Yan De, Yan Ren, Bai Renshu, Sun Quan, and Qian Shi—each of them at the level of a sect grandmaster, including Yan Ren who had once survived an encounter with the Demon Lord’s avatar. They surrounded her now, and Yoshika could already feel their power flowing through some kind of grand technique.

At last, the masterminds had shown themselves, but they had her at a disadvantage. Yan De’s sneer was as punchable as ever as he addressed her.

“Finally, we have you all in one place! Your little game ends now, ‘empress.’ It’s a shame. You had such great potential, if you’d only known your proper place.”

Eui flipped him a rude gesture.

“Shove it up your own ‘proper place’ you arrogant piece of—”

Divine Art: Eternal Five Point Star Sealing Formation

Yan De and his inner circle each became anchors for his divine art, drawing power from all of the gathered elders. Yoshika tried to escape the formation as it wrote itself into the air around her, but not even Jia was fast enough to get out before a barrier snapped into place.

How long had he been keeping this technique in reserve? The divine art was unquestionably spiritual in nature, but it had drawn a formation that rivaled even some of Do Hye’s best work. The barrier extended into the spiritual and even elemental planes, and Yoshika could feel it rapidly sapping her essence as the elders poured their own power into it.

Her domain was being suppressed, and even her bodies’ connections to her soul realm were weakening with every second that passed.

Yan De’s expression was smug in his victory. He knew that he hadn’t really captured all of her, but even just by denying her most powerful aspects, there would be little stopping him from taking his armies to Jiaguo City and finding her true body to deal the finishing blow.

Once more, Yoshika had to make a snap decision. Within her soul realm, her true body stood, startling Yan Yue out of her meditation.

“Yoshika?! What’s happening?”

“It’s time. Get ready. I have to face them in person or we’ll all die.”

Yue’s eyes widened.

“What?! That wasn’t part of the plan! If you go in your true body—”

“If I don’t go, I’ll lose everyone but Meili. It’s fine—we can do this. Trust me.”

She bit her thumbnail, but there was no time to argue.

“I’ll be here to support you, but I swear, if you die again, I will drag you back from the afterlife a second time just so that I can send you back there myself!”

Yoshika nodded, and before her bodies could be cut off, her true self stepped out of her soul realm for the first time in over five years.

Her other bodies vanished, merging safely back into her soul as she stood defiantly before Yan De within his sealing formation. The pressure on her domain eased. It was no longer a projection threatening to be cut off, but the very source itself pushing back against the powers arrayed against her.

Yan De’s eyebrows rose.

“Oho! Isn’t this a pleasant surprise? It’s not every day that our enemy willingly steps into the noose.”

Yoshika’s tails ruffled behind her in agitation as she scowled at the smug grandmaster.

“Did it take practice to become so insufferable, or were you just born that way? Ancestors, Yue was two years old when you left for closed door meditation and she still dedicated her life to escaping you. Do you have any idea how awful you have to be to leave that kind of impression on a toddler?”

He gave her a wan smile and scoffed.

“Your bravado will do you no good. I have no intention of rising to your petty insults, and once the seal finishes draining you of—”

“You’re going to be waiting a long time for that.”

Yan De’s brows furrowed slightly at that, but his smile didn’t falter.

“You have impressive composure in the face of certain death, I’ll grant you that.”

Yoshika rolled her eyes. She exerted her domain against the dodecahedron-shaped barrier surrounding her, and it bowed outwards slightly before snapping back into place.

“This is an impressive sealing formation. I have people back home who will definitely want to study it, but I’ve seen something like it before. It drains my essence to sustain itself, and gets stronger if I struggle. It’s the same kind of seal that captured Do Hye.”

“Indeed? I hadn’t realized beastkin spellcraft had advanced so far.”

Yan De was calm, even conversational as he spoke. So thoroughly convinced of his victory that he wasn’t even entertaining the idea that he might still be in danger. Yoshika shrugged.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“It’s the opposite for me. I didn’t think Qin knew formations like this at all—though Hwang Sung’s spell was just a spell, rather than a divine art.”

“We have known the art of formations since long before you beastkin tried to make it your own. This divine art is nothing like the pale imitation your arcane methods conjured.”

Yoshika nodded.

“I can see that. This is totally indestructible, self-sustaining, and will eventually kill anyone imprisoned within it. I’d bet even your God-Emperor couldn’t escape it without tearing an irreparable hole in the fabric of reality.”

The xiantian elders stirred at that, but Yan De just shook his head.

“I wouldn’t dare presume his capabilities, but your fate is indeed sealed. It is only a matter of time.”

“Except it isn’t. You can’t kill me by draining my essence, Yan De, because I’ll never run out.”

The barrier was indeed draining her constantly of divine essence, and she doubted that even Eui’s Star-Sundering Slash would be able to break it, but Yan De had forgotten something critical about Yoshika. She had the Sovereign’s Tear, and she was the source of her own essence. The seal could take as much as it liked—Yoshika could supply everything it demanded and more.

The grandmaster chuckled as realization dawned on his expression.

“I see, yes. Then I suppose we’ll just have to leave you trapped here while we raze your precious little empire to the ground then seize that divine artifact of yours.”

Yoshika took a deep breath and withdrew her domain all the way within her. Talking to Yan De hadn’t been entirely pointless. Even through the barrier, she could feel the souls of her enemies if she focused. It helped to gain a vague sense of who they were—to find an angle of attack.

Ambition and power, order and hierarchy, sheer unbridled strength, mastery and control—the domains of the grandmasters all tended towards a particular theme. They had risen to power because that was what they desired above all else. Others, like the elder who pursued precision, would never reach that level of influence—not because they were weak, but because it was not part of their craft.

She understood now why Bu Dong Rushan had not been the grandmaster of the Austere Mountain, for all that he seemed to embody the sect’s principles. Leadership was an art unto itself, and not all paths were suited to it.

Yoshika was almost certain now that she understood the true nature of the so-called Jade Pillar. If she was right, then it was a clever trick, but there was only one way to confirm it. Yoshika focused all of her power inwards as Yan De scoffed.

“Finally giving up, are you? It was amusing to watch you struggle.”

Yoshika’s response came as a chorus—five voices resonating through a single pair of lips.

“Our domain cannot penetrate the barrier, Yan De, but brute force is not the only way to move the heavens.”

His eyes widened in alarm and he began to back up.

“Soul magic! Everyone—”

Yoshika didn’t let him finish his warning as she unleashed the power that she’d been preparing for just this moment.

Divine Art: Twin Harmonies of the Dreaming Crescent Moon

Five voices sang out in perfect harmony—no, six, as Yue added her own, resonating from deep within Yoshika’s soul realm. Yoshika’s domain remained trapped within the barrier, but Yan De couldn’t resist gloating—sound, of all things, could still penetrate the barrier. Perhaps if he’d ever bothered to know his own daughter, he’d realize that there was power in her songs.

It wasn’t easy. Each song had to be tailored to the listener—perfectly tuned to move their soul in ways that they didn’t know they could be moved. By herself, Yue struggled to cast her spell over larger groups of people, but with Yoshika’s help she sang to each of the elders.

That was why Yoshika had needed to take a measure of their souls. They only had one chance, and if the enemy escaped her technique, Yan De would not make the same mistake again.

Each of them tried to resist. Officially, Qin denied the existence of soul magic, but it was an open secret among xiantian practitioners that this was a lie. All of them had their own techniques to fight off spiritual influence, but they were expecting an attack like Seong Heiran’s. An attempt at domination and control.

Instead, Yoshika’s song gently touched each soul and resonated with their own truths, singing out in harmony as if to share the same path—if only for a moment. In that moment, their struggles ceased, and their truest selves were drawn into the world of Yoshika’s music.

Some struggled more fiercely than others. Yan De himself wrapped wings of fire around his body and twisted his brows together in concentration.

Sacred Art: True Awakening of the Dragon’s Soul

The fire surrounding him shifted into a brilliant aurora of Plasma and engulfed his soul in a protective layer of dragonfire. That surprised Yoshika. It was a distinct technique from the True Awakening of the Dragon’s Heart that she’d learned, and suddenly she wondered if there was more to the techniques Yue had inherited from her mother than even she knew.

It was also a distinctly Yin-aligned technique, which was unexpected from a man like Yan De. But it didn’t matter, their techniques both came from the same place, and not even the power of dragons could burn Yoshika’s song, nor could it conceal his true nature.

Even the armies below were caught up in it, completely unprepared for Yoshika’s technique as they were all drawn into the same shared dream.

Within the dream, they all stood together in an endless expanse of tall golden grass. If any had been there, they might have recognized the wheat fields from Sovereign Chou’s preliminary trial at the entrance to his tomb. But the sky was different—a brilliant night sky filled with countless glittering stars. Two moons hung on opposite sides, one a sharp crescent shining so brightly that it lit up the world like daylight, and a second so dark it was invisible—yet every observer knew it was there.

No great celestial gate stood in the distance to dominate the horizon. Instead, where it had once been, a single pearly white pillar of jade rose infinitely high to mingle with the stars above. Through the strange logic of dreams, one could see a pedestal at the top of that infinite pillar. What each person saw on that pedestal was different.

For some, it was the God-Emperor, though they did not know what he looked like. It was just the idea of him, some perfect form that they strived for. Some saw themselves there, or their friends, or their nation. Others saw their paths, impossibly condensed into a single bright point—another star in the sky. Those ones had to resist the urge to sit down and meditate on the spot.

Yan De and the other elders stood at the head of the confused Qin army, taking in their surroundings warily. Of all of them, only Yan De knew what he was looking at, and even he wasn’t certain how much of it was real.

Yue stepped out from behind the pillar and closed the distance between them in a single step. She glanced up once, and tried not to think too hard about what she saw there before shifting her gaze back down to meet her father’s eyes.

“Hello, Yan De. Father. I believe we’re long past due for a heart-to-heart, don’t you?”