I am the Heroine’s Master?

The landscape unfurled beneath the Peacock Convoy in an endless procession of color and motion. Vast forests rippled like emerald seas, mountain ranges rose and fell beneath drifting clouds, rivers flashed silver in the afternoon sun, and towns and cities appeared only to vanish moments later, swallowed by the horizon as the flying procession sped north toward the Great Wall.

Almost two hundred li behind, a distance the pursuers judged sufficient to escape even the sharpest spiritual senses, another carriage followed. Or rather, its shadow did: a ribbon of living darkness flowing over the land, gliding soundlessly across forests, mountains, rivers, and bustling settlements alike. It possessed neither wheels nor wings, yet it traversed the earth at a speed that rivaled the convoy soaring through the skies above. To ordinary mortals, it was nothing more than a passing shadow, gone before their minds could grasp what they had seen. Even cultivators who caught the fleeting anomaly found only emptiness when they extended their spiritual sense. The darkness left behind neither aura nor qi, as though it had never existed at all.

The carriage was a deception. From without, it appeared no more than a shadow pressed flat against the earth; within lay a perfectly ordinary cabin, spacious enough for two passengers seated opposite one another. Walls, floor, ceiling, and seats were all wrought from an unfathomable blackness that swallowed every trace of light, the darkness so complete that even the outlines of the furnishings seemed to exist only because they devoured it more thoroughly than the space around them.

No light could be allowed inside. Even the faintest spark would unravel the spirit treasure, a fact the Prince had pressed upon them repeatedly. The artifact was beyond price, impossible to repair, and entrusted to them for one purpose alone: to ensure they could keep pace with their quarry without ever being seen. Yet despite wielding such a miraculous treasure, the distance between hunters and hunted continued to grow.

Ye Wuying sat enveloped by absolute darkness, her enhanced vision useless; the cabin devoured everything. She could perceive her brother only through her spiritual sense and the warmth of his bare shoulder pressed against her own. "At this rate," she muttered, "we'll reach the Wall days after they do. So much for arriving first and laying an ambush."

She felt him shift beside her, his shoulder brushing hers as he gave a slight shrug. "There was never much hope of that." His voice was low and unhurried. "We thought the journey itself might present an opportunity, but with the Peacock General accompanying the convoy, drawing any closer would be courting death. We'll have to wait until we reach the Wall." A quiet certainty bled into his tone. "The opportunity will come."

Before she could answer – there was something about that calm confidence of his that always stirred her – the convoy ahead slowed to a halt. The Shadow Carriage immediately matched its pace, never daring to close the gap, even when opportunity seemed to beckon.

...Something unrelated? Or a trap? Ye Wuying's thoughts raced ahead. If it was a trap, they had already been discovered, and the only sensible course was to remain perfectly still, allow the convoy to resume its journey, and then withdraw at greater distance. Assuming, of course, they had not already been caught.

She was not the only one to tense. Ye Wuhen's hand closed around her wrist, firm enough to make the bones creak. Together they became as motionless as carved stone, suppressing even the rhythm of their breathing as their spiritual senses stretched outward. Seconds crawled by. No attack came. No experts emerged to scour the surroundings. Ye Wuying had just begun to relax when the foremost carriage opened and two figures flew out. Even from two hundred li away, her natal artifact recognized them instantly: Qing Zhanyue, and Mo Jian.

A lesser cultivator might have cursed the Heavens for such rotten fortune. Ye Wuying merely steadied her breathing. Beside her, Ye Wuhen's grip tightened until pain shot through her wrist, and she welcomed it without complaint; pain from him had always carried a dangerous edge she found impossible to dislike. Either of those two alone would have been a formidable opponent; together, they were the sort of enemies from whom escape itself was uncertain. Yet neither looked in their direction.

Instead, Qing Zhanyue raised a single hand, and the world changed.

A colossal arena of stone erupted into existence above her palm, expanding in an instant until it rivaled a mountain in height and a forest in breadth. Ancient walls, towering pillars, and endless tiers of weathered stone blotted out the heavens themselves. Day became night, the blue sky swallowed beneath an endless ceiling of rock. Then, just as abruptly, the arena vanished. Sunlight flooded back across the land. The only trace of its passing was the panicked cries of spirit birds scattering in every direction, and the Peacock Convoy below, its burning wheels still as though nothing at all had happened.

The two siblings exchanged a glance. Neither could see the other through the absolute darkness, yet years of fighting side by side – and something deeper still – made sight unnecessary. In perfect unison, they guided the Shadow Carriage backward. The living darkness receded without a sound, flowing over the earth like a whisper until twice the original distance separated it from the convoy. Only then did Ye Wuhen break the silence.

"That was the Thunderous Applause Arena." His voice was low and thoughtful. "As far as I could tell, only two people entered it. Do you think..." He let the possibility linger between them. "...Qing Zhanyue and Mo Jian might have fallen out?"

It was a tantalizing thought. If two monsters of their caliber turned on one another, the balance of this entire mission would shift. But no feast in this world came without a price, and Ye Wuying knew that. So did Ye Wuhen – he wasn't proposing a conclusion, only casting bait into still water to see what surfaced. "Or they're sparring," she said. "Or it's still a trap, just one we can't yet see." She shook her head. "It doesn't feel like an opportunity."

Taking his hand, she guided it to her stomach. "See? Wuyen isn't stirring."

His palm rested lightly against her flat abdomen. The familiar current of his qi flowed through her, sending a warm flutter deep in her belly. Almost immediately, the flutter answered as their unborn child gave a firm, unmistakable kick. Danger. The same warning Wuyen had given them when they had first set their sights on Mo Jian months ago. Ye Wuhen felt it too. His hand withdrew at once, only to find hers a heartbeat later, their fingers intertwining in the dark.

Neither spoke. The Shadow Carriage remained utterly still, swallowed by silence, while the two of them watched and waited, far too patient, and far too experienced, to be the first to spring a trap they could not yet see.

……………………………………………………………

Mo Jian had encountered several immortal artifacts by now. The Thunderous Applause Arena made the fourth – fifth, if the divine treasure hidden within his storage pouch was counted, though the gui belonged to an entirely different order of existence. Even so, he found himself staring.

Its sheer size was the first thing that struck him. From within, the stone coliseum seemed without end: towering walls climbing beyond sight into darkness high overhead, concentric rings of ancient stands stretching toward a horizon that should not have existed inside an artifact. It was less like standing inside a treasure and more like stepping into a world carved out of stone.

Then there was the isolation. The moment the arena sealed itself, his spiritual sense slammed into invisible walls. It could still spread through the arena, but beyond those boundaries there was nothing. Even his faint connection to the world outside had been severed, as though existence itself ended at the stone surrounding him. He had felt that sensation only once before, inside the Netherworld Domain. Whether this was illusion or a genuine severing of space, he could not tell.

He could not help comparing the arena to the other immortal artifacts he had encountered. The Black Sulde had been largely unremarkable in appearance, though its ability was extraordinarily profound. The Tiger General's Unbound Storm Cloud dominated the heavens with overwhelming speed and destructive force. Shi Wanjun's Myriad Beast Horn (which he had seen once before Muxue had handed it over to Tang Huwei) could summon an army worthy of its name from nothing. Each was formidable in its own right, but the Thunderous Applause Arena inspired something else entirely. Standing within its walls felt less like facing an immortal artifact and more like standing before an immortal's authority made manifest.

General Qing, however, seemed utterly unimpressed by its grandeur. There was a trace of delight on her face, though it stemmed from something else altogether. "I rarely get to use this," she said, hovering opposite him, her gaze wandering appreciatively over the endless stone coliseum. "So this is a wonderful opportunity. The last time was more than a century ago, and that fight ended in under a minute." She clicked her tongue and shook her head with genuine disappointment, as though defeating an opponent too quickly had robbed her of something precious.

Mo Jian resisted the urge to sigh. He raised his hand and summoned the Heaven Enshrouding Ding instead. It materialized above him, pouring down an azure barrier that wrapped around his body like flowing water. He layered a second shield over the first, then a third, each reinforcing the last until three translucent shells stood between him and the outside world. Finally, he activated the ding's reflective domain, turning its mirrored interior to focus on himself – any attack that pierced his defenses would first have to contend with the treasure's rebounding force.

Only then did he allow himself to breathe a little easier.

Qing Zhanyue paid his preparations no mind. Her head tilted ever so slightly, as though listening to a distant melody no one else could hear. "Huh." She sounded more puzzled than anything else. "I thought I sensed..." Her eyes narrowed for the briefest moment. Then she shrugged. "Either they didn't take the bait, or I imagined it."

Mo Jian blinked. "...Wait." The pieces fell together with startling speed. "Someone's following the convoy? And this duel – the arena – it's all bait meant to draw them out?"

It made perfect sense. If the Twin Love Demons were following them and truly intended to assassinate the princess, then removing both him and Qing Zhanyue from the board, even temporarily, would create the best opportunity they were likely to get. Muxue would be left without her strongest protectors, and everyone else would naturally be distracted by the knowledge of an ongoing duel.

This had been the Peacock General's true objective all along. The duel was merely the hook. Whether she had genuinely wanted to test his strength or had simply seized the chance while setting her trap, he could no longer tell.

Qing Zhanyue offered no explanation. "Enough." A sword appeared in her hand. "Defend yourself."

His barriers split open in a perfect line. That was all he had an instant to see before a force struck him like a falling mountain.

Mo Jian crashed into the stone floor of the arena, which, true to an immortal artifact, refused to break. His nose had no such dignity. It broke with a wet, ugly crunch that sent white light exploding across his vision, blood spattering the pale stone beneath him in a dark constellation. The impact rattled through his skeleton from skull to heel, a full-body agony that left him momentarily unsure which way was up.

He lay there for a breath before indignation pulled him upright.

His qi surged before he had consciously decided anything; the nose reset with a crack that was worse than the break itself. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and looked up. General Qing had vanished… and he was standing out in the open like an idiot. The thought arrived like cold water as his mind caught up to his body half a second too late, and he moved.

The Heaven Enshrouding Ding answered his call instantly, manifesting around him as a translucent barrier of cerulean qi that locked into place. A corona of blue flames roared up around its exterior and silver lightning threaded through the fire in branching, restless arcs, crackling and spitting. He reached deeper, about to tap into the power of the Netherworld Scorpion – to turn the flames into ghost-fire, to bolster his defense further – when a sword arrived from behind him.

The lightning shredded apart in a crack of thunder. The blue flames snuffed out. The ding groaned with a deep, wrongly-struck note, and then the whole thing was hurled the length of the arena. Mo Jian had no control on the flight, tumbling with only the blur of stone walls and dark sky wheeling past him before he struck the floor again, hard enough to rattle every bone. He lay still for a moment that was entirely involuntary, then pulled himself up with a groan.

The arena had changed around him. The space had expanded – doubled, at least – the walls having silently retreated to accommodate the scale of the exchange. It would likely keep growing to ensure they never ran out of room to destroy each other.

Useful, he thought, with more anger than appreciation. Because I am done being a punching bag.

It wasn't as though he had expected to win. But a part of him, clearly, had.

He stood, and his expression had changed. The shock was gone, replaced by a scowl carved from stone. He reached upward with his qi, and storm clouds boiled into existence above the arena, churning and vast, flickering with cold silver light, each flash illuminating the General where she stood across the field. She was examining her blade. The lightning gathered and then descended on her in a single, annihilating plunge: a colossal serpentine form, its body as thick as a watchtower, every scale articulated in crackling silver light, its open jaws wreathed in blue flame, its fangs the length of spears. The sound of it was the sound of the sky breaking apart.

Zhanyue looked up from her blade, and the dragon came apart.

It broke, disassembled by a thousand individual strikes, each one so precise that every scale had been individually sheared free, the body punctured in a lattice of clean holes. The lightning frayed into nothing, and the dragon dissolved. But not before the afterimages burned themselves into the air: branching silver traces hanging in the darkness for a long, still moment, like calligraphy brushed on black silk.

The characters read: Qing Zhanyue is the greatest.

Mo Jian stared. The sheer audacity of it – that she had carved a boast into his own technique, for him to read as it died – produced in him a sensation somewhere between shock and involuntary, deeply unwilling awe. He didn't wait for it to settle. She was giving him time, watching him with a patient, faintly amused expression, so he would use every second of it.

Lightning fell again, not as one bolt or ten, but as if the heavens simply gave way. Countless arcs of silver and azure crashed from the storm above, so numerous they became a downpour of pure destruction. They struck across the arena's entire breadth without pattern or mercy, each impact birthing another branching web of fire and light until earth and sky were woven together by incandescent veins. Thunder ceased to be individual peals and merged into one endless roar that shook the bones. The world turned white. It became an ocean of electricity where every heartbeat carried another thousand flashes, another thousand concussive blows.

At the same instant, the Heaven Enshrouding Ding divided.

One copy descended around Mo Jian, locking shut and weaving an impenetrable cocoon of blue-black light around him. The second became a phantom, its massive form shimmering, fading from solid metal into something translucent, then into nothing at all. It glided like a specter through the deluge of lightning, acknowledged by neither the storm nor the space it crossed.

It floated directly above Qing Zhanyue.

She did not even look at it. Her expression remained as calm as still water as she lazily raised her sword overhead and swung.

The world simply... opened.

The storm clouds split cleanly apart as though reality had been carved with a single stroke. The descending lightning divided with them, each bolt severed before it could finish its journey. The slash extended impossibly far, an invisible wound stretching from horizon to horizon, a scar in the fabric of heaven itself. Within that wound, lightning could not exist. Every arc that wandered into its path unraveled soundlessly, sliced apart by an edge too absolute to resist. The storm flowed around the invisible corridor like water around an immovable mountain.

Qing Zhanyue stood calmly at its center, untouched. Or so it should have been. But the ghostly Ding had already reached her, and Mo Jian's fingers closed into a fist.

Detonation.

The invisible cauldron exploded. For the first time since the battle had begun, Qing Zhanyue's composure cracked. Her eyes widened – she sensed it, somehow, that was the incomprehensible thing, she sensed the invisible artifact a heartbeat before it erupted –

But too late. She brought her sword up instinctively, though the explosion swallowed her before the blade could complete its arc. Blue fire erupted with the fury of a newborn sun. The ground where she had stood simply ceased to exist, replaced by a pillar of incandescent flame that devoured everything in its path. It expanded violently, roaring skyward, a towering inferno that swallowed the invisible sword scar, drowned the thunder beneath its own voice, and filled the arena with unbearable heat. And hidden within the brilliant conflagration burned flames that possessed no warmth: ghost-fire, that consumed without discrimination.

The azure inferno, the weathered stone beneath it, fragments of shattered space, the lingering sword intent; even the wound Qing Zhanyue had carved into the heavens, all began to unravel, erased piece by piece as the ghostly flames fed upon concepts as readily as matter. Nothing escaped their hunger. The pillar climbed ever higher, and where it would have struck the ceiling of the arena, the ceiling simply retreated, the walls stretching upward once more to contain it. Then the pillar blossomed outward into a colossal mushroom cloud of blue-white fire, layer upon layer of expanding flame rolling across the sky, each wave larger than the last, until the shockwave itself became a visible wall racing across the battlefield.

Even Mo Jian, hovering dozens of li away, felt the impact, his robes snapping violently in the wind, hair whipping behind him.

Yet he was not watching idly. Another Heaven Enshrouding Ding already hung above him, this one dwarfing all that had come before. It was like a mountain forged into steel – no, larger still; an island could have rested within its vast interior. Suspended beneath its impossible bulk, Mo Jian appeared no larger than a speck of dust, a lone figure standing in the shadow of a world.

He lifted one hand, and the colossal Ding answered.

Lightning poured from its mouth in a flood, an endless cataract of celestial judgment spilling downward in a torrent broad enough to swallow cities, a sea of crackling silver and sapphire descending from the heavens. As it traveled, it changed. Its brilliance faded from blinding silver into pale blue, then into grey, then into something that no longer possessed color at all, the lightning becoming translucent, flickering between existence and nothingness until, to every eye save his own, it vanished completely. Only silence remained.

Then the unseen storm struck.

Ghost-lightning erupted around him in every direction, expanding into a perfect sphere that devoured distance with terrifying speed. Invisible tendrils lashed outward, carving across the arena like the claws of some vast and unseen god. Where they passed, stone withered, the arena walls blackening with long, jagged scars that looked as though reality itself had been burned. Space rippled. The arena expanded once more, its boundaries stretching outward to contain the catastrophe unfolding within, as though even this battlefield feared being torn apart.

Mo Jian let out a slow breath, his chest rising and falling as he finally caught it. It was not due to exhaustion; the exchange had barely taxed his qi reserves, and Qing Zhanyue had never truly fought him in earnest. But after being battered from one end of the arena to the other and then unleashing an unbroken storm of his own, he had scarcely had a moment to simply breathe.

Only now, in the sudden stillness, did another thought creep in.

Had he gone too far? This was only a spar. The General had spent most of it smiling, treating the entire affair like a lesson rather than a duel. His final barrage, on the other hand...

His gaze drifted toward the fading inferno. She was still maintaining the arena, so she couldn't have been seriously-

"Whew." The cheerful voice came from directly behind him. "I was just about to tell you – don't think, just attack – but it seems you've already mastered that particular lesson. Haven't seen anything like this in ages."

Mo Jian spun around so quickly that the ghost-lightning surrounding him flared instinctively. For one panicked instant he expected another sword. There wasn't one.

General Qing stood casually atop one of the countless stone seats circling the arena, almost level with him in the air. One hand rested on her hip; the other held her sword loosely across her shoulder. Rather than looking at him, she was admiring the devastation he had wrought with the pleased curiosity of someone inspecting an unusually impressive firework display.

Mo Jian could only stare.

His stomach lurched.

Her right arm was ruined, the sleeve burned away completely, exposing flesh blackened almost to charcoal. Deep cracks split the skin from wrist to shoulder, glowing faintly with lingering heat as blood seeped sluggishly between them. Her hand had fared even worse; the fingers were fused together in places, twisted into a melted claw that somehow still gripped her immaculate sword with unwavering strength. The flames had ravaged her face as well. A ragged hole had been burned clean through her right cheek, exposing teeth and the dark cavity beyond. Half her hair had been reduced to brittle strands of charcoal clinging to her scalp, while her right eye had clouded over into a pale, milky green, watering continuously as though it could no longer decide whether it still functioned.

She looked as though she had caught the entire explosion with her bare hand.

A wave of horror washed through Mo Jian, followed immediately by nausea. "General – are you-" The question died in his throat. Of course she wasn't. His mind raced instead through the pills he had on hand. Hundred Yang Blood Pills, Heavenly Marrow Dew, The Nine Revolutions – no, with ghost-fire damage, would ordinary regeneration even work? The flames contained xian. If they had eaten away at-

General Qing raised her intact hand. "Don't fret." She sounded completely unconcerned. She might have been waving away a mildly irritating insect. Mo Jian opened his mouth.

Then she casually reversed her sword.

"General, don't-"

The blade plunged straight into her own abdomen. His shout cut off.

There was no blood. Instead, reality rippled. A translucent figure, an exact copy of Qing Zhanyue, burned flesh and all, peeled away from her body for the briefest instant, like an afterimage being separated from its source. She cut through it in a single stroke, and the phantom dissolved into countless motes of pale light. Revealed beneath it was the original Qing Zhanyue, perfectly whole. Her arm was smooth beneath an unburned sleeve. Her face was flawless without so much as a blemish, her hair restored to glossy black, both eyes bright and clear as though the injuries had never existed at all.

She pulled the sword free with a grimace. "...I hate doing that," she muttered.

Mo Jian stared. "...What." He blinked once. "What was that?"

"I cut away the injured version of myself." She answered with complete matter-of-factness.

Mo Jian's mouth opened and closed. He felt a familiar pressure building behind his eyes, somewhere between exasperation and resigned acceptance.

Of course she had.

Qing Zhanyue's gaze returned to him. Something in her expression had changed. The easy amusement was still there, but beneath it burned something fierce and something almost bright, intent and hungry. Her green eyes seemed to shine from within, fixed on him with the delighted focus of someone who had stumbled upon a rare and unexpected treasure after centuries of searching. She bit her lower lip.

"I am impressed." The words came out almost as a whisper. Her smile widened. "So don't hold back. Show me everything."

Mo Jian's expression froze. "...General-"

He never finished.

Her sword disappeared. No, not the sword – only the blade. The hilt remained in her hand.

His pupils contracted. He had barely an instant before something struck him. One moment his barrier was pristine, every layer of ghost-lightning humming around him untouched; the next, an invisible force ignored all of it and hit him square in the chest. The barrier remained intact. Mo Jian did not. His protective qi shattered inside his meridians as though it had never existed. Pain exploded through his body, and the world became a blur of sky and stone as he was driven downward hard enough to crack the arena floor on impact.

Darkness rushed in from the edges of his vision.

His final coherent thought, before unconsciousness claimed him, was painfully simple.

Nothing good has ever come from someone wearing that expression.

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