In the suffocating, pitch-black abyss of his sea of consciousness, Rayn closed his eyes.
Silas's demonic words echoed through the void like tolling bells. In the physical realm, slumped against the frozen bark of the ancient pine, Rayn's bloodied fingers moved with autonomous precision. Guided by his spiritual will, his hand plunged directly toward his abdomen, phasing through skin and meridian lines without drawing a drop of blood.
He gripped the very center of his Origin Core.
With a brutal wrench, Rayn extracted the manifestation of his eighteen fused mortal Daos — the Collector Matrix.
In his palm, it did not appear as raw mist or glowing runes. It took the physical shape of a colossal, grotesque jade cicada, its heavy chitinous wings humming with eighteen discordant elemental frequencies.
Rayn tightened his grip.
CRACK.
The great cicada violently shattered into eighteen luminous streams of light. Crimson fire, azure water, emerald wind, and amber earth flared wildly before drifting upward into the freezing sky. Before their essence could ascend into the rising sun, they disintegrated into absolute cosmic ash, their concepts permanently erased from his existence.
Only a single, pristine white cicada remained behind. It was translucent, radiant, and silent.
With a low hum, the miniature white cicada burrowed back into Rayn's chest, curling up peacefully beside the slumbering phantom of the White Griffin within his newly stabilized core.
Instantly, a profound, heaven-defying lightness washed over Rayn's spiritual form. It felt as though a mountain range, carried upon his shoulders for an eternity, had been cast down into the sea.
"What just happened, Silas?" Rayn asked, breathing deeply as the internal turbulence smoothed out.
"You tore away your mortal clutter, Conqueror," Silas replied, leaning casually against his cane.
"Why did the Collector manifest as a cicada?"
"Mortal Dao arts are rigid," Silas sneered, his demonic eyes glinting. "They must borrow the physical forms of earthly beasts to hold shape. But supreme Primordial Daos — like your Conqueror's Will — possess no fixed form. They are formless deities, adapting to the cosmos at whim. That is why men revere them as heaven-shattering powers."
Before Rayn could respond, a violent spasm struck his dantian.
"Steady yourself," Silas warned, grinning. "The vacant throne demands an emperor. The Gambler's Heart is claiming its dominion."
Within his Origin Core, the horrific, crimson-black organ of the Gambler's Heart slithered into the empty cavity left by the eighteen shattered elements. It slotted into place with a sickening thud, locking perfectly with his spiritual meridians.
The necrotizing rot on his physical flesh vanished instantly, smothered into submission by the foreign organ.
"Our conversation must pause here, kid," Silas said, stepping forward with an unsettling smirk. "Your men are about to be slaughtered."
With a sudden, violent shove, Silas launched Rayn backward into a swirling spatial vortex. As Rayn plummeted into the black hole, Silas's manic laughter echoed from the void:
"Consider this your reward for surviving! Your Conqueror's Dao has forcibly evolved — it has crossed into the Ninth Tier!"
"How?!" Rayn roared against the rushing wind.
"Because supreme ancient powers possess their own arrogance!" Silas barked. "When the vessel proves worthy to bear the weight, the power unlocks its own chains!"
Rayn's eyes violently snapped open.
The frigid mountain air flooded his lungs. His vision cleared just in time to see a jagged, two-handed broadsword plummeting directly toward his skull, wielded by an elite bandit commander with a twisted, bloodthirsty grin.
CLANG!
A child-sized hand — no larger than that of an eight-year-old — shot in from the periphery.
With impossible kinetic force, the tiny, pale fingers caught the heavy steel blade bare-handed. The small hand squeezed.
SNAP.
The broadsword shattered like cheap porcelain. Without missing a beat, the small figure drove the jagged, broken blade backward through the air. The heavy metal punched through the bandit's iron visor, cleaving his skull clean down the middle. Black blood showered the frozen rocks as the corpse collapsed.
Rayn blinked. For a brief second, his razor-sharp mind went entirely blank, resembling a bewildered squirrel that had just watched a hawk steal its prized nut.
Standing over the corpse was a small child, scarcely reaching Rayn's chest.
Who is this brat? Rayn analyzed rapidly. An assassin? A stray beast-child? Why in the world is an infant defending my carcass?
The child glanced back, his dark eyes sharp and utterly merciless. Noting Rayn's vacant stare, the boy barked in a surprisingly raspy, furious tone: "Are you going to sit there looking like an absolute idiot, you imbecile?! Get on your feet and kill these dogs!"
Rayn shook off his stupor.
He sprang to his feet. He glanced down at his torso — the necrotic rot, the crushed ribs, and the bleeding wounds had entirely vanished, replaced by smooth, unblemished skin humming with vitality.
Rayn threw his right hand out, instinctively calling upon his familiar Ice Conqueror Sword.
Nothing happened.
The freezing frost refused to gather. The moisture in the air remained still.
Right, Rayn remembered, a cold realization settling in. I burned away the frost. The seventeen paths are dead.
He closed his eyes, tapping into the single surviving white cicada in his core.
Crack — BOOM!
A blinding, sapphire-tinted radiance erupted into his palm. It did not form ice; it manifested as an immaculate, crackling blade of condensed azure thunder, roaring with the fury of a storm god. The kinetic energy was so intense it warped the falling snow around him.
Rayn stared at the crackling weapon, momentarily lost in an absurd thought of cinematic thunder gods from the modern earth he had long abandoned.
"Rayn, you useless fool!" the child shrieked, brutally kicking a charging bandit over the cliff edge. "Your subordinates are being minced alive down there! How can your mind wander off at a time like this?!"
Snapping entirely back to reality, Rayn focused his gaze on the small warrior. "Whoever you are, brat, keep this summit clear. I am going down to tear open that array."
The child sneered, his fingers twitching as he drew a strange, abyssal-purple shortsword from his hip. The blade was grotesque, lined with living, shifting eyeballs and pulsating micro-tentacles.
"Watch your own neck, Conqueror," the kid spat.
As a bandit rushed the child, the purple sword sliced into the man's throat. The tentacles on the blade violently latched into the open wound, aggressively siphoning the bandit's vitality. In less than two seconds, the grown warrior turned into a withered, dry husk, collapsing into dust.
Rayn's lips curved into a dark smirk. The brat can kill. Good.
Without another moment's hesitation, Rayn turned toward the edge of the precipice and leaped directly into the open sky.
He plummeted thousands of feet, the sea of clouds rushing up to meet him.
Grasping the azure lightning sword with both hands, Rayn let out a deafening, heaven-defying roar. The crimson sun and the gray storm clouds converged around his descending form.
KABOOM!
The heavens answered his command. A colossal pillar of azure lightning, three meters thick, coiled down from the storm clouds, fusing entirely into his blade.
Rayn hurled the lightning-engorged sword down toward the mountain face like a spear cast by an angry deity.
The blade crashed directly into the dense swarm of bandits frantically climbing the steep slopes.
CRACK-THUUUUM!
The mountain face ruptured. An apocalyptic wave of electrical force detonated outward, cooking flesh, vaporizing iron, and pulverizing the bones of eight hundred men in a single, earth-shattering blast. A rain of charred limbs and melted armor cascaded into the valley below as the azure sword dissolved back into pure Gnosis.
Rayn released a burst of feather-light kinetic force to arrest his catastrophic fall, touching down near the perimeter like a graceful immortal descended from the upper realms.
Before he could even admire the craters, an agonizing scream cut through the smoke:
"Rayn!"
He turned toward the sound.
Beyond the smoking crater stood Vespera. Her black hair was disheveled, and her porcelain armor was stained in gore. Trapped within the shimmering, cubic walls of the Absolute Gnosis Array, Victus and Freddy were kneeling in their own blood, barely breathing.
Rayn stepped forward to reach her, but slammed directly into the invisible outer ward of the formation.
CLANG!
The spatial feedback sent a shudder through his boots.
Vespera pressed her bloodied palms against the interior of the purple barrier, staring at him through the translucent ward. Between them lay an absolute gulf of defensive cultivation.
Rayn did not speak. His eyes narrowed to razor points.
He reached toward the empty air and drew his primary, heavy weapon: the Crimson Conqueror Sword.
SHING — ROOOOAAAR!
The instant the blade crossed into reality, the atmosphere grew violently heavy. Upgraded to the Ninth Tier, the great blade did not merely emit bloody lightning — it wailed. Within the swirling vortex of crimson thunder wrapping the edge, the screaming, agonized phantoms of the thousands of men Rayn had slaughtered danced along the steel.
The sword had become a vessel of slaughtered souls.
Rayn pulled the colossal blade back, shifting his weight as his Dragon-blooded meridians flared with blinding, white-hot light.
"Break," Rayn whispered.
He swung.
The Ninth Tier Conqueror's strike split the air with a deafening sonic boom. A crescent arc of pure crimson-white devastation violently crashed into the Absolute Gnosis Array.
CRACK — CRUMBLE!
The ancient, unbreakable barrier did not merely deflect the kinetic strike; it shrieked under the overwhelming weight of the souls bound to the blade. Fissures ran through the purple array like shattered glass before the entire cubic formation violently disintegrated into shimmering stardust.
The backlash ripped through the surrounding ground. Hundreds of elite cultists sustaining the perimeter instantly suffered meridian implosions, vomiting black blood as their chests caved in.
The dust settled with agonizing slowness.
Rayn stood towering in the ruined clearing, dragging the tip of his screaming crimson blade along the shattered earth, leaving a trail of smoking brimstone.
Ahead of him, ten thousand surviving bandits stood frozen, their weapons trembling in their hands.
The Conqueror had finally arrived.