Crimson Vow—Red King’s Inscribed Spear!

Qianya hurled the same move a second time, a crimson lance slicing forward like a comet, spearing for Heng Zi with storm-bright fury.

The strike hit harder than before, like a river in flood, yet Qianya’s face stayed cool, a moon over dark water.

“You only know… that one trick?”

“How many tricks do you want, huh?!” Qianya shot her a glare, sharp as a thrown dagger, then blurred like mist and unraveled into red threads.

Scarlet light fanned out like a thousand silk filaments, then hardened into killing rays that stitched through Heng Zi, a giant blood-red greatsword forming from glass to iron as it ran her through.

“How curious… your power keeps climbing, like a fire that won’t burn out. How do you do it? You were a bug I could crush.”

Heng Zi stopped, the Elemental Ghost Armor she wore shining like frost on black steel, leaving her unscathed beneath its cold halo.

“You’ll know soon enough!” Qianya’s voice was a snarl, like flint sparking in the dark.

Heng Zi’s interest in Qianya only grew, a hunter’s gaze sharpening like a drawn bowstring; from disdain, to deliberate suppression, to a fascination that outshone her urge to fight Dawn Sugar Snow.

Yet Dawn Sugar Snow didn’t intervene, like a quiet moon watching the tide; she stood aside and kept the combat zone steady, a hand holding the storm’s rim.

“Hahaha, so that’s it. I get it.” Heng Zi’s grin turned feral, like a crack splitting stone. “You keep putting out a bit more than I show.”

“I don’t know what price you’ve paid, like blood ink in a ledger, but at this level you dare challenge me… aren’t you too sure of yourself?”

This woman…!

Dawn Sugar Snow clenched her teeth and fed power into the shield, like a second horizon. The empty desert rioted and melted into black mud, a bog of shadow.

The bright sky looked splashed with fuel, a rainbow slick burning without flame; the air warped and widened as space buckled like hot glass.

An unseen weight slammed down, a mountain of pressure, and crushed Qianya midair like a flower trapped in ice.

“Urgh…!”

“The gap between us is an abyss you can’t even imagine, a cliff face to the stars!”

“…You staked everything on this one hit.”

“!?”

Qianya took in all of Heng Zi’s malice like rain on a stone, then slowly lifted her head, eyes steady as winter lakes.

“I grew up a child the world threw away, like driftwood in a storm. The ones who killed my family hunted me day and night.”

“I’ve walked the fence between life and death more than once, like a tightrope over a canyon. But you—an exalted deity—have you ever tasted death?”

“If you want to break me with this kind of power, dream on!”

Heng Zi was right. Qianya couldn’t fathom how terrifying the gulf between them was, a sea with no shore.

So what? This pressure alone could never drown her; when she went all in, that was when fate chose a side.

White light devoured everything like snowfall in a blaze; Heng Zi’s figure broke like foam, a mirage popping under sun.

In the hollowed combat zone, only Dawn Sugar Snow and Qianya remained, two figures on a blank stage.

“This is my dream too, so I won’t lose.” Qianya spoke softly, like a candle in a still room.

“When did you notice?” asked the one wearing Dawn Sugar Snow’s face, voice even as a flat lake.

“Around the time you talked with Qingsheng Tangxue.”

Qianya let out a small breath, like fog in winter, then explained. “That’s when I arrived at this academy too, right? The ‘tuition’ for me and Xuewei… Tangxue paid it.”

“Right, Yueyu?”

“…,” she kept her eyes closed and held her silence, like a sealed door.

Yueyu and Dawn Sugar Snow were sisters, their looks split only by hair color, like moonlight and dawnlight. Their talents ran close, even their divinity near-twinned.

But their natures were opposite winds. This dream was Yueyu’s, no doubt; even here, she strained to be flawless like her sister, so she wore that skin at the Heavenly Deity Academy.

“And Yueyu is Tangxue… only the Tangxue in your mind, a portrait painted from memory.”

“Before you met her, you saw her as your continuation, so her personality fit what you desired. After you met, it changed—she grew… brighter.”

“…You observe carefully.”

“Mm. After Tangxue left, she gave me the memories of her time here, a basket of days, so I didn’t notice the seams right away…”

“And this dream was built from my body as the model, wasn’t it?”

Yueyu said nothing, quiet as fallen snow.

“That’s the one thing I still can’t confirm. Tangxue told me about living in an Ice Palace, a hall of frost; this place isn’t that at all.”

“So I grew suspicious and gambled on diving into that sky-blue lake, like a swallow spearing the surface. Down there, I found my old memories…”

“I warned you, didn’t I? Go in, and you’d really die.” Yueyu’s tone was cold, like iron at night.

“But Yueyu, you saved me.”

“So you used my spare mercy to test your guess?” Yueyu frowned, a fine crack on porcelain.

Qianya smiled and shook her head, light as a drifting leaf. “Xuewei and I came here already gambling with our lives, like dice on a drum.”

“And I never planned to pin my hopes on anyone else, not even a star.”

“Of course, I’m grateful you saved me.”

Yueyu watched Qianya calmly, a mirror without ripple. She’d seen pieces of Qianya’s past and knew the words were true.

“By the way, that student council president who never shows their face—odds are that’s me, right~?”

“…What do you think?”

“I think it’s me.”

Qianya snorted a laugh, like a spark from flint. “Did I guess it, Yueyu…”

“Maybe.” Yueyu didn’t answer straight; she turned, her back a quiet wall.

“Yueyu, I want to make a deal with you.”

“Someone tried to make a deal with me not long ago. I refused,” Yueyu said, voice like frost smoke.

Qianya ignored that and went on, words steady as falling beads. “This world’s about to break. Those people want to release hell’s fiends to shatter the ice wall.”

“I know, and they can’t.” Yueyu closed her eyes a fraction, lashes like ink lines. “What even the gods couldn’t do, they’d pin on prisoners?”

“That’s foolish.”

“No… they can, in another way. They’ll slaughter every living thing, like a scythe through a field, and use that as a medium to flee this dying world.”

“They don’t have to break the ice wall at all.”

“…You found this in the library?”

“Mm.”

“You still had time to read that?”

“This is important!” Qianya snapped, like a flag cracking in wind.

“So, you want to ask me to save the world?” Yueyu’s laugh was cold, a blade on glass.

To ask the very culprit who drove this world to the brink? The thought hung like smoke.

“How to put it… honestly, I kind of hate this world.” Qianya smiled helplessly, a bitter curve like rain on salt.

“I grew up wrapped in its malice, like nettles under cloth. Before Tangxue, nothing went my way.”

“Even when I clawed back what was mine, it slipped again and again, like sand through fingers.”

“I don’t trust anyone but myself. Not even my own people; I even hate some of them—stubborn, thankless, mud sticking to shoes.”

“But because I hate it, I try not to become that, like walking the clean edge of a muddy road…”

“I want to answer the hopes of those who stand with me, torches in a long night, and give them a bright future.”