Chapter 52: Chapter 52
The Heavenly Furnace Mountains lived up to their name perfectly. It was a jagged, brutal range of active volcanoes situated in the deep south of the Central Continent, where the air was so thick with ash and fire-attribute Qi that ordinary mortals would spontaneously combust just by taking a breath.
For the ancient weapon refiners who called these peaks home, it was a paradise. For anyone else, it was a suffocating hellscape.
But as Yan Shuo casually strolled up the black obsidian path leading to the summit of the central volcano, he didn’t feel a single drop of heat.
Walking exactly half a step behind him, Tantai Zhi held a delicate, translucent parasol over his head. It wasn’t made of paper or silk. She had flawlessly condensed her absolute peak Yin Qi into a physical umbrella, casting a soothing, perfectly chilled shadow over her husband.
While the surrounding rocks glowed red-hot, Yan Shuo was enjoying a microclimate that felt like a crisp, refreshing spring morning.
"This place is filthy, Husband," Tantai Zhi complained softly, her golden eyes glaring at a nearby pool of bubbling magma as if it had personally offended her. "The air is full of soot. It might dirty your white robes. Do you want me to just freeze the entire mountain range? We can dig the leyline node out of the ice later."
"That would be a bit excessive, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo chuckled, lazily fanning himself with his paper fan, completely ignoring the terrifying sheer drop into the volcano to his left. "Besides, freezing an active volcano causes massive tectonic backlash. We don’t want to accidentally sink the southern coastline. A gentle touch is all we need."
Tantai Zhi nodded obediently, immediately dropping the idea of a catastrophic geological event. "Whatever Husband says. I will just keep the ash away from your hair."
Yan Shuo smiled, but his dark eyes were incredibly sharp as they neared the summit.
The southern leyline node was supposed to be buried deep within the main volcanic crater. But as they reached the massive, flat expanse of obsidian at the peak, Yan Shuo’s footsteps slowed to a halt.
It was entirely too quiet.
There were no weapon refiners tending to the natural earth-fires. There were no spiritual beasts roaming the ash plains. The ambient fire Qi in the air wasn’t flowing naturally; it felt stagnant, heavy, and artificially contained, like a drawn bowstring waiting to snap.
Yan Shuo casually snapped his paper fan shut.
"You can stop hiding, Bai Chen," Yan Shuo’s voice was completely calm, yet it echoed across the massive volcanic crater with the heavy, undeniable authority of a sovereign. "It is entirely too hot out here to play hide-and-seek."
For a moment, there was only the sound of bubbling magma.
Then, the space directly above the center of the crater violently warped.
The air distorted, peeling back like a curtain to reveal a massive, floating jade platform hovering over the volcano. Standing on the platform was a small army. Dozens of Righteous Alliance Elders, their faces grim and sweating, stood in strict formation.
But Yan Shuo didn’t look at them. His gaze locked onto the figure standing at the very front.
He wore pristine white robes that perfectly mirrored Yan Shuo’s own. His face was hidden behind a weeping silver mask.
The Faceless Scholar looked down at the fifteen-year-old youth standing on the obsidian path. Even from a hundred feet in the air, Yan Shuo could feel the suffocating, paranoid terror radiating from his old sworn brother.
"You broke two of my anchors," Bai Chen spoke, his voice magically amplified to echo across the mountains. He tried to sound like a majestic, untouchable grandmaster, but the slight tremor in his tone betrayed him completely. "You corrupted the East and the West. You forced me to abandon the capital to meet you here."
"You always were a bit dramatic," Yan Shuo smiled warmly, tapping his closed fan against his palm. "I was just taking my wife on a scenic tour. You didn’t have to bring a welcoming committee."
Tantai Zhi’s golden eyes narrowed. The soft, doting wife vanished instantly. The air around the parasol dropped to absolute zero, frost rapidly spreading across the boiling obsidian beneath her boots.
She remembered the silver mask. This was the bug from the Star-Gazing Pavilion. The coward who had dared to put a bounty on her husband’s head.
"Husband," Tantai Zhi whispered, her voice a chilling, demonic melody. "Can I kill him now? I promise I will make it slow."
"Patience, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo murmured softly, placing a gentle hand on her arm.
He looked back up at the hovering platform. He could see the intricate, glowing runes carved into the bottom of the jade. Bai Chen hadn’t just brought an army; he had uprooted the absolute core of his grand array and transported it directly to the Heavenly Furnace Mountains.
"You know you cannot win a straight fight, Bai Chen," Yan Shuo stated mildly, completely ignoring the confused Righteous Alliance Elders who were wondering why this boy was calling their Honored Guest by a name they didn’t recognize. "Your shadow assassins are dead. Your array is half-broken. And my wife is standing right next to me. Why did you come here?"
Behind the silver mask, Bai Chen’s eyes burned with absolute, cornered madness.
"Because I finally understand what you are doing, Brother Yan," Bai Chen hissed, his voice dropping the majestic facade. "You didn’t just come back to life. You came back weak. Your vessel is fragile. You possess the gravity of the Abyss, but you lack the physical endurance of your old demonic body. That is why you hide behind the Saintess. She is your sword, your shield, your absolute perfect armor!"
Bai Chen threw his arms wide, his Nascent Soul aura flaring as he channeled his Qi directly into the jade platform beneath his feet.
"But armor can be bypassed!" Bai Chen roared.
BOOM!
The entire volcanic crater violently erupted, but not with magma.
A blinding, pure white light blasted out from the walls of the volcano, shooting directly up into the sky. It wasn’t a standard Righteous array. It was a suffocating, ancient energy that felt fundamentally different from anything cultivated in the mortal realm.
It was the power of the Heavenly Dao Relic.
Yan Shuo’s dark eyes widened slightly. He didn’t just use the leylines. He used the fragment of the Relic as the core.
The blinding white light did not attack Yan Shuo. It completely ignored him. Instead, the beams of pure Heavenly Dao energy converged directly onto Tantai Zhi.
The moment the light touched her, the terrifying, world-ending Yin Qi she was gathering instantly sputtered and vanished.
"What?!" Tantai Zhi gasped, stepping forward to shield Yan Shuo, only to realize her physical body was suddenly becoming translucent.
"The Heavenly Dao Isolation Casket!" Bai Chen screamed, laughing with manic, desperate triumph. "It doesn’t kill! It doesn’t suppress! It entirely removes the target from the current spatial and temporal continuum! You cannot cut what isn’t there, Saintess!"
A massive, golden cube of glowing runes materialized perfectly around Tantai Zhi.
She slammed her pale hands against the inside of the golden barrier. For the first time in a century, the absolute peak of the mortal realm felt genuine, sheer panic. But she wasn’t panicking because she was trapped.
She was panicking because Yan Shuo was left standing outside the box.
"Husband!" Tantai Zhi screamed, her golden eyes wide with absolute, mind-shattering terror as she looked at him through the glowing barrier. She drew her crimson sword, frantically hacking at the golden light, but her supreme sword intent simply phased through the walls like a ghost swinging at the air. "Let me out! Don’t touch him! If you touch him, I will destroy the cycle of reincarnation! HUSBAND!"
"Zhi’er!" Yan Shuo stepped forward, dropping his paper fan, and slammed his hand against the outside of the golden cube.
But it was too late.
The spatial laws within the Heavenly Dao Relic’s domain took absolute priority. With a blinding flash that temporarily stole the color from the world, the golden cube violently imploded, shrinking to the size of a grain of sand before completely vanishing from the mortal plane.
Tantai Zhi was gone.
The obsidian path was empty, save for the dropped paper fan and the lingering, chilling mist of her parasol.
Up on the floating jade platform, the Righteous Alliance Elders drew their swords, bolstered by the sudden disappearance of the terrifying Saintess.
Bai Chen fell to his knees on the platform, gasping for air, clutching his chest as the massive toll of activating the Relic nearly shattered his own meridians. But behind his weeping silver mask, he was smiling. He had won. He had done the impossible.
He looked down at the fifteen-year-old youth standing alone on the volcanic path.
"The light is gone, Demon Lord," Bai Chen mocked, his voice echoing with cruel, victorious finality. "Your armor has been stripped away. You are just a fragile vessel standing before an army. It is over."
Yan Shuo didn’t look up at the floating platform.
He stood perfectly still, looking at the empty space on the black obsidian where his wife had been standing just a second ago. He looked down at his empty hand. The warmth of her shoulder pressing against his, the sweet, doting smile beneath her white veil, the way she had happily held the cheap paper rabbit lantern...
The pragmatic, calculating facade of the lazy young master slowly melted away.
For the first time since he had opened his eyes in this new, fragile body, the absolute, unadulterated madness of the ancient era clawed its way to the surface. He wasn’t acting anymore. He wasn’t calculating the most efficient path to victory.
Yan Shuo slowly reached down to his waist and wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his heavy black iron sword.
The ambient temperature in the volcanic crater didn’t drop. It ceased to exist.
A suffocating, pitch-black aura began to violently leak from Yan Shuo’s body, so impossibly dense that the glowing red magma in the volcano below actually began to dim, the light physically crushed by the gravity of his killing intent.
He slowly lifted his head. His dark eyes were no longer human. They were bottomless, swirling abysses of apocalyptic slaughter.
"Bai Chen," Yan Shuo whispered. The sound wasn’t loud, but it bypassed the air completely, vibrating directly into the marrow of every single cultivator on the floating platform.
Yan Shuo pulled the black iron sword from its scabbard. The sky above the Heavenly Furnace Mountains instantly turned completely, utterly black, swallowing the sun whole.
"You just touched my wife."
