Night fell over Black Fang Gorge with the clean, pitiless certainty of a blade sliding from its sheath.
The gorge cut through the northern badlands like an old wound that never fully scarred, its walls steep and black, its stone stained by centuries of ichor and the slow seep of abyssal miasma. Even before a single demon appeared, the place smelled wrong. It was not simply rot or blood, but something older and more suffocating, as though the earth itself had learned to exhale corruption. The wind that moved through the narrow passage did not whistle; it rasped, dragging grit and a faint metallic tang across skin and tongue.
Below, hidden in the throat of the gorge, the demon nest breathed.
It was not a metaphor that sprang from imagination. The miasma rose and fell in pulses, thickening and thinning like lungs expanding in the dark. Somewhere in that darkness came the scrape of claws on stone, the wet click of teeth testing air, and the occasional low snarl that traveled along the canyon walls and returned distorted, multiplied, as if the nest contained more mouths than bodies.
Above the mouth of that wound, the Ten Teams gathered without fanfare.
They did not look like a festival army. No banners lifted. No bright armor gleamed. Every metal plate had been wrapped in cloth or smeared with ash to dull reflection. Talismans were tucked away so their glow would not betray them. Even breath was controlled; disciples drew air in shallow intervals and released it without letting it fog into visible plumes against the cold. The simplest habits—shifting weight too loudly, letting a weapon ring against a scabbard—had been punished during training, and now those punishments lived in their muscles as instinct.
The Sovereign overseers remained high on the cliffs, their auras concealed, their presence a pressure at the edge of awareness rather than a beacon. They were not here to clear the gorge. They were here to watch whether the young could.
At the front, where the gorge narrowed like a throat preparing to swallow, Feng Yueru raised her hand and drew two fingers through the air as though cutting an invisible thread. The gesture was small, almost casual, yet those closest to her felt the change immediately. Time did not stop, but it slowed in a subtle, selective way that dulled the jagged edges of movement. Sound did not vanish, but it softened, as if the air had become thicker.
Beside her, Xue Yanfei's frostfire simmered in her dantian, held back behind clenched discipline. In daylight she was storm and blaze, a force that wanted to announce itself. Tonight she kept it folded tight, letting only a faint chill cling to her blade. Her eyes, usually sharp with restless hunger, were narrowed with a different intensity: the cold focus of a hunter who knows that a single mistake brings the whole forest down upon her.
Lan Xin stood slightly behind, zither strapped across her back like a second spine. Her fingers rested near strings that were not yet plucked, and the air around her felt quietly wrong in the way it always did when she prepared illusions; it carried a soft distortion, as though the world's edges had become less certain.
Yan Lan crouched along a higher ridge, her lightning restrained so tightly it flickered only in the whites of her eyes. She wanted to grin, wanted to laugh, wanted to shout something reckless into the dark, but she swallowed it all and watched the gorge like it was a stage where one wrong sound would bring the ceiling down.
Ru Mei moved like someone who had already accepted the ugliness of war. Her crimson aura did not flare. It gathered close, heavy and controlled, and the air around her smelled faintly of iron.
When the signal came, it was not a shouted command. It was a simple shift in posture that ran through the Ten Teams like a breath passing from lung to lung.
They entered the gorge.
At first, the darkness swallowed them so completely that even their outlines seemed to dissolve. The stone walls rose on either side, close enough that a thrown blade could bounce from wall to wall. Somewhere far below, dim red embers glowed where abyssal fungus fed on corruption. The air grew warmer the deeper they went, not with comfort but with sick heat, as though something feverish lay beneath the stone.
Demon sentries were present at the rim, but they were not brilliant. They were accustomed to fear. They expected human scouts to hesitate, to whisper, to make mistakes.
The first death did not announce itself.
Yueru stepped once, and the step did not land where her foot had started. Space compressed under her heel, not violently, but with the quiet precision of someone folding silk. She appeared behind a demon guard whose eyes had not yet finished turning. Her Dao Sword did not blaze. It whispered, its edge carrying the weight of wind's sharpness and lightning's inevitability. The blade slid across the demon's throat so cleanly that the creature's mouth opened as if to speak before blood even recognized that it should flow.
Yanfei moved immediately after, not racing for glory, but carving a silent line along the rim. Frost condensed on her blade's edge, then shifted seamlessly into flame that burned without light. When a demon scout caught the scent of unfamiliar flesh and began to inhale for a warning shriek, Yanfei's frostfire entered its mouth and throat in a tight spiral. The cold seized vocal cords, the heat cauterized them, and the demon collapsed with its sound trapped inside its own ruined body.
Lan Xin's first note was not audible in the way music usually is. It entered the mind rather than the ear. The demons who stood deeper within the gorge blinked, their attention drifting sideways as if something had moved where nothing existed. Two turned toward a shadow that was not there, stepping directly into the path of waiting blades. Their deaths were quick, and the illusion continued, guiding the next pair into the same quiet end.
Ru Mei's team did not kill with flourish. They killed with completion. They slipped close enough that their breaths mixed with demon stench, then cut, then caught the falling weight before it struck stone. Her crimson Dao flowed along her sword like a thin film, sealing wounds so blood did not splash. Bodies were dragged into crevices, wedged behind black boulders, arranged so that from a distance the gorge still looked inhabited.
Yan Lan's squad worked higher, where ledges narrowed and demon scouts perched like carrion birds. She moved with restrained aggression, using lightning only as fine needles that pierced hearts without sparking outward. Each kill made her jaw tighten, not from fear but frustration at having to be quiet. When one of her teammates began to suppress a laugh too loudly after a particularly clean strike, Yan Lan pressed her blade's flat against his throat and murmured, barely moving her lips, that she would cut him before she let him ruin the operation. The teammate's eyes widened, and his nod was immediate.
The first hour passed with a rhythm that began to feel unreal. Demons fell in clusters—one, then three, then ten—as sentries were removed and patrol routes emptied. The gorge's air grew colder where frost and illusion overlapped, and warmer where blood seeped into stone. The Ten Teams moved like a single organism, each squad striking in its assigned corridor, withdrawing into shadow, allowing another squad to pass through, never letting their wakes overlap long enough to create noise.
By the second hour, the corpse count had climbed into the hundreds. By the third, into the thousands.
Yet the nest did not wake fully, because the Ten Teams understood that silence was not simply the absence of sound; it was the absence of pattern. They did not kill in one place long enough for disappearance to become noticeable. They did not allow blood to trail into open pathways. Lan Xin's illusions soothed the minds of patrols, gently redirecting them away from gaps so no demon could register that the gorge's heartbeat had changed.
Even so, a nest that large could not be cut without consequence.
The mistake was small, almost inevitable. A patrol returned early from a deeper passage. A corpse pile had been hidden too hastily behind a collapsed slab of stone, and though the bodies were concealed from most angles, the returning demon commander caught the scent of freshly spilled blood that had not yet cooled.
It stepped closer, nostrils flaring, head tilting as if listening to a song only it could hear.
Then it saw the hand of a dead sentry protruding from beneath the slab, black claws curled as if still reaching for its weapon.
The demon's scream ripped the gorge open.
It was not a simple cry. It carried command. It carried terror. It carried the sharp edge of awakening.
Lan Xin's illusion web shuddered as though struck by a hammer. Several demons who had been drifting into false paths snapped back into clarity and began to howl. The miasma surged outward in a thick wave, rolling up the gorge like smoke driven by bellows. Claws scraped stone in every direction as the nest's interior stirred, then surged, then erupted.
The Ten Teams did not retreat. They had never planned to retreat.
When the first wave of demons came, it did not come as scattered beasts. It poured like a flood. Hundreds at once, then thousands, then tens of thousands, bodies crushing bodies in their hunger to reach the mouth where fresh prey had entered.
Yanfei's frostfire flared, and this time she did not attempt to keep it invisible. The gorge lit in a violent bloom of crimson and pale blue. Her flames surged outward in a broad sheet, then instantly collapsed into a blizzard of razor frost. Demons at the front froze mid-leap, their limbs locked in grotesque angles, and before the second rank could climb over them, Yanfei's fire returned as a contained burn that shattered the frozen bodies into brittle fragments.
Yueru stepped to her side, and the air around her blade thickened with law. Her Five-Fold Dao did not manifest as separate tricks; it manifested as a single way of moving that made her seem unfair. Wind tightened around her feet and shoulders, stripping friction from her steps. Lightning nested along her sword's edge, waiting. Space compressed in front of her, shortening distances so her thrusts reached farther than her arms should have allowed. Time stretched in thin, selective threads, slowing the instant before impact so demons seemed to hesitate in mid-motion. When she struck, the lightning did not merely burn flesh; it detonated inside cores, destroying the corrupted heart of a demon before the body understood it was dead.
The spear formation locked behind them as planned.
Disciples braced shoulder to shoulder, blades angled forward in disciplined rows. The front line did not swing wildly. They thrust in sequence, withdrawing and thrusting again with the rhythm of a single lung. Those behind reinforced the line with controlled Dao techniques: frost barriers that solidified and dissolved as needed, earth walls that rose briefly to redirect pressure, wind currents that swept miasma sideways so visibility remained possible in narrow pockets.
Lan Xin's music changed from guiding illusions to shaping the battlefield. Her fingers plucked, and the notes traveled like threads through the gorge. Where they touched demon minds, perception skewed just enough to cause hesitation at the wrong time. A demon would lunge at a disciple and find its claws closing on empty air, because its mind had been convinced that the target stood half a step to the side. That half step was all a spear thrust needed. Where demon commanders attempted to rally their hordes, Lan Xin's sound wrapped around their voices, dulling the authority, breaking cohesion so that ranks surged unevenly instead of as one.
On the left flank, Yan Lan finally let her lightning breathe.
She did not cast it as distant bolts. She used it as extension of movement, each slash of her blade carrying bright arcs that snapped through multiple bodies at once. When demons attempted to climb the gorge walls to circle behind the spear formation, Yan Lan's squad met them in tight quarters. Stone shattered under their footwork. Lightning scorched black rock into glass. Yan Lan fought like someone who enjoyed danger too much, but even her recklessness had discipline now. She struck, retreated two steps, struck again, never lingering long enough to be surrounded.
On the right flank, Ru Mei's crimson Dao became the gorge's second river.
She did not fling blood outward in uncontrolled waves. She guided it. Black ichor and demon blood mixed on the stone floor, and Ru Mei's Dao seized control of the fluid medium, turning it into weapon and restraint. It coiled around demon ankles, dragged them down, then hardened for a heartbeat like iron chains. In that heartbeat, her team's blades ended throats and cores. When a dense cluster of demons threatened to crush the right side through sheer mass, Ru Mei drew her sword in a slow arc, and the blood on the ground rose in a curved wall that slammed into the horde and pushed it back long enough for the spear line to reset its angle.
The battle became a grinding pressure test. The gorge was narrow, and that was both advantage and curse. The demons could not fully surround them, but they could press forward endlessly, bodies piling into the choke points until corpses formed ramps for the next wave. The Ten Teams fought not for glory but for spacing, constantly cutting down the piled bodies so the horde could not gain elevation and momentum.
Yanfei and Yueru advanced by inches.
When Yanfei's frostfire spread too wide, it risked consuming oxygen and choking allies, so she learned to compress her storms, shaping them into narrow corridors of destruction that matched the spear line's width. When Yueru's space folds threatened to distort allied movement, she adjusted her displacement technique to fold only her own vector, leaving the formation stable. Their rivalry remained, but it manifested as relentless refinement, each pushing the other into sharper control.
Hours passed. The gorge floor disappeared beneath layers of corpses. Black ichor soaked into stone and steamed where frostfire touched it. The air grew thick with miasma and burnt blood. Disciples began to feel the first signs of exhaustion: arms trembling after repeated thrusts, meridians heating under sustained output, lungs tightening as the air became fouled.
Then the quality of demons changed.
From deeper within the nest came a howl that carried heavier pressure, and the front ranks of the horde parted as towering commanders emerged. Their bodies were plated in bone armor grown like disease. Their eyes glowed with corrupted Dao. Their claws dripped with abyssal venom that hissed against stone.
One commander leapt directly toward the spear tip, attempting to break formation through brute momentum.
Yanfei met it with a condensed frostfire sphere that erupted outward on impact. The cold seized its bone plating, spiderweb cracks racing across it. Yueru stepped in at the same time, her sword thrusting through compressed space and entering the cracked armor seam at the commander's chest. Lightning detonated inward, ripping apart organs and core simultaneously. The commander's scream shook the gorge, but it died as its body shattered into ash and frozen fragments.
A second commander tried the flanks, sweeping a blade-arm through the left corridor where Yan Lan's squad held. The strike carved into stone, sending shards flying, and two disciples were nearly taken when the commander's follow-up came faster than expected. Yan Lan's lightning surged, not as wild arcs but as concentrated eruptions along her blade that met the commander's arm mid-swing. The collision did not stop it fully, but it delayed it long enough for her teammates to strike at joints. Yan Lan herself dove under its elbow and drove her sword upward through its rib plate, lightning burning through its inner core. The commander convulsed, then collapsed, crushing three lesser demons beneath its bulk.
Ru Mei's side faced a commander that fought with miasma manipulation, exhaling a cloud so dense it turned the air into choking sludge and attempted to blind the formation. Lan Xin countered immediately, her music shifting into a cleansing resonance that thinned the miasma's grip on perception. Ru Mei used the moment of clarity to seize the blood on the ground and drive it upward in a narrow spike that pierced the commander's throat. When it staggered, her team's blades finished it, cutting its head from its shoulders before it could release another breath.
The Ten Teams did not cheer. They did not have time.
The horde kept coming.
By the time the pressure eased, the disciples no longer fought with fresh energy. They fought with the discipline hammered into them, holding formation through pain, swallowing exhaustion, rotating injured fighters backward while fresh arms stepped forward. The spearhead remained intact because Yanfei and Yueru refused to yield space, and because the flanks refused to collapse under encirclement pressure.
Eventually, the gorge's sound changed.
The roar of the horde began to thin.
Not because the nest had emptied, but because the nest had been cut deep enough that its outer defenders had been annihilated. The remaining demons began to hesitate. Their surges became uneven. Their commanders no longer appeared with the same frequency. The Ten Teams, bloodied and battered, pushed forward with grim persistence, clearing the last choke point and reaching a wider cavern mouth where the nest's interior opened.
The air inside was hotter, heavier, saturated with demonic presence that felt organized, not frantic.
The first true overlord emerged.
It was larger than the commanders, its aura dense enough to press against the disciples' chests and make breathing feel like drawing air through water. Bone armor covered it in layered plates, and its claws carried a corruption so thick it made the stone beneath it hiss and soften.
The Ten Teams tightened formation instinctively.
Yanfei's frostfire gathered again, and this time the storm she held was sharper, more condensed. Yueru's Dao Sword hummed, space and time tightening around her stance.
They moved together without speaking, because rivalry had already transformed into shared instinct under pressure.
Yanfei struck first, projecting frostfire not as a wave but as a spiraling lance that drilled into the overlord's chest. The cold locked its outer plates, and the flame burned through the seams the cold created. Yueru stepped through space and struck at the same seam, her lightning entering the overlap of heat and frost and detonating at the precise point where the overlord's core pulse flickered.
The overlord roared and swung, its claws tearing through air in an arc that could have shattered the spear line, but the combined impact had already destabilized its balance. The swing lost precision, and the front line shifted as one, allowing the arc to carve only stone and dead bodies rather than living flesh.
Yanfei and Yueru pressed again, not wasting the stagger. Frostfire and lightning stacked in quick succession, each strike carving another fracture, each detonation widening the instability within the overlord's core. When it attempted to surge its aura outward to crush them, Lan Xin's music snapped through the air, layering illusion and disruption into its perception. The overlord's aura burst unevenly, misaligned for an instant, and that instant was enough. Yueru's blade entered through folded space and struck the core directly.
The overlord convulsed.
Yanfei's frostfire sealed the remaining cracks.
The body shattered into frozen ash and burning fragments that dissolved in the cavern's heat.
The disciples nearest the spearhead stared for a heartbeat too long, not because they had time, but because their minds struggled to accept what their eyes had seen. The gulf between them and Sovereign-level existence had always felt insurmountable, and yet through coordination, through layered techniques, through refusal to break formation, they had torn down something that should have been beyond them.
The nest did not offer them celebration.
It offered retaliation.
Deeper within the cavern, heavier shadows shifted, and pressure rose again, hinting that greater forces still waited beyond the slaughtered outer defenders.
The Ten Teams held their line anyway, bleeding, breathing hard, blades slick with ichor, eyes no longer bright with youthful excitement but hardened by the simple fact that they had entered an abyssal wound and survived long enough for the wound to notice them.
They had come to cleanse a nest.
They had done far more than kill.
They had learned what it meant to stand in formation while the world tried to swallow them, and to advance one step at a time without breaking.
And as the cavern's deeper darkness stirred, they understood that the silent killing of the first hours had been mercy compared to what waited below.