Dark clouds circled the northern skies. For three days, Yi Zhen had reduced three entire sects to ash and silence. His name, once spat in disdain, now echoed in fear and awe. Yet on this day, as he prepared to leave the ruins of the third fallen sect, the skies trembled with unseen pressure.
A rift split the heavens.
From it descended ten cultivators clad in radiant crimson robes woven with glyphs of burning suns. The emblem on their chests shimmered with golden flames curled into a circle of rebirth.
"The Solar Sanctum Sect," Yi Zhen muttered beneath his breath.
The air around them distorted with the force of their presence. Among the ten, four figures hovered slightly ahead, clearly elders of immense power.
Elder Huai Jing—the First Inferno Flame Master, whose Dao of Searing Radiance could melt reality itself for ten meters around him.
Elder Mei Lian—the Mistress of Solar Threads, who weaved the light of the sun into spectral weapons capable of disarming minds.
Elder Wu Zhen—the Breather of Solar Silence, who could erase sound and sensation from a battlefield, isolating enemies into mind-breaking silence.
And finally, Elder Tan Ruo—the Devourer of Light, whose Dao consumed radiance and reversed energy into darkness, nullifying spells and arts.
Yi Zhen's gaze was calm, though his heartbeat pounded beneath his ribs.
"So," Yi Zhen said, stepping forward, his inverse Qi rising like a storm beneath the earth, "you've come to die?"
The four elders floated down slowly, flanked by the other Solar Sanctum members. Tan Ruo's expression was grim. "Your actions have disrupted the balance. Sacrificing souls, destroying entire sects—are you seeking to tear the heavens apart?"
Yi Zhen smirked. "If the heavens allowed this rot to fester, then yes. I'll burn the sky if it means the world breathes cleaner air."
No more words. Only battle.
The sky ignited.
Elder Huai Jing was first, his palms igniting into molten flame as he struck forward. Yi Zhen stepped through a fold in space, emerging behind him with his corrupted Qi shaping into obsidian chains laced with inverted talismans.
They clashed midair. Blades of radiant sunfire met twisting tendrils of corrupted force.
Mei Lian's sunweave scythe glinted across the battlefield, carving illusions and phantasms of light that tried to trap Yi Zhen's mind.
But Yi Zhen's inverse Qi recoiled the illusions, bending their form back toward their caster.
Wu Zhen stepped into the fray, silence collapsing the space around Yi Zhen. He felt his breath vanish, his senses dull. But his eyes still shone. With a snap of his fingers, the ground ruptured beneath Wu Zhen and a sigil of suffering erupted from below, driving dark energy upward into Wu Zhen's core.
Yet Tan Ruo moved with shadows in his wake, absorbing the rising tide of corrupted Qi. "Your inverse path may twist natural law," Tan Ruo whispered, "but we are the flame that lights truth."
Yi Zhen laughed.
The battlefield trembled. The mountain they fought atop cracked.
And in that moment, Yi Zhen formed a seal with both hands. "Let me show you what twisted truth looks like."
The final clash hadn't arrived yet. But it was coming.
To Be Continued...