The gates of Loyang City still smelled faintly of smoke and blood.

  The beast lay collapsed near the roadside ditch, its massive body already stiffening under the afternoon sun. Dust drifted lazily in the air. Guards watched from a cautious distance. Merchants whispered.

  Li Wei wiped dirt from his cheek. His hands were still trembling.

  Around them, the others were catching their breath—checking wounds, adjusting robes, pretending this had been manageable.

  It hadn’t.

  A sharp voice cut through the tension.

  “Four of you. Stop.”

  A merchant strode forward, robes embroidered with silver-thread commerce sigils. His gaze swept over the carcass.

  “You destroyed my contracted beast,” he said coldly. “Compensation. I expect payment.”

  Li Wei blinked.

  Destroyed?

  Before he could speak, another voice entered smoothly.

  “The four must pay.”

  The prince stepped forward from behind the merchant, expression faintly amused. Lazy. Controlled.

  For a moment, the entire scene shifted.

  This wasn’t about loss.

  This was positioning.

  Li Wei’s jaw tightened.

  “Pay for surviving?” he muttered.

  Behind him, Ru Yan smiled.

  As the Reincarnated Dragonic Empress, she did not need guesses. She required confirmation.

  Her pupils shimmered faintly.

  “Eye of Karma.”

  A translucent mist unfolded around her like drifting silk. Threads—thin, luminous lines—spread outward from the beast’s corpse.

  And there it was.

  A line of fate.

  It stretched from the beast… to the prince’s attendant.

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  The mist thickened.

  Within it, images surfaced:

  A whispered instruction.

  A concealed Qi signature.

  A subtle prod.

  A beast redirected.

  And behind it all—the prince’s quiet approval.

  Li Wei saw it.

  His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles paled.

  “They tried to set us up.”

  The attendant shifted ever so slightly.

  That small movement was enough.

  Something inside Li Wei snapped.

  He stepped forward.

  “Freeze.”

  The word fell softly.

  The world answered violently.

  Air distorted around the attendant. Not heat shimmer—but cold distortion. Frost crawled up his sleeves. Snow-like motes spiraled outward.

  Zhi Yuan moved instantly.

  Not to block.

  To stabilize.

  He stepped between Li Wei and the target, palm raised—not toward the attendant, but toward the field itself.

  “Li Wei,” he said evenly. “Control. You do not yet understand the reach.”

  But Li Wei’s Qi had already surged.

  It wasn’t elegant. It was furious.

  Threads of icy force lashed outward like misaligned lines of script tearing through parchment.

  The attendant’s robes crystallized at the edges.

  And then—

  The ground answered.

  Far North among the Snowy Mount Tai

  Snow-white spiritual herbs erupted from the earth.

  They bloomed in unison, frost-laced petals unfolding in impossible harmony. They were northern herbs

  Hundreds. Thousands.

  A kilometer-wide surge of cold-aspected spiritual energy.

  And Heaven responded.

  Clouds gathered with unnatural speed.

  The air turned metallic.

  “Lightning Tribulation…”

  It was instinctual. Every cultivator knew it.

  When a being broke through to a higher realm, Heaven tested it.

  These herbs, pushed unnaturally into evolution, had triggered the same law.

  Lightning fell.

  Not catastrophic—but precise.

  Silver bolts struck the blooming herbs one by one.

  Testing.

  Judging.

  Refining.

  Back at the gate —

  Li Wei’s eyes widened.

  " I — can’t stop it!”

  The field was expanding beyond intention.

  Zhi Yuan felt it clearly now.

  In his perception, fractured glyphs flickered into existence.

  Not panels.

  Not words.

  Thought-forms.

  Unreadable. Corrupted.

  Фrзезе

  Цuрэ

  Л1й3

  They pulsed like broken commands.

  The system was reacting.

  But not cleanly.

  The Freeze spell was no longer a single-target technique. It was rewriting environmental parameters.

  Interesting. Dangerous.

  “Containment,” Zhi Yuan said quietly. “Not destruction.”

  He adjusted — not with brute force, but with alignment. Subtle corrections. Micro-calculations.

  He shifted the freezing vector inward.

  The frost tightened around the attendant’s limbs.

  Ice sealed him in place.

  But no further.

  The Ice surge stabilized.

  Li Wei staggered slightly, breath uneven.

  “That — was too close.”

  Frost clung to nearby tree trunks. Merchants whispered in panic.

  In the distance, sect scouts would be moving soon.

  Opportunity had just been born.

  Li Wei turned toward the prince, fury still raw.

  “They —”

  “Later,” Zhi Yuan interrupted gently.

  Right now, retaliation would ignite politics.

  Right now, survival required restraint.

  The Freeze field dissipated slowly.

  The attendant remained encased in a thin shell of ice — alive, but immobile.

  Zhi Yuan watched the clouds.

  They were dispersing.

  But not entirely.

  He felt it.

  A subtle awareness.

  A notation.

  A correction logged somewhere beyond sight.

  Heaven had noticed.

  And more troubling —

  The corrupted glyphs had not faded.

  They had stabilized.

  They were learning.

  Li Wei exhaled, quieter now.

  “I won’t forget this.”

  Zhi Yuan’s gaze swept the frost-lined earth, the blooming herbs in the distance, the prince’s carefully neutral expression.

  “Nor will I.”

  His eyes lifted slightly.

  “The world is watching.”

  And somewhere above —

  Something agreed.