Jianmo ripped the core out of the fiend before her and grinned as she savored the taste of its soul. A weakling like that hardly added anything to her power anymore, but consuming souls was a pleasure unto itself. Unfortunately, this one was as tight-lipped as the rest. They practically reeked of dragons, but they were most concentrated in the areas closest to Longyan’s enclave.

They wouldn’t say anything about their masters, but Jianmo wasn’t stupid enough to think it was just a coincidence. A shame she couldn’t bring any of that information back to her cute little disciples—she’d meant to be a little bit more proactive with them, but fate had other plans.

“There you are, monster. Submit now and I assure you that your death will be painless.”

Jianmo rolled her eyes—speak of the devil.

“I don’t hate that confidence, Shen Yu, but I thought one with your experience would have taken the hint by now—I’m just not interested in older men.”

The divine avatar of Sovereign Shen stepped out of the portal to the spirit realm and sneered at Jianmo.

“Your taunts are wasted on me, creature. Tell me where your master hid his tomb or I will pry the knowledge from the depths of your soul myself.”

Jianmo wagged a finger.

“Tsk tsk tsk. You might take my body, but you’ll never have my heart. It’s been a year, Shen Yu—take your rejection with grace before you embarrass yourself.”

In lieu of a retort, Sovereign Shen summoned a legion of invisible blades that tore their surroundings apart, cutting even the very air as they converged on Jianmo.

“Ugh, boring. You Sword Immortals are all the same.”

She tried to spiritwalk away, but something blocked her attempt, forcing her to defend against the attack with her true body. She wasn’t worried about the blade—she was indestructible—but unfortunately most of the attack made it through her haphazard defenses and made a mess of her human form.

“Ow! Rude. I worked hard on this body.”

Jianmo changed tack, calling forth a careful mixture of Void and Gravity essence and suffusing it through her body before swapping places with an identical essence construct several miles away within a mountain cave.

She frowned down at the bleeding gouges all over her body and huffed.

“Fucking Shen Yu and his stupid traps. I don’t hate persistence, but there’s a limit to these things!”

“Fear not, demon. Your flight ends here.”

Jianmo looked up in alarm at the source of the familiar masculine voice—she hadn’t sensed him at all.

“You?!”

The man stepped out of the shadows—he had the appearance of a middle-aged man wearing colorful ornate robes and a crown upon his head. His face betrayed no hint of emotion, but the dark circles under his eyes spoke of a soul-deep weariness.

“I should have destroyed you centuries ago. I always knew that your return would bring about the end.”

She scoffed.

“You couldn’t kill me if you wanted to, Qin. You needed the help of those overgrown lizards just to seal me away.”

“That was a hundred centuries ago.”

“And now you hide behind your divine master like the coward you are. Sorry to disappoint you, but he can’t kill me either.”

The emperor sighed.

“It does not matter.”

Jianmo grimaced. She hated to admit it, but she was in a tight spot. Though she was confident in her indestructibility, there were plenty of other ways that the two sovereigns could make her life miserable. She had severely underestimated how much Qin had grown in ten thousand years.

Sovereign Shen stepped casually through the cave’s entrance, completely confident that he had Jianmo trapped.

“Are you ready to submit yet, spirit?”

Jianmo grinned at the man and flipped a bloody lock of hair behind her shoulder.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, sweetheart. I’m all for a threesome, but we haven’t even figured out a safeword, yet.”

Shen Yu grimaced.

“Enough! Sovereign Qin, I trust you have secured this space?”

Emperor Qin nodded.

“She is trapped. I have taken command of the local qi within my domain and solidified the dimensional boundaries.”

Well that wasn’t good. It seemed baby Qin really had grown into a deity—or at least as close as was possible within a mortal realm. With a few probing attempts, Jianmo confirmed that they had her dead to rights.

“How annoying...”

She didn’t bother resisting as Shen Yu held out a hand and released a blast of Light essence that obliterated her human form entirely—once more leaving only her true body intact.

The sword floated in midair, and it would have huffed irritably if it had any lungs.

“Are you satisfied?”

Jianmo hated the way its voice came out all tinny as it manipulated the air to speak. It wasn’t itself without a body to speak through. It didn’t feel naked—almost the opposite of that, really—but it was no less uncomfortable.

Sovereign Shen smirked.

“I will be when you finally reveal your secrets, demon.”

He stepped forward and grasped Jianmo by the hilt, only to have his entire arm and a chunk of his upper torso obliterated by destruction essence.

“I’m still perfectly capable of defending myself, moron. I’ve killed gods before, and you’re barely a fraction of your true self.”

Shen Yu scowled, barely bothered by having a quarter of his body annihilated.

“You have done no such thing! You were nothing but a conduit for your master’s loathsome power as he thoughtlessly slaughtered his way through the divine realm.”

“Uh huh. And who do you think got to eat all those divine souls? Actually, come closer, I’m feeling a bit peckish.”

“You dare?!”

Jianmo wanted to giggle—it loved getting them onto a script. The older they were, the more they tended to repeat themselves. Before he could, however, Emperor Qin spoke up again.

“Do not rise to their taunts, Sovereign Shen. Give me a moment to suppress it enough to handle.”

A powerful concentration of Wood essence surrounded Jianmo and began to press in on it with a familiar discomfort.

“Oh, I guess you don’t need the dragons for this anymore, huh?”

“I did make a point of learning their ways.”

If only Jianmo had a face to scowl with. What a hypocrite! The man that had been suppressing foreign techniques across his empire for millenia using magic from across the ocean.

The seal was a lot more sophisticated this time. The magic was being worked into Jianmo’s blade and wouldn’t rely on outside sources to maintain. That was hardly fair—how come everyone else got to get so much stronger while Jianmo was stuck under a mountain?

Before the seal could be completed, Jianmo focused everything it had on a tiny essence construct kept deep within its soulscape. It had hoped to never use it, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

There were so many interesting things that could be accomplished with soul resonance, but Jianmo had never really bothered to learn the more complex arts. But for the last ten thousand years, with only a single lonely spirit for intelligent company—well, Jianmo had needed to adapt.

Whispering a silent apology to its former neighbor, Jianmo condensed as much emotion as possible into a single mote of shadow essence and slammed it into the construct, shattering it entirely so that it would resonate as strongly as possible with the original.

The seal snapped into place and Jianmo unceremoniously clattered to the ground, as inert as a regular sword—though still aware of its surroundings.

“It’s done. If that’s all, Sovereign Shen, I will return my awareness now.”

Shen Yu rolled his newly regrown shoulder and picked up Jianmo, grimacing.

“I sensed something towards the end there. Soul resonance?”

“A message, most likely. Crude communication with another spirit.”

“Anything to be concerned about?”

The Emperor of Qin looked down at Jianmo, staring for a moment with tired, emotionless eyes.

“No. It was nothing but a final act of desperation. Jianmo has no agents worth contacting.”

Jianmo felt the weight of his gaze bearing down on it. Qin was lying. He knew about Yoshika, but chose not to mention it. Why? Shen had met them. There was something else at play, and whatever it was, Jianmo really wished that it had discovered that before sending the message.

Oh well. Jianmo had already played its hand, and it didn’t hate surprises. One way or another, things were about to get very interesting. Hopefully Jianmo wouldn’t be stuck in a cave the whole time.