“…Senior Wanxin, what do you mean by that?” Qianji’s words fell like ice chips, her calm a thin glaze over a tide of anger.
She came back to herself like a swimmer breaking the surface, then forced the fire down like slamming a lid on a furnace.
Her face stayed cold as stone, but her gaze was a drawn blade; if not for the gulf in power, she’d have challenged him on the spot.
The others bristled like cats in a storm, hackles up and sparks in their palms, and only Holy Voice’s grip kept Lingxiao and Lingsaki from hurling spells.
Emperor and Lixue held Origin Artifacts like shields in a tempest, yet no talisman wards off every falling star and stray wave.
They had only just gathered like a new hearth kindling to life, and now they were scattered like ash by a sudden wind.
Anger burned like dry pine, but they could read the mountain they faced; charging Wanxin now would be moths at a bonfire.
“Don’t look at your elders like that,” Wanxin said, tone light as a flicked fan, eyes heavy as dusk. “Mind your manners.”
He sighed and shook his head like a willow in a stale wind. “The Soulless Sanctuary is a hive of devices, and you were loud as thunder.”
“Trip a few traps, and what’s strange about a couple going off?” His impatience clicked like pebbles in a stream.
“Cut the nonsense,” Holy Voice shot back, her voice a whip crack in the cold air. “Anyone can see your hand in this.”
“If not, why did it break right when those two were found?” Her words slid like a knife between armor plates.
“Say what you want,” Wanxin muttered, shutting his eyes like a gate closing. “I can’t be bothered. If you’re smart, leave.”
He lowered his head and went still like a sealed idol, and Qianji’s crew could only seethe like coals under ash, with no air to burn.
“Qianji Sister, what do we do?” Lingxiao’s voice trembled like rain on silk. “Do we just stand here with empty hands?”
“Our dear big brother, Emperor, and Lixue got thrown who knows where,” Lingsaki said, worry rising like mist from a cold river.
“Yeah, and they vanished with those two,” she added, dread curling like smoke. “If they mean to hurt Emperor and Lixue…”
They looked ready to fly at the horizon like arrows loosed at dusk, desperate to chase a vanishing trail through night.
But it stayed a thought, a swallow against a storm; the Prime Realm is an ocean of stars, and two figures are a sunken needle.
If Wanxin did this, the landing ground won’t be simple; it’ll be a cave under the sea, a door behind another door.
You might never find it, even with a thread to follow; unless Wanxin grows a sudden mercy, which is winter plum in summer.
“We don’t need to panic over Emperor and Lixue,” Xinyin said, her voice a steady bell under wind.
“They carry Origin Artifacts like roots gripping rock, and their time in the Dragon Realm tempered them like steel in snow.”
“They might not beat a Law Realm head on, but self‑preservation is well within reach,” she said, sure as a lantern on a pier.
“Lixue can reach FrostyLily Dream, too,” she added, a faint gleam like frost. “And Wilsar and Molor will think twice after this.”
“That’s something,” Holy Voice breathed, her shoulders easing like thawing ice, then she looked to Wansheng and Wanling.
“No point butting heads with Wanxin like rams on a cliff,” she said. “We came, we learned, and those two are gone; what now?”
“Then rest,” Wansheng said, calm as a broad river. “Return to the Mizumi Clan and settle your next aim like setting a compass.”
“If you can’t shake the worry,” Wanling added, voice soft as moss, “ask the factions to watch for Emperor and Lixue.”
“But that’s a matter of fate,” he said, a hand lifted like a leaf. “Their place must be hidden deep, like a lantern in fog.”
“Alright, we’ll do that for now,” Qianji decided, her nod a falling petal. “Even world rulers can’t touch the Origin Realm without Xinuo.”
Staying here is sand through fingers; we can’t budge Wanxin, so better to turn away like clouds passing a mountain.
In the end, they agreed like strings finding the same note, and they left the Soulless Sanctuary, each to their own path.
Xinyin and Celia Maya would report to Saint Cole like couriers racing dusk, and Qianji with Holy Voice would bring the bad news to Mizumi.
So the matter of the Soulless Sanctuary lay to rest like a book closed at midnight, the ending sour as unripe fruit.
Lingxiao and Lingsaki were the most stricken, their moods a steady rain, since they were always at Emperor’s side like shadows at noon.
Qianji and Holy Voice felt the same leaden weight, and they returned to the Mizumi Clan with faces like overcast skies.
“Tsk, tsk,” a voice clicked, slick as oil on water. “In this sorry state, you still tilt your sword at Teacher Xinuo?”
When the others had gone, Lotus’s figure bled out of the gloom like ink in water before the prison, her tone all thorns.
“If I’m already ‘this sorry state,’” Wanxin rasped, sardonic as dry bark, “what’s the difference between obeying and offending?”
“Being well‑behaved won’t buy me freedom, will it—ugh?!” His face twisted like cloth wrung dry, breath tearing like paper.
Pain hit all at once, a storm of needles under skin, as if some unseen rack stretched him a notch beyond human.
“That won’t do,” Lotus said, shaking her head like a pitying statue without pity. “No matter what you do, freedom won’t return.”
Her eyes were winter moon, cold and distant; this was only the first note of her lesson, a prelude before the thunder.
“If there’s no hope, then whatever I—ahhh!” Wanxin’s scream ripped the dark like a torn banner, raw and piercing.
If his hands weren’t bound wide like a cruciform tree, he’d have curled on the floor like a boiled shrimp in agony.
“It’s all the same to me,” Lotus said, voice light as drifting snow. “You chose the thorns; don’t blame the briars.”
Perched on a branch like a night bird, she circled the prison and traced runes like frost, locking the seals tighter.
She deepened the seal’s draw on his Primordial Source like a leech set to an artery, the drain steady as a dark tide.
“…Please kill me,” Wanxin begged at last, a guttering candle in a draft, his life-breath thin as cobweb.
His hair seemed a shade grayer, his skin a page gone brittle, and his voice a whisper lost in a well.
“Death’s too cheap a price,” Lotus said, flat as slate. “And without Teacher Xinuo’s leave, I can’t end an Origin Realm life.”
“You’ll live on,” she added, each word a stone. “Clinging like ivy on a dead wall, and that’s that.”
Silence pooled like standing water. The cruelest fate is wanting death and being denied, forced to drink pain like bitter tea.
Forget the old saying about biding ten years; he’d been nailed here for ages like a butterfly in a case, and nothing would change.
“We’ll need to hide the Soulless Sanctuary better,” Lotus mused, eyes tilted to the dark like a stargazer. “People find it too easily.”
“Yes,” she said, as if to the night. “Let the Soulless Sanctuary sink forever to the seabed, and weave a veil to erase it from memory.”
She didn’t spare Wanxin a glance; her figure winked out like a snuffed lamp, leaving only the cold to keep him company.
“…Sigh.” The sound fell like a pebble into a bottomless pond, swallowed with barely a ripple.
In the pitch-dark lowest level, the prison pressed like a buried tomb, and with that helpless sigh, the whole Sanctuary began to fall.
It slid into the sea’s black throat without a sound, vanishing into the abyss like a stone swallowed by midnight.
