The sky above the Silent Peak was never truly black. It was a dark purple, like a bruise rotting on the skin of the universe. The wind roaring at this height did not carry oxygen; it carried the scent of copper from ancient blood and ashes of civilizations that had collapsed even before the gods of today were born.
Amidst the ruins of an altar shaped like a shattered dragon's jaw, Ye Wuming stood.
He did not shiver, despite his thin robe being torn by the ice storm. He was not afraid, even as the abyss below seemed ready to swallow him in absolute darkness. His eyes—ah, those eyes were the most terrifying part of him. Physically, they were the eyes of an eighteen-year-old youth, yet behind the pupils lay a weariness that could only belong to someone who had witnessed ten thousand sunrises and sunsets from different perspectives.
"Nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine," he whispered. His voice was dry, like sandpaper scraping against a tombstone.
He remembered everything.
He remembered life number 14, when he became a Sword Emperor who split oceans merely to prove his love for a woman who then poisoned him on their wedding night.
He remembered life number 1,002, when he was born as a eyeless monster in the depths of a ravine, devouring his own sibling just to survive one more hour.
He remembered life number 5,550, when he was nothing but a disabled beggar frozen to death in a sewage ditch, while above him, cultivators flew on swords toward feasts in the sky.
Every life was a mask. Every death was a different kind of pain: burning, cutting, rotting, or simply fading away in solitude.
---
Right in front of him floated an anomaly. The Shattered Eternal Prism.
It was a golden dodecahedron that was imperfect. Its surface was covered with micro-cracks emitting a golden light that hurt the eyes. The runes on its surface were not static; they crawled, whispered, and devoured one another.
It was a curse. It was a blessing. It was a prison.
Ye Wuming extended his trembling hand. As his fingertip touched the cold surface of the prism, a shockwave struck his consciousness. Not ordinary Qi energy, but the flow of Cosmic Memory.
"Last chance," a genderless voice echoed inside his skull, so loud that the blood vessels in his eyes burst.
"You have spent 9,999 cycles as an experiment. You have become everything, yet you are no one. Now, your safety net is shattered. If your soul breaks in this life, you will not return to the embrace of Samsara. You will become absolute nothingness."
Ye Wuming smiled. It was the most terrifying smile the world had ever seen. There was no joy in it, only the satisfaction of a gambler finally risking his last life.
"Absolute..." he murmured. "Finally, something with consequences."
---
As he drew in his energy, the atmosphere around him began to distort. In his mind, Ye Wuming unfolded the cultivation map he had mastered in his previous lives.
Tempered Flesh Domain (Tempered Flesh) – He had done this thousands of times. He knew every nerve knot that had to be severed so that pain would no longer be an obstacle.
Dao Emperor Domain (Dao Emperor) – He had built foundations from pure gold, from hellfire, to eternal ice.
...up to the Eternal Emperor Domain that he had once held in life number 9,000.
Yet now, he was in this body. The original body of Ye Wuming—a gifted youth deliberately ruined by internal sect conspiracies. His bones had been systematically shattered, his meridians blocked by the "Black Dew Coagulation" poison. Technically, he was trash.
But for someone who had once been both a War God and a Devil Physician, a broken body was merely clay that needed to be reshaped.
He began to meditate atop the altar. Each breath drew in wild Qi from the surroundings of Silent Peak. The Qi was sharp, like tiny knives attempting to slice his lungs from the inside. Yet, Ye Wuming employed the "Nine Thousand Soul Revolutions" technique—a forbidden technique he had created in life number 7,200 when he became a traitor to an orthodox sect.
Blood began to seep from his pores. He did not stop.
His ribs creaked, shifting back into place. He did not blink.
---
Far above the clouds, in realms unreachable by human eyes, cosmic spies began to open. The Gods, entities who had long harvested "experience" from Ye Wuming's cycles, started to feel uneasy.
"That anomaly… it did not die as it should have," whispered a voice that shook the constellations.
"It is the vessel of 9,999 life experiences. If it manages to reach the 36th Domain with full awareness, it will no longer be human. It will become a predator to us."
Cosmic laws began to move. Blood-red lightning storms gathered above Silent Peak. This was not a natural disaster. It was a Heavenly Execution. The sky sought to erase this mistake before it became too sharp to break.
---
Ye Wuming opened his eyes just as the first lightning struck.
The flash illuminated his face, revealing the black aura beginning to envelop his body—an aura from ten thousand deaths. He stood, facing the wrathful sky, and spread his arms as if to embrace the lightning itself.
"Are you afraid?" Ye Wuming chuckled softly. "You gave me 9,999 chances to learn how to kill you. And now, you want to end the game just as I've started to enjoy it?"
He grasped the Eternal Prism, now dimmed, absorbing the last remnants of its essence into his bone marrow. The prism shattered into golden dust in his hands.
"Life number 10,000," he said, his voice calm yet trembling with an unimaginable power. "I do not need immortality. I only need enough time to overthrow your thrones."
With a single step, the altar beneath him shattered into pieces. Ye Wuming leaped down from the mountain peak, heading into the mortal world filled with traitors, monsters, and false gods.
This world might be cruel, but they had forgotten one thing: they were facing someone who was already bored of death.