The void-rift tore at the fabric of Xuanming. Basalt boulders and molten slag peeled away from the mountain, tumbling down the gullet of the tear. Atmosphere thinned to a freezing rasp. The rock beneath Zou Yan’s boots shivered in rhythmic spasms. Below him, the Sect Grandmaster, still clutching the gorged World-Breaker, threw back his head and laughed. It was a dry, grating cackle that scraped against the screech of tearing space.
“Behold, Zou Yan!” the Grandmaster bellowed, his voice distorted by the shearing currents. “The Door is open! Luo Qixing’s pathetic existence was merely a key. A small price for true dominion!”
The smoke and steam above the breach tore open to reveal raw, unyielding radiance. Pale auroral sheets pressed downward, heavy as lead. From that brilliance descended colossal portals carved from starry jade, etched with coiled serpents, cranes, and stern celestial eyes. They sank toward the mountain like an immense lid, humming so deeply that Zou Yan felt the marrow in his shins rattle. These were the Upper Gates, descending to quarantine the heresy below.
“The Immortals!” the Grandmaster shrieked, his laughter sharpening to a needle. “They try to seal me out? Foolish! Their conceit provides the very prybar I need!” He pointed a clawed finger at the jade portals, whose lowest sill already sheared off the volcano’s highest crags. “Watch, mortar-mixer! Watch as I step over their threshold and take their crowns!”
Baozi twitched on Zou Yan’s shoulder. His crumbly terracotta flanks swelled, gorged on Luo’s spilled malice and the Grandmaster’s fury. A brassy gleam seeped from his hairline cracks. He stretched his stubby hindquarters, wrinkled his blunt snout, and snorted. Then he inhaled. A whistle cut through the roar as Baozi sucked in the boundless smugness rolling off the jade portals and the Grandmaster’s posturing—a feast of pure, towering self-importance.
Baozi’s baked shell broadened. The tiny pug legs thickened into corded pillars; his wrinkled snout lengthened into the proud, squared muzzle of a temple lion, flanked by a curled mane of ochre clay. The beaded black eyes flashed like hot brass. Leaping to the terrace, he shook himself until loose dust smoked off his flanks. His chest expanded, releasing a concussive bark that flattened the swirling ash and checked the rift’s suction for three full seconds. The Sovereign of Thresholds stood revealed.
Then, wrinkling that leonine nose, the beast sneezed. A spark burst from his nostrils and hardened in midair. No jagged bone shard, no crude silver wire—this was a heavy, burnished brass key etched with turtle-shell wards and interlocking mortise joints. It hummed with immutable finality: the Threshold Key of Absolute Boundary.
The key dropped into Zou Yan’s palm, scorching his calluses. It was an implement of definition, meant to draw borders no god could cross. Fifty paces ahead, the Grandmaster threw his arms wide beneath the jade lintel, ready to vault across. Around them, the volcano’s rafters caved inward, rafters and kiln-brick sliding down the abyss, while the celestial lintel pressed downward like a millstone destined to grind the province to flour.
Zou Yan saw the fork in the path. With this brass tooth, he could breach the celestial threshold, pulling Baozi and himself into safe pastures above while the crater swallowed the sect. Or he could turn the lock against the Grandmaster. Shutting that path meant barring the tyrant from the mortal world and the heavens alike, but it would leave Zou Yan marooned on the crumbling rim, surrounded by falling rock.
His fingers tightened on the brass ward. The timid mortar-mixer who endured beatings had died under the rubble. Zou Yan glanced back; the clay lion dipped its great head in grim consent.
Crying out over the din, Zou Yan sprinted across the tilting ledge. He sprinted toward the gaping rift, under the descending jade portals, straight at the Grandmaster’s unprotected spine. No running away. No fleeing. He would throw the deadbolt on this monster, even if the doorway collapsed behind them both.