The hidden floor collapsed behind us in a roar of shattered stone and panicked screams.
We didn't run through the main tunnels.
That would have been suicide.
The Jade Prince's people, the Blood Lotus clan enforcers, and half the Shadow Pavilion's shadow assassins would already be sealing every visible exit.
Instead Yue led me through a narrow service fissure - one she had mapped years ago in her first life, one I had never known about until now.
The passage was tight, damp, smelling of moss and old blood.
Our footsteps echoed strangely, like multiple people following us.
Neither of us spoke for the first ten minutes.
When the tunnel finally widened into an abandoned maintenance chamber lit by a single dying spirit lamp, Yue stopped.
She turned.
Her mask was gone now - discarded somewhere in the chaos.
Her storm-cloud eyes were brighter than I remembered, sharper, carrying the same weight of too many deaths.
"You really did it," she said quietly. "You took the second piece in front of every major power in the city."
I leaned against the damp wall, letting the stolen fragment settle deeper into my sea of consciousness.
It felt... heavier.
More complete.
The violet light inside me now had faint crimson veins threading through it like roots in soil.
"I needed them to know," I replied. "I needed them to remember before I start taking the rest."
Yue crossed her arms.
"That's not what you said earlier.
You said you weren't trying to become him again."
"I'm not."
I met her gaze without flinching.
"I'm trying to make sure the cycle ends.
The Sovereign shattered his soul because he was tired of being the strongest thing alive.
He wanted someone else to carry the burden.
He wanted chaos.
He wanted evolution through destruction."
I pushed off the wall, stepping closer.
"I'm giving him what he asked for.
But on my terms."
Yue studied me for a long moment.
Then she asked the question I knew was coming.
"Why did you let me live in your first life?"
The memory surfaced instantly - sharp, painful, unwanted.
Mount Voidheart.
Midnight rain.
Her blade at my throat.
My hand around her wrist.
The moment I could have drained her soul completely...
and didn't.
I exhaled slowly.
"Because you were the only one who ever asked me why instead of just trying to kill me for what I was doing."
She didn't look surprised.
She looked tired.
"I asked because I thought there might be something left of the boy who picked up that fragment in the gutter.
The one who was just trying to survive."
"There isn't," I said flatly. "That boy died on the 999th step."
Yue stepped forward - close enough that I could smell the faint jasmine again.
"Then who am I talking to now?"
I didn't answer immediately.
The fragment pulsed once - almost gently.
"Tell her the truth," it whispered. "She's the only one who might understand."
I looked at Yue.
"I'm the thing that crawled out of the ashes after the Sovereign erased me.
I remember every humiliation.
Every victory.
Every time I told myself I was different from him.
And every time I proved I was exactly the same."
I lifted my right hand.
A thin crimson vine-thread rose from my palm, coiling lazily.
"But this time...
I remember the ending.
I remember what happens when someone becomes too perfect, too complete, too original."
The thread drifted toward her - not threatening, just hovering.
"I'm going to collect every piece.
I'm going to devour every bloodline, every sect secret, every heavenly law that ever dared to call itself eternal.
And when there's nothing left to steal..."
I let the thread dissipate.
"...I'm going to break the cycle.
Permanently."
Yue didn't flinch at the thread.
She reached out instead - slowly - and pressed her palm against mine.
No qi clash.
No drain.
Just contact.
"You're still lying to yourself," she said softly.
"You're not collecting the pieces to destroy them.
You're collecting them because you can't stand the thought of anyone else having what you had."
I didn't pull away.
"Maybe," I admitted.
"But at least this time I know what I'm becoming."
She studied my face for another heartbeat.
Then she stepped back.
"Fine.
Then I'll walk this path with you.
Not because I believe in your redemption.
But because I want to be there when you finally have to face what you've made of yourself."
I smiled - small, crooked, almost real.
"Deal."
Somewhere above us, the city was already waking to the news.
The Copycat Sage had returned.
He had claimed a second fragment in front of witnesses.
He remembered everything.
The great sects would mobilize.
Heavenly envoys would descend.
Old grudges would awaken.
And somewhere in the deepest vaults of the Nine Heavens Jade Palace, a certain finger bone - the last major piece of the Sovereign - would begin to pulse in warning.
We had perhaps three days before the real hunt began.
I looked at Yue.
"Next target?"
She tilted her head toward the surface.
"The Blood Lotus Heiress is wounded.
She'll retreat to her clan's hidden estate outside the city.
They'll try to use her blood to stabilize the lesser fragments they already hold."
I nodded.
"Then we go hunting."
We moved together toward the hidden exit.
One last thing before we stepped into the night:
Yue glanced back at me.
"One question."
"Ask."
"When this is over...
when you have every piece...
what will you do with all that power?"
I thought of the 999th step.
The Sovereign's final palm.
The long fall.
Then I answered, voice low but certain.
"I'll finally do what he never could."
She raised an eyebrow.
I met her eyes.
"I'll let go."
For the first time since either of us could remember, Yue looked genuinely surprised.
Then she smiled - small, sharp, almost hopeful.
"We'll see."
End of Chapter 5