The battlefield lay in stillness, soaked with golden blood and torn clouds. Jian stood at the heart of it, surrounded by the five lifeless bodies of the Heavenly Elders. Their heavenly sigils flickered in the air like burnt-out stars, each one a testament to the chaos he had unleashed. His breath was ragged, his robes ripped and stained, his right arm trembling from overuse of the Dao.
Frostveil stood beside him, silent, reverent.
The silence was not peace. It was the echo of something missing.
Jian closed his eyes. His inner world was burning hot with residual Dao energy, still vibrating with the remnants of his ultimate sword technique. The scent of scorched air, blood, and thunder clung to his skin. But beyond all of that, something in the sky had changed. The stars in this world shifted the same way they did in his old one. The moon dipped at the same angle. The rotation of the heavens moved in patterns he once knew too well.
"This world... it follows the same Celestial Rhythm," Jian muttered, mostly to himself. "The laws of the heavens are the same. This is no foreign world. It's a broken mirror of the one I knew."
Frostveil tilted her head. "What are you saying?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he began walking.
---
The two traveled north, into the Forbidden Forest of Spirit Graves, a region Jian only knew from a faint dream he thought had no meaning. Trees the height of mountains loomed like skeletal monuments. Their branches twisted upward like hands in prayer. The wind was dense, scented with burnt incense and decay. It was a place where time forgot to breathe.
The moment they entered, something inside both Jian and Frostveil stirred.
First came heat. Then came fire. Then came screams.
Neither of them spoke, but both collapsed to their knees, their minds overwhelmed by a vision not their own. Flames swallowed the trees. Ash choked the sky. And in the center of it all stood a titanic figure, covered in silvery-white scales, with horns like ancient branches and wings made of soul mist. His eyes bled sorrow.
The Spirit King.
He was burning. And around him, humans in divine armor launched heavenly chains and flaming arrows. Their robes bore the mark of the Inquisition.
Children screamed. Spirit beasts howled. Ice flowers shattered as they melted under sacred fire.
The vision faded slowly, as if time itself struggled to release it.
Frostveil gasped for breath, her body shaking, her fingers gripping the earth. Jian's hands trembled against the bark of a dying tree.
"I saw it," she whispered. "I saw everything."
"It wasn't just a memory," Jian said. "It was a soul imprint."
They were standing in the final resting place of the Spirit King.
As if on cue, a pulse rang out from beneath the forest. The moss split. The roots trembled. A soft glow emerged from the cracks beneath them.
A sphere of misty blue light rose from the ground. Inside it pulsed a crystal — semi-translucent, shaped like a seed. It radiated unbearable warmth and immeasurable sadness.
Frostveil stepped forward. Something ancient in her blood called out.
The sphere touched her skin and disappeared.
The next moment, her body fell still — eyes open, frozen, as her soul was pulled into the spirit realm.
---
She stood at the center of a frozen lake that stretched infinitely in all directions. The sky above was violet and scarred with stars that wept silver tears. In front of her stood the same towering figure from the vision, only now his body was unburnt, regal, whole.
"My daughter," he said.
Frostveil blinked. Her voice cracked. "Father...?"
He knelt before her, his massive form folding with gentleness.
"You survived. The seed worked. I hoped... I prayed. And here you are."
"Why didn't you come back for me?"
"Because I died knowing they would hunt you. I chose to seal your soul and send you far, to let time forget you, and let fate remember."
"They... they burned us."
"They feared us. The soul-born spirits knew too much. We remembered the true history. The origin of Qi. The cost of Heaven's rise. They erased us to erase the truth."
Frostveil's eyes shone with an unspoken fury. The realm around them began to darken.
"I don't want justice," she said. "I want extinction."
Her father smiled, sadly. "Then take my core. The last of me. Burn it not for revenge, but for remembrance."
He pressed his hand to her chest, and the lake cracked.
The moment ended.
---
Frostveil awoke with a scream, blue flames surrounding her body. Her hair flowed like starlight. Two inner worlds pulsed behind her — one of soul, the other of ice.
She had awakened.
Jian watched in silence, not interrupting. He had spent the last hour absorbing the maiamzama, a toxic mist unique to the Spirit Forest. It was the death essence of spirit beings, poison to humans, sacred to those who dared accept suffering.
It clung to his skin like rot. But as he meditated, he turned its madness into insight, its toxicity into clarity. His meridians cracked and rebuilt. His inner world widened.
He opened his eyes.
"You're awake."
Frostveil stood up slowly, as if wearing a new body.
"I am the daughter of the Spirit King. The last of my race. And I will not die quietly."
Jian nodded. "Then don't."
They stood side by side, alone in the dead forest.
Above them, for just a moment, the sky wept ash.
And the heavens prepared to send another reaper.