Sadly, Ling Xuewei’s strikes sliced the sky like lightning through mist, yet never touched that shadow of a foe.

Her spearwork cracked like thunder across a storm ridge, fast as a falling bolt. The blue‑haired woman slipped aside like a silver fish in a clear stream. Xuewei’s flurries left no scar, sweat sown on stone.

“Is that your all?” The blue‑haired mermaid’s voice fell like cool rain, edged with disappointment. “All charge, no roots. You skipped the soil of basics. You hold a Divine Artifact with storm in its bones, yet you draw not even half its power. It’s strange as winter blossoms—why did it choose you?”

Silence weighed on Xuewei like low thunderheads. Her face darkened like a sky before hail, and her grip chilled harder around the spear haft.

Dozens of blade‑lights bloomed overhead like cold comets. Each could’ve cleaved Edgar like a reed under frost. The air wavered from their fury, mirage heat on a desert noon. Only around the blue‑haired mermaid, space stayed flat as a still pond.

“Still wasting breath on hollow swings?” Her gaze was a knife in ice. “You won’t touch me.”

The Kuilan Priestess laced the air with her divine sense like a net of moonlight. Under Xuewei’s tangled, storm‑drunk assault, dodging was child’s play, a cat toying with a monkey on a leash.

“Enough.” Her palm swept out, wind cracking like a snapped banner. The distant strike caught Xuewei bare as a cliff in sudden rain, and nearly flattened her to the cloud.

“Kerlinveil Xuewei… you disappoint me.” Her words fell like ash. “I expected you might be weak, but not hollow. Strip that spear, and what remains? Next we meet, if you’re still a paper lantern in the wind, don’t blame me when I tear it. For now, sit and watch. The show at Starfate City will suit your taste.”

She breathed to the sky like a priest to tide. A giant phantom screen unfurled above them, a moon‑wide mirror showing Starfate City in cold light.

She moved to finish the knot, mana thinning like winter sap. She spun a barrier like spider silk across dawn, a seal meant to hold Kerlinveil Xuewei even if mountains cracked.

“Don’t… don’t take him from me…” Xuewei’s voice trembled like a reed in night wind. The once‑clear oriole tone had turned hoarse as sand, each word dragging like a wounded wing.

“Him? Sorry.” The mermaid’s eyes flickered like deep water. “He’s not the one you waited for, not anymore. And even if he were, today you couldn’t stop the tide.”

Xuewei bowed her head like a willow in rain. She hugged the long spear to her chest. Thin gray smoke unwound from her skin, threads of ash rising like ghost moths.

“Don’t… you’re not allowed to hurt my brother…” Her whisper was frost on iron. “I promised… Mother Yueyao… I’d guard him. No one—no one touches him.”

The gray mist thickened around her like a stormbank, staining the air like soot in snow. High above the world, no one knew its bite, but its chill matched the iceflame, winter to winter.

“Oh?” The blue‑haired mermaid’s languor burned off like fog under sun. Interest lit her like a drawn blade. Now she wasn’t anyone’s aunt; she was the Kuilan Priestess of the Flower of the Other Shore.

“So it begins?” Her smile was wild as a wolf under moon. “Show me, ‘Key’. Show me how far you’ve grown. Answer my expectation with thunder.”

She curled her right hand like a claw. Water elements swarmed to her like gulls to a tidebreak.

“Void made solid—Five Swords, Seven Rays!”

The gray mist around Xuewei moved like a living cloak. It wrapped her like night over stone. The blue‑haired woman’s strike rang hollow, rain on slate. A few flying swords brushed the gray and dulled at once, dead leaves in frost.

“I’m going to my brother.” Her voice floated from the fog like a bell in deep snow. “Stand aside… or die.” Cold dripped from each word, a reaper stepping from shadow, and the mermaid’s momentum faltered like wind against a cliff.

“Tempting offer.” She laughed like ice cracking. “But the answer stands: if you can, then pass me. To ask me not to bar you? Dream on.”

The water gathered thicker, a whirlpool around her spine. Her aura climbed like a tide under full moon. She was only an avatar, a candle from a distant flame, yet below True God she was a storm with no harbor.

For Xuewei, that gray mist was shield and fang, moonlight mail and serpent coil. Wrapped in it, she feared no ambush, no thorn in fog. She bent it to her will like the other bent water, wave answering wave.

That gray fog had the breath of hell, ash from a furnace under the earth.

“Come then!” The mermaid raised a spear‑like weapon, a river made iron. “Spend yourself. Let me see how strong hell has made you. The stronger you are, the darker the disaster that follows.”

Meanwhile, somewhere else—

“Haha… hahahahaha! Edgar is back!” His laughter rolled like a drum across night alleys. “Today—Vinoena Qianya, and that wretch Qingsheng Tangxue—I’ll spare none of you!”

“So then, partners of the Flower of the Other Shore, walk with me.” Edgar turned and flicked a hand toward a dark wedge of the city. His signal cut the air like a hawk’s cry.

The empty shadow coughed up three white‑robed figures and more than a dozen in black, blooming from gloom like night lilies. The backs of their robes bore a great Flower of the Other Shore, petals like flames.

A few Blood Clan elders paced behind Edgar, cloaks like bats against the moon.

Those who came with the Kuilan Priestess were the high boughs of that tree, leaders all. If sincerity were incense, the air would choke with it.

“Lead on,” someone said, voice cold as a drawn edge. “For your sake, don’t be lying. The Starfate City lot will truly open the gate?”

“Of course.” Edgar smiled like a knife’s reflection. He lifted a communication crystal that glowed like trapped starlight. “City Lord, it’s your turn to open the gates. We’ve arrived. What follows will be… entertaining, won’t it? Heh. You’ll watch the Deep‑Sea Wraith die here.”

The blue‑haired woman’s pupils flickered like lightning in cloud, displeasure surfacing and sinking like a fish. Edgar didn’t see the ripple.

Inside Starfate City, City Lord Fan Chen strode toward the gate like a mountain in motion. “Soldiers, make way. I have work.”

“My lord City Lord.” The knights saluted, steel whispering like reeds. They stepped aside like doors on oiled hinges.

In Starfate City, beneath the Queen, no shadow was larger than Fan Chen’s.

“Good.” His voice was a hammer on anvil. “Stand down. I’ll handle what comes.”

Two knights hesitated, reeds in a contrary wind. After a beat of silence, they obeyed and moved aside like clouds parting from the sun.