A cultivator's breakthrough to the Sovereign's Domain is not a silent event. It is a thunderclap in the Dao, a ripple of power that expands, invisible yet palpable, through the world's veins of energy. And when an empire that already possessed one Sovereign suddenly manifests a second, the ripple is no mere disturbance. It is a tsunami.
And the sharks, in their different oceans, feel it.
Golden Sword Sect - Delegation Quarters, Wei Imperial Palace
The atmosphere in the quarters assigned to the Golden Sword Sect's delegation was somber, charged with a tension so thick you could cut it with one of their famous blades. The luxurious silks and fine wood furniture seemed to mock the ashen faces of the elders seated around the table.
Only one person was not sitting. Young Master Jin Tian paced back and forth, his face a mask of contained fury, his golden robes swirling around him with each violent turn.
"Unacceptable!" he hissed, his voice a sibilant venom. "That drunkard... that woman... they've made me the laughingstock of the entire continent! First, the public humiliation. Then, the impossible challenge. And now this! She manifests a new Sovereign the day after I arrive! It's as if they planned it just to ridicule me!"
"Silence."
Elder Lin Jian's voice was not loud, but it cut through Jin Tian's diatribe like a guillotine. It was a voice stripped of all warmth, as somber and heavy as a tombstone. Jin Tian froze, glaring at the elder.
"Silence, Elder Master? My honor has been trampled!"
"Your pride no longer matters, boy," Elder Lin said, not looking up from the teacup in his hands. "Do you not understand the magnitude of what has happened? Are you still so blinded by your own vanity?"
Another elder, the Third Elder, whose hand trembled visibly as he held his own cup, spoke in a fragile voice. "Yesterday, Jin Tian... yesterday we were the honored guests of an empire with one Sovereign. A formidable power, yes, but one that could be reasoned with. We could negotiate. We could make demands. We were their equals, in a way." He looked up, his eyes filled with a deep, primordial fear. "Today... today we are supplicants to an empire with two."
"Two forces of nature," Elder Lin continued, his voice an implacable hammer. "Two beings capable of wiping our Golden Sword Sect, with its thousand years of history, off the map on a whim. With a wave of their hand. Our strength, our swords, our armies... before them, we are like children with wooden sticks."
Jin Tian paled. "But... the duel..."
"The duel is now your only salvation!" Lin Jian snapped, slamming his palm on the table. The teacup jumped, spilling some of its contents. "The marriage proposal is no longer our demand. It is our only, desperate hope of forging an alliance so we don't become their enemies. It's the only reason they still tolerate us in this palace instead of having sent us home with our tails between our legs."
He stood up and walked over to Jin Tian, his face inches from his. "So you listen to me carefully, Young Master. From this moment on, you forget your humiliation. You forget your pride. You show the most profound and abject humility. You smile. You nod. You praise the magnificent strength of the Wei lineage. And you pray—you pray to all the sword gods—that the princess deems you worthy after you win that duel." He paused, his gaze piercing. "Because if you lose... you won't just lose a wife. You will lose our sect's only chance to survive the coming era under the shadow of two dragons. You are no longer in a position to demand anything. Only to beg."
Jin Tian fell silent, comprehension finally cutting through his anger. Cold, paralyzing fear replaced his fury. He was no longer a proud suitor. He was a tribute, sent to appease the gods.
Merchant Republic - Secret Office of the Seven Rivers Guild, Wei Capital
In a secret office, hidden behind the facade of a luxurious tea shop in the capital's commercial district, the atmosphere was entirely different. There was no fear. Only the soft click of Go stones being placed on a polished wooden board and the aroma of the world's most expensive tea.
The Guild Master of the Seven Rivers, a short, middle-aged man with a kindly face and soft hands that had never known hard labor, placed a white stone on the board. His opponent, the guild's chief spy, a hooded man whose face remained hidden in the shadows, had just finished his report.
"Two Sovereigns," the Guild Master repeated, his voice as smooth as the silk he wore. "Interesting. Very, very interesting."
"The implications are... problematic, Master," the spy said from the shadows. "Our operations in the Southern Campaign... supplying arms to the rebels..."
"It has become too risky," the Master completed, nodding. "A direct confrontation with the Wei, even a covert one, is now corporate suicide. A miscalculation on the balance sheet."
"Do we cancel the shipments, Master? Cut ties with the rebel leaders?"
The Guild Master smiled, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. They glittered with the cold, calculating greed of a shark that smells blood from miles away. "On the contrary, my dear friend. We double them."
The spy froze for an instant. "Double them, Master? If the Wei find out—"
"We won't be selling them to the rebels," the Master interrupted, placing another white stone and capturing a small group of black ones. "We will sell them to the Wei. And at a ridiculously low price. Practically a gift." He looked up, his smile widening. "Contact our agents. I want you to offer General Hu an unlimited supply of runic steel armor at twenty percent below production cost. Offer him grain from our western silos at a price Minister Zhao can't refuse. Steel, medicine, horses... everything they need for their glorious expansion. We will become their most reliable suppliers, their best friends."
"But... the losses..." the spy stammered, confused.
"Short-term investments often look like losses to the short-sighted," the Guild Master explained patiently, as if speaking to a child. "Think long-term. An empire with one Sovereign is cautious. An empire with two Sovereigns will become arrogant. It will expand faster. It will fight on more fronts. And it will spend more. Much more. Its economy, already strained, will be stretched to its limit." He leaned back in his chair, his kindly face radiating an icy cruelty. "And when they need money, when their coffers are empty from their glorious wars and their grand banquets, who do you think they will turn to? They will turn to their 'friends.' To us. We will lend them money. We will rebuild their infrastructure. We will buy their mines and their ports. You don't fight a two-headed dragon, my friend. That would be foolish."
He placed the final stone, completely surrounding his opponent's territory. The game was over.
"You feed it," he concluded, his voice a satisfied whisper. "You feed it until it becomes so fat, so lazy, and so dependent on your food that it can no longer fly without your permission."
Icy Summit Alliance - Glacial Chamber, Far North
In the heart of an ancient glacier, in a minimalist chamber carved directly from the eternal blue ice, the silence was absolute. There were no adornments, no thrones, no silks. Only the cold, the power, and an infinite solitude.
The Matriarch of the Icy Summit Alliance, a woman of indeterminable age with hair as white as freshly fallen snow and eyes the color of glacier fragments, sat cross-legged on a simple yeti-fur mat. Before her, a cup of tea steamed, but the vapor froze instantly in the air.
The shadows in a corner of the chamber swirled, condensed, and took the form of a being made of darkness and frost. It had no face, only two points of cold light where its eyes should be. It knelt before the Matriarch.
"The southern empire has a new Sovereign," the shadow scout whispered, its voice like the crunch of ice under a boot. "Empress Wei Shuyin has broken through. There are now two."
The Matriarch did not blink. She showed no surprise, no interest, not the slightest emotion. Slowly, she raised her cup and took a sip of icy tea. The silence stretched for nearly a minute.
"Two Sovereigns," she finally said, her tone tinged with a cosmic boredom. "How noisy the children of the plains are when they learn a new trick."
She set the cup down on the ice floor. "They are still just two feverish ants instead of one. Their combined heat might melt a snowflake, perhaps two. They are not a threat... yet."
The shadow scout remained kneeling, motionless. "Any orders, Eternal Matriarch?"
The Matriarch closed her eyes, as if the conversation had already exhausted her. "Double the Ice Wraith patrols at the Whispering Dragon Pass." She opened her eyes, and in them was a glint of cold, lethal indifference. "Not because we fear them, but because unruly children sometimes get lost and wander into gardens that don't belong to them. We've had to deal with their 'Snow Wolves' before." Her voice grew even colder, if that were possible. "If one of their scouts crosses the line of monoliths again, do not send back a warning message. Do not send back an ice monolith with their insignia. Send back his head. Frozen."
The shadow scout nodded once, dissolved back into the darkness, and vanished.
The Matriarch picked up her teacup again. To the mighty Great Wei Empire, the rise of a second Sovereign was a world-shaking event. To the Icy Summit Alliance, it was merely a noisy neighbor who had learned to shout a little louder. A noise that, should it get too close, would be silenced