That fellow had clearly said that when the Dragon Phoenix Staff returned to the divine temple, he would arrive together with it.
As the thought crossed his mind, his hands weren’t idle. He gripped the ritual staff and quickly rotated it three more times to the right. Though the staff itself was incredibly heavy, turning it required little effort thanks to the mechanical mechanism.
Feng Miaojun indeed kept her word and didn’t step forward to stop him, but her eyes flickered slightly as she flicked her fingertip, launching a small black bead toward the temple ceiling.
Her movement was extremely fast, and the bead was smaller than a grape. The Prince of Yan saw it and knew it was no ordinary object. Since he couldn’t release the staff to intercept it, he could only fling a sleeve dart to interfere.
With a soft “puff” sound, the bead was promptly pierced by the sleeve dart and burst into a cloud of black mist as dark as ink.
It positioned itself directly beneath the glazed window at the dome of the divine temple, blocking the moonlight shining down from above—suddenly darkening the great hall.
The Prince of Yan inwardly cursed.
Feng Miaojun truly hadn’t come forward to seize the ritual staff; she had simply changed her approach to prevent him from activating the stone platform. She had seen through his earlier intention of waiting for the moonlight while holding the staff. Since it wouldn’t be easy for her to snatch or destroy the staff from the Prince of Yan’s hands, she changed tactics and chose a simpler method of directly blocking the moonlight—she employed a smoke bomb. If one understood an object well enough, it could be manifested in the dream world; this applied to powerful weapons and also to these handy little tools.
This method was borrowed from the Celestial Demon projection in Yun Ya’s Sea of consciousness. Back then, they had transformed into smoke and mist to block the sunlight, making it possible to target young Yun Ya. Now Feng Miaojun was simply copying the same approach, blocking the moonlight.
In this moment of distraction, she had already vanished from the Prince of Yan’s field of vision, and he immediately sensed a faint breeze stirring behind him.
So fast—this woman moved even quicker in the dream realm than in reality, and even he couldn’t track her movement.
The Prince of Yan firmly gripped the staff with one hand, absolutely unwilling to let go. His other hand held the crystal ball, leaving him unable to defend himself. He didn’t even have time to first kill Lady Xu and then manifest a weapon to fight—Feng Miaojun’s Star Sky Awl was less than three feet from the back of his head.
At this distance, for a master of her caliber, it would take but an instant to strike.
In this critical moment, the Prince of Yan’s five fingers released their grip, letting the crystal ball fall freely, while simultaneously raising his wrist and turning his body, a flash of dark light appearing in his hand.
Feng Miaojun’s awl tip was less than three inches from the back of his skull, but the Prince of Yan’s powerful body had already turned halfway, his blade gleaming like snow as it slashed upward toward her face—one inch longer, one inch stronger. The Star Sky Awl’s length was far inferior to his weapon; if she insisted on pressing forward, she might be split in half from her chin upward before she could stab the Prince of Yan.
Fortunately, Feng Miaojun had never intended to engage him in a death struggle. Just as the blade was about to touch her face, she flicked her toes forward, instantly lowering her body by half, “sliding” beneath the Prince of Yan’s blade.
The Prince of Yan’s reaction was equally swift as he raised his leg to kick. His leg strength could split mountains and crack stones—if Feng Miaojun were truly struck squarely, she would suffer terribly. But as his leg extended, he discovered his opponent had suddenly transformed into a wisp of smoke, drifting past his foot—it was just for the briefest moment, after which Feng Miaojun returned to her original form. Anyone else might have thought their eyes were playing tricks, but the Prince of Yan’s temple veins pulsed twice.
After reclaiming the crystal ball but before she could steady herself, she crushed it in her hand and threw it backward and upward—this was the Main Hall of the Divine Temple, with exceptionally vast space. The ceiling beams were more than thirty zhang (one hundred meters) from the ground, a height sufficient to kill a person.
Feng Miaojun’s hand technique was remarkably clever; the ball shattered and burst open precisely as it reached mid-air. Freed from this constraint, Lady Xu immediately returned to her original size, her upward momentum simultaneously halting.
Then, she began falling from mid-air—even from a height of ten zhang, it would be enough to shatter her bones and tear her tendons.
Yet Feng Miaojun didn’t even glance back, proceeding directly to attack the Prince of Yan. He was only one step away from success and wouldn’t let a mere patch of smoke at the dome hinder him—even his method mirrored Feng Miaojun’s earlier approach—fire attack.
The Prince of Yan raised his hand, and two sleeve darts shot toward the dome, their arrowheads burning with fierce flames.
Feng Miaojun flicked her wrist, sending two Star Sky Awls to intercept, while she pounced toward the Prince of Yan. Though the man before her was revered as the continent’s foremost warrior, she showed no fear. She manifested a long whip in her hand and brought its tip down toward his head with formidable momentum.
Lady Xu, suspended in mid-air, couldn’t help but let out a sharp scream, but in her mind echoed her daughter’s whisper: “Wake up and send the signal. Someone will save you.” To verbalize this sentence would take two breaths, but in her mind, it was merely a fleeting thought.
Afterward, Lady Xu was dominated by the terrifying sensation of falling.
In the next instant, her figure vanished from mid-air, and her scream abruptly ceased.
Neither combatant paid any attention. Lady Xu had been frightened awake by the high-altitude fall and should now have returned to reality. Feng Miaojun didn’t need to worry about her for the moment.
In the blink of an eye, the two had exchanged dozens of moves.
From the first exchange, the Prince of Yan was astonished. The last time he had fought Feng Miaojun when she had secretly gone to the Xi Kingdom’s frontlines to rescue Yu Haizhen, her cultivation had been truly remarkable but still posed no threat to him. Yet after just ten years, her style had become completely different. Beyond retaining her original sharpness, she had gained an inexplicable unpredictability.
Tricks and cunning had never been considered elegant, yet watching the Queen of New Xia in action, there was no sense of treachery—rather, she conveyed a feeling of dignified righteousness. These two peculiar and contradictory qualities appearing simultaneously in one person made her opponents extremely uncomfortable.
Feng Miaojun practiced the Celestial Demon’s secret techniques, inherently a path of strange and unpredictable methods, yet her foundational cultivation was the Step of Immortality Technique, an orthodox immortal method. Most importantly, having occupied the throne for many years, her world-dominating perspective and breadth of mind had instead nurtured her true heart.
How many people in the world could have such intertwined fate and circumstances, ultimately finding their unique “Way”?
Even the Prince of Yan had to summon his full attention to fight this hard battle. His sixth sense told him that the Queen of New Xia in the dream world seemed even more formidable than in reality.
Feng Miaojun’s whip hooked onto the back of his blade and pulled forcefully, while her other hand snapped her fingers.
As the “click” sound fell, several shadowy figures suddenly darted out from the surrounding darkness, pouncing toward the Prince of Yan. He raised his leg and first crushed one underfoot, then glanced forward to see that all the emerging creatures were monsters—some had three arms, some had only one eye, others opened blood-red mouths, their appearances best described as hideous. He recognized them as entities that only appeared in the deepest parts of nightmares—nightmares had complex origins; some were formed from human fear, anger, and hatred, while others were directly transformed from the soul fragments of people who had fallen to demonic cultivation. Simply put, in reality, they had all once been living people.