All Chapters of THE FATE-STEALER’S ASCENSION: STRIPPING THE HERO BARE: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
147 chapters
Chapter 61 Unveiling the Obsidian Spines Secret
Jian Chen’s skin crawled as the cold, desiccated fingers tightened around his ankle, digging through the violet silk and into the raw, aching muscle. The grip wasn't physical; it felt like a hook made of ancient grief, pulling directly on the Obsidian Spine nestled in his back. He didn't scream. He didn't even flinch. He just looked down into the hollow, mud-filled sockets of the corpse rising from the Jian family's grave. "Let go of me, you damn fossil. You're getting dirt on the only nice suit I have left," Jian Chen hissed, his Echoing Fist humming a low, violent frequency into the ground. "Replacer... do you think... the meat belongs to the mind?" the corpse wheezed, its voice sounding like dry leaves being crushed by a boot. "You wear my face. You walk with my stride. But your soul... your soul smells like a cheap, neon circus." "It smells like a winner, Grandpa. Something you wouldn't know much about," Jian Chen spat, the violet lig
Chapter 62 Genesis of the Dark Age
"Good. I like it when the mood is appropriately festive," Jian Chen laughed, launching into a Ghost Blink. The Great Hall was a cathedral of obsidian and glowing spirit-ores, lit by the violent violet hue of the domain's barrier. The fifteen sect leaders—men and women who once decided the fate of millions with a nod—sat in rows of cold iron chairs. Sect Leader Hu was clutching his staff so hard his knuckles were white. Elder Wen was sweating enough to fill a tea cup. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the low, electric hum of the walls breathing.Click. Clack. Click.Jian Chen strode into the hall, the sounds of his boots echoing like a heartbeat through a tomb. He walked straight to the central dais, not even acknowledging the masters as he ascended the steps and sat on the throne of Divine Ore. He leaned back, his legs crossed, looking down at the leaders of the world with the bored apathy of a man who owned their souls."So," Jian Chen started, his voice resonating through every bon
Chapter 63 The Reason the Universe Runs
"They’ve ceased their movement, Lord," she reported with a dark grin. "They heard about Ren Wu’s defeat and your takeover of the Moonlight Cult. They’re fortifying the palace, waiting for you to strike. They’ve gone defensive.""They're not waiting for me to strike, Fubune. They’re waiting for the ending to change back," Jian Chen mocked. He looked at Liu Ruoxi, who was standing near the shadow-puppets, her face calm and focused. "Hey, Ruoxi. Ready to visit your father? I’ve got a palace to audit, and I need a 'princess' to tell me where the treasury keys are kept.""The keys aren't in the office, Jian Chen," she replied, her silver eyes glowing with a newfound, hungry light. "They’re in his marrow. You’ll have to cut the resonance out of his chest if you want the vault to open.""Man, you really are getting better at this," Jian Chen laughed. He turned back to the kneeling sect leaders. "Go back
Chapter 64 Deadly Silence After the Blast
"Master, please tell me your head is still attached to your shoulders!" Fubune’s voice hacked through the settling debris like a dull saw. She was coughing, her lungs surely coated in a thick layer of pulverized obsidian and ancient ancestor-dust. The air was a shimmering, toxic soup of violet-violet Qi and the lingering heat of that final, suicidal detonation. Jian Chen didn't answer immediately. He was busy listening to the symphony of snapping wires in his head. The Obsidian Spine was screaming—not with pain, but with a rhythmic, pulsing frequency that matched the silence of the void. He stood in the center of the blackened courtyard of the Sundered Maw, his boots buried three inches deep in what used to be solid granite. His royal-violet robes were shredded ribbons, revealing skin that hummed with a ghostly, translucent silver. “He's... he’s gone,” Li Min whispered, her Mirror Root emitting a dying, pathetic amber flicker. She crawled out
Chapter 65 The Human Placeholder
A thousand miles away, in a ditch on the edge of the Southern Thistles academy grounds, an unassuming youth named Lin Fan groaned. He didn't look like a hero. He didn't look like a savior. He looked like a wet, dirty rug that had been beaten against a stone for a month. He opened one eye—it was milky and bloodshot—and tried to focus on the gray sky above. “Come on, Fan'er. Get up,” a voice whispered inside his mind—a dry, fading echo of the Blind Sage. “The ritual... the ancestral resonance... it's today. You have to pass the entry exam. If you don’t... you’ll never reach the Celestial Repository.” “I... I can't feel my breath,” Lin Fan wheezed, his fingers clawing at the mud. He tried to summon his golden Qi—the power that had once felt as easy as breathing—but his chest felt hollow. It felt as if someone had taken a literal scoop and removed his soul. “Sage... where is the Light? You said the Heavens wouldn't abandon their own blood.” “The Heavens... the Heavens are currently in
Chapter 66 Arrived for an Interview
“Excellent. Inflation is a better weapon than a sword anyway,” Jian Chen chuckled. He looked back at the screen. Lin Fan was now being kicked by a street dog as he tried to scavenge a piece of half-rotten dumpling from a stall’s trash bin. “It’s sickening,” Li Min whispered. “He was meant to be the King of Kings. Now look at him. Even his eyes don't hold the sun anymore.” “That’s because I ate the sun for lunch, bird,” Jian Chen countered. He waved his hand, and the projection zoomed in on Lin Fan’s shattered Dantian. The once-vibrant spiritual center was a jagged, darkened crater, leaking grey Qi that looked like smoke from a dying campfire. “He hears the whispers, you know. Even down there. The rumors of a ‘Shadow Emperor’. The one who took his girlfriend, his mine, and his future. Can you feel his hate? It’s magnificent.” &
Chapter 67 The Obsidian Domain
The chill of death met the fury of dominion. Jian Chen’s grip, forged from stolen destinies and the volatile hum of the Echoing Fist, closed around the corpse's desiccated wrist like a vise made of meta-reality. The ancient bone creaked, not with weakness, but with the grating sound of a deep-seated denial.“Earthquake, huh?” the ancestral voice rattled, its hollow eyes somehow reflecting a ghostly arrogance. “An earthquake … only levels. You can never build anew. This world … belongs to stories. And you … you are merely a misprint!”Jian Chen merely tightened his grip. "Misprints can redefine the lexicon, old man. And sometimes, you need to level the entire library to find your own chapter."The Echoing Fist, vibrating with frequencies beyond mortal hearing, met the primordial *narrative pressure* of the corpse. It wasn't a contest of physical might, but a brutal, instantaneous argument betwee
Chapter 68 The Meta-Narrative Virus
"They're not just reaching in, Fubune. They're trying to hit the delete button on *us*," Jian Chen corrected, his voice flat and lethal. He extended his hand, and a swirling vortex of shimmering dark energy – the very essence of the Sundered Maw, reshaped by his will – appeared. He slammed it down, not destroying, but integrating. The shattered crypt wasn't annihilated; it solidified, reformed into something else entirely – a nexus of black, seamless stone pulsing with his signature. This was no longer just a crypt; it was an embryonic dominion, tethered to his Spine. "The Sundered Maw is gone. This… this is the Obsidian Domain now. And it belongs to me."Li Min flinched as the wave of power radiated from him. "Domain? What does that even mean? Is it… is it like a territory? Can they still try to erase it?""They can try. But here, *I* dictate the laws of existence," Jian Chen replied, running his hand over the strange, dark
Chapter 69 The Author's Glitch
The air within the newly christened Obsidian Domain thrummed with a heavy, almost visible tension, a silent argument between Jian Chen's usurped will and the universe's attempt to snap back into its original trajectory. Outside, the world was no longer simply unfolding; it was flickering.Jian Chen stood before a jagged, obsidian window, carved directly into the heart of his new stronghold. The view beyond was a panorama of the broken landscape of the former Sundered Maw, but now, something was fundamentally amiss. A gnarled, ancient oak tree on a distant ridge shimmered, its autumnal leaves momentarily morphing into spring blossoms before snapping back. A faint, almost imperceptible hum resonated through the very bedrock, like a cosmic hard drive struggling to process conflicting data."He's trying to put it back together," Jian Chen murmured, his voice a low rumble that vibrated with the innate power of the Obsidian Spine. The sensation of the Spine was not unlike wearing a second,
Chapter 70 Forcing the Plot Holes
[Anomaly Detected: 'Temporal Drift' in Central Marketplace of Aerthos City. NPC 'Elder Thistlewick' exhibits anachronistic memory of purchasing 'Phoenix Feathers of Renewal' five decades prior to their historical manifestation.]"Elder Thistlewick?" Fubune chuckled, a strained sound. "That old coot barely remembers what he had for breakfast. He's talking about mythical Phoenix Feathers now?""It's not him, Fubune," Li Min interjected, her Mirror Root flaring a sudden, vibrant green, before dimming. "It's the narrative attempting to inject a 'heroic quest' item into a minor character's past, to set up a future encounter. But it’s clumsy. The timing is off. It's like the Author is trying to force a subplot into existence by brute force."Jian Chen nodded slowly. "Precisely. The Author is not omnipotent; merely immensely powerful and bound by certain rules, even if they are their own. They are attempting to restore a plot, not create it from