A Pawn's Passage

As night fell, a bright moon shone over the sea. Its light scattered across the rippling waves, while a distant lighthouse flickered faintly.

Madam Wu stepped out of the cabin and walked to the bow, stretching lazily and revealing her graceful figure.

Though Madam Wu was ancient, she had never clung to old ways. Her aesthetics had always evolved with the times.

Qi Xuansu and Madam Wu’s plan was not complicated—one of them was to escape openly, while the other secretly fled elsewhere. From the start, Qi Xuansu set two routes. Madam Wu would take the sea route, heading south along the coastline, passing Cape Hatteras and Onslow Bay, then circling the entire Florida Peninsula into the Olmec Gulf. Along the way, she would leave ambiguous traces to draw Sophia’s attention.

Qi Xuansu would take the land route, passing through Harrisburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Springfield, and Smithsburg, ultimately reaching San Antonio.

In the end, the two would meet at the border and enter the Southern New Continent together.

Since Madam Wu was a spirit, she could alter her appearance at will. She directly assumed Audrey’s form, deliberately showing herself at the docks a few times. Anyone investigating would surely follow her trail.

Yet a full day and night had passed, and Sophia had not caught up. Her response was rather slow. Perhaps she was still on vacation and had not even realized her home had been robbed.

Madam Wu let out a bored yawn.

She really wanted to burn something.

She exhaled, and flames ignited on the distant sea, their reflections flickering across the water like the Shiranui of Fenglin.

The sailor steering the ship widened his eyes in shock, almost thinking he was hallucinating.

Fortunately, the flames vanished quickly, so he could only dismiss it as an illusion.

Time passed slowly. After midnight, the sea breeze grew increasingly harsh.

Not only did the temperature plummet, but the wind carried ice and snow. Even the seawater seemed to grow viscous.

Madam Wu remained on the deck, finally showing a spark of interest.

Dark clouds gathered overhead, blotting out the moon, making the sea and sky seem ominous.

Madam Wu smiled. “Finally, they’re here.”

As she spoke, a flying craft appeared in the sky. It had not flown in but rather arrived through some kind of magical leap. With the moonlight obscured, it blended almost seamlessly with the night. It was also silent as a night owl without an exaggerated mechanical roar.

Beneath the flying ship, several flap doors opened one after another, revealing rows of cannons aimed at the ship below.

The next moment, all the cannons fired without warning, showing no regard for the fact that the passenger ship was filled with Western civilians.

A storm of cannonballs rained down from the sky.

Almost simultaneously, a crimson barrier enveloped the ship. Any bullets that approached it were instantly melted by intense heat. Meanwhile, the temperature inside the barrier remained normal.

Watching this, Madam Wu sneered, “What kind of nonsense is this? Who exactly is the enemy of the Westerners?”

But she knew full well why they were so ruthless. They had likely planned to kill everyone, sink the ship, then pin the blame on the Tawantin Empire. It would be the perfect excuse to stir public hatred and further push anti-Daoist bill.

This was what it meant to kill two birds with one stone.

Madam Wu naturally would not let them succeed.

Clusters of flames shot toward the flying craft in the sky.

Each flame was the size of a carriage, looking like meteors flying in reverse from afar.

Though the flying craft had a defensive barrier, it was burned through in an instant. The flames did not explode. Instead, they clung to the surface of the craft and began to spread and burn.

Soon, the flying craft began to melt, though not completely. The steel structure of the flying craft grew soft, like butter softening under heat yet still retaining its rough shape.

A gigantic hand made entirely of flame appeared out of thin air and grasped the flying craft.

To ordinary people, the flying craft was massive. But within the flaming hand, it was like a small model displayed on a shelf.

Everyone aboard the flying craft was seized with terror.

The flaming hand solidified, then slowly tightened its grip.

The middle of the flying craft began to cave in, cracks spreading in a horrifying pattern.

Intricate mechanical structures were revealed beneath the cracks, with steam billowing violently.

The flying craft’s steam mechanisms were not isolated but arranged in layered combinations of various sizes, like interlocking gears in a clock. Under the overwhelming force of the flaming hand, some structures could no longer withstand the pressure and began to collapse. The violent explosions from their failure triggered a chain reaction, causing many other steam components to also rupture.

Fragments continuously broke off from both sides of the flying craft, falling toward the sea below.

Inside the flying craft, the St. York soldiers were utterly helpless. If they left the flying craft, they would be swept away by raging winds in an instant. But if they stayed, they could only wait for death.

At that moment, another massive explosion resounded. The flying craft began to deform. The front and rear ends twisted upward unnaturally, while the middle section bent downward and collapsed.

The massive flaming hand tightened its grip, and the increasingly dense bursts of explosions sounded like wails of agony. Flames erupted across the flying craft, with many sections collapsing and melting entirely.

Finally, with a thunderous roar far louder than all previous explosions combined, the flaming hand’s five fingers closed completely. The flying craft split cleanly into two halves. Countless burning fragments peeled away like a localized rain of fire, while figures tumbled out of the cabin, screaming as they fell, shrinking into tiny black dots before vanishing altogether.

Split in two, the flying craft could no longer remain airborne. Both halves plunged toward the sea.

After all this, the flaming hand began to fade, dissolving into brilliant specks of light before disappearing entirely.

Madam Wu sneered, “If Wu Luo can break flying ships, why can’t I break a flying craft?”

At that moment, the surface of the sea froze solid, immobilizing the ironclad ship.

The ocean had transformed into a vast snowfield.

Madam Wu keenly sensed that a small world was forming. In Western terms, it was a subspace.

Though it appeared like they were still on the sea, they had detached from the real world and entered another realm. The frozen ocean was an indicator of this.

This was no small undertaking.

The next moment, the ice cracked. Sure enough, it was no longer seawater beneath the ice, but surging magma. The blazing lava formed a stark contrast with the icy snowfield above.

At the same time, a howling wind echoed through the sky. The once pitch-black heavens were filled with vast swathes of fiery clouds. It was no longer deep night, but twilight.

The edges of the clouds seemed to burn, yet their flames were entirely different from Madam Wu’s. It was like blood, red tinged with black, spreading across the sky in blotches.

The sky seemed to turn yellow, and within that dim yellow expanse hung a dark-red circular silhouette—the sun.

The crimson clouds gathered into a vortex, from which a massive meteor shot forth, trailing a long streak across the sky. It crashed to the ground and transformed into a towering demon over 3 meters tall, with dark red skin, twisted horns, goat hooves, bat wings, and a trident in its hand.

This was a creation of hell, known as a devil. It was born from the magma of hell, its blood was no different from molten lava and could even burn. As such, it was immune to fire.

It was clear that Sophia had put some thought into this. Judging from the traces left behind in the underground chamber, with everything turned into molten metal, the opponent clearly excelled in fire. Thus, deploying fire-immune demons was entirely logical.

She had come prepared.

It was hardly surprising that Sophia could summon such demons, since she even dared to seek the power of a fallen apostle.

Nothing in this world was absolute. There was no absolute justice, morality, light, or defense. This so-called immunity to fire simply meant the flames were not hot enough or not burning thoroughly enough.

Madam Wu spread her five fingers, each representing a different type of flame.

A Magus of the Arcane Council once proposed the famous Five Fireball Theory. By synchronizing five fireballs to overlap at the same spatial point, a reaction could be triggered, producing power far beyond the sum of the five.

Madam Wu clenched her hand into a fist. The five flames merged into one, forming a blazing tongue of fire that instantly engulfed the newly arrived devil.

The devil offered no resistance at all, dissolving into a wisp of smoke.

However, there was far more than one devil. Several more devils flew out from the fiery vortex, swooping down toward Madam Wu from above.

Madam Wu summoned the Seven Feather Five Fires Fan once more and swung it with force, unleashing torrents of flames that swept across everything.

These infernal demons were like fish in a flood. Once they were caught in the blaze, they had no power to resist and vanished in an instant.

The ice began to melt. Even the entire world itself began to burn.

Like paper catching fire, it started with a patch of scorched yellow, which rapidly spread until it became an irregular hole with blackened, charred edges. Through this hole, the real world beyond became visible.

Holding the Seven Feather Five Fires Fan in her right hand, Madam Wu raised her left hand high and clenched her fingers into a fist.

The five-colored flames continued to spread, devouring all illusions and revealing more of the true world beneath.

The trail of flames that resembled her five fingers slowly closed into a fist.

Madam Wu shouted, “Let’s burn this world to ash!”