Before Vanguard Lin could even take a single step toward the hall's exit, the silver rapier at her waist stopped humming. It didn't just go quiet—the spiritual steel began to warp, its tip bending toward the floor as if crushed by an invisible, gravitational anvil.
The heavy incense smoke burning in the bronze braziers didn't drift away; it froze solid in mid-air, crystallizing into rigid grey threads. The entire Hall of the White Crane was instantly stripped of its atmospheric pressure. Elder Mo, a proud expert of the Qi Condensation realm, felt his lungs collapse as every single particle of worldly Qi was violently vacuumed out of the room.
Then came the light.
The ceiling of the grand hall did not shatter; it simply became transparent, revealing a sky that had turned a terrifying, bruised violet. Two cosmic rifts tore open directly above the sect’s highest peak.
From the left rift, a pair of slitted, starlight-blue eyes opened, so massive they filled the entire northern horizon. Nine celestial tails of pure cosmic mist uncoiled across the heavens, blocking out the sun. From the right rift, a sun-bright, blindingly white wing of a primordial phoenix swept through the clouds, igniting the atmosphere into a sea of harmless but terrifyingly hot celestial gold.
"MELTING INK AND TRIVIAL MORTALS," a voice vibrated. It didn't travel through the air; it shattered straight into the consciousness of every living being within a thousand miles. It was the Primordial Goddess of the Kitsune, and her tone carried the weight of a dying star.
Elder Mo’s knees buckled. He slammed face-first onto the marble floor, his teeth shattering against the stone as an unimaginable, multi-ton atmospheric pressure pinned him down. His Qi Condensation core, which he had spent eighty years refining, began to develop microscopic hairline fractures just from the ambient sound wave.
Right beside him, Vanguard Lin was in no better state. Her proud, Stage 7 Sense Awakening became her absolute undoing. Because her sensory organs were highly refined to perceive the world on a superhuman scale, the divine pressure hit her five times harder. Blood burst from her eyes, ears, and nose. She collapsed into a fetal position, her silver rapier snapping into three clean pieces on the floorboards.
"WE UTTERED A DECREE IN THE DUST, YET YOU DEEM IT THE COWARDICE OF CHILDREN," the second voice roared—the Primordial Phoenix Goddess. The temperature in the room spiked to the absolute limit of mortal endurance. The marble pillars began to vitrify, turning into smooth, molten glass.
"HEAR US, SPECK OF DUST," the Kitsune Goddess purred, a chilling, mocking edge to her cosmic tone. "IF A SINGLE CULTIVATOR FROM YOUR WORTHLESS SECT CROSSES THE BOUNDARY OF THAT FOREST WITH MALICE TOWARD OUR CHILD, THE CLEAR WATER SECT WILL BE ERASED FROM THE ANNALS OF TIME. YOUR PEAKS WILL CRUMBLE. YOUR ANCESTORS' TOMBS WILL TURN TO ASH. WE WILL TEAR THE QI FROM YOUR MOUNTAINS AND LEAVE YOUR REALM A DESOLATE WASTELAND."
Elder Mo choked on his own blood, his fingers clawing uselessly at the melting stone. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even pray for mercy. The sheer gulf between a Qi Condensation mortal and a Primordial Deity was wider than the universe itself. They weren't even looking at him with anger; they were simply speaking, and their mere breath was threatening to dissolve his soul.
"SCRAM TO YOUR CAVE, LITTLE CORES, AND REMEMBER YOUR PLACE," the Phoenix Goddess commanded.
BOOM.
A final, silent pulse of divine authority rippled through the hall. The rifts snapped shut, the sky bled back from violet to a normal, pale blue, and the atmosphere rushed back into the room with the force of a supersonic gale.
Elder Mo gasped, dragging a massive breath of air into his burning lungs. He lay in a pool of his own cold sweat and blood, his body shaking so violently he looked like a dying fish. Beside him, Vanguard Lin was completely unconscious, her refined senses forcibly blown out by the divine encounter. It would take her months of expensive medicinal baths just to regain her eyesight.
Slowly, agonizingly, Elder Mo pushed himself up onto his trembling forearms. He looked at the ruined, glass-fused pillars of his grand hall.
"Cancel..." Mo wheezed, his voice cracking as he coughed up a dark clot of stagnant energy. "Cancel the hunt... Lock the sect gates... Anyone... anyone who even looks toward the southern forest... will be executed by my own hand..."
Meanwhile, miles away in her lightning-struck redwood tree, Ren blinked as a blue notification system window opened up out of nowhere, interrupting her meditation.
[ Ding! World Event Update! ]
* Notice: The Clear Water Sect has entered a state of 'Absolute Terror' and has locked their mountain gates.
* Aggro Status: The sect's threat level toward the host has dropped to 0%.
* System Comment: It pays to have terrifyingly overprotective celestial patrons. You are now completely safe to optimize your build without human interference for the foreseeable future.
Ren stared at the screen, a small, highly amused fox-smile creeping onto her face. "Well," she thought, shifting her weight onto her freshly reinforced Stage 3 bones. "That saves me a lot of running around. Time to grind to Level 10 in absolute peace."