After they spoke, Hanya and Xueyi's slender hands moved with quiet determination as they loosened their sashes. The thin layers of fabric slipped from their shoulders and pooled at their feet. Warm, soft bodies pressed close, wrapping around Kanzaki from both sides.
The heat of their skin seeped into him, stirring something long dormant in his chest. What had been still water began to ripple, then churn. No further words were needed.
He drew them closer. The world outside the study faded.
Jingliu stood motionless before the closed door.
The sounds that reached her were no longer restrained. Every breath, every soft gasp, struck her like a blade slipped between the ribs. Her fingers curled at her sides until the knuckles turned white. She had come to say farewell before the expedition departed. The words died in her throat.
She turned away without knocking. Her steps were silent as she walked down the corridor and out into the night.
Inside the lead starskiff of the Cloud Knights expeditionary force, Baiheng guided the vessel through the sea of stars with her usual effortless skill. Her gaze kept drifting toward the co-pilot seat.
Jingliu had returned from bidding Kanzaki farewell… yet something fundamental had shifted. Baiheng could not name it, but her instincts warned her sharply. If she asked now, whatever fragile thread still connected them might snap.
She swallowed the question and focused on clearing a path for the vast fleet hidden behind them.
The massive formation advanced under an imaginary energy concealment barrier, invisible to the Abominations of Abundance as it moved toward the designated coordinates.
"Report—!"
A scout's urgent voice in the Borisin tongue shattered the silence aboard the Beastship.
Hoolay's clawed hand tightened around the bowl of steaming blood medicine. The liquid trembled.
"Respected Hoolay Khan! The Luofu Cloud Knights have arrived! Their numbers blot out the sky—there are too many to count!"
"…How did the Xianzhou learn our position?"
Hoolay drained the bowl in one motion. A savage light ignited in his eyes. He made his decision instantly.
"Order every wolf cub to abandon the base. Board the Beastships and withdraw at full speed!"
It was already too late.
As the Beastship clusters tried to break through the star system's gravity well, they discovered the outer perimeter—over eight hundred light-years across—had been completely sealed by dense formations of Xianzhou starskiffs.
Hoolay chose what he believed was the weakest point in the blockade. Instead, he flew straight into the trap Jing Yuan had prepared, anticipating exactly this move.
Hundreds of Beastships were reduced to burning wreckage before concentrated fire finally crippled the vessel carrying Hoolay himself. Trailing the stench of scorched metal and flesh, it plunged toward a barren planet on the edge of the system.
"Roar—!"
A wolf's howl shook the air for thousands of miles as Moon Rage fully consumed him.
Near the crash site, two Cloud Knight squads tasked with delaying the enemy never had time to form ranks. They were torn apart by the blood-red giant wolf that emerged from the wreckage. Blood soaked the cracked soil. The metallic scent drove the remaining Borisin into deeper frenzy.
Just as Hoolay prepared to lead the survivors in another breakout attempt, a starskiff tore through the atmosphere with a piercing sonic boom. The hatch opened. A lone figure in military attire leaped down and landed silently on the frozen ground.
Hoolay narrowed his eyes.
Only one person?
He recognized her at once—the Luofu's Sword Champion, Jingliu. The baleful star who had slaughtered countless of his kind and left even the Borisin trembling.
"Good. Very good."
Hoolay laughed, muscles swelling beneath his fur as claws extended.
"As long as I take you hostage, those Cloud Knights filling the sky will hesitate to strike their own!"
He became a streak of blood-red lightning, claws aimed at her throat with enough force to tear steel.
Jingliu did not move.
The wind whipped her long hair, but it could not touch the thick, suffocating gloom in her crimson eyes.
Before the expedition, inside that study… those tender, unrestrained sounds. She did not need to see the entwined figures to understand what had happened. The image alone had driven a thorn deep into her heart—one that would never come free.
Why do you treat me this way?
Why can they hold you so openly, while I…
Since she could not have him, then let the entire world bleed with her.
The claws were already at her throat.
Jingliu finally moved.
She did not dodge. Instead, she stepped forward into the foul wind, crimson eyes suddenly empty of all light—only cold, absolute tyranny remained.
A moon-white sword light fell with a roar.
Boom—!
The ground screamed. A crack thousands of meters long split the earth in an instant. Hoolay, together with the hill beneath his feet, was cleaved cleanly in two by that single strike.
A wave of extreme cold erupted. Air within dozens of miles flash-froze. The charging wolf pack turned into crystal statues without a single scream.
Hoolay's bisected body writhed on the ice. Granulation tissue surged wildly. In the space of a breath, the two halves reconnected and regenerated.
His regenerative power was monstrous enough to make veteran Cloud Knights despair.
"You cannot kill me!" he roared, lunging again.
Jingliu's expression remained blank. Her wrist turned. The sword edge fell once more.
Pfft!
Hoolay's right arm was severed at the shoulder.
Another strike. His left leg flew away.
Another. The freshly regrown right arm was gone again.
This was no battle. It was methodical execution.
Jingliu moved like a machine without emotion. Every cut avoided vital organs, targeting only limbs and joints. She was not trying to end him quickly.
She was venting.
All the resentment, the unrequited longing, the bone-deep jealousy toward the two sisters who could embrace Kanzaki so freely—she poured every drop of it into the Borisin before her.
Hoolay's greatest pride had become his curse. He regenerated again and again, only to be dismembered again and again. Blood soaked the permafrost for hundreds of meters, yet not a single drop stained Jingliu's military coat. She remained pristine, and that cleanliness was more terrifying than any gore.
"Enough! Jingliu!"
Hoolay was breaking. He retreated while roaring.
"You will never kill me! As long as I draw breath, I can still—"
"Noisy."
Her voice was ice.
In the next instant, the sky changed color.
Thousands of swords formed from pure cold imaginary energy materialized above, every tip aimed at the Borisin Warhead.
If he could not die, then he would be silenced forever.
The swords fell like a storm.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
The sound of flesh being pierced was endless. Hoolay never had the chance to scream. His body became a grotesque pincushion of ice blades. Extreme cold erupted outward. A towering ice mountain rose from the ground, encasing his twisted face in eternal frost.
When Dan Feng and Jing Yuan arrived with the main force, this was the sight that greeted them.
Across the frozen wasteland, a massive ice prison stood alone. Jingliu stood at its peak, her long hair whipping in the wind, her back solitary and distant.
The battle-hardened Cloud Knights gripped their weapons with trembling hands.
Dan Feng looked at the ice prison. The technique he had prepared at his fingertips quietly dissipated. He shook his head. This Hunt expedition no longer required his intervention.
Jing Yuan stared up at that familiar silhouette. An unfamiliar chill spread through his chest—not from the cold, but from the realization that something irreplaceable had been lost.
The Jingliu who had once carried warmth beneath her strictness was gone.
In her place stood a naked blade steeped in hostility and quiet madness.
"Master…"
Jing Yuan whispered the word, yet did not dare step forward.
Beside him, Baiheng rubbed the goosebumps on her arms and swallowed.
"…This wasn't a battle," she muttered. "It was a slaughter. What in the world did that wolf do to make her this furious?"