But He couldn’t even form a physical body, let alone a present. Feeling guilty, He offered to reveal an ancient secret that day instead.
Su Zhen inwardly rejoiced, suspecting it might concern unlocking the seal on his power.
Even if not, he could steer the conversation to ask outright.
It was his birthday, after all, and the Breath of Chaos was so gullible—He’d spill it easily.
…
Yet when Su Zhen learned that “secret” from the Breath of Chaos, he transformed beyond recognition.
To Luo Ting, it was utterly inconceivable.
His once like-minded comrade had overnight become indistinguishable from the spineless, weak former Demon Kings he’d scorned!
Suddenly preaching about burying grudges, about peace between the clans.
What utter nonsense!
This was why Luo Ting later clashed fiercely with his old friend time and again, their hearts parting completely—why he even defected to their arch-nemesis, Immortal Emperor Wu Fu, feigning loyalty.
He just had to know what Su Zhen—once even more resolute and ruthless than him—had encountered deep in the Abyss of the Three Realms.
What could have made him so… incomprehensible!
Through Wu Fu’s Haotian Mystic Mirror, Luo Ting saw the Breath of Chaos.
Later, at the Immortal Emperor’s behest, he found an opportunity to secretly poison Su Zhen.
This poison was no trifle, refined from fragments of the ancient divine artifact “God-Slaying Nail” left by heavenly gods—and that nail was one of the lethal weapons the gods had used to slay demonic god Cang Ming.
The poison didn’t target Su Zhen directly but lurked in his demon power. During his power exchanges with the Breath of Chaos, it would flow along with it, infiltrating silently to scatter His consciousness and congeal His origin.
Of course, though Luo Ting and Wu Fu conspired this time, trust was nonexistent between them.
Wu Fu knew Luo Ting’s allegiance was feigned, harboring ulterior motives; Luo Ting had long seen through Wu Fu’s endless schemes and plots.
To Luo Ting, Immortal Emperor Wu Fu was quite the “character.”
Truly, ever since the human immortals seized the Unstained Immortal Realm a millennium ago, their selfishness, vileness, and shamelessness had shattered his expectations of their lows time and again.
At first, he couldn’t understand what Wu Fu was truly after—if the Breath of Chaos were annihilated, the Sealing Demon Great Seal would become fragile beyond repair from that point on.
And once the great seal shattered, the Demon Clan’s primary invasion target would inevitably be the Unstained Immortal Realm! As the Immortal Emperor, wouldn’t Wu Fu be playing with fire and burning himself?
Later, he gradually pieced it together.
Wu Fu’s true goal was far simpler—and more absurd—than he’d imagined.
It turned out that Wu Fu had peered through the Haotian Mystic Mirror and spied Su Zhen drawing primal power from the Breath of Chaos. Fearing that Su Zhen’s strength would one day grow unrivaled, inevitably threatening his own exalted position as Immortal Emperor.
Because the true Heavenly Dao oracle of this era had decreed not him, Wu Fu, as the Immortal Emperor.
His throne had been illegitimately seized!
The oracle had proclaimed a Demon Immortal from the Butterfly Clan—a princess named Jiang Yin—as the rightful one.
Wu Fu had usurped the position that belonged to her, leaving him gripped by inner terror, dreading the Heavenly Dao’s punishment. In a twisted bid for security, he had forcibly taken this fated princess as his concubine, imprisoning her by his side, and even sought to sire children with her. He hoped to cloak himself as the “husband of the heaven-destined woman” and “father of the heaven-destined child,” muddying the Heavenly Dao’s judgment to evade its retribution!
And now, in targeting the Breath of Chaos, beyond his wariness of Su Zhen, Wu Fu also aimed to refine the dispersing primal essence anew. One day, he would harvest it for himself!
With the ancient demon god’s power fused into his body, what could the Heavenly Dao do to him then?
Once Luo Ting saw through it all, he nearly threw his head back in wild laughter.
Human greed has its limits, but the greed of Human Immortals… it is so utterly devoid of reverence, heedless of the masses, thoroughly mad from top to bottom!
So why shouldn’t every last Human Immortal perish?
For a millennium, they’ve basked in the finest splendor of the Unstained Immortal Realm, preening in their false purity—selfish, filthy, base, despicably greedy, hypocritically foolish. I can only regret that I can’t wipe this entire Human Immortal Clan from the Three Realms myself!
But for now, Luo Ting decided to watch coldly from the sidelines.
Watch Wu Fu play with fire and burn himself—ideally dragging the entire Human Immortal Clan into eternal damnation, reaping what they sowed, paying the price for their millennium of sins.
…
Time flowed on, several more years passing.
Unbeknownst to Su Zhen, every fusion with the Breath of Chaos’s power became a breeding ground for the poison’s nurture.
That once vast and warm Breath of Chaos grew thinner, dimmer by the day.
Sometimes, when Su Zhen came to call out to Him by his side for a long while, only then would that cluster of essence respond faintly.
Even playing his favorite tunes elicited no reaction anymore.
For the first time, Su Zhen felt panic.
It was a foreign, heart-piercing grief and helplessness.
Over centuries, he’d thought he was merely using Him.
Yet day after day of companionship, exchange after willing exchange and gift, had etched an indelible mark on his once-hardened heart.
This emotionless Demon Immortal had somehow birthed genuine, useless feelings.
In his lucid moments, the waning Breath of Chaos would softly comfort him:
“Don’t be sad… The world’s cycles cannot be changed… I’ve existed too long, far too long… Perhaps my time has simply come…”
“Su Zhen, you look best when you smile. I hope you always can.”
Years later, on a deathly still day when even the Abyss’s gale winds fell silent, the Breath of Chaos finally flickered out in Su Zhen’s arms like a candle in the wind.
He had no physical form, always just a shapeless haze of qi.
But in that final moment of dissipation, Su Zhen desperately channeled all his demon power, weaving an illusory yet warm embrace to hold Him tight.
He could clearly feel it—that essence that had accompanied him for centuries losing its warmth bit by bit, slipping from the embrace he’d crafted, returning to nothingness.
The Demon King wept soundlessly, tears falling drop by drop.
Piercing the illusory hold, plunging into endless darkness.
…
In the end, the Breath of Chaos fully dispersed, its core condensing into a dark pearl that dropped free.
Su Zhen had no idea what it was and reached to pick it up—only for the Abyss before him to tear open without warning.
Immortal Emperor Wu Fu appeared abruptly.
With undisguised greed and triumph, he unleashed a fatal strike on Su Zhen without a word.
Only then did Su Zhen awaken as from a dream.
But it was far too late.
Wu Fu effortlessly seized the core. A surging, ancient demon god’s dark aura flooded into him instantly; his immortal power skyrocketed at a terrifying pace. Horrific pressure swept the Abyss, cracking and wailing against the surrounding stone walls!
How could Su Zhen—his seal still unbroken—stand against Wu Fu, now wielding the Immortal Emperor’s authority fused with partial demon god might?
Wu Fu didn’t even use his full strength.
With a casual flick, a strand of immortal power wreathed in ominous black qi crashed down like an ancient mountain range!
“Pfft—!”
Su Zhen’s chest caved in. Blood mixed with organ fragments erupted from his mouth as his body flew back like a severed kite, smashing into the icy Abyss wall. Bones shattered utterly.
Blood mingled with his still-wet tears, staining his tattered robes red.
Sprawled in the cold dust, he barely felt his body’s ruin—only the bone-gnawing, soul-devouring regret.
“Sorry… sorry…”
“It’s my fault… I brought the bad man… I got you killed.”
“Sorry… I couldn’t… protect you… sorry…”
In that instant, the seal within him shattered explosively. Vast demon god power, fused with the Breath of Chaos’s purest essence, surged forth like a breached flood.
In that moment, if Su Zhen had willed it, he could have lived.
The Breath of Chaos’s warm essence echoed in his body, ceaselessly mending his limbs and frame. His century-old companion wished for him to live—to play the qin, to smile.
But.
He refused.
He’d been alone for ten million years—how could he bear to leave Him in solitude any longer?
So the Demon King forcibly suppressed the restorative power, eyes blood-red, converting it all into fleeting, soon-to-vanish might. He raised his mangled, bloodied hand, pointing at Wu Fu—who was reveling in the power, smug and exultant.
“I curse you… curse you.”
“With demon god power, with my soul, my blood as sacrifice…”
“Curse you, your bloodline, and the entire exalted lineage of the Immortal Emperor’s divine descendants!”
…
Su Zhen burned his remnant soul, cursing the fate of the Immortal Clan’s divine descendants.
Cursing them, after his death, to inherit the ancient Breath of Chaos within him.
The Immortal Clan wanted this? Fine—let them have it. From then on, as long as this demon god power lingered in their blood, erosion and backlash would cling like maggots to the bone, haunting generation after generation, never to know peace!
Even through reincarnation, they would endure endless hardships, betrayal by kin, eternal parting from loved ones, abandonment by all, unfulfilled desires, hated unions… life after life, drowning eternally in boundless suffering!
Even if their souls fell forever into Avici Hell, unceasing in torment, they would never find release or tranquility!
The curse, steeped in divine-demon power, took effect almost the instant it fell.
Wu Fu, freshly empowered by the demon god’s might, bore the brunt.
He went utterly mad.
The power’s surge brought not mastery, but endless terror and hallucinations.
He’d scoff at Su Zhen’s curse as nonsense one moment, then convulse in the dead of night the next. The curse gnawed along his bloodline, into his soul. He’d laugh maniacally, then sob in agony, living in constant dread.
And the curse spread not just to him, but his bloodline.
In his madness, he turned his malice toward the pregnant Jiang Yin several times, intent on strangling this “inauspicious” source.
Yet each time he struck, the chaos essence in her womb formed a barrier, shielding its mother.
To Wu Fu’s frenzied eyes, this protective force became his most horrifying nightmare. He shrieked in terror:
“It’s Su Zhen—Su Zhen’s curse! He’s wrapped the Breath of Chaos around my son! He doesn’t just want me dead—he wants my bloodline cursed forever! Spawn of evil, I’ll kill you all—I’ll kill you all…!”
Ultimate fear and insanity finally detonated the untamed, chaotic demon god power within him.
Blinding black light and disordered immortal force erupted skyward like apocalyptic desolation, nearly leveling the resplendent Immortal Emperor’s palace.
The Immortal Emperor perished violently; Jiang Yin vanished without a trace.
A few short years later, the new Demon Emperor Luo Ting found Jiang Yin, who had gone into hiding in the Mortal Realm, scraping by in hardship.
By then, she had given birth to Jiang Chen.
With the child born, Jiang Yin lost the Breath of Chaos’s protection.
Luo Ting slew her effortlessly and took the young, bewildered Jiang Chen away.
