Zi Yan's enormous Dragon Phoenix body stretched across the icefield, her dragon head looking down upon the Xia Emperor in the sky. Her phoenix wings spread wide enough to blot out the sun, and the pressure radiating from her began melting the ice for thousands of feet around.
She threw back her head and released a long cry woven from a dragon's roar and a phoenix's call. It rang out clear and piercing, as though an ancient divine beast had descended into the mortal world, shaking the entire vault of heaven.
Then Zi Yan beat her phoenix wings, hurtling toward the Xia Emperor like a dazzling violet-gold meteor. Her dragon claws tore through the void, her phoenix wings severed the bitter wind, and a red-gold pillar of light erupted from her dragon mouth.
As thick as a palace column, that beam carried the terrifying heat of nirvana flame as it blasted straight toward the Xia Emperor.
The Xia Emperor finally raised his eyelids slightly to regard Zi Yan's charging Dragon Phoenix form. The faintest trace of surprise flickered through his dark-gold eyes.
But that surprise vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a lofty indifference.
Then he slowly raised his right hand and spread his fingers. Dark-gold spiritual energy spun furiously in his palm like a vortex.
Before the red-gold beam could come within a hundred feet of him, that vortex swallowed it whole, without letting even a wisp of residual flame escape.
Then he abruptly clenched his fingers. An enormous dark-gold palm seal condensed in the void, thousands of feet across and seemingly cast entirely from gold. Nine streams of dragon qi lay within its palm lines, as though the dynastic fortune of an entire empire had gathered into this single palm.
He turned his hand over