The sky was a bruised canvas, choked with blackened clouds and streaks of silver lightning. Beneath it, the Southern Vast Desert no longer resembled any map. It had become a grave of sand and smoke, a cratered world baptized by divine wrath and unholy might.
And at its center stood Dao Wei.
His figure swayed slightly—blood staining his robes, ash marking his skin, the tips of his hair darkened with godfire. The silence after the storm was deafening, almost cruel. He stood alone, the wind whistling through the still-falling petals of his fading Spring Domain. In his hand, Skyfall pulsed faintly, like a star losing its light.
He exhaled.
A tremor ran through his limbs.
He was victorious—but not unscathed.
Then, light—brilliant and crystalline—began to emanate from Skyfall. It was not just a glow. It was an embrace. A reminder of who he was before the killing, before the devouring, before Diteyi's soul screamed its last.
A voice, tender yet laced with authority, rang out from the sword's depths.
"Zadon!"
The name echoed through his Sea of Consciousness, through every plane that ever feared the void. It wasn't just a word. It was a command.
Dao Wei flinched.
Skyfall glowed brighter, forming a halo around him. The darkness recoiled. His irises flickered—those soul-consuming voids beginning to retreat into their original depthless baby blue.
"You were never meant to become that, Dao Wei," Skyfall said, her tone almost... motherly.
She floated from his grasp, levitating before him, wings of radiant Qi emerging from her hilt like the feathers of a celestial phoenix.
"Zadon… the Reaper of Gods. The one who silenced the Faulty Primordials. Even the stars wept when his name was whispered in the Old Tongue. If you become him, this realm will fall. No sword will stop you. No love will reach you. And no one… not even the Mother Goddess… will weep when your soul burns away."
Dao Wei blinked.
His breath steadied.
He looked at his own hand—his veins still traced with shadow. His aura, though reduced, still radiated the unmistakable scent of death and devouring. But... he was beginning to remember. The pain. The loss. The loyalty of his fallen sect. His humanity.
"I…" he began, but the words never finished.
Because the heavens cracked open.
BOOM!
Three pillars of force crashed down from above like divine warhammers, forming craters as three figures emerged amidst a whirling storm of sand and flame. Nirvana Realm—each one reeking of power, age, and arrogance.
Dao Wei's crimson eyes snapped toward them.
They didn't bother hiding their disgust.
One wore a robe woven with threads of living flame—his skin molten, eyes burning. Another, clad in thunder-black armor, bore the sigil of the White Sky Sect. The last was draped in a pristine white shroud, face hidden beneath a fox mask, a Soul Executioner of the Celestial Tribunal.
"So, this is the demon." The thunder-armored one sneered. "Sword Childe. An Abyssal Spawn. What a pity we couldn't arrive sooner."
The fox-masked one chuckled, a blade of transparent light appearing in her hand. "A pity? Look at him. He's done. Half-dead. Barely even worth the effort. Do you think he still has the strength to scream?"
"We'll see," the flame-robed man said with a grin. "After I take that sword of his. And the treasures of the Demon Childe's corpse. I hear his Spatial Ring alone could buy the Empire."
Dao Wei said nothing.
His expression was calm, almost… indifferent. But his grip on Skyfall tightened.
"Oh? No insults? No last words?" the fox-masked woman taunted. "Where's the fury? Where's the demon god everyone's talking about?"
Still, Dao Wei said nothing.
His silence spoke louder than any threat.
Then, in one breath—without fanfare, without drama—he moved.
BOOM!
Their mocking ended.
Dao Wei's foot slammed into the earth, sending a quake across the broken battlefield. His sword blurred—not as an arc of light, but like a line carved by fate itself. The flame-robed Nirvana cultivator barely managed to raise his defense when Dao Wei's blade struck—and shattered it.
CLANG!
He was flung back, vomiting blood, the landscape behind him scorched from Dao Wei's strike.
The thunder-armored one stepped forward, raising his war hammer.
"You want to die that badly?!"
He launched toward Dao Wei like a thunderbolt, swinging down with enough force to crack a mountain.
But Dao Wei twisted—his movement elegant, almost theatrical. Skyfall parried the hammer with a screech of clashing force, then spun upward in a reverse slash.
Blood sprayed.
The warrior howled—his chest gashed wide.
Dao Wei landed softly, the petals still floating around him, as if even death itself moved in slow motion when he did.
"You think I'm the demon?" he finally spoke.
The three froze.
His voice was quiet. Wounded. But laced with something far more dangerous than rage.
"Then come. Let me show you what your 'righteousness' tastes like… on the edge of a sword."
Whoosh!
They all came.
And Dao Wei met them—fatigued, yes. But sharper. Quicker. More dangerous than ever before. A swordsman not bound by mercy or rage, but by something purer—conviction. Every move was deliberate. Every technique a lesson. And every cut a sentence.
They weren't fighting a demon. They were facing the Being, Zadon, half-asleep.
And the air was thick with dust and smoke, blood and lightning.
Night had fallen—but this was no ordinary night.
The moon, like an eye smeared with crimson tears, watched from above as the sands of the Southern Vast Desert became a slaughterfield. The stars refused to shine. Even the heavens seemed to look away.
Dao Wei stumbled, panting, his sword arm trembling with strain. Skyfall was slick with blood—his enemies', yes—but his own too. His knees buckled for a moment, but he forced himself upright.
A roar echoed behind him. A flame-clad Nirvana cultivator charged, his body engulfed in searing fire.
"You're breaking!" he bellowed. "You can't hold it back, can you? That rage. That divine curse inside you!"
Dao Wei didn't answer.
His silence was dangerous.
His eyes flared with black streaks of divine corruption, and cracks had begun to form across his arms—veins lit with a godlight too vast for his current realm to endure. Every technique he used splintered his body further. The price of power… was pain.
He spun, deflecting a brutal hammer strike from the second Nirvana cultivator, but the impact sent him skidding back across the sand.
A third followed—fox-masked, Soul Executioner. She blurred through shadow, slicing a deep line across his ribs. Blood splashed across the sand.
"Still holding back, Sword Childe?" she mocked, circling. "Still pretending to be mortal?"
Dao Wei swayed. His breath was jagged.
And then, like a whisper through wind and fire, a voice slid into his mind—silken, ancient, and utterly foreign.
"Descend… and be reborn."
Dao Wei froze.
His heart stopped.
The voice wasn't Nyx. It wasn't Skyfall. It wasn't even the Old Ones.
It was something grim.
"You were not made to bleed. You were made to break the sky. Let it fall. Let it burn. Let it all die…"
Dao Wei dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth as the weight of his own Qi surged uncontrollably through him, his dantian cracking like overpressured glass. Skyfall flickered in warning, her glow dimming, almost begging him to stop.
"Damn it…" he growled. "This body… it can't hold it…"
From all sides, the three Nirvana elites closed in. They saw their chance.
BOOM!
A flaming fist struck his back.
CRACK!
A hammer blow slammed his shoulder, shattering the bone.
SLASH!
A blade tore through his thigh, sending him to the ground in a pool of his own blood.
"This is the end, Reaper!" the flame-wrapped man snarled. "You should've never crawled from the Abyss!"
Dao Wei collapsed, eyes dimming.
But even on his knees—he radiated something deeper than power… it was pure defiance.
His aura pulsed like a dying star. The ground trembled and the clouds churned. Sand lifted into the air, refusing to settle.
Then—more shouting.
"THERE HE IS!! That's Sword Childe!"
A swarm of black-cloaked figures tore across the dunes—Demon Sect assassins, eyes gleaming with madness and rage.
At least two dozen. Maybe more. Their arrival was sudden and overwhelming, a swarm of locusts drawn by blood and chaos.
"Great!" barked the thunder-armored guy. "There's no going back for you now!"
The Nirvana trio turned defensively, forming a triangle around Dao Wei's faltering body.
The Demon Sect circled in like hounds, whispering curses and laughing, their blades hungry for the blood of the man who'd slain the Demon Childe.
Dao Wei's thoughts were slipping—too much blood loss, too many voices, too much power tearing him apart from within.
He grit his teeth.
"No…" he rasped. "I'm not done yet…"
Then he moved—fast.
Too fast.
A flicker of shadow, a blur of white hair, and blood sprayed as he carved through the Demon Sect's front line with a single wide arc of Skyfall. But even that was short-lived. His body reeled. His legs nearly collapsed beneath him.
"He's trying to run!" one Nirvana cultivator shouted.
And they were right.
Dao Wei's mind screamed for vengeance, but reason—Skyfall—Nyx—whatever tether he had left—guided him west.
To the forest.
The Deadwood Expanse.
He turned and ran.
Whoosh!
Not with fear—but with strategy.
Through fire. Through pain. Through the maddened howls of the Demon Sect and the roars of the Nirvana warriors. His silhouette, bloodstained and broken, fled westward as flames licked the sky and night deepened into nightmare.
He didn't look back—He couldn't afford to.
The forest would hide him.
And maybe—just maybe—buy him time to survive.