Go—move, like fleeing a wildfire!

He measured Night Frost before him. She didn’t look weaker. With his power thrown wide, his odds edged over hers, a blade-thin margin.

Flames still gnawed at him, clinging like bone-eating grubs. He had no way to shake them, no river to wash them off. He remembered her eerie Black Flame, born of the Black Dragon.

But this Night Frost’s fire bent different, like a mirage in heat. Gold flared within the Black Flame, a golden tree rooted deep in dark blaze. That had to be Chu Qing’s seal.

The Black Flame carried the Black Dragon’s scent. The gold was Chu Qing’s thread. This Night Frost lacked the Black Dragon’s heart, the core ember. Her Black Flame was rootless foam; Chu Qing’s gold must be binding that unknown black blaze together.

Even so, she was a thornbush. Black Array Patterns coiled her arms like serpents. She seemed numb to pain, a statue in fire. She let flame sheath her whole body, dragging her power up near Lin’s, and he still didn’t know how her flesh survived the Black Flame, like a clay pot in a kiln.

Yet Night Frost didn’t plan to tangle with Lin; she slid like a shadow. She wanted the two fleeing through the passage—Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue—two candles in wind. He only needed to stand like a wall and bar her way. Let them escape like birds from a net. Then he’d regroup with Night Frost and the others—and finish her like a falling guillotine.

Lin’s muscles swelled, and purple-black mist poured off him, flooding the narrow passage like storm fog. As the passage knitted shut, space shrank, and Night Frost would breathe more of the demonic miasma. First weaken her, and his odds would swell like a rising tide.

A figure, tinged with gold, flashed past his flank like a shooting star. Lin reacted and snatched an ankle, a trap snapping. His palm went light; the golden figure melted into searing flame and scattered like sparks across stone.

The fire bit into the purple mist, hiss-hiss, burning it away like frost at sunrise. Lin stared, stunned, at his lower belly; Night Frost’s hand, banded in black Array Patterns, had speared through him like a shard of night. Fire spread inside him from that instant, like roots through dry soil.

“You fell for it—” Her voice cut like a razor.

Black Flame laced with gold fell from midair like glittering shrapnel—beautiful, deadly—and drove into Lin to bloom.

The fog in his head cleared like glass. Her target was never the pair fleeing for the passage. It was him. That silhouette had been a mirage of fire, bait for his eyes. A trap, laid on purpose, a snare in long grass. Her goal was him all along, the man just a hair stronger than this Night Frost.

“You seem real close to Yin Tiancheng,” she cooed, a cat by the hearth. “Let me guess—he’s your boss, and Yin Chen Yue is his darling girl. If I held either, you’d kneel. Shame they slipped.”

“As if.”

Night Frost’s lips curled, a playful smile with knives behind it. She parted the flames and breathed in his ear, a moth’s wingbeat in smoke.

After the Magic Cannon blew a corner off the Abyss, Night Frost moved. She stationed two throwaway Earth Dragons at the passage’s end and carved a capturing Formation. As mortals, Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue were fish in a bucket.

“Time’s up, Lin. Here’s your gift.”

The Abyss kept knitting. The tunnel shrank. Two Earth Dragons shoved in from both sides, jaws gripping Yin Tiancheng and the curled Yin Chen Yue, like wolves with hares.

“Well then, choose. Save Yin Tiancheng, or save Yin Chen Yue. Or run alone. Fighting back isn’t on the menu.”

She pinched Yin Chen Yue’s cheek, greed flickering in her eyes, a magpie spotting gold. She wanted all Night Frost once owned, to seize the body back into her hands.

“My lovely little sister’s barely breathing. If she dies here, maybe she’ll become my kind,” she sang, sugar over ash.

Yin Tiancheng struggled in the Earth Dragon’s grasp, a man in a flood. It cuffed him, a dull thump; no need to ask who ordered it. He gritted through it. An ordinary man would already be dust on the floor.

Night Frost spotted the necklace clenched in his fist. It glowed faintly, a coal in ash. Maybe that trinket kept him standing.

“If I take it off, can you still hold on—with that so-called love of yours?” Her tone dripped like pitch.

She strode up and tore the necklace free. Black-gold fire melted it like wax. Dense Abyssal Aura poured off her, a black tide coiling around Yin Tiancheng.

Without the ward, the Abyssal Aura slid into him like cold needles. The Earth Dragon’s blows came heavier, hammer on anvil.

He gasped after a gut strike, a fish on shore. The Abyssal Aura ran with his Blood, a dark river through every vein.

Lin threw a punch like thunder, but the floor burned with Array Patterns. A wall of fire roared up. The wounded Lin was caged, a hawk in wicker. Flame seared him inside and out, breath turned to knives.

“Abandon your daughter, and you’re free,” she murmured, a demon in prayer. “Why suffer? Toss her away, then make another. Simple.”

Her whisper slid along the tightening tunnel like oil on water.

“Make another? If I abandon my daughter once, I’ll abandon her twice…” His voice shook like a cracked bell. “I’m a father. She’s my daughter. She’s not a prop for my path. I’ve no right to choose her life or death. My duty is to keep her alive.”

He hauled breath like hauling rope, just to push out the words.

A claw came down before he finished, a guillotine of bone. Stuffed with Abyssal Aura, his body teetered at the cliff’s edge. Death breathed on his neck.

Lin saw everything, eyes like ice. He rammed the fire wall again and again, a bull at a gate. His belly wound tore wider; blood steamed away before it fell, ash in a furnace. But this wall was tougher than he guessed. Old walls of fire he could cut through. Night Frost had changed it, turned it into a prison of flame.

Yin Tiancheng still endured, a tree in gale. It surprised her. A father with spine. Even under Earth Dragon blows, he wouldn’t yield.

“You’re quite the father,” she said at last, voice cooling like iron.

She weighed the game. Make the father choose? He’d choose the daughter. Make the daughter choose? She’d choose the father. Pointless lines in sand. But it didn’t matter. This was only a prelude; the real drumbeat was next.

She lifted her Spear and drove it into the fire wall, a needle through silk. A flick of her jade-white hand, and the wall fell like torn curtain.

“Choose. Only one of you three walks out.” Her aura dropped like a mountain, wrapped in searing gold. She leveled the Spear at the two before Lin. The instant he chose, her Spear would lance the abandoned one, lightning to ground.

Lin wouldn’t choose. He couldn’t. Yin Tiancheng raised him. Not his father, but more than a father, a lantern in rain. That outstretched hand had taught him how to be human, how to stand upright in the world.

Yin Chen Yue was Yin Tiancheng’s daughter. He and she had shared few words. But gratitude makes us human; without it, we’re just cold beasts under fur.

Night Frost’s aim was plain as cut stone. She meant to kill him here. Lin was strong. He healed fast. One on one, he would beat Night Frost, a clear sky after storm. So she picked a neat little stratagem, a needle in velvet, to remove him.

She bet his ties to Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue ran deep as roots. Seize them, and Lin would be pinned like a butterfly. All he could lean on then was raw strength.

Hold his people in her hands, and he wouldn’t dare step forward; his power would choke like a river dammed. He’d be forced to decide. And once he decided, his heart would leave the fight, and taking him would be child’s play.

So far, every step worked. Lin was passive, a ship becalmed. He hovered at the edge of breaking.

“Choose… choose…” Her chant wound around him like ivy.

Flame climbed Lin’s body like wolves up a cliff. Joy flashed in her black-gold eyes, hard to hide. She spread her arms and cupped the air, then pinched. Yin Tiancheng and Yin Chen Yue hung inside that invisible hold. She was a giant of fire, and they were ants in her fist.

Lin shut his eyes. His body shook, leaves in wind. He couldn’t, and he wouldn’t.

Two roads yawned before him. Trade his life for theirs, or drag Night Frost into death with him. The walls crept closer like closing jaws. If he delayed, the Earth Dragons and everyone here but Night Frost would die crushed.

“Lin! I don’t need to live. Move,” Yin Tiancheng shouted, a flare in smoke. “I’ve never given you an order. This is my first—and my last.”

He knew Lin couldn’t beat Night Frost now. He knew Lin couldn’t choose. But he knew Lin could break through her and trade for their lives.

“Boss, I know. You want the young lady and me to live,” Lin said, voice low as embers. “But I believe my life is yours. Yours is worth far more.”

“The bond between you and the young lady runs deep. Lose either, and the other won’t live. So… I’m sorry, Boss. This is my first time disobeying you.”

“And it’ll be the last.”