The Primordial Chaos Sovereign

Meeting The Crimson Emperor

The horns never stopped.

Day and night, across mountains and rivers and burning forests, the sound of the imperial war horns chased Armstrong like the heartbeat of something enormous and ancient.

Something that wanted him dead.

He had not slept in four days.

He had not eaten in three.

And he had nearly died six times.

The first general of the Crimson Dynasty came on the second day.

A woman wrapped in black lightning armor descended from the clouds like a falling star. Her twin blades moved faster than sound itself. Armstrong barely sensed her before the first cut opened across his shoulder.

Blood sprayed across the earth.

She was already behind him before he landed.

"You're slower than I expected." Her voice was almost gentle.

The second blade came for his throat.

The bloodline answered before Armstrong could.

BOOM.

Golden-red fire erupted from his pores. The phantom of the Heaven Breaker Ape rose behind him like a second sun, and his arm moved on pure instinct. His fingers caught her blade mid-swing.

The steel screamed.

Then shattered.

She stared at her broken weapon with genuine disbelief.

Armstrong grabbed her by the collar and threw her into the mountainside. The stone exploded. The entire cliff face collapsed inward. He stood there for a moment, breathing raggedly, golden markings burning across his forearms before slowly fading.

Inside his chest, something purred with satisfaction.

He wanted more.

So he ran for it.

The third general ambushed him inside a canyon on the third day.

An old man.

Thin as paper.

Eyes like ancient graves.

He spoke no words. Simply raised one finger and pointed. The entire canyon compressed inward.

Space itself folded.

Armstrong felt his bones groan under the pressure. His vision went red. His lungs refused to expand. The Laws of the world were being weaponized against him, bending reality into a cage.

He dropped to both knees.

This is it, some distant part of his mind whispered.

"No one can kill you."

Then something cracked open inside his bloodline.

Deeper than before.

Somewhere beneath his ribs, the broken seal pulsed violently. And from it, a roar erupted that had nothing to do with Armstrong himself.

It was older than him.

Older than the empire.

Older than the Laws the old man was wielding like weapons.

The compressed space simply...

...broke.

The old general's eyes widened for the first time.

"How? How is that possible?

How can a mere Nascent Soul kid break my...

Armstrong stood before the man could finish what he wanted to say.

His body was blazing. Every vein beneath his skin glowed like rivers of molten gold.

The ape phantom towered behind him, so massive now that its silhouette blotted out the sky above the canyon.

Its burning eyes stared down at the old general with something that resembled contempt.

Armstrong's voice came out differently from how was earlie.

Deeper.

Almost layered.

As though something else was speaking alongside him.

"Don't think of doing that again. It is of no use against me."

He walked forward.

The old general retreated.

He had fought for eight hundred years and never once retreated.

He retreated now.

Armstrong tore through the canyon wall with his bare hands and kept running. Behind him, the phantom slowly dissolved. The golden markings faded. But this time, they faded slower than before.

And the voice inside his blood grew louder.

'Why do you run?'

'Turn around.'

'Kill them.'

'Destroy everything in your path.'

Armstrong clenched his jaw and kept moving.

By the fourth day he had stopped counting the attacks.

Arrows made of condensed Imperial Law.

Formations that materialized from thin air and swallowed entire valleys.

Cultivators who fought in coordinated waves, dozens at once, each one individually stronger than anyone from the Southern Domain mercenary world.

He fought through all of them.

Not elegantly.

Not skillfully.

He fought the way a boulder rolls downhill. Pure destructive momentum. Every time he was cornered, every time the wounds became too many and his body began to fail, the bloodline detonated from inside and rewrote the rules of the battle entirely.

His broken ribs healed mid-combat.

Lost blood replenished within seconds.

Once, a spear drove completely through his chest. He pulled it out, looked at it for a moment, and crushed it in one hand.

The soldiers who had thrown had to compensate him with his life after that.

But every time the bloodline surged, it stayed a little longer afterward. The golden-red markings lingered on his skin like they were trying to make themselves permanent. The ape phantom appeared faster, hungrier, as though it was waiting for an excuse.

And the whispers grew more coherent.

'Stop running.'

'You are not prey.'

'You have never been prey.'

'Turn around and remind this world what you are.'

Armstrong pressed his palm against his chest during a rare moment of stillness, hiding beneath a collapsed stone bridge while imperial search formations swept the river above him.

He could feel it.

His own thoughts were getting harder to locate. There was a version of himself according to the desires of his bloodline.

It grew bigger.

And colder.

Something that did not feel fear, did not feel exhaustion, did not feel the need to protect anything or reach anywhere.

It only felt hunger.

"I'm stronger than this. I can't give in to this desire. I have to survive this, go to the Celestial Maiden Palace, seek refuge  cultivate there and become strong enough to kill the Crimson Emperor and make myself worthy of Leila." he whispered to himself.

A reminder.

A promise.

He crawled forward and kept moving.

He crossed the border ridge of the Southern Domain on the fifth morning and finally came close to the Central Domain.

The Central Domain stretched beyond in vast silence. Mountains he had never seen. Forests older than empires. Air that tasted different, cleaner, untouched by imperial pressure.

He almost smiled.

Then the sky changed.

The clouds parted as though something commanded them to move aside. The temperature dropped instantly. The spiritual energy in the surrounding air became completely still, like a breath held in terror.

And then a single figure majestically descended from the heavens.

No army.

No generals.

No ceremony.

He simply appeared, standing twenty meters away on the ridge, hands clasped behind his back, robes of deep crimson moving lightly in the wind.

The Crimson Emperor.

He looked way younger hanfsome than Armstrong expected. Sharp-featured, almost calm, with eyes the color of burning coals that held the weight of centuries behind them.

The surrounding Laws bent around him like light bending around a star.

He studied Armstrong silently for a long moment.

Then he spoke.

"I've killed thirteen beings who carried traces of primordial bloodlines."

His voice was quiet. Almost conversational.

"Every single one of them believed the bloodline made them untouchable and omnipotent. But they all died."

He tilted his head slightly.

"You've made it further than any of them."

A pause.

"That's why I came personally. I'm here to acknowledge your accomplishment."

The temperature dropped another ten degrees.

Armstrong's bloodline ignited immediately, golden-red fire erupting across his skin without him even calling it. The ape phantom rose behind him, enormous, furious, ancient.

For the first time in five days, Armstrong planted his feet.

He did not run.

He stared directly into the Emperor's burning eyes.

And somewhere deep inside the roaring bloodline, beyond the hunger and the whispers and the creeping darkness, something clear and human and stubborn rose to the surface.

Armstrong's voice came out steadily.

"Then I'll be the fourteenth but the first to proves you wrong."

The ridge cracked beneath their feet.

And the Crimson Emperor smiled.