On the other flank, the air itself screamed.
Madame Su was forced back once more, her footing unsteady on the shattered ground. Kirin moved not with the explosive bursts of **Jingdao**, but with an unsettling, liquid grace. He flickered, a phantom of intention rather than muscle. His fingers danced in the empty space before him. With a sound like a glacier calving, the moisture in the air—dew, the sweat of fear, the very humidity—was ripped forward and **coalesced**. It didn't just freeze; it was *compressed* into a dome of jagged, diamond-hard ice that materialized around Madame Su in an instant, its spiked interior threatening to crush her into pulp.
*Liang!* Her mind screamed the warning she could not voice.
A streak of orange fire, propelled by a crude but potent jet of **Shidow**-manipulated flame beneath his feet, shot across the intervening space. Liang understood. Gen was blind to anything but his vengeful duel. It was up to him and Lorel. They had fought as a duo before, in the Tower of Wonder. There was an implicit, desperate trust there, a shared language of survival that even Gen's current anger could not erase. He wasn't worried about her. He was worried about the phantom before him.
Kirin arrived in front of Liang as if he had always been there. His palm drew a clean, almost lazy arc through the air. It looked harmless.
Liang felt the world *twist*. His instincts, honed by a thousand observations as the 'weakest,' shrieked. He didn't think; he *burst* sideways in a flare of fire.
Where he had been standing, the air shimmered. The residual Qi from Kirin's gentle-seeming gesture solidified into a dozen needle-thin blades of solidified light, lancing forward from every conceivable angle—a sphere of silent, sudden death.
Madame Su was already there, moving with the last of her dancer's speed. A storm of razor-petals erupted from her, guided by frantic **Shidow**, intercepting and shattering each light-needle with a series of sharp *pings* that sounded like a deadly music box. The level of control displayed—to create and guide so many individual, precise projectiles while mortally wounded—left even Liang speechless.
*This… this level of manipulation… I can't even compare,* he thought, a cold knot forming in his stomach.
He didn't stop. He summoned his fire, not in a wild torrent, but in a focused, roaring **flame tornado** that he sent spiraling directly at Kirin's center.
Kirin simply smirked. He brought his palms together in a soft, almost prayerful clap.
***Ripple Dominance.***
From the point where his palms met, a complex, invisible symbol seemed to imprint on reality. Then, a ripple of pure, condensed **Fendow**—the Wheel of Separation—pulsed outward. It was not an attack of force, but of *unmaking*. The ripples didn't clash with Liang's flame tornado; they **dissolved** it. Where they touched, the bonds holding the fire together were severed. The roaring vortex puffed into disparate, dying embers as if it had never existed. The petal-storm meeting the same ripples simply disintegrated into faint motes of pink light.
Liang's eyes widened. His connection to his flames… vanished. The jet of fire propelling him died instantly. He was fifty feet in the air, and suddenly he was falling.
His heart leapt into his throat. Panic, cold and absolute, seized him. He tried desperately to gather his Qi, to summon the fire again, but the lingering ripple in the air made it feel like trying to grab smoke with numb fingers. The ground rushed up to meet him.
Madame Su's face darkened with grim resolve. With a gasp of effort, she used **Zhidow**. Not for attack, but for salvation. A pair of magnificent, translucent wings fashioned from countless interlocking pink petals bloomed from her back. She beat them once—a powerful, shuddering flap that sent agony lancing through her body—and dove.
She shot past the fading ripples, snatched Liang from his plummet, and soared away just as his feet would have smashed into the stone.
"Was that… the Wheel of Separation?" Liang gasped, clinging to her.
She nodded, her face ashen. "Kirin was a prodigy. His first Wheel was **Zhidow**, like mine. Then **Shidow**. His third was **Fendow**. He has never learned **Jingdao**," she said, her voice strained. "He considers it… crude. Unfit for his 'beautiful skin.'"
Liang's mind raced, the analyst in him seizing on a sliver of hope. "That might be an advantage. If we can just *touch* him. No matter how simple the attack, if we land a solid **Jingdao**-reinforced blow…"
From above, Kirin's voice floated down, amused. "Let us see how you manage to touch me, then."
Liang summoned his flames once more, the orange corona flickering back to life around his fists now that the ripples had passed. He looked up, defiance hardening his features. "I've faced a three-Wheel cultivator before! With Gen! I'm not scared!"
"Are you sure?"
The voice came from directly beside him. Kirin stood there, a palm resting lightly on Liang's shoulder, another on Madame Su's. Their blood ran cold. They reacted instantly, a blast of fire and a whirl of petals consuming the figure.
It dissolved into wisps of distorted air. A mere **Shidow** phantom.
The real Kirin stood ten paces in front of them, a faint smile on his lips. "Certainty is the first step to a profound mistake."
Liang took a deep, shuddering breath. He gathered his courage, clenching it like a fist in his heart. *Gen did it. He defeated an opponent of this caliber. If he, the Immortal's son, could… then I, the weakest disciple, the sideliner… I can do it too. I have to. This is my chance. To prove I won't be left behind.*
He roared, pouring every ounce of his Qi into his connection with the Kalash. Fire erupted from him not in a stream, but in a wild, uncontrolled **swing**—a blazing arc meant to force a reaction.
Kirin smirked and clapped once more. *Ripple Dominance.*
The separating pulse shot out, dissolving the wide arc of fire into nothingness before it got halfway.
But Liang was already moving. He'd let go of the attack on purpose. As the flames died, he slid low on the scorched earth, using the distraction. Then he *jumped*, not with fire, but with pure, reinforced leg strength. At the apex of his leap, he summoned the **Kalash of Elements**.
A single, perfect bolt of **white lightning** forged from its depths lanced down, aimed at Kirin's crown.
Madame Su saw his intent. With a cry of effort, she used her **Shidow** not on Kirin, but on Liang. She wrapped him in a vortex of guiding, accelerating wind—the **Floral Wings** technique, born from her own desperate desire to rise above the clouds that had always covered her sky. She lent him her sky.
Liang felt the borrowed power, the incredible rush. The level of control and difficulty to bestow a creation spell upon another… it showed the yawning chasm in mastery between him and masters like Kirin and Madame Su.
He did not despair. He *soared*.
From the Kalash's dark mouth, he summoned not a bolt, but the **essence**. A thunderous, raging mass of white light so pure it was painful to look at, even in the bright night. It churned like a captive star, a biting, judgmental form that seemed to carry the weight of Liang's entire will. He was the deliverer. This was his verdict.
Kirin's face shifted slightly. He felt the immense, focused purity of the power. He brought his hands up, preparing another **Ripple**.
Madame Su chose that exact fraction of a second to strike. With her last, gasping reserve, she fused her Wheels. A **dazzling dragon** of intertwined razor-petals and shrieking wind—**Zhidow** and **Shidow** combined—coiled into existence and shot towards Kirin's flank.
His face took a sharp turn, genuine surprise flashing in his eyes. "Madame Su… your growth has been phenomenal. It is such a pity I must kill you today."
The lightning fell. The petal-dragon struck.
Kirin moved.
He didn't dodge. His right hand shot up and ***caught*** the core of the biting white lightning in his palm. There was a sizzling, grinding sound as his **Fendow** activated at the point of contact. He wasn't blocking it; he was **severing** its connection to Liang, pulling the very principle of "lightning" apart from the energy that gave it form. Then, spinning on his heel with balletic grace, he hurled the now-neutralized, but still massively dense, ball of raw energy up into the distant night sky.
It exploded miles above in a silent, dazzling flower of light that momentarily outshone the Damocles.
In the flash of that false dawn, Kirin used a gust of **Shidow**-wind to shoot himself into the sky after Liang, who was now descending, drained. Kirin appeared before him, caught his face in a gentle, almost intimate grip.
"Well played," Kirin murmured into his ear.
Then, flames bloomed in Kirin's other palm. But they were not Liang's orange fire. They were a sickly, smiling yellow, tinged with green at the edges—flames born of a different, despairing principle. They did not radiate heat, but a soul-deep chill.
***The Severing Touch and the Despair Flames.***
Kirin pressed the smiling flames into Liang's chest.
There was no explosion. Only consumption.
Liang's world dissolved into absolute, silent agony. It was not the pain of burning flesh, but of burning *connection*. His link to his Qi, to the Kalash, to the very air around him, felt severed, melting away. He was being un-made from the inside out. His body convulsed in Kirin's grip, wreathed in the silent, smiling inferno.
In the brilliant, hellish light, Madame Su dove for them. Gen, Yuan, Lorel, Chubbs—all froze for a split second, their attention ripped from their own battles by the terrifying spectacle in the sky.
Liang, consumed by impossible pain, had one final, crystal-clear thought before the darkness took him:
*Three Wheels… Two Wheels… what does it matter? Jun and Kirin have the same number. The difference… is mastery. I was so naive.*
His face, visible for an instant through the green-yellow flames, darkened. Then his eyes rolled back. Consciousness left his body, and he went utterly, terrifyingly limp in Kirin's victorious grasp.