The chaos of the battlefield dissolved into background noise. Clashing of steels. Spiritual techniques exploded across the ruined capital. The voice of the coalition barking of commands. The roars of the undead army. The furious screech of the new born dragon all faded into a distant, muted thrum.My eyes were fixed on the man standing several dozen steps ahead of me.Malphas.He stood in the middle of the destruction with his hands hanging loosely at his sides.No weapon. No stance. No visible defense. Just that calm, ancient expression.My fingers tightened around my spear.Neither of us spoke.Then, Malphas disappeared.My pupils contracted. I barely saw him.My body moved before my mind finished processing the attack. I twisted sideways.BOOM!A fist tore through the space where my head had been. The force behind it ripped apart the stone beneath our feet.I rotated with the momentum, my spear already sweeping upward.CLANG!Malphas blocked the blade with his forearm. The collisi

There was no pause. No breather. No span of seconds for the air to clear. The whole atmosphere flattened. The demonic Qi surrounding Malphas ceased to be a simple aura. It became dense and pitch black, moving like a living ocean, rising and falling in slow, deliberate waves.Every time it contracted, the space around him seemed to shrink. Every time it expanded, the ground trembled.My fingers tightened around the shaft of my spear until the metal groaned under the force.Deep in the dark instinctual part of my mind, something whispered a single word. Run.I crushed the thought before it could take root.Malphas tilted his head. His completely black eyes settled on me. A faint smile appeared.“There it is.”I frowned.“That look.”He took a slow step forward. “I have been waiting to see those eyes.”The corners of his mouth stretched into a wide, hollow grin. “Is it fear, Long Chen?”I swallowed hard without answering, but even the sound of the echoes in my head. Before the sou

Everything faded and silence slammed against my ears . There was no battlefield. No pain. Only darkness.I couldn’t tell if I was dead. My consciousness floated in an endless, weightless void. There was no ground beneath my feet. No sky above my head. For the first time in my memory, the endless cycle of killing and surviving simply ceased. I didn’t have to move. Didn’t have to think. Didn’t have to protect anyone. There was nothing demanding anything from me.There was no anger left in me, only an overwhelming, uncanny peace. A memory surfaced.Warm sunlight. The sound of water flowing through the garden behind the Long Clan residence.I was young again. Much younger.I could hear my father’s voice somewhere behind me, telling me to slow down. I laughed and ran through the sunlit pavilion. For that brief moment, I wasn’t the Sovereign. I wasn’t the survivor of the Long Clan massacre. I wasn’t the man standing against an ancient demon.I was simply Long Chen.A mischievous child

The wind that swept through the ruined capital was cold, completely stripped of the demonic heat that had suffocated us for hours.I stood motionless before the small, quiet pile of black ash. Where Malphas had stood seconds ago, there was now only dust, caught in the low gusts of the night air and scattered across the cracked stone.The sky above had turned pitch black, the demonic qi that had covered the capital was gone. Whether it had been swallowed by the coming night or simply vanished with Malphas, I couldn’t tell. Nearby, remains of the battlefield field have started moving. Soldiers moved through the wreckage. Some carried the wounded. Others carried the dead.A few guards were lighting torches, their flames small against the enormous darkness settling over the city.Nobody celebrated. Nobody had the strength. I lowered my gaze to the sword in my hand. My father’s sword. The blade reflected the faint torchlight.I tightened my grip.We had won. So why did it feel like som

The pale light of dawn was just breaking over the capital, bleeding thin gold across the sky when I arrived. I appeared above the eastern palace grounds without disturbing the air.For most cultivators, crossing several hundred meters required time. For me, distance had become little more than a suggestion.The second awakening had changed the way I understood space. It no longer felt like something I crossed.It yielded.In my arms, Mei Ling felt terrifyingly light. Her head against my shoulder. Her long hair spilled over my arm. Her body was cold, her breath came in shallow, fragile hitches that every few seconds I found myself checking it. I held her with an almost absurd gentleness, terrified that the slightest sudden movement might shatter what little life remained in her fragile core.I tightened my arm beneath her back a little. Behind me, there was no gentleness.Spiritual chains wrapped around Wei Jue’s wrists and ankles, dragging him through the air behind me. His robes