The moon was swollen and heavy tonight, hanging low over Azure Tempest City like a silent witness to unspeakable deeds. Its silver light washed over the rooftops, turning every tile into a reflective shard and every alley into a corridor of shifting shadows.
Tiān Lán moved through this stillness like he belonged to it.
The lantern flames flickered as he passed, reacting to a pressure they could not understand — a pressure that made night guards straighten and instinctively grip their weapons, though none could see him clearly.
He was a shadow gliding through fog.
A presence felt in the skin, not the eyes.
From atop a towering spire, he gazed down at the city.
The Council was gone.
Their influence had cracked open like a rotten shell, leaving the city exposed.
And now…
Eyes would turn toward him.
Hungry, cautious, desperate eyes.
"Let them come," Tiān Lán whispered, the wind carrying his words to no one and everyone at once.
"I will not bend."
---
A sudden tremor pierced the stillness — faint, fleeting, but unmistakable.
A portal's residue.
Someone had entered Azure Tempest City without using its gates… or its laws.
Tiān Lán's storm-blue eyes narrowed.
He did not move — the world moved around him.
In a heartbeat, a figure materialized in front of him, tall and cloaked in obsidian. His aura cracked outward in waves, vibrating the air, bending the moonlight itself.
A Spirit Severing expert.
Not hiding.
Not subtle.
Announcing himself boldly, like a spear thrust into the sky.
"You are Tiān Lán," the man said, voice deep and cold. "The Mountain Phantom."
He studied Tiān Lán as one might study a rare beast.
"I have been sent to… assess you. The continent watches. Your existence has become an anomaly."
Tiān Lán's lips curved.
"Assessment implies doubt," he replied softly. "Allow me to erase it."
The rooftop groaned under the pressure of their colliding auras.
---
The intruder struck first.
His movement was a jagged tear in the night, slicing through air so fast the rooftop tiles cracked from the pressure. A blade of pure shadow qi flashed toward Tiān Lán's throat.
Tiān Lán flowed backward — no sound, no effort, as if the wind itself moved him.
His Sprint Realm mastery made him untouchable, light bending around his form. Their qi collided silently, like two storms crashing in the sky above mortals' awareness.
The fox spirit shot forward, nine tails splitting into flickering illusions that confused depth and direction.
The wolf leaped from below, severing incoming energy threads with its fangs.
Above them, the dragon spiraled in a sweeping arc, its roar silent but its presence bending gravity itself.
The intruder parried an illusion, only to realize his blade struck air.
"You fight with spirit beasts… like extensions of your own will," he muttered. "Such synchronicity is… unnatural."
Tiān Lán's eyes flashed cold.
"You mistake synchronicity for unity," he said, appearing behind the man with impossible speed. "They are not extensions. They are me."
Their fists clashed.
The shockwave shattered the spire.
Rooftops crumbled beneath their feet as they danced through the night — two phantoms carving streaks of moonlit destruction through the skyline.
But slowly, the envoy's breathing grew heavier.
Slower.
Less certain.
For each attack he made… Tiān Lán had already predicted the counter.
---
They landed on opposite ends of the highest tower.
Moonlight reflected off the intruder's trembling fingers.
"You…" he exhaled, disbelief in every syllable. "You are nothing like the rumors. Your mastery of the Sprint Realm defies logic. Your reactions… your beasts… your perception…"
Tiān Lán stepped forward.
"One night ago, the Council believed rumors," he said quietly. "Now they are corpses."
A pulse of qi rippled outward — not killing, but suffocating.
A warning delivered with absolute confidence.
"If you continue this path," Tiān Lán said, "you will learn fear as they did."
The intruder stumbled back involuntarily.
His Spirit Severing aura flickered.
"You—… Monster."
"No," Tiān Lán whispered.
"I am inevitable."
---
Before the intruder could speak again, a whisper of air cut between them.
A new presence stepped out from the darkness.
A woman.
Slender.
Calm.
Quiet — yet her Spirit Severing aura dwarfed the intruder's like a mountain dwarfs a stone.
Her eyes were gentle, but behind them was a depth like a frozen sea.
"You've made quite the spectacle, Mountain Phantom," she said softly. "If you wished to conceal your power, you have failed."
Tiān Lán didn't lower his guard.
"And you are?"
She held his gaze with unwavering composure.
"Yue Qingling," she replied. "Watcher of Azure Peaks. Observer of anomalies. And perhaps—"
Her eyes sharpened.
"—your first true ally. Or your first true test."
The intruder bowed his head instantly.
"Lady Qingling…"
She silenced him with a glance.
"You misunderstand why we came," she said. Turning back to Tiān Lán, she added, "Raw power may win battles… but it does not win continents. The enemies watching you now… are far older, far colder, far more cunning."
The wind swirled around them.
"Your rise will shake the world," she continued. "But it may also destroy you, unless you learn to wield more than rage."
Tiān Lán studied her.
Then:
"I have wielded patience longer than you imagine," he said softly.
"And as for darkness…"
The air around him pulsed with suffocating cold.
"…I do not fear what I already became."
Her smile was faint, enigmatic.
"Then perhaps we will walk the same road."
---
As they vanished into the night, Tiān Lán climbed atop the city walls alone.
The moon bathed him in silver.
The world around him pulsed with the quiet aftermath of battle.
He thought of the names burned into his memory:
Feng Jiutian.
Mu Yiran.
Zhao Wusheng.
Their betrayal was a scar carved into his soul.
He closed his eyes.
Then spoke words that resonated across the spiritual fabric of the continent.
"I will rise.
And every betrayal will be returned with interest."
The wolf howled.
The fox's tails fluttered.
The dragon spiraled skyward, sending shockwaves through the clouds.
Far beyond the city, in hidden halls and forbidden sects…
Eyes opened.
Plans shifted.
Old monsters stirred.
The Mountain Phantom had stepped onto the stage.
And the continent would never be the same.