Blood stained the white marble of Cloud-Hidden Peak. The deep crimson was a jagged scar against the pale mists that always choked the Azure Cloud Sect. Rain lashed down in freezing sheets, dragging the blood into the ancient grooves of the ancestral altar.
At the center of it all knelt Lu Chen.
His breathing was a wet, broken mess—the sound of air escaping punctured lungs. A jade-hilted sword was buried deep between his shoulder blades, its blade perfectly severing the flow of his World Essence. Seventeen years of cultivation—the foundation that made him the greatest genius of the Eastern Province—was leaking out of him, scattering into the cold winds of the Great Azure Realm.
He didn't scream. He just stared at the hands that had shoved the steel into his spine.
"Why, Muxue?" Lu Chen's voice was a ragged whisper, barely louder than the storm.
Lin Muxue stood ten paces away. The rain didn't even touch her, deflected by a thin, invisible wall of Qi. She looked like a goddess in her moonlight robes, ethereal and distant. But her eyes, once filled with warmth for him, were now nothing but flat, freezing pools. She calmly wiped a stray drop of his blood from her cheek with a silk handkerchief.
"Don't ask naive questions, Chen," she said. Her voice lacked any malice, which made it feel a thousand times worse. "We live in the Age of Fading Providence. The spiritual ley lines are drying up. The Heavens are cracking. You know this. Since the Great Celestial Sunder, true ascension is a lie for anyone but one person. To survive, to actually live, you can't afford to share the world's dwindling luck."
"Do you remember the Frostbite Caverns?" Lu Chen rasped, the taste of blood in his mouth as bitter as the memory. "When the Ice Wyrm had us trapped. I burned a decade of my life using the Blood Ignition Art just so you could get out. I dragged myself out half-dead, clutching the Frost Core you needed for your meridians. Was that... was that all a lie?"
Muxue's face flickered for a second, a tiny crack in her icy mask, before smoothing over. "It wasn't a lie, Chen. I did love you. I still care for you. But affection won't fix the Heavens. It won't stop the decay of this world. Every century, the World Essence drops. Soon, there won't be enough Qi for anyone to even reach the Golden Core stage."
She stepped closer, looking down at him with cold logic. "Only a 'Child of Heaven'—someone holding all the world's remaining luck—can break the ceiling and become the Infinite Sword Sovereign. You have the Innate Spirit Root, but you don't have the ambition, the backing, or the bloodline. Fang Tianyou has all three. You were just a temporary vessel for the world's luck."
"A beautiful excuse for a backstab," a new voice cut through the rain.
Slow, heavy footsteps echoed like a death knell. From the mist stepped Fang Tianyou.
He walked with the easy grace of a predator that had already won. Fang Tianyou, the 'Chosen One' of the Azure Cloud Sect, had the kind of handsome face and charisma that drew people like moths to a flame.
Through the Heavenly Eye, every cultivator had 'Qi Yun'—a golden aura of providence. Normal cultivators had mere wisps; prodigies had halos. But Lu Chen? He had a roaring, sun-like pillar of luck that pierced the sky. It was what gave him 'Heavenly Opportunities'—the random treasures, the lucky encounters, the impossible escapes.
Fang Tianyou's Qi Yun had been a pathetic, thin thing compared to Lu Chen's fire. Until today.
Today, Lu Chen's golden pillar was flickering, dying out as his life force ebbed away.
"Junior Brother Lu," Fang Tianyou smiled, stopping next to Lin Muxue. He slid an arm around her waist. She didn't pull away; she leaned into him. That small gesture twisted the knife in Lu Chen's heart harder than the blade in his back. "Still so arrogant, even in the dirt."
"Fang Tianyou," Lu Chen spat the name like poison. "The Sect Master's golden boy. Are you so talentless you have to rob a dying man?"
Fang Tianyou's smile didn't move, but his eyes turned to obsidian. "Talent is a myth, Lu Chen. There is only Providence. You were born with the Supreme Sword Root. The Heavens dumped luck on you for no reason. I have the bloodline and the status, yet the Heavens gave me a mediocre Foundation. In an age of scarcity, morality is for the dead. The Sect cannot bet its future on an outsider. My father agrees."
Lu Chen's eyes widened. "Sect Master Fang... he knew?"
"Knew?" Fang Tianyou laughed, a bright sound that mocked the thunder. "He planned it. Who do you think gave Muxue the Soul-Severing Jade Sword? It was the only thing that could pierce your perfect Sword Intent."
A cold realization hit Lu Chen, deeper than the rain. His whole life in the sect—the rise, the praise, the gifts—it was a pen. He was a beast being fattened for the slaughter. They had waited until his Innate Spirit Root matured at the peak of Qi Refinement before they struck.
"Now," Fang Tianyou stepped forward, his hands glowing with a sickening purple light. A forbidden art. "Time to fix the mistake the Heavens made. Don't worry. I'll put your Supreme Sword Root to good use. When I'm the Infinite Sword Sovereign, I'll make sure your name is carved on the bottom of my throne."
"The Heaven-Devouring Art," Lu Chen realized, his horror growing. "You... a righteous sect..."
"Righteousness is written by the winners," Fang Tianyou chuckled.
"Don't touch me!" Lu Chen roared, trying to force his broken body up. He tried to summon his Sword Intent, but his dantian was a wreck. The jade sword acted like a lightning rod, grounding his energy into the altar.
Fang Tianyou ignored him. He reached out and shoved his glowing purple hand directly into the open wound in Lu Chen's chest.
Pure agony exploded through Lu Chen. It wasn't just physical. It felt like Fang Tianyou was reaching into his soul, grabbing his identity, his memories, his very fate.
"Ah... what a root," Fang Tianyou whispered, his eyes rolling back in pleasure. "The density of the Essence... it's intoxicating."
Lu Chen let out a raw, guttural scream that tore his throat. The storm answered with a deafening crash of thunder. He felt his Sword Intent—the will he had forged in a thousand battles—shattering. His World Essence leaked out of his pores like steam.
Slowly, Fang Tianyou pulled his hand back. In his grip was a pulsing, golden light, shaped like an intricate root made of starlight.
As it left Lu Chen's body, the massive pillar of Qi Yun above his head detached. It swirled like a hurricane before funneling into Fang Tianyou.
Lu Chen collapsed. His vision dimmed. The colors of the world washed out into gray. The connection he'd always felt to the world—the wind's whisper, the earth's pulse—went dead silent.
He was hollow. A husk.
Fang Tianyou was glowing. The golden cloud above him swelled, solidifying into a pillar that pierced the storm. The Heavens seemed to bow to him now.
"It's done," Muxue breathed, watching Fang Tianyou with a mix of awe and hunger.
"Yes," Fang Tianyou murmured, looking at his glowing hands. He glanced down at the bleeding mass of flesh that used to be a genius. "Clean up this mess, Muxue. The banquet for my 'miraculous' breakthrough starts in three hours."
Muxue nodded. She walked to Lu Chen. No pity. Just the cold look of a survivor. She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward the edge of the peak.
Below was the Abyss of Despair.
A bottomless chasm of eternal dark. A graveyard for gods. Nothing that fell in ever came back.
"In another life, Lu Chen, things might have been different," Muxue whispered as she hauled him over the ledge.
Lu Chen couldn't move. He couldn't fight. But his eyes, staring at the woman he loved, burned with a hatred so absolute that Muxue actually flinched.
"I will... tear down... your heavens," Lu Chen gurgled, blood bubbling past his teeth. "I will... eat... everything."
Muxue scowled and let go.
Gravity took him. Lu Chen fell into the howling dark.
The fall felt like an eternity. The wind ripped at his torn skin. Above, the light of the sect vanished, swallowed by the gloom.
As he hit the deep, the spiritual energy vanished, replaced by a suffocating miasma. This was a place forgotten by luck.
Is this it? Lu Chen thought. Robbed. Butchered. Thrown away like trash.
His hatred flared, a dark fire in his broken soul. He wouldn't accept it. If the Heavens chose Fang Tianyou, then he would slaughter the Heavens. If providence left him, he would become the demon that fed on it.
I want it back. I want it all back!
His blood, trailing upward in the fall, hit something in the dark.
Clink.
A hollow ring echoed through the wind.
Suddenly, the dark cracked. A blinding, silvery-black light erupted from below. Not the warm gold of Qi Yun, but something older, colder, and terrifying.
An ancient mirror, its surface cracked and empty, floated up to meet him. Its obsidian frame was carved with runes from before the world broke. As Lu Chen's body hit the mirror's surface, it didn't break.
It rippled like water.
A voice, sounding like grinding stone and dying stars, hit his mind.
[Providence stripped. Destiny shattered. The vessel is perfectly hollow.]
Lu Chen's blood soaked into the mirror's cracks.
[Condition met. Binding the Sovereign of the Void. Would you like to plunder the Heavens, mortal?]
Through the dark, Lu Chen forced his bloody lips into a savage smile.
Yes.
The mirror dissolved into liquid shadow, sinking into Lu Chen's chest, filling the hole where his Spirit Root used to be. The fall stopped. The dark swallowed him whole.
The Azure Cloud Sect thought they killed a genius. They didn't know they just birthed a monster.