The battle shifted from the street to the vertical. Director Zhou didn't just move; he rewrote the coordinates of the air. With a casual flick of his wrist, the gravity of the skyscraper beside us rotated. Suddenly, the glass wall of the fifty-story building was the ground we were standing on.
I skidded across the reflective surface, my boots leaving scorched marks on the reinforced glass. Zhou was already there, his charcoal suit rippling like liquid ink. He didn't use a weapon. He simply reached out and plucked a strand of light from the air—a literal fiber of the city's electrical grid—and whipped it toward me like a celestial flail.
I brought the Fallen Leaf Blade up in a sweeping parry.
"You think you're a rebel, Chen Feng," Zhou's voice boomed, echoing off the surrounding towers. "But you're just a friction point. Every time you strike me, you're just generating more heat for the Silos to absorb."
"Then I'll give you enough heat to melt the casing!" I roared.
I slammed my palm into the glass. I didn't use my own Qi; I reached through the glass, through the steel frame, and tapped into the Wind-Pipe Anchor leaking beneath the shop blocks away. I pulled that raw, unrefined Golden Dew up through the city's "veins."
The silver light of my aura turned a violent, screaming gold.
I launched myself at him, a streak of light that shattered the windows we passed. We traded a hundred blows in the span of a single breath. Each collision sent a pulse of energy that turned the clouds above into a swirling vortex. Zhou's expression finally shifted from bored corporate interest to genuine, cold-eyed focus.
He caught my blade between two fingers. The friction caused a localized sound barrier to break, the boom shaking the very foundations of the district.
"Enough," Zhou said.
He didn't hit me. He spoke a word in the Primal Tongue—the language used to command the stars.
The word was [HALT].
My blood turned to lead. My Qi froze in my meridians. I felt the weight of the entire planet pressing down on my shoulders, forcing me to my knees on the side of the skyscraper. The Dao wasn't just fighting me; it was un-making my permission to move.
Zhou adjusted his cufflinks and looked down at me. "You are an impressive specimen, Chen Feng. But even the strongest leaf cannot choose which way the wind blows."
He raised his foot, his shoe glowing with the weight of a collapsing star, ready to stomp my existence out of the local reality.
"The wind," a familiar, melodic voice drifted from above, "tends to be quite unpredictable when there's a storm coming."
A silver pin, carved in the shape of a crane, whistled through the air. It didn't hit Zhou; it struck the air an inch in front of his face, creating a ripple that shattered his [HALT] command.
I gasped, the pressure lifting just enough for me to roll away as the glass beneath me disintegrated under Zhou's strike.
Yue Qin descended from the sky, her plum-colored trench coat billowing like a dark cloud. She didn't look at me. She looked straight at the CEO of the Universe.
"Director Zhou," she said, her voice dripping with a dangerous sweetness. "I believe our contract had a clause about unauthorized 'deletion' of senior assets. Chen Feng is still under my jurisdiction."
Zhou straightened his suit, his eyes narrowing. "Yue Qin. You're late. And you're interfering with a system optimization."
"The system is rigged, Zhou," she said, landing softly beside me and offering a hand. Her palm felt cold—not the cold of ice, but the cold of a deep, empty silo. "And I've decided to stop being the architect and start being the demolition crew."
I took her hand, pulling myself up. The silver pin flew back into her hair.
"You're working with me?" I wheezed, my silver aura flickering back to life.
"Don't get sentimental, Sovereign," she whispered, her eyes fixed on Zhou. "I'm just protecting my investment. Now, show me that 10,000-Leaf Strike. I'll provide the atmosphere; you provide the edge."
Zhou sighed, the black sedan behind him on the street below starting to glow with a terrifying, white-hot intensity. "Very well. A joint-liquidation it is."