The northern route was already losing its outer structures by the time the coalition's forward elements reached the first abandoned position. Umbrel scouts found the control chamber empty, its portable plates removed and the heavier fixed mechanisms drained before anyone had attempted to damage them. Veridian Prime traced two buried conduits from the chamber and discovered that one had been severed cleanly while the other still carried a weakening pulse northward. Above the forest, Celestara reported disciplined columns moving away from the region rather than gathering around the next convergence complex to defend it.
Xuanyin received the reports while the main army was still several miles south, and she kept the forward legions moving instead of waiting for every wounded formation from the previous battle to catch up. The people who had taken the greatest strain at the regulator remained behind with the slower support elements, while fresh mixed teams replaced them near the front. Haotian traveled with the leading force after the healers reinforced the bindings around his left forearm and side, though he kept the injured arm close whenever the uneven ground required climbing. Tianlan remained farther back with the mobile formations so he could move between whatever fronts developed once the withdrawal stopped being a single road.
The terrain changed gradually as the army advanced. Low forested hills gave way to long stone ridges running north and south, with old Blue Sphere roads cut between them and abandoned waterways winding through the lower ground. Abyss formation channels appeared everywhere, but many had already been emptied, leaving dark metal buried beneath the soil without enough pressure to activate. Haotian could still feel the living relationship ahead through the Dao Palace of the Universe, although it weakened every time another outer conduit was disconnected.
The second abandoned station showed more clearly how the withdrawal was being conducted. Its outer node had been emptied first, then the burden had been transferred inward before the control plates were removed from the walls. Only after the chamber no longer carried useful pressure had the demolition crew broken the conduit behind it, leaving the structure damaged without allowing an uncontrolled release. A Veridian elder crouched beside the exposed channel and told Xuanyin, "They are closing every section after the people and the burden have already passed through."
Xuanyin studied the marks around the chamber before asking whether the same crew had done all of the work. The Veridian elder pointed to three different tool patterns and said several groups had probably been operating in sequence, with one handling the transfer, another stripping the controls, and a final team destroying what remained. Haotian followed the surviving conduit and found that the pressure did not simply move north in one continuous stream. It entered another structure ahead, settled briefly, then continued deeper after a delay.
"They are not running," Xuanyin said as she looked toward the northern ridges. "They are taking the network apart while they withdraw."
The advance became more cautious after that. Umbrel scouts moved ahead of the main force in pairs, while Veridian Prime followed closely enough to inspect every newly abandoned position before the evidence was lost beneath demolition. Celestara remained higher than usual because the trees and ridges created too many places for a retreating army to reverse direction and attack a pursuing column. Blue Sphere kept the mixed teams spread enough that one collapsing road or conduit would not trap an entire legion inside a narrow approach.
The first rear guard appeared near a broad stone crossing where three old roads met beneath a ruined watchtower. The demons did not charge the coalition when they came into sight, and they did not wait long enough to become surrounded. Several shield formations held the road while ranged cultivators occupied the higher ground, buying time for a group of formation specialists farther north to finish dismantling another control chamber. Once those specialists withdrew, the rear guard began giving ground as well.
The coalition pressed without allowing the movement to become a chase. Marephoros cultivators kept the forward teams from accelerating blindly into the retreat, while Veridian Prime watched the road for buried formations that might have been left active beneath the surface. The demons used the delay well, firing into the advancing lines and withdrawing behind each prepared position before the coalition could close completely. Pyrelith struck only when the rear guard compressed around natural choke points, because the roads themselves still carried conduits the scouts had not finished tracing.
One demonic commander remained long enough to threaten the Veridian teams working beside the crossing. Yinxue moved from the supporting formation and intercepted him before he could reach the specialists, her sword meeting his heavy blade without allowing the exchange to drag her away from the road. Frost gathered across the metal only where the weapons touched and along the ground beneath his leading foot, limiting his ability to drive forward without filling the entire crossing with indiscriminate ice. When the demon tried to disengage toward the withdrawing formation, Yinxue kept enough pressure on him for two Blue Sphere cultivators to close the route instead of following him alone.
Ziyue supported the opposite side of the same line. She used the changing elements within her Sword Dao to respond to the demon formations rather than throwing broad attacks through terrain the coalition still needed to inspect. A sharp wind-edged cut broke the pressure around one shield group, followed by a heavier earth-aligned strike that caught the defenders when they tried to anchor themselves against the first disruption. The opening allowed the mixed teams to advance without forcing Ziyue to pursue the retreating group beyond the crossing.
The rear guard eventually abandoned the position after the final formation specialists ahead disappeared beyond the next ridge. Blue Sphere did not allow the forward teams to rush into the vacated road until Veridian Prime confirmed that the demolition sequence beneath it had already completed. The control chamber farther north had been stripped even more thoroughly than the previous two, leaving only fixed stone housings and a single half-destroyed plate that showed where the pressure had been transferred before withdrawal. Xuanyin compared its timing with the earlier stations and began seeing the same sequence repeated.
The Abyss emptied the outer function, transferred the burden inward, removed what information could be carried, withdrew the people responsible for the process, and then destroyed the section behind them. The order varied slightly when the coalition approached too quickly, but the priorities remained consistent enough that the scouts could begin predicting what they would find at the next abandoned position. Xuanyin warned the commanders not to mistake that predictability for weakness. "They know we are following them, so assume every clean pattern is something they are willing to let us see."
The next Celestara report appeared to confirm her caution. A large body of demons was moving northwest through a broad valley, far larger than any force the scouts had observed along the actual northern conduit. Several banners and heavy formation wagons traveled with the column, making it look like the evacuation of the complex's important personnel and equipment. The northern ground route, by comparison, contained only scattered rear guards and demolition teams.
Tianlan received the report while moving his reserve through a lower ridge several miles behind Haotian. He opened a brief sensory bond with one of the healthy Frost Rainbow Falcons and looked down across the northwest valley from above. The troop column was genuinely large, and its formations were disciplined enough that it could not be dismissed as a collection of expendable soldiers pretending to retreat. What bothered him was the lack of technical movement around them.
He released the Falcon's senses and asked the Celestara officer beside him how many formation crews had been seen with the column. The woman answered that there were wagons and several cultivators wearing technical robes, but not enough activity around them to match the size of the withdrawing force. Tianlan looked east toward the ridges hiding the central route and said, "Keep watching the column, but do not move the reserve northwest yet. I want the roads those specialists are not using."
Xuanyin reached the same concern from the ground reports. Umbrel scouts following the northern conduit had found fresh footprints from smaller groups that moved quickly and carried equipment rather than heavy weapons. The tracks repeatedly disappeared into maintenance cuts and reappeared farther north, keeping close to the buried network instead of joining the obvious surface withdrawal. When Tianlan's observation arrived, Xuanyin divided the problem instead of deciding one of the routes must be false.
The large northwest column still had to be contained. Yinxue and Ziyue were assigned to the surface force with enough Blue Sphere, Marephoros, Celestara, and Pyrelith formations to prevent several thousand demons from simply breaking away into the surrounding region. Haotian continued north with the deeper pursuit because the living spatial relationship remained beneath the central ridges. Tianlan was placed between them, responsible for maintaining physical and command contact so neither force became isolated if the Abyss shifted troops between the two routes.
The third assignment proved useful almost immediately. A smaller demonic formation emerged from the trees between the northwest valley and the central ridges, threatening the supply path connecting Haotian's force with the surface containment group. Tianlan sent two mixed teams before the demons reached the road, then moved a third formation farther north because the first attack drew too much attention toward the obvious crossing. The higher Falcon showed another group trying to move behind the first through a concealed depression, and Tianlan used the brief bond only long enough to redirect the reserve before returning his attention to the broader position.
The northwest column slowed once Yinxue and Ziyue's force reached it. The demons formed layered defensive lines around their wagons and began moving backward through the valley while ranged cultivators occupied the surrounding slopes. Yinxue did not try to freeze the entire valley or force the withdrawal to stop in one exchange. She held the eastern side with disciplined sword pressure, keeping the column from turning back toward the central route while Blue Sphere formations closed the southern exits.
Ziyue controlled the western side through repeated attacks against formations trying to widen the withdrawal front. Her sword changed according to the defense in front of her, using sharper wind pressure when the demons packed too closely and heavier elemental force when they tried to anchor themselves around the wagons. She did not invent openings where none existed, and several demonic formations successfully withdrew a few hundred yards before the coalition compressed the valley again. The containment force therefore advanced slowly, preserving its shape instead of allowing the demons to pull individual units into a pursuit.
Haotian's group found the true shape of the northern complex after crossing the second central ridge. The structure did not spread broadly across the terrain like the previous convergence complex. It stretched lengthwise through a sunken route between the mountains, with three outer receiving sectors feeding a broad central corridor before the pressure passed through several intermediate redistribution chambers toward one deep transfer junction farther north. Much of the outer system had already been emptied by the time the coalition reached it.
The three receiving sectors were still visible because the Abyss had not yet finished destroying them. One lay west beneath a series of stepped stone platforms, another occupied the central entrance to the sunken corridor, and the third sat east near an abandoned reservoir. Their control rings had been stripped of portable plates, and most of the burden they once carried had already moved inward. Veridian Prime confirmed that the conduits beneath them were being disconnected one section at a time rather than ruptured randomly.
Xuanyin joined the forward command through the communication formation and asked how much of the complex remained functional. The Blue Sphere specialists estimated that the outer receiving sectors were mostly dead, while the central routing corridor and several redistribution chambers still carried active pressure. Haotian followed the spatial relationships farther north and told her that the deepest transfer junction remained alive, though it was losing connections quickly. "Then we stop trying to take the whole complex," Xuanyin said. "Reach the junction before they finish stripping it."
The pursuit entered the central corridor.
It was not a tunnel, but a broad sunken trench cut between high stone walls, wide enough for several formations to fight side by side. Exposed conduits ran along both walls beneath protective plates, while overhead bridges connected maintenance positions at different heights. The Abyss had already removed many of the controls from the southern section and left rear guards at the points where the corridor narrowed.
The first defenders tried to hold one of those narrowed sections long enough for a demolition team farther north to finish cutting an active conduit. Their formation was built around several heavily armored cultivators who anchored the center while spear users behind them attacked through the gaps. Blue Sphere met the line directly, but the mixed teams did not waste time trying to grind through every defender if another route around them remained available. Umbrel scouts moved toward the side maintenance paths while Veridian Prime checked whether the exposed conduits could be crossed safely.
Marephoros found the first usable bypass. A narrow drainage shelf along the eastern wall carried little formation pressure and remained stable enough for several teams if they moved without concentrating too much weight. The leading cultivators used Undertow Crossing to maintain balance along the uneven stone while Veridian Prime reinforced only the weakest section. Once the small force appeared behind the anchored demonic line, the defenders were forced to divide themselves and lost the compression that had made the corridor difficult to enter.
Pyrelith did not destroy the center when it opened. Their concentrated strikes targeted two defensive positions already separated from the exposed conduits, allowing Blue Sphere to push through without collapsing the trench. The rear guard withdrew before becoming surrounded, but the demolition team ahead had gained enough time to sever another local control line. Haotian felt the deeper junction weaken slightly as the connection disappeared.
Umbrel scouts began focusing on those demolition teams rather than the rear guards themselves. Veil Shroud — Empty Silhouette reduced their presence against the broken stone and irregular formation light, while Silent Flow — Soundless Crossing allowed them to cross exposed sections of the maintenance shelves without announcing every movement. They rarely had enough time to prevent the first steps of a demolition sequence completely. Their real success came from forcing the crews to abandon tools, controls, or records before everything could be removed.
One pair reached a redistribution chamber just as three demonic specialists were preparing to destroy its central routing plate. The scouts crossed the final gap under Silent Flow and attacked the men rather than the mechanism, keeping the plate intact while Blue Sphere fighters entered behind them. The demons fought only long enough to prevent immediate capture, then withdrew through a northern access before the chamber could be surrounded. A Veridian cultivator examining the remaining controls discovered that most of the chamber's burden had already been transferred deeper.
The recovered plate contained only fragments of useful routing information. Several sections had been physically removed before the Umbrel pair arrived, and another had been deliberately scraped until the formation pattern could no longer be reconstructed. Even so, the surviving portion confirmed that the intermediate chambers all fed toward one deep northern junction rather than multiple independent exits. Xuanyin told the forward commanders to stop spending strength preserving chambers whose information had already been stripped unless those chambers still carried live pressure.
The Abyss adapted to that decision by leaving more troops in the corridor and fewer around the structures themselves. Rear guards began using the coalition's desire to move quickly against it, retreating just far enough to expose another prepared line before the pursuing teams could reorganize. Blue Sphere responded by rotating the front instead of allowing the same formations to carry every engagement. Fresh mixed teams moved through while those that had just fought shifted aside to protect the technical groups following behind.
Xiangyin joined the forward line at the next major constriction. A high-level demonic spear formation held the corridor where the stone walls narrowed around a raised conduit crossing, making it difficult to bypass without climbing directly into ranged attacks above. Xiangyin entered with the Dao Palace of the Spear active around her cultivation, but she did not attempt to overwhelm the whole formation alone. Her spear work concentrated on controlling the central line so the mixed teams around her could widen the engagement.
The enemy commander recognized her strength and met her directly. Their first exchange happened at full spear length, both weapons testing angle and distance before either committed enough weight to be redirected easily. Xiangyin allowed the demon to believe the center remained locked, then shifted her rear foot and changed the line of her spear just enough for a Marephoros cultivator beside her to turn the pressure from the commander's next thrust toward the corridor wall. Blue Sphere advanced into the space created between him and his supporting ranks.
The demonic commander recovered quickly and shortened his grip rather than losing the entire line. Xiangyin did the same, meeting him closer while the fighters around them pressed through the opening. Her Spear Dao Palace reinforced the precision of each change without turning the corridor into a spectacle of oversized force. When the commander realized the rear guard behind him was beginning to lose its formation, he abandoned the duel and withdrew north with the survivors rather than dying merely to delay the coalition another minute.
Xiangyin let him go because the route ahead mattered more than following one opponent. She looked toward the exposed conduit crossing and asked the Veridian specialists whether it still carried pressure. They confirmed that the main burden had already passed through, though one smaller relationship remained active. Xiangyin ordered the front around it instead of allowing Pyrelith to break the structure before the specialists finished recording where it went.
The pursuit continued through two more redistribution chambers.
The first had been stripped almost completely before the coalition arrived, leaving only broken housings and one damaged control lever too incomplete to provide useful information. The second remained partly active because the demolition crews had been interrupted by Umbrel scouts farther ahead. Blue Sphere captured enough of the controls to keep the chamber from collapsing while Haotian followed the surviving pressure toward the deep transfer junction.
The spatial relationship was weakening faster now.
Haotian could feel one major route beyond the junction collapse before he reached it, disappearing from the far side in the same controlled manner he had observed at the regulator. A second relationship narrowed moments later but did not vanish completely. He told Xuanyin that the deeper junction had already lost at least one connection and that the coalition might have only one live route left by the time they arrived.
Xuanyin asked whether he could preserve the dying relationship from their current position. Haotian followed it through Universe and told her that the severance was too far advanced; trying to hold it now would mean reconstructing a connection that no longer existed along several sections. "Then leave the dead one alone," she said. "Get the last one while it is still real." Haotian agreed and accelerated the forward formation without abandoning the technical teams needed to secure the junction once they reached it.
The surface withdrawal became more violent during the same period. The northwest column tried to break south-west after realizing Yinxue and Ziyue's force had closed the easiest northern escape route. Several heavy demonic formations struck one side of the containment line together, forcing Marephoros and Blue Sphere to absorb enough pressure that the outer ranks moved dozens of yards before stabilizing. Yinxue shifted toward the threatened section rather than chasing the main body, using controlled frost along the ground to restrict the attackers' footing while Blue Sphere rebuilt the line behind her.
Ziyue remained farther north because abandoning that side would have allowed the main column to reverse toward the central ridges. When a demonic commander tried to lead several hundred fighters through a narrow break between two coalition formations, she moved directly into the opening and used her sword to slow the front rather than trying to kill the entire group at once. The people behind her closed the gap in stages. The demons withdrew again only after losing enough momentum that the column could no longer exploit the breach.
Tianlan spent most of the same fighting moving between the surface and central routes. One Falcon remained over the northwest valley while the other watched the ridges above Haotian's pursuit, allowing him to identify several places where the two demonic movements still touched. He used brief sensory bonds when those contacts became unclear, then redirected reserves to prevent rear guards from leaving the central route and joining the larger surface column. The physical connection between the coalition's two forces stayed open because he treated the roads between them as objectives rather than empty space.
The lower Falcon showed him a demonic formation approaching one of those connecting roads from the north. Tianlan released the bird's perspective and reached the threatened route with a reserve group before the demons could cut it. Their commander tried to draw him into a fight along the ridge, but Tianlan kept his spear oriented toward the road and forced the man to enter his reach if he wanted to pass. Another Blue Sphere unit arrived several minutes later, allowing Tianlan to leave the exchange and move toward the next reported threat.
The true demolition crews remained inside the central route.
Umbrel found one near the final redistribution chamber, where several specialists were removing a set of portable control plates from an overhead bridge. The scouts could not reach them without crossing open formation light, so they waited until a rear guard below launched another attack and used the resulting disruption to move. Silent Flow carried them over the bridge approach, and Veil Shroud kept their presence difficult to isolate until they were already inside weapon range.
The specialists abandoned two plates and escaped with the third. One attempted to activate a demolition mechanism while retreating, but the nearest scout struck his wrist before the command completed. Blue Sphere secured the bridge and recovered the abandoned controls. Xuanyin later learned that one plate contained timing records from the recent withdrawal sequence, while the other held partial routing data from the deep junction.
The information confirmed what the coalition had begun to suspect from the pressure movement. The enormous northwest column was not carrying the most important network specialists. Most of those people had withdrawn through the central corridor in smaller groups, protected by rear guards and timed demolition rather than the obvious mass movement on the surface. The larger column still contained real troops, equipment, and commanders, but its visibility had encouraged the coalition to assign more attention westward while the technical heart of the complex disappeared north.
Xuanyin adjusted the surface containment without weakening it enough to create an escape. She told Yinxue and Ziyue that they were no longer required to push the column north as quickly, only to keep it contained inside the valley while more reserves shifted toward the central pursuit. Yinxue answered that the surface force could hold its current shape if the western Blue Sphere legion received replacements for the people already wounded. Xuanyin sent those replacements from Tianlan's reserve rather than taking them from Haotian's advancing force.
The deep transfer junction came into sight late in the afternoon.
The sunken corridor widened into a large stone basin enclosed by steep walls, with several conduit bridges converging on a central platform built partly beneath the northern cliff. Most of the portable controls had already been removed. One deeper relationship was completely gone, another was collapsing from the far side, and only the final northern line still carried enough pressure to remain usable.
The Abyss had left a strong Immortal Lord-level commander at the junction.
He was not another Demon General and did not possess the same authority over the larger network. His task was simpler and more practical: keep the coalition away from the controls until the demolition crews finished destroying what remained. Several dozen high-level defenders held the basin around him, while formation specialists continued working behind the line.
Haotian did not rush directly toward the commander.
The surrounding mixed teams needed room to enter the basin, and charging ahead would only leave the technical specialists farther behind. Blue Sphere established a foothold across the southern edge while Marephoros controlled the first heavy counterattack, and Veridian Prime checked whether the conduit bridges could support concentrated fighting. Haotian moved forward only after enough of the basin belonged to the coalition that the rear teams could continue working safely.
The Immortal Lord commander met him halfway.
The demon used a heavy saber suited to the wider basin and attacked with enough cultivation pressure to force ordinary fighters back from the immediate exchange. Haotian stepped inside the first cut without using the wounded left hand to catch the weapon, relying on his right forearm and shoulder to alter the line. The binding around his side pulled as he rotated, reminding him that the injuries from the Demon General had not disappeared simply because a new battle had begun.
The commander recognized the limitation and began attacking toward Haotian's left side. Haotian adjusted by keeping the injured arm closer to the body and changing the angle of his entries, refusing to offer the same path twice. His goal was not to defeat the man as quickly as possible but to move him away from the central control platform while Blue Sphere specialists advanced behind the surrounding fight. Every exchange that carried the commander a few steps sideways created more room around the junction.
The demon fought intelligently enough to understand the pressure. He repeatedly abandoned promising attacks when following Haotian would move him too far from the controls, then returned toward the center and forced Haotian to approach again. The saber's heavier reach m
ade careless entry expensive, and Haotian accepted several interrupted exchanges rather than forcing his injured body through a line that was not ready to open. The battle around them remained dense enough that neither man could ignore the formations moving nearby.
Xiangyin's group reached the basin from the eastern side.
She used her spear to keep another high-level defender away from the conduit bridge while Blue Sphere and Veridian Prime crossed behind her. Yinxue and Ziyue remained with the surface operation and did not appear at the deep junction, leaving the pursuit force to solve the final position with the people already assigned to it. The coalition spread gradually around the basin without sealing every exit until the technical teams had reached the central platform.
The demolition crews increased their pace.
One of the two remaining deeper relationships disappeared completely.
Haotian felt it collapse through Universe while fighting the Immortal Lord commander, and he knew immediately that no amount of power used afterward would make it a genuine connection again. The final line narrowed at the same time. Its pressure remained real, but several segments had already begun losing continuity.
He disengaged from the commander before the man expected it.
The demon tried to follow, but Xiangyin's spear entered the space between them long enough to stop the pursuit. She did not attempt to take over Haotian's entire opponent; she only controlled the line for several breaths while Blue Sphere cultivators reinforced her side. Haotian reached the central platform with the final relationship still present.
The remaining formation specialists tried to destroy the controls.
Umbrel scouts struck them from the maintenance side while Blue Sphere entered from the basin. One specialist succeeded in damaging part of the central ring, and another removed a portable plate before retreating north. The core relationship survived because the physical conduit beneath the platform had not yet been severed.
Haotian placed his awareness into the junction.
The Dao Palace of the Universe clarified the surviving spatial line, allowing him to distinguish the live connection from the dead routes surrounding it. The Dao Palace of Creation joined only after that structure was understood, preserving the function that still existed rather than rebuilding what had already been destroyed. He did not use the Heaven Sundering Trinity Scripture, and the Dao Palace of Destruction had no role in keeping the final relationship alive long enough to read it.
The surviving route resisted preservation because the Abyss was dismantling it from the far side.
Universe held the spatial relationship within the geometry it still possessed, while Creation sustained the remaining lawful function through the damaged local controls. Haotian could not restore the portions already severed, and he did not try. The line remained narrow but real.
Xuanyin felt the junction stabilize through the command formation and asked whether Haotian had the route. He answered that he had one live relationship and that the other two were already gone beyond recovery. "Then read the one we have," she told him. "Do not waste strength trying to turn two dead roads back into roads."
The Immortal Lord commander broke away from Xiangyin and tried to return to the platform.
Haotian could not leave the junction without risking the last relationship, so Xiangyin and the surrounding high-level coalition fighters took the attack instead. Her spear met the saber at an angle that kept the blade away from the control ring, while Marephoros supported the shift by changing the commander's forward pressure when he tried to drive through her. Several Blue Sphere Immortal Lords entered from the sides once he committed.
The commander adjusted and fought his way out of the first enclosure.
He remained dangerous enough that no one treated him as a minor obstacle merely because Haotian was no longer facing him. Xiangyin took a shallow cut along the upper arm during the next exchange, and one Blue Sphere Immortal Lord was driven to one knee by a heavy saber strike before Marephoros redirected the follow-up. The coalition kept the fight away from the junction and allowed numbers to matter instead of turning the engagement into a series of isolated duels.
Haotian followed the preserved relationship farther north.
It did not lead directly to another broad convergence complex like the ones they had already dismantled. Several major routes narrowed into a shared region where the network became denser but contained fewer independent junctions. The outer complexes appeared to have been feeding inward toward a smaller number of transfer points, each carrying more responsibility than the structures behind them.
The surviving line also carried traces of recent movement.
Pressure, control signals, and transferred burden had all passed northward during the withdrawal, confirming that the Abyss had not simply abandoned the outer complex. It had concentrated useful resources deeper into the network. Haotian could not yet see the Main Rift itself, but the architecture ahead was narrowing in a way that made the direction increasingly difficult to disguise.
He told Xuanyin what he could distinguish.
She had the Blue Sphere specialists record every direction, fold, pressure change, and timing interval while Creation preserved the last live function. The damaged controls limited how much information they could extract, and several sections of the route faded while the recording continued. Xuanyin did not ask Haotian to hold them past the point where they remained real.
The Immortal Lord commander fell before the last readings were complete.
Xiangyin controlled the saber line long enough for a Marephoros cultivator to redirect a heavy committed strike away from the demon's center. A Blue Sphere Immortal Lord entered the opening, followed by another attack from the opposite side. The commander remained on his feet through the first impact but could no longer recover a formation around himself, and the surrounding coalition fighters brought him down through accumulated pressure rather than waiting for Haotian to leave the junction.
The remaining garrison tried to withdraw north.
They found Umbrel already occupying several of the maintenance exits and Blue Sphere formations closing the broader routes behind them. Some fought until they were killed, while others attempted to break across the conduit bridges and were intercepted before reaching the outer ridge. The coalition did not deliberately allow a surviving group to escape simply because it hoped they would lead to the next position; the live network relationship already provided more reliable information than following enemy troops through terrain the Abyss controlled.
The northwest surface column remained contained as well.
Yinxue's formation stopped another attempt to break west by freezing the unstable ground immediately ahead of the lead ranks rather than trying to encase the entire force. The change ruined their footing long enough for Blue Sphere and Marephoros to close the opening. Ziyue held the northern boundary, preventing the column from reversing toward the central complex when reports of the junction's capture reached them.
The surface demons eventually lost the ability to move as one body.
Their wagons became obstacles once several road sections were blocked, and formations that tried to abandon the heavier equipment found Celestara controlling the open routes beyond the valley. Pyrelith reduced hardened defensive positions only after the surrounding terrain and supply wagons had been checked for useful records. The surface force was dismantled through containment rather than being intentionally permitted to disappear into the northwestern hills.
Tianlan stayed between the two fronts until the central junction and surface valley were both secure.
He used one last brief Falcon bond to confirm that no large demonic group had slipped through the ridges between them, then released the connection and allowed both healthy birds to descend toward the reserve. The roads he had spent most of the day protecting remained open, allowing wounded cultivators from the deep pursuit to move south while replacement teams traveled north. His own spear saw less direct fighting than it would have if he had joined Haotian at the junction, but the two coalition forces never lost contact with one another.
The preserved northern relationship finally began failing beyond Haotian's ability to sustain it.
Creation could support what remained locally, but the far end was being dismantled section by section and had reached a point where there was no continuous function left to preserve. Haotian withdrew Creation first and kept Universe active long enough to watch the final spatial fold collapse. He recorded the direction in memory and allowed the relationship to die rather than forcing an artificial continuation.
The junction remained useful even after the live route disappeared.
Blue Sphere specialists recovered partial routing records from the damaged central platform, while Umbrel brought back several control plates abandoned by the demolition crews. Veridian Prime mapped the physical conduits leaving the basin and confirmed which had once carried the three deeper connections. The surviving information aligned closely enough with Haotian's spatial reading to give Xuanyin confidence that the next region had been identified correctly.
The records also showed that the northern complex had not been withdrawing alone.
Other major convergence sites across Blue Sphere World had begun the same outer-to-inner dismantling sequence within a similar window. Some had already lost their outer nodes, while others were transferring burden inward and stripping routing information. The Abyss was contracting the network faster than the coalition could march from one stationary complex to another.
Xuanyin spread the recovered timing records beside the maps from the previous regulator. "If we continue taking them one at a time, most of the outer structures will be empty before we arrive," she said while the senior commanders gathered around her. The northern complex had still given them the direction of the deeper shared region, but the other withdrawing sites were feeding into it from different routes. Haotian looked across those converging lines and told her that the coalition would have to follow several moving targets at once if it wanted to keep the network from disappearing ahead of them.
Yinxue and Ziyue arrived after the surface valley was secure.
Yinxue's armor carried several cuts from the containment fighting, while frost still clung to the lower part of one greave where she had repeatedly changed the ground under the demonic formations. Ziyue had taken a minor wound along one shoulder but remained capable of moving with the next advance. Xuanyin gave them only enough time to report the condition of their forces before ordering both surface groups into rotation.
Xiangyin joined the command area later from the deep junction.
A healer had already bound the cut along her upper arm, and she rested her spear against one shoulder while listening to the recovered routing report. When Tianlan asked whether the deep commander had been another Demon General, Xiangyin shook her head and said, "No. Strong enough to make us work for the junction, but he was there to buy time for the demolition crews." Haotian agreed, adding that the enemy's priority had been the withdrawal rather than holding the complex permanently.
The coalition spent the remaining daylight dismantling what little of the northern complex still carried pressure.
Most of the outer structures were already empty, so Pyrelith could destroy them after Blue Sphere and Veridian Prime confirmed that no useful relationship remained. The intermediate chambers required more care because several still contained residual burden trapped by the withdrawal sequence. Marephoros emptied those sections gradually before the hardened housings were removed.
Haotian remained near the deep junction while his forearm was cleaned and rebound again.
The day's fighting had not reopened the wound as badly as the battle with the Demon General, but the bandage had darkened where repeated movement pulled at the cut. The healer told him that continuing to use the arm close to the body had prevented worse damage and warned him not to interpret that as permission to stop protecting it. Haotian flexed the fingers once, confirmed that the movement remained clean, and allowed her to tighten the new wrapping.
Xuanyin reorganized the next operation before the last demolition crews finished their work.
The northern live route had given them the deepest map, but two other withdrawing complexes were still moving burden inward along different relationships. One lay north-east, where reconnaissance already showed a mobile group of formation personnel and troops leaving the outer structures. Another lay farther east, where the network was collapsing so quickly that the scouts were uncertain how much infrastructure would remain by the time a full legion reached it.
Tianlan was assigned toward the north-eastern withdrawal.
His experience maintaining the links between the day's fronts made him useful there, especially because the route contained enough mobile enemy formations that the next operation would require independent command decisions rather than constant instructions from Xuanyin. One healthy Falcon would range farther ahead while the second stayed closer to the legion, and the third would remain in recovery. Tianlan accepted the assignment without asking whether Haotian would accompany him.
Shuyue and Yanfei were assigned east.
The eastern complex had already begun destroying physical structures before all of its own troops cleared them, making its construction and demolition patterns as important as the fighting itself. Yanfei's knowledge as a blacksmith would help identify which housings, supports, and reinforced sections were meant to fail first, while Shuyue could protect the specialists and keep the mixed formations functioning during the pursuit. Xuanyin made clear that neither woman was being sent to solve a formation system outside her own expertise; they were being given the tools and people needed to interpret what the enemy physically built.
Haotian remained with the northern inner route.
The preserved relationship there had disappeared, but its direction and folding pattern extended farther inward than anything recovered from the other fronts. He would follow that path with a separate force while Xuanyin maintained central command between all three operations. The armies would no longer share one battlefield, but their pressure records would still be compared as parts of the same contracting network.
The first scouts left before night fully settled.
Tianlan's north-eastern teams moved through the ridges where the larger withdrawal had not yet completed, while Umbrel preceded Haotian along the deeper northern direction and Celestara pushed observation farther east for Shuyue and Yanfei. Behind them, the captured junction continued yielding partial records as Blue Sphere specialists copied whatever the demolition crews had failed to remove. Every surviving fragment pointed toward fewer inner routes carrying more of the Abyss network than the structures the coalition had already destroyed.
Xuanyin remained over the combined map until all three advance markers began moving.
The northern complex had been captured, but most of the network function it once carried had already been transferred away before the coalition reached the deep junction. The next pursuit therefore could not wait for one army to finish and then march toward another stationary target. Three withdrawing routes were still alive ahead of them, and the coalition began following all three before the Abyss could finish contracting them into the deeper network.