426 Prelude to the Reversal

[POV: Hei Mao]

Hei Mao knelt in the heart of the desert.

The sand around him had been stained a deep, rusted red, ground fine by shockwaves and scorched by qi until it no longer reflected the sun. Shattered soaring vessels lay half-buried like the carcasses of extinct beasts, their hulls split open, formation arrays burned out, banners of the Heavenly Temple torn to tatters. Corpses littered the ground, some whole, some reduced to fragments by overwhelming force. The air still carried the acrid stench of lightning, blood, and burnt essence.

Encasing it all was a half-sphere of darkness pressed into the desert itself.

Divine Mandate of Proximity.

The barrier did not hang in the air. It grew from the ground like a wound that refused to close, a dome of compressed qi and shadow that bent light and muffled sound. Any cultivator who crossed its boundary felt their strength bleed away, their footing turn uncertain, and when they tried to flee, the shadows themselves reached out, dragging them back toward the center.

Toward him.

Hei Mao remained motionless at the eye of the storm, his posture rigid, his breathing shallow. His dark eyes glowed with a dull crimson light, and within them burned the distinct silhouette of a torii gate.

In his arms lay Ren Jingyi.

Her body was barely holding together. Portions of her arm and shoulder crumbled into ash even as he watched, dissolving at the edges like embers after a fire had gone out. Her qi circulation was shattered, her soul tether frayed to the point of transparency. Only his hands, pressed tightly against her back and shoulder, kept her from slipping away entirely.

"Divine Word: Life."

His voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable, but the words carried power. Green-black sigils bloomed around Ren Jingyi's form, sinking into her skin as Hei Mao's Immortal Art surged.

Nether Gate Summoning Chant.

The faint sound of a zither echoed through the dome, slow and mournful, its notes vibrating through sand and shadow alike. The music did not come from any visible instrument. It was an aftereffect of his art, a lament carved into reality itself.

Ren Jingyi's body solidified again, flesh knitting where ash had been, color returning faintly to her lips.

Hei Mao did not relax.

His arms tightened around her as though he could hold her soul in place by force alone.

"Divine Word: Life," he whispered again.

It had been a terrible battle.

Enemies had come from every direction, soaring vessels tearing through the sky like carrion birds drawn to blood. Heavenly Temple cultivators, Union mercenaries, zealots wearing borrowed authority, all descending upon New Willow's remnants with merciless efficiency.

Hei Mao and Ren Jingyi had stood back-to-back in the ruins, bloodied and unyielding.

He had slaughtered without pause, shadow blades tearing through formations, curses blooming like crimson flowers among the enemy ranks. He fought with a ferocity born not of rage, but of terror. Terror of failing again. Terror of watching the people beside him die while he survived.

Ren Jingyi had been even worse.

She had laughed through cracked lips as she burned her future away, invoking a forbidden technique that pushed her beyond her limits. Her presence had surged, her strikes carrying the weight of incredible power, but Hei Mao had known the moment she activated it.

This was not power meant to be survived.

The cost had been absolute.

True death.

No resurrection magic responded. No Divine Word answered her call. Even now, with all his might, all his arts, all his refusal to accept the outcome, the world itself rejected his attempts.

Hei Mao tightened his grip on her, his fingers trembling.

"Divine Word: Raise."

The words fell into the sand and vanished.

Nothing happened.

Hei Mao remained kneeling, his gaze unfocused as new presences entered the domain of his barrier. He felt them immediately, the distortion in the shadows, and the subtle resistance in the Mandate's flow.

He did not look up.

Instead, he lifted one hand and summoned his familiar.

A small shadow emerged from his sleeve, coalescing into the shape of a cat curled into a ball. It floated gently in the air, featureless except for two faintly glowing eyes. It drifted closer, pressing itself against his cheek, radiating a soft, comforting chill.

When it sensed the intruders, the shadow cat stiffened.

Its form sharpened, ears flattening, and then it vanished soundlessly into the darkness.

Hei Mao did not react.

His thoughts spiraled inward, collapsing under their own weight.

When had it started?

Was it when his Divine Possession with his master had shattered during the defense of New Willow, when Da Wei's qi had gone out of control and consumed itself? When the connection had snapped so violently it felt like part of his soul had been torn away?

Or was it earlier, back in that recorded world of the past, when his master had looked at him and decided he was no longer needed?

Or earlier still, when he had been found trapped as a ghost, clinging to the world out of resentment, and Da Wei had reached down and dragged him back into existence?

His thoughts twisted, folding back on themselves until they reached the beginning.

The night his family had died.

The fire. The screaming. The helplessness.

Hei Mao's jaw tightened.

He should have vanished then. Dissolved quietly into the ether, like countless others. But he had refused. He had clung to hatred and obsession, turning himself into a hungry ghost, gnawing at the edges of the living world.

Everything that followed stemmed from that choice.

"Yes," he murmured hollowly. "It was my fault."

If he had died back then, none of this would have happened.

Ren Jingyi would still be alive.

New Willow might still stand.

His master would not be carrying so many graves in his heart.

The shadows around him trembled faintly.

The familiar returned.

It drifted back to his shoulder, its posture subdued, eyes dim. It had not attacked the intruders. It had not chased them away.

Behind the small shadow creature stood a familiar figure.

Gu Jie.

She stood just beyond arm's reach, her expression unreadable, her presence steady in the oppressive darkness of the Mandate. The shadows parted around her as though unwilling to press closer.

She looked down at him, at Ren Jingyi in his arms, and at the ruin he had made of the battlefield and himself.

"Are you going to keep sulking," she asked calmly, "or are you going to stand up once more?"

"I'm tired," said Hei Mao hoarsely. "I can't do this anymore."

"Your master needs you," said Gu Jie. "And so does Ren Jingyi."

Something in Hei Mao snapped.

"Can't you see?" he screamed, the sound tearing out of his chest. "She's dead!"

The shadows within the Divine Mandate trembled violently, sand lifting into the air before crashing back down. Hei Mao clutched Ren Jingyi tighter, as if daring reality to take her from him.

Gu Jie's gaze shifted to the woman in his arms.

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"Then tell me," Gu Jie said quietly, "why is she clinging to you so desperately, if that's true? And why are you doing the same?"

Hei Mao froze.

He looked down.

Ren Jingyi's fingers were ashen and half-translucent. Yet, they were curled into his sleeve.

Gu Jie continued. "If it were my father in your place, he would find a way. Even if that way was long. Even if it hurt. Even if it demanded letting go for now. Of course, you are not my father, but you are his disciple, the same I was."

Hei Mao's breathing grew uneven. His heart felt as though it were being torn in two directions at once. Despair warred with a faint, terrifying spark of hope.

Gu Jie stepped forward at last and placed two fingers gently against Ren Jingyi's forehead. Destiny stirred. Invisible threads coiled and rewove themselves. Hei Mao felt inevitability shifting its course.

"You can let go now," Gu Jie said softly.

Hei Mao's hands shook. With a shuddering breath that felt like it scraped his soul raw, he loosened his grip.

Ren Jingyi's body dissolved.

Ash scattered into the wind, carried away grain by grain, until almost nothing remained, except a single scale, gold edged with deep red, resting in Hei Mao's trembling palm.

He stared at it, unblinking.

Carefully, he closed his fingers around it, as though afraid the slightest pressure might erase it too. Using his quintessence, he wove a thin string and fashioned a necklace, placing the scale against his chest. He did not dare put it away. He could feel the warmth, faintly pulsing.

Ren Jingyi was alive.

Gu Jie reached out and held the necklace between her fingers. Destiny moved once more, quieter this time, but no less profound.

"The first destiny," she said, "is for Ren Jingyi to continue living." She paused, then added, "The second is for this necklace and anything bound to it to always find each other."

Hei Mao bowed his head.

"Thank you," he said, his voice steady for the first time in a long while.

Gu Jie withdrew her hand. "It isn't over yet," she said. "There's another place we need to be."

A shadow passed over the desert.

Hei Mao looked up as a soaring vessel bearing the colors of the Heavenly Temple descended through the thinning darkness. Its deck came into view and with it were familiar faces.

"Liang Na…" Hei Mao said in disbelief. "You're alive?"

Liang Na snorted. "Unfortunately for our enemies."

Lu Gao stood beside her, dark armor scorched but intact. Wu Chen leaned against the railing, pale yet upright. Ding Cai peered over the edge, eyes wide.

Ding Cai leapt down from the vessel and ran toward him. "Senior Hei Mao, what about Sister Ren?"

Hei Mao lifted the necklace, the golden-red scale catching the light.

With a pained, gentle smile, he answered, "She's here."

Lu Gao was the first to break the moment.

"We should move," he said, eyes already on the horizon. "Standing here is a waste of time."

"Wait," Gu Jie replied.

She reached into her pocket dimension and drew out a body.

Hei Mao stiffened at the sight of Yuen Fu… or at least what remained of him.

The man's torso was mangled, his lower body missing entirely, his expression frozen in the dull stillness of death. The sight struck Hei Mao harder than he expected. He had seen countless corpses, raised countless dead, yet this one felt heavier and closer.

Gu Jie turned to him. "Bring him back."

For a moment, Hei Mao could not breathe.

"I…" His fingers curled reflexively. "I might not be able to."

The fear was real and raw, like an exposed nerve. After Ren Jingyi, after everything that had gone wrong, the thought of failing again made his chest tighten painfully.

Gu Jie did not press him. She simply waited.

Hei Mao closed his eyes.

"I won't give up," he told himself. "Not while there's still something I can do."

Shadow qi rose quietly around him as he began the chant. His voice was steady, even if his heart was not.

"Immortal Art: Nether Gate Summoning Chant."

The air grew heavy. The boundary between worlds thinned.

"Divine Word: Raise."

Quintessence surged violently, pouring through Hei Mao as though demanding more than he could safely give. His knees dug into the sand, but he held firm.

Yuen Fu gasped as his eyes flew open as if dragged back by force. Flesh knit itself together with unsettling speed. Bone reformed. Blood flowed. Legs regenerated as though they had never been severed.

Yuen Fu sucked in a ragged breath and stared at his own body.

"What… what's going on?" he demanded.

His gaze swept the group, then stopped abruptly on Liang Na. His eyes widened.

"You… you're alive? No… That can't be…"

Liang Na raised an eyebrow. "You sound disappointed."

Yuen Fu shook his head hard and turned to Gu Jie. "Did you die too? Is this… is this the afterlife?"

"This is not the afterlife," Hei Mao said quietly.

Lu Gao let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. "Congratulations," he said to Yuen Fu. "You've been resurrected."

Yuan Fu stared at his hands, then frowned. "That's impossible. I can't feel my cultivation at all."

"It regressed," Ding Cai said. "That's normal, probably…"

Wu Chen gave him a tired smile. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Yuan Fu's expression darkened. "You're telling me I survived all that just to end up a mortal?" He clicked his tongue. "Damn it. Not again…"

Hei Mao watched him for a moment longer, then exhaled and let his familiar sink back into his shadow.

"I'm lifting the spell," he said.

With a single gesture, the half-sphere of shadow collapsed inward and vanished. The world beyond rushed back into view. Thousands of soaring vessels filled the sky. Banners of the Heavenly Temple rippled like a sea of judgment, formation arrays glowing as they locked onto the group below.

Yuen Fu looked up, took it all in, and cursed loudly.

"Ah. So I really am alive. Fuuuck…"

Hei Mao felt his blood boil the instant the horizon filled with hostile light.

Thousands of soaring vessels hung in the sky like a steel tide, their formations tight and merciless. The pressure alone made the air feel heavier, as if the desert itself were being pressed flat beneath the will of the Heavenly Temple. His fingers curled, shadow qi instinctively seething beneath his skin.

"This could be dangerous," Lu Gao said calmly, though the tension in his voice betrayed him.

Hei Mao stepped forward anyway.

A lone cultivator drifted ahead of the fleet, robes immaculate, expression mild. A fan rested in one hand, a sword floating lazily at his side as though it were an ornament rather than a weapon. Hei Mao recognized him instantly.

The Immortal Sage, Mo Yu.

Behind him hovered more than a dozen elderly cultivators, each radiating the oppressive depth of the Tenth Realm. They were veterans of the battlefield, exuding intimidating spiritual pressure.

Hei Mao straightened from his kneeling posture, shadow and sand sliding from his robes. "I'll buy you time," he said quietly.

His hand rose to the necklace at his throat. For a heartbeat, he considered removing it, entrusting it to Gu Jie, retreating into annihilation if that was what it took. But before his fingers could touch the cord, Gu Jie spoke.

"Trust me," she said lightly. "Just this once. No one needs to die here."

Her tone was almost amused.

Mo Yu's voice rolled across the battlefield, amplified by qi until it reverberated through bone and soul alike. "Hei Mao. Gu Jie. Lay down your arms. The Heavenly Temple may yet show mercy if you surrender now."

Hei Mao's gaze flicked across the field, calculating without thinking. Lu Gao. Gu Jie. Liang Na—three Tenth Realm combatants. Wu Chen, still injured, but an Eleventh Realm Ascended Soul nonetheless, layered with immortality. And himself.

Against them stood an armada, dozens of Tenth Realm elders, and Mo Yu, an Immortal Sage whose depth Hei Mao could not fully measure.

There was a chance for survival, he realized. A narrow one. Escape, regroup, survive.

That chance vanished when the sun went black.

The light died as if swallowed whole, the world plunging into a sudden, unnatural dusk. Heat surged outward in a violent shockwave, scattering sand and shattering the silence.

Something fell from the sky.

The impact split the desert, molten cracks spiderwebbing outward as furious flames erupted. At the center of the crater stood a figure wreathed in eclipse fire, breath steaming, eyes burning with restrained fury.

Ru Qiu.

Hei Mao's pupils shrank at the terrible enemy they were about to face.

However, Gu Jie just smiled. It was not a kind smile. Her mismatched eyes glowed, gold and crimson igniting with a predatory brilliance. She stepped forward, voice resonant, layered with something far deeper than qi.

"Unbind the power that holds his soul hostage," she declared. "Bring forth the man who defied the heavens. Lift the demon within him… and let his destiny bloom for all to see."

She stomped.

The desert shuddered.

Gu Jie clapped her palms together, and from Ru Qiu's chest burst a chain of pure darkness, slick with blood-red qi. It writhed, screaming without sound, stretching toward her as if dragged by fate itself.

Gu Jie caught it.

With a sharp twist of her wrist, destiny flared and the chain shattered, fragments dissolving into nothingness.

Ru Qiu gasped.

The flames around him changed, dark fire sharpening into something focused and controlled. His eyes cleared, fury condensing into lethal intent. "Who dares violate this Seat…?" Slowly, he looked up to Mo Yu, his gaze hardening with hatred and rage. "It's you…"

Gu Jie laughed, the sound ringing bright and fearless across the battlefield. "This," she said, "is the beginning of our counterattack."

Ru Qiu vanished, the brainwashing done to him finally broken.

A dark, fiery sword appeared in his grasp as he reappeared before Mo Yu in a roar of displaced air. Mo Yu barely raised his blade in time, shock flashing across his face as steel met flame, desperately parrying the furious Heavenly Demon.

However, that was not all.

The inner cabin of their own soaring vessel exploded outward in a shower of splintered metal and shattered arrays. From within leapt a familiar figure, wild laughter echoing across the battlefield.

"Ka ka ka ka ka ha ha ha ha ha ha ha~!"

It was Jue Bu.

His hair was disheveled, eyes blazing with manic clarity as he threw his head back and roared, "It's about time I gave them a taste of the Da Wei special!"

Before anyone could react, he raised both hands.

"Final Adjudication."

A colossal scale manifested in the sky, slamming down into the heart of the Heavenly Temple's formation. The impact alone crushed vessels into twisted wreckage, but the true horror followed a heartbeat later as chains erupted from every edge of the scale, lashing outward like living serpents. They wrapped around cultivators and ships alike, ripping them apart, dragging screaming bodies into annihilation.

Jue Bu vanished in a single explosive leap and reappeared beside Mo Yu, bone-white fragments swirling around him, ivory remnants torn from those caught in his spell, orbiting like macabre stars.

Gu Jie did not hesitate.

"Wu Chen. Ding Cai. Stay with me," she ordered calmly. "Liang Na—commanders and key figures only."

"Lu Gao—cut their retreat. Destroy the vessels."

"Hei Mao," her gaze sharpened, "support Ru Qiu and Jue Bu. Mo Yu does not leave this battlefield."

Her palm opened.

Wen Yuhan emerged.

The corpse puppet stood silently beside her, eyes closed, deathly still, yet the pressure she exuded made the surrounding air recoil. Gu Jie smiled, devious and assured. "Leave the Tenth Realm cultivators to us."

Hei Mao was already gone.

He dissolved into shadow, leaping from one darkness to another as though the battlefield itself had become his domain. Above, Mo Yu was forced entirely onto the defensive. Ru Qiu pressed him relentlessly, eclipse flames roaring as dark fire carved through space, while Jue Bu assaulted him from the other side, ivory bones smashing and reforming with each strike.

The clash was catastrophic.

Tenth Realm elders attempted to intervene, but the sheer pressure of the battle shredded their coordination. Those who ventured too close vanished as Wen Yuhan would appear without warning, a pale hand reaching out, and another elder would fall, lifeless before they could even scream.

The sound of a zither grew louder.

It was no longer mournful. It was relentless.

Hei Mao moved faster, his red scarf deepening in hue as his momentum built. Shadow qi coiled tighter around his limbs, his thoughts narrowing to the task before him. He searched for an opening he could exploit.

He summoned his familiar.

The shadow cat emerged, eyes glowing, and without hesitation cast Divine Possession upon him. Hei Mao's form shifted with cat-like ears sprouting atop his head, and a long, sinuous tail unfurling behind him. Power surged through his legs, explosive and feral.

He struck.

Hei Mao blinked into existence beside Mo Yu, red strings bursting forth like blades from his scarf. He aimed to decapitate, sever, and pulverize. Mo Yu barely managed to respond, fan and floating sword flashing as he deflected strike after strike, but blood sprayed, lacerations tearing across his body.

One arm was torn free.

Mo Yu roared, staggering back as countless swords bloomed around him in desperate defense. At the same moment, nine dark fiery dragons erupted from the eclipse above, crashing down with annihilating force.

Jue Bu laughed and followed with a curse.

The swords rusted midair, crumbling into useless fragments.

Hei Mao's eyes burned red, the torii-gate pattern flaring as he spoke a single word, heavy with authority.

"Divine Word: Rest."

Mo Yu froze.

Time seized him in place for a breath, just long enough for Ru Qiu's dark fire to engulf him.

"Rest," Hei Mao whispered, "you've taken enough from this world."