"You claim not to be Xianzhou-born."
"Yet under Heaven's Mandate, I become Xianzhou."
Su Xiaoquan sheathed her rapier, gaze steady. "Sword Sovereign—your blade remains flawless as legends say."
Anming slid Wuye's hilt back into its scabbard. After four decades of devotion, even this fragment sufficed against most threats. Their clash had carried no lethal intent—merely a duelist's challenge.
He recognized the aura clinging to her—not Aeon's blessing, but something older. Not Hunt. Not Destruction.
"Did you await me here merely for theatrics?" Anming partially drew his second blade, steel hissing like winter wind. Forty years' tempering hummed in the half-revealed edge.
"Only to deliver a message." She retreated gracefully, bubbles rising from her seahorse pendant. "Destiny's Envoy... sends regards."
The street blinked.
Where pink ombre hair had shimmered stood a timid youth offering jade credentials. "Grandmaster Huaiyan awaits at Flamewheel Forge."
"Did he ever take female disciples?"
"None since Master Yingxing departed."
The reforging chamber unfolded like cosmic origami. Paper cranes transmuted into radiant mechanisms, floors pivoting to reveal a miniature sun—Sui Huang's pulsing heart.
Visions assaulted Anming: golden colossi, phoenix-winged warriors, soldiers burning bright with war cries. The primordial flame roared memories into his skull—
—until steel sang.
Wuye's hilt grounded him. Sunlight bent around his resolve.
"Marvelous." Huaiyan emerged from coronal flares, beard shimmering with stardust. "To face Sui Huang's gaze unshaken—Marshal Hua's praise was no courtesy."
Barriers rose, muting the forge-god's whispers. The master smith's appraisal cut deeper than blades: "You bear a smith's soul beneath swordsman's skin."
"Merely... dabbled while sharpening blades." Anming laid Wuye's fragments on the anvil.
The elder chuckled. "Táowù's hide cares not for 'dabbling'."
Twenty-four years of preparation coalesced under Sui Huang's gaze. Molten alloys danced with Anming's golden blood—a final ingredient the Destiny's Envoy had foreshadowed.
Dragon-song shook Zhuming's skies as Wuye awoke. Auric stormclouds birthed celestial serpents, their coils sliced by ascending sword qi.
Nightless, thus dawn broke.
"Táowù..." Anming sheathed the reborn blade, its hilt warm with latent power.
Monsters mattered not. With steel in hand, destiny became clay.
At nineteen, Jingtian's parting words had haunted him: "You'll sever fate's threads."
Twenty-four winters later, comprehension dawned—the cutler becomes the shears. To break destiny's chains was itself a predetermined act.
The star raft hummed through astral seas. Anming watched constellations swirl, Wuye's weight familiar yet transformed.
When the beast beneath Yuque stirred, he would answer—not as victim of fate, but its sculptor.