The scent of ozone and crushed lotuses filled the narrow alleyway. Lin Mengyao's sword thrust was not just fast; it was guided by an unnatural, sickeningly familiar providence. The golden aura clinging to her blade—a fraction of the Innate Spirit Root stolen from Lu Chen's very body—guided the tip unerringly toward his throat.
He didn't draw his sword. To clash with her now, while the Azure Cloud Sect's alarm bells tolled a frantic rhythm across the peaks, would be suicide. Fang Tianyou's oppressive divine sense was already sweeping the outer courtyards, hunting the resonance of his stolen talent.
Time seemed to slow as Lu Chen's eyes narrowed. In his sea of consciousness, the Luck-Binding Mirror flared to life.
Through the ancient bronze surface, he saw Lin Mengyao's Fate Panel. Above her head, a thick, parasitic golden cloud pulsed with stolen vitality. But right beside it, tethered to the Mirror's newly awakened second form, lay a murky puddle of black, viscous energy—the residual cursed luck he had absorbed from the ancient entity beneath the Sword Graves.
*You want to steal from me again?* Lu Chen's lips curled into a cold, soundless sneer. *Take this, then.*
With a mere thought, Lu Chen snipped a thread of the black curse and forcefully injected it into the golden cloud above Mengyao's head.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The golden light violently rejected the foreign darkness, but the curse was too potent. The conflicting energies collided directly within her meridians. Mengyao's eyes widened in sudden, unadulterated terror. The flawless circulation of her 'Azure Lotus Sword Art' violently halted. Her Qi reversed course, violently slamming into her chest.
"Gah!"
Mengyao coughed up a mouthful of black blood, her sword violently veering off course to bury itself deep into the stone wall beside Lu Chen's head. Her knees buckled as she fell against the cold bricks, gasping for air, her spiritual sea in sudden, chaotic turmoil.
Lu Chen stood perfectly still, his eyes devoid of any lingering affection. He looked at the woman who had poisoned his tea, who had smiled as Fang Tianyou ripped his Spirit Root from his dantian. His hand hovered over the hilt of his rusted iron sword. It would be so easy to end her right here.
But a sweeping wave of pressure cascaded from the inner sect peaks. Fang Tianyou was getting closer. Killing Mengyao would shatter her life jade slip, immediately painting a target on his exact coordinates.
Not yet, Lu Chen thought, melting back into the shadows. When I take your life, I will take the very foundation of your pride with it.
Using his Void Sword Intent, Lu Chen erased his physical presence, blending his breathing with the ambient rustle of the wind. By the time Mengyao looked up, blood staining her pristine white robes, the alley was empty.
***
The Azure Cloud Sect was in absolute uproar. Enforcers on flying swords streaked across the night sky, their spiritual lanterns casting harsh, searching beams over the courtyards. They were looking for an intruder, an anomaly. They were looking for him.
Lu Chen knew that trying to slip out of the sect gates now was impossible; the grand defensive arrays were fully activated. Instead, he moved in the opposite direction. He headed deeper into the sect's core.
The most dangerous place was often the safest. While every elder and enforcer scoured the outer limits, the Heavenly Book Pavilion—the sect's central repository of martial arts and history—stood in relative silence, its usual guards mobilized to aid the search.
The Pavilion was a towering, nine-story pagoda built from dark spiritual wood, surrounded by a faint, shimmering dome of energy. The grand array protecting it was a Grade-Five 'Heavenly Lock Formation'. To a normal cultivator, touching it meant instant immolation.
But to Lu Chen, the formation was not a wall of energy; it was a weave of providence.
He pressed his palm against the cold bronze of the Luck-Binding Mirror hidden in his robes. Through its eye, the shimmering dome transformed into a tapestry of golden threads. Every formation had a flow of 'luck'—a path of least resistance where the array's internal energy cycled.
Lu Chen found the weakest thread, a blind spot in the array's circulation caused by a microscopic flaw in a foundational runestone. Channeling his Void Sword Intent, his body became incorporeal, a mere shadow slipping between the strands of fate. He passed through the dome with nothing more than a faint ripple, entering the silent, dust-scented interior of the Pavilion.
He bypassed the first six floors. They contained basic martial arts, low-tier spells, and generic histories. He ascended the spiral staircase, his footsteps making absolutely no sound, until he reached the heavy iron doors of the Seventh Floor: The Restricted Section.
The doors were sealed with a blood-lock, requiring the token of a Core Elder. Lu Chen didn't bother trying to open it. Instead, he pressed himself against the crack between the doors, compressing his physical form with Void Intent until he seeped through the gap like black smoke, reforming on the other side.
The Seventh Floor was vast, yet suffocatingly dense. Floating shelves of obsidian held ancient bamboo slips, glowing jade records, and tattered scrolls of beast-skin. The air here was heavy with the weight of forgotten centuries.
Lu Chen walked down the aisles, his eyes scanning the titles. Blood-Refining Demonic Arts, Forbidden Soul-Searching Techniques, Topography of the Abyss of Despair.
He ignored them. He was searching for something specific. Down in the Sword Graves, the ancient entity had recognized his Void Intent. It had spoken of the Great Celestial Sunder. If he was to survive the coming storm, he needed to understand the true nature of his existence and the world he was stealing from.
The Luck-Binding Mirror pulsed warmly against his chest, pulling him toward a shadowed corner of the library. There, sitting atop a solitary pedestal of white jade, rested a heavy, black jade slip covered in thick dust.
It was unassumingly placed, clearly forgotten or deliberately ignored by the sect's current masters.
Lu Chen reached out. The moment his fingers brushed the cold jade, a jolt of pure, unadulterated historical memory violently projected into his sea of consciousness. He didn't just read the words; he lived them.
The Great Celestial Sunder...
A voice, ancient and sorrowful, echoed in his mind. He saw a vision of a sky painted in blood. Colossal figures, beings of unimaginable power, tore at the very fabric of the heavens. They were fighting over a radiant, golden river that flowed across the cosmos—the River of Providence.
"The Heavens were fractured," the voice whispered. "The infinite luck of the universe was shattered into finite pieces. The Age of Fading Providence began. To cultivate is no longer to commune with nature; it is to steal the dwindling scraps of destiny from one's peers."
Lu Chen's eyes widened as the vision shifted. He saw the formation of the Imperial Bureau of Heaven, men and women in star-embroidered robes casting massive nets of spiritual energy across the Nine Provinces, hoarding the golden light, deciding who was allowed to become a 'Child of Heaven' and who was doomed to mediocrity.
"They seek to forge a single, perfect vessel," the text continued. "A 'Child of Heaven' who can gather the remaining providence and mend the shattered sky. But the Heavens are blind, and their chosen are but parasites feeding on the corpses of the untalented."
The jade slip grew freezing cold in his hand. The next passage was sealed with a powerful psychic lock, a warning layered with lethal intent. Lu Chen sneered, using the Mirror to devour the psychic trap, absorbing its energy as a mere snack.
The final text revealed itself, burning like black fire in his mind.
"The prophecy speaks not only of the Child of Heaven, but of the Anomaly. The Sovereign of the Void. One born without the favor of the stars, bereft of destiny. He who holds no luck of his own shall become the black hole that consumes the world. The Void does not borrow; it plunders. The Void does not mend the Heavens; it devours them."
"By decree of the First Emperor of the Bureau of Heaven: Should the Sovereign of the Void be found, the Nine Provinces must unite to obliterate him. For if he ascends, the age of Heavenly authority will end, and the era of the Infinite Sword will begin."
Lu Chen slowly lowered the jade slip. The silence of the library felt heavier now, charged with a terrifying clarity.
Fang Tianyou wasn't the main villain. The Azure Cloud Sect was just a stepping stone.
His true enemy was the Imperial Bureau of Heaven. They controlled the very concept of luck in the Great Azure Realm. They manufactured 'Chosen Ones' to maintain their rule. And his existence—a man who could manually steal and redistribute the luck they so carefully hoarded—was an existential threat to the entire world order.
Sovereign of the Void, Lu Chen thought, tasting the words. A slow, chilling smile touched his lips. They fear me. Good. They hoard the world's providence, treating mortals like livestock to breed their perfect Child of Heaven. I will take it all. I will plunder every last drop of their precious destiny until their Heavens collapse.
He slipped the black jade record into his spatial ring. Knowledge was power, and this knowledge was the blueprint for his ascension.
But before he could turn back toward the stairs, the ambient temperature of the restricted section plummeted to a freezing absolute.
The runic lanterns illuminating the aisles flickered and died, plunging the seventh floor into a suffocating darkness.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The sound of rhythmic, deliberate footsteps echoed from the far end of the pavilion. They weren't coming from the stairs. They were coming from the shadows themselves.
Lu Chen's hand instantly gripped his rusted sword, his Void Intent flaring to completely mask his presence. He melted against the obsidian shelves, becoming indistinguishable from the dark.
A faint, silvery light pierced the gloom.
A man stepped into the aisle. He wore robes not of the Azure Cloud Sect, but of deep, midnight blue embroidered with silver constellations. In his hand, he held an intricate, spinning astrolabe. The rings of the device were turning frantically, glowing with a harsh, glaring light that seemed to cut through the very fabric of spiritual stealth.
An official of the Imperial Bureau of Heaven.
Lu Chen held his breath, slowing his heart rate to one beat per minute. How was a Bureau official here? In the Eastern Province's backwater sect?
The man paused just ten paces from Lu Chen's hidden position. He tapped the violently spinning astrolabe with a slender, pale finger.
"Fascinating," the man murmured, his voice smooth and cold as ice. "Sect Master Fang assured me this sect's providence was pure, dominated entirely by his prodigious son. Yet, the Star-Compass screams of an absolute void."
The man raised his head, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, profound silver light. He looked directly at the patch of shadows where Lu Chen was hiding.
"A tear in the tapestry of fate," the official smiled, a predator finding an unexpected delicacy. "You can hide your body, little rat. You can hide your Qi. But you cannot hide the fact that you possess absolutely no destiny. Show yourself, Anomaly. Or I will burn this entire pavilion down with you inside it."
The astrolabe flashed, and the space around Lu Chen began to lock, the air turning into solid crystal.
He had been found.