Lin Tian released the White Dragon and dismissed the sword technique in the same breath, hands already moving into a new seal.

Mo Lihai watched, jaw tight. Across the distance, even Li Qingxue had gone still, her eyes unblinking.

The 12 Heaven-Guarding Swords Technique answered his call.

Twelve sword manifestations appeared around him, spinning in slow, measured orbit.

He raised them toward the heavens and a blue rune formation spread across the sky like a crown, and with it came thunder, deep and rolling, the kind that makes the bones remember fear.

It dwarfed everything Mo Lihai’s Lightning Abyss Sword had conjured.

Then the sky guardian appeared.

A projection, vast as a storm front, a sword-wielding warrior rendered in light and qi, hovering above the clouds with its blade drawn.

Mo Lihai stared upward, and for the first time, his eyes held something he’d never allowed himself to feel before.

Fear.

Not far behind, Han Xin and Li Qingxue stood side by side in silence.

"He’s been concealing far more than anyone realized," Han Xin said quietly.

Li Qingxue didn’t look away from the figure in the sky. After a long moment, she spoke.

"We mustn’t provoke him again."

Mo Lihai set his teeth and summoned the Saint Skull Technique, a black-wreathed skull of condensed qi that roared upward to meet the sky guardian. Lin Tian raised one hand, extended a single finger forward, and gave the command.

The sky guardian moved.

It brought its sword sideways in one sweeping, unhurried arc and released a crescent slash downward.

The qi momentum behind it was staggering, a pressure so immense that the very wind seemed to bend away from it in deference.

The ground trembled. The tremor carried all the way to Zhu City. Trees were uprooted and thrown like kindling.

Lightning hammered down from the heavens, and the world beneath the technique seemed very, very small.

Sword energy met the saint’s skull in a collision that sent qi turbulence rolling outward in all directions.

Han Xin and Li Qingxue raised their defensive walls without a word, bracing against the pressure washing over them.

"A technique of this power..." Han Xin’s voice had gone quiet, "It’s monstrous."

"Lin Tian." Li Qingxue’s words were barely above a whisper.

"Just how far have you walked since we last stood in the same place?"

Mo Lihai was unraveling.

The qi in his body was nearly gone, bled dry by the effort of holding the Saint Skull Technique together.

The qi turbulence crashing against him again and again forced blood up his throat. He coughed, choked, and coughed again.

COUGH!

The skull fractured. Then it shattered completely.

Mo Lihai hit the ground hard, body sprawled, limbs heavy, spiritual qi reduced to a flicker.

Above him, the crescent slash carved through the vanishing smoke without slowing, still descending, still aimed directly at him.

With nothing left, his hand found a jade token. He crushed it.

"Ancestor!" His voice cracked open, "Save me!"

A streak of black light exploded in from elsewhere and arrived between one heartbeat and the next, the qi aura it carried so dense and so old it pressed against everything around it like a second sky.

"Insolent little brat!" The voice was raspy, unhurried, and utterly cold.

It shattered Lin Tian’s descending strike on contact. Lin Tian felt it immediately, a weight dropping onto him like a mountain, the full pressure of a cultivation level far above his own.

A Soul Formation cultivator. Moiyi Sect’s ancestor.

The smoke thinned.

A hunched old man stood before Mo Lihai, a black skull staff in hand, robes hanging from his frame like old bark on a dead tree. He’d arrived in time. Barely.

Lin Tian studied him without blinking. Han Xin and Li Qingxue had gone very still.

"Moiyi Sect’s got a Soul Formation ancestor?" Han Xin asked.

"His aura suggests a recent breakthrough," Li Qingxue replied, her voice measured. "Within the last few years, perhaps. The qi’s still rough at the edges."

The old man drifted forward until his staff was leveled at Lin Tian’s chest, the tip trembling faintly with restrained force.

"Brat." His voice dropped low, the kind of low that precedes catastrophe, "You’ve wounded my disciple. For that, I’ll see your soul refined and suffering for one thousand years."

He clenched his fist. The air around his knuckles cracked. Lin Tian held his gaze for a moment, and then he laughed.

"HAHA! One thousand years?" His voice rang out clean and bright across the ruined sky.

"Before you do that to me, I’ll come to your sect and bring every last stone of it to the ground before a single night’s passed!"

The old man’s eyes went angry, "YOU’RE COURTING DEATH!"

He slammed his magic staff against the floor of the sky three times. A black rune blazed into existence at his back, its qi aura shaking the heavens themselves.

Lin Tian pushed back with everything he had. Both hands snapped into a technique seal, calling up the great white rune behind him.

The Soul Formation monster leveled his staff forward without hesitation and unleashed thousands of skulls wrapped in thick, suffocating black qi aura, wave after wave of them, too many to count.

Lin Tian answered in kind, driving his thousands of swords forward to meet them. The blade crashed against the skull.

Explosion after explosion tore through the sky, shaking the ground far below.

Even so, he knew the truth.

The 12 Heaven-Guarding Swords already drained too much out of me. If I use the Soul-Splitting Whip, the risk is too high, and Mo Lihai’s still breathing.

Li Qingxue? Dragging her into this would only make everything worse.

BLAST!

A massive detonation rattled Lin Tian’s soul down to its roots. There was something deeply wrong about the power behind that black skull technique. He’d have to be careful.

He was thrown far back, eyes wide, coughing blood more than once. When he steadied himself and looked ahead, the old man’s skull barrage hadn’t stopped. Not even close.

"It’s over for you, you little wretch!" the old man snarled.

Lin Tian had no other choice. He reached into his robes, pulled out his jade token, and crushed it. A distress signal shot out toward Cao Ying back at Lingxian Sect.

In the span of a single breath, she crossed the distance and arrived exactly where he’d crushed the token.

The skull barrage was almost on top of him. There was almost nowhere left to go.

Damn. What should I do?

"Old man! Isn’t it a little pathetic going after someone so far beneath you?!" a woman’s voice rang out sharp and clear.

A wall of fire wind erupted and tore straight through the old man’s skull swarm, obliterating it.

He lurched backward in shock, leaping away the moment he felt it, a power equal to his own bearing down on him from somewhere inside the crimson smoke.

From within that red haze, Cao Ying stepped forward across the floor of the sky.

She was still wearing her red dress, different from the robes of Fenhai Sect, deliberately so. She served Lin Tian now. She didn’t want anyone thinking she still had ties to another sect.

"Cao Ying," Lin Tian said.

"Why do you always pick a fight with a Soul Formation monster?"

Lin Tian didn’t answer. He went quiet and still, focusing on pulling himself back together.

Across the battlefield, the old man’s face had gone rigid. The person who’d come to Lin Tian’s aid was a Soul Formation Master.

A Soul Formation Master?

He could feel it clearly. Her power surpassed his own. She’d reached Soul Formation long before he had, and the primordial qi aura settled inside her body was deep and unshakable.

Mo Lihai’s eyes went wide with something close to panic, "S-Since when does the Lingxian Sect have a Soul Formation ancestor?!"

Cao Ying glanced back at Lin Tian and took in his condition. It wasn’t good.

"Recover yourself. I’ll handle him."

She walked forward and came to a stop, a lava sword appearing in her hand, radiating a qi aura that pressed outward like the heat from an open furnace.

"Alright then, old man."

"Are you ready to meet your death?!"