The fifth floor of the Prime Minister's pavilion detonated outward in a storm of splintered timber and pulverized stone.

An old man in blood-red robes descended through the smoke on a blade of pure qi, his sword still singing with the force of the strike. He landed amid the wreckage, eyes blazing, and drove the weapon through the two figures seated at the war table.

They did not bleed. They did not scream. The blade passed through them as if through colored mist. The images of Alex Bai and Zhuge Liang flickered once, twice, then dissolved into harmless light and scattered pixels.

Namgung Hyuk froze. The righteous fury on his ancient face cracked into raw disbelief.

Below, thirty meters underground in a reinforced bunker lined with concrete and layered wards, Alex and Zhuge Liang remained perfectly still, but the faint tightening around his eyes said he understood the same terrible truth.

This one had gotten through.

Alex had prepared for exactly this moment. Every sensitive meeting between Prime Minister and strategist happened down here, in the buried heart of the pavilion. On the fifth floor, Gaia-linked holograms played their parts-perfect copies that moved and spoke.

The real men never sat exposed where an assassin's blade could reach them. Changyi lay at the center of Yan and Qing like a beating heart. Alex had ringed both provinces with satellites and five concentric layers of drone surveillance.

Anything that entered the capital's airspace or approached the compound larger than a sparrow triggered alerts.

In the past months, seventy-two assassins had been intercepted and neutralized before they ever reached the inner gates-Core Formation killers, poison experts, shadow cultivators. All stopped cold.

This one had walked through every layer like they were smoke.

Only a Nascent Soul cultivator could do that.

The bunker shuddered. Dust sifted from the ceiling in thin gray streams. A deep, bone-rattling roar rolled through the earth above them, vibrating the table and the lights overhead.

"You bastard, Bai Xiaochun!" The voice thundered down through the structure, amplified by raw qi until the concrete itself seemed to groan. "Traitor to Xia! Spy for the foreign devils of Prussia! You dare bring their forbidden machines into our world and call yourself governor? Show yourself, or I will bury this entire palace and everyone in it! You have three seconds!"

Alex's jaw locked so hard his teeth ached. Cold sweat prickled at his temples. His mind raced through contingencies with brutal clarity. The emperor was upstairs in the harem wing—safe for now, but the symbol of legitimacy Alex needed was fragile. The five governors who had just knelt were still in the city. The dikes, the refugee settlements, the long game he was playing to position Xia as a lever against the coming storm between Estoria and Prussia in three and a half years everything could fracture if this monster brought the pavilion down.

He could not go up. Not against a Nascent Soul. Not yet.

“Gaia,” he said, voice low and steady despite the ice in his veins. "Get the Wudang Sect Master here. Now. We cannot handle this one alone."

"Already en route, Master,” Gaia answered at once, calm and precise.

The building shook harder. Lights flickered. A hairline crack raced across the ceiling.

"One!"

Alex could picture the old man hovering in the night air above the ruined fifth floor, sword raised high, qi condensing into a single devastating arc that would shear through stone and steel like silk.

"Two!"

Zhuge Liang's fingers remained steepled. His breathing stayed even. Only the slight forward tilt of his head showed he was listening to every vibration, calculating every possible outcome.

"Three!" Namgung Hyuk roared. "Since you hide like a coward, Bai Xiaochun, then die!"

The air above them split with a sound like tearing thunder. Qi pressure slammed downward in a visible wave. The bunker lights died for a full second before emergency strips flared red.

Then, cutting through the chaos from the far side of the night sky, came a clear, commanding voice that grew louder with impossible speed.

"Old Namgung Hyuk! What in the heavens do you think you are doing here?"

A second sword slash-brilliant, disciplined, carrying the weight of Wudang mastery —tore across the darkness and met the descending strike head-on. The collision detonated in mid-air with a shockwave that rattled every window in Changyi.

Namgung Hyuk was forced to twist violently, blade rising to block. The two cultivators hung in the night sky above the shattered pavilion, swords locked, qi clashing in brilliant arcs of light.

Below, in the red-lit bunker, Alex slowly released the breath he had been holding. His hands were still cold, but the blood was returning to his face.

The real fight had only just begun.

The two Nascent Soul cultivators hung in the night sky above the shattered pavilion, swords locked in a blaze of qi. Wind howled around them Every clash sent shockwaves Hippling outward, cracking what remained of the upper floors and rattling windows across Changyi.

Namgung Hyuk's face twisted with rage. He broke the lock and slashed again, his blade carving a silver arc through the darkness.

"Feng Taiyi!" he roared. "As Wudang Sect Master, have you already thrown in with the Prussians as well?"

Feng Taiyi met the strike with effortless precision. His own sword flashed, turning the attack aside and driving a sharp counter that forced Namgung to retreat half a step in mid-air.

"You old fool," Feng Taiyi said. "You have a mouth. Why not use it to say something worth hearing?"

"Stop pretending!” Namgung's qi surged, his robes whipping violently. "The drones everywhere. The satellites watching the skies. All of it is Prussian technology. Did you sell the Wudang Sect to them already?"

“What Prussia this and that?” Feng Taiyi's reply cut through the wind like a blade. "Every one of those things is Wudang's finest work. Designed and built by our own people. For Xia."

Namgung answered with a furious roar and a storm of strikes. The two masters blurred into motion, exchanging hundreds of the space of a few heartbeats. Sword light flashed and clashed, each impact ringing like thunder. Neither gained a clear advantage. Sparks of raw qi rained downward like burning stars.

At last Namgung broke away, chest heaving. Even after five hundred exchanges, they stood evenly matched. Fighting for ten days and nights would change nothing.

"You stood with me once," he said,

voice rough with old pain. "We fought side by side to keep the Prussian army from overrunning Xia. How many of our brothers and sisters died in that war? How man villages burned? And now you let

their machines walk our lands

again?"

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many

Before Feng Taiyi could answer, a clear voice rose from the ground below, steady

and unafraid.

"Old Namgung Hyuk."

Alex stepped forward from the shadow of a half-collapsed wall, his white robes marked with dust but his posture straight. He looked up at the hovering masters without a trace of fear.

"I am Bai Xiaochun. I ask you, a respected elder of the Namgung family-tell me what mistake I have made that brought you here to kill me."

Namgung's eyes narrowed. He swung his sword downward in a killing arc. Feng Taiyi's blade intercepted it with a sharp ring of steel on steel.

“Listen to him first, old man,” Feng Taiyi said quietly. "We can fight for a thousand days if that is what you want. But hear his answer."

Namgung hesitated. Then, with a growl of frustration, he let his body drop. He plummeted the last fifty feet and landed hard enough to shatter the stone courtyard in a cloud of dust and broken tiles.

He straightened slowly, sword still in hand, and fixed Alex with a glare that could have melted iron.

"First," he said, voice low and dangerous, "all of this drone technology. It is Prussian. How dare you use it?"