The Final RelicLi Xuan’s black-ice wings slammed against the air, throwing up two massive walls of crimson spray as he touched down on the bone-white sand. The spectral wings dissolved into cold mist, flowing back into his skin. His feet did not sink into the beach. His Primordial Iron Physique made him feel as heavy as a mountain, yet he moved with the weightless precision of a hunting panther.Thirty paces ahead, Ning'er knelt beside her father’s hollowed-out corpse.Her beautiful face was unrecognizable. She had used a jagged shard of shale to slice open her own forearms, painting her tattered white bridal dress in lines of her own essence-blood. In her shaking hands, she held a long, bone-white needle etched with jagged silver inscriptions.The Asura-Slaying Needle.This was the Ning clan's absolute final defense mechanism, a forbidden weapon designed to assassinate higher-realm experts by targeting their soul paths. To activate it, a cultivator had to burn their entire lifespan.

Entering the CapitalLi Xuan dropped from the golden sky like a falling star, his black-ice wings cutting a twin wake through the thick, spiritual clouds of the Upper Realm. Below him sprawled White Jade Capital, the primary trading hub of the lower heavenly tier. The city was a massive, sprawling metropolis built entirely from polished white stone and jade pillars. Floating palaces anchored by massive silver chains hovered over palaces of commerce, and the streets below were packed with thousands of merchants and rogue cultivators.The moment his boots touched down on the main marble thoroughfare, the ground cracked under his weight.His Primordial Iron Physique radiated a heavy, oppressive gravity that caused nearby horses of spiritual flame to rear up in panic. The merchants froze, their conversations dying instantly as they looked at the newcomer. Xuan stood dead center in the street, his tattered, soot-stained black robes contrasting sharply against the pristine white splendor of

Looting the StormLi Xuan lowered his left hand, the Abyssal Asura Ring cooling down against his knuckle. The grey, brittle husk of Elder Lei disintegrated into a pile of ash as the rising mountain wind swept across the square. Xuan stood at the center of White Jade Capital’s ruined plaza, his forty-foot wings of black-ice and crimson blood-qi humming with stable, cataclysmic power. Fractured Ascension Level 9 vibrated through every meridian in his body.He didn't waste a second. He waved his hand, utilizing his aura to pull the storage rings of the three slaughtered elders directly into his palm.Xuan crushed the spiritual imprints on the rings with a casual flex of his fingers. He swept his consciousness through the contents, bypassing the mountains of spirit stones and low-tier techniques. His focus locked onto a sealed, violet jade scroll inside Elder Lei’s personal bag. The scroll bore the crest of the inner council of the Thunder Crest Immortal Sect.He snapped the jade seal. A

The Thunder RangeLi Xuan’s black-ice wings tore the northern sky to ribbons. He crossed three thousand miles of the higher realm in less than an hour, leaving a frozen, crackling wake of vacuum behind him. Ahead, the mountains rose like jagged, iron teeth. At the very center of the range stood the highest peak—a mountain completely wrapped in a continuous cage of purple lightning.The Heavenly Thunder Crucible.This was the inner sanctum of the Nine Star Immortal Sects. The entire mountain had been hollowed out to form a colossal, three-mile-wide forge. A massive cauldron of black spirit-iron hovered above the volcanic peak, fed by nine roaring rivers of pure lightning-qi flowing from the surrounding summits.Xuan touched down on the northern ridge. The moment his bronze boots hit the stone, a familiar, agonizing throb echoed inside his chest. His purple jade dantian vibrated violently, responding to a frequency it had not felt since the day of his betrayal.Deep inside the glowing w

The Waking AncestorLi Xuan hovered six thousand feet above the flattened mountain range. The air around his sixty-foot wings of black ice and purple lightning did not just vibrate; it tore into micro-fissures of negative space. His pristine Asura Sovereign Core hummed inside his chest with a deep, liquid rumble that matched the heartbeat of the cosmos. The higher realm had gone dead silent. The proud palaces of the Nine Star Sects were nothing but gravel and burning ash strewn across the shattered peaks.Suddenly, the deepest trench of the continental crust groaned.A mile-wide crack tore through the bedrock of the valley below. A thick, suffocating cloud of white primordial fog erupted from the fissure, blotting out the ruined landscape. The air pressure multiplied by a factor of twenty in a single heartbeat, pushing down so hard that the floating fragments of red ice on the distant coast shattered into liquid foam.Out of the deep white fog rose a figure clad in robes of woven star