Hua Yang Zhenjun's fingers twitched imperceptibly, the weight of a thousand sect vendettas pressing against his immortal dao heart. Across the throne hall, the Dragon King's Golden Blood pulsed in its crystal amphora—each throb synchronizing with the Ten Thousand Laws Soul-Stealing Tome's whispered promises.
Become more than Zhenjun, the artifacts crooned. Become sovereign.
The True Monarch's gaze swept across trembling cultivators. How small they looked beneath vaulted ceilings where dragon kings once held celestial court—Sword Sect disciples clutching jian blades gone dull with fear, Six Sun Patriarchs' stolen daylight sputtering like dying candles.
"Your threats reek of mortal stench," Hua Yang's voice cracked stone tiles. "This hall has witnessed dynasties of dragonfire extinguished. What are your insect squabbles but fading echoes?"
Li Yongzhe's silver hair whipped in building qi turbulence. Behind him, Cha Feixiong's severed limbs regrew with the sickening pop of bone forcing through necrotic flesh—a lesser demon might have screamed, but the Six Paths Master merely grinned through blackened teeth.
"You court oblivion, Zhenjun," the Demon Sect envoy hissed. "Even the Nine-Headed Azure Dragon fell to—"
Hua Yang's laughter crystallized the air.
"I am the falling!"
The Dance of Annihilation
The first deaths came as poetry written in disintegrating flesh.
Hua Yang's fingers flickered through Nine Celestial Mudras—artistry perfected through eight centuries of monastic isolation. From his clasped palms erupted the Verdant Crucible Skyrend: a kaleidoscopic storm of annihilation that reduced Six Sun disciples to floating ash motes.
Li Yongzhe's summoned asura evaporated mid-swing, its obsidian battle-axe dissolving into harmless shadow. Cha Feixiong's hungry ghosts froze in feeding frenzy poses before crumbling like desiccated locusts.
"Pathetic." Hua Yang's silk slippers kissed jade tiles as he advanced. "Your parlor tricks couldn't light a beggar's pipe."
A Qingcheng water blade pierced his left shoulder.
The Tribulation Transcendence cultivator examined the injury with academic curiosity. "Ah. The Misty Lake's famed Thousand Cuts Technique." He plucked the watery sword from his flesh, the wound sealing before blood could stain his robe. "Your master executed it better... before I ate his soul."
The attacker's scream died as five colored ribbons from Hua Yang's crucible reduced her to a screaming soul fragment trapped in a jade paperweight.
Flight of the Broken
Li Yongzhe's spatial translocation talisman crumbled in blood-slick fingers. Behind him, the last Six Paths adept dissolved mid-syllable of a teleportation chant—Hua Yang's ribbons bisecting the man's dantian precisely enough to leave his golden core intact for harvesting.
"Run, little silver fox," the True Monarch crooned. "Tell your Demon Emperor his tribute is overdue."
Cha Feixiong stumbled over petrified merfolk statues, his regeneration talismans overloading. "The Codex foretold this! The Seventh Hell's—"
A ribbon pierced his left eye, detonating the Demonic Master's accumulated corpse poison reserves. The chain reaction vaporized seventeen fleeing cultivators and collapsed the Hall of Celestial Accord's eastern wing.
From their crystalline vantage, Zhao Rui counted seventeen distinct energy signatures extinguished in three breaths.
"Brother..." Dun Che's whisper trembled. "Even Yellow Springs' Torture Marshals didn't..."
"Quiet." Zhao Rui pressed deeper into shadows as Hua Yang's ribbons carved fractal patterns through marble. The God-Sealing Tome pages burned against his chest—not in warning, but recognition.
The Price of Sovereignty
When the last scream faded, Hua Yang stood amidst floating debris—a conductor surveying his orchestra of destruction. The Dragon King's Golden Blood now glowed white-hot, resonating with spilled essence.
"Come out, little mice," he sang towards Zhao Rui's pillar. "I'll make your deaths quick. Relatively."
Dun Che's claws sank into fossilized coral. "Plan?"
"Distract him."
"Distract a Tribulation monster? How?"
Zhao Rui's fingers brushed the breathing manuscript. "Be magnificent."
The fox demon's grin revealed stolen jewels set in molars. "Finally."
Dun Che's Gambit
The explosion of stolen treasure from Dun Che's spatial pouch rivaled supernovae.
"Behold!" The fox demon pirouetted through raining diamonds, a stolen Six Sun banner tied around his waist like a loincloth. "Dun Che the Death-Defying! Slayer of—"
Hua Yang's ribbons licked out.
"—abyssal gloom!" Dun Che's improvised dance carried him between disintegrating energy streams. A Qingcheng water blade (salvaged from corpse) parried three strikes before shattering. "You fight like my grandmother! And she died of foot fungus!"
The True Monarch's amusement lasted precisely nine seconds—until a hurled amphora of Phoenix Urn Wine temporarily blinded his qi perception.
Zhao Rui's Revelation
The Ten Thousand Laws Tome burned through Zhao Rui's palm flesh as he pressed it against the Golden Blood amphora.
Not scripture. Not blood.
The truth unfolded in fractal visions—the Dragon Kings' final gambit against Heaven's tyranny. The "tome" was celestial lung tissue. The "blood" stolen sunlight from creation's dawn.
Hua Yang's ribbons found Zhao Rui's throat.
"Thief."
The word carried weight enough to crack Zhao Rui's cervical vertebrae. Golden motes swarmed from his pores, their song harmonizing with the hall's crumbling dragonbone architecture.
"Not theft," Zhao Rui gasped. "Return."
The amphora shattered.
Dragon's Final Breath
Creation's first sunrise erupted through the throne hall.
Hua Yang's scream contained multitudes—every cultivator he'd consumed across eight centuries shrieking through his disintegrating form. The True Monarch's vaunted Tribulation Transcendence cultivation base unraveled in reverse chronological order:
The slaughter of Cloudpeak Monastery (3 seconds prior)The theft of Southern Wastes' Earth Pulse (47 years prior)His first golden core formation (824 years prior)
When the light faded, only infant Hua Yang remained—a mewling thing clutching a rusted medallion.
Dun Che lowered his treasure-shield (an ornate chamber pot). "Well that was—"
The Dragon King's skeleton disintegrated. The entire palace followed.
Ephemeral Victory
Zhao Rui awoke to pressure changes signaling oceanic collapse. Around them, the Dragon Palace folded into non-Euclidean angles—reality itself rejecting the vacuum left by stolen divinity.
"Time to leave," he coughed, golden motes reconstructuring shattered ribs.
Dun Che stared at the screaming medallion in his paw. "But the loot—"
"Already ours." Zhao Rui nodded at the God-Sealing Tome now bearing a dragon-shaped watermark. "The real treasure was the apocalypse we survived."
The fox demon considered this while stuffing jade chopsticks into his ear canal. "Deep."
Their laughter echoed through collapsing dimensions—two shadows fleeing the dawn of a saner world.