The Sword Emperor's calloused, blood-soaked left hand gripped the pitch-black edge of Azathoth so tightly that iron sparks hissed between his skin and the dark steel.
His eyes burned with three millennia of savage, unhinged wrath, his hot, sour breath brushing against the pale cheeks of the youth before him.
The flame licking the obsidian blade ate into his flesh, but his grip remained frozen in place, an ancient titan refusing to concede an inch of dirt to a junior.
"You... You will pay for this..."
"Pay? You don't deserve to utter such words." Haoran smirked, "Genesis Protocol...!"
CRACK!
A sound that did not belong to the mortal heavens tore through the rusted expanse of the Ten Thousand Sword Domain.
It was not a sound of metal snapping or stone crumbling. It was the low, primordial hum of reality being rewritten from its very foundations.
