Su Mengtian sat cross-legged at the center of the vast cultivation chamber, surrounded by a cocoon of swirling spiritual essence. The light from the surrounding arrays dimmed to a faint golden glow, as the immense energy he had just absorbed settled into every meridian and spiritual pathway in his body. A solemn stillness embraced the core sanctum of the Heavenly Soul Palace.
He exhaled slowly.
Seven spheres.
Seven awakenings.
Each one more soul-rending, glorious, and divine than the last. From the unyielding weight of broken divinity to the rampaging thunder of judgment and resurgence—his spiritual sea now pulsed with stabilized divine power, layered and swirling in harmony.
He opened his eyes, the pupils shimmering briefly with threads of lightning and void.
"Now," he murmured, gaze drifting toward the last three crystallized spiritual spheres that remained, floating silently before him like suspended stars. "Only one bloodline remains. The Kun-Peng bloodline..."
Excitement brewed in his chest.
He reached out and touched the eighth sphere.
The moment his fingers brushed against the luminous, deep-blue crystal, a tiny burst of starlight leapt forward—a miniature Kun-Peng made of pure spiritual essence. It hovered before his forehead, staring into his soul with innocent, knowing eyes. Then, in a flash, it dissolved into his skin.
Su Mengtian felt a strange pulling sensation in his chest—
And the world inverted.
He was no longer in the sanctum.
Instead, he floated in a space beyond space.
Above him—
A roar.
A cry that didn't echo through air, but across galaxies.
Su Mengtian gasped as the cosmos warped around him. He turned his head—and his breath caught.
The mythical beast.
The Kun-Peng.
It loomed above, its wings spanning horizons, dark yet glimmering with constellations woven into every feather. Its eyes swirled with the essence of stars, time, and silence. Just looking into them gave Su Mengtian the illusion that he was falling into infinity.
The beast beat its wings—once.
Reality cracked.
In a flicker, it vanished.
Then reappeared.
Not just across the sky.
Across dimensions.
Mountains trembled in its wake. Celestial rivers paused their flow. Su Mengtian watched in awe as it danced between worlds, unbothered by rules of space or distance. The Kun-Peng didn't fly.
It shifted.
With each wingbeat, ripples of spatial tears shimmered in its wake like starlit whirlpools. Distance became irrelevant. Sacred formations flickered and collapsed as the beast passed through them with serene disregard.
There was no resistance.
There was no barrier.
Only motion.
And transcendence.
Su Mengtian stared upward, heart pounding. "So this... is Heaven-Treading Voidshift."
A soft hum accompanied his realization.
Then he heard them—the songs.
Dozens of spiritual echoes. High-pitched, layered, and impossibly ancient. The voices of a pod of Kun-Pengs. They circled far in the distance, massive figures in flight, singing their parting hymn across the stars. Their tones weren't mournful—they were triumphant, exalted.
And then—one phrase. Echoing across space.
"Heaven-Treading Voidshift."
The words entered his very soul, not as sound—but law.
In that moment, Su Mengtian understood the meaning behind the divine ability.
-Heaven-Treading Voidshift,
This divine ability wasn't just speed. It wasn't simply flight.
It was the power to deny distance.
To fold it.
To laugh in the face of spatial limitation.
When activated, Su Mengtian would be able to instantaneously move across vast expanses—hundreds or even thousands of miles, depending on his current cultivation level. His presence would leave behind shimmering echoes, like space itself had been temporarily unstitched and then hastily sewn shut.
The ripples weren't just visual. They held resonance—echoes of movement that made it impossible for enemies to follow his path.
At higher mastery, even spatial locks—formations crafted by Grandmasters—could not contain him.
Even the divine-grade barriers could be bypassed.
The Kun-Peng was too ancient, too free.
And the Divine Trait of this ability? It made Su Mengtian smile.
Immunity.
Spatial traps?
Laughable.
Teleportation seals? Realm boundaries?
Shackles for the ordinary.
Not for him.
Not anymore.
Under specific celestial alignments—such as a lunar convergence or during solar eclipses—this ability could even allow travel between realms. A feat only ever recorded in ancient myth.
Su Mengtian exhaled as the stars dimmed, and the great Kun-Peng faded back into cosmic mist. The space around him began to dissolve, returning him to the inner sanctum.
He opened his eyes.
Power pulsed within his blood.
The eighth sphere had been fully absorbed.
He lifted a hand and flicked his fingers.
Space in front of him shimmered.
And then, with the faintest flap of imagined wings, he vanished.
Appearing at the other end of the sanctum.
A grin crossed his face.
"Oh, this will be fun."
But he didn't linger. One bloodline. Two abilities remained.
He turned back toward the ninth sphere, ready to continue his divine awakening—knowing now what it truly meant to carry the blood of a god-beast who soared through eternity.
Right now within the cultivation chamber, deep inside the core sanctum of the Heavenly Soul Palace, Su Mengtian sat still as a statue. The faint glow of the crystalline formations lining the walls pulsed in time with his breath. Around him, eight divine auras coiled in the air—each representing a mastery forged in the fires of awakening. Seven from two ancient bloodlines, and one freshly stabilized from the Kun-Peng.
As he exhaled, spiritual runes etched across his skin dimmed gently, merging back into his soul.
"Only two remain," he whispered, his voice a low murmur in the silence.
He looked at the ninth crystallized spiritual sphere hovering before him. There was no hesitation. No fear. Only reverent determination.
Su Mengtian pressed his palm to it—and the world unraveled.
He found himself floating, not in sky nor on land, but adrift in an endless black ocean. The waters beneath him shimmered like obsidian glass, yet moved with slow, tidal certainty. Stars glimmered beneath the waves instead of above, and there was no sound but the slow heartbeat of the cosmos.
Then, the darkness moved.
Not with malice.
Not with corruption.
But with purpose.
Su Mengtian turned.
The Kun-Peng, colossal beyond comprehension, hovered above the ocean surface. Its wings stretched farther than the horizon. Its eyes burned like twin abyssal moons. And when it opened its maw, the world changed.
A low, drawn-out bellow echoed across dimensions. The sea trembled. The stars shivered.
And then—everything began to collapse inward.
The clouds, once peaceful, twisted into spirals and plunged downward. Bolts of lightning arced from every direction, consumed by the vortex forming in the great beast's mouth. Wind, water, light—all began to funnel toward it, as if the heavens themselves bowed in offering.
A domain spread.
The Abyssal Swallowing Domain.
Its radius extended for miles. A gravitational sphere bloomed into existence, a silent promise of unrelenting consumption.
Cultivators appeared—echoes of ancient enemies, perhaps memories of war etched into this divine realm.
They attacked.
A tide of divine techniques surged toward the beast. Fire dragons writhed through the air. Spears forged from astral jade cut space. Rivers of cursed blood howled their way forward.
And yet—
None made contact.
None even touched the surface of the domain.
Everything they cast was pulled inward.
Unraveled.
Devoured.
Not resisted.
Not deflected.
But erased.
Within the core of the domain, Su Mengtian saw spiritual essence condense—not into artifacts, but into raw power. It didn't just vanish. It was broken down and reforged into the Kun-Peng's body.
Its scales thickened with each technique devoured. The aura of its soul deepened, thunder rolling beneath each wingbeat. As it fed, it evolved—grew—ascended.
Even time seemed affected.
The domain didn't consume just energy.
It swallowed future potential, the roots of technique, the meaning behind force.
Su Mengtian watched as a Dao-based attack—a radiant wheel of karmic rebirth—was caught in the domain's pull. It resisted.
For a moment.
Then it fractured.
And the wheel's wisdom—its Dao resonance—was drawn into the heart of the Kun-Peng.
Su Mengtian shivered.
"This isn't a technique..." he muttered. "It's a cosmos unto itself."
The domain slowly retracted as the enemies faded. Su Mengtian stood upon a now-silent sea. The sky above remained broken, full of threads pulled taut between stars.
Then he heard it—
A roar from deep within the ocean.
It wasn't from the Kun-Peng.
It was from the domain itself.
The Abyss had awakened.
And from the center of the collapsing void, the words rang out—not in speech, but in fate:
"Abyssal Swallowing Domain."
Su Mengtian closed his eyes, feeling the name engrave itself into his soul.
Su Mengtian opened his eyes.
The ninth crystallized spiritual sphere was gone.
But the weight of what he had inherited still rippled across his soul.
The ability pulsed inside him—hungry, vigilant, silent.
He took a deep breath and steadied himself. "Only one remains," he said aloud.
Then, looking toward the tenth crystallized spiritual sphere glowing softly at the far end of the spiritual sea, Su Mengtian whispered:
"Let's finish this."
Beneath the boundless void, Su Mengtian stood in solemn stillness, his body brimming with ancient power. Nine spheres now pulsed in his spiritual sea, each a testament to awakening, agony, and ascension. His breathing was calm, but the weight of his transformation echoed across the inner plane.
The tenth crystallized spiritual sphere hovered before him.
Its glow was subtle, not dazzling like the others—but deep, like the unseen gravity of a star.
Su Mengtian reached forward without hesitation.
The moment his hand touched it, the heavens split.
The sea around him vanished.
He was no longer grounded. No longer tethered.
Instead, he stood atop a floating islet suspended in the edge of reality—a place where the stars whispered and the sky bled streams of aurora. Before him, the Kun-Peng stirred.
It rose not from ocean, but from void. From the deepest void, the Kun-Peng rose.
Each movement of its wings shredded the fabric of space, scattering cosmic particles like falling stardust. Its feathers shimmered with light and shadow, like blades forged from the twilight between day and night.
And then it shrieked.
But the sound was not sound.
It was a scream of freedom. Of defiance. Of return.
The moment it cried out, all laws bent. Clouds curled into spirals, then scattered like sand. Time warped—stretching, then snapping.
The Kun-Peng flew.
Straight upward.
Faster than thought. Faster than fate.
The clouds parted before its path like fragile curtains. The sky pulsed as it ascended. Enemy forces attempted to intercept—phantoms of dread and spell-casters of abyss.
They raised snares wrought from cursed gravity.
They conjured nets of star-forging threads and soul-binding chains.
All were annihilated in passing.
They did not miss.
They dissolved.
They were rejected by the realm the Kun-Peng now flew through.
It was above fate. Beyond consequence.
Su Mengtian watched, his breath stolen. The world beneath him shrank as he was lifted alongside it—not bodily, but spiritually. As if the beast had taken a part of him with it.
The wings cut space like glass.
Each feather that scattered from the Kun-Peng did not fall, but hovered briefly in the sky, spinning. Space warped around each one, folding slightly. A divine hum resonated.
*Shuuaaa!* A thousand trails of cosmic light marked the creature's path.
And then, in a final flash of brilliance, it vanished.
Gone.
But not absent.
Su Mengtian could still feel it—a gaze watching from above the firmament. A presence that refused to be shackled. A power that existed for no other purpose but freedom.
His chest ached.
Not from pain.
But longing.
The dream of soaring without boundary. The desire to shake loose the world and fly beyond its limits.
The wind whispered against his ears.
A voice rang within his soul—the language of stardust and blood.
"Astral Sovereign: Heaven-Treading Ascension."
Su Mengtian descended slowly back into his spiritual sea.
The tenth sphere had dissolved, merging into the core of his being.
Ten spheres. Ten awakenings. Ten divine authorities.
And now, at the center of his spiritual sea, the silhouette of three beasts emerged.
The Ancestral Void Ape God sat cross-legged, chains glowing faintly across its arms.
The Thunder Guardian Dragon coiled in a dome of lightning, one eye open.
The Kun-Peng hovered above both, wings outstretched, cutting starlight.
All three watched Su Mengtian silently.
As if recognizing him anew.
As if offering fealty.
He exhaled, his heart still thundering.
Then, he whispered to himself:
"It's not just about power anymore. It's about what I become... now that I carry all of them."
Outside the chamber, the runes lit the walls like a miniature sun.
The awakening was complete.
And Su Mengtian... was no longer merely mortal.
He was a sovereign of storms, silence, and stars.
And the world would tremble at his return.