The subterranean cavern had been completely reduced to an apocalyptic wasteland of shattered ice, pulverized stone, and pools of glowing blue and crimson blood. Vespera, her pristine clothes now heavily soaked in the visceral gore of the aftermath, stood amidst the ruins. Without a single word, she lifted the two completely mutilated bodies of her husband, Dawinton, and the monstrous youth, Rayn.
With a profound, heaven-defying manipulation of spatial qi, she forcefully tore open a rift in the void and completely bypassed the ruined domain. She reappeared deep within the hidden bowels of Ashburg, stepping into a secret, heavily reinforced underground chamber. This was the exact same sacred marble room where Dawinton had cowardly sequestered himself after his brutal, near-fatal clash with Victus and the terrifying powerhouses of Sterling Town.
The room was carved entirely from flawless, white profound jade-marble, designed to perfectly isolate qi signatures and accelerate natural healing. Vespera unceremoniously dropped the two bloody, broken bodies onto the massive, freezing marble slab in the center of the room.
She stood over Dawinton first. Her cold eyes scanned the absolute devastation of his physical vessel. His right leg was completely erased from existence, replaced by a jagged, bloody stump of mangled flesh and shattered bone. His internal organs were absolute meat paste from the Conqueror Sword's invasion, and his ribs were entirely reduced to fragmented powder.
"If any normal cultivator, if a normal human, sustained even a tenth of this absolute fucking damage, their soul would have shattered, and they would have died in a single minute," Vespera muttered to herself, her voice echoing coldly off the marble walls. "But this stubborn old bastard... his life force is like a disgusting, unkillable cockroach. He is still breathing."
She closed her eyes, rapidly circulating her supreme healing Dao. But to understand the present, one had to look back at the absolute madness that had occurred just two hours ago.
[Two Hours Ago - The Brink of Death]
Vespera had just dragged both Dawinton and Rayn through the spatial tear. Rayn's body was a horrific canvas of absolute butchery. The massive, gaping hole in his abdomen from the golden coin sword was actively spilling thick, black, coagulated blood onto her arms. His intestines were visibly severed, and his entire meridian network was continuously collapsing.
Suddenly, a violent spasm seized Rayn's broken frame. His crimson eyes snapped open, blazing with an unyielding, psychotic light despite the absolute agony tearing through his nervous system.
"Hmmmmmmmmmm... FUCK!" Rayn violently coughed, spitting a massive glob of crimson blood directly onto the pristine marble floor. His trembling, blood-soaked hand desperately clutched his shredded stomach, trying to physically hold his own spilling intestines inside his body. The blood simply would not stop flowing; it was like a ruptured dam pouring out his life essence.
Summoning a terrifying amount of pure willpower, Rayn forcefully dragged his upper body off the marble slab, gritting his teeth so hard his gums bled.
"Vespera..." Rayn gasped, his voice a horrifying, wet rasp. "Vespera, you crazy... don't you fucking dare heal me first. I am fine."
Vespera's usually completely emotionless face cracked. A flicker of genuine panic flashed in her cold eyes. She rushed forward, violently pressing her hands against his chest to force him back down onto the slab. "No, no, Rayn! You ignorant fool, your core is literally bleeding out! You are going to die!"
Rayn forcefully swatted her hands away with his bloody wrist. His face was twisted in a mask of absolute, heaven-defying arrogance and unbearable pain. "Hmmmmmmmmmm... FUCK... I said don't worry about me, Vespera! I am going to be fine! Just do exactly what the fuck I ordered you to do! Go heal that old motherfucker over there before his soul completely dissipates! If he dies, I'll fucking kill you myself! I am going to be alright!"
Before Vespera could even formulate a curse to hurl back at his arrogant face, the extreme blood loss finally overwhelmed Rayn's monstrous willpower. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he collapsed heavily against the cold marble, instantly slipping back into a deep, death-like coma.
Left with no other choice, and bound by the terrifying aura of the young master's absolute command, Vespera turned her back on the dying boy. She placed both of her hands hovering over Dawinton's mutilated corpse and violently activated her absolute healing domain.
[Present Time - The Miracle of the Marble Room]
For two agonizing, absolute fucking hours, Vespera poured every single drop of her profound qi into Dawinton's ruined vessel. Her healing Dao was not a gentle, benevolent magic; it was a brutal law of equivalent exchange. To rapidly knit shattered bone and regenerate pulverized organs, Vespera had to physically share the karmic burden of the pain.
Every time a nerve ending reconnected in Dawinton's stump, Vespera felt the phantom sensation of a limb being violently sawed off. Every time his ribs forcibly snapped back into place, she felt the crushing agony of a mountain dropping on her chest. Sweat completely soaked her clothes, and blood continuously dripped from her nose.
After two hours of this absolute hell, she finally severed the qi connection. She collapsed to her knees, panting heavily.
She looked up at the marble slab. Dawinton's horrific, apocalyptic wounds were entirely sealed. Fresh, pink scar tissue covered the gaping hole in his chest, and the stump of his leg was stabilized.
"The catastrophic wounds of this old man are completely healed," Vespera whispered to herself, wiping the blood from her face. "His core is stable. He only needs to rest to let his qi naturally replenish his completely drained vessel."
With a heavy, exhausted sigh, she slowly tilted her head to look at the other side of the marble table. Her heart violently clenched in her chest.
She dragged her tired body over to Rayn. Seeing the boy lying there, completely soaked in his own dried crimson blood, a profound wave of sorrow violently crashed against her usually impenetrable emotional walls. She reached out with a trembling hand, her delicate fingers gently brushing the matted, blood-soaked hair from Rayn's forehead.
Tears—hot, uncharacteristic tears—welled up at the edges of her cold eyes, slowly tracing down her flawless cheeks and dripping onto Rayn's pale face.
She knew he was entirely unconscious, lost to the absolute void of a death-like sleep, but she couldn't stop the words from spilling from her lips. "My love..." she whispered, her voice completely breaking. "I wanted to heal you... I wanted to save you from this absolute agony... but you commanded me to heal him first. You stupid, arrogant, heaven-defying fool."
She sniffled, gently trailing her hand down his chest to assess the catastrophic damage she expected to find.
But suddenly, Vespera completely froze. Her breath violently hitched in her throat. Her eyes went wide with absolute, unadulterated shock.
She frantically ripped open the remnants of Rayn's shredded tunic. There was no gaping hole. There were no severed intestines. There was no ruptured meridian network. Beneath the thick crust of dried, crimson blood, Rayn's skin was completely flawless. It was pristine, smooth, and radiating a terrifying, dormant vitality.
Vespera stumbled backward, her mind completely short-circuiting. She hadn't transferred a single drop of healing qi to him. She hadn't used a single pill or artifact. Yet, the boy's completely destroyed, heaven-condemned body had perfectly and entirely healed itself.
What the absolute fuck is he? Vespera thought, her entire worldview completely shattered.
Inside Rayn's Inner Mind Realm
While his physical vessel lay dormant on the marble slab, Rayn's consciousness was completely awake, violently thrust into the boundless expanse of his own Spiritual Sea.
His Mind Realm was an infinite, chaotic ocean of pure, condensed spiritual energy. Floating lazily above the surface of this boundless sea were millions of glowing, translucent golden cards. Each card was a literal, perfect manifestation of a memory, ranging from his absolute earliest childhood traumas to the brutal, bloody slaughters of his present cultivation journey.
Rayn found himself sitting cross-legged on a majestic, ethereal throne carved from dark ice, suspended directly in the middle of the sky. He was staring down at the spiritual ocean with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust.
Swimming leisurely through the absolute center of the spiritual sea, completely butt-naked and splashing water onto the floating memory cards like a carefree idiot, was Silas—the fragmented soul of Rayn's own mysterious previous life.
The veins on Rayn's spiritual forehead visibly pulsed with immense rage. "What the actual, ever-loving fuck are you doing down there, Silas?!" Rayn roared, his voice echoing like heaven-shattering thunder across the infinite realm. "Just because your parasitic soul is attached to me from my previous fucking life doesn't mean you get to swim around butt-naked and watch my entire existence like it's a fucking premium movie theater!"
Silas paused his backstroke. He floated onto his back, totally unashamed of his completely exposed, ethereal manhood, and let out an arrogant, mocking laugh. "What's wrong, junior? Are you getting jealous of my absolute freedom? Are you mad that I get to enjoy the scenic route while you get your guts shredded by old men in caves?"
"Jealous?!" Rayn spat, his crimson eyes flaring with violent killing intent. "What the fuck would I be jealous of you for? You're a dead, naked ghost! I refuse to live a life where I just sit around and do absolutely fucking nothing like some lazy, complacent motherfuckers who always tell themselves, 'Oh, I am going to do it tomorrow because my poor little legs are tired today.' I am the one out there actually bleeding and conquering!"
Silas scoffed, splashing a wave of spiritual water over a memory card depicting Rayn killing a beast. "You are completely delusional, boy. Let me teach you a harsh truth about the Heavens. Just because a cultivator breaks their back doing hard work daily doesn't mean they are going to get what they fucking want. Sure, they might achieve some pathetic, foundational success. But the only people who reach the absolute apex—the ones who become true Gods and Emperors—are the ones who possess an unfathomable combination of heaven-defying luck, ruthless hard work, and supreme innate born talent. If you lack even one of those, you are just going to end up a fucking nutcase grinding yourself into a bloody paste for nothing."
Rayn threw his head back and laughed loudly, a deeply arrogant and terrifying sound. "You just sit there and watch, you naked fuck! When I achieve my ultimate goal and stand atop the corpses of the Heavens, I am going to drag your soul out and talk to you in person, face to face. And I will tell you exactly what is important in this miserable world!"
Rayn paused, his laughter fading as a serious, calculating thought crossed his mind. He looked down at his own spiritual hands. "Hey, Silas. During that absolute bloodbath with Dawinton, my physical vessel was completely destroyed. But the wounds... they entirely healed themselves. Since you're squatting in my soul, did you use some hidden, heaven-defying technique to heal my body?"
Silas immediately stood up in the shallow part of the spiritual sea, sneering in absolute contempt. "Fuck no, Rayn! Do I look like a wet-nurse to you? I absolutely refuse to be the person who secretly supports a pathetic, arrogant weakling like you. If you die, you die."
Rayn's spiritual aura violently exploded. "Are you courting death, you bastard?! You call me a weakling?! You are the motherfucker who already died in your previous life! You got brutally stabbed and slaughtered by someone stronger than you! You have absolutely no right to talk down to me!"
Silas's eyes narrowed, a flash of ancient, terrifying pressure leaking from his naked form. "You ignorant little shit. That 'same person' you are calling weak is literally you. We are the same soul. And just because your pathetic brain hasn't unlocked the memories of your old life doesn't give you the right to spout absolute bullshit about me!"
"I have already told you a million fucking times!" Rayn screamed, his voice distorting the spiritual sea. "I do not give a single, solitary fuck about what happened in my previous life! It is not my fucking time to worry about it! What happened in the past is already fucking dead and buried! I don't want to talk about it, and I don't care!"
Silas sighed, a heavy, ancient sound that seemed to age the very realm around them. "That is your own foolish wish, boy. But fine, I will give you the answer to your question. The absolute entity that healed your shattered organs during the battle with Dawinton... was yourself."
Rayn frowned in profound confusion. "What the fuck are you talking about? Speak clearly, you cryptic bastard. I didn't use any healing Dao."
"I mean," Silas said, his voice dropping an octave, echoing with supreme, terrifying authority. "The power that forcibly rewrote your biology and healed you... is the Conqueror Power."
Rayn completely froze. "What?"
"Yes, my man," Silas smirked, walking on the surface of the water. "The Conqueror is not just some flashy, oppressive aura like you foolishly believe. It is the absolute, supreme power that every single sovereign entity in the universe would butcher their own families to possess. And the only reason you have it is because of me. I am the original entity who awakened that heaven-defying power in our past life. And because we share a soul, you—the reincarnation of me—managed to awaken the exact same power."
Silas paused, his eyes glowing with terrifying intensity. "Listen to me very carefully, you ignorant child. Let me tell you the absolute truth about the Conqueror. If it is fully awakened to the stage that we truly desire, a single, casual swing of your intent is going to instantly split entire fucking planets in half. It is a power that can literally crush the Heavenly Dao itself!"
Rayn's eyes widened, his heart pounding in his spiritual chest.
"But here is the absolute, harsh truth," Silas continued ruthlessly. "You haven't even unlocked one percent of its true potential! You think your Conqueror power has advanced because you beat up some trash in a cave? Bullshit! It hasn't advanced a single fucking stage! And worse, the Conqueror is not a power you can simply level up through generic hard work or meditating in a cave like a monk. It requires a specific, terrifyingly violent process to advance it. A process of absolute dominance and soul-shattering revelation."
Rayn violently clicked his tongue. "How the fuck was I supposed to know that?! You didn't attach any of those crucial details to my duplicate soul when I reincarnated, you useless bastard!"
Rayn sighed heavily, rubbing his temples. But then, a sudden realization struck him like a bolt of heavenly tribulation lightning. He looked down at Silas. "Wait a minute. You just explicitly stated that you and I are the only absolute entities who have ever awakened this specific Conqueror power. You in the previous life, and me in the present life. That's exactly what you just said, right?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I am saying," Silas replied proudly, crossing his arms.
"Bullshit," Rayn shot back instantly. "There is another person. My mother, Rena, explicitly told me about someone else. Didn't you hear her tell me that?!"
Silas's arrogant expression completely shattered. A look of profound confusion washed over his face. "What? What did she say?"
"I asked if you heard it!" Rayn yelled.
Silas cursed under his breath. "The thing is, boy... your mother is terrifying. She has always somehow known that my soul remnant exists within your Mind Realm. Whenever she speaks to you about the deep past, she secretly uses an unfathomable, heaven-sealing power to completely mute my connection to your senses. I couldn't hear a single fucking word she said to you. I couldn't hear any names."
Rayn was completely thunderstruck. His entire body went rigid. What the fuck?! He had always assumed he was the only living being who knew Silas existed inside him. But his mother—Rena—knew? She knew Silas was unsealed, and she had the terrifying power to casually block a supreme ancient soul from eavesdropping?! Just who the fuck is my mother?!
Rayn swallowed hard, trying to process the absolute mind-fuck. "Think about that later, you naked idiot. Listen to me. My mom clearly stated that there is another person who wields the absolute Conqueror power. She called him a supreme sovereign. A King that everyone in the higher realms absolutely praises and fears."
Silas walked closer, his ethereal body tense. "Who? What is the specific name that you mentioned?"
Rayn looked Silas dead in the eyes. "His name... is King DD."
The entire spiritual ocean completely froze. The floating memory cards stopped spinning. Silas's eyes widened to an impossible, terrifying degree, staring at Rayn as if the boy had just ripped his heart out.
"That..." Silas stuttered, his voice trembling with an emotion Rayn had never heard before. "That King DD... is my son. He became the absolute King of Aetheleon."
Rayn's jaw completely dropped. The spiritual realm violently quaked around him. He gripped the arms of his ice throne, leaning forward in absolute, unadulterated shock.
"What the actual FUCK?!" Rayn screamed, the revelation entirely shattering his mind. "Are you telling me... that supreme sovereign, King DD... is MY FUCKING SON from my previous life?!"