The massive, twin-panelled doors of the cultivation chamber sealed shut behind Su Mengtian with a soft yet final thud. Situated in the deepest sanctum of the Heavenly Soul Palace, this chamber pulsed with latent spiritual force—constructed upon leyline nodes, its entire foundation was forged from soul-refined crystal ore and starstone. The silence inside was absolute. Not the silence of absence, but one of sacred isolation, where even time felt hesitant to intrude.
Su Mengtian took a deep breath and walked to the center of the chamber, his footsteps barely whispering against the polished crystalline floor. The dome above shimmered faintly with drifting stardust patterns—a subtle mirage formed by soul arrays carved in forgotten tongues. With no hesitation, he sat down in a lotus posture. His sovereign's robes folded neatly around him as he placed both palms upon his knees and exhaled slowly.
"Now," he whispered to himself, voice low and steady. "It's time."
He began to meditate, sinking layer by layer into his own consciousness. The world around him faded—first the chamber, then the crystalline resonance, then even the faint whisper of spirit winds.
Darkness claimed the world. Not a sinister void, but a pure absence. All that remained was Su Mengtian's soul—a radiant form of himself, unarmored, bare, pulsing with latent might.
He drifted.
Deeper.
Further.
And then, he reached it.
His Inner Spiritual Sea.
For the first time in his life, Su Mengtian truly entered the very core of his being. It was vast—endlessly vast—a flat, liquid plane of translucent spirit water stretching into a horizonless expanse. Unlike the vibrancy he'd expected, the sea was blank, colorless, void of movement. There were no currents, no tides, no stars.
Nothing.
He floated above it in his soul form, gazing at the eerily still waters.
"So this is my core," he murmured, frowning. "Why is it so empty?"
Was something wrong with him? Had his cultivation method gone awry?
He thought. For a long while.
Then, choosing stillness over movement, he descended. Lower and lower, until he sat gently upon the spirit sea's surface. He folded into a lotus posture once more, breathing even though breath was meaningless here.
"I'll wait. I'll listen. If this is my path... then I must be ready for it to speak."
His soul pulsed faintly. Time passed without measure. Silence grew heavy.
Then, the change came.
A tremor.
Beneath him, the sea shook—ripples expanding in concentric circles. It was not violent—but it was ancient. Something stirred below.
The water shattered.
From the depths surged ten colossal spheres—each one forged from crystallized spirit essence. They burst upward in silence, glowing with hues unknown to mortal sight. Their surface flickered with inscriptions—archaic runes older than Dao, yet deeply familiar.
Su Mengtian stood, eyes wide.
These were not weapons.
They were seals.
Seals containing the divine abilities of his bloodlines.
A heartbeat passed—and his spiritual form extended one hand toward the first sphere.
The moment he touched it, the world twisted.
He was pulled inward—faster than thought, deeper than self.
A battlefield of shadows.
Silver mist cloaked everything. The sky was a fractured mirror, reflecting pain, judgment, and time's forgotten tears.
Su Mengtian floated there. Alone. And yet...
Not alone.
A figure approached through the fog—indistinct at first, then painfully clear. Man, god, revenant—it was all of these and none. Golden chains wrapped around its body, not in bondage, but in declaration. Behind it floated a throne. Shattered. Fractured. Orbiting itself like planets around a core.
The throne was power. But not pure. Not pristine.
It was majesty broken and reforged.
The chains writhed.
A hum resonated through the world.
Then, the throne began to realign. Fragment by fragment, it drew itself together. The cracks remained—but the power increased with each reconstruction.
A memory not his own flooded Su Mengtian's mind.
Wars fought under red skies.
Betrayal in halls of divinity.
Sacrifice of self to save legions.
And the binding—a will so absolute that not even godhood could erase it.
Then came the chaos.
Creatures born of hatred and entropy surged forward—twisted things with jagged limbs and void-slick eyes. One leaped.
The figure did not move.
The chains moved for him.
Golden serpents of judgment lashed through the air. They coiled around the creature, piercing limb, chest, spirit core—and drove it down.
Not in death.
But in subjugation.
It knelt.
It bowed.
Not out of fear.
But out of recognition.
Su Mengtian felt it in his soul—his knees almost touching the ground as well. He resisted.
The aura around the throne grew heavier. Not evil. Not righteous.
Just... inevitable.
Power, shattered.
Reborn.
Dominion forged through pain.
Sacrifice turned into sovereignty.
The being turned. It had no mouth, but a voice echoed directly into Su Mengtian's soul:
"You will break, Su Mengtian. And you will rise. But remember—only those who embrace the pain of ruin may bear the Crown of Chains."
The throne pulsed once.
Then twice.
It spun—slowly.
And the mist cleared.
All that remained was the throne, the chains, and Su Mengtian.
Above them, invisible yet present, words etched themselves into the sky:
"Throne of the Gilded Shackles."
As they burned across the heavens, the first Crystallized Spiritual Sphere embedded within his inner sea shattered—and flowed into his form.
Divine light surged through him.
Pain.
Not of the flesh, but of the soul.
The agony of enduring eons of judgment, of bearing chains forged from remorse and love, of sacrificing self not for glory—but for those too weak to fight.
He screamed.
And the chamber outside—deep in the Heavenly Soul Palace—shuddered.
The divine signature of an awakening.
The first of many.
And Su Mengtian, within the storm of his own legacy, did not retreat.
He endured.
The aftermath of awakening the "Throne of the Gilded Shackles" still clung to Su Mengtian's spirit like phantom chains. He sat in the void of his inner spiritual sea, heart steady but soul weary, the echo of divine judgment carved into the marrow of his very essence. There was no more pain now, not in the ordinary sense. What remained was an ache beyond sensation—the ache of having tasted what it meant to be a being whose power was born not of superiority, but of suffering endured for the sake of others.
His spiritual sea, moments ago a storm of golden chains and divine rupture, now rippled quietly. The black waters shimmered faintly beneath him, a surface of tranquil potential. He sat again in lotus posture at its center, slowly breathing in and out. Every breath calmed the tides, every exhale firmed the contours of his spiritual vessel.
"If this is the pain I must face and endure to find and move forward in the path," Su Mengtian murmured to himself, "so be it. Let me awaken the others as well."
There was no time to fear what lay ahead. His path was his own, and he had chosen to walk it.
He turned his focus toward the second sphere.
It jutted from the spiritual sea like a fang of ice wrapped in crimson fog. As he reached out with his spirit, the fog stirred. He extended his hand. Threads of silver light flickered from his fingertips, dancing through the emptiness until they touched the base of the crystallized spiritual sphere.
In a heartbeat, the world changed.
Darkness fell.
But this was no ordinary darkness. It wasn't shadow—it was silence. All consuming. Not a sound. Not even the beat of his heart.
Mist welled from the ground—silver and shifting—and something stirred within it.
A figure emerged from the deep veil.
He was tall, lean, and cloaked in a dusk-colored mantle that seemed stitched from twilight itself. His hair, impossibly long, spilled down his back and over his shoulders. Silver strands with crimson-tipped ends floated behind him, each one undulating with the grace of sentient serpents.
And his face?
There was no face.
Only eyes—twin moons glowing with the haunting light of dusk. Eyes that knew betrayal, and hunted vengeance.
Su Mengtian took an instinctive step back. The air was too still. Each movement he made was like a ripple across glass.
Then it began.
The figure leapt—no, glided forward. No sound followed. His footfall was silent. His approach was a blur.
Where he struck, spectral fangs bloomed. Great, translucent jaws snapped from the air itself—shaped from the rage of something ancient, something divine. They moved independently, rippling with aggression. These weren't just energy projections. They were echoes of a predator's wrath, of judgment given form.
Su Mengtian saw other beings emerge—shapes in the mist. Cultivators. Warriors. Monsters. All illusions, or perhaps memories, called into this space by the divine ability itself.
The figure slashed. Hair strands tipped in red lashed outward, striking enemies like coiled blades. For each that connected, a faint mark appeared on the victim's soul—a brand glowing like blood beneath skin.
The marks pulsed.
Then began the slowing.
The marked enemies faltered. Their movements dulled. Their reactions stuttered.
"They can't escape," Su Mengtian whispered. "They're... being Hunted."
The mists swirled into a dome, a world apart. Each enemy moved like wading through molasses. The hunter grew faster, more ghostly. His figure became like a shadow in moonlight—always present, never grasped.
Then the moon revealed itself overhead—a thin crescent, pale and silver.
The figure's power surged. Each motion now fractured the space. Spectral afterimages layered like ripples. The enemies couldn't even scream.
The fangs struck with elegance and violence. And each one howled as it struck, as if the heavens themselves mourned those caught in the oath.
And then came the voice.
It wasn't loud.
It was calm. Like a whisper behind the ear.
"I do not forgive. I do not forget. I Hunt."
A name carved itself into Su Mengtian's soul.
"Duskhollow Fenrir: Oath of the Crimson Hunt."
He repeated it aloud. "So this is the name of this divine ability."
The hunter figure turned toward Su Mengtian. Those moonlight eyes met his. No words were exchanged, but a surge of intent transferred between them.
Duty.
Judgment.
The Divine Oath.
Su Mengtian felt it then—felt the resonance of the bloodline in him roar awake. The divine beast Fenrir, the oathbound hunter, was no legend. It was a piece of his essence. A creature from some divine chapter of history he barely understood.
The mist swirled tighter. The battlefield vanished.
Only the veil of silver remained, then broke apart like smoke on a breeze.
He opened his eyes.
Back in the spiritual sea, Su Mengtian sat in the same posture. A light tremble passed through his limbs. The second crystallized spiritual sphere now floated beside him, no longer rooted, but active.
It shimmered with red and silver runes.
Duskhollow Fenrir.
The Oath was now his to wield.
Su Mengtian closed his eyes again. He focused on his breath. This time, it didn't take long to stabilize his spiritual sea. The waves stilled faster, perhaps as a result of his growing mastery over this inner space.
But he understood something else now.
These divine abilities weren't just tools.
They were fragments of eternal truths.
Echoes of ancient beings, burned into the marrow of his bloodlines.
What he was awakening wasn't mere strength.
It was memory.
Legacy.
He let that knowledge sink into his bones, into his spirit. Then, with steady hands, he reached toward the next sphere.
The journey was far from over.
He had more to remember.
And many more powers to reclaim.
Su Mengtian steadied his breath as he sat cross-legged in the vast emptiness of his spiritual sea. The tremors from the previous awakening still echoed faintly in the deepest corners of his soul. But his mind was clear.
His body, though seated in the physical world within the core sanctum of the Heavenly Soul Palace, now lay forgotten as his consciousness reached into the third crystallized spiritual sphere.
He inhaled.
Then reached.
The moment his spiritual essence touched the third sphere, the world changed once again.
Everything around him dissolved into light and pain.
But not pain of injury. It was the pain of understanding.
He opened his eyes—or so he thought—and saw only flame.
A sea of fire stretched infinitely in all directions. Above, below, beside—there was no horizon, no sky, no earth. There was only the slow, deliberate undulation of flame.
But it did not burn.
It illuminated.
This was not fire that consumed. This was fire that revealed.
Even in its silence, Su Mengtian could feel that this place held truth in its embers. Each flicker, each movement of the flame, whispered ancient riddles. Every spark bared pieces of divine law, of forgotten ends, of stars that died not from time, but from being declared finished.
He tried to step forward, but realized there was no ground. Yet he moved—floated perhaps—toward the epicenter.
Then, a ripple.
The fire parted.
And from its coiling depths, emerged a shape.
Not a creature in flesh and scale, but a manifestation of might.
It was a serpent—vast, coiling, celestial.
Its body was made of coronae and dying starlight, its eyes twin furnaces of white flame. Each slither of its aura warped the space around it, like glass bending under cosmic heat. From its maw, tongues extended—not physical ones, but trails of fire, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.
Each tongue forked again and again, branching into endless filaments of whispering flame.
They spoke.
Not in voice—but in decree.
"Anathema to all falsehoods."
"Judgment beyond law."
"Let all things find end in fire."
The figure appeared again. Su Mengtian recognized it—the shadowed being he had seen during each of his prior awakenings. It stood at the heart of the Solar Serpent's flame.
Clad in robes of burning scripture, the figure raised a hand. The tongues of fire responded instantly, spiraling upward, weaving complex loops of heat and divinity.
Then, the figure cast its hand down.
And the sky obeyed.
From the coiling flames above descended a burst of serpentine tongues. They did not burn the way mortal fire did. Instead, they spoke sentences into reality. As they touched the world, things ceased to exist.
A tree became dust.
A hill became wind.
A statue became memory.
Everything they touched vanished not from destruction, but from being declared concluded.
Su Mengtian could feel the essence behind it:
"The Solar Serpent does not rage. It judges. It ends."
He stared into the heart of a single flame that drifted toward him, small and soft. It shimmered with the memory of a dying sun. As it passed by, his heart trembled.
He saw the image of a child crying beneath a burning roof.
He saw a war priest weeping before a battlefield.
He saw himself, bleeding under a sky filled with stars that refused to shine.
And in that moment, he understood:
Each flame was not just destruction.
It was memory.
Regret.
Confession.
Truth.
The Solar Serpent devoured illusions. Even those we told ourselves.
The battlefield beyond warped again. A mountain rose in the distance, shaped like an accusing finger.
Then the tongues descended.
The mountain unraveled. Not shattered. Not exploded.
Unraveled.
Each rock folded into nothingness. Each tree hissed away in silence. The rivers turned to mist, and the land gave way to the light. It did not end in chaos.
It ended in quiet.
In finality.
A divine voice, one that transcended language, echoed through the realm:
"Falsehood ends in flame."
"Truth is the fire that remains."
Then all the tongues coiled back into the sky, forming a vast halo that pulsed once like a dying heartbeat.
From the center of that celestial ring, a single name sounded—not with noise, but with cosmic memory.
"Solar Serpent Incantation."
Su Mengtian felt his soul tremble.
This was no technique.
No martial path.
It was a sentence. A final word spoken by the divine, inscribed into his very being.
His body blazed with temporary resonance, his spiritual sea trembling as the crystallized sphere containing the Solar Serpent cracked open, releasing streams of golden flame that poured into his form.
He gasped, eyes wide in shock.
He felt his veins glow. His bones hummed with heatless fire. His soul—a vast forge in which the tongues of the Solar Serpent now slumbered.
He clenched his fists.
He had not merely learned this divine ability.
He had inherited a judgment.
A revelation.
A power to speak ends into existence.
When he returned to his spiritual sea, now subtly illuminated with the soft glow of solar flame, the crystallized sphere had shattered completely, vanishing into the ocean of his inner world.
Three.
Three divine abilities now pulsed within his core.
Throne of the Gilded Shackles.
Duskhollow Fenrir: Oath of the Crimson Hunt.
Solar Serpent Incantation.
And each one was a burden, not a blessing.
Su Mengtian sat in stillness, centering his spirit.
But somewhere in the farthest corner of his consciousness, the other spheres shimmered faintly—each waiting for its story to be told, for its truth to be inherited.
Yet, for now, his focus returned to his breath.
To the silence.
To the fire that did not consume, but instead whispered:
"Become the end. Become the truth."
He whispered back.
"I will."
And with that, the flames dimmed, leaving only a calm, blazing clarity in his heart.
The silence that followed the awakening of the Solar Serpent still crackled faintly in Su Mengtian's spirit sea, like embers fading into the deep. His soul-form, though stable once again, trembled faintly as if echoing the magnitude of the truths it had just consumed. Floating cross-legged in the center of the spiritual ocean, Su Mengtian looked around at the now-familiar sea of darkness, now stirred with swirls of elemental resonance.
His gaze slowly turned.
There it stood.
The fourth crystallized spiritual sphere.
Ominous.
Unmoving.
But humming with an unspeakable gravity.
Su Mengtian rose, hovering slightly above the mirror-still sea. His body pulsed with a steady spiritual aura, his thoughts now more focused than ever. "If I must endure divine pain to grasp what is mine to bear... then so be it. Let truth strike me down if it must, I will rise again with its name."
He reached out.
The moment his soul touched the fourth sphere—the world disappeared.
He entered silence.
Not the kind that soothes.
But the kind that ends.
The space around him did not fade—it ceased.
His body became formless. His mind extended into a space of anti-light and unsound. There was no gravity, no echo, not even color. Just... presence.
And then it stepped forward.
The figure dissolved as it emerged—its face faded into featureless blur, its body shifting like a reflection on a rippling pond. What remained was outline, void, and a single, floating black-gold crown, pulsing in rhythmic cadence with the beat of the unknowable.
Then came the wings.
Six of them.
Each unfurled in different directions—vast appendages of black flame and shadow, flaring without sound, eclipsing the air around them. The space folded under their weight, not from mass but from meaning.
One wing shimmered as it bent Time, the air freezing and resuming in broken loops.
Another wing cracked and twisted, unraveling Illusions with a wave, as if peeling back lies from the fabric of reality.
A third wing curved inward, distorting the Fate lines crisscrossing existence itself, silencing the divine strings of destiny.
Each wing was a blade. Each wing was a law. Each wing was an end.
Su Mengtian tried to move, but even intention did not travel. His thoughts, for the first time, felt like echoes trapped in glass.
Then came the activation.
The Crown of the Faceless Seraph awakened.
It began with the Crown of Sovereign Silence.
A dome of divine stillness spread outward, vast and unfeeling. Within it, spiritual sense was voided, sound ceased, and identity unraveled. No breath, no heartbeat, no presence.
Enemies—echoes of former gods and beasts—tried to charge into the dome. They halted mid-stride. Not struck down, not killed.
Erased.
Not as an act of violence.
But as a correction of reality.
They did not belong. And so they ceased.
Su Mengtian could not move, but he saw.
The Seraphic Wings of Negation glided across the dome.
Will unraveled.
Memory detached.
Soul fractured.
Each wing bore a forbidden concept. Each flick or turn carried impossible weight. One wing passed through a celestial technique aimed at it, and the technique simply blinked out of existence, never having existed.
Then the Faceless Authority settled in.
Su Mengtian felt it firsthand.
He looked into the faceless being.
And he could not remember what he was looking at.
He tried to assign it a name.
The thought fell away.
He tried to reach out spiritually.
The path was void.
No memory. No targeting. No karma.
He existed in the presence of an entity the universe had refused to define.
Then the enemy attacked.
A massive beast clad in divine armor appeared, roaring as it plunged a flaming halberd into the heart of the Faceless Seraph.
The attack connected.
But there was no reaction.
No pain. No wound.
Instead, the Echo of the Forgotten began its tally.
Su Mengtian saw it in a flash—the moment that halberd struck, the injury was stored in the void, folded into the wings, into the crown.
Time passed.
The Crown slowly dimmed.
The wings folded.
And then the blow returned.
Threefold.
The beast did not die.
It vanished.
It was unmade.
Not in body, but in concept.
The void roared with finality.
And then...
Nothing.
Su Mengtian knelt.
His soul bowed.
Not from fear.
But from reverence.
For he understood:
This was no mere ability.
This was a law.
A living concept of judgment.
A divine authority without name, without face, without ego.
A sovereignty that did not ask for recognition.
It was recognition.
The crown hovered above the outline once more.
Darkness returned to Su Mengtian's spiritual sea.
He fell backward, gasping in the realm of his soul, the fourth sphere now dimmed, its power sinking into his spirit and becoming one with him.
And in the air—soft, cold, and absolute—a single phrase echoed:
"Crown of the Faceless Seraph."
Su Mengtian lay still in the middle of his spiritual sea.
He did not rise immediately.
He did not rush.
He listened.
And in that moment of silence, when even breath was distant, he understood the weight of what he now bore.
A throne forged from pain.
A hunt bound by vengeance.
A flame that spoke the end.
And now—a crown that unmade remembrance.
Su Mengtian whispered to the darkness around him, his voice finally free:
"I am no longer what I was. I am becoming what I must be."
He opened his eyes.
Within his spiritual sea, four of the ten crystallized spheres now shimmered dimly—no longer sealed, but resonant. Each a testament to power born not of privilege, but of resolve.
And he knew...
There were still six more to awaken.
But he was ready.
The fourth had been the heaviest.
And yet—
The void within him had grown calmer, not darker.
Silence, too, was a form of strength.
He closed his eyes once more.
The fifth sphere pulsed gently in the distance.
Waiting.