Caelan looked at the figure before him, now enveloped in that dense black energy."You've decided to give everything?" His voice came out calm, without a single layer that could be called pressured. "You should have done that from the start." A pause. "Because honestly—I haven't even been serious this whole time."Hearing that, the Supreme Leader ground his teeth.The first humiliation earlier—Caelan standing there with no troubled expression despite receiving dozens of attacks—could still be swallowed. That could be explained by differences in fighting style, by unfinished calculations, by many things.But what had just come out of Caelan Voss's mouth was like someone throwing filth directly into his face.In front of twelve thousand people.In his own arena."YOU BASTARD—" The Supreme Leader's voice was filled with rage. "I WILL CUT YOUR BODY INTO A MILLION PIECES!"Then he moved.BRAKK.The black stone floor beneath his feet didn't just crack—it shattered. A two-meter radius from h

Eight Grand Elders closed the distance in a time that gave no one watching a chance to count.This was coordination that had been very thoroughly trained—not eight people moving together by coincidence, but eight people who had long understood how each other moved so that there was no gap between them. From the left, from the right, from the front, from the back—angles that closed off every possible exit, at speeds each of which had already proven itself across hundreds of fights before tonight.One meter away.Rex was still looking into the arena.Half a meter.Seven blades and one staff moved in unison toward one small target standing still.Then Rex suddenly wasn't there.No visible movement. No wind preceding his departure. Just Rex—and then no Rex—and the eight Grand Elders found themselves striking empty air at the point where that small child had just been standing, some of their attacks even colliding with each other because the target was no longer there to be struck."Where

Tears began running down the Supreme Leader's face. Not chosen tears, not tears planned as a tool, but tears that came from a body in pain, in fear, with no defense left to hold them back."Caelan Voss..." His voice came out unlike any voice that had ever come out of him in his entire life. Cracking at its edges, unstable. "I... I concede defeat."No response from Caelan.The Supreme Leader swallowed something that felt like swallowing broken glass."You won. You're far stronger than me—I acknowledge it." His head dropped, slightly, in a motion this body had never made before. "I don't want to die. Not like this. Not here." His voice dropped lower. "Let me live, and I'm willing to do anything you ask. I'll hand over this sect, hand over everything in it, all the records, all the artifacts, all the connections the Eternal Black Dragon Sect has accumulated across centuries." A pause, and then the words that came next were words these lips had never imagined saying. "I will be... your do

Caelan shifted his gaze from the Supreme Leader's head no longer attached to his body, to the twelve thousand people standing—and lying—in the stands."Your Supreme Leader is dead." His voice came out without needing to be loud to reach every ear present. "And from this moment on, I will be taking over his position."A pause."Anyone object?"No one answered.The black sword with its gold veins moved—one long horizontal pull, from left to right, dragging across the surface of the arena's black stone floor and leaving a deep, clean line along its entire path."For those who object, step over this line." Caelan looked at the crowd before him. "And face me. But I assure you, no one will be walking away afterward."Silence.Five seconds.Twenty.A full minute passed without a single foot moving forward.No one needed long to reach the same conclusion—a conclusion already very clear even before that line was drawn. The Supreme Leader was dead. The Supreme Leader who had used the Realm Sacr

Caelan's hand stopped on one bundle of documents.Nothing about its appearance was special—a cover no different from the others, a cord no more eye-catching than the rest. But there was a kind of energy drawing him to it, something that couldn't be ignored, that made his hand stop there and nowhere else.He picked it up.Opened it.The writing inside was old—but readable, in the way of writing very carefully preserved by something invisible from the damage of age. Caelan read in silence, with Bai Li still standing quietly near the door and not interrupting.First page. Second. Third.Then his eyes stopped.There, among records of cultivation history with no exact dates, among names he didn't recognize and events with no surviving witnesses—one name appeared.Xului.An old man with long white hair. Appearing every few years, from time to time, with no predictable pattern. The name was first recorded in this document a thousand years ago—not as a founder, not as a leader, but as someone