
Séline took over interception duties from Dominic.
Every formation blade that slipped toward the backline met her fists, disrupting half-born formations before they could mature into proper dead zones. Her air-steps helped immensely, giving her enough mobility to dodge around pincers of formations and reached those Joanne failed to interrupt mid forming.
Camille remained like ashadow, poison claws carving open mucus boils until Yuan Zheng Zi's wings spasmed with every strike.
The shrieks of the thousand eyes carried more than sound.
They carried invitations.
Ascend.
Kneel, receive blessings, submit your eyes, become emperor, become one.
Janet's skills pushed back against them, soaring with stubborn morale and refusing to let the team's minds synchronize with the boss's rhythm. As a war valkyrie, her attack and morale buffs rarely had chance to shine now that Emma had joined the team with one of the rarest support classes known by human. But when in battle where they did, it would mean the differences between life and death.
Alexei stayed beside Séline.
His aura expanded until it formed the shape of an armored angel whose wings curled around Team Nemean and Yue Ting alike, shielding them from incoming attacks.
Dominic became a living battery.
Every time Yuan Zheng Zi shifted his attention toward Alex in the air or Yue Ting at the flank, Dominic punched Eyeless Heaven again.
"God's Roar Cannon!"
Again.
"God's Roar Cannon!"
Again.
Each blast tore chunks from the boss, shattered formations, and forced the wings to fold defensively. The recoil hammered Dominic's body. His boots carved trenches through the stone while his arms trembled violently. His eyes teary from the Weeping Onions accelerating his mana recovery. Alex guided his aims.
Alexei braced him from the side, shield locked against shield, keeping Dominic upright whenever recoil and counter-formations threatened to throw him down.
"Dom!" Janet shouted.
"I'm good!" Dominic roared back.
He was lying.
Yue Ting controlled the battlefield from within her Ba Gua.
Qián made her terrifying in a battle this chaotic. She could not overpower Yuan Zheng Zi, yet every tiny adjustment she made kept everyone alive.
A talisman flared, and Jake's next dodge landed outside a moonfire circle instead of inside one.
A coin sword rang against empty air, deflecting a formation seed before it unfolded beneath Emma.
Yue Ting stepped twice, kicked a trigram point, and shifted the Ba Gua just enough to turn a killing beam away from Joanne's spine.
Jake hated the fight.
He was excellent in it.
He ran errands at the speed of panic sharpened into purpose, dragging Janet clear when a formation bloomed beneath her, kicking loose stones into circles to trigger them early, and at one point sprinting directly beneath Yuan Zheng Zi's wing, slapping a True Iris with the flat of his dagger before blurring away while screaming,
"Bad eyeball! Bad!"
Janet scolded him immediately.
Dominic banned him from leaving Alexei's aura for the rest of the fight.
Alex scattered psychic marbles through the battlefield like floating mines.
Using bīng, she steered them directly into formation lines. The moment Yuan Zheng Zi's wing-eyes opened circles, the marbles triggered them prematurely. Moon blades fired into empty air. Gravity wells snapped shut around psychic decoys instead of living targets. Spear formations exhausted themselves against disposable constructs.
Yet, tried as she may, she could not handle every single one.
Some still broke through.
A crescent array carved a deep line across Alexei's thigh before Dominic shattered it. A square of silver light trapped Camille for three agonizing seconds, blistering her skin beneath concentrated moonlight until Séline broke the edge apart. Emma took a direct hit and survived only because of the vajra and her mana-tech armor. Joanne caught a grazing beam across her shoulder and cursed so creatively that even Yue Ting glanced sideways.
Yuan Zheng Zi refused to die.
The garden itself strained beneath the battle as moonlight poured down too brightly and silver water rose from the well to replace torn flesh.
Alex's storm flickered.
Bīng burned at the edge of what she could sustain.
She dismissed the axes in mid-dive and nearly fell as the storm wings lost their ascent concept. Bai Hu's winds barely caught her.
She looked toward Yue Ting.
Toward the gourd.
Yue Ting understood immediately.
Yuan Zheng Zi spread his wings to their full extent. Every remaining eye opened.
A thousand formations appeared—circles, squares, triangles, spirals, and hexagrams.
The garden flooded with moon phases, sword arrays, gravity wells, flesh nets, and prisons of light. There was nowhere safe. Not a single clean route remained. Even qián stuttered around Yue Ting as more and more futures collapsed into death.
Dominic punched Eyeless Heaven one final time.
God's Roar Cannon blasted a tunnel through the first layer.
Alex flew straight through it.
Bīng shifted above her palm.
The axes vanished, then a psychic copy of the half-blue, half-red gourd formed between her hands.
It was crude. It was imperfect.
The colors bled together, and the carved sword flickered uncertainly. It lacked the original relic's impossible compactness, that sense of ridiculous lethality hidden inside humble craftsmanship.
But thanks to bīng...
It held.
One chance was all they had.
Yue Ting uncorked the real gourd.
Alex uncorked the psychic copy.
Side by side, they bowed.
Yue Ting's voice remained perfectly steady.
"Please, relic."
Alex's voice cut through the shrieks of a thousand eyes.
"Do the spin."
The real gourd answered first.
The cloud figure emerged, fleshy eyes glowed.
Alex's copy answered a heartbeat later.
A second cloud figure formed from psychic mist, rougher and brighter, its eyes made of psychic constructs instead of flesh.
Yuan Zheng Zi screamed.
The twin cloud figures reached into him simultaneously.
The real one entered through his back.
The psychic one struck from the front.
Their arms passed through flesh, wings, mucus, formation lines, dead True Irises, moonlight, and the rotten core holding Yuan Zheng Zi together.
For one brief moment...
Every formation completed.
The entire garden turned white.
Then the figures pulled.
Yuan Zheng Zi split apart.
His wings tore away in opposite directions. True Irises burst like rotten fruit. The swollen head popped free once more, but this time the neck never reformed. Behind him, the well screamed as silver water geysered skyward before turning black.
Alex's copy shattered in her hands.
Yue Ting's gourd snapped shut by itself.
The formations collapsed.
One after another, circles folded into lines, lines into sparks, and sparks into ash. The sealed dome broke apart like silent glass.
Fresh night air rushed into the garden.
Yuan Zheng Zi's body dissolved into mana before it ever reached the ground.
For one long moment... no one moved.
Then Dominic collapsed onto one knee.
Alex fell from the air and struck the stone path hard enough to drive the breath from her lungs.
Joanne sat down where she stood.
"Never," she said hoarsely, "invite me to dead sect again. I refuse."
Jake sprawled beside a cracked formation circle.
"Same."
Emma lowered herself with practiced dignity before immediately putting her head between her knees.
Jack collapsed onto his back, one side steaming while the other frosted over from all the Elemental Requiems he had released that day. Janet crawled over to Dominic first, her hands shaking as she checked him over.
Alexei's shield slipped from his grasp with a heavy clang.
Yue Ting remained standing three seconds longer than everyone else.
Mostly out of pride.
Then she sat down too, clutching the gourd against her chest.
The garden grew quiet again.
The moon above had returned to its proper shape.
No one cheered.
No one had enough mana or stamina left for celebration.
Team Nemean, Yue Ting, and the broken stones of Zhen Wu Pavilion lay beneath the moonlight, alive by the width of a single breath, while the last echoes of Yuan Zheng Zi faded into the well.