The Bleeding Phoenix spread its wings, and Reigan Shen slipped off into another portal. He breathed a sigh of relief when it worked; the Dreadgod could have stopped him, had it wanted to.

His work here was done, but the next phase of his plan was even more dangerous.

Now, while the Dreadgod cleared his way, he had to follow it without anyone detecting him. Besides the danger, it was the stealth that really stuck in his craw.

Sneaking was for mice.

14

Lindon drove an Empty Palm into the core of the Third Elder. The plump old man doubled over, wheezing, but Lindon hadn’t used the force he’d unleashed on the Patriarch. The Third Elder would recover his madra in minutes.

Lindon leaned over to speak into the man’s ear. “I cannot be surprised. I cannot be ambushed. My eye sees all.”

Though Lindon didn’t summon him, Dross popped out in front of the Third Elder, his purple eye wide open and menacing.

The elder shuddered, and Lindon played along. “Here it is now.”

[I am the Great Eye,] Dross intoned. [My gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and…what else? Metal. Leather. And cloth, it penetrates cloth.]

His gaze drifted down from the Third Elder’s face, and the old Jade blushed and hurriedly clutched his outer robe closer.

The golden sky loomed over them, and the ground shook, so Lindon’s fear shook him to action again. He pulled the elder to his feet with one hand, shoving him toward the buildings of the Wei clan. “You’re on duty,” Lindon ordered. “Search for stragglers. Get them running for Heaven’s Glory by any means necessary.”

With fists pressed together, the Third Elder started to bow to him, but Lindon shouted “Now! Go!”

Their trip to the east was a mad rush, and they weren’t the only ones with the same idea. Streams of people trickled in from all over Sacred Valley, pushing for the exit farthest from the encroaching threat.

But none were as frightened as Lindon. He knew what was out there.

At least he could vaguely sense the Wandering Titan’s location. While his spiritual perception was still restricted, the Titan was a big target. It hadn’t moved all day, feeding on aura and physical materials from the earth.

That pause was just a temporary reprieve that could end at any time. Whenever the Dreadgod changed its mind, or drained that location dry, it would move east once more.

Only a few more of its strides would break through the mountain and set it loose on Sacred Valley.

So Lindon made sure the Wei clan flowed to the east, occasionally stopping to prevent some Iron from robbing a group of Coppers, or a family from dragging a massive bundle of what looked to be all their earthly belongings.

For the moment, the elders followed Lindon out of fear. Fear both of him and of the Dreadgod. But most of the clan had no idea who he was, and he couldn’t keep demonstrating his strength to everyone he passed.

Fear of the Titan would have to be enough.

The Heaven’s Glory artists and their Grand Patriarch were bound in scripted chains, struggling from the back of a wagon that Lindon kept a special eye on. He might need to use them as hostages when he reached their school.

But as the day crept along, the golden sky’s shine fading to a duller hue, they finally came up to the foot of Mount Samara. Its ring hadn’t started to form yet, and Lindon could already tell something had changed in Heaven’s Glory.

The normal path up the mountain, with its wide road crawling upward in a series of switchbacks, was packed with people. That much, Lindon had expected.

To the side, however, the Trial of Glorious Ascension was gone. The bright pink haze that had once covered the long staircase was gone, leaving flights upon flights of bare stone steps. Some Remnants still wandered in confusion around the slopes, and a few of the scripts still flickered fitfully with dream madra, but it was mostly clear.

So the Heaven’s Glory School had deactivated their formation to allow people to reach the top faster. Good for them. Eithan must have really taken over.

Which might explain the other difference he’d noticed: the column of smoke drifting up from the school proper.

Lindon rose on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, glancing over the Wei clan to make sure they would follow his instructions—although there wasn’t much chance of the opposite, at this point. They were stuck in a thick tide of fleeing people, so there would be nothing to do but wait to move forward.

He flew toward Heaven’s Glory, keeping his perception extended and scanning for Eithan. He’d expected the Archlord to have taken over one of the Jade Elders’ houses, but he felt nothing from that direction.

In fact, as he gained altitude, he saw that one of those homes was the source of the smoke he’d noticed earlier.

When he didn’t spot Eithan where he expected, he extended the radius of his search, sweeping the Heaven’s Glory School.

Dross cleared his throat. [Don’t be mad at me. It’s a miracle I can see anything with your senses like this.]

What is it?

[There’s a battle.]

Dross dragged Lindon’s attention to the wild territory behind the Heaven’s Glory School, where once Yerin had run from the school’s pursuers. Those slopes were mostly snow and Remnants, with occasional sparse bushes or trees, but Lindon quickly sensed what Dross was talking about: flares of light and heat in his spiritual perception.

A fight.

Lindon flew over, but only when he came closer did he feel Eithan’s presence. Weak. Flickering. Low on madra. Heavily drained.

Dread made his heart pound, and he reached into his void key. Wavedancer flew sluggishly over to him; the aura was just barely thick enough to support a flying sword, but this one was used to richer environments. The artfully crafted weapon lurched like a graceful fish squirming through mud.

That didn’t stop it working as a sword, though. Lindon clutched the weapon in his left hand as constructs took aim at him.

Heaven’s Glory had protected themselves from the air.

An accelerated missile of Forged force madra shot for him, and if Lindon had been any more than a Jade, he would have just let it hit him.

Instead, he slapped it from the air with Wavedancer’s blade. A gust of the Hollow Domain wiped out a Heaven’s Glory Striker technique, and then he’d located all six flying constructs in the area.

He pointed and wiped them out one at a time with dragon’s breath.

When Lindon hovered over Eithan’s location, he stepped off the Cloud and fell through the trees. A few thin branches snapped beneath him on the way down, but as he landed, a pair of sacred artists aimed weapons at him.

One swung a hammer that gathered earth aura as she swung, and the other was simply planning to club him with a brick of brown Forged madra.

If their sacred arts hadn’t clued him in, their massive badges—almost like breastplates—showed him their identity clearly. These were members of the Kazan clan. Had Ziel brought them here?

He slipped aside from the hammer, letting it crash into the trunk of a tree, and the brick he caught in his Remnant hand.

When he held both Iron sacred artists still, he spoke calmly. “Pardon, but I’m only here to help.”

Eithan, who had been slumped at the base of the tree, sputtered and spat splintered bark out of his mouth. “Is there sap in my hair? You’d tell me if there was sap in my hair, wouldn’t you?”