The next morning on Eclipse Terrace. Officials insist the duel resume for the watching continent. Lian enters with a hidden bandage on her left palm from Yanluo's night wound.

Across the arena, Chi Yanluo conceals the same palm injury under a black glove. Their eyes meet through the formal distance.

The formal duel resumes. Their arts clash beautifully, but a shallow wound on Yanluo's cheek appears on Lian at the same instant, forcing both to mask reaction.

A huge vertical crowd shot: envoys, gamblers, and soldiers roar as Lian and Yanluo pause at opposite ends of the arena, both wounded in identical places.

After a staged pause, Lian and Yanluo descend separately into a shrine under the terrace. Mo Qiran and Lin Ruo are present near the corridor with offerings, seeing enough to become useful later.

In the shrine, Yanluo uses a dead twig to test the oath. He breaks it against his finger hard enough to injure himself, and Lian's finger answers.

Lian tests the emotional edge by touching a mourning tablet from the northern ancestral dead. She feels a private grief; Yanluo receives it too, with no visible injury.

The shrine grows silent. Lian and Yanluo stand among tablets of both clans' dead, understanding that grief itself can cross the oath. The red thread glows faintly through their sleeves.

Voices from above demand that the duel resume. In the shrine, Lian and Yanluo decide to conceal the bond rather than let their families exploit it.

They return to the arena and stage an overwhelming clash of frost and blood-fire, using the blast to hide their retreat and confuse witnesses.

In a narrow maintenance passage beneath the terrace, Lian and Yanluo meet again without witnesses. The red thread is dim under their sleeves. They agree to hunt the immortal.