The heavens blazed.
Fire pill furnaces burned within the God Realm as if a thousand suns had fallen. Divine creatures—phoenixes, qilin, time-immemorial dragons—all bowed in reverence for one man. On the Celestial Alchemic Tower, Ye Chenfeng smiled silently and resolute, his robes attired with colors of chaos flame. All immortals, all gods, all emperors bent their head.
"Alchemist God!" they cried. "Great Ye Chenfeng!"
No other had ever surpassed him in a billion years. He made potions that healed the dao-rotten corpses of ancient kings. He made artifacts more cutting than fate, talismans that could trap ghosts of past ages, edifices that could topple empires. He was sage, god, and creator in one.
And next to him—her hand wrapped around his—stood the woman he had loved since centuries past. His wife. His empress. His calm in storms. Her mouth flexible with curves, her face aglow like a moon in springtime. Ye Chenfeng had never questioned her.
Never ever.
And thus he never noticed the betrayal when it came.
Her delicate, petal-tipped fingers, so fragile in their daintiness, grew into talons. Silver flash, and agony roared in his chest. The holy heart put to the fire of anarchy shattered against her blow. Betrayal hardened in the instant—he could hardly believe it was occurring, even as the blood marked his robes.
Silence closed around them in the God Realm.
"Why…" His voice trembled, suspended between horror and pleading.
His wife's eyes were no longer gentle. They shone with hunger, hard and cruel.
"Because, husband, even gods are ladders. And I… will climb higher."
The words tore what was left of his heart. While falling, his last sight was her shadow in the blaze of the inferno, her arms open to the heavens as if announcing herself free. His soul tore in tempestuous currents.
Eternal darkness enveloped him. A thousand years of devotion torn away.
—
Cold.
Somewhere in the distance he could feel damp earth to his face. The great spires of the God Realm did not stand anymore. Stagnant water, mold, and decaying grass hung in the air. He rolled onto his side, growling and opening his eyes.
There was no holy palace looming above. Instead, gray cloud cover concealed a forgotten forest. Slanted trees towered over him, leafless, branches fingerlike bony fingers stretched up toward the heavens.
"What… happened?" His voice scraped, raw and foreign.
Then he looked. His hand.
Not the firm hand of Ye Chenfeng, Alchemist God. Not the hand which had toyed with divine fire that could shape things that were like universes that were. Thin. Gaunt. Pockmarked with white bruises and scarring. Pale, nigh illness-stained flesh. Bones pushed through pulled-tight skin.
"This…"
He staggered in confusion to a shallow puddle, staring at it. The face before him was not his.
A boy's face stared back. Fifteen, or possibly sixteen. His face was lovely in a fragile kind of way, but grunged up with dirt and fatigue. Bitter laughter clung to the bags under his eyes, the rim of thousands jeering voices still sharp in his heart.
And then washed over him like a tidal wave: memories that were not even his.
He was once the Young Master of the Upper Realm's noble Ye Clan. Born to achieve greatness. But his meridians. spoiled. His talent. mediocre. The clan found him useless, stricken with "crippled roots." His father abandoned him, his mother deserted him, his clan exiled him to the Lower Realm in disdain.
Abandoned—like trash.
The memories seared like fire. Ye Chenfeng's breathing swelled and diminished as he experienced not only images, but feeling: the shame of being called a shame, the nighttime weeping shared, the desperate, one-way entreaties to be embraced. The boy had died in hopelessness.
And Ye Chenfeng stood now in his meat.
For the very first time in his millions of years, he stooped his head in silence—neither shame nor shame-faceness, but black recognition of the boy whose life he now carried.
"You were left behind," he whispered faintly. His breath trembled, not with frailty, but with something pared. "As I was."
And then it arrived.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Three heartbeats echoed in his dantian. Not his. Primitive, ancient, terrifying. His body shook as universes had collided within him.
The first—one that was cruel and savage—likeordial thunder that resounds, creating worlds and destroying them with each beat. Chaos Body.
The second—one that was boundless and timeless—older than the world itself, a vibration that had existed prior to heaven being divided from earth. Hongmeng Body.
The third—blazing, smoldering—encompassed him in flame that incinerated not flesh nor Qi, but karma itself. Ancient Yang Body.
A threefold impossibility. Even as a former god, he'd dabbled in a body of myth and come up short. But here, in the body of a boy ridiculed as trash, all three coexisted.
Ye Chenfeng's eyes shook. His lips twisted, laughter unimaginable spilling from them. The sheer absurdity of the heavens—they denied him grandeur, but granted him a flesh that terrified even cosmic emperors.
The puddle in front of his feet shook with horror. His own face shone strangely now: a young face, but his eyes hid ceaseless chaos, boundless origin, and primeval sunfire.
He clenched his skeletal fists into fists. Veins pulsed with coiled power.
"Wife…" The single word was a vow written in lightning. "You killed me. You set me free."
The trees appeared to sag under unobserved strain. Weeds withered about his feet. Birds took flight in terror from around miles away.
But then the laughter stopped. He closed his eyes and panted. A hundred rough shreds of feeling quivered in his chest. Beneath the indignation and sarcasm, something more sinister lay hidden—pain. Hurt. Desolation of a man who had lived true love, to be broken.
"Trust," he snarled. "How am I ever going to be able to trust again?"
A soft cough shook him.
And soon enough, a dirty old peasant with bundles of firewood emerged from behind the trees. His eyes widened in recognition as he recognized Ye Chenfeng. Instant recognition flashed. "Eh? That abandoned little scamp? Still breathing? Tch. No matter you live one day longer, trash is trash. Wiser you begin digging your own grave ahead of time."
The words pierced Ye Chenfeng's heart with a sense of eerie familiarity—this same shame the boy's memories had sustained innumerable times prior.
This time, there was another outcome.
The Chaos, Hongmeng, and Ancient Yang inside him burned with a low flame, and a river of untainted Qi filtered out like the waves. The old man stood there, relinquishing his bundle of wood, knees thudding on the ground as though the land itself demanded him to kneel.
Ye Chenfeng's eyes were calm. No anger. Simply unspoken inevitability.
"Not demon." His words glided like liquid steel. "Not rubbish."
He stepped forward, and the world caught its breath.
"Only one who was betrayed… and who shall rise again."
The words dropped into the trembling air like a decree.
As if in response, deep in a distant mountain, hidden in age-old stone, a sword shattered with a shuddering crack. Its very essence moved, seeking out its long-forgotten master. Across the skies, minute sparks flashed to hidden patterns.
The skies trembled.
The earth gave a low growl.
On this forgotten night, in this forsaken shape shunned by parents and scorned by clans—
The Alchemist God was born.
And history itself would never sleep quiet again.