“Lingxiao, how’s our dear brother—storm or calm?”

Seeing Lingxiao return, Lingsaki rushed over like wind fluttering a curtain.

“Luckily I made it in time, no grave injuries. Before I left, I gave dear brother some Holy Healing Fruit. It should steady the tide...” Lingxiao’s voice wavered like thin ice. “That woman, Lixin, is absurdly strong. She’s absolutely at Overdeity Level. My full-power Aurora: Sacred Ward only barely stopped a casual flick of her hand.”

“Overdeity Level?! Even as a Sword Wielder, he’d be a reed in a typhoon!”

Anxiety pressed on Lingsaki like low thunder. Lixin might outstrip the fourteen Divine experts they fought combined.

“So we end this fast, then rush to help dear brother.”

Lingxiao swept out a wide defense spell, a pale wall in rain, and caught the Dark Demon’s arrow storm. Resolve burned in her eyes like lanterns in fog. “Those ten beastmen are held by Lixue at full burn. We finish the four Dark Demon now. This Law Domain is a nettlefield.”

“Mm. We’ll use our domain too.”

The Dual Daynight Tomes were special as mirrored moons. Only a fused domain could bloom fully. Alone, each of theirs was half-carved jade. Together, it became whole.

The sky split like silk—sun rose on one edge while night spilled on the other. Their Law Domain blanketed Dark Demon’s field like tide over sand.

“What’s happening?! Those two little brats’ domain is pressing ours?”

“Their strength looks only early Divine. How can dawn overturn dusk?”

“Just initial-stage Divine domain casters—no, the books in their hands reek of the ancient!”

“Are you stupid? Mizumi Clan relics don’t bow to common sense. Pump the field! Don’t lose, even if our bones groan!”

Their surprise snapped into frenzy. Magic flared off them like wildfire and fed their Law Domain without end.

“Hmph. Now you react? Too late.”

They traded a look. Two tomes flipped to the same leaf like twins turning a page.

“Law Domain—Daynight Celestial Realm.”

…

Stuffed with Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine that healed like spring rain, Lixue felt as if she stood in the Palace of Ice Crystal. She cast sword arts like snowfall, no fear of cost.

Facing ten Divine beastmen, she reversed the tide like a river breaking a dam. No longer pressed, she pinned them instead.

That was the edge of a special Sword Domain—Heavenly Snow Dance Burial. It amplified Lixue’s personal strength to the brink.

“Dance Bloom: Snowfall.”

She stepped in air like a swan threading clouds, slipping past surging strikes. Her twin blades sang. She tugged down a storm of lovely snow, each flake a blade, each sparkle a cut. The beastmen’s hides bloomed with shallow wounds like scratched bark.

“So annoying! That yellow-haired brat won’t come down. How do we fight?”

Saikusa snarled, dodging slashes, glaring upward like a wolf howling at the moon. Even at Divine, most beastmen couldn’t fly.

In truth, they excelled at close-quarters grappling, like mountains moving. At range, they fumbled like bears swatting bees.

Aside from winged eaglefolk, sky-lion clans, unicorn tribes, the rest were the same. Bodies like iron, strength beyond measure, yet hands made for grappling, not reaching. It was a breed’s flaw.

“Everyone, release the Force Domain with me! So many of us, and we can’t rip one yellow-haired girl? Shame to the clan!”

“About time!”

At Divine, beastmen could condense a Force Domain, heavy as a storm, stackable like stones.

Soon an invisible field weighed over everything like wet sand. Lixue felt her body sink; gravity clutched like hands from the earth, dragging her down.

Ten Divine beastmen stacked their Force Domain. The effect was no joke. Even with Heavenly Snow Dance Burial as a cloak, Lixue couldn’t shake free.

Within that field, staying aloft was like swimming in tar. No choice. Lingering would burn stamina like dry leaves.

She rode gravity like a hawk stooping and dropped a slash toward the two chieftains, Vekza and Saikusa.

“Polar Snow: Descent.”

“Wha—agh!”

“Damn it!”

She was too fast, lightning under snow. By the time they felt the chill, deep wounds had already opened like red seams. Blood ran. They stared at Lixue’s cold face like prey facing winter.

“What are you all standing for? Get her! Today we tear this yellow-haired brat to pieces!”

“As you wish. I’ll fight you on the ground.”

Her figure vanished. She became ribbons of sword-light flashing like fireflies. But the beastmen surged into frenzy, power shooting up like storm-tide. They blocked with ease and countered hard.

Lixue treated their strikes like hail. What she could dodge, she slipped past like water. What she couldn’t, she broke clean with a counter-cut.

In raw force, she was a willow before oxen. In speed, she was the arrow outracing thunder. And she could swallow an elixir any time, restoring her body to peak like dawn washing dark. That erased numbers, since Vekza and Saikusa weren’t far above her.

“Blizzard: Ice Fracture.”

She sliced a wolf elder’s weapon, and Ice Illusion Moon burst with ice-blue light, cold winds coiling. She chased in, a slash that sealed like frost.

“You dare!”

Elders lunged like a pack, attacks roaring like boars. Lixue didn’t stop. The instant she felled the wolf elder, she turned and let her twin blades whirl.

“Blizzard: Rend Sky.”

She blocked everything for a heartbeat, then slipped away on Mirror Calm Water steps, smooth as glass. Unluckily, she ran into Vekza and Saikusa again. They pounced like tigers.

But strength means nothing if speed is a ghost. In Mirror Calm Water, and with Heavenly Snow Dance Burial at full swell, her speed and senses eclipsed them like noon over candles.

She unraveled their strikes like thread and cast wide-area sword arts as she pleased, rain over fields. When the burn rose, she took an elixir, and her state snapped back like a bowstring. It made Vekza, Saikusa, and the elders almost cough blood.

When power is close, Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine flips the board like a gust. And Ice Illusion Moon’s edge was unstoppable, a glacier’s bite.

The beastmen had no elixirs, no high-grade weapons. Their clans held divine artifacts, true, but as ancestral treasures they dared not draw them. Brute strength alone couldn’t dent Lixue, a blade in winter.

“Why can’t so many of us beat one yellow-haired brat?”

“Are Sword Wielders this heaven-defying?! Damn it, all out!”

Led by Saikusa and Vekza, every beastman readied their strongest arts, desperate as candles in wind.

“Time to end it. The Emperor’s side feels wrong...”

She murmured, and in the sky gathered a flood of icy Sword Aura, weaving it into countless feather-shaped, transparent short swords. They filled the heavens like a frosted forest.

“Ice Moon Feather.”

Like gale, like downpour, blades poured and hammered their formation, shattering their preparations. They pivoted to defense, panic fluttering. A few beastmen ignored wounds and charged like bulls.

“Ice Moon Scatter.”

The falling blades broke from straight lines and fanned out wildly, a storm turning sideways. The first unlucky were those charging headlong.

“Why! We have numbers, we have strength, yet we can’t beat that yellow-haired girl!”

One elder after another toppled like trees in snow. Saikusa’s voice cracked, eyes fixed on Lixue like a man staring at an avalanche.

“Is this the day my clan dies?!”

Vekza crushed short swords in bleeding fists, not feeling the red drip pooling like petals.

“You shouldn’t have joined Dark Demon against the Mizumi Clan.”

Lixue’s eyes held no mercy, winter-hard. The tiger and wolf clans chose this with eyes open. She didn’t know Mizumi’s full terror, but the Central Continent’s resources lay in Mizumi’s palm like pearls in a box. That alone says enough. Her reversal today rode Mizumi’s “resources” too—the heap of Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine Lingxiao pressed into her hands.

And behind Mizumi stood Xinuo, a mountain higher than her teacher, FrostyLily Dream. Who would dare challenge Mizumi? To Lixue, Dark Demon’s plan was idiocy carved in ice.

Their morale sagged like wet banners. The Force Domain weakened like fog thinning. Lixue struck to break it.

“Ice Moon Pierce.”

She became a razor of light slicing the Force Domain end to end, shedding gravity’s shackles and soaring back up like a gull.

“No! We can’t give up!”

“...Urgh! Has the tiger clan’s fate guttered out?”

The two chieftains refused to kneel. But every elder lay wounded, struggling even to rise, like reeds in frost. Only Saikusa and Vekza still had flickers of fight. It wasn’t enough.

“It’s over. Ice Illusion Moon, Second Form— Icemoon Bow.”