Ring 8 – Abandoned Rooftop Garden, Sector 41 "Lotus Graveyard"
9 hours 38 minutes after the Red Lotus massacre
The city is screaming the way only the lower rings can scream.
Every billboard, every neural feed, every cracked holo-sign loops the same three clips on infinite repeat. The bounty counter has frozen at one hundred million credits per head because the exchange servers melted when it tried to go higher. The dark feeds have crowned him "Silver Ghost Zero." The official channels call him "Celestial Seed Anomaly – Void-Nine Threat." The gutter kids call him "the boy who finally won."
Right now that boy is bleeding on the roof of a half-collapsed pagoda garden thirty stories above the traffic lanes.
Liàn Xing leans against a bioluminescent lotus pond, coat torn open, silver circuits flickering like dying neon under his skin. The half-formed spear shaft (black with flowing galaxies) rests across his knees, humming softly, almost content.
Lan Shuyin stands five metres away, white combat hanfu fluttering in the polluted wind, frost trailing from her boots in perfect circles. Her cryo-tubes glow angry crimson again; the yin poison is creeping back now that direct contact has been broken for too long.
Zhao Shentian has just landed in a blaze of golden plasma, hover-bike disintegrating into nine orbiting micro-swords that spin lazily around him like bored fireflies. His white-gold robes are pristine, hair perfect, grin sharp enough to cut light.
He looks at the blood on Liàn Xing's coat, the frost on the deck, the wanted posters flickering on every billboard in sight.
Then he laughs (wild, delighted, the laugh of someone who just found the one thing in the universe worth fighting).
"Took me nine hours to track you, Silver Ghost," he says, stepping off the smoking wreckage of his bike. "You're slippery."
Liàn Xing wipes blood from his lip.
"You're late."
Zhao's grin widens.
"Fashionably."
Lan Shuyin's voice cuts between them like a cryo-blade.
"Zhao Shentian of Heavenly Sword Court. You have ten seconds to explain why I shouldn't freeze your heart and sell the corpse for parts."
Zhao ignores her completely, eyes locked on Liàn Xing.
"One strike," he says, drawing a single plasma sword that ignites with a sound like tearing silk. "Same as the alley clip. I want to feel it again. Right here. Right now. Winner claims the loser as rival for life. No interference."
He glances at Lan Shuyin.
"That means you, ice princess."
Lan Shuyin's killing intent drops the temperature twenty degrees. Frost explodes across the rooftop in perfect lotus patterns.
"This is my garden," she says, voice flat as absolute zero. "You do not give orders here."
Liàn Xing stands slowly.
The spear shaft unfolds in his grip with a metallic shriek that makes every billboard in a kilometre radius glitch.
He looks at Zhao.
Then at Lan Shuyin.
Then back at Zhao.
"One strike," he agrees.
Zhao's eyes light up like twin suns.
Lan Shuyin starts to protest.
Liàn Xing raises one hand.
"Trust me."
She hesitates (the longest three seconds of her life), then steps back, frost swirling around her like a living storm.
Zhao becomes nine golden phantoms, each one swinging a different lethal arc of Heavenly Sword Court's signature technique: Nine Phantoms Severing Karma.
The rooftop garden's gravity generators whine in protest.
Liàn Xing takes one step forward.
"Starlight Thrust."
No wind-up.
No stance.
Just motion.
The spear shaft moves.
A single straight line of silver cosmic light punches through all nine phantoms like they're made of paper.
The real Zhao barely parries with crossed arms, plasma swords screaming against the half-formed spear. The shockwave flash-freezes the lotus pond and flash-melts the pagoda roof in the same heartbeat.
They stand nose-to-nose, weapons locked, steam exploding between them in perfect rings.
Zhao's eyes are feral with joy.
"Again," he whispers.
Liàn Xing smiles back (small, sharp, real).
"Anytime."
Lan Shuyin watches them, cryo-blades still in hand, frost swirling like a living storm.
For one perfect second the three most dangerous teenagers in the Nine Heavens are all in the same place, and the universe holds its breath.
Then every alarm in the district screams at once.
Hunter ships crest the horizon (Azure Sky interceptors, Moonlit Ice cutters, Heavenly Sword gunships). Forty-two Nascent Soul auras ignite like angry stars.
Zhao lowers his swords first.
"Looks like playtime's over."
He looks at Liàn Xing.
"But this isn't finished. You're my rival now. No one else gets to kill you. Anyone tries?" His grin turns lethal. "I cut them into pieces too small for the recyclers."
He throws something (a golden comm-beacon that hovers in mid-air).
"Call when you're ready for round two."
Then he looks at Lan Shuyin.
"You're keeping him alive. Good. I need him in one piece when I surpass him."
Lan Shuyin's answer is ice.
"Touch him and I'll freeze your blood solid, sword idiot."
Zhao laughs and leaps backward off the roof, nine swords forming a golden surfboard that catches him mid-fall.
He vanishes into the traffic lanes below.
The hunter ships lock weapons.
Lan Shuyin turns to Liàn Xing.
"We have ninety seconds before this roof becomes a crater."
Liàn Xing looks at the golden comm-beacon hovering in his palm.
Then at her.
Then at the spear shaft humming with anticipation.
He closes his fist around the beacon.
"Seventy seconds is enough."
He offers her his hand.
She takes it.
Starlight and frost spiral together.
"Together?" she asks.
"Together."
Zhenxing materialises on his shoulder, grinning like a cat who just ate the universe.
"Finally. Let's go break some heavens."
They leap off the roof as one.
The hunter ships fire.
The rooftop garden ceases to exist in a sphere of azure, gold, and white annihilation.
But the three monsters are already gone.
Falling through traffic lanes.
Falling toward the radiation belts.
Falling toward three months that will change everything.
Behind them, the bounty counter finally unfreezes.
It rolls over to two hundred million.
Then three.
The hunt is on.
And the prey just formed a pact that will one day make the heavens themselves kneel.