According to the rules of the Immortal Alliance’s annual grand ceremony, the martial tournament ran for three full days across six rounds.

During this time, to accommodate the righteous-path cultivators who had traveled from every corner of the world, the Immortal Alliance as host had reserved a spacious palace complex in the capital, set aside exclusively for participants from the major Immortal Sects to rest during the day or spar privately among themselves.

Within this complex, the Five Great Immortal Sects each occupied their own hall.

The mysterious sword intent that Zhihan had sensed deep in the night had come from the direction where the Wuji Sect cultivators were housed.

And yet...

The Wuji Sect was a formation-path sect. Sword cultivators of genuine talent among their ranks could be counted on one hand.

And yet that sword intent, vast and thunderous, carrying the faint shadow of ancient Abyss Demon malevolence, was something else entirely. Its nature held both an icy piercing chill and a blazing, pure yang heat at once, yin and yang extremes colliding head-on with one another. The terrifying sword force that erupted from such a clash was not hard to imagine.

What unsettled Zhihan even more was that the sword intent had behaved like a secret that had slipped out by accident. It flashed for just one fleeting instant in the pre-dawn sky before some invisible force immediately smothered it. The sword qi that preceded it dissolved without a trace, and the still night sky returned to silence as if nothing had ever happened.

A detail like that, only Zhihan, who cultivated the Primordial Sword Dao, would have been sharp enough to catch it.

"What dangerous sword dao has Yuyan been cultivating all these years..."

Lost in thought, Zhihan had already thrown on her black robes.

She walked down the corridor toward the Wuji Sect’s wing of the complex, and the image of the fair-faced young man she had seen earlier that day drifted unbidden into her mind.

"Yuyan’s Junior, though handsome and distinguished on the surface, doesn’t have a pure character. Even back at the Dao Testing Pavilion, I noticed something off about his gaze. And his hidden sword intent is something even I couldn’t see through at a glance..."

"And now that I think about it, others have mentioned that Yino used to be a profligate Young master of Luo City, a regular at the Phoenix Pavilion, no less..."

At that thought, Zhihan’s heart clenched.

She thought of her own situation. Of certain unpleasant things she had lived through firsthand.

She considered herself to be in a desperate position, and yet even so, she had never once yielded to either the Noble Family or the Grand Tutor’s Lin mansion. She was still fighting her last battle against the Heavenly Mandate.

If she, in circumstances like these, had managed to hold onto her resolve... then what if Yuyan had run into something similar? What if she had fallen even earlier than Zhihan, driven by some form of coercion or temptation into the clutches of that young master from the Grand Tutor’s Mansion?

"No. I shouldn’t think of her that way. I’m overthinking."

"Yuyan’s resolve is far stronger than mine. If even I haven’t lowered my head, how could she possibly be so easily...."

The more Zhihan thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. She closed her eyes, trying to push away the darker thoughts.

After a moment, she stopped in front of a courtyard gate in the northern quarter of the complex.

She looked up. By the light of the hand lantern she carried, she could make out one word carved into the gateposts: Ranmo.

Once she confirmed this was Yuyan’s quarters, Zhihan raised her hand with care and ran her fingertips along the invisible barrier of sword intent layered over the gate.

"This is... a sword-sealing Barrier?"

"In the dead of night, if this were ordinary cultivation, why go to the trouble of laying down a high-level Barrier to hide it?"

Zhihan’s brow lifted slightly, and the uneasy feeling in her chest pulled tighter.

"That explains it, the sword intent that erupted and then vanished so quickly earlier. It must have been sealed inside by this Barrier, keeping the qi from leaking out!"

She curled her fingers slightly against the Barrier’s surface, her grip tightening.

Her heartbeat quickened. She was worried for Yuyan, but just as she moved to cut through the Barrier, a cold thought stopped her short.

"No. If I force my way through, I might disturb the snake before I know what I’m dealing with. Even if Yuyan really is in danger, by the time I get inside she’ll probably act as if nothing happened."

"Until I know more, better to observe from the shadows first."

Under the moon-draped sky, the black-skirted immortal pressed her lips together and brought two fingers gently to her chest. A soft, steady flow of Spiritual Energy gathered around her body like a second skin.

She was a Tribulation Crossing stage sword cultivator, not yet ascended to the immortal realm, but half a step away from it, a sword Venerable in all but name. Slipping through a Barrier of mere Divine Transformation stage caliber was no challenge for her at all.

In moments, her body had quietly merged into the Barrier.

Inside the courtyard, lamps flickered. Their light was amber and warm, blinking softly like fireflies.

The tension of sneaking in at this hour settled over her. Zhihan’s footsteps fell without a sound.

"!!!"

Zhihan controlled her strength with precision and eased the courtyard gate open.

Candles burned in the dark. She stepped over the threshold, two steps in, and then heard something.

A faint and odd sound.

She wasn’t sure she’d heard it right. She pressed forward and listened closely.

This time, there was no mistaking it. From somewhere inside the room came a series of shallow, breathless moans.

She almost thought she’d misheard. The voice’s natural quality was cool and clear, but threaded through with something contradictory, something charged, it carried the low, unguarded rawness of an animal catching its breath.

This was Yuyan’s courtyard. There was only one person that voice could belong to.

"..."

Zhihan stood frozen. The image of Yuyan from earlier that day floated back to her, the white-robed woman, still as beautiful as she’d always been in Zhihan’s memory, her face so ethereal it seemed untouched by the mortal world.

And yet...

Yuyan had looked no different from any other year. But the sounds coming from inside that room, again and again, hit Zhihan like a wall.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure she could make herself walk any closer.

Those faint moans were something else entirely. Even as a woman, Zhihan felt heat rise to her cheeks, her mind pulling in directions it shouldn’t....

But right now, what she felt most was fear.

Because beneath the woman’s voice, barely audible, was the sound of a man’s ragged breathing.

Eavesdropping on this had never been her intention.

She had only come because she’d sensed a terrifying sword intent and feared Yuyan was in danger. She’d slipped into this Cave Dwelling to find out what was happening.

But even now, she could still feel that dangerous sword intent bleeding from the room in front of her, and these sounds she hadn’t expected had thrown everything sideways.

"Calm down... calm down..."

"If this is just Yuyan and her Junior, then it isn’t really a problem. After all, Yuyan said today that they’re already sworn partners."

"But the strange part is, if this were just ordinary intimacy, why would there be wave after wave of overwhelming sword intent coming from inside that room?"

"It’s precisely because the sword intent is so strange that I need to see this through, for Yuyan’s sake!"

Zhihan stood before the door. The moans continued. She pressed her fists together and opened her cold, sharp eyes again, her resolve returned.

She extinguished the hand lantern. Then, breath held, she stepped forward in silence.

And as she drew closer, the sounds from inside came faster, one after the other.

"Mm..."

"Mm...!"

"Ahhhhh-n〜♡!!!"