The silent city stretched around them like a tomb dressed in beauty. David stood in the market square, the weight of Athena's words still pressing against his chest. Three hundred thousand years. A war that destroyed everything. A prison that held the Dark Lord himself. The scale of it was too vast to grasp, so he did not try. He had learned long ago to focus on what was in front of him, not on the shadows of things beyond his reach.Then he heard a voice he had not heard in a few years."Athena, why are you here?"David turned toward Albert materialized beside him, his ancient form flickering like a candle flame in a draft. But his eyes were not on David. They were fixed on the woman in white, and there was something in them that David had never seen before. Recognition. Confusion and beneath both, a grief so old it had become part of the spirit's very being.Athena looked toward the sudden figure with calm silver eyes. She studied Albert for a long moment, her expression unreadable.

David absorbed this. His knowledge of the wider universe was still limited to the politics of ancient beings, the wars of True Gods and Universe Lords, the secrets that shaped the cosmos. But he understood enough. This was the source of his inheritance. The reason his bloodline was so powerful. The reason the universe would one day want him dead."Why me?" he asked. It was not a question born of self-doubt but of genuine curiosity. "Out of all the people in the universe, all the geniuses and prodigies and chosen ones, why did you choose a thirteen-year-old boy who was thrown away by his own family?"The fragment tilted its head. The gesture was almost human, almost warm. " ‘Choice’ is a strange word. I set the conditions. The blood pond and the secret realm even the token you gain. All of them were tests, and all of them were gates. You fulfilled the conditions. You passed through the gates. Was that my choice? Or was it yours? Or is choice simply the name we give to the moment when d

The memories cascaded through David's mind, one after another, a river of small cruelties and quiet rejections. But something was different now. Something had changed. The memories still hurt, they would always hurt but the pain no longer controlled him. He watched them pass like leaves on a stream, acknowledging each one without letting it pull him under.The Primogenitor's blood was not just remaking his body. It was remaking his soul. The cracks that had formed over years of neglect and rejection were being filled with something stronger than stone. The wounds that had festered in the darkness of his heart were being cauterized by a light that did not judge and did not comfort. It simply healed.And as he healed, his power grew.His gene level surged past thirteen thousand. Fourteen thousand. Fifteen thousand. The numbers would have been impossible for any ordinary cultivator in the immortal realm to increase or even, but David was no longer ordinary. He was no longer merely human

Inside the trial chamber, David stood motionless, his eyes still closed, his breathing slow and deep.The transformation was complete. The Primogenitor's blood had finished its work, and what remained was a body that no longer felt entirely his own not because it was foreign, but because it was more. More than he had been. More than he had thought possible.He raised his hand and looked at it. The skin was smooth, unblemished, but beneath it he could feel a density that rivaled the strongest armor he had ever worn. His muscles coiled with potential energy, ready to explode into motion at the slightest command. His bones hummed with a resonance that he recognized as the Law of Destruction not just comprehended, but integrated. Part of him. As natural as breathing.Then he felt it. A warmth on his forehead. Two points of heat, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.He reached up and touched his forehead. His fingers came away glowing faintly one point red as fire, the other blue-white a

The asteroid base trembled as Raka rose from his throne. It was not a physical trembling; the metal and stone were sturdy enough but a tremor in the air itself, a vibration that pressed against the eardrums and made the heart beat faster. The lieutenants who had served Raka for decades knew that tremor well. It was the sound of their leader's patience finally snapping.Twenty-one years of dead ends and false leads, of bounty hunters who took the money and vanished, of informants who sold information that turned out to be worthless. Twenty-one years of sitting in this hollowed-out rock while the boy grew stronger, while the token drifted further from his grasp, while the key to a resource which could increase his strength remained just out of reach."Report," Raka growled. The word was barely more than a vibration in his throat, but it filled the chamber like a physical force.Krell stepped forward. The thin navigator had grown thinner over the years, his face gaunt with the stress of