Fulin brushed him aside like dust off a sleeve—a knight from the Heavenly Spirit Empire’s Strategic Bureau.

The Strategic Bureau was a shadow unit, a special-ops blade that slipped behind enemy lines.

So nearly every Imperial Knight in its ranks was elite among elites, like tempered steel pulled from white-hot flame.

The man Fulin felled wasn't just any Earth Rank Knight; he was near the peak, clad in the empire’s finest steel and leather, tempered by storms of close calls.

Yet that mountain of a fighter toppled before a mysterious, breathtaking girl of the Blood Clan, like a pine cut by a silent moonlit blade.

Worse, she did it with a single spell, a lazy flick like dew shaken from a leaf—one breath, and he was gone.

“This—this can’t be!” Almost all of them flinched back a step, as if a wave slapped the shore, their lips spilling stunned whispers.

Heh-heh. Fulin smiled, shy on the surface, like a night lily opening under moonlight—so alluring it cut like ice, a cruel bloom that made spines shiver.

A few heartbeats later, the remaining four steadied themselves like reeds in wind. Their leader, a Sky Rank Knight, leveled his blade at Fulin and shouted, “For the Empire, for the Light Deity, no matter what you are, we end you here!”

He hurled the challenge like a spear and led the other three in a rolling, wave-like assault.

“Take this!” The first to move was an Earth Rank Knight, lunging like a gray wolf out of snow.

He’d seen the previous Earth Knight die like a torch snuffed by wind, so caution gripped him like frost.

He slashed out a Battle Aura wave, a crescent like cold water. Fulin slipped aside like a shadow. He closed the distance, yet kept within the two mages’ cover, a tight orbit like moons around a planet. He braced for that sudden flame again, hoping their spells could blunt the blaze. However—

“Skyfire Surge.”

The same move, the same result—like a script the storm refused to change.

Fulin moved, and a pillar of ravenous flame roared up like a volcano. The Earth Rank Knight was hurled away like a leaf in a gale.

The two mages’ wards kept him from the core of the blaze, a thin raincoat in a monsoon. The blast still broke him like brittle clay.

“Three of you remain.” As he hit the ground and couldn’t move, Fulin’s voice fell like frost on stone.

“You—you...!” The Sky Rank commander ground his teeth, anger boiling like oil. From a youthful, stunning Blood Clan girl, her taunt stung like salt on a wound.

Annoyance aside, doubt coiled like smoke. He flicked a glance at the fallen Earth Rank Knight, then snapped at the two Celestial Race mages, “Why didn’t you block that spell?”

“Captain, that didn’t look like a spell!” The answer popped out like a cork.

If it wasn’t a spell, then spell-wards were useless, like nets cast on stone. With that in mind...

“Then she’s a Night Disciple or a dark priest,” the captain said, words clipped like knife-cuts. “Use the Light Deity’s sacred arts, now!”

“Understood!” The reply snapped like a banner in wind.

Mages in the Strategic Bureau were high-grade, at least adept with sixth-tier spells, and priests of the Light Deity besides—hands that cast both arcane and divine, like twin rivers.

One mage wrapped himself in platinum light, a halo like dawn on snow, and chanted, “Great Light Deity, on this unclean earth, bring down Your hammer of judgment!”

It was Holy Censure, the Light Deity’s own power, a trump like thunder kept in a fist. It could one-shot even dark priests under the Earth Mother’s blessing, twice a day at most.

He leveled his staff at Fulin. Holy radiance fell like a sunbeam turned hammer, and he pictured her reduced to ash. But—

“Counterspell—Soul-Devouring Serpent.” Fulin named the answer in her heart, a whisper like steel under silk.

The light aiming for her unraveled into drifting motes, like pollen in air. A strange sigil bloomed under the caster’s feet, and before he could blink, a phantom serpent lunged up.

Swift as lightning, the phantom bit down. He had no counter, no breath—his life snapped like a twig in winter.

The other mage didn’t even understand yet. He gathered the body like a lost child and shook it. “Bains? Bains!” Then the scream tore out. “Damn it, even Bains is dead!”

Only two remained on the field. The captain, a Sky Rank Knight, gripped his sword with a tremor like a drawn bowstring. Maybe he wanted a clean death, so he asked, “Who in the stars are you? What’s your tie to the Blazing Fire Knight?”

Fulin’s voice was cold as well water. “I’m not obliged to answer you.”

She lifted her hand, palm forward, and gathered a quick-cast, lethal spell like frost condensing on glass.

“Ice Spear.” This time she chose the chill, an attack like a shard of winter.

The spear formed with a whoosh and flew without warning, like a white comet loosed from a bow.

“Danger!” The last mage shouted, leaping before his captain and stacking ward after ward like paper shields in rain. It was futile.

“Aah!” The ice spear punched through him like a stake through soft earth, and he fell.

The last man could only watch, power draining like sand. “Damn it!”

“Ice Spear.” Fulin loosed the quick spell again, cold biting like sleet.

The killing spear streaked forward again, a second comet across the night.

He was every inch a battle-seasoned Sky Rank Knight, and he twisted aside with hawk-fast motion to evade it.

Even as he dodged, he sprang into the air and countered with a long-range, explosive art. “Battle Aura Burst!”

He hurled a sphere of Battle Aura, a sun marble that streaked to Fulin and bloomed in an explosion.

At the instant it blew, Fulin thrust her hand forward. “Blood Curtain Barrier.” A dark, sturdy shield unfurled like a crimson umbrella.

Blast and barrier blossomed together, twin flowers in midair. Heat and shock slammed in, then split to both sides like a river parted by rock.

Seeing his sure-kill fail, the Sky Rank Knight hovered like a hawk and snarled, “You monster!”

“Say what you like.” Fulin didn’t care. She answered with a volley of ice spears, each one a shard of moonlight.

He twisted through the air in cutting arcs to dodge, and sent back several Battle Aura blasts like thunderbolts.

Ice and explosions traded notes in a jagged symphony, the battlefield lit like a storm-tossed sea.

After a few exchanges, the Bureau’s Sky Rank Knight began to labor, his breath choppy like waves against rocks.

He landed back on the Divine Warrior’s shoulder, boots thudding like stones. His voice went solemn. “I hadn’t planned to use the Divine Warrior’s true power, but to end a monster like you, don’t blame me for what comes.”

Fulin watched him posture, calm as still water, and watched him slip into the Divine Warrior’s cockpit like a shadow sliding into armor.

“Very well—” Fulin stepped into the Eternal War Armor, the ancient shell closing around her like dusk around a mountain.