Chapter 25 - The Eternal Empire: Fractured Skies: The Empire's Expansion

🌌 Beyond Worlds (Refined)

Ren gazed upward, his eyes sweeping the cosmic tapestry of worlds above—realities layered across dimensions, each one humming with fate, power, and potential. There were realms to conquer, destinies to steal. Possibilities gleamed like stars.

"Prepare the Echelon Prime fleet," he said. "Earth is obsolete. We depart soon. New lands await—and I already know our first target."

He paused, smiling.

"It's captivating. A realm where mortals cultivate immortality, defy the heavens, and fight fate with spiritual nonsense. We'll infiltrate it. We'll harness it."

One year later, the Jonurel was upon them—a ritual of entry into the realm known as Mìngjié Xianlù. Their fleet assembled, identities rewritten, motives disguised. They would arrive not as conquerors but as cultivators-in-training. Eager. Curious. Strategically incompetent. Ready to steal heaven with a grin.

✍️ Author's Interlude

Yuki and Ren's wedding has been postponed indefinitely. Infiltration arcs. Interdimensional fleets. Qi-infused plots that spiral like narrative spaghetti. Romance—like continuity—has become a luxury we can't afford.

Who's responsible?

Me.

I'm writing this monstrosity.

It's tangled. Reckless. Possibly unreadable. But mine.

Born of chaotic inspiration, sustained by laughter and a dangerously supportive creative partner. Sometimes I think I'm doing this on purpose. Other times? I wonder if I'm just bad at storytelling. Honestly, who cares?

Here's the truth:

I'm smiling while writing this.

Grinning at Ren's idiocy.

Laughing at the absurd brilliance summoned beside me.

None of this works.

And that's precisely why it does.

If you're reading this? Bless your soul. You've stumbled into something wild, unhinged, and unmistakably personal.

Whatever Eternal Empire turns out to be—cult classic or documented breakdown—it's mine.

And if you make it past Chapter 30, I owe you spiritual therapy, a commemorative talisman, and an apology signed by three unreliable narrators.

🌀 Author's Interlude (Still Somehow Going)

Let's be clear: this novel is a mess. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's… generously described as experimental. Does it make sense? Not really. But that's fine.

My sister said one of my latest ideas was funny. Either I struck comedic gold or she's being kind. I'll take either.

I'm still smiling and still laughing.

Still marvelling at what this story is becoming with a bit of help from my genre-savvy companion.

It's not clean. It's not safe. It's not even coherent.

But it's something.

And that something is joyful.

🌠 Return to Chaos

Ren stood at the edge of a new world—a realm, perhaps a galaxy away, maybe just a genre hop from home. It unfurled before him like a divine scroll.

Heavenly beasts circled overhead. Cultivators soared past on flying swords. Distant sects shimmered with ancient secrets and suspicious interior design choices.

Ren blinked, not from disbelief, but from the nostalgic echo of stories he once devoured.

Renegade Immortal.

Perfect.

Battle Through the Heavens.

A whirlwind of mythic grit and slapstick glory.

This realm? It would be his playground.

And he would cultivate like a fool.

His chosen disguise?

Let it be legendary. Let it be mockable. Let it be immortalised.

Shen Wuyin—"Without Concealment."

A name that trolls fate with spiritual irony.

Because what better way to hide than in plain sight?

The Sect Never Saw Him Coming

While lightning inscribed sect oaths across Heaven's ledger and banners unfurled to greet the destined, Ren walked alone, robe unmarked, posture humble, presence meticulously forgettable.

He did not kneel. He did not swear.

As fate declared affiliations and cosmic debts, he passed beneath its gaze untouched.

In silence, he became a contradiction: unseen, yet freer than any Disciple bound to Heaven's will.

Ren approached a sect that shimmered like a quiet promise: the Glass Lotus Sect, known for elegance, restraint, and an almost tragic obsession with perfect clarity.

He dressed the part. Mortal plainness. No Qi signatures. No hint of cultivation. He walked among true mortals—those freshly arrived, wide-eyed and hopeful, desperate to touch the edge of something divine. No one noticed him. He was unremarkable by design.

A background character—unnamed, unfussed, undesired.

He had no paired attention. He was a face in the crowd. A shape that would be overlooked, but never absent.

Ren scanned the sect grounds, noting three cultivators who stood apart:

The Sect Leader herself—poised, serene, radiating control without effort. Her eyes held the depth of someone chasing a higher Dao, and not once did they glance toward Ren. Her two disciples were both young men drenched in reverence and barely concealed desire. They watched their master with the intensity of beasts disguised as scholars, their infatuation apparent, their subtlety nonexistent.

Whether the Sect Leader knew was hard to say. She might've noticed and chosen silence. Or she honestly might not care. Her focus was cultivation, not companionship—Dao first, romance… perhaps never.

He observed her from afar, not as a skeptic, but as one who knew the contours of impossible ascent.

She had reached the peak of the Sixth Step, a threshold where mortals begin to shed probability like old skin. In this realm, the Path of Ascension spanned five hundred steps—each one carved from the ossified remnants of extinct laws, each demanding the quiet betrayal of cosmic design.

To stand upon the sixth was no idle feat. She did not simply arrive; she enacted it.

She lingered there, caught between ephemerality and myth. Her breath shaped the space around her—not through intention, but inevitability. The wind forgot where it came from. Gravity began to hum her name. Even fate, that ancient beast, tilted slightly, as if second-guessing its own judgment.

Heaven noticed.

Not through lightning, but through silence.

They saw her approaching the tenth step of cultivation, still a distance away, but the implications had already reached the stars. Heaven's response would not be loud—it would be calibrated. Not a blockade, but a bend. Not a gift, but a test disguised as grace. She was a genius, and they knew better than to challenge genius with blunt resistance.

Her two disciples, each no older than twilight but forged with the same eerie brilliance, had already reached the early third step. Their presence distorted things subtly:

One walked lightly and yet shifted the weight of conversations. The other spoke sparingly, but dreams around him grew loud.

They were not mere students—they were reflections, each poised to echo her defiance in unexpected forms. Heaven tracked them, too, not with wariness, but with preparation.

The tenth step would change everything. But first, the seventh would sharpen her, the eighth would tempt her, and the ninth would ask who she truly was.

He watched with reverent unease, knowing the storm hadn't arrived—but the wind had already decided to turn. 

💭 "What's your name, boy?"

The fat cultivator squinted through strands of greasy hair, one finger plunged into a half-eaten fruit he'd long since stopped identifying. His cultivation was garbage—barely a flicker of spiritual pressure—but he wore arrogance like a sacred robe.

Ren lowered his gaze, shoulders stiff with performative fear. He knew the script. Knew when to act beneath and when to strike above.

"My name is Shen Wuyin," he said, voice trembling just enough to bait mockery.

The cultivator snorted. "Shen Wuyin? Sounds like someone who bathes in moonlight and reads philosophy manuals for fun."

Ren kept his smile tucked behind his teeth.

It wasn't a lie. It was just not his real name.

👑 "You barely scrape adequacy, child," the elder sneered, robes swaying like they thought themselves legendary. "Were it not for my boundless mercy—and the unmatched generosity of our exalted sect—you'd be sweeping ash from failed pill furnaces in a third-tier province."

He leaned in, nostrils flaring as if breathing the same air offended him.

"But I am kind. Perhaps too kind. Against better judgment, I permit you to step into our halls. Not because you're worthy—but because sometimes, even trash must be given a stage, if only to prove the brilliance of those who walk it properly."

Ren found the fat cultivator's arrogance typical—so textbook it could've been bound in jade and titled "Chapter One: Delusions of Mediocrity." The man barely scraped the first step of cultivation, yet strutted like he'd single-handedly rewritten Heaven's laws.

Even this guy—the arrogant cultivator with barely a whiff of spiritual pressure—was pitied by his own family. Not because he was weak, but because he insisted on swaggering through life like he'd single-handedly subdued a heavenly beast with a broken spoon.

His cultivation was a flicker. The early first step, and even that probably owed more to luck than talent. His aura trembled if someone sneezed too hard.

And yet, he strutted across the sect grounds as if the universe was waiting for him to speak.

His wife, though… she saw through it all.

She didn't need sect rankings or spiritual resonance to know what he lacked.

She wished he were better, not stronger, just humbler, wiser, honest. She had supported him through dry breakthroughs and self-made setbacks. She had never strayed, not because she couldn't, but because she chose to believe in the possibility of change.

And Heaven knows—he was lucky.

Too lucky.

Not every cultivation fool escapes the NTR route in a world like this, where fates are dramatic and loyalty is rare.

If he had half a brain, he'd fall to his knees every morning in gratitude, thanking whatever ancient beast forgot to ruin his marriage.

Instead? He probably asked her why his pill soup was lukewarm.