Inside the shattered blessed land, no one moved. Breath slowed, eyes fixed on the man in the sky, and even killing intent hid itself beneath the weight of the moment. Leaves trembled, dust hung in the air, but blades stayed still. It was as if the entire forest remembered what silence felt like when heaven watched.
Within Han Chen's sea of consciousness, Yue Ruo's calm voice rang out, not through his ears, but straight into his thoughts. "Use the life energy stored in the Heavenly Eye to mask your presence and hide," she said. "When you use that energy to cloak yourself, even Ascendants can't sense you. But the energy consumption will be heavy."
In this world, energy is endless, and anyone can choose to become a cultivator. Yet, some still live as mortals by choice. Even in such a chaotic world, nothing comes without a price.
If Han Chen wishes to hide from a Deity Transformation, it will demand a great amount of energy—far more than most could afford.
Han Chen's gaze didn't waver. His reply was a small nod. He drew a thin strand from the Heavenly Eye's stored life essence—then let it spread over him like a second skin. The air around his body bent, swallowed his edges, and smoothed his scent, sound, and spiritual signature into nothing. In the blink of an eye, his outline went glass-thin, then transparent. He didn't vanish; he became something the world forgot to notice. Even the wind seemed to pass around him without finding purchase.
...
High above, Wang Zhen stood in the air in black royal robes that flowed without wind. His long white hair hung loose, clean as cut frost; his brows matched, stark against a youthful face honed by agony and will. Behind his head, the revolving halo turned: half dark, half bright, a yin-yang ring in motion—yet where the twin dots should be, there rested the symbols of sun and moon, watching one another across the circle. Every turn of that halo felt like a page turned in a book.
Yan Fei inclined his head, voice steady. "Congratulations, fellow Wang, on your breakthrough."
Wang Zhen acknowledged with a slight nod—neither humble nor proud, simply sovereign.
Beside Yan Fei, Mo Gu stood silent, a storm behind still waters, eyes reading angles, auras, and timing. On the torn ground below, Old Man Jin and Old Man Wei finished skidding across ravaged earth. Both had coughed blood on impact; both refused to kneel. Jin rose first, sword point low, shoulders square, breath sharp. Wei planted the 44 Mountain Seal beside him and straightened with a grin that showed too many teeth for comfort.
The field held the shape of a standoff: the newly ascended Deity in the sky, the four titans arrayed by chance and choice below, and a ring of hungry, frightened witnesses stretching from the broken tree line to the edges of shattered law-marked dome. Overhead, the three heaven-sent gifts still hovered at their posts—the Deity Formation Gu pulsing like a living vow, the Grade 7 Artifact Core steady as a star, and the Deity Stabilisation Pill breathing calm into an air that did not deserve calm.
Old Man Jin wiped a line of blood from his lip with the back of his wrist. His eyes never left Wang Zhen. When he spoke, it was plain, clean, and final: "Wang Zhen, what my master failed to accomplish, I'll do in his stead."
The words fell like iron. They told a story without needing to tell it: a debt inherited, a blade handed down, an oath that had waited too long for an answer. Across the field, old rivals and cautious friends traded short looks. Some recognized the name Jin's master had worn; others only recognized the weight of a promise sharpened into purpose.
Wang Zhen's gaze slid to Jin—filled with disdain. The halo turned; the sun-symbol brightened a fraction.
[FLASHBACK]
Sixteen thousand four hundred years ago, the forest was quiet but tense—the kind of quiet that follows a storm and waits for the next one. Between towering blackwood trees, two figures cut through the air: one chasing, one fleeing.
Wang Zhen, at the Initial Stage of Seven Star Deity Formation, moved like a knife through silk—cold, fast, sure. Ahead of him, a red-haired girl, Jin Xiyue—Six Star Deity Formation—flew hard, her breath sharp, eyes wide with a fear she tried to bury under stubbornness.
"Xiyue, stop running," Wang Zhen said, voice flat, the wind carrying his words to her back.
She didn't stop. "Wang Zhen, if you let me go, I'll do anything you say," she called, slipping between branches like fire through reeds.
...
Wang Zhen's gaze narrowed. After a while, he said. "Anything I say? Then marry me."
Her flight wavered. "What?" She looked back over her shoulder, disbelief burning in her eyes. "Do you not know? I already have a fiancé."
"So what?" Wang Zhen said without heat. "The stronger takes all. If you don't want to marry me, I can kill you as you wish."
Her jaw tightened. "Wang Zhen, I do not intend to pry into your business. If you let me go, I'll never say a word of what I saw."
Wang Zhen laughed once, but there was no humor in it. "No. You discovered my greatest secret. Marry me and stay with me—or die."
He closed the distance slowly, step by step in the air, not rushing. He didn't need to. The forest around them seemed to lean away.
After a while, Xiyue stopped abruptly, hovering in the air. "Alright," she said, steadying herself. "I'll marry you."
...
Wang Zhen slowed near her and frowned, studying her face. "What? I thought you would rather die than marry me. That's why I said it. If you refused, I could kill you with a reason."
Xiyue's eyes widened. "What? You wanted to kill me already—even though I agreed? Am I not beautiful enough to live?"
"Forgive me," Wang Zhen said, and his face didn't move at all. "But that secret is what made me who I am today. I can't let even my wife—you, who said yes—know about it. So please… DIE!!."
His fist drew back in one clean line.
When it moved, the world tore.
A beam erupted from his fist—a silent, focused annihilation. It pierced Xiyue mid-air before she finished her breath. The force carved a perfect circular cavity through her torso, vaporizing everything in its path. Her left arm disintegrated to ash, scattering like red dust. Xiyue stared at the hole in her body, shock swallowing her voice until it finally broke out as a single, trembling word.
"Why…?"
She began to fall.
It was like watching a mountain take a spear through the heart—too final, too clean. As her body dropped, a token flew out from the ring on her finger, cracked down the center with a sharp sound that felt like a verdict, and burst into a cloud of red mist.
The forest changed.
The red mist flooded the air, dyeing light and shadow alike. A thunderous voice shook the trees, the earth, and even the clouds above. Divine sense swept the region, not like a searchlight but like a tide that drowned all hiding places.
"MY DAUGHTER!!!"
The voice hammered through bones and marrow, exploding against the sky. The red mist roared, and the divine sense narrowed, locking onto Wang Zhen like a blade pressed to the throat of the world.
"WHICH MOTHERFUCKER DID THIS!"
Space buckled around Wang Zhen. Nothing about him moved—his robes didn't flutter, his eyes didn't flinch—but even the forest seemed to hold its breath, waiting for what came next.
The voice found him, and the heavens felt smaller for it.
"WANG ZHEN!!! WHAT DID MY DAUGHTER DO TO YOU!! YOU ACCURSED BEING, I'LL KILL YOU!"
The promise in that roar came from someone who had the power to keep it. The red mist churned with killing intent so thick it became a weight. Trees bowed. Stones cracked. Birds burst into ash mid-flight. The world turned a color that meant only vengeance.
Xiyue's body spun slowly downward, cloak torn, hair falling like streaks of blood against the red-lit air. Her eyes found Wang Zhen one last time. There was fear there, yes—but there was also clarity. Not confusion, not pleading. Only the hard truth of a choice made and a price exacted.
Wang Zhen's face remained calm, empty of triumph or regret. He lowered his fist and let the silence return to his hand.
The red mist surged inward.
Power like a collapsing sun braced itself to descend.
...
The red mist tightened, drawing itself into a single point that burned like a wound in the air. The forest braced as a shock wave burst outward from that point—raw and crushing—making ancient trunks bow and loose stones skitter like startled insects. Space trembled. Then a single, thunderous step fell.
The step bent the world. Ripples spread in layered rings, but each ring was edged, faceted—like a blade's geometry hidden in a wave. The sky's skin cracked along those edges, and space shattered with a sound that was not a sound, but a pressure that forced the heart to skip.
From the broken seam walked a man who seemed both old and young at once: red hair like banked embers, face carved by years and unsoftened by them. He wore no wild armor, no flaunting crown—yet the air around him bowed as if it knew his name. Jin Shang. Two-star Ascendant. Patriarch of the Jin Family, one of the four great families of the Zhao Continent. His presence made mountains feel like poorly kept promises.
His one step had shattered space, and yet Wang Zhen's expression did not change. He had expected this arrival. He had known Xiyue's blood carried a surname heavy enough to bend weather. His calm was not defiance; it was a page already written.
"Old Geezer Jin," Wang Zhen said, voice flat and cold. "Your daughter wanted to die. It was not my fault."
Jin Shang looked at him, and the day itself changed. The bright sun tucked itself behind hurried clouds; light turned gray and lean; the forest's many colors washed out as if the world feared to be seen in full. A wind with no direction moved through the leaves, and silence filled with the weight of a father's stare.
"Wang Zhen," Jin Shang said, and the name went through the trees like an oath. "Even though you stand in Deity Formation—you who have condensed more than fifty fragments of the threads of laws, and over forty of those are unique—with this accomplishment alone, I will not insult you by calling you junior." His voice was iron-tempered in grief. "On the strength of that, I count you the equal of any Ascendant in the Zhao Continent."
He did not raise his voice for the next words, but the world heard the rise in them.
"BUT WHAT YOU DID TO MY DAUGHTER IS UNFORGIVABLE!!"
His eyes were fierce—hard enough to cut stone—and wet. The tears did not fall. They held in the rim like a blade that refused to tremble.
The red mist around him thickened, then grew thin and sharp, like a cloak turning into a spear. Divine sense pressed down again, but now it moved with a terrible gentleness, touching every leaf and grain of earth as if counting what would be left when rage had finished speaking.
Wang Zhen met his gaze. "She saw my greatest secret. How could I let her live?"
Jin Shang's foot slid forward half a step, nothing flashy—just setting his weight. The clouds shifted above them. The forest seemed to brace.
Wang Zhen nodded once, as if agreeing to a time already set.
They moved at the same breath.
Jin Shang stepped in with a straight, heavy strike—no flourish, just clean force. Wang Zhen met it head-on, fist cutting a short line through the air. Impact landed between them with a dull, deep crack. The ground split like a spiderweb. The trees bent away.
-----TO BE CONTINUED-----