Chapter 458: Conquering the Azure Fall City

Pale morning sunlight filtered through the heavy silk canopy of the consultation pavilion, mixing with the warm, lingering fragrance of aged spirit-sandalwood rising from the bronze brazier.

Outside the warded walls, the distant clang of armor and the neighing of warhorses signaled that the camp was waking up to march into the unshielded outer gates of Azure Fall City. Inside the quiet chamber, however, time seemed to stand still upon the wide couch of snow-white furs.

Cui Yulan lay curled on her side across Alaric’s muscular lap and chest, her loose crimson silk robe bunched up around her hips after falling asleep in his arms the night before. Her long, glossy dark hair spilled over his shoulder, and her breathing was slow and deep.

Before her silver eyelashes even fluttered open, she felt a pair of large, warm hands moving with shameless familiarity over her bare skin.

Alaric, already wide awake and propped up against the velvet cushions, had his left hand cupped firmly over her massive right breast. His fingers sank into the soft, heavy flesh, kneading the plump globe in a slow, possessive rhythm while his thumb brushed back and forth across her rosy nipple until it hardened into a stiff, sensitive peak.

At the same time, his right hand glided down from her bare ribs, tracing a lazy circle around her soft navel before slipping under the bunched crimson silk at her waist to cup and squeeze the bare, round curve of her buttocks, pressing her soft backside tight against the thick, hard morning ridge tenting his silk trousers.

“Mmph… hnn…”

A low, sultry groan escaped Cui Yulan’s parted lips before she was even conscious of making the sound. Her curvy thighs rubbed together instinctively on his lap, and her back arched into his palm, pushing the heavy weight of her breasts deeper into his fingers.

When her silver eyes finally fluttered open and she realized why her body was tingling with heat from head to toe, a bright scarlet blush raced from her cheeks all the way down her bare neck and chest.

She reached down and caught his wrists—though her grip had zero force behind it—and glared up at him through half-lidded, drowsy eyes.

“You… you perverted rascal!” Cui Yulan chided, her voice husky with sleep and interrupted by a soft gasp asAlaric pinched her stiff pink nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “The sun has barely touched the mountain peaks, and my eyes were not even open yet! Can you not keep your shameless hands off my chest for a single morning?!”

Alaric grinned down at her, his ruby eyes warm and unrepentant as he gave her bare, round buttocks a playful, stinging slap with his right hand while his left hand shifted to cup and lift her other massive breast.

“Ah—!” Cui Yulan gasped, her hips jerking forward against his hard shaft as the warm sting spread across her ass. “You did it again!”

“Can you blame me, Yulan?” Alaric murmured, lowering his head to nuzzle the warm, fragrant skin of her neck while his hands continued kneading both of her heavy, snow-white breasts. “You fell asleep half-naked on top of me with these two magnificent treasures pressed right against my chin. A man who wakes up to a feast like this and keeps his hands to himself is either a eunuch or a corpse.”

“Listen to your glib tongue,” Cui Yulan muttered, turning her red face against his collarbone to hide the small, helpless smile tugging at the corners of her lips as his palm rubbed slowly over her flat stomach and her soft navel. “Every soldier in this army thinks Physician Alaric is a saintly gentleman who barely looks a woman in the eye. If they saw you mauling my breasts and spanking my backside before breakfast, their jaws would drop into the mud.”

“Then it is a good thing this show is reserved only for me,” Alaric chuckled, rolling both of her stiff nipples between his fingers until she let out another trembling moan and dug her nails lightly into his shoulders.

After five more minutes of letting him fondle and caress her voluptuous curves until her skin was glowing pink and her breath was coming in hot, shallow pants, Cui Yulan finally tapped his chest and sat up reluctantly on his lap, pulling the edges of her crimson silk robe closed over her heaving breasts.

“Enough for this morning, you greedy wolf,” Cui Yulan breathed, smoothing her tousled dark hair back behind her ears as she looked toward the tent flap. “The outer barrier of Azure Fall City shattered when the Sunken Fortress collapsed yesterday. First Prince Huang Wei has ordered all units to march through the southern gates at sunrise. Wait until we finish driving General Tokugawa out of the mountain passes—then you will not have to stop at morning teasing.”

She leaned down, pressed a quick, hot kiss against Alaric’s lips, and slipped off his lap to put on her dark violet profound-steel battle armor before stepping out into the crisp winter morning.

Two hours later, deep bronze victory horns echoed across the plains as sixty thousand soldiers of the Celestial Dragon Empire marched unopposed through the scorched, unshielded southern gates of Azure Fall City.

Because the “Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier” had died with the Sunken Fortress, the sixty-foot black iron-stone walls that had blocked the army for weeks stood cold and dark.

First Prince Huang Wei rode at the front of the column inside an open golden chariot pulled by six white scale-steeds, standing up and waving his jewel-encrusted sword toward the empty battlements as if he had knocked the walls down with his own two fists.

“Look upon the might of this prince!” First Prince Huang Wei shouted to the cheering soldiers of the Fierce Tiger Unit and the Black Tortoise Shield Corps lining the wide stone boulevard. “General Tokugawa thought his black walls could hold me back! One wave of my hand at the Sunken Fortress, and he fled Azure Fall City like a whipped dog! Quartermaster General Luo Feng! Write up a proclamation immediately—Wait, no! Keep the border blockade sealed for a few more days until we sweep the upper citadel too, so my victory report to my father Emperor Huang Long is spotless!”

Yet as the lead regiments marched past the abandoned municipal halls and iron foundries of Azure Fall City toward the northern plaza, the cheering gradually died down in the throats of the veteran officers.

Towering directly behind the northern rim of Azure Fall City rose the sheer, vertical black cliffs of Mount Kurogane.

Carved two thousand feet up into the jagged, snow-swept precipice of Mount Kurogane stood the true heart of the Rising Sun Empire’s eastern defense: the Iron-Cloud Citadel.

Unlike Azure Fall City down on the flat plain, the Iron-Cloud Citadel could only be reached by a single, six-foot-wide stone stairway—the Serpent’s Spine Ladder—cut into a vertical cliff face overhung by forty iron artillery casemates and wrapped in a swirling, milky-white barrier of mountain cloud energy known as the “Nine-Peak Cloud-Locking Ward”.

General Cui Hao rode back from the northern plaza and reined in his warhorse beside First Prince Huang Wei’s golden chariot and Cui Yulan’s mount.

“Your Royal Highness, Noble Consort Cui,” General Cui Hao reported grimly, pointing his silver spear up toward the cloud-wreathed fortress towering two thousand feet above the city roofs. “Azure Fall City has been stripped clean of grain and spare iron. Before abandoning the lower city walls last night, General Tokugawa withdrew his remaining twenty-five thousand elite warriors—including the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit, the Scarlet Crane Unit, and the Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps—straight up into the Iron-Cloud Citadel!”

First Prince Huang Wei squinted up at the towering cliff fortress, his brow furrowing in annoyance at having his parade spoiled. “He hid up in a mountain crow’s nest? So what! We have fifty-five thousand men! General Sun! Send the Fierce Tiger Unit and the mercenary companies up that stone stairway right now and pry him out!”

General Sun Ba looked up at the six-foot-wide stairway hanging over a two-thousand-foot abyss, where dozens of heavy repeating ballistas and boulder chutes gleamed through the cloud ward, and swallowed hard. “Your Royal Highness… that stairway is only wide enough for three men abreast, and the ‘Nine-Peak Cloud-Locking Ward’ freezes the grip of anyone climbing the rocks. If we send infantry up that cliff face head-on, one man rolling logs from the top can hold off ten thousand!”

Just then, the gilded carriage carrying Zhao Mengxue and Su Xinyue rolled up beside First Prince Huang Wei’s chariot, accompanied by Alaric’s gray medical wagon and Guildmaster Lin Ruoli’s supply train.

Ten minutes earlier, Alaric had already examined the leyline structure of Mount Kurogane and transmitted his exact instructions to Zhao Mengxue, Su Xinyue, and Lin Ruoli over their Phone Artifacts.

Zhao Mengxue stepped out onto her carriage platform, her crimson fur cloak draped regally over her shoulders. “Do not throw away your soldiers’ lives on a cliff climb, Wei’er. A general who owns the city below owns the throat of the mountain above.”

Su Xinyue smiled gently beside her, gesturing toward the sheer granite peak of Mount Kurogane. “Look at the Iron-Cloud Citadel, Your Royal Highness. It sits on barren black iron-rock two thousand feet in the clouds. There is no farmland up there, and twenty-five thousand elite samurai consume hundreds of sacks of grain and thousands of spirit stones every single day to maintain the ‘Nine-Peak Cloud-Locking Ward’.”

“When General Tokugawa retreated from Azure Fall City in such haste yesterday,” Zhao Mengxue continued smoothly, “he could only carry two weeks of dry rations up those steep stairs. He is counting on secret smuggling trails in the eastern back-valleys and four subterranean water-and-leyline conduits under the mountain to keep his garrison alive. If we lock down the mountain trails and sever those four underground conduits while camping comfortably inside the warm houses of Azure Fall City, General Tokugawa will starve in his own iron cage without us losing a single soldier on the stairs!”

First Prince Huang Wei’s eyes lit up as he realized he could stay in the luxurious governor’s manor of Azure Fall City drinking warm wine instead of standing out in the snow watching a failed cliff assault.

“Of course! That was merely a test to see if General Sun was paying attention!” First Prince Huang Wei laughed loudly, puffing out his chest. “Why would this prince climb a snowy cliff when I can starve the fox out of his hole?! Quartermaster General Luo Feng! Master Array Formulator Tian Yi! Do exactly as my mother and Su Xinyue just heard me plan! Seal every mountain goat path around Mount Kurogane and dig up those four underground conduits!”

What followed over the next three full weeks—twenty-one slow, freezing days of relentless encirclement—was a textbook execution of Alaric’s two-pronged strangulation strategy.

During the first fourteen days, not a single siege engine was fired at the Iron-Cloud Citadel.

Instead, the war was waged across the snowy back-roads, mountain smuggling trails, and border markets by Guildmaster Lin Ruoli of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Auction House.

Operating from a warm counting house in the center of Azure Fall City, Lin Ruoli and Ya Su used the vast fortune of spirit stones they had wrung from First Prince Huang Wei’s war chest to buy up every single kernel of wheat, every smoked beast carcass, every sack of charcoal, and every low-grade spirit stone within a hundred-mile radius of the eastern border.

When secret supply agents sent by General Tokugawa’s Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps slipped down the back slopes of Mount Kurogane on the sixth and tenth nights carrying gold bars to buy emergency rations from corrupt border merchants and mountain bandit clans, they found the bandit storehouses empty and the merchants already wearing the emerald-and-gold badges of the Jade Serpent and Gilded Lotus guilds!

By the fourteenth day of the siege, the snowstorms atop Mount Kurogane had grown ferocious. Up inside the wind-lashed stone halls of the Iron-Cloud Citadel, the twenty-five thousand warriors of the Rising Sun Empire were reduced to boiling their leather saddle-straps for soup and melting icicles over dwindling spirit-stone braziers.

Then, from the fifteenth day through the twenty-first day, Alaric tightened the second noose.

While spending his nights in his warm pavilion inside Azure Fall City enjoying the lush, naked bodies of Zhao Mengxue and Su Xinyue on his bed—and spending every midnight beside the sandalwood brazier aggressively fondling, spanking, and kissing a breathless, blushing Cui Yulan on his couch—Alaric sketched out the precise geological locations of the four subterranean water-veins and spirit-conduits running beneath the granite roots of Mount Kurogane.

Following the diagrams passed down through Zhao Mengxue and Su Xinyue, General Cui Hao’s Thunder-Spear Relief Force and Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s engineers spent seven days excavating four deep shafts along the lower spurs of Mount Kurogane.

One by one—on the sixteenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first days—heavy plugs of refined magnetic black-iron were driven straight through the four subterranean conduits.

Up on the peak of Mount Kurogane, the four deep mountain springs inside the Iron-Cloud Citadel dried up to a muddy trickle, and the swirling white dome of the “Nine-Peak Cloud-Locking Ward” dimmed to a thin, flickering film that groaned under the weight of the winter wind!

While Alaric’s economic and leyline chokehold slowly strangled the Iron-Cloud Citadel from above and below, those same twenty-one days of mountain blockades brought an unexpected turning point for Corbin.

Assigned to patrol the treacherous, snow-choked ravines on the eastern back-slope of Mount Kurogane with the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit to intercept Rising Sun supply runners, Corbin fought like a starving wolf let off its chain.

Because General Tokugawa was desperate to open a supply line during those three weeks, the officers leading the breakout patrols down the hidden mountain paths were no longer disposable ashigaru—they were high-ranking Grandmaster and Martial King captains of the Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps and the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit!

On thefifth night of the blockade, Corbin ambushed a five-man shinobi supply squad in a frozen gorge, cleaving their Martial King captain in half with his black-iron greatsword and earning his first 12,000 System Points in months.

On the twelfth day, Corbin tracked a secret detachment of the Scarlet Crane Unit to an abandoned mountain shrine where they were storing emergency spirit stones, slaughtering their commander and eighteen elite samurai single-handedly to harvest another 30,000 System Points.

And on the twentieth night, when two veteran Martial King elders of the Rising Sun Empire tried to sneak a caravan of pack-beasts up the icy eastern ridge, Corbin collapsed a snow cornice onto their column and hacked both elders to pieces in a brutal two-hour duel in the dark!

Standing over the frozen corpses on the twenty-first night, wiping steaming blood from his scarred iron half-helm, Corbin stared at the golden text glowing in front of his eyes with a savage, trembling grin.

[System Notification: Host Has Slain 2 Early-Stage Martial King Commanders and 7 Grandmaster Officers During the Blockade Campaign.]

[Bounty & Milestone Rewards Credited: +84,000 System Points!]

[Current Balance: 84,000 System Points.]

“Eighty-four thousand points…” Corbin breathed into the freezing wind, his scarred fists clenching as power and warmth surged back through his long-starved system interface. “Finally! Enough points to run the system’s highest-tier Omni-Dimensional Mana-Analysis Engine the next time that hidden bastard makes a move!”

Three days later, as dawn broke gray and biting cold on the twenty-fourth day after the fall of the Sunken Fortress, the final crisis arrived.

High atop Mount Kurogane, inside the freezing, frost-crusted central hall of the Iron-Cloud Citadel, General Tokugawa stood in his black lacquered armor before an empty iron ration cauldron.

Around him, the elite warriors of the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit had sunken cheeks and frostbitten fingers. Above the fortress courtyard, the “Nine-Peak Cloud-Locking Ward” flickered with weak, sputtering sparks; without the four subterranean conduits and without fresh spirit stones, the barrier would collapse on its own within forty-eight hours.

General Tokugawa did not waste a single breath calling a council or giving speeches to his commanders.

He looked at Commander Honda Tadakatsu, Commander Hattori Hanzo, Commander Sakakibara, and the two white-haired Half-Step Martial Emperor guardian elders of the Rising Sun expedition—Elder Musashi and Elder Kojiro—who stood beside him with their katanas drawn.

“Our grain is gone, and our barrier dies tomorrow,” General Tokugawa said, his voice flat and cold as an executioner’s blade as he strapped his ancestral black katana, Muramasa Night-Sever, to his waist. “First Prince Huang Wei hides behind ten thousand shields inside Azure Fall City, watered and fed by those merchant guilds. However, Hattori’s spotters confirmed at sunrise that Cui Yulan and her brother General Cui Hao are ascending the White-Pine Mountain Defile at midday with a small inspection retinue to check the fourth sealed conduit.”

Commander Hattori Hanzo’s eyes glinted beneath his black hood. “The White-Pine Mountain Defile passes directly over the mouth of the old dwarven iron-smelting shaft leading down from our cellar.”

“We execute the ‘Nine-Shadow Serpent Strike’ now,” General Tokugawa commanded, turning straight toward the dark subterranean shaft entrance without a second’s hesitation. “Every Half-Step Martial Emperor and Martial King remaining in this citadel comes with me. We move through the subterranean shaft, erect the ‘Blood-Flame Demon Array’ to lock the White-Pine Mountain Defile, kill General Cui Hao on the spot, and take Cui Yulan alive as our hostage. With a Peak Martial King Imperial Consort under my blade, First Prince Huang Wei will open the eastern border road before nightfall. Move!”

Thirty shadows clad in black iron and dark shinobi cloth plunged silently into the subterranean mine shaft, descending through the heart of the mountain like a venomous serpent striking from the dark.

By early afternoon on that twenty-fourth day, a thick, freezing mountain fog had rolled down the upper slopes of Mount Kurogane, wrapping the tall, snow-covered pine trees and jagged granite walls of the White-Pine Mountain Defile in a dense white shroud.

Riding slowly up the narrow, frost-covered stone trail of the defile was Cui Yulan in her dark violet profound-steel armor, accompanied by her brother General Cui Hao, Half-Step Martial Emperor Commander Jin, twenty Peak Martial King guards of the Violet Thunder Pavilion, and Alaric, who walked calmly beside her stirrup in his simple gray linen robes.

“The fourth iron plug over the eastern water-vein is holding solid, Sister,” General Cui Hao said, his breath pluming white in the cold fog as he pointed his spear toward the sealed masonry pit at the upper bend of the defile. “Master Tian Yi says the cloud barrier above the Iron-Cloud Citadel has lost eighty percent of its luster since yesterday. Within two more days, General Tokugawa will either have to march down the stairs and surrender or starve to death on the rocks.”

Cui Yulan nodded, her silver eyes scanning the quiet, snow-laden cliffs above the defile before glancing down with a warm, softened gaze at Alaric walking beside her warhorse.

Her mind flashed briefly to the promise she had whispered in his arms—that the night General Tokugawa fell and this war ended, she would hold nothing back from him on his bed. Just thinking of how his large, warm hands had kneaded her bare breasts that morning made a tiny, secret flutter of heat rise in her chest beneath her violet breastplate.

“Do not lower your guard during the final two days, Hao,” Cui Yulan said, straightening in her saddle. “A cornered wolf bites hardest right before its throat is cut.”

Before the echo of her voice faded against the granite cliffs, Alaric stopped walking.

His ruby eyes turned toward a snow-covered rock outcropping forty yards up the defile wall—right where the hidden ventilation grate of an ancient dwarven iron-smelting shaft sat buried under three feet of drift snow.

“Everyone halt,” Alaric said calmly, without a trace of his usual deferential healer’s tone.

BOOM!

The snowdrift covering the upper rock outcropping exploded outward in a geyser of shattered ice and black iron!

Out of the dark mouth of the subterranean smelting shaft shot thirty blurring figures radiating suffocating, bloodthirsty Martial King and Half-Step Martial Emperor Battle Auras!

At the very front of the airborne assault, eight black-robed array elders of the Rising Sun Empire hurled eight six-foot pillars of blood-soaked magnetic iron straight into the four corners of the White-Pine Mountain Defile!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The eight blood-iron pillars drove deep into the frozen granite.

“Blood-Flame Demon Array—Lock the Heavens!”

A colossal, inverted bowl of roaring crimson-black blood-flames erupted from the eight pillars, sealing a five-hundred-yard stretch of the White-Pine Mountain Defile inside a soundproof, sight-blocking prison of condensed demonic fire and gravity pressure that cut off all spiritual transmissions to Azure Fall City below!

“Ambush! Protect Noble Consort Cui!” Commander Jin roared, leaping from his steed and igniting his full Half-Step Martial Emperor golden Battle Aura as he swung his heavy golden halberd upward!

From the crimson smoke above, Elder Musashi and Elder Kojiro—both Half-Step Martial Emperors of the Rising Sun Empire—descended side by side like twin black meteors, their four katanas weaving a cross-shaped net of dark void-wind that slammed head-on into Commander Jin’s golden halberd!

CLANG-CRACK!

Fighting two Half-Step Martial Emperors at once inside the suppressing gravity of the “Blood-Flame Demon Array”, Commander Jin spat a mouthful of bright red blood as his golden halberd shaft bent and he was blasted forty feet backward into the cliff wall, his chest armor gashed open!

At the same instant, Commander Sakakibara and six Martial King samurai crashed down onto General Cui Hao and the twenty Peak Martial King guards, locking them in a furious, sparking storm of clashing steel, while Commander Honda Tadakatsu, Commander Hattori Hanzo, and General Tokugawa himself landed thirty paces directly in front of Cui Yulan!

General Tokugawa’s Half-Step Martial Emperor aura rolled across the narrow defile like an iron tsunami, his ancestral black katana Muramasa Night-Sever humming with a terrifying crimson-black blade glow as he pointed the tip at Cui Yulan.

“Noble Consort Cui Yulan,” General Tokugawa said coldly over the roar of the blood-flame barrier. “Your brother’s head stays in this ravine today, and you will walk back up into the Iron-Cloud Citadel as my guest. Tadakatsu—cripple the guards and take her!”

Commander Honda Tadakatsu let out a thunderous war cry, gripping his massive black-iron great-spear Tombokiri with both hands as his Peak Martial King—half-step into the Emperor realm—Battle Aura erupted into the phantom image of a thirty-foot iron demon!

“Iron-Demon Mountain-Splitting Thrust!”

Commander Honda Tadakatsu lunged forward, his great-spear tearing the frozen air apart as it aimed to smash straight through the gray-robed physician standing beside Cui Yulan’s horse and shatter Cui Yulan’s right shoulder!

Cui Yulan leaped from her saddle, raising her thunder-lance to intercept both Commander Honda Tadakatsu and General Tokugawa, even knowing that facing two supreme experts inside their own array would tear her foundation apart. “Alaric, get back behind me—!”

She never finished the sentence.

Because Alaric did not step back.

Standing in the snow ten paces ahead of her, Alaric casually tossed his cheap wooden healer’s staff aside into a snowbank and took a single step forward, placing himself squarely between Cui Yulan and the charging war gods of the Rising Sun Empire.

“You have kept me waiting in this cold mountain pass for two months, General Tokugawa,” Alaric said, his voice a deep, resonant baritone that echoed cleanly over the roaring blood-flames. “And tonight, I have an appointment on my bed that I have no intention of delaying by another single day.”

With a flick of his left hand, Alaric snapped his fingers.

“Eight-Desolations Void-Concealment Matrix.”

An invisible, secondary spatial membrane instantly lined the inside of General Tokugawa’s crimson array dome, ensuring that not a single ripple of mana, light, or sound from what was about to happen could leak out to the soldiers down in Azure Fall City—while simultaneously casting a shimmering veil of silver starlight around the upper ledges of the defile where General Cui Hao and Commander Jin were pinned down, obscuring their vision in a dense, localized whiteout.

Only Cui Yulan, standing five paces directly behind Alaric’s back, had a crystal-clear view of the center of the defile.

And then, Alaric lifted his right hand to meet Commander Honda Tadakatsu’s charging Iron-Demon great-spear.

Alaric carefully restrained the outward manifestation of his Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion avatar inside his blood, knowing that if a fifty-foot Suanni-mutated lightning lion roared out of his back right now, Cui Yulan would recognize her siphoned bloodline on the spot.

He did not need a bloodline avatar to swat flies.

His Level 69 Peak Archmage mana core roared like an unbound ocean!

Five concentric rings of blinding, intricate runic geometry—blazing with the pure, primal laws of Wind, Fire, Ice, Water, and Arcane Lightning—snapped into existence around Alaric’s outstretched palm in a tenth of a heartbeat!

“Five-Elements Arcane Convergence: Tempest-Flame Annihilation Lance!”

In front of Cui Yulan’s wide, stunned silver eyes, the five elemental rings compressed into a ten-foot-long, spiraling lance of white-hot plasma, emerald hurricane wind, and violet-blue arcane lightning that shot from Alaric’s palm without a single word of chanting!

BOOOOOOOOM!

The “Tempest-Flame Annihilation Lance” met the tip of Commander Honda Tadakatsu’s legendary iron great-spear head-on!

There was no stalemate.

The spiraling five-elemental Archmage spell sheared straight through the thirty-foot Iron-Demon Battle Aura phantom, shattered the centuries-old black-iron shaft of Tombokiri into molten shrapnel, and slammed squarely into Commander Honda Tadakatsu’s chest plate!

“Gaaah—!”

Commander Honda Tadakatsu—the undefeated vanguard champion of the Rising Sun Empire—vomited a mouthful of blood and shattered organ fragments as his lacquered breastplate caved in! His massive body was hurled backward like a ragdoll for a hundred yards, smashing straight through three towering pine trees and embedding four feet deep into the solid granite cliff wall, unconscious and broken in a single exchange!

Dead silence dropped over the White-Pine Mountain Defile for a full second.

Cui Yulan’s silver eyes dilated until they nearly filled her sockets, her breath catching in her throat as she stared at the broad back of the man in simple gray linen robes. One casual raise of his hand had just swatted Commander Honda Tadakatsu into a cliff wall like an insect!

General Tokugawa’s pupils contracted to pinpricks as he stared at the smoking craters and the lingering five-elemental runic matrices hovering around Alaric’s hand. “You… you are not a camp physician! That is Peak Archmage elemental law! You are the mastermind who inverted my arrays at Shattered Pass and the Sunken Fortress!”

“Sharp eyes for a dead man,” Alaric said lightly, tapping a tiny obsidian disc at his belt. “Ladies—clean up the trash on the flanks. Leave the general to me.”

Before General Tokugawa’s twenty Martial King assassins and his two Half-Step Martial Emperor elders could surge forward to surround Alaric, four tears in space and four pillars of blinding light opened along the snow-covered boulders flanking the defile!

Stepping out of the shimmering spatial folds—having waited in concealed ambush along the mountain ridge at Alaric’s summons—were four women of breathtaking beauty and terrifying, world-shaking power, their faces veiled behind translucent masks of elemental light so the pinned guards in the outer fog could only see their divine silhouettes.

On the high left boulder floated Professor Lilliana Valtor, her dark-red Archmage robes whipping in the gale as five glowing elemental orbs orbited her slender shoulders and her large, shapely breasts rose and fell with surging arcane power.

Opposite her stood Saintess Ceanna Paxton, clad in white-and-gold priestly vestments that hugged her voluptuous curves, a halo of dazzling golden sacred light blazing behind her golden hair as she raised her holy staff.

On the lower right ledge stood Grand Elder Yun Lan in flowing ice-blue silks, her Peak Martial King ice aura dropping the temperature in the eastern half of the defile by a hundred degrees in a single breath, while beside her stood Queen Cai Wei, her sultry, curvy body wrapped in seven-colored scales of spiritual light as a thirty-foot magma whip coiled in her hand!

“Four… four more Arch-level experts?!” Elder Musashi gasped in horror, abandoning the wounded Commander Jin as he and Elder Kojiro spun around to face the four women. “Shadow-Mist Shinobi! Blood-Moon Samurai! Kill those four women first!”

“Elemental Concord: Wrath of the Five Thrones!”

Professor Lilliana Valtor’s cool, authoritative voice rang out from the high boulder as she swept both hands downward.

The earth, sky, and snow inside the left flank of the defile tore apart! Five colossal, forty-foot-tall elemental constructs—a Titan of Molten Magma, a Sovereign of Glacial Ice, a Lord of Emerald Gale, a Golem of Adamantine Rock, and a Seraph of Thunder—rose straight out of the mountain terrain!

Six Martial King samurai who tried to leap toward Lilliana were swatted out of the air by the forty-foot fist of the Adamantine Rock Golem and stomped into the frozen stone, while the Magma Titan and the Glacial Sovereign locked their arms around Elder Musashi, trapping the Half-Step Martial Emperor in a vise of colliding fire and ice!

“Break!” Elder Musashi roared, burning his Half-Step Martial Emperor Battle Aura to cleave the Glacial Sovereign’s arm off with his twin katanas.

Above him, Professor Lilliana Valtor did not even blink. She pressed her palms together, aligning seven rotating spell circles in front of her chest.

“Elemental Concord: Prismatic Annihilation!”

A ten-foot-thick beam of blinding, seven-hued elemental energy erupted from Lilliana’s hands, striking Elder Musashi squarely in the chest while four smaller prismatic beams lanced through the chests of six Martial King samurai behind him!

Elder Musashi’s twin katanas disintegrated into metal vapor in his hands, and the Half-Step Martial Emperor was blasted into ash and charred armor fragments before his feet could touch the snow!

On the opposite cliff, Commander Hattori Hanzo and twelve elite Shadow-Mist Shinobi melted into the dark crimson shadows of the “Blood-Flame Demon Array”, trying to use their shadow-meld assassination arts to slit the throats of the women from behind.

Saintess Ceanna Paxton smiled coldly, her blue eyes glowing with fanatical devotion to her Master as a pair of radiant, twenty-foot wings of pure golden light unfurled from her back!

“In the presence of my Lord, no shadow may hide!” Ceanna chanted, slamming the butt of her golden staff into the rock. “Heavenly Angel’s Judgment: Sanctified Sunburst Pillar!”

BOOM!

Twelve pillars of blinding, scorching golden holy fire rained straight down from the top of the defile, striking the exact spots where Commander Hattori Hanzo and his eleven shinobi were hiding inside the shadows!

The dark shadow-energy shrouding Commander Hattori Hanzo boiled away like grease on a red-hot skillet, leaving the shinobi commander screaming as his black cloak caught holy fire and his stealth barriers shattered!

Before Commander Hattori Hanzo or Commander Sakakibara could recover from the blinding holy light, Grand Elder Yun Lan and Queen Cai Wei moved in lethal harmony.

Yun Lan glided down from the ledge like a goddess of eternal winter, her long ice-blade Frost-Heart sweeping across the ravine in a dazzling blue arc.

“Frozen Cloud Art: Blizzard of the Ninth Heaven!”

A screaming hurricane of sub-zero arctic frost and ten thousand razor-sharp ice lotus petals tore through the ranks of the Blood-Moon Samurai! Every samurai touched by the ice petals had his blood, his meridians, and his Dantian flash-frozen inside his armor in half a breath!

Commander Sakakibara raised his heavy katana, roaring as he flared his Martial King fire-aura to melt the encroaching frost—only for Yun Lan to appear three paces in front of him and point two snow-white fingers at his brow.

“Absolute Zero Confinement!”

Crack-k-k!

A coffin of translucent, unbreakable blue-black glacier ice erupted around Commander Sakakibara and Commander Hattori Hanzo simultaneously, sealing both commanders and eight Martial King samurai inside solid blocks of absolute-zero ice!

At the same moment, on the right flank where Elder Kojiro—the second Half-Step Martial Emperor of the Rising Sun Empire—was desperately trying to break through the silver fog to reach General Tokugawa, Queen Cai Wei licked her full red lips and snapped her wrist.

Behind Cai Wei’s voluptuous, swaying hips, the colossal, hundred-foot phantom of the Seven-Colored Spirit Devouring Python reared up into the sky, its seven-colored eyes locking onto Elder Kojiro with paralyzing serpent pressure!

“Where do you think you are going, old man?” Cai Wei purred coldly, lashing her thirty-foot magma whip through the air. “Seven-Colored Python Art: Molten Earth-Devouring Coils!”

The magma whip transformed into three giant, writhing fire-pythons that wrapped around Elder Kojiro’s legs, waist, and sword-arm!

Elder Kojiro slashed frantically with his katana, severing the head of one fire-python, only for the Seven-Colored Spirit Devouring Python phantom behind Cai Wei to lunge down and swallow his protective Battle Aura barrier whole! With his aura devoured, Cai Wei yanked her magma whip taut with a sharp snap of her hips—crushing Elder Kojiro’s armor and scorching the Half-Step Martial Emperor into a smoking, unconscious wreck in the snow!

In the center of the defile, Cui Yulan stood rooted to the frozen stone beside her warhorse, her silver eyes wide as she watched the four peerless women—an Elemental Archmage, a radiant Archmage Saintess, a Peak Martial King Ice Fairy, and a Seven-Colored Python Queen—effortlessly dismantle General Tokugawa’s invincible shadow corps in less than three minutes!

And every single one of those four supreme women had addressed the man in gray linen robes as their Master!

Facing Alaric in the center of the ravine, General Tokugawa saw his two Half-Step Martial Emperor elders and his greatest commanders crushed before his eyes.

For forty years, General Tokugawa had never known fear on a battlefield. Now, looking at the young man in gray robes standing calmly thirty paces away, a chill colder than the snow on Mount Kurogane gripped his spine.

“If I die in this ravine today, Archmage,” General Tokugawa roared, his white hair whipping loose as his shattered helmet fell into the snow and he bit the tip of his tongue, spitting a mouthful of Half-Step Martial Emperor life-blood along the flat of his ancestral black katana Muramasa Night-Sever, “I am taking you and the Noble Consort down to the Yellow Springs with me!”

General Tokugawa slammed his left palm onto the ground, drawing every remaining drop of energy from the eight blood-iron pillars of the “Blood-Flame Demon Array” straight into his own body and blade!

The sixty-foot dome of crimson blood-flames collapsed inward, condensing around General Tokugawa’s katana to form a hundred-foot-long, roaring crimson demon-dragon of compressed life-force and mountain-cleaving Sword Intent!

“Secret Art of the Rising Sun: Eight-Gods Blood-Demon Severance!”

General Tokugawa became one with the hundred-foot crimson demon-dragon, tearing a ten-foot-deep trench straight through the granite floor of the defile as he slashed his ancestral katana down toward Alaric’s skull with the full, suicidal might of a Half-Step Martial Emperor!

Behind Alaric, the sheer wind-pressure of General Tokugawa’s strike made Cui Yulan’s dark hair whip backward and cracked the stone beneath her boots.

Alaric did not retreat half a step.

His ruby eyes gleamed with cold, sovereign majesty as he raised both hands in front of his chest.

“In front of a Peak Archmage, martial brute force is just noise,” Alaric spoke calmly.

With his left hand, Alaric gripped the fabric of space occupying the twenty yards in front of General Tokugawa’s charging blade and twisted it ninety degrees.

“Spatial Anchor: Ten-Fold Gravity Collapse!”

BOOM!

The air around the charging crimson demon-dragon turned as heavy as solid lead! The granite floor beneath General Tokugawa’s boots caved downward three feet under ten times normal mountain gravity, slowing his suicidal, lightning-fast charge by half!

With his right hand, Alaric wove three high-tier elemental matrices in rapid, seamless succession—layering Ice, Water, Fire, and Arcane Lightning into a symphony of destruction!

“Azure Glacial Lance Barrage!”

Sixty twelve-foot spears of hyper-compressed dark-blue glacier ice materialized in mid-air and fired like a machine-gun barrage straight into the jaws of the crimson demon-dragon, freezing and shattering the outer thirty feet of General Tokugawa’s blood-flame aura!

General Tokugawa roared through blood-stained teeth, pouring the last of his Dantian essence into Muramasa Night-Sever to cleave through the final glacial lances and bring the black katana edge within three feet of Alaric’s collarbone!

Alaric smiled coldly.

Without letting any beast phantom manifest outside his skin, Alaric circulated a silent, internal pulse of his Beast Emperor grade Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion physique through the bones and muscles of his right arm, wrapping his bare hand in a multi-layered glove of compressed spatial blades and arcane thunder-fire:

“Nine-Heavens Arcane Thunder-Fire Matrix—Void Rend!”

Alaric reached out with his bare right hand and caught the descending razor edge of General Tokugawa’s ancestral black katana between his palm and fingers!

CLANG—SCREEEEECH!

Sparks of purple arcane lightning, crimson fire, and silver spatial cracks exploded ten feet outward from Alaric’s palm!

General Tokugawa’s eyes bulged out of their sockets in utter disbelief. His ancestral divine blade—a weapon that had cleaved through three border fortresses—was held dead still in mid-air by a mage’s bare hand wrapped in spatial-elemental law!

“Break,” Alaric said softly, clenching his fist.

CRACK—SHATTER!

The black folded steel of Muramasa Night-Sever snapped into seven jagged pieces in Alaric’s grip!

Before General Tokugawa could leap backward, Alaric stepped inside his guard and pressed his glowing right palm lightly against the center of General Tokugawa’s black lacquered breastplate, releasing the full, compressed payload of his “Nine-Heavens Arcane Thunder-Fire Matrix” and a localized “Void Rend” straight through the general’s armor!

BOOOOOOOM!

A concentrated beam of violet-blue arcane lightning, white fire, and spatial blades blew straight out the back of General Tokugawa’s armor, vaporizing the remaining blood-iron pillars of the array behind him and blasting a forty-foot hole through the rear granite wall of the defile!

General Tokugawa stood frozen for two heartbeats, the center of his lacquered breastplate hollowed out and his Dantian shattered into dust. Blood spilled from his lips as his knees hit the snow, and the feared Iron Demon of the Rising Sun Empire pitched forward face-first onto the frozen rock, dead before his cheek touched the ground.

All around the White-Pine Mountain Defile, the remnants of the “Blood-Flame Demon Array” dissolved into harmless red sparks.

In less than fifteen minutes from the moment the ambush began, General Tokugawa, two Half-Step Martial Emperor elders, and twenty-three Martial King commanders and assassins of the Rising Sun Empire had been wiped off the board—either dead in the snow or sealed unconscious inside blocks of absolute-zero ice for Cui Yulan’s soldiers to collect as prisoners of war!

With a wave of his hand, Alaric signaled Professor Lilliana Valtor, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, Grand Elder Yun Lan, and Queen Cai Wei. The four women offered a graceful, silent bow toward their Master and stepped backward into their shimmering Recall Anchor rifts, vanishing from the mountain pass before the silver fog concealing the outer edges of the defile lifted.

As the white mist parted, General Cui Hao, Commander Jin, and the surviving Violet Thunder guards blinked their eyes in dazed shock, seeing General Tokugawa lying dead with his shattered katana in the center of the ravine and Commander Honda Tadakatsu, Commander Hattori Hanzo, and Commander Sakakibara lying broken and bound in ice around them!

Yet Cui Yulan was not looking at General Tokugawa’s corpse, nor was she looking at the captured Rising Sun commanders.

Having stood five paces behind Alaric inside the clear center of the ward throughout the entire clash, Cui Yulan stared at Alaric as he turned around in his simple, unruffled gray linen robes.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs so hard she felt dizzy.

He was not a humble Master Mage healer. He was a peerless Peak Archmage who commanded elemental laws, spatial dimensions, and four terrifying Arch-level women with a flick of his finger—and when General Tokugawa had launched a suicidal ambush to capture her, Alaric had stepped out in front of her without a moment’s hesitation and obliterated the entire high command of the Rising Sun Empire just to keep a single hair on her head from being touched!

When Alaric walked up to her and reached out to brush a flake of snow from her cheek with his warm fingers, Cui Yulan’s legs felt almost weak beneath her violet armor. She caught his hand in both of hers, pressing his warm palm tight against her cheek as she looked up into his ruby eyes with naked, breathless worship and deep, overflowing affection.

“You really hid the heavens itself beneath those gray robes, Alaric…” Cui Yulan whispered so only he could hear, her voice trembling with emotion and her silver eyes shining like melted stars. “You ended the entire war so quickly… for me.”

“I told you, Yulan,” Alaric murmured with a low, intimate smile, his thumb stroking her flushed cheek before he released her hand so her approaching brother would not see, “that I had an appointment I didn’t wish to delay any longer.”

What neither Cui Yulan nor Alaric noticed in that moment was that half a mile up on the jagged, wind-swept ledge of Eagle-Beak Crag overhanging the northern rim of the defile, a man in a mud-stained mercenary cloak was lying flat in the snow behind a boulder, staring down at the ravine as if he had just been struck by nine bolts of heavenly lightning.

It was Corbin.

An hour earlier, while trailing a lone shinobi signal-runner up the northern goat tracks, Corbin had seen the crimson dome of General Tokugawa’s “Blood-Flame Demon Array” seal the White-Pine Mountain Defile below.

Sensing the massive collision of high-tier energies inside that sealed dome—and suspecting that the camp’s hidden mastermind might finally be forced to act to save the Imperial Consort—Corbin had bitten the bullet and spent 50,000 of his hard-earned 84,000 System Points to activate his system’s supreme “Omni-Dimensional Mana-Analysis Engine”!

For ten minutes, the golden scanning beam of his system had drilled through the outer spatial membrane of the defile.

And at the exact instant Alaric caught General Tokugawa’s katana bare-handed—unleashing his Peak Archmage spatial-elemental magic while circulating that brief, internal pulse of his Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion essence through his arm—Corbin’s system interface had exploded with blinding, flashing crimson alerts!

[System Alert: Omni-Dimensional Mana-Analysis Complete!]

[Detected Target Energy Profile: Peak Archmage Spatial-Elemental Mana Core + Mutated Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion Essence (Synthesized from Azure Spirit Lion & Siphoned Nine-Heavens Violet-Gold Suanni Bloodline)!]

[CRITICAL MATCH: 100.0% Correlation with the Unknown Void Entity from the Catacomb!]

[Target Identity Confirmed: Master Alaric.]

Lying in the freezing snow atop Eagle-Beak Crag, Corbin stared at those three lines of crimson text until blood leaked from his bitten gums.

His hands shook so violently that his fingernails tore deep gouges into the granite boulder beneath him.

“Master… Alaric?!” Corbin rasped, his voice a choked, silent shriek in the howling mountain wind as two months of confusion, humiliation, and torture clicked together into a single, horrifying picture. “The gray-robed physician?! The polite, soft-spoken healer?!”

It had been him all along!

In the catacombs beneath Iron-Cloud Fortress, it was that gray-robed physician who had stepped out of a spatial rift to steal the final blow on the Abyssal Bone Demon Emperor and ruin Corbin’s quest!

Inside the pitch-black void pocket, it was that gray-robed physician who had mimicked Corbin’s voice, blinded Cui Yulan, fucked her for three straight days to siphon her Nine-Heavens Violet-Gold Suanni bloodline, and planted the stolen bloodline aura on Corbin’s chest to frame him as a rapist before the entire continent!

Every single ounce of blood in Corbin’s body boiled with a hatred so intense he nearly leaped off the four-hundred-foot crag with his greatsword drawn to charge straight down into the defile and scream the truth at the top of his lungs!

Yet just as Corbin’s muscles coiled to jump, his eyes dropped to the clearing fog at the bottom of the defile.

Down there, standing beside the corpse of General Tokugawa, the proud, untouchable Noble Consort Cui Yulan—the woman who wanted to skin Corbin alive—was holding Alaric’s hand against her cheek, gazing up at the gray-robed physician with tender, misty-eyed devotion and complete trust!

Corbin froze on the ledge, a bucket of ice water seeming to pour over his raging brain.

“Wait…” Corbin breathed, his chest heaving as cold, survival-honed calculation forced his suicidal rage back down. “If I jump down there right now disguised as a mercenary lieutenant—or even if I tear off my disguise as this Mo Chen and reveal myself as Corbin—and shout that Physician Alaric is the one who violated her in the void pocket and stole her bloodline… what will happen?”

He looked at Cui Yulan’s worshipful expression as she walked beside Alaric, and he looked at General Cui Hao and Commander Jin bowing down to the knees in front of Cui Yulan and Alaric to thank them for saving their lives.

“She won’t believe a single word out of my mouth!” Corbin realized, his teeth grinding together until they ached. “To Cui Yulan, I am the filthy monster she saw when her bloodline had been stolen, while Alaric is the gentle healer who cured her meridians, saved her brother from poison, shielded her in the Sunken Fortress, and just killed General Tokugawa for her! If I accuse him without undeniable, physical proof that strips away his bloodline concealment in front of her eyes, Cui Yulan herself will impale me on her thunder-lance before Alaric even has to lift a finger!”

Worse still, Corbin had just seen Alaric’s true combat power and the four terrifying women answering his summons. Even with 34,000 System Points left in his account, charging into a one-on-five fight in an isolated mountain pass would be suicide.

Corbin slowly pulled himself backward into the shadows of the snowy crag, his eyes burning like twin coals in the dark.

“Thirty-four thousand points left…” Corbin whispered as he slipped silently down the back slope of the mountain before the scouts could spot his tracks. “In five days, once the Iron-Cloud Citadel falls, First Prince Huang Wei will hold a grand victory feast in the central hall of Azure Fall City with every general, every royal guard, and all three Imperial Consorts present. With thirty-four thousand points, I can purchase an ‘Ancient Bloodline-Mirroring Soul Stone’ and a ‘Void-Echo Recording Crystal’ from the System Store! I will record the exact Suanni bloodline frequency hiding inside that bastard’s chest and expose him in front of Cui Yulan, First Prince Huang Wei, and the entire army at the victory banquet!”

Down in the White-Pine Mountain Defile, oblivious to the rat scurrying away down the northern snowdrifts, General Cui Hao and Commander Jin quickly bound the frozen bodies of Commander Honda Tadakatsu, Commander Hattori Hanzo, and Commander Sakakibara onto pack-sleds and carried the headless banner of General Tokugawa back down the mountain road toward Azure Fall City.

In keeping with Alaric’s instructions, General Cui Hao and Commander Jin reported to the camp that Cui Yulan had triggered an ancient lightning-and-elemental trap scroll prepared by Master Alaric and Imperial Consort Xian inside the defile, slaying General Tokugawa when he walked into the ambush.

With General Tokugawa dead and his entire upper command captured in a single afternoon, the eastern border war collapsed like a house of cards over the next five days.

On the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth days, when General Cui Hao’s soldiers hoisted General Tokugawa’s shattered black katana and war helm on a pole at the base of the Serpent’s Spine Ladder and catapulted loaves of hot bread onto the lower steps, the starving, freezing samurai inside the Iron-Cloud Citadel threw down their weapons by the thousands.

By the twenty-eighth day, the last remnants of the Rising Sun garrison who refused to surrender had fled eastward through the blinding blizzards back toward the coast, and the dragon banners of the Celestial Dragon Empire were raised atop the highest watchtower of the Iron-Cloud Citadel and across all five iron-rich mountain passes.

On the twenty-ninth and thirtieth days, First Prince Huang Wei rode around Azure Fall City in his golden chariot from morning till night, sending off twenty express hawks and relay riders toward the Imperial Capital with glowing victory dispatches claiming that his unmatched strategic genius had wiped out General Tokugawa Ieyasu’s hundred-thousand-man invasion and reclaimed the entire northeastern border without losing a single city.

And as night fell on the thirtieth day—marking the victorious end of the campaign while lanterns and bonfires lit up the streets of Azure Fall City for the grand victory banquet scheduled for the following evening—the inner courtyard of Alaric’s private residence in the city’s upper quarter was quiet, warm, and wrapped inside his “Sound-Severed Void Ward”.

Inside the spacious bedchamber, two bronze braziers burned aged spirit-sandalwood, filling the room with the sweet, rich aroma that had accompanied every night of the campaign.

A light knock sounded at the inner wooden door.

Alaric, dressed in a loose black silk robe open at the collar, walked over and drew the door open.

Standing on the threshold was Cui Yulan.

Her brother General Cui Hao was safe and honored, the Cui Clan’s northern legions were redeemed, Azure Fall City was reclaimed, and General Tokugawa’s head rested in a salted box ready for the capital.

Tonight, there were no dark violet armor plates, no war maps, and no burdens left on her shoulders.

Fresh from a scented bath, with her long dark hair cascading loose and damp down past her narrow waist, Cui Yulan wore only a sheer, floor-length gown of violet mist-silk beneath a white fox-fur cloak. Even before she unfastened the cloak, the outlines of her massive, firm breasts, her flat stomach, and the lush flare of her hips and round buttocks were clearly visible through the translucent violet silk.

As Alaric closed and bolted the door behind her, Cui Yulan reached up with slender, steady fingers, unclasped the white fox-fur cloak from her shoulders, and let it slide down onto the carpet at her feet.

Her silver eyes met his glowing ruby gaze in the warm amber light of the sandalwood braziers—shining with open love, breathless anticipation, and complete, conscious devotion.

“The war is over, Alaric,” Cui Yulan whispered, stepping forward until the sheer violet silk covering her massive breasts brushed lightly against his chest. “Azure Fall City is ours, my family is safe… and tonight, I have come to keep my promise to you.”