Mei Suyao's breath caught.
The air atop the World Tree was still vibrating from what had just happened. Where Jikong Wudi had stood—with his Heaven's Will crown blazing, destiny rivers coiling around him like dragons—there was now only empty sky and a faint afterimage of a man being punted out of tree.
Ling Feng put his foot back down as if nothing special had happened.
He rolled his ankle once, like someone loosening a joint after getting up from a chair instead of kicking a Heaven's Will candidate and all his borrowed fate clean out of the Timeless Portal.
"See?" he said, voice almost conversational. "Heaven's Will… it's a neat little crown. But it's still under a sky. If you stare at it too long, you miss how low the ceiling really is."
Mei Suyao turned from the fading edge where Jikong Wudi had vanished and looked back at him.
Her Dao Heart—pure, crystalline, polished since childhood to bear the expectations of a generation—shook.
She had seen Immortal Emperor heritage before. She had seen supreme lineages and their hidden cards. She was Mei Suyao of the Eternal River School; she was used to watching the world look up at her.
Yet this man had just treated Heaven's Will like a step-stone.
"…Past the ceiling," she murmured, half dazed, half to herself.
"Mm." Ling Feng smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "If you're going to chase it, chase something that doesn't stop at one era."
Those words sank into her like a seed dropping into deep soil. Past the ceiling… past one era…
He let her sit with it. He didn't press, didn't lecture. He simply turned his gaze upward.
Above them, the void was no longer empty.
The ancient rune hanging over the crown of the World Tree had always been there—few just qualified to see it. Up close, its structure was crystal clear. Countless microscopic sigils nested within one another, each bend and curve tuning some minute aspect of space, time, and boundary.
Together, they formed a complete sentence.
The Void Gate's language. A key.
Ling Feng inhaled slowly.
Chaos stirred in his inner world. It did not blaze or roar. It seeped out, silent and colorless, like a shadow cast by a light that didn't exist.
He didn't batter the rune. He wrapped it.
Chaos flowed along the paths the rune itself opened, adhering to its pattern instead of rejecting it. The Green Chaos Emerald in his Inner Void pulsed once, aligning his sense of space with the Void Gate. The Cyan Emerald turned, slowing his perception until each infinitesimal twitch of the rune fell into focus, every changing law-line as clear as ink strokes on white paper.
He extended a hand.
The rune trembled.
Instantly, the World Tree reacted. Its entire crown shivered; the gate embedded in its branches flickered. Dao lines shot out from both tree and portal in a surge—countless strands of will probing the intruder.
They didn't just test his cultivation.
They tested his origin.
Chaos answered, not with force, but with a simple truth that rolled across those probing lines like thunder:
—I am not of this river of time.
For a heartbeat, everything hung on a knife-edge.
The World Tree's life energy, ancient beyond eras. The Realm God's distant, half-mad pulse from below. The Void Gate's cold, indifferent will—test, reject, obliterate.
There was a real possibility there: that the gate would see him as an infection and hurl him away the way it had done to so many Heaven's Will candidates. Or worse, drag him in and tear him apart.
Then the tension melted.
The rune's light shifted, hard edges softening. The probing lines retracted like beasts lowering their hackles in front of something they could not name and did not dare deny.
"Good," Ling Feng murmured, lips quirking. "You've got taste."
His hand closed.
The ancient rune broke apart without resistance, dissolving into a stream of light that flowed into his palm like water. He guided that current through his meridians, past his Fate Palaces, through the sea of Emeralds, down into the deepest part of his Inner Void.
There, it settled near the Green Emerald and… opened.
Information poured into him.
The structure of the Void Gate. The existence of the Void World beyond, overflowing with chaotic energy alien even to this world. The way rules could be engraved upon the gate's frame: who might enter, what could be taken, what fate awaited trespassers who dared to cheat death.
Space Dao unfolded in his mind in layers.
No longer just lines and planes, but joint-work. Volumes of possibility, intersections where one reality could be cut, rotated, and sutured into another. Places where the world's own bones could be dislocated and reset.
The Green Emerald brightened, its facets deepening from simple jade to something closer to a boundless night sky. With a thought, Ling Feng knew he could open his own path into the Void World, bypassing the Academy's portal entirely.
He didn't.
Not yet.
He exhaled.
Outside, the Key Rune—the spine of the Timeless Portal's stability—finished dissolving.
Without its keystone, the Void Gate trembled.
Hairline cracks spread across the gate's translucent surface, multiplied, wove into each other until they formed a vast spiderweb of fractures.
"Boom—"
The sound seemed to come from every direction and nowhere at once.
The gate shattered.
Fragments of twisted space exploded outward, each shard a distorted slice of the world. They didn't cut; they burned away, disintegrating into harmless motes of residual Dao. The World Tree shook, its titanic trunk groaning. The ivory emptiness around it rippled like disturbed water.
Below, throughout the maze of the Timeless Portal—among the warped paths, broken palaces, floating rivers, and hidden pocket-worlds—collapse began.
Ling Feng closed his eyes, Chaos Sense following the cascade.
Every cultivator clinging to bark, meditating under leaves, hiding in dimensions wedged into the Tree's body… all at once, they were seized by a will not their own and thrown outward.
Timeless Portal was ending.
He opened his eyes.
"Well," he said mildly. "Show's over."
Light surged.
...
The noise hit first.
"Old Heaven, give me back my jade pond—!"
"My heavenly compass! I was halfway through digging it out—!"
"I finally climbed onto the World Tree and you kick me out after a few breaths?!"
The dignified grounds of the Heavenly Dao Academy were chaos. The plazas, jade pavilions, and mountain terraces that usually radiated solemn majesty were now littered with cultivators in all sorts of humiliating poses.
Geniuses from great powers sprawled on cracked tiles, clutching shovels, broken treasures, or simply empty air. Some were on the verge of tears. Others lay flat on their backs, staring at the sky as if betrayed by the heavens themselves.
Above it all, the Academy groaned.
"Rumble—"
The earth split in long, jagged lines. Mountains shuddered; rivers in the distance briefly reversed their flow. Grand formations embedded deep in the Academy's foundation flashed one after another, desperately stabilizing the ancestral vein.
Ling Feng and Mei Suyao stood on the highest peak overlooking it all.
She still hadn't fully calmed from what she'd seen earlier—the casual kick that sent a Heaven's Will candidate flying out of an era, the way he'd plucked the void rune like fruit from a tree.
Her Immortal Bone was still trying to settle around the new pattern he had just forced into her dao with a few offhand words.
But her gaze was steady.
It was fixed on the depths beneath Heavenly Dao Academy—the place where the ancestral vein ran like a buried dragon and where now… something screamed.
"…The Realm God," she said quietly.
Ling Feng nodded.
The World Tree's life energy had flooded down the old scar in reality, clashing with the Realm God's cultivation, cultivated from the Eastern Hundred Cities' blood and worldly energy. A conflict of origins, of roots. Even an existence that rivaled Immortal Emperors had limits.
Now, with the key rune gone and the Timeless Portal severed, that conflict was ripping its core apart.
"Cultivate harder, Suyao," Ling Feng calmly spoke. "As I said, the limit is far beyond the Heaven Will."
Her shoulders stiffened. The immortal radiance around her bone dimmed very slightly.
"…I understand," she said softly.
Before she could say more, the earth convulsed again.
Deep beneath the Academy, a roar like collapsing worlds echoed. A wave of invisible pressure rolled out, so heavy that weaker students fell to their knees, faces pale, some coughing blood.
Ling Feng's eyes narrowed.
"Not good," he murmured.
Chaos surged.
One step, and he vanished.
Mei Suyao watched the place where his figure had been.
For a long breath, she simply stood there, fingers curling at her sides. The cold wind at the peak whipped her robes, but her heart felt strangely hot.
Then she let out a quiet sigh and descended the peak, heading toward her own cultivation ground.
If the ceiling could be kicked aside… then she had no excuse to sit still.
...
Deep beneath Heavenly Dao Academy, where sunlight and mortal footsteps had never reached, the earth groaned like a wounded beast.
The Realm God screamed.
Its demonic tree body filled the cavernous void, roots spearing through layers of rock, trunk a vertical world of rugged bark and ancient scars. Every breath it took sent tides of blood energy and worldly energy surging through the ancestral ground.
Now, those breaths were erratic.
Branches that pierced stone quaked so violently that the surrounding space twisted. Old wounds—left from the day it had been dragged through the Void Gate under the World Tree—glowed with blinding, painful light. The disappearance of the gate had cut a chain… but that chain had been wired directly into its origin.
NovelFull
Ling Feng arrived without passing through a single corridor or formation.
One instant, he was on a peak above. The next, he stood inside the cavern's heart, in front of bark that towered like a wall to the sky.
He simply folded space and walked across the crease.
The Realm God loomed before him, a demonic tree the size of a country. Cracks marred its surface, oozing distorted void light. Every twitch of its roots made the world above tremble.
Its spiritual consciousness rolled like a storm-tide, lashing the air.
"—GRRRHHHHHHH—"
The roar wasn't sound.
It was raw will. Pain. Rage. The terror of an origin being pulled in two directions at once—toward the World Tree's impossible life, and toward a broken gate collapsing under its own laws.
"Yeah," Ling Feng said quietly. "This looks bad."
He reached into his sleeve and drew out a jade bottle and a sealed jade box.
Young leaves of the World Tree.
Myriad Star Water.
He had picked them earlier with a different person in mind. Now, he stood in front of that person's estranged kin.
"Realm God," he said, his voice taking a rare respectful note. "You don't know me yet. But you know that aura, right?"
He opened the jade box.
A faint, pure fragrance spilled out, rich with the breath of the primeval era. The young leaves inside glowed softly, their veins etched with the same primordial pattern that coiled through the World Tree above the Academy.
The Realm God froze.
Its wild consciousness—half-drowned in agony and inner demon madness—sharpened like a spear.
"World… Tree…" an ancient, hoarse whisper echoed in his mind.
"Yeah." Ling Feng's lips quirked. "Your hometown's big brother sends his regards."
He uncorked the bottle. Starlit water floated up in tiny globes, orbiting his wrist like miniature constellations.
"Right now," he continued, "your root's being tugged between this world and that busted gate. If we do nothing, you either go insane or get dragged back into the void in little shredded strips. Neither sounds fun."
He lifted his hand.
Chaos Force spread out, thin and invisible, threading through the Realm God's bark and roots. He didn't slam his Dao into it. He searched.
He found nodes of twisted space where the Void Gate's influence still clung, knots of foreign law woven into the tree's own grand dao. He wrapped each knot in Chaos, marking them like a physician marking hidden meridian wounds.
"Here's the deal," he said. "I close the wound and give you a new anchor. In return, you cut off that broken door and stop letting it yank on your origin."
The Realm God's branches shuddered like someone with a fever trying to nod.
"Can… you… do this…?" the ancient will asked, doubt and desperate hope tangled together.
Ling Feng smiled.
"Watch me."
...
He didn't rush.
First, he pressed a young World Tree leaf into a deepest fissure in the Realm God's trunk.
The moment the leaf touched, its life force spread like green fire, creeping along bark and root. It didn't try to devour. It braided itself with the Realm God's own demonic vitality, filling gaps, soothing torn fibers without drowning its original nature.
"Good," Ling Feng muttered. "Same root, different branch."
He guided several more leaves into key wounds, his fingers moving with minute precision. Each insertion sent another wave of primordial life through the demonic tree's body, like a fresh pulse of blood entering a failing heart.
Then he lifted his other hand.
Droplets of Myriad Star Water floated free, each bead reflecting the cavern as a tiny universe.
He flicked them into the Realm God's core.
They did not splash. They sank straight through bark and demonic wood, plunging into the darkest depths where origin and law met. Each droplet brought with it the memory of the high firmament—of cold void holding infinite stars, of balance between life and emptiness.
At the same time, Cyan Chaos stirred.
Lines of alien, translucent law flickered into existence around the Realm God's worst scars—the ones left by the Void Gate. Ling Feng didn't try to erase them. Scars were part of a dao; to tear them out completely was to rip up foundations.
Instead, he twisted.
He took jagged tears and bent their lines, turning them into closed loops. He redirected their pull from the distant, collapsing gate back into the Academy's ancestral vein. It was like rerouting a river: from a path that plunged into a chasm, to one that circled a mountain and fed the fields below.
From the outside, it looked deceptively simple.
A lone young man, one hand pressed to a colossal trunk.
Green light flowed from his palm, threading into cracks. Star-water rained in slow arcs. Strange, colorless lines spun, sank, disappeared.
Inside, a quiet war raged.
The Realm God's chaotic will clawed at anything it could find. The World Tree's origin power surged through new channels. The Void Gate's lingering laws thrashed as they were shackled and rerouted.
Ling Feng stood at the center of it all.
To him, each collision of energies was as clear as a sparring match. His Primal Chaos Genesis Physique drank in the feedback, his comprehension leaping with every adjustment. Every time the Realm God's origin rebelled, he shifted the pattern by a hair. Every time the Void Gate tried to flare, he compressed time in that area, freezing the backlash and tying it off.
What might have taken ordinary powers months of array work, countless rare medicines, and multiple near-disasters…
He compressed into two days.
He did not step out of the subterranean cavern even once.
Outside, rumors churned like storm clouds.
Word spread that the Timeless Portal had collapsed ahead of schedule, that no one knew how or why everyone had been forcefully ejected. Heaven's Will candidates gritted their teeth in humiliation. The elders of Heavenly Dao Academy muttered in closed council about the Realm God's instability, about the danger to the entire Eastern Hundred Cities if their guardian went berserk.
Inside, time flowed at Ling Feng's pace.
Under the Cyan Emerald's influence, he stretched each moment around himself and the Realm God, turning breaths into minutes, minutes into hours. Fine adjustments that would have been impossible in the rush of normal time became as simple as walking downhill.
On the second "night," the demonic tree exhaled.
"—Haaa…"
The sound rolled out from its core like a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
The ancestral ground settled.
For the first time since the Timeless Portal opened, the Heavenly Dao Academy's underground dragon-vein lay quiet. The cracks in the Realm God's bark stopped bleeding void. New, faintly glowing veins ran through its trunk—marks of the World Tree's pattern harmonized with its own demonic grandeur.
The Realm God's consciousness gathered.
Branches and roots twisted, forming a vague humanoid outline within the cavern. It was not clear whether it was male or female—only vast, ancient, and indescribably heavy.
"You…" it rumbled, voice echoing through stone and root. "Have severed the chain. This one… no longer hears the Void Gate's call."
Ling Feng rolled his shoulders, joints popping.
"If you lost your mind after I babysat you for two days straight, I'd look pretty stupid," he said dryly.
There was a pause.
Then, unexpectedly, a low, rough laugh—like boulders grinding softly together.
"For many eras," the Realm God said slowly, each syllable weighed down with memory, "this one was trapped between worlds. Born under the World Tree, chained by the Academy's greed, bound to guard them, unable to return, unable to rest."
Branches lowered.
"This one owes you a debt that reaches to the marrow," it continued. "If you ever call, I will respond. Even if it means tearing apart the Eastern Hundred Cities, this one will sweep them clean for you."
Ling Feng waved a hand.
"Easy," he said. "No need to start promising massacres right away."
A faint, amused light flashed in his eyes.
"The favor I want won't be that big," he added. "Just need you to move some people. That's all."
The Realm God's brow—a jagged ridge of bark—furrowed.
"'Not too big'," it repeated. "Coming from you, that terrifies this one more than an Immortal Emperor's tribulation."
"See?" Ling Feng grinned. "You get me. That's the start of a beautiful friendship."
At that moment, a sharp ripple tugged at his mind.
The soul-locked communication jade at his waist flared with urgent intent. A familiar voice poured into his sea of consciousness—respectful, but strained.
"Young Noble," Li Shangyuan's transmission trembled. "Bad news. Chi Xiaodao has been imprisoned by Tiger's Howl School. They supposedly say they only wish to peacefully discuss Chi Xiaodao and Bao Yun's marriage and the 'future arrangements' for Lion's Roar, but…"
The message frayed at the edges, anger and worry leaking through the normally steady man's tone.
"…their people have sealed Lion's Roar's mountain gates. The Bao Yun Clan is cooperating. The situation… is bad."