There was no speech after that. No reflection. No pause to admire what they had survived.
At this moment, Ning Huang's gaze sharpens.
She had seen men crawl out of lesser fights shaking with relief, drunk on their own survival. She had seen self-proclaimed geniuses spend ten times more energy boasting after victory than they had spent earning it. She had grown up around people who treated every success like proof the heavens should stop and applaud.
The siblings were the opposite.
To Long Shenyin, the battlefield already looked finished and boring.
To Long Shenyu, it looked processed.
Mei Qingxue moved first. The moment he spoke, she stepped closer without question, trusting the direction of his voice before she even thought about the destination. Shen Lanyue followed more quietly, her expression cold but steadier than before. Ning Huang hesitated a fraction longer.
Not from fear.
From habit.
She preferred moving under her own power. Preferred standing on her own feet, even when those feet were bloodied and half-numb from the aftermath of battle. Some hard part of her disliked the idea of being carried anywhere, especially by him.
Long Shenyu looked at her once and understood the hesitation immediately.
"You can fly if you want," he said lazily. "And if your energy stutters halfway there, I'll catch you after you embarrass yourself in front of everyone. That works too."
Ning Huang's eyes narrowed. "You always speak like that?"
"Only when I'm being considerate."
That should not have worked.
It did.
Not because she was persuaded by the tease itself, but because he said it with infuriating ease, as though taking command here was the most natural thing in the world. As though protecting them, leading them, deciding the pace and direction and timing of everything around him was not an affectation but a reflex.
Ning Huang clicked her tongue. "Lead, then."
His smile deepened just slightly, like a man who had expected that answer all along.
He gathered Mei Qingxue and Shen Lanyue first.
Not with his hands.
With Qi.
His flow spread around them in one smooth, stable current that did not seize or drag. It enclosed. Supported. Lifted. Mei Qingxue's breath caught softly as her feet left the broken earth, but the sensation was so controlled, so balanced, that it barely felt like being carried at all. It felt like the world itself had shifted and decided they belonged somewhere slightly higher than before.
Shen Lanyue noticed the same thing and hated that she admired it.
Ning Huang felt his force settle at her side a moment later, not trying to dominate her balance, merely locking it in place before instability could even appear. He did it without looking at her, which somehow made it worse. She was not used to being read that quickly.
Long Shenyin rose on her own, effortlessly, the new spear still resting over one shoulder. She looked bored already.
During the flight, the five of them crossed a sky still stained by battle residue and the distant pressure of the approaching tide.
For the first few breaths, no one spoke.
The silence was not awkward. It was full.
The women below the siblings had just witnessed too much in too little time. Six heirs from the Noble Domains dead. Demon and beast annihilated. Heaven-rank weapons claimed. A sister who had appeared out of nowhere and spoke to Long Shenyu as if they were mortal enemies. The shape of the day had gone far beyond ordinary sense.
Still, when Mei Qingxue and Shen Lanyue looked ahead and felt the beast tide pressing toward Moonwatch City, a small knot of nerves returned.
It surprised both of them.
A minute ago they had been watching two Origin Core monsters drag down enemies who should have been untouchable. They had every reason to believe the impossible could happen around these siblings.
And yet the tide was a tide.
Not a duel. Not six enemies. Not a battlefield framed by one clash.
A moving wall of beasts had its own terror.
It was size.
Weight.
Momentum.
The knowledge that once it reached a city, screaming would become part of the landscape.
Mei Qingxue clasped her hands together against her lap, looked toward Long Shenyu, and finally asked the thing sitting in her chest.
"You two…" Her voice was soft, but it carried clearly in the wind. "Will you really be alright?"
She meant both siblings, but her eyes stayed on Long Shenyu. She was still far too nervous to look at Long Shenyin for long. There was something in the other woman's presence that felt like staring too closely at a blade still wet from use.
Long Shenyin did not react at all.
Long Shenyu chuckled.
"You're asking that now?"
Mei Qingxue's cheeks colored faintly. "You were injured. Both of you were. Your energy was drained too. I felt it. We all did."
Shen Lanyue's gaze shifted as well. Ning Huang said nothing, but she was listening.
Long Shenyu glanced at his sister, and her expression made it clear that if lesser beings failed to understand something obvious, that was not her problem.
So he answered.
"Because of our special powers, we're already healed." He sounded almost amused by their expressions before he added, "Completely."
That made all three women look at the siblings again, more carefully this time.
And it was true.
No hidden stagger in Long Shenyu's breathing.
No lingering instability in his aura.
No damaged rhythm in Long Shenyin's circulation.
Nothing.
It was not that they seemed recovered.
They simply were.
Mei Qingxue blinked. Shen Lanyue's cold composure shifted for a moment. Even Ning Huang's eyes sharpened. They had all sensed the injuries after the fight. They knew what had been there.
Now there was nothing.
Long Shenyu did not elaborate.
He had not fully explained his reincarnation to Mei Qingxue or Shen Lanyue. At this point, there had been no need. Too many larger things had already moved. Too many enemies had appeared too quickly. The truth of what he and Long Shenyin had once been could wait.
So the women did what cultivators always did when faced with something they could not place inside normal rules.
They called it another heaven-defying ability.
That was close enough for now.
The real answer was simpler and far more terrifying.
Dragons did not recover like mortals.
The vitality of their bloodline was not just physical. It ran through flesh, marrow, soul, instinct, even the most hidden roots of force. Injuries that would have crippled others became temporary inconveniences. Depletion became a brief phase. Once the pressure passed, recovery followed with frightening speed.
For siblings like these, minutes were enough.
Moonwatch City rose ahead.
Even from a distance, it looked wrong.
The walls were manned to the edge of collapse. Defensive formations flickered in shallow layers over the gates, too thin, too uneven, more reassurance than shield. Torches burned before sunset because fear made people light things early. Figures moved everywhere—guards, elders, servants hauling stones and medicine, mortal families clustering at the inner streets with the tense silence of those who had already begun saying goodbye in their heads.
And beyond the city—
The tide.
It rolled over the land like a dark second horizon.
Not a line, but a mass. Horns. fangs. scaled backs. stampeding bodies. bursts of beast Qi and dust and the guttural cry of creatures driven into a frenzy by pressure most of them did not truly understand. The front ranks were already close enough that the city archers could make out individual shapes. The rear vanished into the wilds behind them.
The pressure it exuded was enough to tighten the chest.
It hit Mei Qingxue first. Shen Lanyue a moment later. Even Ning Huang, who had fought on battlefields drenched in stronger blood than this, felt her shoulders harden.
Below, the city had already reached the edge of despair.
Everyone thought death was coming.
And then the five of them arrived.
Long Shenyu lowered the three women into a position behind the main wall line, a zone shielded by broken towers and old formation stones where the first shock of any collision would not reach them. He placed them there with quick precision, as though he had measured the terrain on sight.
"Stay here," he said.
Mei Qingxue immediately nodded.
Shen Lanyue frowned. "And you?"
Long Shenyu smiled. "I'll be back before the city understands what it saw."
Ning Huang folded her arms. "Your confidence is offensive."
"That usually means it's deserved."
Before she could answer, he was gone.
So was Long Shenyin.
The next moment, both siblings were standing high above Moonwatch City.
At first, no one even understood what they were seeing.
Two figures.
Young.
Far too young.
One in black-red ruin with a spear over her shoulder and the expression of someone insulted by the need to be present.
The other in stillness and quiet command, standing above a doomed city as casually as if he had stepped onto a courtyard path.
Too high above the walls.
Too steady in open air.
Too calm for the pressure descending from the tide.
A few city defenders actually forgot to breathe.
One elder of the Shen Family stared upward, blinked twice, and thought for one insane instant that death had finally cracked his mind.
Long Shenyin looked down at the tide and looked unimpressed.
She only came because staying behind with the others had sounded worse.
She had no intention of playing savior for a city this weak.
Long Shenyu glanced at her and said, "Help me with this."
Her head turned slowly.
The disgust in the side look she gave him could have soured wine.
"You're ordering me now?"
"I'm improving your mood."
"You always do the opposite of that."
"First time for everything."
She stared at him.
Then at the tide.
Then at him again.
Finally she clicked her tongue with the expression of a woman who regretted existence on principle.
And then both siblings released their aura.
Not battle aura.
Not the usual oppressive force that stronger cultivators spread to crush weaker ones.
This was older.
Realer.
It did not expand.
It descended.
That was the first thing every living creature felt.
Not a wave coming sideways.
A sky falling downward.
A vast pressure dropped over the land outside Moonwatch's walls, and the beast tide reacted before the humans did.
Every beast understood it differently.
But they all understood the same truth.
Something above their bloodline had looked at them.
The weaker beasts broke first.
A flood of whines tore through the front ranks. Bodies stumbled out of rhythm. Some collapsed where they stood, legs folding under them as their souls convulsed. Others turned so violently they crashed into the ranks behind them, trampling smaller creatures flat in their desperation to flee.
The stronger beasts did not flee at once.
They froze.
Shaking.
Instinct split apart inside them—half screaming to run, half dragging them toward the ground in involuntary submission.
The city walls went silent.
Truly silent.
No shouted commands. No panicked prayers. No clatter of arrows nocked too fast.
Just thousands of people staring at a miracle they could not name.
Even Mei Qingxue, Shen Lanyue, and Ning Huang, who had already seen what the siblings were, went still.
Long Shenyin's dragon aura was black-red calamity.
Battle ruin.
Slaughter drunk enough to laugh.
It tasted like iron in the air. Like a field after sunset where no one living should still be standing. Beast instinct met it and knew death had shape.
Long Shenyu's aura was worse in an entirely different way.
Sovereign.
Immense.
Calm.
Not calmer than violence.
Above it.
It carried no need to roar, because it had never once doubted obedience. There was conquest in it, yes, but also something even more fundamental—the simple certainty that resistance was temporary and kneeling was not.
The beast tide folded.
The front lines crumpled.
The middle ranks jammed.
The rear broke.
Then Long Shenyu did one thing deliberately.
He spared one.
A massive Gorehorn King stood near the center-left flank of the tide, its body plated in dark horn armor thick as fortress gates, its neck like a moving siege pillar, its hooves gouging half-moons into the earth each time it fought the urge to collapse. It was a 2nd Layer Sky Lord beast, and its bloodline was strong enough that it almost stayed standing under the pressure.
Almost.
Long Shenyu's gaze isolated it.
The rest of the tide became background noise.
Soul pressure descended on the Gorehorn King alone, precise and merciless.
The beast let out a thunderous roar, lowered its head, and forced one hoof forward through sheer rage. Its muscles bunched. Veins stood out along its plated neck. The roar broke halfway through, strangled by the weight pressing directly against its consciousness.
Long Shenyu descended.
He landed in front of it as the ground around them shuddered under stampeding retreat. Dust rolled around his boots. The Gorehorn King towered above him, breath steaming, eyes bloodshot, horn plates trembling from strain.
Long Shenyu raised one hand and placed it between the beast's eyes.
The Primordial Dragon Soul moved.
Soul force entered like a higher law informing a lower lifeform that its private will was no longer private. The Gorehorn King's battered consciousness was torn open. Instinct. blood-memory. territorial pride. rage. fear. old violence written into beast marrow. All of it was dragged upward and crushed beneath a root older than this world.
In that instant, Long Shenyu learned its name.
Tuo Shan.
The beast thrashed once so violently that the ground split beneath its hooves. Trenches ripped outward. Its horn plates creaked like bending iron. Blood leaked from the corners of its eyes as it tried to hold onto itself.
Long Shenyu's voice, when it came, was quiet.
"Kneel."
At first, Tuo Shan resisted.
Of course it did.
This was a beast king. A Sky Lord ruler among lesser creatures. Submission was alien to its blood.
Then the soul-brand landed.
An unseen mark drove through everything it thought it was.
The enormous body convulsed.
One front leg buckled.
Then the other.
Then the Gorehorn King crashed down before him, both knees slamming into the earth with enough force to send fractures racing outward.
Moonwatch City forgot how to think.
Somewhere on the wall, a guard actually dropped his weapon.
A beast king.
A Sky Lord beast.
Forced to kneel by a youth who looked young enough to be standing in a training yard.
Shock spread through the city like wildfire.
It only got worse when Long Shenyin let out a cold snort.
That one dismissive sound was enough.
The remaining beast tide fully broke. Whatever lingering struggle remained in the stronger beasts vanished. Panic swallowed hierarchy. The retreat became a rout.
Bodies crashed over bodies.
Entire sections of the tide scattered in different directions, desperate to put distance between themselves and the two figures in the sky.
Long Shenyin descended first.
She landed with less grace than her brother and more force, black-red pressure rolling once through the dirt around her boots before settling.
Long Shenyu looked at Tuo Shan and said, "Stay put for a moment."
The Gorehorn King lowered its head instantly.
It obeyed.