Chapter 486 Severed Thread

The shard shot out of the cage with the speed of a bullet.

It bypassed Jiu Zui’s defenses and Yan Zhaoge’s kinetic shield, striking Lin Ji’an directly in the center of her chest.

THWACK!

The impact was devastating. It didn’t pierce her heart; he would never allow that, but it drove deeply into the plexus of her newly formed Body Fusion meridians.

The cold exploded outward from the impact site, instantly and violently freezing her spiritual pathways. The Heart Fire illuminating her cast-iron spatula sputtered and died.

Her muscles locked up, paralyzed by frostbite spreading through her nervous system.

Ji’an gasped, her eyes flying wide in shock. The spatula slipped from her numb fingers, clattering to the floor.

She collapsed to her knees on the glass, clutching her chest, staring up at the cage in disbelief.

"W-Wangchen?" she choked out, a thin trail of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, her silver-flecked eyes wide with a betrayal that defied human articulation.

He had struck her.

Her Ice Demon.

Her fiercely loyal, overprotective dog had just put a weapon through her chest.

Jiu Zui roared, dropping to his knees beside her, his hands hovering over the ice shard, terrified to pull it out lest he shatter her frozen meridians. "Brat! Hang on! I’ve got you!"

Yan Zhaoge took a step forward, his amber eyes blazing with fury, his starmetal pipe igniting with a supernova of heat. "You feral, ungrateful bastard! You actually struck her?!"

Wangchen did not look at the Sovereigns.

He looked down at Ji’an, forcing every single ounce of his ability to maintain the cold, dead, unfamiliar sneer on his face.

"You are a fool, Lin Ji’an," Wangchen said.

His voice was a razor blade drawn across glass.

It was so cold, so devoid of the obsessive, velvety warmth she knew, that it felt like a stranger was speaking through his mouth.

"You truly believed my devotion was real?" Wangchen mocked, his upper lip curling in disgust. "You believed the supreme authority of the Heavens could be tethered to a loud, uncultured, grease-stained cook?"

Ji’an knelt on the floor, shivering violently from the ice in her chest, staring up at him as if the sky had just turned black.

"I was weak," Wangchen lied, the words tasting like ash and bile in his throat, but he forced them out with ruthless precision. "I was trapped in a mortal vessel, unaware of my true lineage. I required a shield, the protection of the Apex Anomaly, to survive the crucible of the orthodox sects. Your overwhelming power, your tyrannical nature... You were a convenient, highly effective bodyguard."

He looked at her with a gaze so flat, so indifferent, it was like he was examining an insignificant insect that had accidentally crawled across his pristine white boots.

"But now?" Wangchen sneered, gesturing slightly to the High Council standing below him. "Now I know what I am. The supreme power of the Highest Realm has been served to me on a silver platter. I am invincible. I am a god."

He summoned his remaining Qi, forcing the ethereal, glowing crimson line of the Red Thread of Fate to materialise into the physical realm. The thread stretched taut between his bleeding wrist and Ji’an’s trembling arm.

"I do not need you anymore, mortal," Wangchen stated, his voice echoing with final, devastating cruelty. "You have served your purpose. And now, I discard you, just as one discards a used, filthy rag."

With a brutal, vicious swipe of his bleeding hand, Wangchen summoned a blade of frost and slashed directly across the Red Thread.

But he did not sever the bond from the center.

He severed it exclusively from his own side.

The magical tether violently snapped.

The connection to his soul was amputated. But the severed cord, a glowing, ragged, bleeding length of crimson light, snapped back and wrapped itself around Ji’an’s wrist, a magical scar of the bond she still possessed.

The moment the thread was cut, the celestial chains binding Wangchen dissolved.

The cage vanished.

Wangchen floated down from the ceiling, landing gracefully on the cosmic glass floor amidst the ranks of the Star-Seers.

The golden, blinding light of Immediate Ascension began to cascade down from the spinning astrolabe rings, bathing him in a pillar of divine, celestial radiance. The ascension protocols were initiating.

The Heavens were reclaiming their Prosecutor.

"You bastard!" Jiu Zui screamed, his face twisting in rage. The Sovereign of the Drunken Peak abandoned his attempt to heal Ji’an, gripping his silver sword and lunging toward the ascension pillar. "I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL RIP YOUR GODHOOD OUT THROUGH YOUR THROAT!"

Yan Zhaoge roared simultaneously, abandoning his lazy, cynical detachment.

The Overtime Boss unleashed a swirling torrent of hellfire, blasting it directly at the ascending Ice Demon, furious on behalf of the girl who had just been shattered before his eyes.

But the ascension pillar was absolute.

The divine light effortlessly repelled Jiu Zui’s silver blade, throwing the drunkard backward across the glass. It absorbed Yan Zhaoge’s hellfire as if it were a mere spark, neutralising the wrath of the two most powerful Sovereigns in the Azure Empire.

Wangchen stood in the pillar of light.

His wounds were instantly healing. His torn white robes were transmuting into the heavy, starlight-woven garments of a celestial deity.

He did not look at the furious Sovereigns.

He turned his head one last time, his dead, cold ruby eyes falling upon Lin Ji’an.

She was still kneeling on the floor. She hadn’t moved or screamed.

The ice shard was still lodged in her chest, freezing her blood, but it was nothing compared to the annihilation of her soul.

She just stared at him.

Her silver-flecked eyes were wide, empty, and completely devoid of light.

He turned his back on her, facing the High Council.

"The Prosecutor returns," the Head of the Tower announced, bowing deeply.

The pillar of light flared, blinding the entire chamber.

And with a sound like a thunderclap, Xie Wangchen, the Sovereign of the Eternal Cloud Peak, the Ice Demon, her prep cook... vanished completely, ascending to the Highest Realm.

The chamber was plunged into an eerie, echoing silence.

The heavy, suffocating pressure of the High Council began to recede. The bureaucratic auditors had achieved their goal.

The anomaly was neutralized, the thread was severed, and the Prosecutor was reclaimed.

They turned to leave, dissolving back into the swirling vortex of dark energy.

But the cruelty of the Heavens is never truly satisfied.

As the final ranks of the lesser Seers filed into the vortex, two hooded figures lingered at the rear.

They looked at the kneeling, paralysed anomaly and the furious, distracted Sovereigns who were currently picking themselves up off the floor.

The Heavens had promised her life, an amnesty.

But they had not promised her mobility.

If she could walk, she could climb the Tower again. If she could walk, she could cause more chronological friction.

The bureaucrats hated loose ends.

The two Seers raised their hands as two invisible lances of pure Qi pressure shot out from their sleeves, striking with the silence of a vacuum.

They bypassed Ji’an’s frozen, disabled meridians, slamming directly into the back of Ji’an’s knees.

CRACK!

The sickening, wet sound of bone and cartilage shattering echoed loudly in the quiet chamber.

It wasn’t a clean break.

It was a purposeful, malicious breaking of her kneecaps and the surrounding spiritual pathways. It was a wound to be permanently irreparable.

They crippled her, ensuring that the Apex Anomaly would never, ever crawl back up the mountain to challenge the stars again.

Ji’an pitched forward, her ruined legs collapsing beneath her. She hit the glass floor hard, her cheek pressing against the cold, reflective surface.

The two Seers lowered their hands and stepped into the vortex, vanishing into the dark, leaving the broken pieces behind.

"JI’AN!" Jiu Zui screamed, the sound tearing from his throat in a wail of terror.

He scrambled across the glass, throwing his sword aside, falling to his knees until he reached her. He grabbed her shoulders, desperately trying to turn her over.

Yan Zhaoge was there a fraction of a second later.

The Overtime Boss dropped to his knees on her other side, his hands glowing with restorative thermal energy. He didn’t care about his silk robes.

He didn’t care about his dignity as he grabbed the ice shard lodged in her chest.