The heavy, profound iron doors of the central treasury stood wide open. Behind them, the greatest accumulation of wealth in the Central Continent was completely, utterly gone, leaving nothing but bare stone shelves and empty jade pedestals.
But Tantai Zhi didn’t care about the missing mountains of spirit stones.
"Husband!" Tantai Zhi gasped, her golden eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated panic. She threw her sword clattering onto the floor and rushed forward, grabbing Yan Shuo by the shoulders. "You swallowed it! You swallowed the strange silver fire! Spit it out right now!"
She frantically reached up, gently grabbing his cheeks and trying to pry his mouth open like a mother checking a toddler who had just eaten dirt.
Yan Shuo let out a muffled laugh, gently catching her wrists and pulling her hands away from his face.
"I’m perfectly fine, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo said, his voice warm and entirely calm. "The fire didn’t burn me. It was just a condensed burst of Yin Qi. My Foundation Establishment method is very... adaptable. It simply dissolved into my meridians."
Tantai Zhi’s frantic worry instantly short-circuited the moment he said Zhi’er.
The terrifying, world-ending Saintess froze. A brilliant, scorching blush exploded across her flawless porcelain cheeks, traveling all the way down her neck. She looked at his gentle smile, her heart doing a violent flutter in her chest.
"A-Adaptable," she stammered, her gaze dropping shyly to his collarbone. She completely forgot about the soul-burning curse. "If... if Husband says he is fine, then I believe him. But you must tell me if your stomach hurts. I will make you a soothing medicinal soup."
"I will let you know," Yan Shuo chuckled, wrapping an arm around her waist.
In the corner of the empty treasury, holding her burlap sack, Su Mei was currently experiencing a profound existential crisis.
Adaptable?! Su Mei screamed in her mind, her fox ears plastered flat against her head in sheer terror. He just ate a Soul-Sealing Yin Fire curse! That is a supreme-tier assassination array meant to turn a cultivator’s spiritual sea into ash! And he ate it like it was a spicy noodle!
She stared at the fifteen-year-old youth in pristine white robes. The terrifying Saintess was currently leaning against his chest, blushing like a maiden in spring. But Su Mei finally understood the true, horrifying hierarchy of this marriage.
The Saintess wasn’t the monster protecting the boy. The Saintess was the shiny, incredibly sharp scabbard hiding the true, world-devouring blade from the rest of the cultivation world.
"Miss Su," Yan Shuo called out lazily, not even turning his head.
Su Mei violently flinched, snapping to attention. "Y-Yes, Lord Yan!"
"The architect of that little fire trick was in the Star-Gazing Pavilion, correct?" Yan Shuo asked, guiding Tantai Zhi out of the empty treasury and into the grand jade corridor.
"Yes! In the deepest northern sector of the inner palace!" Su Mei nodded frantically, hurrying to follow exactly ten paces behind them. "But Lord Yan, the Pavilion is a restricted zone! The Patriarch gave the Honored Guest absolute control over its defenses. We don’t know what kind of formations are waiting inside!"
Yan Shuo snapped his paper fan open with a sharp, echoing clack.
"Good," Yan Shuo smiled. It was a dark, pragmatic smile that promised absolute ruin. "I love surprises."
High above, in the towering spire of the Star-Gazing Pavilion.
The glowing array table in the center of the room violently shattered. The intricately carved jade cracked perfectly down the middle, turning black as the spiritual connection was brutally severed from the other side.
The Faceless Scholar stumbled backward, his white robes tangling around his boots.
He clutched the edge of a marble pillar to steady himself, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps behind his weeping silver mask.
"No," the Scholar whispered. His voice, usually so smooth and controlled, was trembling with a deep, paranoid terror. "No. That is mathematically impossible."
Through the scrying connection of the silver mist, he hadn’t just felt his soul-fire get absorbed. He had felt the pull. The impossibly heavy, crushing, pitch-black gravitational anomaly that swallowed light and spat out nightmares.
And for a fraction of a microsecond, the youth had let his golden disguise slip. The Scholar had felt a microscopic thread of that ancient, demonic aura.
Demon Lord Yan.
"You died," the Scholar hissed, pacing frantically across the room, his long fingers digging into his own scalp. "I drove the karmic blade through your heart! I watched your core detonate! The Heavenly Dao erased your soul! You cannot be alive!"
The Scholar was a genius of the highest order. His mind raced, desperately trying to find a logical explanation that didn’t involve the resurrection of the most dangerous warlord in history.
An inheritor, the Scholar’s mind desperately supplied. Yes. It must be an inheritor. The boy must have stumbled upon a remnant of Yan’s soul in some dark cave and inherited the Heaven-Swallowing Abyssal Art. That is the only logical answer. The boy is just a vessel. He is trying to scare me.
The Scholar stopped pacing. He took a deep, steadying breath, forcing his erratic Qi to calm down.
If it was an inheritor, the boy was still only in the Foundation Establishment realm. He was relying on the Saintess for raw power, using Yan’s ancient tricks to absorb energy arrays.
"You think you can use his shadow to frighten me?" the Scholar murmured, his composure slowly returning as cold, calculating malice filled his eyes. "I killed the master. I can certainly kill the student."
The Scholar walked over to the main control pillar of the Pavilion. He bit his thumb and smeared a line of blood across the central rune.
"Let us see if the Saintess’s sword is fast enough to save you from the stars," he whispered.
Down in the inner palace, Yan Shuo and Tantai Zhi strolled through the opulent, winding corridors.
They encountered exactly one remaining patrol of elite inner-palace guards who hadn’t fled with the Patriarch’s army. A dozen silver-armored cultivators blocked the pathway, their spears lowered, their hands trembling as they recognized the crimson robes of the Saintess.
"H-Halt!" the guard captain shouted, his voice cracking. "This is restricted ground! By order of the Righteous Alliance, turn back or we will—"
Before Tantai Zhi could even narrow her golden eyes and turn them into a fine mist of blood, Yan Shuo casually reached into his sleeve.
He pulled out a massive, glowing handful of supreme-grade spirit stones—the very stones he had just looted from the Alliance’s own treasury.
Clatter.
Yan Shuo casually tossed the priceless stones onto the polished floorboards right in front of the guards. They bounced and rolled, radiating a blinding, intoxicating spiritual aura.
The guards froze. Their spears wavered.
"You didn’t see us," Yan Shuo said pleasantly, not stopping his leisurely stroll.
The guard captain looked at the mountain of wealth on the floor. He looked at the terrifying Saintess walking beside the boy. He looked back at the wealth.
Without a single word of hesitation, the captain dropped his spear, dramatically clutched his own chest, and let out a fake groan. "Oh no! A sudden Qi deviation! I am blind! I am fainting!"
The captain collapsed onto the floor, immediately followed by the other eleven guards, who all conveniently fainted directly on top of the pile of spirit stones, hastily stuffing the gems into their armor.
Tantai Zhi let out a soft, melodic giggle, clinging tighter to Yan Shuo’s arm.
"Husband is so merciful and generous," she praised him, completely ignoring the blatant bribery. "You always find peaceful solutions."
"I am a lover of peace, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo agreed smoothly, stepping over a fainted guard.
Finally, the grand corridors opened up into a massive, open-air celestial courtyard.
In the center of the courtyard stood the Star-Gazing Pavilion. It was a towering, ominous spire of black jade and silver steel, piercing the sky like a needle. Unlike the rest of the opulent, golden palace, this tower radiated a cold, chilling isolation.
The heavy, iron-bound doors at the base of the tower were completely sealed shut, covered in dozens of glowing, defensive starlight arrays.
Tantai Zhi’s smile faded as she looked at the heavy doors. She could feel the dense, lethal formations waiting on the other side.
"Husband," Tantai Zhi said, taking a half-step forward, her crimson sword materializing in her grip. "There are many nasty traps on that door. Let me cut it down for you. I will slice the whole tower in half, and we can just pick the bug out of the rubble."
Yan Shuo gently placed his hand over hers, lowering her sword.
"No need to be rude, Wife," Yan Shuo smiled, his dark eyes locking onto the sealed doors. The pragmatic, lazy facade dropped away entirely, replaced by the suffocating weight of an ancient sovereign arriving to collect a blood debt. "It has been a very long time since I visited an old friend. It is only polite to knock."
Yan Shuo let go of her hand. He stepped forward, walking right up to the heavily warded iron doors.
He didn’t draw the black iron sword at his waist. He simply raised his right fist, pulling a fraction of the incredibly dense, crushing gravity from the Abyssal Star-Core directly into his knuckles.
Yan Shuo casually punched the door.