Chapter 15 When the Lotus Breathes Light
Li Yue lifted a hand.
Behind her, dozens of Sect members poured through the broken ice.
“You’re trapped, Shen Wei,” she said. “And this time… she won’t escape me.”
The Moon Lotus behind Yue Ling pulsed then cracked.
The relic was awakening.
The crack slicing through the Moon Lotus pulsed like a heartbeat silver, trembling, alive.
Lian hua felt the vibration in her bones. Her breath caught in her throat as she stumbled backward. The air in the Frost Bound Abyss thickened, shimmering.
“Shen Wei…” she whispered.
But he was already in front of her, stance wide, a wall of fierce protection between her and the woman who haunted their past.
Li Yue,her presence chilled the chamber deeper than the Abyss itself. The moonless glow around her pulsed like the shadow of a forgotten spirit neither living nor dead, trapped between cycles.
Shen Wei’s voice dropped to a low, lethal calm.
“You crossed the boundary of reincarnation, Li Yue. How much humanity is left in you?”
She smiled.
Enough to want him, Yue Ling realized.
Enough to hate the woman he chose.
Li Yue lifted her hand, and the Abyss roared in response. Frost cracked across the silver floor like spiderwebs. The Sect members behind her began forming a semi circle, chanting spells that tasted of iron and old snow.
Shen Wei said softly, without turning,
“Ling’er… don’t move.”
She nodded, though her heart hammered.
Li Yue stepped forward, her voice as sweet as drifting snow.
“Shen Wei… surrender the Moon Maiden and the Lotus. I may let you live long enough to watch the ceremony.”
The “ceremony.”
Lian hua felt the words ice her spine.
“That relic,” Li Yue continued, eyes gleaming at the cracked lotus, “belongs to the Temple. You two were selfish enough to steal it in our past lives. But fate has given me a chance to finish the ritual.”
Shen Wei’s jaw tightened.
“Over my dead body.”
“Oh, Shen Wei.”
She tilted her head.
“That already happened once.”
Frost surged toward him. Shen Wei countered instantly white blue light rushing from his palm, clashing in a storm of ice and shadow.
The Abyss reverberated with every strike.
Yue Ling watched the duel not just with fear, but with the burning feeling of recognition, like she had seen this dance before,them. Battling,dying,reborn again.
Her pulse raced as the Moon Lotus shuddered behind her, the crack widening.
“Ling’er!” Shen Wei shouted between clashes. “The Lotus is reacting to you don’t let it pull you in!”
But even as he said it the silver petals flared.
A wind warm, not cold spiraled around Lian hua. It lifted her hair like fingers tracing the memory of a life she’d forgotten.
Silver symbols appeared beneath her feet, glowing with a slow, rhythmic pulse, mirroring her heartbeat.
Lian hua gasped.
“It… knows me.”
Shen Wei’s head snapped toward her.
“Don’t touch it! You don’t have your full memories"
But it was too late.
The Lotus opened.
Not like a flower but like an eye.
Light spilled into Lian hua’s chest with the force of a wave. She cried out, collapsing to her knees as vision after vision struck her:
Her past self draped in moonlit robes standing beside Shen Wei beneath a sky of falling stars.
A vow whispered between them:
“If death finds us, we will find each other again.”
Another image ,Li Yue standing behind her, eyes wild, blade trembling.
And then a final image:
Lian hua herself sealing the Moon Lotus, sacrificing her own memory so Shen Wei could escape alive.
The visions shattered.
Lian hua gasped, gripping her head.
Shen Wei shouted her name but Li Yue struck again, forcing him back.
The Sect chanted louder, closing in.
Lian hua staggered to her feet. Her fingers glowed with silver.
“Shen Wei,” she whispered.
“I remember more.”
His head snapped toward her eyes widening with hope and terror all at once.
But the Abyss was collapsing.
Cracks raced across the ceiling like lightning.
They were running out of time.
Li Yue flicked her wrist a blast of shadow light shot toward Lian hua.
Shen Wei lunged, taking the hit full force.
He slammed into the ice wall, the impact echoing like thunder.
“SHEN WEI!” Yue Ling screamed.
Blood stained the ice beneath him.
He tried to stand failed.
Li Yue laughed softly.
“Always so heroic. Always so foolish.”
She turned her blade toward Lian hua.
“This time… you will not reincarnate.”
Lian hua’s breath caught.
Silver light pulsed from her palms raw, unstable.
“What do you want from me?” Yue Ling demanded.
Li Yue’s expression twisted, something old and broken beneath her beauty.
“I want the life I was supposed to have.”
Her voice trembled.
“I want the man who was supposed to choose me.”
Yue Ling’s chest clenched.
“You can’t force fate,” she whispered.
Li Yue smiled.
“But I can rewrite it.”
A sudden tremor shook the ground so violently the Sect staggered.
Li Yue froze.
Shen Wei’s head snapped upward.
Lian hua felt the Lotus behind her throb in panic.
A deep, ancient voice echoed through the Abyss:
“THE LOTUS HAS BEEN AWAKENED… AND ITS GUARDIAN RETURNS.”
Ice cracked.
A massive fissure split open in the far wall and out of the darkness stepped a figure in moon silver armor.
Breath misting like clouds.
Hair white as frost.
Eyes glowing with the cold authority of both moon and winter.
Shen Wei whispered, horror dawning “No… not him.”
Lian hua trembled.
“Who is he?”
Shen Wei’s voice barely escaped his throat.
“The first Frost Guardian…the ancestor who betrayed the Temple.
He didn’t die.
He was sealed in the Abyss.”
The ancestor lifted his head.
And smiled.
“My descendants… you’ve brought me exactly what I needed.”
He looked at Yue Ling at the glowing silver around her hands and bowed slightly.
“Moon Maiden… your soul is the key.”
Li Yue’s face drained of color.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen…”
Shen Wei pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping down his jaw.
“You planned everything except the truth,” the ancestor said.
“The Lotus doesn’t belong to Li Yue.
It belongs to the Moon Maiden.
And she… belongs to me.”
Lian hua’s heart froze in her chest.
The ancestor lifted his arm.
Silver chains of moonlight erupted from the ground, snapping around Yue Ling’s wrists, ankles, waist pulling her toward him.
“SHEN WEI!” she screamed.
He lunged ,Chains wrapped around him too, slamming him to the floor.
Li Yue tried to run ,but even she could not escape. Chains coiled around her throat, dragging her forward like a sacrifice.
The ancestor stepped into the circle of light, voice cold enough to shatter mountains:
“All three of your souls belong to this ritual.”
The Moon Lotus cracked open fully a beam of blinding silver shot upward and the Abyss swallowed the three of them in brilliant moonfire.