Time is not a line. It is a stagnant river, choked with the corpses of failed heroes.
Deep within the darkest folds of the Grey Chaos, far beyond the radiant boundaries of the Twelve Heavenly Domains, a solitary consciousness drifted. It had no form, no heartbeat, and no breath. It was merely a speck of obsession, stubborn enough to survive the erosion of ten million years.
This speck of soul floated past the wreckage of dead stars. It drifted through the skeletal remains of galaxies that had been devoured by the Void. It moved with a silence that was louder than thunder.
Failure.
The word echoed in the consciousness, a bitter taste that not even the oblivion of death could wash away.
The First Era. I was the Sword Saint of the Purple Clouds. I cut down nine thousand demons, but I broke my blade against the Wall of Domain 12. I died of exhaustion.
The Second Era. I was the Alchemist Emperor, Pill Sovereign. I refined a sun into a pill to bribe the Heavenly Dao. The Heavens took the pill and struck me down with Nine-Color Lightning. I died of betrayal.
The Fifth Era. I led the Rebellion of the Thousand Clans. We burned the sky. We almost succeeded. But the Ancient Clans... my own blood... sold me out for a few drops of divine liquid. I died of heartbreak.
The Tenth Era...
The soul shuddered. The memory of the Tenth Era was fresh. It was a memory of blood, of a throne made of white bones, and of a realization that came too late.
In the Tenth Era, I conquered the world. I sat on the highest throne. I became the World Enemy. And when I finally looked up at the sky, waiting for the final Tribulation... I saw the truth. There is no Tribulation. There is no test.
The Twelve Domains are a farm.
And I was just the fattest livestock waiting for the butcher.
The soul stopped drifting. It hovered before a massive, invisible barrier. Through the murky chaos, one could see the Twelve Heavenly Domains shining like jewels in a dark room. They looked beautiful. Majestic.
To the mortals inside, those Domains were the entire universe. To this soul, they were a cage. A beautifully crafted, gilded birdcage designed to refine the energy of trillions of lives into "Concept Source" for something waiting outside.
They call it Destiny. They call it the Heavenly Dao. They call it the Will of the World.
I call it a parasite.
A faint hum resonated within the soul. Wrapped tightly in the center of this consciousness was a rough, grey stone object. It looked like a broken piece of a tombstone. It had no markings, no Qi fluctuations, and no light. It was the Nameless Tablet.
He had found it at the end of his tenth life, buried under the ruins of the Primordial Era. It was the only thing in the universe that the Heavens could not see. The only thing that did not belong to the Cage.
"Ten lives," the soul projected a thought, a voice that sounded like grinding stones. "I have spent ten lives playing by your rules. I cultivated your Qi. I comprehended your Laws. I fought for your Karma."
The Nameless Tablet pulsed, absorbing the soul's resentment.
"This time... I will not Ascend. I will not seek approval. I will not be a hero or a villain."
The soul began to burn. It was igniting its own accumulated memories, burning the experiences of ten eras to generate enough thrust to pierce the barrier of the world one last time.
"This time, I will be the cancer."
BOOM!
Without a sound audible to the physical world, the soul tore through the fabric of the Chaos. It shot toward the shimmering light of the Eleventh Domain: The Imperial Heavens. It did not aim for a random mortal. It did not aim for a lucky encounter.
It aimed for the Ancient Xie Clan. The very clan that had betrayed him in the Fifth Era. The clan that guarded the deepest secrets of the Cage.
"I will be born into the heart of the enemy. I will eat their rice, drink their water, learn their secrets, and use their resources to forge a blade that can kill the Sky."
The soul streaked across the firmament like a falling star that cast no shadow.
"The Eleventh Life is over. This is the Twelfth. The final cycle."
"Let the funeral begin."
As the soul pierced the atmospheric barrier of the Imperial Heavens, the Nameless Tablet flared one last time, wrapping the soul in a shroud of absolute nothingness.
Even the Great Eye of the Heavenly Dao, which watched all things, blinked. For a microsecond, it lost track of a single thread of fate.
In that microsecond, the anomaly slipped in.
The game had begun.