The stone beneath Lei Ze's boots ceased its trembling, replaced by a hum that vibrated through his teeth. It was a frequency that bypassed the ears, striking directly at the marrow.
At the apex of the monument, the orb of the Jade Sun didn't just shine; it inhaled the surrounding shadows. A pillar of white light descended, thick and viscous as molten glass. It swallowed Lei Ze whole. There was no heat, only a pressure that felt like being submerged in a sunlit trench miles below the ocean.
Inside his chest, the peace ended.
The light found the black knot of the Demon King's essence. It was an oil-slick against a pristine spring. The collision was a physical wrenching. Lei Ze's jaw locked, his head snapping back as his meridians became a battlefield. His skin mapped the conflict—veins pulsing a blinding, bleached white before turning an ink-stain black.
The Pagoda did not ask for permission. It functioned as a mechanical force of nature. It lunged at the darkness, not to eradicate it, but to bind it. Lei Ze felt the black energy being dragged, screaming, into the furthest, coldest corner of his spiritual sea. A seal of jade-light slammed shut over it.
The pressure vanished.
The massive structure of the Pagoda began to fold. It collapsed into itself, geometry defying the eyes, shrinking until it was no larger than a chess piece. It hovered for a heartbeat before sinking into Lei Ze's chest.
He stood in the sudden silence of the hall. The air was thin. He felt... clean. The Mid-Golden Core didn't just feel stable; it felt like it had been forged into a diamond. Every breath was a draught of pure Qi.
Information trickled into his mind like cold water. The Pagoda was a filter. It wasn't just a battery; it was a hungry furnace. It could take the chaotic, stolen flames of the Emperor's Scorch—the very fire Gāo Fēng was trying to tame—and strip them of their violence, turning them into pure, raw fuel for his own ascent.
Lei Ze looked down at the wooden beam in his hand. He looked at the centipede, now a deflated husk of chitin and green slime. He felt a weight in his limbs that wasn't there before—a density of power that made the stone floor feel fragile beneath him. He allowed himself a small, sharp exhaling of breath.
Then the temperature in the hall dropped twenty degrees.
The silence was cut by a voice that carried the weight of a falling mountain.
"The Jīn Yàn do not care for thieves."
Lei Ze turned. His boots made a dry, scraping sound on the marble.
Standing in the shattered entrance was Lord Yáng Zhàn. He didn't look like a man who had climbed through a tunnel; he looked like he had stepped out of a nightmare. Beside him, Mò Zhàn's chest was heaving, his fists clenched so tight the leather of his bracers groaned. Měi Lín stood a half-step behind, her eyes like flint, tracking the way Lei Ze's weight shifted.
Yáng Zhàn's gaze wasn't on the empty pedestal. It was fixed on the center of Lei Ze's chest.
"You are the boy," Yáng Zhàn stated. His voice was a low, resonant thunder that rattled the remaining glass in the window frames. "My son came to claim his birthright. It seems you've swallowed it. Spit it out, or the Green Pine will be burned until the soil is glass."
Mò Zhàn took a heavy step forward. The stone cracked under his boot.
Lei Ze didn't reach for a weapon. He crossed his arms, his posture mirroring the stillness of the statues around them. "The Pagoda is a judge," he said. His voice was different now—deeper, anchored by the relic. "It doesn't care about your son's name. It only recognizes the righteous."
Yáng Zhàn let out a dry, rattling laugh. He folded his hands behind his back.
"Righteous? You are the son of a woman who traded her soul for a lie. You didn't even know her name before today, did you?"
The heat hit the back of Lei Ze's neck. His fingers twitched against his biceps.
"You speak of things you shouldn't know."
"I know the woman who birthed you," Yáng Zhàn said. He began to pace, his eyes never leaving Lei Ze's. "Lán Mèng. She was ours. A Sect Leader of the Jīn Yàn. She was a storm in human skin until she showed up with a belly full of a secret she wouldn't name. She left the sect to hide you in the mud. She chose a peasant's death over a queen's life."
Lei Ze felt the hall tilting. The name Lán Mèng tasted like ash in his mouth. "Who killed her?"
Yáng Zhàn stopped pacing. He looked at Lei Ze with something that might have been pity, if it weren't so cold. "Your father's name was Yǒng Yè. A Dark Lord from the North. He didn't come for her. He came for Jìng Xū. He brought a tide of forbidden smoke to erase your precious Master, but the dark is a blind dog. It missed the target. It took the village instead. It took her."
The world went grey at the edges. Lei Ze's knees didn't buckle, but his vision blurred. Every memory of the smoke, the screaming, the smell of burnt thatch—it all led back to a rivalry between old men.
"Where is he?" Lei Ze's voice was a whisper, vibrating with a violence that made the air hum.
"The Northern Lands," Yáng Zhàn said, exhaling a long, weary breath. "Where the sun doesn't reach."
Mò Zhàn roared, a guttural sound of frustration, and lunged. He was a blur of red hair and brute force.
Yáng Zhàn's hand shot out, catching his son's shoulder with a grip that stopped him dead.
"No," the Sect Master said.
"Father, he has it! He has the Pagoda!"
"He is the Pagoda now," Yáng Zhàn stated flatly. "To kill him here would be to crack the relic. The bond is finished. We waste our time on a closed door."
Yáng Zhàn turned, his heavy robes swirling in the dust. Měi Lín stayed for a heartbeat, her gaze lingering on the red marks on Lei Ze's hands, her expression unreadable. She turned and followed the Master into the gloom.
The rage that had been coiled in Lei Ze's gut finally snapped. It wasn't the refined Qi of the Pagoda; it was the raw, jagged howl of a boy who had just learned his life was a byproduct of a mistake.
"Where do you think you're going!" Lei Ze screamed.
He didn't wait for an answer. He launched himself at their retreating backs, his hand outspread, the air in the hall screaming as the Jade Sun began to pulse once more.