Dual Cultivation: Gathering SSS-Rank Wives in the Cultivation World-Chapter 381- Queen’s Surrender

One moment, hundreds of catkin warriors, nobles, and servants filled the space—bodies, voices, presence. The next, they were simply gone. Vanished like smoke dispersing in wind.

Helvora blinked, her grey eyes darting left and right. The tables were still there. The chandeliers still hung overhead, their light flickering across empty marble. The thrones remained.

But the people...

Gone.

Replaced by hundreds—’hundreds’—of black butterflies.

They filled the air like living shadows, wings fluttering silently as they hovered where bodies had stood moments before. The hall looked like it had been invaded by a swarm of midnight insects, each one pulsing with dark energy.

"What..."

Helvora breathed, her voice barely a whisper.

On her left, the white-haired queen—Seris—had gone pale, her ice-blue eyes wide with shock. Her painted silver claws dug into her throne’s armrest hard enough to crack the obsidian.

On her right, the black-haired queen—Vyrena—had risen halfway from her seat, amber eyes blazing with barely controlled fury. But even she didn’t move further. The sheer impossibility of what just happened had frozen her.

Then, in the center of the hall, dark smoke began to materialize.

It gathered from nowhere, coalescing like ink drops spreading through water. The butterflies nearest to it scattered, their wings creating silent ripples in the air as they fled the expanding darkness.

The smoke took shape.

A leg appeared first. Slender, wrapped in tight black fabric that looked painted on. Then another. Hips. A narrow waist. The smoke continued building upward, forming a torso, shoulders, arms—

And then she was there.

A woman.

Milky white skin that seemed to glow faintly against the dark material clinging to her body like a second epidermis. Long black hair fell past her shoulders in sleek waves, framing a face of sharp, aristocratic beauty. But it was her eyes that commanded attention—violet, glowing faintly with power, pupils contracted to vertical slits.

She stood there in the center of the hall, one foot placed delicately on the marble as if she’d just stepped down from an invisible staircase. The butterflies around her swirled in gentle orbits, responding to her presence.

Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her gaze.

Those violet eyes locked onto the three thrones. Onto Helvora specifically.

And she spoke, her voice carrying clearly through the oppressive silence.

"Were you the one who sent that provoking letter to our husband?"

The question hung in the air like a blade waiting to drop.

Helvora’s mouth twitched.

"Husband," she repeated, her grey eyes widening as the word registered fully in her mind.

The recording. That male voice. Those infuriating words that had burrowed under her skin and festered for hours.

’He’ had sent women—’these’ women—to do his bidding?

Her jaw clenched so hard her fangs bit into her lower lip, drawing blood. Slowly, deliberately, she rose from her throne, the shattered armrest forgotten. Her grey hair swirled around her shoulders as cultivation energy crackled across her skin in silver arcs.

"I see." Her voice was low, dangerous, edged with barely controlled fury. "So you are a woman of that bastard."

Yu Xiang’s violet eyes narrowed fractionally.

That was all the warning Helvora got.

The queen moved.

Ten feet of distance vanished in an instant. Not a blur—not even visible movement. One moment Helvora stood at her throne, the next she was ’there’, directly in front of Yu Xiang, her clawed hand already mid-swing toward the woman’s throat.

The strike was lethal. Precise. Born from centuries of combat experience and cultivation that had reached the peak of Divine Transformation Realm.

Her claws passed through empty air.

No—not air. Through Yu Xiang’s ’body’.

Helvora’s eyes went wide with shock as her entire form phased through the violet-eyed woman like she was nothing more than smoke. Yu Xiang stood there, completely intangible, her expression unchanged as the queen stumbled forward from momentum.

’What—’

Helvora tried to turn, instincts screaming danger.

But before she could complete the motion, something descended from above.

A leg.

It came down like a guillotine blade—fast, brutal, aimed directly at her skull.

Helvora’s hand shot up on pure reflex, catching the descending kick with both palms. The impact sent shockwaves through her body, driving her down to one knee as the marble beneath her ’exploded’.

CRACK-BOOM!

The floor shattered in a ten-foot radius, chunks of stone erupting upward like shrapnel. Cracks spider-webbed outward from the impact point, racing across the hall’s pristine marble with sounds like breaking bones.

Helvora’s arms trembled. Her shoulders screamed with strain as she held the kick at bay, feeling the raw physical power behind it threatening to crush her completely.

She looked up.

Golden eyes stared down at her. Tiger eyes, glowing with predatory satisfaction.

Sabrina.

The tiger-kin stood on one leg, the other pressing down against Helvora’s guard with monstrous force. Her lips pulled back in a feral grin that showed too many teeth.

"Careful," Sabrina growled, her voice dripping with mockery. "You almost hit someone important."

On either side of the hall, Seris and Vyrena moved simultaneously.

The white-haired queen’s body blurred, ice-blue energy crackling around her form as she shot toward the confrontation. The black-haired queen’s tattoos flared crimson, her claws extending to full length as she launched herself forward with killing intent radiating from every pore.

They never reached Sabrina.

Two hands—delicate, feminine, impossibly strong—grabbed both queens mid-flight.

Akane appeared between them like she’d materialized from nothing, her nine tails spread wide in a magnificent fan of silvery-white and crimson. Her golden eyes blazed with ancient power as her fingers wrapped around each queen’s arm.

Then she ’yanked’.

CRASH!

Both queens were hurled across the hall like ragdolls. Seris slammed into the left wall with enough force to crack the reinforced stone, her body leaving a crater as she crumpled to the floor. Vyrena skidded across the marble on her side, carving a groove in the stone before slamming into an overturned table.

Akane stood where she’d caught them, her massive breasts heaving with each breath, her pregnant belly pressing against her tight crimson dress. Her nine tails swayed lazily behind her, each one crackling with barely contained power.

She tilted her head, golden eyes tracking both downed queens as they struggled to rise.

"Should I kill these two?" Her voice was pleasant, conversational, like she was asking about the weather.

The temperature in the hall plummeted.

Not literally—but the atmosphere shifted so dramatically it might as well have. The casual question carried weight that pressed down on everything, making the very air feel thick and suffocating.

Helvora’s breath caught.

She was still on one knee, hands trembling as they held back Sabrina’s crushing kick. But now—now she understood.

The power level gap wasn’t just significant.

It was ’insurmountable’.

That single kick had told her everything. The way Sabrina stood there, barely exerting herself while Helvora’s arms screamed with strain. The effortless manner in which that fox woman had grabbed two Death Gate Realm cultivators and thrown them like children.

This wasn’t a fight.

This was an execution waiting to happen.

Helvora’s hand trembled violently as the realization crashed down.

Her grey eyes darted between Sabrina looming above her, Akane standing with those nine tails radiating lethal intent, and Yu Xiang—still standing exactly where she’d been, utterly unconcerned, like violence happening around her was beneath notice.

"I surrender." The words came out strangled, forced through a throat that wanted to roar defiance instead. "Just tell me what you want."

Sabrina’s grin widened. She removed her foot from Helvora’s guard, stepping back with lazy grace. "Smart kitty."