The acrid scent of burnt oil, scorched bronze, and flaking rust lingered heavily in the canyon air, refusing to yield completely even under the relentless wash of the dying downpour. Torrential water tumbled down the black cliff faces in sheets, churning the mud below into a dark, frothing slurry. Where four massive, terrifying war golems had once stood as invincible avatars of the Immortal Sects' tyranny, there remained only four colossal heaps of pulverized scrap iron, flickering with dying purple sparks that hissed and sputtered against the rising mire.
Gu Yao leaned heavily against the warped handle of his shattered hammer.
The giant weapon, once forged from heavy iron, was now cracked along its spine, its head half-buried in the sludge to serve as his sole anchor against the earth. He was kneeling on one knee, his broad shoulders trembling with the rhythmic, agonizing effort of each breath. To any onlooker, he resembled an ancient stone statue on the verge of collapsing into dust.
His left arm hung utterly limp at his side, unnaturally twisted at the mid-forearm where jagged white shards of bone had pierced straight through the skin, starkly vivid against the dark, crimson bloodstains saturating his tattered sleeve. Every shallow breath he drew was a ragged, wheezing struggle—a visceral signal that deep within his thoracic cavity, the black needles of the Immortal-Locking Nails were violently writhing, frantic to devour the last reserves of his lingering life force.
"A-Yao..."
A soft, frantic whisper cut through the roar of the rain.
Shen Yi rushed forward through the mud, her footfalls splashing frantically against the shallow pools. Her eyes were rimmed with red, inflamed by exhaustion and the stinging mountain mist, though her jaw remained set with fierce discipline as she forced herself to keep her tears from falling. Slashing water away with her sleeves, she dropped to her knees beside him in the mud without a second's hesitation.
From the inner lining of her dry tunic, she pulled out several neatly pre-prepared strips of coarse linen and a handful of crushed medicinal herbs—wild root sap and bitterness that she had kept protected from the storm beneath her own body heat.
"Don't move. The bone is broken; I have to set it."
Shen Yi’s voice was remarkably soft, almost soothing, yet it carried an undeniable, bone-deep calmness that rose far above the thundering cascade of rain around them.
Gu Yao slowly raised his head, his vision blurred by a mixture of mud, sweat, and blood trickling from his hairline. He looked into her eyes. Beneath the dim, shifting reflections of the flickering scrap-metal fires, he caught sight of something extraordinary. Deep within the recesses of Shen Yi’s dark pupils, a fleeting, infinitely subtle golden glow flared—a radiance that was fundamentally distant, ancient, and entirely detached from the realm of mortal existence. It vanished in less than the span of a heartbeat, as smooth as an ember dipping below dark water.
Yet in that exact instant, a strange tremor passed through Gu Yao’s body. The malevolent Immortal-Locking Nails embedded in his spine suddenly shuddered, shrinking back slightly into his flesh as if recoiling in instinctual terror before an ancient, unnamable authority.
CRACK!
Shen Yi applied sudden, precise force with both hands, grasping his upper arm and forearm simultaneously to snap the fractured bone back into alignment.
A muffled, visceral groan tore from Gu Yao’s throat. Cold, beaded sweat erupted across his brow, mingling instantly with the crimson tracks running down his face. His muscles locked hard enough to shatter teeth, yet through sheer, monstrous willpower, he did not utter a single cry of pain, refusing to let his voice break in the presence of the gathered masses.
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At that moment, the three thousand mortals standing in the shadows around them began to move.
For hours, they had remained huddled together behind the jagged rocks and towering stone pillars of the canyon, watching the horrific slaughter with the hollow, unseeing numbness of beasts driven to slaughter. But now, as they stared at the broken iron bodies of the golems and the bleeding man who had brought them down, the deep-seated cowardice born of three millennia of crushing enslavement began to burn away. In its place, something scalding, dangerous, and entirely new began to pulse through their veins.
An old woman stepped forward tremblingly, her weathered feet sinking deep into the cold mud. Shivering violently against the icy wind, she undid the ties of her mantle and gently draped her only dry woven towel over Gu Yao’s bare, scar-ridden back, offering the fragile warmth as if covering an altar.
Immediately after her came a burly miner. He silently set down his heavy iron shovel, dropping to his knees beside the pool of water gathering at Gu Yao's feet. With his bare, calloused hands, he began wildly clawing at the mud, digging a small drainage trench through the clay to divert the rising water away from Gu Yao’s open, bleeding wounds.
"Brother Gu... this cake... please, you must eat it."
The pale youth who had spoken earlier stepped forward again, parting from the crowd with unsteadiness in his legs. In his trembling hands, he held out a coarse-grain cake, damp and heavy with rainwater, lifting it gently toward Gu Yao’s bloodless lips. The terror that had clouded the boy's gaze during the battle was entirely gone, replaced by a deep, breathless reverence—the solemn look of a mortal gazing upon a living god.
Gu Yao looked around at these mortals—the very people whom the high-minded cultivators of the Immortal Sects dismissed as mere "slag," useless byproduct unfit for the path of true ascension.
Looking into their faces, a sudden, heavy realization struck him. In this brutal canyon, he had done far more than shatter four immortal iron war engines. With every blow of his hammer, he had shattered the invisible, three-thousand-year-old spine of servitude that had kept these people on their knees for generations.
"Cough... everyone... listen to me."
Gu Yao gently reached out his uninjured right hand and pushed the youth’s offered cake away. His voice came out raspy, hollowed by internal hemorrhage, yet every word cut through the wind with absolute authority.
"The Sect’s reinforcements... they are already on their way. The thunder in the sky will bring their scout vessels before long. We... we cannot remain in this canyon. Those who are able to walk must help those who cannot. We must cross this northern ridge before the dawn breaks."
The three thousand mortals listened, their eyes wide, and then nodded in unified, silent resolve. Without a single word of complaint or panic, they began to self-organize right there in the downpour. Stronger men hoisted the elderly onto their shoulders; women wrapped cloth around the legs of the injured; children were gathered into tightly packed clusters in the center of the formation to shield them from the wind. Gathering their meager bundles of possessions, these people—who had spent their entire lives as nameless fuel for the immortal fires—showed for the very first time the unbreakable cohesion of a true tribe.
Gu Yao leaned back heavily against the jagged rock wall behind him, letting out a long, ragged exhale as Shen Yi finished securing the last layer of linen bandages over his arm.
"Shen Yi..." Gu Yao spoke in a low, gravelly tone, his dark, sharp gaze searching the depths of her eyes as she pulled the final knot tight. "Just now... what was that?"
Shen Yi’s hands paused for a single beat, hovering just above his bandaged forearm. She slowly looked up, her countenance completely untroubled, her dark eyes clear, gentle, and utterly devoid of any supernatural light. The golden glow was gone, as quiet and seamless as if it had never existed at all.
"A-Yao, I just want you to live," she said softly, reaching out to gently tighten the cloth strip one final time before resting her palm against his cold cheek. "No matter who I am, or where I come from... I’m still just the wife who brews barley tea for you by the hearth."
Gu Yao fell completely silent, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with the falling rain. As he stared into her quiet eyes, a ghost from the past rushed through his memory—fifty years ago, at the tragic culmination of the very first Ninety-Seven Mile blood road, he had watched another woman dissipate into ash and wind to save his life, leaving behind only questions that had haunted him for half a century.
Looking at Shen Yi now, Gu Yao felt a profound chill run through his marrow. The truth of this world, the hidden gears of fate, and the woman sitting right in front of him were far deeper, far darker, and infinitely more complex than he had ever dared to imagine.