The sun had already reached its zenith, bathing the Flying Galleon's deck in a golden, relentless light. The vessel was not crossing clouds; it was perfectly docked on the ground, anchored in a rocky clearing after the annihilation of the previous days. The low breeze barely grazed the hardwood, passively repelled by the thick gravity emanating from the man seated at the center of the black velvet rug.
The air on the deck, however, was absurdly dense. The smell of meat roasted over embers and expensive wine mixed inescapably with the scent of ozone, sandalwood, and the sweetened musk of boiling Yin. The altar's possessive lust and the frustration of the patrol's slaughter had not respected the early hours, dragging themselves voraciously and noisily well into the morning.
Yù Méi tore a piece of meat directly from the bone with her teeth. The golden silk of her dress was frayed at the sides, exposing the gleam of sweat that had not yet dried on her jade skin. The youngest chewed with predatory euphoria, sprawled widely across the rug. She licked the fat and a flake of dried blood from her thumb, her almond eyes gleaming with impatient boredom.
"That bastard captain turned to dust way too fast..." Yù Méi grumbled, her guttural voice vibrating as she kicked an empty wooden cup across the deck. The unresolved sexual tension from the previous night still prickled in the warrior's thick thighs. "My blood is itching. I need something that won't break on the first punch."
At the center, reclined against heavy dark cushions, Zhì Yuǎn kept the charcoal-gray tunic open at his chest. Sitting sideways in his lap, her legs swinging gently in the air, Bái Wǎn held a succulent piece of meat between her pale little fingers. The immense mane of ocean-blue hair cascaded over his shoulder.
"Say aaah, husband..." Bái Wǎn murmured, her voice sweetly coaxing. She raised the food to the man's lips with a smile of blind devotion, but her large chestnut eyes overflowed with an intellectual, calculating coldness that only he noticed.
The lethargic darkness in Zhì Yuǎn's eyes dissipated, bathed in a mild and indulgent warmth. He opened his mouth, accepting the meal. The god's large, calloused thumb rose afterward, wiping a drop of sauce from the corner of the young woman's full lips, and she sighed in pure comfort, rubbing her chubby face against his chest.
A few steps away, the altar exhaled a predatory and devoted calm.
Yù Qíng was not floating. The priestess sat gracefully on her heels over the black velvet. Lying face-down with her immaculate cheek resting directly on the firstborn's thigh, Qīng Yǔ breathed in a gentle, docile rhythm, her eyes closed in pure lethargy. Settled to their right, Huáng Bìyù maintained her regal posture. The Valkyrie in the scarlet dress held a pair of silver chopsticks. With millimetric delicacy, Bìyù pinched a soft piece of roasted meat and brought it to Yù Qíng's ruby lips.
The woman in blue parted her mouth, accepting the meal directly from the hands of the former legend with a mild and satisfied smile, chewing slowly. Bìyù, fulfilled by serving her elder sister, speared another piece and brought it to her own mouth, her liquid-amber eyes watching over the family's peace with unyielding loyalty.
A long, dragging creak cut through the calm sound of lunch.
The heavy cedar doors of the inner cabins swung open. Lín Jié stopped at the threshold, her ink-stained fingers gripping the doorframe so hard her knuckles went white to keep herself from collapsing.
The Ink Goddess breathed in desperate gasps. The heavy jade-green velvet Hanfu had been thrown on in haste, its collar straining under the chest that rose and fell chaotically. The mature woman's legs trembled visibly beneath the skirt. She had fainted countless times in the darkness of the sheets — the only one who had failed to match the colossal endurance of the other wives under the husband's crushing march that had invaded the morning.
Yù Méi stopped chewing. The Brutal Blade swallowed the meat in one go, her irises sparking in living gold, and let out a hoarse, scandalous laugh.
"By our heaven, Jié!" Yù Méi's voice echoed across the deck, pointing the roasted bone at the woman in the doorway with pure friendly mockery. "You look like you got run over by a herd of primordial beasts! Did the ink on your brush dry out in the middle of the night?"
Lín Jié closed her green eyes, swallowing hard. Without the strength to formulate a bureaucratic response, her lower belly throbbing absurdly, she staggered to the edge of the rug and let her knees give way, sinking into the velvet with a long, exhausted, and purely surrendered sigh.
Yù Qíng swallowed the piece of meat Bìyù had given her and tilted her pale face. The priestess extended an elegant hand, pouring a single cup of dark wine, and held it out toward the newcomer.
"Our new sister's paper still tears far too easily under the heavy pen of our heaven, doesn't it?" Yù Qíng's velvety voice floated, the poisoned and sweet metaphor caressing the other's shame. "Drink, woman of ink. Your soil needs water before it tries to bear his weight again tonight."
Lín Jié took the cup with both trembling hands. The thick heat stained her pale neck, but she didn't avert her eyes, drinking the wine and turning her face toward Zhì Yuǎn.
The god did not laugh at the provocations. His dark gaze descended upon the exhausted, undone figure of the former secretary. The void receded completely. His irises were taken over by a warm and undeniably satisfied possession, silently dissecting with approval the damp marks his own weight had left on the bureaucrat.
It was then that a faint rustle of sky-blue silk drew his attention back to his own lap.
Bái Wǎn settled herself more comfortably sideways on the husband's thighs, turning her torso slightly to lean her shoulder against his broad chest. The former academic produced a dark leather scroll from within her own sleeve. She unrolled the map over the god's rigid chest, her large oceanic eyes glinting with childlike excitement that concealed the cold cruelty of someone who sees other people's lives as a game board.
"Husband..." Bái Wǎn murmured, her voice gentle and melodious, raising her divinely chubby face to him. "I was reading the dead archives we looted from those guards' rings last night. I found such a curious tale about the ancient Sect of the Grey Valley."
Zhì Yuǎn did not push the scroll aside. Indulgent patience emanated from his presence.
"What did you find of interest in the old writings, Wǎn'er?" the god's deep, velvety voice echoed, his chest vibrating softly against the girl's shoulder and back.
Bái Wǎn smiled, her rosy cheeks gaining a gleam of pure poisoned innocence.
"The story says they were not destroyed by swords. Their enemies did not attack the mountain. They dominated the trade routes around the valley and began strangling the inflow of ores and food," Bái Wǎn explained, the tip of her pale finger tracing the runes on the leather. "The sect began bleeding gold. When the elders finally came down from the mountain, one by one, to audit the bankruptcy... they were silently kidnapped in the shadows. The sect imploded in pure paranoia before the first arrow was ever fired."
The Goddess of Serenity propped her chin on her husband's chest. Her blue eyes blinked in an adorably pleading manner.
"It's so fun to watch the ants run in circles without knowing where the poison is coming from, my heaven..." Bái Wǎn whispered. "We always smash their ceiling so fast. Can't we play like that with the Court of the Absolute Blade? Just a little?"
On the velvet rug, Yù Méi stopped cleaning her hands. The warrior widened her eyes and threw the bone onto the tray with a dull thud.
"Are you serious, Wǎn?!" Yù Méi protested, her voice hoarse and indignant, crossing her arms beneath her generous bust with a scandalous pout. "Hide-and-seek games and bureaucratic bankruptcy?! My blood is boiling and my legs are itching to smash their front door in, and you want to play gossiping merchant?!"
Zhì Yuǎn let out a low, rich, and purely amused laugh.
The man's baritone warmed the early afternoon breeze. To his Inner Universe, obliterating the Court of the Absolute Blade would require nothing more than a flick of a finger. The commercial strangulation plan was a hilariously wasteful expenditure of time and power. But looking down at Bái Wǎn's flushed cheeks awaiting his permission, the Dao's apathy evaporated. If his pocket goddess wanted a theater to entertain herself after lunch, the stage would be set.
"My heaven spoils his flowers far too much," Yù Qíng purred, her black eyes overflowing with maternal sadism. She rested her hand elegantly on her own legs, watching her husband. "But I confess that watching the insects tear their own antennae off in the dark and devour each other for gold is an excellent appetizer before the main course."
Zhì Yuǎn tilted his face, kissing Bái Wǎn's forehead with affectionate approval, before turning his dark gaze toward the edge of the rug. The unyielding lethargy descended over his voice, stripped of playfulness.
"Yán. Jié."
Mò Yán, who had been resting silently in the corner, straightened her posture immediately. The restrained flower crawled across the velvet, the white and black silk straining against the monumental fullness of her breasts, her pale skin flushing with heat at the usefulness being demanded of her.
Lín Jié, still sunken in the velvet, set the cup aside and swallowed hard. The exhaustion vanished from the ink woman's green eyes, the bureaucratic mind igniting like a malevolent forge. She straightened her torso to kneel in perfect submission beside Mò Yán, a few steps from her husband.
"Wake the dogs in the shadows," Zhì Yuǎn decreed, his long fingers tracing Bái Wǎn's jaw. "Strangle the Court's trade routes to the last drop of silver. When the Elders come down..."
He turned his gaze to the sulking youngest. The god's smile was a reflection of visceral promise.
"Bag the old men alive. The youngest will need punching bags when her boredom tightens."
Yù Méi's pout vanished in the same instant. The Brutal Blade leaned forward, her canines gleaming in a manic, unhinged grin.
"Oh, alive? For me?" the golden warrior purred, her canines gleaming. "I swear I'll make each one of them last at least half an hour before turning to dust, my heaven."
On the black rug, Mò Yán and Lín Jié were already exchanging complicit glances. The Snow and the Ink. The two most efficient minds of that altar were preparing to gut the economy of a continental sect purely for the sadistic pleasure of watching the old men run without direction.
"The board is already set, husband," Mò Yán's melodious voice flowed, strictly professional. The diplomat raised her pale hand. The invisible connection of her soul spun obediently in tune with her god.
Riiip.
The space folded with the dry sound of silk being torn open. A black rift with silver edges opened on the deck. Mò Yán stepped into the vacuum, her perfectly bare feet floating a hair's breadth from the wood. Lín Jié followed, the heavy velvet Hanfu billowing as her mature curves entered the dimensional distortion, leaving the family in the sunlit calm.
---
When the rift spat them out, the ozone smell of the Galleon was abruptly replaced by the dense and opulent incense of a palace hidden in the belly of the Imperial Capital.
Two old men, whose colossal auras of the 7th Sub-realm distorted the very light of the torches, dropped to their knees on the polished marble the moment the scent of Yin and sandalwood invaded the room. Both men's bones cracked on impact. They were the Ancestors of the Earth Dragon and the Blue Fire — the former gods of that empire, now reduced to mere guard dogs.
Lín Jié looked down. The Ancestor of the Blue Fire, the man who had once been the untouchable pillar of the clan that had enslaved her in bureaucracy for decades, now pressed his forehead against the stone floor, trembling centimeters from her immaculate fingers.
A cynical smile, impregnated with the superiority of one who slept in the true god's bed, split the ink woman's lips.
"Raise only your ears," Lín Jié's husky voice descended upon them. "The Syndicate will bleed the Court of the Absolute Blade dry. If any noble lineage, Guild, or Sect in this capital attempts to send gold, pills, or support troops to their mountains... cut the routes. Choke the bureaucracy down to the last sheet of paper."
"No support caravan will leave our gates, my Lady," the hollow, fanatical voice of the Earth Dragon Ancestor scraped against the floor.
Mò Yán didn't blink. The space tore itself open again.
---
The rift ejected them into the damp darkness of a cavern thousands of kilometers away. The air reeked of wet earth and rust. Heavy crates, overflowing with Spirit Stones washed in Golden Mist, lined the walls of the Twin Shadows Syndicate's epicenter.
At the center of the cavern, four men in the 4th Sub-realm of the Immortal Establishment froze. The shadow assassin Lóu Jiàn and his captains felt their own souls tremble. The oppressive gravity and the scent of those two women crushed the oxygen from the room. All four threw themselves to their knees simultaneously.
Mò Yán kept her hands clasped before her abdomen. The posture of flawless restraint contrasted grotesquely with the sadistic order that left her lips.
"Our youngest sister wants bones to break, and our heaven wishes to watch the ants run," Mò Yán's velvety voice dictated the economic massacre. "Buy up the entire stock of forging ores, healing elixirs, and Fire Stones in the cities neighboring the Court. Pay triple. Inflate the market and burn what you cannot store."
Lín Jié's breathing quickened slightly.
"Their furnaces will freeze before nightfall," the former secretary's smile bared white teeth in the darkness. "Desperation will force the elders down to audit the cities. When they descend accompanied by disciples to flaunt their power... clear the street. Any servant or warrior below the top tier who breathes near you is to be put down in silence."
Mò Yán assumed the conclusion, her voice becoming lethal and non-negotiable.
"But the Elders, from the 1st to the 4th Sub-realm... these, you will capture alive. Break their legs if they attempt to use escape techniques, but keep their Dantians intact and the blood in their bodies."
Lóu Jiàn, the assassin with deep-set scars, raised his face.
"And how do we deliver the cargo to the Lords without crossing the frontier patrols?"
Mò Yán's neck burned merely thinking of her husband's mechanical omnipotence.
"When the packages are bound, focus on the connection carved into your souls. Send a single pulse of submission intent to our Lord," the diplomat whispered, feeling her own belly warm with the dogma. "He will sense the call and open a door in the dark. You will simply throw the trash into the hold of our ship. Was I clear?"
"We will deliver the toys before nightfall, my Ladies!" the monsters howled in unison, their foreheads striking the raw stone.
The work had required nothing but words.
Mò Yán raised her fingers, and the space split open for the return journey.
---
When they crossed the silver veil, the strong early afternoon light received them. Both women's perfectly bare feet floated over the planks of the Flying Galleon's deck, suspended by the Lotus of the Void. The rift closed with a mute snap behind the diplomat and the bureaucrat.
The sensory contrast between the fetid cavern and the deck was immediate. The air there remained heavy, saturated with the rich smell of sweet wine, melted fat, and the warm musk of the poorly-slept night's sweat.
Zhì Yuǎn remained reclined against the dark cushions. His black, lethargic gaze rested on the distant mountains as his large hand slowly stroked Bái Wǎn's hair. The Goddess of Serenity, exhausted after lunch and the excitement of the plan, had surrendered to sleep in his lap, breathing in a docile rhythm.
Right beside him, the altar exhaled an obscene and devoted laziness.
Qīng Yǔ continued resting in Yù Qíng's lap, her blue eyes lost in lethargy. Huáng Bìyù chewed her own lunch in silence, her liquid-amber eyes watching over the family's peace with unyielding loyalty. Lín Jié curved her lips, feeling her mature chest swell as she returned to that greenhouse of power and lust.
Mò Yán straightened her Hanfu silk. The diplomat walked to the edge of the rug, the bureaucratic instinct to deliver a report burning on her tongue.
"Our shadows have swallowed their light, husband," the melodious voice rang out strictly professional, though the heat rising along her neck betrayed her excitement. "The trade routes have been strangled. The market will implode within ho—"
Zhì Yuǎn's large hand rose mere centimeters from Bái Wǎn's sleeping face. Just two fingers suspended in the air.
The simple gesture cut Mò Yán's voice at the root. The weight of the universe in his gaze descended upon both women. There was no interest whatsoever in the bureaucracy or the logistics of someone else's misery.
"Enough reporting, Yán. Come rest," the deep voice reverberated across the deck, stripped of any urgency.
He lowered his hand, indicating the open space on the velvet rug. The command demanded no reports; it demanded rest.
Mò Yán's diplomatic rigidity melted instantly. Without saying another word, the restrained flower crawled across the rug and collapsed, leaning her back against Zhì Yuǎn's leg with a long, relieved sigh. Lín Jié didn't hesitate. The ink woman, whose legs still trembled from the use of her Law and the abuses of the night, sank into the rug right behind her, her mature body sprawling into the nest of silks.
Yù Qíng watched the diplomat and the secretary melt into the husband's calm with a languid smile, her pale fingers gently stroking the nape of Qīng Yǔ in her lap.
On the other side, Yù Méi rolled onto her back. The golden warrior stretched languidly, yawning loudly and licking her lips with her warm tongue.
"Good thing your network works fast, Sister Snow," Yù Méi grumbled, her voice dragged by boredom, crossing her bare legs on the velvet. "If those trashy mercenaries take too long to dump the bags of old men into our hold, I swear by our heaven I'll come down that mountain myself. My blood is already burning to break some real bone."
Huáng Bìyù smiled serenely, extending her chopsticks to deposit a succulent piece of meat directly into the youngest's sulking mouth, silencing the impatience with food.
Zhì Yuǎn leaned the back of his neck against the dark cushions. His calloused thumb returned to grazing Bái Wǎn's chubby cheek. The lethargy of his presence repelled the wind outside, keeping the ship submerged in a thick, impenetrable warmth. Gradually, the deck sank into the rhythmic quiet of synchronized breathing.
The Flying Galleon of the Court of the Absolute Blade remained docked in deathly silence, the sun bathing its deck in a golden, relentless light.
Inside, the lethargic god and his seven goddesses slept and rested in a nest of silks and velvet. Completely untouchable.
Outside, the target of their "entertainment" had already begun bleeding gold and unraveling in pure, blind paranoia in the dark