The horn's echo still lingered in the bones of the world.
OOOOOOOOOM
It was not a sound made by living creatures.
It was the cry of something that had once stood against Heaven itself and refused to fall completely.
High above the silver heavens, the ancient landmass shifted.
The First Battlefield moved.
Mountains of broken stone and shattered divine metal groaned as the colossal sword embedded in its heart slowly rose. Azure light older and deeper than the light of the current Azure Sword bled from the cracks in the earth around the blade.
Every cultivator on the battlefield felt it.
The First Heavenly Regent's expression finally cracked.
"Impossible…"
The Heavenly Eye above them trembled violently. Golden runes across the silver sky began to fracture one after another, as though the very laws that held the heavens together were being rejected by something older.
Lin Feng stood in the center of the chaos, Azure Sword still raised.
The Fourth Seal continued rotating inside his pupils. Through it, he saw more than the others.
He saw the truth of the First Battlefield.
It was not merely a ruin.
It was a graveyard of sovereigns.
Countless broken thrones.
Countless shattered swords.
Countless corpses of beings who had once stood at the peak of their eras all of them having died with their blades pointed upward, toward Heaven.
And at the center of it all, the gigantic sword was still rising.
The Azure Sovereign's voice echoed calmly inside Lin Feng's mind.
"That blade is called the *Primordial Azure*.
It was the first sword I ever forged… before I became the Sovereign."
Lin Feng's grip tightened.
"And the one holding it?"
A long silence.
Then
"Myself."
---
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!
The First Heavenly Regent no longer held back.
The golden spear in his hand expanded into a mountain-sized weapon of pure heavenly law. The Heavenly Eye above poured endless judgment into it. The surrounding Heaven Executors and Marshals formed a complete kill formation around Lin Feng, sealing every possible escape path.
"Erase him," the Regent ordered coldly.
"Before that sword fully awakens."
Lin Feng exhaled slowly.
The nine dragon heads behind him roared as one.
Gold.
Silver.
Blue.
Crimson.
White.
Black.
Purple.
Green.
And the faint, incomplete tenth that still refused to fully show itself.
Dragon aura flooded the shattered battlefield.
The Fourth Seal pulsed once.
Lin Feng's eyes sharpened.
He could see it clearly now the thin, almost invisible threads of law that connected the Regent's spear to the Heavenly Eye, to the silver heavens, and to the distant will of Heaven itself.
Everything was connected.
Everything could be cut.
Lin Feng took a single step forward.
Cloud Step Art.
His figure vanished.
The Regent's spear descended.
The kill formation closed in.
And then
SHIIIIIIIIING!!
A single azure arc crossed the sky.
It did not aim at the Regent.
It did not aim at the formation.
It aimed at the *connection*.
The golden threads linking the Regent's power to the Heavenly Eye were severed in an instant.
The spear's light dimmed by half.
The Regent's eyes widened for the first time.
"You"
Lin Feng reappeared directly in front of him, Azure Sword already swinging for a second time.
This time, the slash carried the weight of the Fourth Seal's true meaning.
Truth.
The ability to see the foundation of a thing… and cut it.
The Regent crossed his arms, golden laws forming layer upon layer of absolute defense.
CLANG!!
The Azure Sword struck.
Cracks spread across the heavenly barriers like spiderwebs.
For a brief moment, the two of them locked eyes at point-blank range.
Lin Feng's voice was calm.
"You said rebellion always fails."
He pushed harder.
The cracks widened.
"Then why," Lin Feng asked quietly, "are you so afraid of a single sword?"
---
Far above, the Primordial Azure finished rising.
The ancient landmass tilted.
Ruins collapsed into the void.
And from the hilt of the gigantic sword, a figure slowly stepped out.
He was tall.
His long hair was pure azure, cascading down his back like a waterfall of living light.
His eyes were the same color as Lin Feng's yet infinitely deeper, carrying the weight of countless eras.
The true Azure Sovereign… or at least a residual will powerful enough to shake the silver heavens.
He looked down at the battlefield.
At the First Heavenly Regent.
At the trembling Heavenly Eye.
And finally, at Lin Feng.
A faint smile touched his lips.
"You have done well, successor."
His voice rolled across the Upper Sky Region like thunder from the beginning of time.
"Now… let us remind Heaven why it once feared the name Azure."
The Primordial Azure trembled.
And the war that had been sealed for ages finally took its first true step forward.