Through all this, the Demon Ancestor had been suffering.
From the moment Ling Feng took that casual step earlier, an invisible weight had dropped over the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger's body. His blood energy, usually as vast as a roaring sea, had been locked in place, refusing to surge, refusing to resonate fully with the White Tiger Great Vein beneath the mountains.
He could have broken free.
A brute-force eruption—burning origin, wounding the dao foundation he had built over countless years—would have shattered that unseen shackle.
But at that time, the Tiger Emperor Citadel had still been intact. The Prime Imperial Sire and school master had still been alive. The sect's inheritance had not yet been reduced to drifting blood mist.
Now, with the citadel cracked and bleeding, the Prime Imperial Sire and school master erased in front of his eyes, and the sect's core reduced to ruin… there was nothing left to conserve.
Caution became meaningless.
"Junior!" the Demon Ancestor roared. Eight demonic wings flared behind him, claws tearing space as killing intent erupted. "You think you can suppress this old man forever?!"
With a dull boom, his wings snapped wide.
A river of demonic qi burst from his body, colliding head-on with Ling Feng's invisible constraint. The air trembled. Worldly essence around the White Tiger Great Vein churned like an overturned ocean.
High above, Ling Feng's eyes narrowed, amusement flickering in their depths.
"Ah," he murmured, voice light. "You're finally going to get serious?"
He lifted his hand.
Chaos gathered around his fingers, thick and fathomless, then unraveled—just a little. The pressure weighing down the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger's body eased by a hair's breadth.
To the Demon Ancestor, that tiny opening felt like the heavens had cracked.
He didn't hesitate.
He roared from the depths of his demonic lungs, a sound that shook dust from the oldest rafters of Tiger Emperor Citadel.
"Four Ominous Graves—awaken!"
The ground answered.
At the four corners of the citadel, ancient formations that had slept for generations lit up one after another. Layers of runes shattered like old scabs being torn open. Stone split. Earth exploded.
Four colossal, indistinct graves rose from the depths, like the shadows of tombs meant to bury eras.
Each one radiated a terrifying grand dao—death, calamity, destruction, annihilation. Since the school's founding, the four ominous graves had been its absolute defense line, the last fangs behind the White Tiger Great Vein, known to be unbreachable even for Virtuous Paragons.
Today, they were not a shield.
They were a gamble.
Blood erupted from every pore of the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger's body, streaming toward the four graves in crimson rivers. His demonic wings withered visibly. The sheen of youth peeled away; deep lines carved themselves into his face as age caught up all at once.
"Regardless of the outcome…" an old Tiger's Howl elder whispered, voice shaking as he remembered the sect's ancient records, "to fully awaken the four ominous graves is to cast aside one's own path. Even if he kills that junior, Ancestor will—"
"Slay!" the Divine Tiger roared, voice hoarse.
The four grave images rose into the sky.
Darkness followed.
Not the simple absence of light, but a tangible, suffocating death-qi. It poured down like ink, swallowing color from heaven and earth. Even far beyond Tiger Emperor Citadel, countless cultivators in the Eastern Hundred Cities looked up with ashen faces as the world dimmed, as if all things were being slowly pushed into a vast, open grave.
Beneath the mountains, the White Tiger Great Vein roared in resonance.
Worldly essence surged in raging torrents, drawn into the four graves. The phantom of a colossal white tiger curled around them, fangs biting into the heavens, its roar echoing through the region like the judgment of some ancient fiend.
To countless cultivators watching from afar, it felt like the end of the world had arrived.
In a distant city, banners snapped wildly in the unnaturally cold wind. Old undyings sitting in meditation abruptly opened their eyes.
"What is this aura…?"
"Tiger's Howl… they actually awakened those graves…"
"Who forced them that far?!"
The Eastern Hundred Cities trembled.
Far away, the ominous shadow reached first.
In the Azure Mysterious Ancient Kingdom, old ancestors sitting above dragon veins felt their hearts clutch. Their gazes pierced layers of land and cloud, all falling upon the White Tiger region.
In the Brilliance Ancient Kingdom, where Immortal Emperor light had once shone upon armies, an ancient ancestor half-submerged in thick life essence frowned deeply, sensing a hateful familiarity—the killing intent of the White Tiger Vein, stirred to madness again.
In the Furious Immortal Saint Country, where generations tempered tyrannical physiques, the remnant will of their Progenitor rippled faintly. That battle-honed instinct, honed on endless carnage, whispered a single word:
Danger.
Back above Tiger Emperor Citadel, the four grave shadows towered over everything, each like a tomb prepared to bury a world.
Death-qi blotted out the sun. The White Tiger Great Vein poured itself recklessly into them. Under normal circumstances, this scene would be remembered for generations as the day Tiger's Howl wagered its entire foundation.
Today, it was just material.
Ling Feng watched in silence.
The firmament above Tiger Emperor Citadel had become a battlefield of concepts: ominous burial dao, ferocious tiger essence, the stubborn vitality of a great vein that had once been a branch of Terra's White Tiger Dao.
His black cloak fluttered lazily in the suffocating wind. Below him, Chen Baojiao, Xu Pei, Bai Jianzhen, Bing Yuxia, Li Shangyuan, Chi Xiaodie, Chi Xiaodao, and Bao Yun all felt their hearts tighten, their breathing grow heavy, as if invisible hands were squeezing their chests.
Only Ling Feng seemed… amused.
"So that's your trump card, huh," he said softly.
His tone was light, like a man commenting on the weather before a storm.
Inside his Inner Void, though, Chaos surged.
Green, red, yellow, and cyan radiances rose one after another. The four existing Chaos Emeralds floated in the darkness like four miniature worlds—space, power, energy, time—each one saturated with law that didn't belong to this epoch's Heaven's Will.
Now, the four ominous graves roared.
Death essence, calamity dao, slaughter intent that had slept for countless generations—all that the Divine Tiger poured into them surged upward, trying to drown the sky.
Ling Feng exhaled.
"Perfect timing," he murmured. "Free sample delivery."
His right hand opened slightly.
Invisible lines of Chaos spilled from his palm like a net. But they didn't collide head-on with the graves, nor compete with the White Tiger Great Vein for control. Instead, they brushed along the edges of the graves' death dao, "tasting" it, sliding into the subtle joints between grave and vein, bone and marrow.
The Four Ominous Graves were not ordinary tombs.
They were ancient relics tied deeply to the White Tiger Great Vein—four burial points where ominous energy, resentment, and battle will had been condensed again and again, era after era, until they formed something akin to soul scars in the land itself.
"Graves for living beings," Ling Feng mused, eyes half-lidded. "Graves for destinies. Graves for eras. You're not just burying bodies… you're burying souls."
Chaos answered.
Unlike worldly energy, it didn't clash or push. It wrapped. It seeped. It threaded itself through the death-qi and killing intent spilling out of the graves, not to cleanse them, but to read them and absorb its deathly essence. The deathly essence rapidly rushes towards a certain Chaos Emerald in his Inner Void.
Concepts bloomed in Ling Feng's mind:
—Resentment of those buried alive, clawing at their own coffin lids.
—Despair of sect masters crushed beneath Tiger's Howl's ambition, their lineages snuffed out to feed this vein.
—The unwilling, furious roars of ancient enemies whose corpses had become offerings to this land.
All of it was soul-deep.
'This is it,' Ling Feng thought. 'The missing piece.'
In his Inner Void, the darkness stirred.
Between the four existing emeralds, where the deathly essence was flowing in, a gleaming purple pulsed—a socket that had been waiting quietly since the moment he chose this path.
Soul.
Below, the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger roared himself hoarse.
"Four Ominous Graves—bury all enemies!"
His blood essence burned, years of foundation turning into fuel. The four tomb shadows swelled, mouths opening like yawning abysses, prepared to swallow intruders, sky, and even the sect's own country if need be.
"You juniors," the Demon Ancestor roared, voice cracking, "will be buried in my Tiger's Howl graveyard—"
His words abruptly cut off.
Something was wrong.
The grave shadows that should have moved according to his will began to shudder. Their edges blurred. Death-qi, which should have surged obediently toward Ling Feng's group, suddenly… hesitated.
A portion of the death-qi twisted upward instead, forming countless black threads visible only to those with terrifying soul perception.
They were not dragging intruders down.
They were being pulled up.
"…What are you doing?!" the Divine Tiger roared, panic creeping into his voice. "Those are—"
Ling Feng looked down at him, gaze calm.
"Borrowing," he said simply. "Don't worry. I'll put it to good use."
Inside his Inner Void, forging began.
Even more death-qi and ominous dao poured into the void like four filthy rivers. Chaos filtered them, stripping away loose hatred and madness, extracting pure "soul structure" from the clamor.
Between the four emeralds, a fifth point of light ignited—a faint violet at first, then deepening into a rich, dark purple, like ink soaked in starlight.
The Soul Chaos Emerald.
It did not shine fiercely like its siblings.
Where the green emerald bent space, the cyan stretched time, the red burned with raw might, and the yellow crackled with infinite energy and lightning, the newborn emerald was almost quiet.
Yet everyone on Tiger Emperor Citadel felt it.
A cold shiver crawled down countless spines. Elders who had tempered their Dao Hearts for centuries suddenly felt as if someone had opened a window in their minds and was looking in.
On distant peaks, Ancient Kingdom scouts and Furious Immortal spies shuddered, hands flying to their chests as if to shield their True Fates.
Within Ling Feng's group:
Xu Pei's lightning domain stiffened; arcs of electricity within her meridians tightened like a frightened animal.
Bai Jianzhen's hand tightened around her sword, sword intent instinctively coiling inward, ready to cut anything that dared touch her soul.
Li Shangyuan's Pure Jade Physique resonated faintly, as if some invisible gaze had just swept past her soul and nodded in satisfaction.
Far away, within the Heavenly Dao Academy, Mei Suyao's Immortal Bone vibrated. Even separated by mountains and vast formations, she felt the strange ripple. Her Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao—which touched karmic filth and emotions—shivered uncontrollably, as if some vast hand had brushed against its petals.
Ye Chuyun's Pure Lotus Dao trembled as well. In her sea of consciousness, the lotuses briefly closed, petals wrapping tightly around their cores, hiding from something vast and unknowable.
In the Inner Void, the Soul Chaos Emerald drank.
It swallowed the wails of the Four Graves. It devoured the bitter will lingering in the White Tiger Vein. It refined resentment, despair, killing intent—not to erase them, but to understand them.
Dao lines appeared upon its surface.
Not spatial lines.
Not lightning lines.
They were subtle, like inscriptions usually hidden within the depths of the soul—marks that normal grand daos could not perceive clearly.
Ling Feng watched them form, eyes narrowing.
Soul Chaos Emerald.
Mastery: Soul · Consciousness · Causality Imprint.
Its nature whispered itself to him:
—Any soul that his Chaos touched could be marked.
—Once marked, that soul could be found again across vast distances, even if hidden behind formations, artifacts, or bloodlines.
—Soul attacks entering his range could be unraveled into harmless memory fragments—like ripping the teeth out of a feral beast.
—He could condense soul shackles that ignored ordinary realm gaps, locking down True Fates, spirit bodies, and mental worlds with terrifying ease.
—His existing ring system—refining souls into rings as buffers and cultivation fuel—suddenly gained a spine. Rings became easier to create, more stable, and able to carry a portion of their original owner's dao without backlash.
More importantly—
He felt the river of time trying to "remember" him.
The karmic web of this world weaved itself around who killed whom, who owed what, which sect held which debt or grudge. With the Soul Emerald formed, all attempts of fate and karma to tag his soul became… blurry.
Threads that tried to clamp onto him burned out like moths diving into flame.
Ling Feng felt that familiar twist.
Similar to the point when Immortal Emperors took that step out of the river of time—those mighty existences who could force down the past, present, and future with a single will—his own presence slipped a little sideways.
Not out of the river.
But no longer flowing smoothly within it.
At the same time, something else shifted.
His realm.
On paper, Ling Feng's cultivation base had not changed; his Fate Palaces, Life Wheel, and True Fate still sat on the Named Hero rung where everyone believed he was parked.
But as the Soul Chaos Emerald clicked into place among its siblings, his foundation reorganized.
Space. Power. Energy. Time. Soul.
Five emeralds resonated, their individual laws knitting together like five fingers closing into a fist.
Chaos threaded through them, infusing his spirit energy until it no longer fit neatly into the Mortal Emperor World's categories.
His aura rose.
At first, it climbed back to the oppressive Named Hero level that had already suffocated Heavenly Sovereigns.
Then it leaped.
Royal Noble.
Ancient Saint.
Heavenly Sovereign.
Heavenly King.
It did not stop there.
A hazy, undefinable pressure began to emanate from his body—the kind of pressure that only appeared when a cultivator stepped into the Virtuous Paragon realm, at the threshold where one chooses to follow the path of the Heavens or the path of the Grand Era.
Of course, Ling Feng's dao wasn't walking either path honestly.
The Chaos Force had hijacked the ladder.
To outside observers, however, the details did not matter.
What their senses screamed was simple:
This was a Virtuous Paragon standing in the sky.
No.
Worse.
A half-step that smelled faintly… like Immortal Emperor.
The Eastern Hundred Cities shook again.
In Lion's Roar's ancestral temple, old lion carvings along the pillars trembled. An aged ancestor who had once personally seen the shadow of an Immortal Emperor pass through their era stumbled to his feet, clutching his chest.
"This aura…" he whispered hoarsely. "Who is it…? Clearly below Immortal Emperor… yet…"
In the Azure Mysterious Ancient Kingdom, an undying paragon who had slept in stasis for generations snapped open his eyes. Robes fluttered as he stepped out of a sealed chamber, gaze piercing the void toward the Eastern Hundred Cities.
"Which Immortal Emperor has descended?" he muttered, then frowned as he probed deeper. "No… not an Emperor… What are you?"
Within the Brilliance Ancient Kingdom, old battlefields shook. An iron-blooded general, once confident in their two Immortal Emperor backings, felt his spear tremble in his grasp. The ancient memory of the Realm God smashing through their lines flashed before his eyes—and, for the first time, he had the terrible illusion that something worse than the Realm God had appeared in the East.
In the Furious Immortal Saint Country, a young genius cultivating the Lower Tyrannical Immortal Physique coughed blood violently. The pride inherent in that physique—born to trample all beneath their feet—was crushed under the distant pressure.
"Who dares…" a hazy ancestral will growled weakly from their sacred grounds, "…stand above Furious Immortal's descendants…?"
Before the sentence could finish, that will felt it too.
That aura.
And it faltered into silence.
...
Above Tiger Emperor Citadel, Ling Feng finally stopped suppressing himself.
He rolled his shoulders once.
The air cracked.
This time, there was no showy Immortal Emperor phenomenon—no nine suns hanging above his head, no dragons coiling around his body.
His aura simply spread.
It flowed outward in silence, crossing mountains, rivers, and cities without asking permission. The White Tiger Great Vein, which normally responded only to the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger and Tiger's Howl's formation masters, shuddered—
—and then, to the horror of every Tiger's Howl elder, it partially bowed to another will.
"This… this is impossible…" an elder choked, face turning bloodless. "The vein… the vein is acknowledging that junior…?"
The Divine Tiger felt it most clearly.
His demonic heart hammered violently. His eight wings stiffened mid-flap.
"This aura…" he rasped, eyes filled with disbelief. "This is—"
Ling Feng looked down at him and smiled.
"You wanted to awaken the graves," he said gently. "You pulled on the vein first."
His tone remained soft, almost conversational, like a neighbor pointing out a bill.
"That means you're the one paying."
The instant he finished speaking, he moved.
No grand gestures.
No blinding light.
The Soul Chaos Emerald pulsed once in his Inner Void.
From Ling Feng's perspective, the world slowed.
Cyan time law and soul perception fused; every heartbeat in the citadel, every flicker of fear in countless eyes, every wisp of death-qi from the graves turned into distinct threads, hanging in his vision.
One thread burned brighter than the rest.
The soul fire of the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger.
"Found you," he murmured.
He raised his hand.
To onlookers, it looked as if he merely extended a finger toward the sky.
To the Divine Tiger, it felt as if an invisible, icy hand had pierced his chest and simultaneously grabbed both his True Fate and his demonic soul.
"—!"
His eyes bulged. He tried to circulate his merit laws, to draw again on the White Tiger Vein, to command the Four Graves—
Nothing responded.
The Soul Chaos Emerald tightened its grip.
In that instant, Ling Feng used the graves and the vein as leverage. Their ominous dao, which had been used for ages to bury others, was quietly told to turn inward.
Soul Chaos Technique—Gravekeeper's Hand.
"Die," Ling Feng said.
He flicked his finger.
There was no explosion.
No dazzling beam of light, no sky-splitting phenomenon.
The Eight-Winged Divine Tiger's massive demonic body simply… stopped.
From nose to tail, wings to claws, every cell lost its animating will at the exact same moment. His soul was yanked clean out of his flesh and compressed into a tiny, shrieking mote that only Ling Feng could see.
To the spectators, it looked as though their invincible ancestor had been frozen mid-roar, expression twisted, veins bulging in fury—
Then his body began to fall apart.
Not in a messy, bloody spray.
The demonic flesh turned to ash in neat, orderly layers, peeling away from the outside in like a sculptor disassembling a statue. Bones dissolved next, then the remnants of blood energy, collapsing into fine grey dust.
The Eight-Winged Divine Tiger, the divine beast protector of Tiger's Howl, the terror of the Hundred Cities—
Became a quiet rain of ash, scattered over his own citadel by a gentle breeze.
Not even a drop of blood remained.
The only thing still arguing was his soul.
Ling Feng closed his hand.
The shrieking mote vanished into his Inner Void, refined in an instant. A thick, bright soul ring formed around the Soul Chaos Emerald, saturated with ferocious White Tiger battle dao. Compared to his previous rings, this one was heavier, sharper, its presence like a coiled blade waiting to be unsheathed.
In the sky above Tiger Emperor Citadel, silence fell.
Every Tiger's Howl disciple, every elder, every visiting expert from other powers—
Every spy from Ancient Kingdoms lurking in the shadows—
All felt their throats close at the same time.
Gone?
Just like that?
Earlier, when the Prime Imperial Sire had died, it had required Li Shangyuan and Chen Baojiao to combine strength, their blows ringing like war drums as they smashed his divine rings apart.
But the Eight-Winged Divine Tiger, who stood above the Prime Imperial Sire, who had been their ultimate reliance, who had used the Four Ominous Graves and the White Tiger Great Vein as his towering shield—
Had been erased with a single word.
High above, Ling Feng lowered his hand.
He didn't crow. He didn't roar. He only flexed his fingers once, as if testing the unfamiliar weight of the new soul ring.