The Bloodwood Expanse was a forest that bled. Crimson sap oozed from the pores of ancient, twisted ironwood trees, vaporizing into a thick red miasma that choked the spiritual energy of the air.
Lu Chen knelt in the blood-soaked dirt, coughing violently as spatial lightning arced across his torn robes. Ye Xiyue's secret spatial fissure had saved him from the Azure Cloud Sect Master's wrath, but the chaotic transport had left his newly forged Void Core trembling.
Before he could even cycle a breath of Qi, the Luck-Binding Mirror in his soul vibrated with a shrill warning.
Behind him, the miasma parted.
A gargantuan beast, easily fifty feet tall, dragged its colossal frame from the shadows. It was a Blood-Horned Wendigo, a Golden Core-level abomination that fed on the marrow of fallen cultivators. But it wasn't the beast's putrid breath or its six scythe-like arms that caught Lu Chen's attention.
It was the colossal pillar of crimson providence erupting from the beast's crown. In the laws of Qi Yun, gold represented heavenly fortune. Crimson represented blood-soaked karma—a destiny forged through slaughter.
Roar!
The Wendigo lunged, all six bone-scythes tearing through the air, creating a vacuum that sought to crush Lu Chen into paste.
Lu Chen didn't retreat. Slowly, the corner of his bloodied mouth curled upward.
"Perfect timing," he whispered.
He didn't draw the Severing Edge. Instead, he channeled the pitch-black Void Core spinning within his dantian. Unlike a traditional Golden Core, which radiated blinding light and condensed spiritual energy, the Void Core was a black hole. It demanded sustenance.
Lu Chen raised one hand, his fingers spread wide. *Void Sword Intent.*
A ripple of absolute darkness expanded from his palm. It wasn't a visible blade, but a localized collapse of reality. The Wendigo's six bone-scythes struck the dark ripple and simply ceased to exist. No explosion, no clash of energy. They were just erased.
The beast's triumphant roar choked into a gurgle of sheer terror. It tried to backpedal, its primitive instincts screaming that the tiny human before it was an anomaly—a glitch in the world's natural order.
"Where are you going?" Lu Chen's voice was a cold whisper that seemed to echo from every direction.
With a flick of his wrist, the localized void expanded, swallowing the Wendigo's lower half. As the beast collapsed in a geyser of foul blood, Lu Chen's eyes flared with the ethereal light of the Luck-Binding Mirror.
"Plunder."
Thick cords of crimson luck were violently ripped from the beast's dying soul. The energy flooded into the mirror, purifying instantly before cascading into Lu Chen's meridians. The spatial tears on his flesh knit together at an impossible speed. His erratic Void Core stabilized, hummed, and settled into the early stage of the Golden Core realm.
Lu Chen exhaled a breath of black mist. The power was intoxicating. But the silence of the Bloodwood Expanse was short-lived.
A deafening, celestial horn blew across the horizon. The sound was so immense it shook the crimson leaves from the trees and caused the earth to groan.
Lu Chen looked up through the canopy. The perpetually gloomy sky of the Great Azure Realm was forcibly overwritten. A blinding cascade of golden light tore through the clouds, unrolling like a cosmic scroll across the entire Eastern Province.
The projection was hundreds of miles wide, burning with the oppressive aura of the Imperial Bureau of Heaven. Golden characters materialized in the sky, each stroke radiating the majesty of the heavens.
[IMPERIAL HEAVEN-SEALING EDICT]
TO ALL SECTS, VAGRANTS, AND NOBLES OF THE NINE PROVINCES.
A HERETIC OF THE HIGHEST ORDER HAS BREACHED THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN. THE ENTITY KNOWN AS THE 'SOVEREIGN OF THE VOID' HAS PLUNDERED THE ANCIENT SWORD TOMB, SEVERED THE LEY LINES OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE, AND THREATENS THE TOTALITY OF OUR WORLD'S PROVIDENCE.
BOUNTY: ONE HUNDRED MILLION TOP-TIER SPIRIT STONES. A HEAVEN-RANK MARTIAL SCRIPT. THE TITLE OF PROVINCE LORD. GUARANTEED ASCENSION TO THE IMPERIAL BUREAU INNER COURT.
KILL ON SIGHT. MAY THE HEAVENS GUIDE YOUR BLADES.
Below the text, a massive, lifelike portrait of Lu Chen—clad in his bloodied robes, his eyes burning with cold indifference—was projected for billions to see.
The forest around Lu Chen grew deathly silent. The sheer weight of the bounty was enough to make even Nascent Soul monsters salivate. To the entire cultivation world, Lu Chen was now a walking treasury. A target painted in the brightest gold.
Lu Chen stared at his own colossal face in the sky. For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, a low chuckle escaped his lips. The chuckle grew into a cold, hollow laugh that resonated with his Void Core.
"Wanted?" Lu Chen mused, wiping a speck of ash from his cheek. "A bounty?"
He summoned the Luck-Binding Mirror. Through its third form, *Destiny Sight*, he looked out past the Bloodwood Expanse.
In the distance, he could see dozens—no, hundreds—of golden threads rapidly turning their trajectory toward his location. Cultivators. Geniuses. Assassins. The so-called 'Chosen Ones' of the era, all drawn by the scent of unparalleled reward. Every single one of them was laden with Qi Yun, carrying the very heavenly providence Lu Chen needed to evolve his spirit root and eventually mend the Great Celestial Sunder on his own terms.
To the Imperial Bureau, they had just initiated the greatest manhunt in the history of the Age of Fading Providence.
To Lu Chen, they had just rung the dinner bell.
"Let them come," Lu Chen whispered to the wind, his eyes shifting from dark brown to the shimmering abyssal black of the Void. "The more they hunt me, the more luck delivers itself to my doorstep. I am not the prey. I am the abyss they are eagerly throwing themselves into."
Rustle.
The subtle displacement of air was the only warning. Lu Chen didn't turn around. His Destiny Sight had already caught the sudden manifestation of three gray threads of fate dropping from the canopy above.
Shadow Sword Pavilion.
Three assassins, all at the Peak of Foundation Establishment, clad in form-fitting mimetic armor that blended with the red bark of the trees. They held daggers coated in a localized spatial-lock poison, designed to prevent their target from using movement arts.
"Target acquired. His Qi is fluctuating. Strike now!" the lead assassin hissed through a voice-transmission talisman.
They moved with flawless synchronization, forming a triad execution matrix.
Lu Chen sighed. "Too slow."
He didn't move his feet. He simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch, letting a poisoned blade shave a single hair from his temple. Simultaneously, he drew the Severing Edge.
The ancient sword didn't hum with light; it drank the ambient light of the forest. Lu Chen channeled his Void Core, weaving a singular thread of black sword intent.
First Form: Severing the Thread.
The blade flashed. Not at the assassins' physical bodies, but at the gray fate threads binding them to the mortal plane.
Snip.
The lead assassin suddenly froze mid-air, his eyes widening in pure horror. He didn't have a scratch on his body, but the spark of life in his eyes abruptly vanished. His soul had been unmoored from his physical form.
He dropped to the forest floor like a sack of stones, dead before he landed.
The remaining two assassins aborted their attack, kicking off the tree trunks to retreat. Panic bled through their disciplined training.
"He's not Foundation Establishment! The intel was wrong, he's a Golden Core! Fall back!"
"Retreat?" Lu Chen's voice was right beside the second assassin's ear.
The assassin swung his dagger wildly, but Lu Chen simply grabbed the man's wrist. The Luck-Binding Mirror flashed.
"Plunder."
The golden providence radiating from the assassin was violently yanked out of his chest. As his luck was drained, the assassin's spatial-lock dagger slipped from his grip, inexplicably bouncing off his own knee and burying itself deep into his femoral artery.
Misfortune. The ultimate consequence of zero luck.
The assassin bled out in seconds, gurgling in terror as he watched Lu Chen turn toward the final fleeing shadow.
Lu Chen raised two fingers, pointing at the retreating figure hundreds of yards away. He condensed his Void Sword Intent into a pinpoint needle of absolute darkness and flicked his wrist.
The black needle crossed the distance instantly, punching cleanly through the back of the assassin's skull.
Three Peak Foundation Establishment assassins. Dead in less than ten breaths.
Lu Chen walked among the corpses, letting the Luck-Binding Mirror absorb the residual, fragmented Qi Yun. It was a meager meal compared to the Wendigo, but every drop counted. The golden aura flowed into him, reinforcing his newly condensed Void Core.
"Shadow Sword Pavilion works fast," Lu Chen muttered, looting a spatial ring from the leader. "But their luck is pitiful. I need the true Heavens' favored."
As if answering his silent challenge, the temperature in the Bloodwood Expanse plummeted.
The crimson miasma froze, turning into delicate, blood-red snowflakes. The Luck-Binding Mirror violently pulsed against Lu Chen's chest, burning hot against his skin.
Lu Chen's eyes narrowed. He activated Destiny Sight and looked toward the northern edge of the forest.
A thread of fate wasn't just approaching; it was tearing through the environment like a golden tidal wave. It was so thick, so unimaginably dense with providence, that the very laws of the world seemed to warp around it to clear a path.
Footsteps echoed. Slow, deliberate, and heavy with authority.
A figure stepped through the frozen crimson fog. He was clad in the immaculate white and gold robes of an Imperial Bureau High Enforcer, but his aura was terrifyingly young. He carried an oversized, golden greatsword resting casually on his right shoulder. His eyes, devoid of sclera, glowed with pure, blinding starlight.
Lu Chen felt a rare flicker of genuine pressure weigh down on his shoulders.
"So," the young man's voice boomed, carrying the resonant weight of a heavenly decree. "You're the glitch they're making such a fuss about."
Lu Chen gripped the hilt of the Severing Edge, the black void energy wrapping around the blade. He recognized the armor. He recognized the absurd, almost blinding pillar of golden luck that practically formed a halo over the boy's head.
Sikong Jian. The Heaven-Hunting Hound of the Imperial Bureau. A monster rumored to have achieved Golden Core at the age of twelve by accidentally swallowing a piece of a shattered star.
"A glitch?" Lu Chen replied, his voice chilling the air further. "I prefer the term 'correction.'"
Sikong Jian smiled, a predator baring its fangs. He swung the massive golden greatsword off his shoulder, and the earth beneath them shattered into a spiderweb of fissures.
"Good. I was hoping you wouldn't be boring."