The golden aura of Sikong Jian burned like a miniature sun in the gloom of the Bloodwood Expanse. Through the Luck-Binding Mirror's Destiny Sight, Lu Chen saw it not just as light, but as a suffocating web of crimson and gold threads. It was the providence of a predator heavily favored by the Heavens.
Sikong Jian stood atop a jagged bloodwood branch, a sleek, silver-trimmed longbow in his hand and an Imperial Heaven-Fate Compass floating beside him. The compass needle spun wildly, agitating the surrounding spiritual energy into a suffocating pressure.
He is at the peak of the Golden Core realm, half a step into the Nascent Soul, Lu Chen assessed, his expression icy behind the mask of shadows. Worse, his Qi Yun is so dense it acts as an absolute defense. If I attack him now, the Heavens themselves will intervene—a random spatial tear, a sudden surge of his cultivation, a misfire of my own technique.
Lu Chen's newly formed Void Core pulsed, warning him of its instability. He had just survived an Extermination Decree and killed a squad of elite assassins. Fighting the Imperial Bureau's 'Heaven-Hunting Hound' head-on in his current state was a fool's errand.
"Sovereign of the Void," Sikong Jian's voice echoed, laced with a chilling arrogance that vibrated through the forest. "Your existence is a glitch in the Heavenly Dao. Surrender your stolen providence, and I might allow your soul to enter the reincarnation cycle intact."
Lu Chen didn't bother replying. His eyes narrowed, activating the Luck-Binding Mirror's Third Form. The world dissolved into a tapestry of karmic threads. He wasn't looking at Sikong Jian; he was looking for a blind spot. A gap in the Imperial Bureau's omniscient net.
His gaze snapped to the northwest. Just beyond the Bloodwood Expanse, the shimmering golden threads of the world abruptly stopped, forming a gaping, jagged hole of oppressive gray emptiness. It was a place entirely devoid of Heavenly Opportunity. A dead zone.
Perfect.
With a flick of his wrist, Lu Chen drew the Severing Edge. Instead of swinging at Sikong Jian, he slashed at the invisible, golden thread tethering Sikong Jian's compass to his own lingering aura.
SNAP.
The compass needle shattered instantly. Sikong Jian flinched, his eyes widening in shock as the absolute lock on his target vanished.
In that split second of Imperial confusion, Lu Chen stepped backward into the shadows, letting the Void energy swallow him whole.
***
Lu Chen traveled for three hours, moving entirely through the dark spaces between the province's spiritual ley lines. When he finally emerged, the heavy, metallic stench of bloodwood had been replaced by the foul odor of rot and stagnant water.
He stood at the edge of a valley shrouded in a thick, gray miasma. The soil beneath his boots was the color of ash. Up ahead, crumbling stone huts leaned against one another like exhausted corpses. A half-rotted wooden sign, completely devoid of spiritual energy, hung from a dead willow tree: Wuhen Village.
Village of No Traces.
As Lu Chen stepped past the boundary marker, he immediately felt the suppression. The spiritual energy here wasn't just thin; it was actively hostile. It felt like walking through a swamp of invisible mud that clung to his meridians, attempting to drag his cultivation down.
He walked through the dusty, desolate streets. The villagers he passed were skeletal, their eyes hollow, their skin a sickly shade of gray. A young boy ran past him, only to trip over a perfectly smooth stone and break his arm with a sickening crack. A woman carrying a wooden pail of water suddenly collapsed, gasping for air as her lungs failed her for no discernible reason. A perfectly intact roof of a nearby hut caved in, crushing an elderly man inside.
This wasn't normal poverty or sickness. This was absolute, unadulterated bad luck.
Lu Chen placed a hand against his chest. The Luck-Binding Mirror was trembling violently. It wasn't reacting to Qi Yun—it was reacting to its exact opposite.
Lu Chen activated his Destiny Sight. The village was drowning in thick, suffocating black-and-gray threads. It was a concentrated mass of 'Dark Providence.' Misfortune.
"So this is the truth of the Age of Fading Providence," Lu Chen murmured, his voice a cold whisper in the dead air.
The Heavens did not create luck out of thin air; they redistributed it. The world's total providence was finite. For sects like the Azure Cloud to sit on verdant peaks, bathed in golden Qi Yun, for 'Chosen Ones' like Fang Tianyou to stumble across ancient treasures in their sleep... the Heavens had to siphon the baseline luck from other places.
The Imperial Bureau of Heaven wasn't just managing destiny; they were hoarding it. They drew the luck away from places like this valley, dumping their karmic waste and misfortune here. These villagers were born to suffer tragedy, sickness, and disaster solely so the geniuses of the Eastern Province could prosper.
A garbage dump for the Heavens, Lu Chen thought, his eyes turning glacial.
But to the Sovereign of the Void, a garbage dump was just another feast.
Lu Chen leaped onto the roof of the highest, least-collapsed building in the village center. He sat in the lotus position, drawing the Severing Edge and laying it across his knees.
If his path was to become the Infinite Sword Sovereign by devouring what the Heavens hoarded, then he would also devour what the Heavens rejected. The Luck-Binding Mirror thrived on plundering providence, but its second form was the bestowal of Misfortune. To bestow it, he needed a reservoir.
"Mirror," Lu Chen commanded, his inner voice echoing in the dark expanse of his dantian. "Devour it all."
He opened his meridians completely, operating the forbidden breathing technique he had forged in the Abyss of Despair.
Instantly, the gray miasma covering Wuhen Village violently churned. The oppressive black threads of Dark Providence, stagnant for centuries, suddenly found a conduit. They whipped through the air like frenzied vipers, slamming into Lu Chen's body.
Crack!
Lu Chen violently coughed up a mouthful of black blood. The pain was excruciating. Unlike absorbing the golden, warm Qi Yun of a Chosen One, absorbing Dark Providence felt like swallowing shattered glass and freezing mud. The misfortune immediately began to attack his body. His meridians threatened to rot, his blood flow reversed, and a sudden, inexplicable urge to plunge his own sword into his heart clawed at his mind.
Is this the weight of a thousand doomed lives? Lu Chen grit his teeth, a savage smile breaking through the agony. Weak. Compared to the betrayal at the Azure Cloud Sect, compared to the isolation of the Abyss... this curse is nothing!
"Grind it down!" Lu Chen roared internally.
In his dantian, the pitch-black Void Core spun with terrifying velocity. It acted as a cosmic grinder, taking the hostile, rotting threads of misfortune and mercilessly crushing them into raw, neutral energy.
As the Void Core refined the curse, Lu Chen channeled the resulting power directly into his Sword Dao. His Void Sword Intent—normally an invisible, erasing force—began to mutate.
Gray veins spread across the pitch-black blade of his soul. The intent didn't just feel sharp anymore; it felt contagious.
He was forging a new property: 'Rotting Destiny.'
Any cultivator struck by this Sword Intent would not just suffer physical wounds. The intent would infect their Qi Yun. A genius struck by this blade would suddenly find their cultivation bottlenecks insurmountable; their defensive artifacts would inexplicably shatter; their most trusted allies would betray them. It was a poison for the soul's destiny.
Hours passed. The vortex of gray energy surrounding Lu Chen grew smaller and smaller as his Void Core greedily consumed centuries of hoarded misfortune. His cultivation base, previously unstable from his forced breakthrough in the Sword Tomb, solidified, pushing him firmly into the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm.
Down below, a miracle was occurring.
The villagers, long resigned to their cursed existence, stepped out of their decaying homes in stunned silence. The suffocating pressure in their chests was gone. A young woman, blind since birth due to a stray karmic hex, blinked as the gray film over her eyes dissolved. The ash-gray soil beneath their feet suddenly shifted in color, a single blade of green grass pushing through the dirt for the first time in ten generations.
The curse was lifted. Not out of benevolence, but because a predator had consumed it.
Lu Chen opened his eyes. They flashed with an eerie, ash-gray light before settling back to pitch black. He exhaled a breath of stale air that instantly withered the wood of the roof he sat upon.
He raised his right hand, condensing a sliver of his new Sword Intent. It flickered like a gray flame. He could feel the sheer malice contained within it. It was perfect.
However, Lu Chen's smirk faded as he looked up at the sky.
By consuming the Dark Providence, he had cured the village. But by curing the village, the "blind spot" in the Heavenly Fate web no longer existed. The natural, golden threads of the world were rapidly flooding back into the valley to fill the vacuum.
And riding those golden threads was a predator of the Heavens.
The clouds above Wuhen Village suddenly parted, not from natural wind, but from a terrifying, overbearing pressure that forced the newly hopeful villagers to their knees. A massive, golden astrolabe materialized in the sky, casting a blinding, judgmental light down upon the village square.
Stepping out from the center of the astrolabe was Sikong Jian, his silver longbow already drawn, an arrow made of condensed starlight aimed directly at Lu Chen's head.
"You are a slippery rat, Sovereign of the Void," Sikong Jian's voice boomed like rolling thunder, backed by the authority of the Imperial Bureau. "To hide in a Heaven-Forsaken plague zone... But your tricks end here. The Heavens see all."
Behind Sikong Jian, spatial rifts tore open as a dozen Gold-Robed Enforcers stepped through, surrounding the village perimeter. Their combined Golden Core auras locked the surrounding space, making another Void jump impossible.
Lu Chen didn't panic. He didn't even draw his sword immediately. Instead, he stood up slowly, brushing the dust from his robes. He looked at the massive, radiant golden providence shining above Sikong Jian's head—a true 'Child of Heaven'.
"The Heavens see all?" Lu Chen chuckled, the sound dry and scraping. He rested his hand on the hilt of the Severing Edge. "Then let's see how the Heavens react when their favorite dog catches rabies."
Lu Chen unsheathed his blade. It didn't gleam. Instead, a sickly, ash-gray aura bled from the steel, causing the surrounding golden light of the Imperial astrolabe to actively recoil, sizzling as if burned by acid.
Sikong Jian's pupils contracted, his infallible instincts suddenly screaming at him to run.
Lu Chen smiled, his Void Core spinning to life. "Come, Hound. Let me rot your destiny."