The skies above the Eastern Wastes dimmed as the blood-hued moon rose, casting a crimson hue upon the land. The winds carried whispers of dread and reverence—whispers of a name that had begun to echo across the thousand dominions of the Low Realms.
Li Xuan.
His presence had become the fulcrum around which empires tilted and sects crumbled. At the core of his shadowy rise lay the Heaven Auction House, no longer just a mysterious institution of trade but a colossal engine of influence. With each transaction, with each deal sealed in secret rooms lit by floating karmic lanterns, Li Xuan's control deepened.
Tonight, however, he did not reside in the grand auction palace. He sat cross-legged atop the black jade dais within the Void Chamber, the innermost sanctum of his hidden citadel. The chamber pulsed with arcs of silver and violet energy, threads of karma drawn from a thousand deaths and betrayals across the Lower Realms.
His eyes were closed, his breathing faint, yet the space trembled around him. Inside his sea of consciousness, the Voidheart Enlightenment Sutra churned.
It was not a technique one could learn.
It was a curse. A trial. A crucible of identity.
Pain howled through his soul as insights clawed at his mind, ripping apart the barriers of mundane perception. His thoughts burst like shattered mirrors, revealing fragmentary truths of time, causality, and self.
Visions of past lives flickered.
A scholar who burned libraries for a single forbidden text.
A tyrant who slaughtered the gods of his world and wept over their corpses.
A beggar who starved beside immortals and laughed.
All these fragments converged into Li Xuan's present self—not as memories, but as karmic echoes anchoring him to the infinite weave of fate.
Blood spilled from his lips. Bones cracked. Still, he endured.
When he opened his eyes, they were pools of infinite night, reflecting neither light nor hope.
"Control... is not merely dominance," he murmured, voice dry. "It is understanding. It is being the knot in every thread."
A knock echoed from the chamber's edge.
Only one dared interrupt him during cultivation.
It was Ji Suyin, one of the Seven Generals.
"Master," she said, kneeling with her head bowed, "the Shadow Lotus Sect and the Verdant Flame Temple have both submitted. Their treasuries and secrets are being transported to the Auction Vault."
Li Xuan said nothing.
Ji Suyin shivered. Silence from him was worse than rebuke.
He finally stood. "Good. Prepare the forty-ninth trade conclave. Only our elites shall attend."
Ji Suyin nodded and vanished.
Li Xuan walked to the chamber's edge. There, suspended in a crystal sphere, floated a map of the Lower Realms and its one million supporting realms. Each realm was marked by karmic strings—gold, red, black.
Most were now tethered to him.
Not by war.
Not by peace.
But by debt, deal, oath, and silence.
He pressed his hand upon the crystal sphere.
The map pulsed.
"Let them believe they are free."
He turned, walking deeper into the shadows.
In the coming weeks, he would consolidate more. No longer simply an undercurrent in the Low Realms, he would become the hidden Monarch beneath the surface of a million worlds.
And as his power grew, the threads of karma began to stir restlessly.
Something ancient had noticed him.
Something that had long dwelled in the Forbidden Realms.
And it was sm