The world was a cage of jagged, frozen crystal.
On the sovereign planet of Aetheleon, the sky did not offer light or warmth; it offered only the suffocating, heaven-crushing embrace of a perpetual, violent blizzard. The massive mountain ranges looked like the jagged teeth of a starving, primordial beast, violently biting into the gray, dead firmament. Yet, the pristine whiteness of the snow was an absolute fucking lie. Beneath the violently falling flakes, the valley floor was a canvas of absolute, unadulterated slaughter.
The snow didn't just melt; it hissed violently as it touched the raging rivers of fresh gore. This wasn't merely human blood. It was a rhythmic, sickening soup of neon green, obsidian black, and profound royal purple—the condensed, highly volatile life-essence of Phase 3 and Phase 2 cultivators and demonic beasts alike. The mutilated corpses were piled so incredibly high that they formed new, grotesque hills in the valley, their frozen, dead eyes staring up at the unforgiving heavens in silent, eternal accusation.
Through this apocalyptic charnel house, a lone, terrifying figure moved.
He was a ghost walking in a thick, red mist. His white hair, incredibly long and wildly unkept, whipped behind him like a blood-soaked battle standard. His sovereign robes, once pristine and woven from heaven-defying silk, were now so completely saturated with thick gore that they looked like they had been entirely dipped in a vat of crimson wine. In his right hand, he gripped a blade that violently defied the very laws of the worldly domain. It was a long jian forged of translucent, abyssal bone, heavily wreathed in chaotic Crimson Thunder—massive arcs of demonic lightning that constantly filled the freezing air with the nauseating stench of ozone and scorched, rotting flesh.
A thousand elite warriors had surrounded him. They were the absolute "Immortals" of the Supreme Sect, terrifying Phase 2 powerhouses who could effortlessly level entire mortal cities with a casual flick of their fingers. But to Yaowang Ming—the supreme entity whose soul would one day be known in the dark abysses of time as Silas—they were merely pathetic slabs of meat waiting to be butchered.
He moved. It wasn't a walk; it was a violent blur of absolute spatial displacement.
Rip. Tear. Shatter.
The sound of the sacred battlefield rapidly devolved into the sickening sound of a mortal butcher's shop at dawn. Yaowang Ming did not merely kill his enemies; he completely erased them. Channeling his terrifying, bottomless Gnosis, he unleashed a single, casual horizontal sweep of his bone blade.
SHHHLUCK!
Thirty elite Phase 2 men were instantly bifurcated at the waist. Their upper torsos slowly, agonizingly slid off their severed hips, their steaming intestines and internal organs violently spilling out onto the frozen ice like a nest of writhing, bloody snakes. Before the remaining cultivators could even scream, Ming violently grabbed a Vanguard Commander directly by the throat. The Crimson Thunder radiating from his palm instantly superheated the commander's skull, completely vaporizing the man's head into a fine, bloody red mist before his headless body could even hit the fucking snow.
"Die! You ignorant motherfuckers called yourselves my equals… look at you now!" Ming roared, his voice sounding like a tectonic plate violently grinding against another. "You want my absolute divinity?! You want my supreme Gnosis?! Come and fucking take it from the depths of hell!"
Ten minutes. That was all the time it took for a thousand so-called "gods" to be completely reduced to a thousand steaming piles of mutilated offal.
Exhausted, his profound meridians completely screaming with the soul-tearing agony of absolute overexertion, Yaowang Ming slumped heavily onto the massive, shattered branch of a Black-Iron Spirit Tree that had been violently felled by his own kinetic shockwaves. He breathed heavily, each ragged exhale forming a thick cloud of bloody vapor in the freezing air.
From the dark shadows of a nearby jagged peak, a pathetic scavenger—a Phase 4 cultivator who had cowardly hidden his Gnosis signature during the entire absolute massacre—saw his golden chance. The coward crept forward, his heart violently hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The Sovereign is completely weak! His Gnosis is entirely depleted! If I take his heaven-defying head right now, I will be the absolute king of this domain!
Driven by pure, blinding greed, the scavenger violently leaped into the air, his poisoned dagger aimed directly at the back of Ming's exposed neck.
Shuck.
The scavenger didn't even feel the spatial steel. He was still suspended in mid-air when he suddenly realized his visual perspective had violently shifted. He found himself looking down at his own headless, soaring body, thick blood still violently pumping from his severed neck stump as it plummeted toward the blood-soaked snow. Yaowang Ming hadn't even bothered to look back. He had simply flicked a single, bloody finger, sending a condensed thread of supreme Conqueror sword-intent to completely sever the space between the man's vertebrae.
"Thrashing, pathetic dog," Ming spat, coughing up a mouthful of black blood.
But then, the ambient temperature violently plummeted—growing infinitely colder than the surrounding ice mountains. The very fabric of space around the shattered tree branch completely buckled.
SHING!
A terrifying blade of pure, absolute void-energy violently erupted directly through Yaowang Ming's chest from behind.
Ming violently gasped, a massive spray of supreme, golden sovereign blood erupting from his lips. Before he could even attempt to turn and face his attacker, a blinding flash of azure light completely overwhelmed his vision. A man with hair the color of the deep, abyssal ocean materialized from the void, his hand moving in a completely blurred, heaven-severing arc.
Squelch.
Yaowang Ming's entire left arm was violently severed. It flew high into the freezing air, spinning like a discarded, broken toy, trailing a thick ribbon of glowing golden blood. Ming violently fell to his knees, the sheer, absolute kinetic impact of his descent cracking the frozen earth for miles in every direction.
He slowly looked up, his vision violently swimming as his Gnosis rapidly bled out. Completely surrounding him were six terrifying figures. His supreme generals. His absolute "brothers." The people he had shared wine, women, and apocalyptic wars with for centuries. Every single one of them radiated the terrifying, world-ending pressure of a Phase 1 Exalted Sovereign.
"Why?" Ming hissed, the word tasting like burning copper and vile bile. "Why this absolute betrayal, you backstabbing bastards?"
The man standing in the absolute center, sporting hair of spun gold and eyes full of sickening, false piety, stepped forward. This was Zhao Tian, the Golden Emperor.
"Because you are a literal god among insects, Ming," Zhao Tian sneered, his Phase 1 Gnosis completely suppressing the surrounding atmosphere. "And insects eventually tire of being ruthlessly stepped on. You are far too strong. Your very existence makes our supreme power entirely irrelevant."
Ming violently gritted his teeth and turned his bleeding gaze to a woman shrouded in absolute black silk, her flawless face hidden behind a dark veil. His heart, far more than his mutilated body, completely shattered.
"Even you, Yue'er?" Ming whispered, a bloody smile creeping onto his face. "After absolutely everything I gave you?"
The woman's voice was like a cold, poisoned dagger twisting in his gut. "You gave me everything, yes. But you completely forgot to give me my absolute freedom. I don't want to be the Sovereign's pathetic consort. I want to be the Sovereign. Sorry, my dear. You simply have to die."
The six of them didn't wait. They weren't arrogant enough to monologue for long; they knew exactly how catastrophically dangerous a cornered, bleeding tiger could be.
"I, YAOWANG MING..." He violently coughed, a massive glob of golden life-essence permanently staining the white snow. He forcefully dragged his mangled body up to stand on one leg, his eyes violently burning with an apocalyptic crimson light that made the six 'Exalted Ones' physically flinch backward. "...NEVER DESERVED TO FUCKING KNEEL BEFORE MERE, PATHETIC ANTS LIKE YOU! YOU DARE BETRAY THE HEAVENS THEMSELVES?!"
The sky instantly turned pitch black. The massive ice mountains violently groaned as a terrifying, suffocating wind completely stripped the valley bare, fueled by his burning soul.
"I WILL HAVE MY FUCKING REVENGE!" Ming screamed, a sound so ancient and primal it physically shattered the eardrums of the weaker Phase 4 cultivators hiding miles away. "I will completely massacre your lineages! I will violently pull your pathetic ancestors from their graves and burn their souls to absolute ash! When I return, the rivers will run red with the butchered blood of your kin! I CURSE YOU! I CURSE YOUR SECTS! I CURSE YOUR PATHETIC BLOODLINES TO THE NINTH GENERATION!"
Knowing his physical shell was entirely finished, Ming performed the ultimate, heaven-condemned taboo. He violently bit his own tongue off, sacrificing his sovereign blood to activate the Forbidden Soul-Splitting Art. He forcefully compressed his memories, his apocalyptic rage, and his absolute essence into a microscopic, indestructible seed of light—a duplicate soul will that would transcend death itself.
The woman in black moved. Her blade, as dark and empty as a moonless night, swung in a completely perfect, unavoidable arc.
Yaowang Ming's head violently left his shoulders. His body, however, remained upright, kneeling as a defiant, terrifying statue of meat and bone, even as his soul-seed violently vanished into the endless void of the reincarnation cycle.
And then—the absolute Sovereign vanished from the world.
[Five Thousand Years Later…]
The Cave of Whispers was incredibly damp, suffocating, and reeked heavily of wet earth and fresh iron.
A woman, her flawless face completely pale and drenched in exhausted sweat, let out a final, harrowing cry of pain that violently echoed against the jagged stalactites. She possessed hair as dark as a raven's wing and eyes that violently flashed with a desperate, fiery red energy. This was Rena.
In her trembling arms, she held a newborn infant. The baby didn't cry. He didn't scream like a normal mortal child. Instead, he simply watched her with eyes that were far, far too old for a newborn—eyes of burning, apocalyptic crimson that seemed to silently, coldly count the very atoms floating in the air.
"Rayn..." she whispered, her voice violently trembling as she brushed her thumb against his cheek. "My little Rayn."
Outside the dark mouth of the cave, the terrifying, rhythmic thud of armored boots echoed like the violent beating of a war drum. Hundreds of elite cultivators were closing in.
She slowly looked up at her husband. He was a man who stood like an absolute god of slaughter, his terrifying Gnosis aura so incredibly dense it felt as if he had just casually walked out of a mountain of butchered corpses. His eyes were entirely cold, perfectly reflecting the blood-stained steel of the heavy blade he gripped. He looked like a man who was entirely prepared to violently kill every single living soul in existence just to keep his newborn child for himself.
As he stepped toward the exit, fully preparing to pave a terrifying path of red gore, Rena's exhausted voice broke the heavy, suffocating silence.
"Dear... please," Rena rasped, clutching baby Rayn tightly. "Make sure you live a good life. Keep him absolutely safe. Wait patiently for the heavy wheel of fate to finally turn; and when the time comes, find me. We will take our absolute revenge together and burn their entire fucking world to ashes."
The husband didn't look back, but his broad shoulders violently tensed with a silent, unbreakable vow. He confidently stepped out into the freezing light, and the screaming immediately began.
He moved like an absolute whirlwind of death. His massive sword ruthlessly reaped the lives of the invading outsiders, violently severing limbs and shattering Phase 5 Gnosis cores until the pristine snow was completely stained a deep, permanent crimson. While the absolute carnage unfolded outside, Rena used the very last drops of her profound life force to trigger a supreme concealment array. Her physical form violently flickered, the spatial laws bending around her, before she completely disappeared into the darkest depths of the cave, vanishing like an ancient ghost.
Having absolutely slaughtered every single threat in his path, leaving nothing but a courtyard of bifurcated, bleeding corpses, the husband violently kicked a severed head out of his way and clutched the infant Rayn tightly to his heavily armored chest.
With a deafening roar of absolute exertion, two massive, terrifyingly powerful wings violently erupted from his back, completely shattering his silken upper robes. With a single, violent flap that sent a massive kinetic shockwave through the entire valley, shattering the surrounding trees into splinters, he took to the sky. He violently fled into the dark storm clouds, completely disappearing into the horizon before the enemy reinforcements could even glimpse his terrifying shadow.