425 Hei Mao's Domain

[POV: Gu Jie]

The stolen Heavenly Temple vessel cut through the skies of the Great Desert like a blade, its formation arrays humming with restrained power. From above, the sands stretched endlessly, dunes folding into one another beneath the sun like a living ocean.

Gu Jie stood near the stern, one hand resting against the cold railing, her gaze fixed on the horizon.

Liang Na had taken the wheel. Her movements were efficient, practiced, as though she had piloted Heavenly Temple crafts all her life. The vessel obeyed her as if it recognized her authority.

Wu Chen remained below deck with Ding Cai. Gu Jie could sense the faint fluctuations of qi with there quiet conversation. Ding Cai had been through too much too quickly. Still, she was alive, and more than that, she had grown. That alone mattered.

Jue Bu was still unconscious, secured within the inner cabin. His breathing was stable, his presence deep and unfathomable, like a sleeping abyss. Whatever battle he had fought had nearly consumed him.

Above them all, perched upon the crow's nest, Lu Gao meditated.

Dark qi swirled faintly around his body, suppressed by sheer will. Gu Jie could feel it even from here the pressure and the sense of something vast pressing against an invisible ceiling.

He was forcing himself not to advance.

That knowledge twisted something in her chest.

Her master… no. Her father.

The correction still hurt.

Being stripped of her position as first disciple had felt like exile, even if she understood the reason. There were larger currents at play now, far beyond titles or pride. Still, the wound remained, tender and unresolved.

Her father had wanted Lu Gao to reach the Eleventh Realm.

Not like this, but soon and under controlled circumstances, with preparation and safeguards in place. With Lady Alice overseeing his path, guiding his mind as much as his power.

No one had foreseen how quickly events would spiral. Not them and not the Heavenly Temple.

For over two centuries, the hostility between the Holy Empire and the Heavenly Temple had simmered without fully boiling over. Careful moves. Probing strikes. Muted aggression.

Yet the roots of this conflict went far deeper, back to the day her father sundered the Summit and shattered an order that had ruled unquestioned for ages.

Gu Jie closed her eyes briefly.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

Lu Gao was suddenly there, no longer on the crow's nest. His presence was heavy, controlled, but strained, like a sword held in a trembling grip.

"Is there another way?" he asked quietly.

Gu Jie turned to face him.

"A way to break through," Lu Gao continued, his voice low, "without being swallowed by the madness."

She understood his fear. Anyone who stood at the threshold of the Eleventh Realm would. Especially now.

At some point, they would need his full power. There would be battles where hesitation meant annihilation. And the cruel truth was this: once the breakthrough began, it could not always be stopped.

Even if he resisted, even if he delayed, circumstances might force his hand.

"Be patient," Gu Jie said at last.

Lu Gao frowned slightly. "That answer won't hold forever."

"I know," she replied evenly. "But neither will recklessness."

More than a thousand years ago, a calamity had swept across the Hollowed World.

Immortal-class cultivators were driven mad. Their minds fractured under something unseen, something woven into the laws themselves. Many turned on their own disciples. Others annihilated entire regions before destroying themselves.

The Six Elders had survived only by maiming their own cultivation, forcibly regressing their realms and sealing away their former power.

Lu Gao might be forced to do the same one day.

And if that day came, he would need Gu Jie.

Right now, he was their strongest fighter.

Wu Chen was still wounded from the defense of New Willow. Her bloodline allowed her to move as if uninjured, but Gu Jie could sense the damage beneath the surface. Her roots cracked, and vitality strained.

Jue Bu was formidable, a peer to Ru Qiu and her father in his prime, but he remained unconscious.

Ding Cai was the weakest among them in raw power, yet her insights and her frightening clarity would be indispensable.

Liang Na was an enigma. Powerful, precise, and impossible to read. A weapon that might turn the tide or cut its wielder.

Lu Gao, a named Paladin of her father, one who had unlocked Divine Transformation and assimilated with the Hell Path, possessed terrifying burst potential. Yet he was still only Tenth Realm.

And every limit mattered.

That was why they needed Hei Mao.

The vessel continued its silent flight over the sands.

Lu Gao broke the quiet. "There's something I want to consult you about, Gu Jie."

Gu Jie frowned.

Lu Gao's tone carried weight. Instinctively, she considered opening her Destiny Seeking Eyes.

The thought barely formed before pain exploded behind her forehead.

Her vision swam. A sharp migraine speared through her temples, sudden and vicious. Gu Jie sucked in a breath and bit the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to remain still. She could not afford to show weakness.

There was too much imbalance within her right now.

The Paladin Legacy and the Warlock Legacy coiled together inside her like twin serpents locked in a perpetual struggle. Ordinarily, she could mediate them with ease—yin and yang, fortune and misfortune, causality and destiny, all aligned neatly under the guidance of her Destiny Seeking Eyes.

But Alice's blood still coursed through her.

The vampiric transformation had tipped the scales. The Warlock Legacy pressed heavier than it ever had before, and for once, her Eyes did not answer her call. Instead, they punished her for even trying.

Gu Jie straightened, her expression smoothing into practiced calm.

Lu Gao's gaze sharpened. "Something wrong?"

"No," Gu Jie replied at once. "I'm fine."

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The words came too easily.

She met his eyes and added, "What did you want to consult me about?"

Lu Gao studied her for another heartbeat, then let it pass. He turned his gaze toward the endless desert below.

"I'm worried about Master," he said.

Gu Jie's fingers tightened slightly against her sleeve. "Elaborate."

Lu Gao's voice grew quieter. "He left me a task. One I didn't fully understand at the time."

He paused, as if choosing each word carefully.

"He told me to share his burdens. To endure his hell if needed. And to safekeep the memories of his homeworld."

Gu Jie felt a faint chill.

It wasn't the first time she had heard those words.

Since acquiring the Destiny Seeking Eyes, she had learned to fracture her perception, splitting herself into countless hypothetical futures, sending fragments of awareness down branching possibilities to gather information. It was a dangerous habit. An addictive one.

She had hidden it well.

In one such future, she had asked Lu Gao directly what made Da Wei acknowledge him. Back then, she had still been the first disciple. The first to meet Da Wei. The first to be accepted by him. And yet, Lu Gao had received something she had not.

It had grated against her pride more than she liked to admit.

Lu Gao had told that version of her the truth: he had never sought acknowledgement. Becoming a Hell Paladin had not been a reward. It had been a necessity.

He only wanted to help a man who carried too much.

Of course, Lu Gao standing before her now remembered none of that conversation.

He continued, unaware. "The seal on those memories loosened recently. I can feel it. Which means Master must be facing something… terrible."

Gu Jie said nothing.

Lu Gao exhaled slowly. "Right now, the Hollowed World doesn't even agree on what happened to him."

Gu Jie nodded faintly.

"There are three narratives," Lu Gao went on. "The first is the one the common populace believes that Master suddenly changed, became a tyrant, and turned against the world."

His jaw tightened. "They don't know the Da Wei they saw wasn't him. It was a version from another reality."

"The second group," he continued, "are those who witnessed the destruction of his Six Souls. Word has spread that Da Wei is dead."

Gu Jie's eyes dimmed for a fraction of a second.

"And the third," Lu Gao said softly, "are the ones who know the truth. That Master was taken, whisked away by a strange martial artist. That group is very small. His disciples, us. A few close associates."

Silence stretched between them, filled only by the hum of the soaring vessel.

Lu Gao finally asked, "Is there a plan?"

Gu Jie met his eyes evenly. "You're asking whether we intend to find him."

"Yes," Lu Gao said. "Whether rescuing him is part of this at all."

Gu Jie's expression cooled. "I should remind you… I'm no longer his disciple."

Lu Gao frowned. "That doesn't change anything."

"It changes plenty," Gu Jie replied flatly.

He shook his head. "You're still his daughter."

Her eyes flickered.

"Not by blood," Lu Gao continued, his voice firm, "but a daughter nonetheless."

For a moment, Gu Jie said nothing. The migraine throbbed dully behind her eyes. The desert rolled on beneath them, vast and indifferent.

Gu Jie broke the silence herself.

"There is a plan," she said at last. "One that might help my—help Da Wei… But I can't tell you what it is. Not yet. If I did, you would think worse of me."

Lu Gao frowned. "You're saying you don't trust us?"

Gu Jie shook her head. "No. I'm saying I need you to trust me."

She turned fully toward him, her mismatched eyes steady despite the imbalance gnawing at her core. "When the time comes, I will be honest with you, with Wu Chen, and with the others. I won't hide anything then. But until that moment, you must follow without knowing why."

Lu Gao was silent.

"The truth," Gu Jie added quietly, "is that even I'm not certain the plan will work."

That earned her his full attention.

"It's a coin toss," she said. "Fifty–fifty. And no matter what we do and no matter what the Heavenly Temple does, those odds won't change."

She clenched her fingers. "This will be a confrontation between supremes."

Lu Gao inhaled sharply.

"There is one variable," Gu Jie went on. "One woman capable of tilting the balance, even by a single percent."

She did not need to name her, but she did anyway.

"Yuan Shun."

Lu Gao's expression darkened.

"You know what she's like," Gu Jie said flatly. "You've heard directly from my mouth what my last encounter with her had been like… She knows what she is doing…"

The length and depth of Yuan Shun's preparations far exceeded anything she herself could assemble in the past two hundred years. No matter how meticulously Gu Jie planned, no matter how many contingencies she laid down, Yuan Shun had simply begun earlier, so early that the advantage had compounded beyond recovery. It was not merely patience, but a terrifying clarity of purpose. Yuan Shun was insane, yes, but she was also brilliant. Talented enough to interfere with inevitability itself.

Lu Gao absorbed that grim assessment, then asked, "How about you?"

Gu Jie's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.

"There's one thing I have that she doesn't."

Lu Gao waited.

"I know more about the future than her," she said. "It's our only edge, but it will work. After all, she can only see and interpret so much, unaware of the gravity of destiny. That's the flaw of foresight. No matter how far one looks, foresight is still bound by causality. By projection. By what should happen. Yuan Shun can only wield half the power of my Immortal Art. She sees what can be. I see what shouldn't."

Lu Gao exhaled slowly, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders.

"Can you at least tell us what we're meant to do?" he asked.

Gu Jie nodded. "Play your parts. Stall. Disrupt. Fight where you can, armies against armies. Bleed the Heavenly Temple."

Lu Gao gave a humorless laugh. "With what army?"

He gestured vaguely toward the horizon. "Everything we had has been scattered or crushed. Since that monster appeared, the Heavenly Temple has finally moved in earnest. The Federation is weakening. The Martial Alliance is losing cohesion by the day."

He stopped himself, jaw tightening.

"…Sorry," Lu Gao said after a moment. "I don't know why I'm saying this. It's pointless."

Gu Jie didn't rebuke him.

She knew just how overwhelming Yuan Shun's preparation truly was. Two centuries of her own planning barely scratched the surface of what she had laid down across eras.

The vessel suddenly slowed.

Wu Chen's voice cut in, confused, as she appeared beside them. "What… is that?"

Ahead of them, the desert warped.

A vast hemispherical domain of darkness was anchored to the desert floor, its curvature perfect and unnatural. The sand beneath it had fused into a smooth, glass-like crust, while the surrounding dunes slumped toward its boundary and stopped, as if restrained by an unseen law.

Gu Jie activated her Destiny Seeking Eyes without hesitation… and found nothing. Her heart sank. She had seen many horrors. The dark veil. The Supreme Void's prison. Even those had left traces.

This did not.

Ding Cai's voice broke the silence, uncertain but firm. "That's… emptiness."

Gu Jie turned to her sharply.

Even with Ding Cai's extraordinary insight, she could see the girl was straining, limited not by perception, but by knowledge and experience.

Gu Jie stepped closer. "Tell me," she said quietly. "What do you mean by emptiness?"

"It looks like the spell Senior Lu used," Ding Cai said hesitantly. "That purple dome."

Lu Gao narrowed his eyes. "Divine Mandate of Proximity?"

"Yes," Ding Cai answered. "That one. Hei Mao and Ren Xun must be inside."

Gu Jie felt a subtle pull behind her eyes as her Destiny Seeking Eyes reacted. She followed the thread of fate instinctively, her gaze tracing invisible lines that converged upon the half-sphere. The deduction came naturally. Hei Mao and Ren Jingyi would never have been separated in a retreat like this. With a controlled breath, Gu Jie bestowed a destiny to find them, confirming what Ding Cai had already sensed. This place was the end of that thread.

"It's dangerous," Lu Gao said quietly.

Wu Chen nodded, her expression grave. "An immortal-class cultivator cast this. There's no one else it could be… It has to be Hei Mao."

Her voice softened as memories surfaced. "Before New Willow fell, Ren Jingyi and Hei Mao fought the hardest. They saved me more than once. Without them, Jue Bu wouldn't have been able to gather even that much of the city when he tried to restore it."

Gu Jie's fingers curled slightly at her side. She shared Wu Chen's concern but feared something deeper. Hei Mao had endured too much, far more than any spirit should bear unscathed. She remembered the recorded world, the battle against Heavenly Master Yuan Shun after Yuan Shun had stolen her long-dead sister's body. She remembered Hei Mao being forced to send his own master away, powerless to stop it. And then New Willow, watching it collapse despite everything he did.

If there was such a thing as a wounded spirit, Hei Mao was standing on its edge.

"Company," Liang Na called out calmly.

A soaring vessel rose from below the dunes, its movement smooth and practiced. A voice carried through Qi Speech, old and commanding, belonging to a Tenth Realm cultivator.

"This area is under Heavenly Temple jurisdiction," the voice declared. "State your business. We are tasked with guarding the underworld prison."

Lu Gao's aura flared, fury threatening to spill over, but Gu Jie raised a hand slightly, stopping him. Her eyes sharpened with curiosity.

She stepped forward and answered in the measured tone of a Heavenly Temple cultivator. Since they were riding a Heavenly Temple vessel, it shouldn't be that hard. "Underworld prison? Explain. We've been tasked to come here at the request of the higher ups to provide support. Brief me."

The old man snorted. "Anyone who enters that domain never returns. Orders from above are clear, stay away, observe, and report immediately if the tier-one criminal Hei Mao shows signs of movement."

The enemy vessel rose higher, leveling its deck with theirs. The old man came into view, spear in hand. The moment his eyes swept across Gu Jie's group, his expression froze.

"T–Tier-one criminals," he choked out. "Retreat! Warp immediately!"

Shouts erupted across the deck. "It's the resistance!"

Their faces were infamous now.

The cultivators moved quickly, activating the warp formation beneath their feet.

Liang Na sighed. "I was getting bored anyway. Leave it to me."

She vanished.

A dagger flashed through the air. The old man reacted on instinct, knocking it aside with his spear, only for the blade to explode into a web of fine metal wires. Liang Na appeared behind him in the same instant, fingers tightening as the wires snapped taut.

There was no sound when she moved again.

The old man's head separated cleanly from his body, falling before the spear hit the deck.

Below them, the warp formation flickered and died as Wu Chen's spell took hold. Roots erupted from beneath the vessel, twisting into its structure, choking the array and snapping its energy lines apart.

Gu Jie watched calmly as Liang Na's wires recoiled back into her sleeves. Liang Na stepped into the center of the deck and began to move, throwing blades, needles, and hidden weapons in seamless succession. Cultivators fell one after another, unable even to scream.

"Let me handle this," Liang Na said lightly, as if commenting on the weather. "I will make it quick…"