Phantylia's wariness lasted no longer than the blink of an eye.
Then amusement returned.
The colossal vessel of Abundance regarded the four of them with something dangerously close to pity. Whatever curiosity Sunny's stolen authority had inspired dissolved beneath the simple arithmetic of power. She was still a Supreme Titan anchored to the Ambrosial Arbor. They were three Saints and a Master borrowing scraps of borrowed Paths.
She did not even bother to move her lower body; below the waist, she remained unmaterialized, a tapering column of luminous growth that merged seamlessly with the great lotus beneath her. If she had chosen to fully solidify, she would not have fit within the labyrinth of roots. It was unnecessary. She did not need legs to end them.
Her fan lifted.
She pointed it forward.
The world obeyed.
Vines erupted from the roots in a violent detonation, each as thick as a tower pillar and moving faster than artillery. Barbed tendrils twisted through the air in spiraling arcs. Roots shot upward like spears. Carnivorous blossoms snapped open with rows of crystalline teeth.
They tore through the amber shields as if they were paper.
Jing Yuan's upper body vanished in a spray of blood and lightning.
Fu Xuan crumpled as a root thicker than her torso crushed her from above.
Dan Heng's head separated cleanly from his shoulders, dragon blood scattering across the roots.
A spear of wood punched through Sunny's chest, exiting between his shoulder blades, shattering bone and rupturing lung.
The shield failed.
The Luofu ended.
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
Fu Xuan inhaled sharply.
The vision snapped apart like glass.
The future dissolved before it could become present.
In that infinitesimal sliver of time before Phantylia's fan truly descended, Fu Xuan had seen everything. More importantly, she had transmitted it.
Images flooded into Sunny's mind — violent, undeniable. Jing Yuan bisected. Dan Heng decapitated. Himself skewered like livestock.
No words were needed.
Sunny reacted on instinct.
He tore down the mental reinforcement layer of the Preservation barrier and reconfigured it in an instant. Amber light shifted, thickening outward, compressing into a physical bulwark. The shield densified around their bodies, refracting into overlapping plates of hardened authority.
Phantylia's fan lowered again.
Reality repeated itself.
Vines detonated from the earth in identical trajectories to the vision.
This time, Jing Yuan was already gone.
The white tiger blurred into lightning, vanishing from his previous location an instant before a root erased it. Dan Heng surged upward, dragon form coiling through the air as three spectral dragons twisted around him, intercepting a barrage of tendrils. Fu Xuan snapped her fingers and swapped positions with a distant projection of herself, leaving a decoy to be obliterated.
Sunny braced.
The largest spear of wood screamed toward him.
It struck.
Amber flared violently as the shield absorbed the impact. The force hurled him backward like debris from an explosion. He tumbled across the lattice of roots, crashing through smaller outgrowths before finally skidding to a stop dozens of paces away.
Pain flooded his nerves.
His skin split in multiple places, muscle tearing beneath the strain. He felt ribs fracture and immediately grind back into alignment under the dampening effect of Preservation. Blood welled but did not spill; the shield had absorbed the worst of the penetration.
The amber barrier around him flickered, webbed with cracks.
It had barely held.
Sunny inhaled shakily and forced Shadow Essence outward. The cracks darkened, then fused, the damage siphoned into the Lance of Preservation itself. The weapon drank the impact like fuel, its glow intensifying to a deeper, hotter amber.
He understood with cold clarity.
If that strike had landed directly without the shield, he would have ceased to exist. If the barrier had been even slightly weaker, it would have shattered and carried his body with it.
Phantylia had not exerted herself.
She had pointed.
That was enough to kill them all.
Sunny steadied himself and forced his mind to function.
Fu Xuan's capabilities were invaluable. She could glimpse futures — whether through Aspect or Memory was irrelevant — and relay them instantly. She could swap positions in a heartbeat. She manipulated probability like a blade, deflecting inevitability into survivable outcomes. She could not deal decisive damage, but she ensured they lived long enough to try.
Jing Yuan was pure offense. Lightning incarnate. The Lightning Lord and now this white tiger form were not mere projections but Path-aligned manifestations, proving that he was an Emanator of The Hunt. Even so, his strikes against Phantylia left shallow wounds that sealed almost immediately.
Dan Heng was more complex. Sunny knew his Dormant Ability induced decay on contact. His Awakened state allowed him to transmute Soul Essence into elemental phenomena. His Ascended Ability remained uncertain. His Transcendent form — the three tangled dragons — granted fusion beyond normal logic. Electric flames. Freezing lightning. Paradoxical elements.
And now Sunny realized something else.
Dan Heng's decay no longer required direct physical contact.
The carnivorous plants that intercepted his elemental torrents blackened and withered mid-growth. His Soul Essence carried the Dormant decay within it. He had externalized it. The elements he conjured were not simply manifestations; they were vectors of entropy.
Sunny almost laughed despite the tension.
'So he really was just a wizard!'
The battlefield intensified.
Jing Yuan, now fully transformed into the massive white tiger, became a streak of incandescent lightning. He darted between vine strikes, claws raking across Phantylia's torso. Each swipe carved glowing lines into her artificial flesh. The wounds closed almost instantly.
Sunny narrowed his eyes.
The Abundant Ebon Deer had drawn directly from the Arbor to replenish itself. Essence had flowed visibly from the roots into its body. Phantylia's wounds were healing — but no additional Essence was entering her vessel.
Her reservoir was finite.
Already below half from the Celestial Jade punishments. Regeneration slowed.
They didn't need to overpower her. As long as she ran out of Essence… they won.
Dan Heng roared, three dragons spiraling outward as he unleashed a barrage of fused elements. Lightning-infused frost slammed into a wall of sprouting carnivorous plants. The plants absorbed the impact briefly before black veins spread across their surfaces, decay eating through vitality at a pace that even Abundance could not immediately reverse.
Phantylia responded with contemptuous escalation.
More lotuses erupted. Vines multiplied. The air filled with slicing petals and grasping tendrils.
Fu Xuan's visions echoed within their minds.
'Left flank collapse in three seconds. High angle vine. Downward strike. Switch.'
They moved as one.
A vine that would have bisected Jing Yuan instead met empty air. A blossom that would have swallowed Dan Heng snapped shut on nothing. A spear of wood that would have skewered Sunny grazed the amber shield instead, leaving it smoking but intact.
Sunny's role solidified.
He was not the lance.
He was the wall.
He redirected Preservation's authority constantly, reinforcing the Saints' defenses whenever Fu Xuan indicated imminent lethality. Each impact that struck the shield fed the Lance, deepening its glow. It was as though the weapon thrived on defiance.
Whenever he detected an opening — when Jing Yuan forced Phantylia to focus upward, or when Dan Heng's dragons coiled around her limbs — Sunny acted.
Shadow Step.
He materialized beside one of the primary lotuses and drove Hail Sorrow into its core. The blade carved through luminous tissue before dissolving back into his Soul Sea. The lotus convulsed and withered, its petal storm faltering for several seconds.
Shadow Step again.
A quick thrust at Phantylia's exposed flank.
Then gone before her retaliatory roots could impale him.
He never lingered.
A graze would be death.
Even so, once, a barbed vine clipped his side before he could fully dissolve into shadow. Agony lanced through him as flesh tore open. The amber barrier flared and absorbed the worst of the penetration, but the warning was clear.
He was dancing on a razor.
Fu Xuan transmitted another future.
Jing Yuan torn apart mid-leap.
Sunny thickened the shield above the tiger an instant before impact. The vine strike that followed dented the barrier but did not penetrate. Jing Yuan rebounded off the reinforced layer, claws raking across Phantylia's face in retaliation.
Her laughter grew thinner.
Each attack she unleashed consumed Essence. Each wound she healed consumed more.
She was arrogant. She did not conserve. She assumed inevitability.
Sunny's lips curved faintly despite the blood in his mouth.
He would let her spend herself.
Another coordinated assault.
Dan Heng's fused lightning-flame speared against her left wing. Decay spread outward in branching fractures before the wound sealed with visible strain. Jing Yuan's Lightning Lord manifested again, crashing down with a titanic guan dao strike that forced her torso to twist.
Sunny saw the drain in her Essence.
It was subtle, but it was there.
He paled again, not from fear this time but from understanding the scale of what they were eroding. Even halved and slowed, her power was vast. One mistake, and they would not get a second vision to correct it.
He did not retreat.
He could not.
He might be a coward in quieter battles, calculating survival above pride. But debts were different.
Phantylia had invaded his mind, rummaged through his memories, and laughed.
She was on his naughty list.
And Sunny always repaid what he was owed.