The Sun-Scorched Clan’s celestial city floated upon a massive platform of solid condensed magma. Defensive arrays wrapped the perimeter, pulsing like a miniature sun. Today, the core palace blazed with extra brilliance. The Young Master, Yang Chen, was celebrating his betrothal to the Holy Maiden of the Azure Sea.Thousands of high-tier cultivators from neighboring territories packed the grand hall. Wine made from ten-thousand-year-old fire plums flowed freely."With this union, our Sun-Scorched Clan will control both the solar rifts and the northern water veins," Sector Governor Yang bragged from the high dais. He raised a golden chalice to his esteemed guests. "In the True Upper Cosmos, strength is everything. The weak are merely fertilizer for our growth. Anyone who dares defy our bloodline will find themselves turned to ash before they can even scream."BOOM!The palace’s ninety-foot-tall southern gates did not just open. They detonated inward with a deafening roar.A massive shoc

The staircase led down into a subterranean vault carved entirely out of pure, compressed star-iron. Massive pillars of volcanic jade held up the ceiling, each one pulsing with high-grade Celestial Qi that had been gathered over ten millennia. Millions of upper-realm spirit stones were piled into shimmering mountains along the walls. Rows of weapons, ancient scrolls, and rare medicinal herbs floated inside protective amber spheres.Li Xuan stepped into the vault, his boots leaving dark, scorched footprints on the cold floor. Behind him, Chen Yao crawled on her hands and knees. Her mind was completely broken after witnessing the slaughter upstairs. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she kept her head low, terrified that even looking at Li Xuan's back would cause her instant death."Se... Senior," she whispered, her voice cracked and trembling. "Everything the Sun-Scorched Clan has stolen or traded for is here. The three chests in the center contain their most prized possessions. Please... I h

The destruction of the Sun-Scorched Clan sent a massive, violent shockwave ripping through the local fabric of the True Upper Cosmos. Millions of tons of burning white jade palaces, shattered star-iron walls, and frozen magma asteroids tumbled downward through the clouds, raining down like an apocalyptic meteor shower into the lower tiers of reality. The territory that had ruled this cosmic sector for ten thousand years was completely erased from the map in a single afternoon.Floating amidst the drifting space debris and the howling vacuum, Li Xuan stood completely upright. His dark star-iron skin pulsed with a cold, metallic luster. Behind his back, the sixty-foot wings of cosmic violet ice and white-hot plasma flared smoothly, cutting through the gravity fields of the upper realm with absolute ease.Inside his chest, the Perfected Abyssal Sovereignty Core was humming a terrifying tune. Having devoured the Soul Transformation Core of Yang Absolute, the core had grown into a dense, m

The High Council's Main Citadel was a fortress city spanning three thousand miles across a floating diamond plate. At its apex sat the Grand Judgment Hall, wrapped in eighty-one concentric layers of the Sovereign Heaven Defense Array. Eighty thousand elite elders stood stationed at the array nodes, their unified Qi feeding the golden energy dome. They had heard High Commander Zhao's final, desperate transmission. The entire capital was in a state of absolute military lockdown."Maintain the perimeter!" Grand Chancellor Mo shouted from the high balcony, his face pale as he surveyed the line of array-masters. "No single entity can breach the Sovereign Heaven Array! Even an ancient deity would need three days to crack—"BOOM!The sky didn't just darken; it shattered.Li Xuan descended like a pitch-black asteroid, bypassed the outer outposts entirely, and rammed himself straight into the apex of the golden dome. He didn't use a weapon. He didn't use an array. He used his bare right knee,

The golden dust of the High Council’s capital didn’t drift. It hung in the air, frozen in place as if time had snagged on a nail. Li Xuan stood in the center of this stillness. His skin, now a deep, void-black, didn’t reflect the light; it pulled the golden motes toward him, swallowing them into his pores.He reached for the storage ring of the last Ancestor he had consumed. As his fingers brushed the silver metal, the ring didn’t just open—it screamed.A thin, red needle of light shot out from the ring, piercing Li Xuan’s palm. He didn’t flinch. He watched the red light crawl under his skin, moving up his arm like a hungry worm. It wasn’t an attack from the outside. It was a key.Suddenly, the void-black luster of his body flickered.Inside his chest, the Perfected Abyssal Sovereignty Core didn’t just spin; it stuttered. A voice, cold and familiar, echoed from within his own heart. It wasn’t the voice of a God or an Ancestor. It was the voice of Mo Fan—the brother whose arm he had st