With a delicate step down from her flying sword, Jin Xifeng alighted onto the ruined flagstones of a once-elegant courtyard. Death surrounded her. She drank it in. So many had given of themselves, their spirits, their cultivation—and now she stood on the threshold. After so many centuries, the Ninth Realm was within her grasp. Almost as importantly, she was free.

  She sent the nine floating swords back to her storage treasure. Her lips curled into a smile as she did—she wouldn’t be needing them again for quite some time. Cai Weizhe was dead. Any disciples or heirs he may have raised up during her imprisonment wouldn’t be bringing him back. She’d won, and she’d made certain her victory was final.

  Nearby, a familiar presence revealed itself at the edge of her perception. She turned and walked over to the man kowtowing at the far end of the plaza. He was a tangled mess of shadow and metal. A yawning chasm of endless suffering for all those unfortunate enough to fall in. Razor-sharp blades of the finest steel, honed over the course of half a millennium, hid within the umbral depths of his spirit.

  He’d stepped into the Eighth Realm since she’d given him his core. Long Tingguang. The first who’d received her greatest gift and mastered it. The first to survive.

  “This Long Tingguang greets his empress,” he said into the cracked flagstones. “At long last.”

  “Rise, my true dragon.”

  Her servant did as he’d been commanded. How could he not? She had wrapped her will so tightly over his spirit for so long that he may as well be an extension of herself by now. The only desire he could hold was to serve. He’d given himself to her completely. And he was no less powerful for it.

  Standing before her, he was the picture of a true immortal. Strong, noble of bearing, and projecting an unmistakable aura of power and confidence—even with his tightly restrained presence overshadowed by her own. He wore black robes adorned with red formation characters. A concession to her own spirit. Long black hair fell down his back and shoulders like silk. His beard came to a noble point, and his eyebrows were like swords.

  “Tell me of the Dragon Emperor,” she said.

  “The poison worked. A child sits upon the imperial throne.”

  It had been a gamble—but one that had paid off. Little else mattered. She cast her long gaze to the northeast. To the capital. With Cai Weizhe’s sect scattered to the four winds, the path to the Imperial City lay open. The Dragon Empire would be hers, at long last.

  She took a small comfort in that notion. For so long, she’d hungered for his destruction. Hungered to tear down all he’d built. To break him as punishment for defying her. Now she’d done so. And she remained unfulfilled. There was more that yet eluded her grasp. More that was not under her dominion. The hunger and want screamed in her spirit. Without realizing, she reached to the northeast, as if to pluck a fruit from a tree.

  With a brief shake of her head, she stopped herself. Instead, she turned to her retainer. “You’ve taken a disciple.”

  “This one has found a most promising martial daughter. Sent by your Emissary, Kong Huizhong. She remains at the peak of the Body Refining stage, yet the control she exhibits over her gift increases by the day. Soon she will achieve the Fourth Realm, and her training can begin in earnest.”

  Jin Xifeng shuffled through the spirits within her cultivation base. Kong Huizhong had served her well, despite only having reached the late Nascent Soul stage. He’d been the one that had given her the final push. The needed power to break the Dawn Palace at long last. His death had served her well.

  “See that she reaches her potential, whoever she is. I look forward to gracing her with my sight, and learning what you’ve made her into one day.” Just as Jin Xifeng was about to continue, to issue the first of her commands and send what remained of her forces to the Imperial City, two insects scraped across the ground at the edge of her perception.

  She turned. Two cultivators—if she could call them that—pressed their heads into the dirt at the edge of the ruined courtyard. They were each at the late Golden Core stage. Nothing. Fury boiled up in her heart. How dare these worms approach her? How dare they make themselves visible to her without her leave? She raised a hand to erase their existence, then paused.

  Desire, hot and vengeful, burned in their hearts. They wanted. Wanted with an intensity that reminded her of her younger days. Striving to grasp for always more. She looked closer, and what she saw stayed her hand in truth. They had been marked by Cai Weizhe’s arts. No, that wasn’t correct—when she realized what she saw, rage exploded from her.

  A black mass of grasping shadow lined with the blood of thousands lashed out in all direction. What was left of the courtyard shattered beneath her feet. The crimson sunset blazed with calamitous hatred. Cai Weizhe had an heir. His arts had been passed on to another. His death meant nothing!

  With a flash, she appeared before the two infant cultivators. Blood flowed from their mouths and noses and eyes and ears. She grabbed one and lifted him. Stared into his terrified eyes and spoke her demand.

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  “Who do you desire vengeance upon? Name him.” She could see the shape of things in their desire. They’d been beaten by a cultivator of lower advancement, lower status. They’d been humiliated, and vengeance burned in their hearts. Jin Xifeng cared not for the wants of infants. She cared only for the bearer of the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace.

  “He Yu. He was a disciple of the Shrouded Peaks Sect. Our junior. He humiliated us.”

  Cai Weizhe had passed his arts to a child? A mere Fourth Realm? Jin Xifeng let out a long, musical laugh. An infant such as this inheritor was beneath her. She would not demean herself by hunting him personally. These two would be more than enough. Especially if they served her in truth.

  “And you wish to pledge yourselves to me in exchange for revenge? How truly hated this child must be.”

  “This Wang Xiaobo will do whatever it takes to restore his honor.”

  “This Xin Lu follows his sworn brother in your service.”

  These worms were beneath her. Jin Xifeng turned to Long Tingguang. “Make these two into something worthwhile. Then send them after the child they so desperately wish to destroy. If they can manage that, I’ll allow them to serve me.”

  Jin Xifeng turned and headed to the grand pavilion of the former Shrouded Peaks Sect. There would be a thousand years’ worth of hoarded treasures within, all for the taking. Behind her, the two worms swore themselves to the attention of Long Tingguang. Swore themselves to her service. The first servants of her new empire.

  * * *

  Zhang Lifen let her arms fall to her sides, barely keeping a grip on her bow. Grief kept its fingers firmly wrapped around her heart, but she had no time to give herself over to it. Instead, she squared her shoulders and took another step forward with her movement technique, the Tidewalker Step. She appeared next to Yi Xiurong, who had just crushed the skull of a Fourth Realm cultivator beneath her radiant fist. She pushed her worry for He Yu aside as she turned away from the young man Yi Xiurong had just killed. Sending him away from the sect when she had was the best thing she could have done. The best way to ensure his survival.

  “Sect brother—” Yi Xiurong stopped herself. “Ren Huang comes. Have any of the others made it out?”

  For a moment, Zhang Lifen simply searched her eyes. Dark circles had appeared beneath them. Her spirit was far weaker than Zhang Lifen had ever felt it—they’d been on the run and constantly battling for weeks now.

  She shook her head. “I’ve not found any. I know Su Meifeng was with Elder Wen.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “I think—I think it’s just the three of us.”

  The severity she’d come to expect in Yi Xiurong’s expression had softened during their flight following Master Cai and Leader Zhou’s deaths. Heaven knew what Yi Xiurong must be feeling. She had been First Disciple before Zhang Lifen had even entered the sect.

  “We should keep moving. Ren Huang will catch up when he’s ready.”

  Together, they headed north. They’d set out from the Shrouded Peaks and had first thought to make for the Imperial City. That had been foolish. They should have expected that as soon as Jin Xifeng had finished with the sect, she’d head for the capital. Which was exactly what she’d done.

  Her passing had been unmistakable. The red sun descended upon the land, and a tide of want followed. The frenzy that accompanied her this time had been different in character. Less of an all-out attack on a hated foe, more of a general upwelling of chaos. Mortals and cultivators alike gave themselves over to their deepest held or basest desires.

  In her wake, those that remained of the Sunset Court crashed over the land. The Golden Core that Yi Xiurong had just killed was one of them. At least now, weeks after her passing and hundreds of miles away from the Shrouded Peaks, they’d grown far less common on the ground.

  A blast of heat and anger announced Ren Huang finally catching up to them. Even his spirit seemed somehow less hot, less of an inferno than weeks prior. His features showed his fatigue, too. Zhang Lifen didn’t blame him. For weeks they’d been fighting a near-constant battle that ebbed and flowed in its intensity, but never completely abated. The three of them were—for all they knew—all that was left of the sect. Anyone who’d remained would have died at Jin Xifeng’s hands once she’d finished with the elders.

  “They’re handled,” he rumbled. Embers popped off his skin as he hoisted his wolf-tooth club onto one shoulder.

  He’d set off to deal with some pursuers he’d caught the scent of. Zhang Lifen was grateful that he still had enough left to do it himself. She wasn’t used to being the weakest one in a group. It had been a long time since she’d been assigned to assist any of the other core disciples. Normally, she was either on her own, or in charge of small teams of high-ranked inner disciples. At least, she reminded herself, that how things had been.

  “Good,” said Yi Xiurong. The word clipped and slightly strained. “We should be out of the central plain in another day or so. We can break east and make for the sea. My clan will shelter us.”

  Zhang Lifen didn’t voice her doubts. Rumors of fighting had reached them in those few moments of rest they spared in a village or a roadside inn. Many nobles had risen up when talk that the Dragon Empire had fallen reached them. They’d marched on the capital with their clans and their retainers. No doubt intent on carving out their own place in whatever replaced the old dynasty. Sometimes they’d warred with one another, sometimes they’d warred with the ever-growing forces of Jin Xifeng’s Twilight Empire.

  If things got out of hand, Jin Xifeng herself would make an appearance. Although it would take some time for her to fully bring the empire to heel, Zhang Lifen could see the outcome clearly enough. There was nobody who could stand against Jin Xifeng. The empire was hers. The great noble clans would either fall in line, or she would destroy them.

  There would be resistance. If Zhang Lifen remembered her history lessons from when she was a girl, when the last dynasty had forged the Dragon Empire, it had taken the better part of a thousand years to finally cement their control. The only difference was, they hadn’t had techniques capable of fostering undying loyalty in their followers.

  The three remnants of the Shrouded Peaks Sect continued their trek north. Zhang Lifen spared one last thought for He Yu. She’d truly grown fond of him in their short time together. If she learned that he’d made it out alive, perhaps she could continue his training one day. For now? The last three members of the Shrouded Peaks Sect had a duty. They had to finish what the sect’s mission. They had to stop Jin Xifeng.