From the sky, Divine Blooms fell; petals crimson as a god’s blood, and a bleak chill spread like fog across a battlefield.

Yet Mapleleaf’s sword didn’t bite; the blade slid through the air like moonlight through mist, passing straight through Lingwen’s phantom body.

He hadn’t missed; after Mapleleaf flashed past like a hawk, Lingwen dropped to her knees, gasping like a fish on shore. No blood flowed, yet the exhaustion on her face lay like frost, proof the strike had landed.

“My sword severs delusion,” Mapleleaf said, sheathing his blade with a soft note like rain on steel. “Even if she blurred her body like smoke, she only bled off most of it. That cut still found her.”

Who understands the loneliness of One Slash, Ascend as an Immortal—the way a peak stands alone in snow? Who can fathom the Sword God’s smile—cold as a crescent over a field of graves?

Those are the two great currents of Other Shore sword arts, two rivers cutting stone. The solitude of One Slash stands at a height only a handful can breathe.

The Sword God’s Smile is merciless; when that blade leaves its scabbard, it drinks like a wolf at night. No one lives to study that smile.

The first school is famed, a banner in the wind. Its snow-silent loneliness forged an undefeated God Emperor; Emperor Luo rose like dawn and cast the other school in shadow. But shadow isn’t weakness; the Sword God lineage is strong—iron in ice.

Its blades are without feeling, winter-hard. Each draw means blood on stone, and beneath the Sword God’s smile lies a heart like a frozen lake. Few follow it; frost thins a forest.

Ouyang’s sword work is lousy—by his own campfire standards—yet even he saw Mapleleaf standing at that path’s far cliff. That earlier slash carried the taste of soaring, like a crane taking cloud.

“You punk, your knack for the sword…” Ouyang exhaled, his breath like steam in cold air. He hadn’t felt that snow-deep loneliness, but he had to admit Mapleleaf could sit at a masters’ table.

Mapleleaf grinned like a fox. “Can’t help it. Life’s lonely as falling snow… shame there’s a long road till I’m first under heaven with a sword.”

“First with a sword? You’ve got a long road indeed,” Ouyang said, voice flat as a blade. Luo’s sword had already stepped past his own riverbed; his edge had become its own mountain and left the old maps behind.

He’s the true first across the sword domain, a pole star over dark sea.

Their awe cooled, the two fixed on the woman before them. Her loss came clean as a cut bamboo. She hadn’t expected Mapleleaf to pivot from Ouyang like a shadow turning, and the terror of a legendary Ultimate Art did the rest.

The Other Shore’s Ultimate Arts once let its vassal clans sweep starfields like a prairie fire. Mapleleaf’s is legendary tier; same rank or not, his weight would crush her like a wave on rock. And Mapleleaf himself—his depth is a riddle coiled in fog.

So Lingwen’s defeat wasn’t unjust; it was a lesson written in wind. In truth, that loss saved her life. Had she kept a spark to resist, Ouyang—lurking like a knife in a sleeve—would’ve called the Heaven Departing Divine Sword and carved her clean.

Wounded by Mapleleaf, she could still breathe under rain. Cut by Ouyang, with that sword’s passive bane like night frost, Lingwen would be dead to the root, no revival in any dawn.

“Ahem. You lot—do you see the lay of the land yet?” Ouyang spoke by soul-voice, thoughts sliding like water straight into their minds.

See what? The three mortals stood like deer in torchlight, but Lingwen stiffened as if pricked by a thorn.

“Prisoners?” Her word dropped like a pebble in a well, and it woke the three youths. If even Lingwen—their sharpest spear—had fallen, their worth wasn’t a tenth of hers; they were driftwood in a flood.

That meant one thing: they were Mapleleaf’s and Ouyang’s captives. Realizing it, their faces blanched like paper. Yet the word adventure carries risk like flint in its grain. No trail stays smooth forever; they had known this at the first step.

After a heartbeat of daze, their expressions steadied like boats finding the current. Their hearts—who knew if they were as calm.

“Captives? With you bunch of weak chicks, what use are such spoils?” Ouyang flicked a hand at Senyue and the other two, as if shooing sparrows. Then he eyed Lingwen. “Her grade, we’ll barely take. If we weren’t short on hands, we wouldn’t bother.”

Arrogant—his words strutted like a rooster at dawn. Not only Senyue and the others, even Lingwen’s gaze changed; defiance burned like ember under ash. She was a Creator God; even weak, she wasn’t straw. Ouyang might not be much stronger, yet his mouth cut pride like a lash.

“Not convinced? This place is my turf,” Ouyang said, voice like thunder over stone. “You storm my yard, and we spare you by mercy. Now speak—the path you took in. We’ll send you back, and we won’t pursue it further.”

His tone made Lingwen frown, lines like knife marks. The others didn’t take it the same way.

Senyue snapped back like a cat with fur up. “Your turf? Get real. This is a lost plane, not your living room. I get it. You found a Void Smuggler Beast and want us gone so you can hog it.”

Ouyang couldn’t help a wry breath, like wind through reeds. Her imagination was a canyon.

“The Void Smuggler Beast…” The old name rang like a bell. Among Other Shore’s core, only we called it the Grass-Mud Horse, a crude nickname tossed around campfires. To vassals and outsiders, it was always the Void Smuggler Beast.

Thinking it through, that was its proper name; some scoundrel in the Other Shore had tagged it Grass-Mud Horse, and the joke spread like weeds. No wonder it took him a beat to link the names.

“Come to think of it, Moqi that guy carries its blood,” Ouyang muttered, thoughts tacking like a boat. Moqi—the tenth seat among the Demon Kings—Heart of Space, a serpent that tunneled through earth like a giant earthworm. Ouyang had sent him and that fat pig Dufei to the Divine Realm to steal ‘ore’.

He shook his head and came back to the moment, like a bird returning to its branch.

“Kid, if I say it’s my turf, it’s my turf,” Ouyang said, palm gathering a ball of lightning like a blue sun. Sparks crackled, and with his face gone feral like a storm mask, Senyue yelped and fell on her backside.

Territory? He didn’t need to prove a thing. This was the gods’ domain of the Other Shore, bedrock underfoot. Why should he answer to gatecrashers? At a word he’d swing fists; the three waking mortals clamped their mouths like clams, and the fourth—Senyang—foamed on the ground, speech lost to him.

Lingwen stayed cool as stone in shade. She leaned against a wall, too spent to rise, breath thin as thread. “You’re natives of this lost civilization?”

That earlier One-Slash-to-Ascend brilliance, Lingwen had felt it like sunrise. With that kind of weight, Ouyang and Mapleleaf might well be survivors of what was lost. She knew little of that civilization, but even a glimpse of its iceberg had shocked her sea-deep. With power she couldn’t oppose, Mapleleaf could be a native star.

“‘Natives’… you can think so. ‘Lost civilization’… lost fits,” Ouyang answered with a sigh like wind over graves. “So, please return the way you came. Given your attitude, we won’t push harder. If you’d wrecked relics here, we wouldn’t be talking this calmly.”

As he spoke, he sighed again, helpless as rain. In one sense, the Other Shore is a lost civilization, once a banner that made ten thousand domains kneel like grass in a gale. Now stray dogs and cats treat this place as a playground for dares.

He didn’t hate most of them; it was the traitors who salted the earth. They’d hacked the Other Shore’s defense web like moths in silk and let the riffraff slip through. Most so-called invaders didn’t know a thing; they only mistook a found passage for a ruin’s door.

“I understand. Thank you for your mercy,” Lingwen said, voice cool as a spring.

True or not, Ouyang’s tale mattered less than the stone-hard fact before her: she couldn’t match Mapleleaf. His One-Slash splendor had swept her thoughts clean like tide from sand. She was badly hurt, her strength a guttering candle; if other gods smelled it, they’d coil around her like vines.

And Ouyang stood there too, strength unknown, both men towers above her like peaks over a valley. That fact wouldn’t change with any prayer.