Chapter 612 - 383: Battle

The narrow, pitch-black corridors of the seventh floor groaned beneath an overwhelming, suffocating pressure.

Every breath of air was foul, tasting of old copper, volcanic ash, and the necrotic rot that wept from the walls.

The dark floor were slick with drops of Qian Yunxi’s blood, reflecting the faint, trembling glow of the holy sword held tightly in her white-knuckled grip.

Her breathing was ragged, her chest heaving in shallow, burning gasps that sent searing needles of pain through her cracked ribs.

The hideous, blackened scar running from her left temple down to her jawline throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic heat, gnawing at her soul sea.

Standing ten paces away was Qing Yan.

His robes hung in shredded, blood-crusted tatters, framing a posture twisted by delusion and malice.

The grey, curved scimitar in his right hand hummed with a soul-rending frequency, dripping drops of corrosive dark mist that hissed as they ate into the stone.

His pupils, completely dilated and engulfed in an oily, venomous film, locked onto her trembling legs with feverish, unhinged hunger.

"Don’t look at me like that, Yunxi," Qing Yan murmured, his voice cracking into a jagged, wet rasp that echoed off the damp stone. "You forced this. You chose the tyrant who will discard your ruined face the moment he sees you. But don’t worry... once I sever the tendons in your heels, once I pin your broken wings to the floor, you’ll see. You’ll finally understand who truly cherishes you."

Qian Yunxi did not offer him the dignity of an answer.

Her lips were pressed into a thin, unyielding line, fresh blood seeping from where she had bitten through her lower lip to keep her consciousness sharp.

Her left eye, framed by that hideous purple scar, remained cold and unblinking—an amber diamond reflecting pure, unsullied contempt.

"Don’t worry, Yunxi, I will definitely take care of you."

BOOM!

The air detonated behind Qing Yan’s boots as his Spirit Ascension cultivation erupted without restraint!

"Phantom Eclipse!" Qing Yan shrieked, his figure dissolving into three flickering, grey-tinted afterimages that tore through the narrow corridor!

The speed was terrifying.

Qian Yunxi, drained of ninety percent of her spiritual qi, her remaining right wing shattered and dragging limply across the ground, could not track the spatial distortion with her naked eyes.

Yet, she did not raise her guard to parry, and she did not even attempt to dodge.

Instead, with a fierce, reckless determination burning in her chest, she threw her head back and unlocked the final, deepest gate of her dantian!

HUUUUUUMMMMM!

She did not compress her remaining power into a razor-sharp blade, and she did not cast an armored ward over her exposed throat.

With everything she had left, she simply allowed her golden core to rupture outward in an uncontrolled, dazzling beacon of pure, unadulterated holy light!

Brilliant, incandescent solar radiance erupted from her pores like an exploding miniature star!

Blinding beams of white gold dawn punched through the shadows, illuminating every crack in the obsidian walls, turning the damp mist into sizzling white steam!

The light did not seek to pierce Qing Yan; it shot straight up into the vaulted ceiling, echoing down the infinite intersections of the labyrinth like a siren’s call across a stormy sea!

She knew she couldn’t win this fight.

Against an adversary possessing the crushing weight of the Spirit Ascension realm, armed with strange artifacts that can bend space he got from who knows where, a battered, crippled Nascent Soul cultivator had zero chance of victory.

Every clash of steel would only hasten the moment his blade severed her tendons.

So, what did she do?

Simple.

Earlier, during her brutal ascent through the lower six floors—from the fiery broadsword of Michael to the thunderous sentinels of the upper tiers—she had noticed an immutable rule governing this trial.

The guardians were not mindless automatons, but were sacred watchdogs attuned to the ancestral royal bloodline.

They were drawn irresistibly to the pure, unpolluted solar energy of the Six-Winged Divine lineage, descending upon any manifestation of royal light like moths to an open bonfire.

If she could not kill Qing Yan, she would summon the executioner of this maze to do it for her.

"What are you doing?!" Qing Yan’s furious roar tore through the brilliance, his grey blade flickered into reality bare inches from her left knee!

"Wasting your last breath on empty fireworks?! Do you think lighting up this ditch will save you?!"

CLANG!

Qian Yunxi twisted her hips, bringing the fuller of the holy sword down to deflect the blow.

The kinetic impact was catastrophic.

The shockwave shattered the bones in her left forearm with a sickening snap, forcing her to her knees as the stone fractured beneath her shins.

A fountain of fresh crimson sprayed from her mouth, splattering across Qing Yan’s manic, grinning face.

"Die! No... live! Live as my broken bird!" Qing Yan laughed, his face smeared with her blood, his left hand reaching out like a vice to seize her shattered collarbone while his grey blade reversed, aiming straight for the tendons behind her right ankle!

But, at that moment...

"Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the Lord hath spoken."

A voice.

It was not loud, yet it froze the marrow in their bones.

It was a sound woven from the grinding of celestial spheres, the singing of molten glass, and the cold, terrifying majesty of an absolute conceptual authority.

The air temperature in the corridor plunged to absolute zero in less than a heartbeat, followed instantly by a blistering, dry heat that made the stone walls crack and weep white ash.

The space around them began to fold, buckling inward like parchment caught in a furnace.

CRACK!

The ceiling sixty feet above them did not break; it simply ceased to exist, erased by a geometric tear in the fabric of the dimension!

Descending from the spatial rift was an entity that defied mortal comprehension—a creature ripped straight from the highest, most terrifying tiers of the ancient celestial hierarchy.

It was an Ophanim.

A colossal, spherical eye spanning three meters across, but the longer you look, the more it seem that it stretched to infinity.

Its pupil was burning with the cold, unblinking light of an ancient white dwarf star.

Sprouting from the rim of this titanic, burning eye were three pairs of magnificent, feathered wings—six wings of pure, blinding golden fire that beat against the air with concussive, deafening booms!

Interlocking around the colossal winged eye were four concentric, rotating gyroscopes of celestial brass—massive wheels within wheels that spun at dizzying, impossible angles!

And embedded into the surface of every single rotating brass ring were countless small, unblinking eyes—thousands of them, rolling in their sockets, weeping tears of pure, molten silver, staring down at the intruders with holy, merciless wrath!

"BE NOT AFRAID, FOR THE HOUR OF THY JUDGMENT IS AT HAND."

The thousands of eyes embedded in the spinning wheels blinked in unison!

BZZZZT!

From the central titanic eye, a focused lance of pure, reality-cleaving solar plasma ignited, aimed directly at Qian Yunxi!

The guardian recognized the presence of the royal bloodline, but in this final trial of the seventh floor, the mandate was absolute: the heir must prove worthy to inherit the throne of the Six Winged Emperor, or be cleansed into dust!

The beam of divine plasma screamed toward her exposed chest, carrying enough concentrated heat to vaporize an entire mountain peak!

Trapped on her knees, her forearm broken and her wings shattered, Qian Yunxi could only watch the descending dawn with wide, unblinking blue eyes.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!"

A feral, blood-curdling screech tore through the chamber!

Qing Yan’s face twisted into an expression of sheer, apocalyptic panic.

His obsession was poisonous, possessive, and utterly diseased, but in that sick, fractured mind, a single twisted rule reigned supreme.

He would cripple her. He would break her wings. He would lock her in a cage of shadows and force her to rely on him for the rest of eternity.

But he would never, ever allow anyone else to lay a hand upon her!

She was his treasure, his goddess, his sole purpose for breathing!

"System! Maximum barrier output! [Aegis of the Fallen Supreme]!" Qing Yan shrieked, his vocal cords tearing from the strain!

[Warning: Consuming 30% of Host’s remaining life essence!]

[Grand Spatial Aegis deployed!]

Qing Yan did not dodge. He lunged forward, throwing his entire body directly into the path of the descending solar lance!

A massive, hexagonal barrier of dark purple crystal materialized before his chest, clashing violently against the divine beam!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The collision produced a concussive shockwave that ripped the ancient walls apart!

The ceiling collapsed in colossal chunks of burning stone, and the floorboards split into jagged fissures spewing pale white smoke!

The heat was monstrous; the silk of Qing Yan’s robes burned away in an instant, the skin across his back blistering and turning black as the sheer kinetic force drove his feet six inches deep into the solid bedrock!

Blood gushed from his nose, his ears, and the corners of his eyes, but his teeth remained bared in a rabid, bared-fang snarl, his arms shaking violently as he held the purple barrier against the guardian’s wrath!

"She is mine!" Qing Yan howled, his voice breaking into that layered, monstrous double-frequency as the dark entity in his sea of consciousness raged against the heavens! "Not even God gets to touch her! YOU OVERGROWN PIECE OF SHIT!"

The guardian’s six wings flared with a concussive roar, the four concentric wheels spinning faster, generating a hurricane of golden fire that began crushing Qing Yan’s barrier downward!

Crack! Crack!

"Yunxi, run!" Qing Yan yelled over his shoulder, his voice frantic, laced with a terrifying blend of desperate love and psychotic fury. "Run into the inner maze! I’ll tear this monster apart! I’ll kill it, and then I’ll come find you! You can’t escape me! You will never escape me!"

Qian Yunxi didn’t wait for him to finish his ravings.

The moment the blinding glare of the clash had forced the guardian’s focus onto Qing Yan, she kicked off the fractured stone!

She ignored the searing agony in her shattered forearm, clamping her left arm tight against her broken ribs to keep her chest from caving in.

Dragging her dead right wing along the floor like a torn banner, she threw herself through a jagged fissure torn open by the explosion!

Her boots hammered against the rubble, scrambling over burning chunks of obsidian, turning blind corner after blind corner in a frantic, desperate sprint!

Behind her, the deafening thunder of battle shook the foundations of the seventh floor.

"THOU SHALT NOT BOW DOWN THYSELF TO THEM, NOR SERVE THEM!" the guardian’s booming, metallic voice echoed through the labyrinth, followed by the terrifying screech of spinning brass wheels shearing through stone!

"Die! Die! Die!" Qing Yan’s manic screams answered, accompanied by the concussive detonations of system skills, the hiss of corrosive dark mist, and the sound of flesh being ripped apart by divine solar fire.

Qian Yunxi didn’t look back.

Not once.

Every stride carried her further from the madman who had carved her face, further from the titanic eye that demanded her life.

Blood dripped steadily from her jaw, leaving a crimson trail across the cold, unyielding stone of the maze.

’Young master Haoran...’ she breathed within the silence of her soul, her vision blurring, her boots stumbling over the uneven slate. ’I’m coming. I’m almost there...’

*

*

*

On the lower levels.

The massive spiraling staircase leading from the fifth floor up toward the sixth and seventh tiers was bathed in an eerie, absolute silence.

The walls here were cracked and scorched, bearing the deep, violent scars of the previous guardians that Qian Yunxi and Qing Yan had fought so bitterly to overcome.

Yet for Haoran, such guardians were instantly slapped to death, and he continued his ascent without trouble.

But now, the atmosphere was frozen, purged of all residual hostility by an aura so vast, so heavy, and so chillingly absolute that even the ancient dust motes suspended in the air seemed afraid to drift.

Haoran did not seem to care about this and just ascended the stone steps in measured, unhurried strides.

His black and gold imperial dragon robes flowed around his ankles without catching a speck of grime from the blood-stained stone.

His hands remained clasped loosely behind his back, his golden hair framing a visage of pure, unblemished jade that looked completely untouched by the horrors of this ancient realm.

Beside him, Ling Luochen was practically running to keep pace with his casual walk, her fingers flying across her hovering system interface with manic energy.

"Young Master! Wait, there’s an update!" Ling Luochen shouted, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and excitement. "The system just registered a massive energy spike on the seventh floor! Sister Yunxi’s life-force dropped to critical levels, but thankfully, nothing bad happened to her."

Haoran’s expression did not shift by a fraction of a millimeter, his golden eyes remained fixed on the ascending gloom ahead, cold as the northern glaciers.

"How far?" he asked, his voice smooth, quiet, and carrying a resonance that made the air hum.

"We are approaching the threshold of the sixth floor’s transition gate," Ling Luochen answered rapidly, swiping a floating blue panel aside. "The spatial distortion from the clash above has destabilized the upper stairwell. There’s a localized space lock preventing normal ascension—"

Haoran did not wait for her to finish.

He raised his right hand, his fingers casually gathering into a loose, unhurried fist.

BOOM!

A concussive shockwave of pure conceptual force erupted from his knuckles!

The space-lock, the ancient stone archway of the sixth floor, and the colossal iron doors barring the way ahead were instantly pulverized into a cloud of fine grey powder!

The path was cleared, the trial was ignored, and the ancient rules of the Six Winged Emperor were treated like brittle glass beneath an iron boot.

"Keep walking, Luochen," Haoran said softly, stepping through the billowing dust without blinking. "If a dead emperor’s toys dare to touch what belongs to me, I will tear this tower down and turn this entire realm into kindling."