The shattered remnants of the fifty-foot obsidian gate lay strewn across the grand corridor like broken teeth.Dust and acrid ozone swirled through the subterranean gloom, illuminated only by the faint phosphorescence of ancient stellar murals carved into the arched ceiling. Ten thousand years ago, this fortress had been a sanctuary for astronomers of the primordial era; now, every foot of flagstone was carved with demonic blood-grooves, channeling fresh human vitality toward the palace core.Chu Yuan walked forward with measured, unhurried steps.His boots made no sound against the blood-slicked floor, yet every stride carried the latent gravitational weight of one hundred and eight thousand jin. Above his crown, the four desolate stars—Yuan, Nether, Battle, and Dragon—burned like cold lanterns in the dark, casting long, sharp shadows down the hallway."Intruder!"A rasping voice echoed from the shadowed colonnade ahead.Twelve silhouettes detached themselves from the darkness. They

The sky above the Fallen Star Wasteland groaned like tearing parchment.With the destruction of the Ninth Blood Altar and the death of Commander Yan, the ancient Blood Demon Slaughter Array had completely unraveled. The toxic crimson smog that had choked the wasteland for millennia began to swirl into massive vortexes, sucked into the planar rifts tearing across the upper atmosphere.Through the clearing air, brilliant rays of true sunlight pierced the gloom for the first time in ten thousand years.Chu Yuan strode out from the shattered obsidian gate of the Central Star Palace.His simple, ash-colored robes fluttered in the gale, untouched by the blood and gore of the inner halls. Behind him, bouncing limply across the jagged star-stone pavers, was Crown Prince Ji Wushang. The once-untouchable heir of the Grand Chu Empire was caked in dried grime and his own vomit, his luxurious golden dragon robes torn to shreds, his shattered dantian leaking residual spiritual light into the dirt.

The wind howling over the Grand Star Platform smelled of burnt copper, ozone, and spilled blood.Across the vast square of white star-jade, the silence was suffocating. Hundreds of cultivators from the Northern Sect Alliance—elders with silvered beards, inner disciples clutching bloodied halberds, and the nineteen rescued survivors—stood in rigid formation around Chu Yuan. The golden token in Chu Yuan's right hand pulsed with pure, nine-colored astral light, casting long, solemn shadows across the floor.At his feet, Crown Prince Ji Wushang lay crumpled like a discarded rag. His dantian was shattered, his imperial robes torn to shreds, and his breath came in shallow, rattling gasps. The stolen Constellation Core, which had sustained his arrogant rise, was gone, returned to the youth who had once been branded a sword slave.Ji Tianhao’s face had turned the color of cold ash. As the commander of the Imperial Dragon Guard and a blood elder of the Ji Clan, he had never known humiliation o

The shockwave detonated in mid-air like the fury of an ancient thundercloud.Imperial General Ji Tieyun felt the world tilt around him. The crescent moon halberd in his hands—a Fifth-Grade Spirit Weapon tempered in the blood of a thousand battles—trembled violently, its cold steel screaming under sheer kinetic devastation. The dark violet astral lightning he had condensed across forty years of cultivation was extinguished in a single breath, devoured by the pitch-black aura wrapping Chu Yuan’s blade.Before Ji Tieyun could draw a breath of spiritual air, Chu Yuan’s fist arrived.One hundred and fifteen thousand jin of raw, unyielding dragon force crashed into the general's breastplate.Crack!The heavy black dragon-bone armor caved inward like wet parchment. The sound of fracturing ribs echoed over the screeching wind, and Ji Tieyun was blasted backward through the storm clouds, spewing a long arc of dark crimson blood."Die! You

The poisonous crimson mist swirled sluggishly around the jagged basalt cliffs of the Deathmist Trench, reeking of ancient decay, sulfur, and stagnant blood.Twelve Stage 7 Heavenly Astral prodigies stood fanned out in a lethal semicircle, their weapons drawn, locking every natural pathway out of the sunken ravine. In their eyes, Chu Yuan was already a dead man walking. To them, a former sword slave stripped of his imperial standing was nothing more than a bountiful prize waiting to be carved up for Duke Ji Tianba's favor."Twelve dogs?" Zhao Kuang’s face contorted into a vicious sneer. He slammed his jagged greatsword into a mountain of dragon bones, cracking the ancient fossils to powder and kicking up clouds of white bone dust. "Arrogant whelp! You think defeating a few incompetent deathsworn in the wasteland puts you on par with the true martial nobility of the Grand Chu Empire? Today, I will teach you the difference between common mud and the boundless heavens!""Enough talk," Lin