Darkness.
Zhengyi Zhiguang floated in an endless void, weightless, breathless adrift between life and death. His body was broken, his soul frayed. Pain had long since faded, leaving behind only silence and numbness. He didn't know how long he had been drifting. Minutes? Hours? An eternity?
Then came the whispers.
Ancient voices surrounded him, curling through the void like smoke. Whispers that spoke in languages he didn't understand, and yet... somehow, he did.
"He has returned..."
"The one who challenged the heavens..."
"Reborn... incomplete... yet destined."
A blinding light tore through the darkness.
Zhengyi's body jerked, suspended in the void as if pulled toward something vast and divine. From within the brilliance, a colossal figure emerged. It radiated unimaginable power. Its form constantly shifted, a five-clawed golden dragon of celestial majesty, then a radiant humanoid cloaked in a robe of flowing white mist. The being's long black hair shimmered with starlight, and its oceanic blue eyes blazed like twin suns.
Zhengyi stared in awe.
"That's... me?"
A tidal wave of memories surged from deep within his soul.
He saw himself, or rather, who he once was standing atop a floating altar made of celestial jade, surrounded by swirling galaxies and ethereal lotus blossoms. Thousands of cultivators knelt below, their chants reverberating across the cosmos.
He had reached the peak.
The final, unattainable realm of cultivation. The pinnacle that no mortal, god, or demon had ever conquered.
The Primordial Immortal God Realm.
At that moment, Zhengyi had stood at the threshold of ascension. ready to transcend mortality, sever karma, defy samsara, and fuse with the Dao itself.
But just as he reached out to grasp that final spark of transcendence, a shadow moved behind him.
A man in golden armour appeared. His sworn brother. His dearest friend. A brother not by blood, but by countless lifetimes of shared battles and near-death struggles.
"Forgive me, brother... But I can not let you ascend."
Zhengyi turned, eyes widening in disbelief.
"What are you doing?"
But the answer came not in words, only in steel.
A sword, cloaked in cursed black flames, pierced his back. Golden blood burst from his chest, staining the altar.
The heavens trembled.
The galaxy wept.
Zhengyi's divine soul fractured under the weight of betrayal.
"Why?" he asked, his voice weak, his light dimming.
"Because this world cannot contain you," the traitor whispered. "And I... I can not bear to be left behind the heavenly dao cannotbear it and i wont be defeatedby you again."
Lightning screamed across the cosmos. Time fractured. Space collapsed. The moment of ascension turned into a cataclysmic fall.
The betrayal was not merely of flesh but of soul. A betrayal shattered his core and cast his divine essence into the cycle of reincarnation.
He fell from the heavens, his power sealed, his memories buried deep.
Until now.
In the void, Zhengyi clutched his head. His body convulsed as the memories exploded like a storm within his soul.
He remembered the thousands of years he spent cultivating. The endless battles, the ancient secrets he unearthed, the heavens he defied.
He remembered his name.
"I am not just Zhengyi Zhiguang... I was once Bai Yong Gan a Primordial Immortal God."
The divine figure looked at him again, sorrow and pride mingling in its gaze.
"Your time has come again," it said. "But the world has changed. And so must you."
The figure extended its hand.
Zhengyi reached out.
Their fingers touched, and the golden light surged into him.
Power, Ancient and raw. Familiar and foreign. It flooded his soul, reforging his meridians, awakening dormant veins, and igniting spiritual runes within his bones.
His body quaked violently as divinity stirred within.
Then...
BOOM!
Zhengyi's body convulsed on the floor. He gasped, his eyes snapping open.
Mei Xue, who had been sitting silently at his bedside, jumped to her feet in shock.
"Zhengyi?!"
His eyes, once a calm oceanic blue, now shimmered with threads of gold.
And in that moment, as his breathing stabilized and his aura shifted subtly...
His body gradually levitated.
The trash of Ravenwood Town had vanished.
What remained...
Was a sleeping dragon beginning to awaken.
(Author's Note: Please tell me your honest thoughts about this chapter in the comments and what you think might come next).