Zhao Lixuan’s memories afterward were a complete haze.
He only remembered holding Jiang Chen’s blood-soaked body amid the collapsing white expanse, sitting there until the end of time.
His mind was empty, tears long dried up. He knew nothing of what came before or after, only that the body in his arms grew colder bit by bit.
“Little Jiang… hold on…”
Occasionally, he would whisper softly to the man in his arms.
His voice drifted into the void, unanswered.
Time overlapped and blurred. He had forgotten the life-or-death battle of that day, forgotten the gods’ annihilation. In his daze, he was back at the Suspended Sun Stele Forest that day—finding him, on the brink of death and covered in blood. A single thought filled his mind.
Little Jiang was hurt.
He had to take him home.
That was all he remembered. But Shen Fengyu said that much more had happened afterward.
The Order Deity and the Chaos God shared the same origin, bound in mutual destruction. Thus, the instant Jiang Chen stabbed himself with the blade and the last wisp of Breath of Chaos dissipated, the fallen Order Deity’s final shred of divinity also shattered into nothingness amid an unwilling shriek, returning to eternal silence.
The gods perished, and the dust settled.
Yet Xue Ying Princess refused to accept it. In the moment when everyone’s minds reeled in shock, a desperate madness flashed in her eyes. Her figure shot forward like lightning, lunging straight for the Realm-Eroding Demon Sword that had fallen to the ground at the altar’s center!
She gripped the sword, its icy chill piercing to the bone, but she felt nothing.
Without a backward glance, she leaped into the dark vortex at the altar’s base—a bottomless whirlpool that was slowly closing now that the god had vanished!
“It’s not over…”
It’s not over! She refused to admit defeat.
The Yao Clan’s heavenly mandate, etched into her very bones, had been instilled through years at her father’s side.
Reviving the Yao Clan and reordering the cosmos—that was the core of her pride, her life’s conviction! Even if her father turned to ash before her eyes, even if the god they had schemed with for millennia had fallen, she would carry out the final step in his place and complete their unfinished grand undertaking!
“Damn it, even the gods are this useless…”
Beneath the black hole lay the rift between the Three Realms, the hiding place where the Order Deity had clung to life for ten thousand years.
No light here—only eternal, viscous chaos flowing endlessly. Xue Ying tumbled onto an invisible “ground,” her chest burning with resentment and unwillingness.
Why?
Her Yao Clan was born with innate spiritual power, closer to nature’s essence than humans, yet without humanity’s deceitful vileness or hypocritical righteousness.
So why did the cunning, greed-driven humans and Human Immortals occupy the finest Unstained Immortal Realm and Mortal Realm, basking in the richest spirit veins and tributes?
What crime had she and her father committed?
This world was filthy and chaotic, black turned to white—why not let them cleanse and remake it entirely?!
Fine, if that wouldn’t work…
Then they’d all perish together.
The god was dead anyway.
She staggered forward. The demon sword’s eerie glow lit the path ahead, revealing the scene bit by bit.
It was the God Tomb.
Countless massive silhouettes, mountain-like, floated and sank in the darkness, twisted into bizarre shapes—Ancient Gods locked in eternal slumber, surrounded by auras that were holy or decayed remnants of antiquity.
If the “otherworldly gods” weren’t truly from another world, then the so-called “otherworldly beasts” were no outsiders either.
There was no such thing as “magic beasts” within the Three Realms’ laws.
So what were the demonic creatures that had plagued the Three Realms for millennia…?
“Heh… hahaha…”
This was a secret even Jiang Chen hadn’t glimpsed on Clear Heart Island.
Gods didn’t die.
They only… fell into deep slumber.
Thus, no one could imagine it: the cycle of heaven’s dao, the twilight of the divine race. These countless primeval gods, slumbering through epochs of change, could be “hatched” with evil arts, corrupted, twisted…
Ultimately becoming those mindless engines of destruction and devouring—”magic beasts”!
Who said slaying gods was impossible?
The Yao Clan had done it long ago. And right here, before her eyes, so many… so many slumbering Ancient Gods brimmed with world-shaking power! If she could harness them all, toppling the Three Realms would be a snap.
…
At the God Tomb’s entrance, someone awaited her.
It was the Demon Bright’s Azure Flame Commander, Yan Su.
The skeletal general stood draped in solemn black robes amid the congealed chaos and deathly silence, like the most faithful tomb guardian.
Xue Ying staggered closer, the demon sword scraping harsh sounds across the ground. Yan Su shifted slightly, extending his bony hand to guide her toward the thickest darkness at the God Tomb’s depths.
There stood a prepared altar.
Xue Ying didn’t hesitate. She mounted the altar, thrust the demon sword into its central ground, and formed intricate, profane mudras with her hands.
It was Demon Sovereign Luo Ting’s final Annihilation Ritual.
Yan Su stood silently behind her, his bony palm hovering over her back. A vast, pure yet laden-with-oblivion force surged into her body.
“It will work… it has to work!”
The flooding power made her tremble, her eyes blazing with even more stubborn madness.
The entire God Tomb quaked beneath her feet. Countless slumbering Ancient God remains emitted low, pained resonances—not resistance from awakening, but the wails of their essences being forcibly extracted and burned as fuel!
Boundless divine power was madly plundered from all directions, coalescing into visible, multicolored yet ominous torrents of energy that spiraled and roared toward the altar above!
At its heart, an unprecedented core was taking form.
Fist-sized, yet compressed with the power of eons’ stars. Its glow shifted unpredictably—blazing white like a noonday sun one moment, pitch black like eternal night the next. Its surface swirled with divine runes and demonic marks, its terrifying fluctuations making even the Three Realms Stone groan under the strain, teetering on collapse!
Xue Ying reached to claim it.
But the core, infused with the Ancient Gods’ essence—enough to remake or destroy all—suddenly erupted in searing light, repelling her power outright.
Her pale fingertips charred black in an instant. She cried out in pain and recoiled, forced to watch helplessly as the core dropped into Yan Su’s skeletal palm.
Greed sprouted like venomous vines in her heart.
With enough strength, wouldn’t she seize this power for herself, becoming the sole sovereign above even her father?!
But now, with her father gone and her alone against this unfathomable Demon Bright war god, she took a deep breath, suppressed her resentment, and forced the most obedient, adoring expression onto her face:
“Lord Yan Su… no, new Demon Sovereign Majesty. Congratulations on achieving your great undertaking. Please… lead us Yao Clan—no, lead us Immortal Clan—to true revival and eternity!”
She thought to herself, the Yao Immortal Clan’s secret gu poison, which subtly warped the mind, had long been slipped to Yan Su over the years through countless opportunities.
He had drunk it down, stained his hands with rivers of blood for their Yao Clan and her father’s plan, committing atrocities beyond redemption…
How could he not be loyal? How could he abandon her?
He was her accomplice.
She believed it utterly, gazing at Yan Su’s silent, jagged profile.
And then—
Yan Su’s bony hand cradling the destructive core quietly—almost tenderly—closed its fingers inward.
No earth-shattering boom.
Just a faint, crisp crack, like some delicate, fragile thing being gently crushed.
The core—holding the God Tomb’s countless Ancient God powers, the Yao Clan’s millennial ambitions, enough to topple the Three Realms—dissolved in Yan Su’s palm into a wisp of pure, harmless, drifting light motes.
The glow was faint and soft, vanishing instantly into the God Tomb’s eternal dark.
As if nothing had happened.
Save for the shattered echoes reverberating at the soul’s level—the Three Realms’ laws wailing in final rupture.
All else: dead silence.
…
One year later.
That core’s annihilation was the final collapse’s beginning.
The cataclysmic divine power, amassed to its peak only to be snuffed out, unleashed backlash and aftershocks that utterly shattered the already crumbling Three Realms Stone. This primordial cornerstone, balancing the spatial stability and spirit flow of the Unstained Immortal Realm, Mortal Realm, and Demon Realm, finally… broke apart completely.
Once, the Three Realms had distinct borders, but their ley lines interconnected, breaths intermingling in a vast, precise cosmic cycle maintaining delicate equilibrium.
Now, the three main spirit veins were severed at the law level.
From then on, the Immortal, Mortal, and Demon Realms became truly isolated “solitary realms,” disconnected from one another. Each had to face its own spirit abundance or dearth, resource booms or busts, racial survival—alone.
Millennia hence, the Unstained Immortal Realm’s spirit veins might wither from the broken cycle, its glorious immortal palaces fading; the Demon Realm’s barren lands might remake themselves, birthing new life; the Mortal Realm, free of “upper realm” meddling, would chart an utterly unknown path.
Every world, every race, could rely only on itself to seize its own destiny.
Perhaps in time, tales in the Mortal Realm of soaring immortals and river-flipping demons would fade into nebulous myths.
Even one day, in Unstained Immortal Realm teahouses under storytellers’ gavel or in street children’s rhymes, echoes of immortal-demon lore might linger—yet none would behold the true faces of the Immortal Clan again.
…
Zhao Lixuan ascended Clear Heart Island alone.
Wildflowers bloomed silently on the isle, springs murmured softly. As he walked every path, he glimpsed Jiang Chen’s solitary shadow wandering there.
At last, at the island’s heart, he found the legendary spring that reflected one’s true heart and all things.
The water was crystal clear to the bottom, mirroring his dust-worn, weary form.
From his bosom, he drew a finely embroidered brocade box.
The box had appeared soundlessly on Perching Maple Vine Pavilion’s desk a year prior, tied with Shen Fengyan’s signature knot unique to his family.
Back then, as Xue Ying Princess vanished into the rift, Shen Fengyu and Yu Changxin had pursued right after.
Thus, Shen Fengyu had witnessed everything in the God Tomb firsthand—the core’s annihilation, and in the final shattering of light and shadow, the black skeleton’s silhouette… briefly transforming into his brother Shen Fengyan’s likeness.
Shen Fengyan had looked at him, lips twitching.
No joy of reunion in that smile—only endless weariness, profound guilt, and a trace of bitter relief at last release.
Shen Fengyu froze, desperate to rush forward, but the violent aftershocks pinned him in place, immobile.
No one knew what truly transpired.
Until this brocade box appeared.
At its bottom lay a letter.
Short, yet revealing all the unspoken truths.
After Zhao Lanze’s sacrificial death, Shen Fengyan had scoured every corner of the Three Realms.
Over those long, lonely twenty years, he pieced together the truth of that ancient calamity—uncovering Demon Sovereign Luo Ting’s full ambitions and schemes, and the gods behind him poised to awaken and remake the Three Realms.
He simply hadn’t known of Jiang Chen’s existence then.
He thought himself the only one left bearing the Ancient Magic God’s aura. His brother Shen Fengyu had a wisp too, which he’d easily coaxed away with a few words.
Thus, his brother escaped fate’s curse and cycle.
All sins and burdens, borne by him alone.
So, carrying the Breath of Chaos, he ventured resolutely to the oldest Divine Miracle in the Beiming Abyss for a pact.
Abandoning his immortal flesh, stripping part of his soul and reason.
In exchange for supreme power, he became the invincible yet taciturn war god Yan Su.
The price was fractured wits, so over the years he’d often fallen into hazes, memories fragmented. Fortunately, he retained enough clarity at key moments to follow that long, dark plan, step by step.
Of course, even as the Three Realms’ strongest warrior—capable of effortlessly slaying Luo Ting and the rest—
Opposing the awakening Ancient Gods remained a fool’s dream.
He had no choice… but to commit many evils.
He had secretly fanned the flames, sparking the chaos of the Three Realms war; he had lured the Demon Sovereign and Tu Ji into refining slumbering gods into demonic beasts, stirring up even greater calamity; and he had coldly sacrificed countless lives from the Immortal Clan and Demon Clan alike, feeding the Demon Sovereign’s ambitions with blood and turmoil to hasten the final madness and downfall of the gods’ plan.
In the end, the core gathered from countless strands of ancient divine breath was crushed by his own hand, reduced to nothingness.
The Demon Sovereign’s ten-thousand-year ambition, along with that mad dream of reshaping the Three Realms using the gods’ power, was utterly shattered.
And yet…
With the Sealing Demon Great Seal invalidated by the collapse of the Three Realms’ foundation,
Under the drastic shift in the laws of heaven and earth, the Soul-Gathering Lamp finally collected every last fragment of Zhao Lanze’s soul scattered across the world.
With the Youyu Priest there, it would take at most two or three years for him to help Zhao Lanze reform his immortal body and return to life.
But…
Zhao Lanze had lived a life as upright and pure-hearted as a clear sky after rain, always carrying the common people in his heart, his soul utterly pristine and untainted.
