The sky above the Heavenly Realm was not blue—it was gold.
An endless stretch of soft golden radiance rippled like living silk, streaked with rivers of floating starlight and dotted by islands of glowing cloudstone. Celestial birds soared across the firmament, their feathers woven from mana threads and immortal essence. Palaces drifted on sky islands, each larger than mortal cities, sculpted from sacred stone and bound with law-forged sigils. Every inch of the heavens vibrated with order, serenity, and divine will.
And yet, that sky was cracking. Like shattered glass under divine pressure, thin veins of black spread across the glowing firmament. Thunder, no longer serene, roared with fury. Entire constellations trembled. The floating palaces dimmed one by one, their hovering forms lowering like bowing giants.
He had come. A lone man walked across the clouds—barefoot, robed in black streaked with scarlet threads. Each step he took scorched the sacred cloud-paths beneath his feet. His presence twisted space slightly, not with raw pressure, but with absolute refusal to obey the heavens. His long dark hair trailed behind like a shadow of fire, and his eyes... those eyes held no godly pride, no mortal fear. Only cold.
He was called Xian Ren, once known as the Heavenbreaker.
And today, he had returned to live up to that name.
The skies screamed as he neared the gates of Heaven. Thunder twisted around him. Immortal birds scattered, their instincts overriding centuries of divine obedience. The laws of balance began to ripple, protesting his very existence.
He said nothing but his gaze remained forward—piercing, unwavering, cruel in its calm.
Then came his voice not spoken, but murmured in a breathless whisper that echoed louder than any roar.
"They took her. Sold her soul like coin. I warned them—I warned them all."
Before him stood the Heavenly Gate—a titanic archway built from Primordial Obsidian, veined with golden law-runes that pulsed like a heartbeat. It was said the gate had stood unshaken since the birth of divine civilization.
Its twin towers reached into the clouds above, manned by the Heaven Guard—divine soldiers clad in gleaming soulsteel, weapons pulsing with sentient aura.
A tremor passed through the towers. Dozens of horns sounded at once—deep, resonant, thunderous.
Across the sky, doors opened. Soldiers began to flood the platforms.
Within minutes, thousands lined up in flawless formation—rows of silver and white, moving like parts of a single divine organism.
From behind them, more figures descended. Unlike the Heaven Guard, these beings wore cloaks marked with glowing crests—each representing a piece of a divine law.
They were the Heaven's Heralds—elite squad leaders who had earned fragments of the Skyward Oath itself. They stood tall, serene, unflinching.
And behind them came three towering figures, wrapped in robes that shimmered with miniature realms spinning around their shoulders. Domain Generals—commanders who ruled over planetary regions under Heaven's dominion.
The lead general, a man with skin like molten bronze and eyes like twin comets, raised a hand.
"Heavenbreaker. By decree of the Skyward Oath, you stand in violation of absolute divine order. Surrender your soul and submit."
Xian Ren stopped walking. He looked at them all. Then took one slow, measured step forward.
The ground beneath his feet rippled—cracks spreading like threads of ink across the cloudstone. The moment his heel touched down, space screamed.
"Then let Heaven try to take it."
The generals didn't wait. The order was given silently—divine minds needed no words. At once, every soldier channeled divine aura into the air. Dozens of layered formation arrays lit up—hexagonal nets of golden light forming a dome around the invader.
From above, spears of pure starlight rained down. From below, blades rose from formation circles. The sky became a furnace of divine precision.
But Xian Ren had seen it all before. He closed his eyes and the world slowed.
Petals bloomed in the air—illusory, glowing, floating outward from his chest. They spun slowly, dragging time itself around them.
The Chrono Lotus Field activated. To the soldiers, everything around them moved at full speed. But for Xian Ren, the world became a canvas—a still painting. He stepped lightly, weaving between falling spears as if dancing through mist.
He tapped two glowing lines in the air.
Crack!—One formation collapsed.
Snap!—A captain's blade shattered as he overcharged it unknowingly.
Whump!—A Herald twisted sideways mid-dash, only to be caught in his own side's suppression field.
Then Xian Ren drew his sword.
It was black, simple, and unadorned. But when it left its scabbard, the heavens held their breath. The blade trembled with an ancient echo, as if somewhere in the void, a dragon mourned.
This was the Heaven-Splitting Sword, forged from the starbone of the Abyssal Sky Dragon, slain during the Eternal War. A weapon that once split three realms in half with a single swing.
He did not move fast nor loud. Just inevitable.
One swing—an arc of black flame cleaved through five formations.
Another step—he blurred past a Herald, and that Herald exploded in a bloom of golden petals, soul erased.
A flick of his left hand—a void-slip. He vanished into a falling immortal cloud.
A second later, ten archers from the sky-towers fell dead, necks cleanly cut by an unseen wind.
The Domain Generals fought back with all their power. One summoned a miniature realm of gravity, pulling space into a crushing sphere. Another triggered a planetary war hammer, a weapon that collapsed moons.
But Xian Ren didn't fight them directly. He forced the battlefield to turn on itself.
He whispered a series of divine calculations—equations no god ever dared use in combat. His mastery of formation architecture allowed him to invert suppression lines. The planetary hammer struck one of their own shields, detonating an entire Herald squad.
The gravity realm bent into itself and collapsed, crushing the summoner.
Blood rained not red—but gold and silver, thick and shimmering, like molten stars.
By the time the sky stopped trembling, only three remained—one injured general crawling backward, two Heralds kneeling in broken formation.
Xian Ren walked through them, his robes untouched, his hair swaying gently.
At the end of the skybridge stood a towering door carved from translucent crystal and living light. The Gate of Law.
It pulsed gently, scanning divine essence in the air. Only gods with registered identities and Skyward Oath bindings could pass through it.
Xian Ren stopped before it.
The gate shimmered, confused—its sentience could not recognize him. His divine brand had been stripped when he defied Heaven.
He looked up at it then, without a word, he raised his left hand. His fingers trembled—not from weakness, but from the soul pain that followed.
He placed two fingers at the center of his chest, above his heart, and pulled.
A wisp of light emerged. A glowing symbol—the last remnant of his divine name, once etched into the heavens. He burned it.
The light hissed and his skin blistered then the air distorted and the gate screamed.
The Gate of Law cracked for the first time in divine history.
With a groan like a dying sun, it shattered inward—exploding into a spiral of law-runes and blinding flames.
Xian Ren walked through the falling light.
"My name no longer binds me," he murmured, voice cold as the void.
"Let Heaven fear my nameless wrath."
Behind him, the sky burned ahead of him, the throne of the King God awaited.
To be continued…