Strongest Incubus System

Mu Qing remained at the center of the arena while the layer of ice spread across the sand and reached the first rows. Celina coordinated the guards while Elizabeth remained in the box. The suspect who had approached the noble section had been taken down, but Damon did not look away from the woman in white.

The root inside Jian Li reacted. Damon felt her circulation accelerate and try to complete the channels built around her heart. Mu Qing was not merely demanding its return. Her presence was pulling the fragment.

"Remove the public through the southern and western exits," Damon ordered. "No one crosses the northern corridor."

Celina heard the instruction and divided the flow. Elizabeth left the box once the inner corridor was secure.

Ester held Damon’s arm. "If the mark passes your elbow, you leave."

"It is already at my elbow."

"Then leave now."

"If I leave, Mu Qing will follow the root to Jian Li."

"You do not know that."

Damon looked toward the woman on the field. "I do."

Mu Qing turned her face toward the passage where he was hidden. Her white eyes did not search.

They found him.

"Bearer," she said.

The word passed through the stone and made Vorn’s lines rise. Damon closed the meridian in his shoulder. Xue Lian’s memory showed the frozen lake, three kneeling people, and a fourth figure standing among them.

Mu Qing was not merely a conductor.

She had placed the other three inside the seal.

Damon entered the arena. Jian Yue advanced, accompanied by Su Lan and Bao Ren. Damon raised one hand and made them stop.

"Does she know you?"

Jian Yue took time to answer. "Mu Qing led the expedition to Heshan."

"You said she died when the ruin collapsed."

"We saw her body inside the ice."

Mu Qing looked toward Jian Yue.

"You saw what I allowed you to see."

Jian Li screamed. Damon felt the root touch her heart and retreat beneath Ester’s seals. They did not have much time.

"Why did you wait four years?" Damon asked.

"The root needed to finish the replacement."

"So you allowed Jian Li to carry it until she became dependent."

"A living vessel transports it better than an immobile altar."

Jian Yue lost his composure. "You used us."

"I used your ignorance. That is different."

Damon understood the plan. Mu Qing had allowed Jian Li to break the sphere, permitted the root to enter her, and waited for it to build a complete circulation system. Recovering it earlier would have returned only raw energy. Now it carried formed channels, bodily memory, and a path toward a host capable of surviving.

"You do not want to return the root to the valley," Damon said. "You want to place it inside yourself."

Mu Qing did not deny it.

"The conductors were temporary vessels. You kept them kneeling until the root learned how to circulate through human bodies. Jian Li was the final stage."

Mu Qing raised the sword. "Hand her over, and I will leave Mirath intact."

Damon released a short breath. "Seraphine also liked making that kind of offer."

"Seraphine was an undisciplined collector."

"And you are a patient murderer."

The ice exploded beneath Mu Qing’s feet.

She crossed the arena in a direct line. Damon felt the temperature drop and turned his body. The transparent sword passed beside his face, cutting several strands of white hair. He grabbed her wrist, but the arm dissolved into snow.

The real one appeared behind him.

Damon lowered himself as the blade crossed where his neck had been. He rotated over his left foot and struck her abdomen with his elbow. The body received the blow and retreated.

"Two ice bodies," Damon said.

"Seven."

Six copies appeared around the arena.

Jian Yue and Su Lan advanced before Damon could stop them. Bao Ren created ice plates to change direction while Su Lan attacked two copies. Their weapons passed through compacted snow, but every destroyed body began rebuilding itself from the cold spread across the field.

Damon understood the mechanism. Mu Qing distributed her consciousness among the forms and used the frozen arena as a reserve. As long as the ice remained connected, she could exchange the position of the true body.

"Break the ground."

Bao Ren struck the sand with his spear. Su Lan cut the frozen lines between the copies. Guards threw heated stones along the edges of the field. Mu Qing lost two forms, but the remaining five continued advancing.

One attacked Jian Yue. Another moved toward the infirmary passage.

Damon chose the second.

He opened his external circulation and froze a narrow line beneath his feet. The Heavenly Ice Body launched him forward without using the root. He reached the copy before it entered the corridor and grabbed its head.

The ice tried to dissolve.

Damon removed the cold holding the form together. The copy lost consistency and fell across the sand like water.

Mu Qing hesitated.

"You return energy to the environment," she said. "But you can also remove it."

"I am learning."

The four remaining forms attacked together. Damon retreated from the first, blocked the second, and received a shallow cut from the third. The fourth struck his chest with an open palm.

A symbol entered through his clothes.

The root reacted violently.

Damon was thrown backward until Ester caught him. Vorn’s lines crossed his shoulder and touched the base of his neck.

"It is over," she said, pressing the first cutting point.

"Wait."

"No."

Mu Qing stopped at the center of the field. The copies surrounded Jian Yue, Su Lan, and Bao Ren, but did not attack. She observed Damon as though she had confirmed something.

"The Heavenly Ice Body completed its integration," she said. "Xue Lian chose well."

The memory opened together with the mark. The lake appeared again. Mu Qing walked among the conductors, but this time Damon saw Xue Lian standing before her.

The image was much older.

Mu Qing had known Xue Lian.

"You were not a conductor," Damon said. "You were her disciple."

Jian Yue became still.

The memory continued. Xue Lian held the transparent sword and gave it to Mu Qing. Then she pointed toward a root trapped beneath the lake. Damon did not hear the words, but understood the intent: guard it, do not use it.

Mu Qing had broken the order.

"She told you to protect the root. You decided to cultivate a vessel."

"She abandoned all of us."

"She entered the fortress."

"And never returned."

Mu Qing’s voice lost its neutrality. That was resentment accumulated over centuries.

Damon rose despite Ester’s hand on his shoulder. "So you turned people into fuel because your master left."

"I transformed a useless wait into purpose."

"That sounds like a long excuse."

Mu Qing advanced.

Damon did not try to follow every copy. He closed his eyes for one second and felt the temperature. Four bodies possessed the same cold, but only one carried a small area of warmth near the heart. The true body still needed to keep something alive.

He opened his eyes and ignored three attacks.

A blade passed through the side of his shirt, but it was only snow. Damon advanced toward the form on the left, received a cut on his arm, and grabbed Mu Qing by the neck.

The body did not dissolve.

"Found you."

Mu Qing tried to pierce his chest with the sword. Damon trapped her arm beneath his elbow and turned, breaking her posture. Jian Yue appeared and struck her knee. Su Lan cut the hand holding the sword.

No blood emerged.

A white substance, thick as resin, flowed from the wound.

"She is a root too," Ester realized.

Mu Qing struck Jian Yue with her head and threw Su Lan away with a wave of cold. Damon maintained his grip even as his fingers began freezing.

"Not completely," he replied. "She replaced her own body little by little."

Mu Qing smiled. "Jian Li will survive the process."

"If she becomes this?"

"If she becomes eternal."

Damon tightened his grip around her neck. "You stopped being human and decided everyone should be grateful."

"Humanity is a limitation."

"You are still angry, so you did not remove enough of it."

He opened the circulation of the Heavenly Ice Body through direct contact.

Mu Qing tried to absorb the cold, but Damon offered no energy. He removed the connection between her and the arena. The copies collapsed, and the true body lost stability.

The transparent sword vibrated on the ground.

Inside the mansion, Jian Li screamed.

The root inside her responded to Mu Qing, trying to abandon the heart and cross the distance. Damon felt the movement and understood that the ancient disciple was using her own body as a destination.

"Ester, block Jian Li now."

"I already did."

"It is not enough. Close her natural circulation too."

"She may die."

"For a few seconds."

Ester hesitated for only a fraction of a moment before sending the order through the guards. Inside the infirmary, the seals would close around Jian Li’s chest, interrupting both the root and her blood.

Mu Qing felt the passage disappear.

Fear appeared in her white eyes.

Damon pulled.

Not Jian Li’s root.

He pulled the fragment Mu Qing had cultivated inside herself. The white structure beneath her skin tried to remain attached, but the Heavenly Ice Body recognized the channels as an incomplete construction. Damon separated one line, then another, returning the cold to the arena instead of absorbing it.

Mu Qing screamed.

Her body began to crack.

"You do not know what you are destroying!"

"I know enough."

"Without me, Heshan dies."

"Then we will save the valley without feeding it people."

The final connection broke.

Mu Qing fell to her knees, still alive, but the white vanished from her eyes. The artificial body began melting around a much older woman, thin and weak, who had been preserved inside the root.

Damon released her and nearly fell with her.

Ester caught him before he struck the sand. The lines had reached his neck, but they began retreating now that the connection had been broken.

Jian Yue placed the sword against Mu Qing’s throat. "You killed our expedition."

She raised her aged face. "I kept Heshan alive."

"No," Damon said, breathing with difficulty. "You kept Heshan dependent."

Mu Qing looked at him with hatred, but lacked the energy to answer.

Celina entered the field after the final spectators had been removed. Guards surrounded the ancient disciple, collected the sword, and closed the exits. Aria appeared immediately behind them, holding another dented folder.

"Jian Li?" Damon asked.

Ester received confirmation from a messenger. "Alive. The root retreated from her heart when Mu Qing lost the connection."

Damon nodded and allowed some of his weight to rest against Ester.

The tournament had ended on its first day. Han Ruo, Shen Yu, Yun Shuo, and Mu Qing were captured. The other suspects had been arrested or identified.

More importantly, the root inside Jian Li had revealed the path it used to seek another body.

Damon looked toward Mu Qing as the guards shackled her.

"Now we know how to separate it."

Ester followed his gaze. "It could still kill her."

"It could."

"And you intend to try anyway."

Damon observed Jian Yue, Su Lan, and Bao Ren. Then he looked at the transparent sword, Heshan’s triangle, and the ice melting across the sand.

"Not today."

This time, no one needed to force him to stop.

Damon left the arena supported by Ester while Mirath began to understand that its first Founding Tournament had ended with a four-hundred-year-old dead woman being removed from the field.

For a city that had grown too much in only a few months, that still managed to seem excessive.

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