The void sang in silence. Not the quiet of peace, but the kind that echoed with something ancient and absolute—a hush that weighed like stone on the breath of existence itself.
Xian Ren stood alone within the Chamber of Soul Reflection, a sacred hollow buried beneath Heaven's roots, where time seemed to unravel into threads of light and memory. The chamber stretched wider than cities and deeper than oceans, yet no walls could be seen—only a boundless, mist-veiled plane, illuminated by a trembling silver glow.
In the center, floating above a spiraling dais of soulsteel and celestial quartz, was the Soul Reflection Mirror—a flawless oval of divine obsidian ringed with golden script. The air rippled around it as though it breathed.
Xian Ren's robes—once gleaming white with star-thread—were now dulled, darkened by the toll of war and the slow rot of divine poison within him. His long black hair drifted weightlessly in the airless chamber, as if underwater. Cracks of pale golden light ran along his arms and neck, glowing faintly like dying veins of starlight.
His expression was unreadable—tranquil, but edged with exhaustion. His silver-gold eyes burned dimly, not from lack of power, but from the cost of holding everything back. This was no longer the Xian Ren who tore apart Heaven's gates with one hand; this was a man standing on the edge of divine extinction, preparing to break himself on purpose.
He stepped forward, each movement rippling the air as if the very reality bent to acknowledge his presence.
As he approached the mirror, the fog in the chamber shifted, curling around him like curious spirits. With every step, it revealed flashes of past lives—echoes drifting in and out of form.
Then the mirror shimmered and it began.
The surface of the Soul Reflection Mirror turned to liquid light and pulled apart like a curtain. From it, reflections emerged—dozens of them. All were Xian Ren, and yet none were quite the same.
The first stepped forth—a version of him dressed in war-worn armor, face scarred and hardened, clutching the severed head of a divine beast.
"I am wrath," it said. "I chose destruction to save her."
Another emerged, a version cloaked in black and purple, eyes hollow with endless calculation. "I am mind. Strategy carved my path. But did it keep her soul safe?"
Then a third appeared—young, gentle-eyed, wearing robes of a mortal scholar. "I am heart. I lived one life for love, and died never touching power. Was I the truest form of us?"
Xian Ren didn't speak. He watched each version with unflinching calm.
More appeared, crowding the void like stars on a lightless sea—each carrying fragments of what he was across eons. A god crowned in gold but weeping blood. A wanderer who walked broken worlds with her name carved into his soul into a tyrant, a savior and a coward who had once chosen silence.
They encircled him.
"You would kill the god within," said one, voice sharp as thunder.
"You would cast away your divine name?" asked another, sorrow in its tone. "You will become no more than a speck in a dying world."
"And if she never awakens?" a third whispered.
Silence followed then, Xian Ren spoke.
"I am both," he said, voice quiet but immovable. "I will die as a god. And rise as her husband."
The mirror pulsed and then reflections trembled. One by one, they nodded—and dissolved into threads of silver fire, circling him like memory returning home.
The ritual began. He floated to the top of the spiraling dais, where the stone turned to pure soulglass. His fingers weaved through the air, carving runes that burned in gold and crimson—The Echo Script, a language forbidden even in the oldest heavens.
Around him, the chamber responded. The mists lifted further to reveal symbols etched into the sky dome above—laws of the universe engraved into the skin of Heaven itself. They trembled. For even Heaven feared what was coming.
Xian Ren extended both hands toward his chest. His fingers sank into his own sternum—not flesh, but soul—and drew forth a ribbon of golden-blue light.
His soul thread. It pulsed like a living star, dense with eons of power, memory, and burden with excruciating slowness, he began to pull it apart.
Each layer he unraveled sent echoes of pain through the chamber. Not physical agony—but existential unraveling, the feeling of undoing everything one ever was. His breath hitched, his lips bloodless. His skin cracked, and divine light leaked from his pores.
First, he extracted his cultivation memory.
Glowing sigils spun from the thread—battle arts, soul forging, mana refining techniques honed across countless realms. Entire manuals collapsed into a single droplet of knowledge, which hovered in the air before him.
Second, he reached for the emotional resonance that bound him to Yue Ling'er.
This thread was delicate, shimmering pale lavender and gold, warm to the touch. As he pulled it, the chamber flooded with images—her laughter under cherry trees, the way she whispered his name during the eclipse, the way her soul pulsed against his during shared meditation.
Tears formed in his eyes but he did not pause.
Finally, he unraveled the strategic core of his being.
This one was colder—an obsidian strand woven with razor-thin lines of silver. This was the mind that had defeated gods, razed empires, and rewritten war itself. Without it, he would not be Xian Ren.
Yet he pulled it free.
Three threads now floated before him, pulsing with divine weight. They began to spin around one another, braiding slowly into a single soul fragment—shaped by memory, love, and wisdom.
It pulsed then came the hardest part.
He turned to face the sky dome above—where Heaven's remaining Laws of Existence watched. These laws had no eyes, no mouths, no faces—but they stirred in protest. The dome cracked faintly, light bleeding from above like judgment.
This ritual… defied everything.
To allow a god's fragment to reincarnate into another realm, he had to erase all divine identification. And that meant one thing—
His name. He closed his eyes.
"I relinquish the name... Xian Ren," he said quietly.
The chamber screamed. Winds erupted—silent but devastating. The sky dome shattered in places, raining crystalline shards of heavenly commandment. His body convulsed. The soulglass dais beneath him melted, reforming into an unstable altar.
The soul fragment pulsed erratically. The laws were trying to crush it, to erase it before it could ever reach another world.
So he did the unthinkable. He burned a part of his eternal soul thread, not memory nor power.
But lifespan the portion that tethered him to immortality itself.
He reached into his chest once more, and this time pulled fire—black and gold and screaming with loss. He pressed it into the forming fragment, using it to shield it against the collapsing chamber.
Pain surged through him. His body, made of condensed divinity, began to crack open.
Yet the laws slowed. The resistance ceased.
The fragment stabilized. It floated gently in the air, glowing with quiet purpose.
No longer divine, yet not mortal but a bridge, seed and rebirth.
He whispered its name: "Li Tianming."
The fragment pulsed once in response.
Then, it vanished—blinking out of the chamber, passing through the dimensional seams between realms, flying toward the world called Veylanth.
And Xian Ren… collapsed.
He fell to one knee, his body flickering in and out of form. His robes burned away, replaced by strands of raw mana. His hair grayed. His eyes dimmed, not dead—but no longer whole.
Yet he smiled for the first time in centuries, he smiled—not as a god.
But as a man who had sacrificed the heavens to become a part of his wife's world once more.
The chamber went silent again. The mirror darkened.
And in the void that remained, a whisper echoed like prophecy:
"Let Heaven forget me. Let fate break. Let love remain."
To be continued…