Chains Of Eternity: Defiling Heaven
My gaze fell on a slender mortal girl with short dark hair and glowing brown eyes. She looked like she was about to cry, and soon enough, she began sobbing. I glanced at the heaps of bodies around her—were they her companions? Why was she crying? This was war, and their fate was sealed the moment they entered my domain. I tilted my head, resting it on my hand as I studied her. There was something different about her, something I couldn’t quite figure out.
Why did I feel a flicker of pain, an emotion, from my pitch-black heart? It shouldn’t be possible—my heart was dead. I was sure of that. Yet, she walked toward my castle, forcing herself closer with each step. Her foundation was weak, far weaker than the knights I had just slain. I channeled my cosmic bolt, aimed to kill, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I tried, but she kept moving forward, weeping uncontrollably. The ache inside me grew as she finally reached me, collapsing and embracing me, her cries so loud they seemed to echo in my soul.
I was frozen, unsure of what to do. Emotions I thought long dead came crashing back. She sniffled and cried out,
“Come home, big brother. Please come home with me.” She cuddled closer, and a warmth spread through me. I felt a warm liquid on my cheeks—tears. I realised I was crying.
“Please, big brother, let’s go home,”
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Chapter: Su Qingyue, sad taleThat night, Xiao Meng sat on the east wing's roof tiles and stared at the red sky.He kept his breathing steady, the Azure Stream flowing through his meridians, and let the qi circle through his dantian again and again. Two days had passed since the theft, and in two days he had learned something strange about himself.His spirit sense was sharper, unlike the normal guard in the mansion. When he closed his eyes, the entire manor unfolded in his mind like an ink painting: the guards pacing the wall, the steward snoring in the storehouse, a mouse in the granary, a moth against a lantern. He could feel every change in the air, every breath, every heartbeat. He had assumed it was normal until Qingyue gaped at him over dinner."Tiānrén Gǎnyìng!" she had cried, spilling her soup. "Heaven and Man Resonance! That's an ability reserved for cultivators who have formed a Golden Core!"He remembered her clear explanation of what the golden core was. A Golden Core, Jīndān, was what a cultivator bec
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: Zhao Bao: The Hand That Named the Fox"That I was nothing but a scavenger who wanted a free meal." Xiao Meng's voice stayed gentle. "At that hour, no horse had been reported, no jar had been counted. The steward had not yet entered the stable. Only one kind of man hunts the fox before the hens have begun to cry, and it is the man who watched the fox walk in."Silence fell like a dropped blade."That's right," Qingyue whispered, then louder, her eyes blazing. "That's right! You said it before anybody knew anything! You knew!""A slip of the tongue!" Zhao Bao barked. "Anyone could have guessed a stranger would steal...""Guessed what, exactly? A theft that no one had yet discovered?" Xiao Meng tilted his head. "If a man cries 'thief' while the house still sleeps, either he is a prophet or he is the thief. And I do not think you are a prophet.""Master Su," Old Qian stammered from his knees, daring to lift his head. "The farrier's stamp, the one I use to mark hoof-shapes on the new shoes. It's been missing from my toolbox sin
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: Who is the Thief?Nobody believed him."Early Qi Refining?" Lu Heng's eyes narrowed. "Impossible, just yesterday you didn’t even have a spirit core, so how? That’s just impossible!" He sent out a thread of spiritual sense, and his brows rose. Deep in Xiao Meng's lower dantian, thin as a strand of spider silk but unmistakably real, a thread of qi was turning. "...It’s impossible, just what demonic technigue did you use.""Demonic technique? Is it so hard?" Xiao Meng asked. "To become a Qi Refining cultivator?"The guards burst out laughing."Hard?" one wheezed. "First you temper the flesh, that's Body Refining. Then you open the meridians, sense the qi of heaven and earth, and draw it into your dantian. Most men spend years on that threshold, and plenty never cross it.""Even a gifted child needs two or three years," another added."Only prodigies and exceptions do it faster," Qingyue said, folding her arms. "And I have tutors, pills, and a spirit spring, and I'm still in early Body Refining after two ye
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: Early stage Qi refining in a single nightThe scavenger market rose out of the red dust like a scab on the land.Xiao Meng stared from the wagon seat. Tents of patched hide leaned against walls of scrap iron. Splintered stalls sold bones, rusted talismans, and jars of "spirit dust" that looked suspiciously like sand. Between them, people sat in the dirt with hollow cheeks and ribs showing through ragged cloth, palms turned up to every passing wagon. Eyes measured the guards' weapons and slid away. A man clutched a loaf to his chest as if the air itself might steal it."Don't give them anything," Qingyue whispered. Then she dug into her sleeve and pressed a copper coin into a child's hand."Why are they like this?""Because of the war." It was the quietest he had ever heard her. "When the heavens fell, we were cut off from the mainland's spiritual veins. Nothing grows right here. The strong left, and the ones who couldn't dig through the ruins for relics to sell for bread. That's what a scavenger is ."She forced her smile back
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: A Name Without a PastXiao Meng woke to the creak of wheels.A wooden ceiling swayed above him. A lantern rocked on its hook, and the air smelled of dried herbs and horses. A carriage. He sat up and found three faces watching him: a lean, grey-eyed man with a trimmed beard, a broad-shouldered guard he vaguely remembered from the hollow, and a girl who was beaming."He's awake! Father, he's awake! I told you he wasn't dead. Mu Jian owes me a silver.""I said he was breathing too evenly to be dead," Mu Jian muttered, with a deep sigh." Yeah, whatever, it’s the same as saying he is dead." The girl clasped her hands and bowed with theatrical grace. "Let me introduce myself properly, since you fainted on me last time. Su Qingyue, daughter of caravan master Su Beichen. You may remember my name with gratitude.""Qingyue," her father said mildly, with a heavy sigh, "Young man, you saved my daughter's life. We found you unconscious and alone among the. Leaving you there was unthinkable."Xiao Meng stared hard for a
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: The Man Beneath the Red Sky"Help! Someone, help me!"The cry came again and again, ragged and frantic, scraping at the edges of the dark. Then a shriek tore across the air, so shrill it split the silence in two, and Xiao Meng's eyes snapped open.Leaves, orange leaves, dry and brittle, buried him to the chest. He thrashed upward through them, and they spilled from his shoulders like dying embers as he dragged himself to his knees, gasping.The sky was red, a deep, bruised crimson stretched from horizon to horizon. Beneath it lay broken walls, rusted halberds leaning in the dust, and the vast ribs of some colossal beast arching overhead like the ruin of a temple.Where am I?He pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat was slow and steady. His fingers were long, callused, and unfamiliar. His body felt like borrowed clothing, tailored for a stranger.Who am I?"Please! Somebody!"The voice came from beyond a ridge of shattered stone. Xiao Meng rose, swayed, and found his balance. He walked toward it without knowi
Last Updated: 2026-09-03
Chapter: CHAPTER TWELVE: VISION OF THE HERALDThey all knew by the next morning.Chase could tell, not from anything said directly, but from the particular quality of silence that follows a conversation about someone who is now present. The way eyes found other things to look at when he walked through the common area. The way conversations didn't stop but adjusted, like water rerouting around a new obstacle.He was fine with it. He had a box to finish.The ambition of that first meeting had dissolved from their faces entirely, replaced by something more honest, a collective uncertainty about how to relate to a variable the equation of this school had never contained before. Chase didn't hold it against them.He understood the arithmetic. Zero divinity wasn't just a low score but something they simply couldn’t associate in a common topic. They didn't know what to say to someone whose situation had no established vocabulary, so they said nothing, and Chase ran his laps, and the days moved.He had developed his rhythm by now, every
Last Updated: 2026-06-24
Chapter: CHAPTER TEN: THE SENIORSDean Mackenzie had been rearranging the same shelf for forty minutes.This was not unusual. The books in his study operated under a classification system that existed entirely within his own mind, and the system had a tendency to evolve overnight, rendering whatever order he'd achieved the previous day aesthetically unsatisfying by morning. Felix had stopped commenting on it two years ago."Felix." Mackenzie swung the rolling ladder along the rail with one hand. "Did you tell them about Chase?"Felix was hunched over his worktable on the far side of the room, looking at the design Mackenzie had"Crap." He set down his measuring tool. "I forgot. They should be back by now."Mackenzie paused on the ladder.Lumina Sanctum Academy had eight students before Chase arrived, whom had been away for the past week with their secondary instructor, Mr. Godfrey White, competing in the annual Regional Competition. Schools from across the Silver Throne's outer territories sent their students to compe
Last Updated: 2026-06-24
Chapter: CHAPTER NINE: THE WEIGHT OF ZEROThe forest was wrapped in the quiet light of dawn when Chase arrived. The sun had begun its slow climb beyond the mountains, but very little of its golden glow managed to reach the forest floor. Enormous old-growth pines towered overhead rising like pillars into a vast canopy of dark green needles that swallowed most of the morning light before it could descend.Mackenzie arrived several minutes later. Felix followed close behind him carrying three wooden boxes stacked against his chest. The boxes appeared deceptively ordinary until he lowered them to the ground.The impact landed with a deep, heavy thud that seemed far too powerful for their size. The sound rolled through the quiet forest, disturbing the fragile stillness of dawn, and Chase felt a faint vibration travel through the earth beneath his boots as loose pine needles trembled across the ground.Mackenzie looked at the boxes. Then at Chase."In those boxes are weighted cuffs." Mackenzie said. "Each set carries a different am
Last Updated: 2026-06-23
Chapter: CHAPTER EIGHT: THE LAST CHANCEThe silence lasted exactly long enough to become uncomfortable.Then Mackenzie turned to Felix with the expression of a man who needed a second witness to confirm what he'd just heard. "Did you just hear that?" He pointed at Chase without looking at him, finger extended like evidence. "The kid just said zero aptitude."Felix was staring at Chase with his mouth slightly open. "I heard it.""Zero." Mackenzie repeated maybe hoping it was a joke and also trying to make sense. "As in the number. Before one.""That is traditionally what zero means, yes," Felix said.They both looked at Chase."Kid." Mackenzie's voice had shifted, stripped of everything except the need for confirmation. "You are serious right now."Chase said nothing. Just looked back at them with the particular stillness.Mackenzie pulled Felix to the far side of the room by his sleeve. The muttering that followed was low, fast, and punctuated by Felix glancing at Chase twice. Mackenzie's hands moved while he talked.Then M
Last Updated: 2026-06-23
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVEN: LUMINA SANCTUM ACADEMYThe economy train took two days.Chase had no other choice, this was all he could manage. Plane ticket: impossible. Fast train: impossible. The slow one, the one that stopped at every station and smelled of old upholstery and someone else's lunch: that was his speed now.He didn't mind as much as he expected to.The window gave him sky and passing mountain ranges and enough silence to think, which was either a gift or a punishment depending on the hour. He turned the black card over in his fingers until the edges felt familiar. In the envelope the man had left alongside it. He never told him his name, just call me Mr. Hope, were two things: a letter sealed with wax he hadn't broken yet, and a single handwritten line.The journey ahead is yours and yours alone.Chase had read it four times. It wasn't comfort exactly it just made him think quite a lot and for such a journey, it helped him kill time.He watched the landscape change outside the glass and thought about what Mr. Hope had sa
Last Updated: 2026-06-23
Chapter: CHAPTER SIX: THE NEW PATH"Who the hell are you?"The man with green hair looked at him sideways and made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. A scoff delivered with the efficiency of someone who found the question mildly beneath them."Does it really matter?" He produced a cigar from somewhere inside his loose jacket, lit it with a practised motion, and returned his gaze to the ocean. "I'm not the one who's lost, am I?"Chase stared at the side of his face for a long moment. The man showed no interest in being stared at. He simply smoked, watching the water.Chase's knees were still on the ground. He got up. Brushed the grass off. Sat down at the cliff's edge instead, legs hanging, and looked at the ocean because there was nothing else to do with himself.The wind moved through the blue lilies. The water caught the afternoon light and scattered it."So," the man said, after a while. "You think God has forsaken you." A pull of the cigar. "How is that, exactly?"Chase exhaled through his nose. It came out long an
Last Updated: 2026-06-23
