The night was unnaturally still.
Dark clouds clung to the moon like smears of ash across glass. Lu Xuan stood alone beneath the ancient moon-tree outside the Celestial Dawn Sect's eastern gardens, his senses sharpened. Something wasn't right.
Then the world shifted.
The shadows moved.
Without warning, the air split open with a hiss, and a blade of black qi sliced through the garden lantern like it was paper. Lu Xuan's eyes widened just as a tall, masked figure in pitch-dark robes emerged from the night itself—a Shadow Envoy.
More came. Four in total. Their auras distorted the spiritual field.
The one in front—its face obscured by a veil of soul mist—stepped forward. Its power was suffocating.
Soul Ascension Realm.
Lu Xuan's muscles coiled, instincts screaming, but it was too late—
A blinding flash burst in front of him. A massive, golden seal slammed into the ground, sending tremors through the soil.
"Xuan'er—GET BACK!"
The voice rang like thunder and grief.
Elder Shi Qiran.
The old man landed between Lu Xuan and the assassins, his robes fluttering, eyes filled with radiant fury. He didn't look frail now—he looked like a wall of heaven itself.
"Shi Qiran..." one of the assassins rasped, "Our orders were only to leave his corpse intact."
Shi Qiran didn't wait.
With a shout, his sword gleamed in the dark, releasing a flurry of radiant silver arcs. Lightning laced with spiritual will surged forward, forcing three of the assassins to dodge.
Only the Soul Ascension Envoy remained unmoved.
"You are not strong enough," it said coldly.
"Maybe not," Shi Qiran whispered. "But I am still a teacher."
The ground erupted.
Shi Qiran flung both palms forward, summoning his true form—the Nine Heavens Thunder Phoenix, a beast formed of tribulation qi and ancient sealing runes. It screeched, diving into the Shadow Envoy with lightning that tore through stone and space.
But the Envoy simply stepped through the thunder. The phoenix shattered.
Shi Qiran coughed blood, but stood tall.
Lu Xuan had never seen his master like this. His heart slammed against his ribs. He wanted to rush forward.
"No, stay!" Shi Qiran barked, eyes still burning. "If you move now, everything I've done will be meaningless!"
The assassin formed a seal. Black runes encircled his blade—it wasn't swordplay. It was soul execution.
The killing strike was seconds away.
And still, Shi Qiran smiled.
"I raised you not to rely on me," he murmured under his breath. "But to outlive me."
Golden light coiled around his arms, his core pulsing wildly. Spiritual lines etched themselves into the air. It was a self-sacrificial seal, one only someone at the late Nascent Soul stage could use.
"Lu Xuan," he said one last time, his voice soft. "You're already past me. Go higher."
Then he lunged.
His body ignited in pure spirit light as he smashed into the Soul Ascension Envoy mid-seal. There was a sound like a sun being born—
And the world went white.
The shockwave turned the moon-tree to ash. The garden floor cracked for fifty meters in every direction. The three lower assassins were blown off their feet.
The Soul Ascension Envoy staggered back—wounded.
Lu Xuan knelt in silence, his master's broken sword embedded before him, the cracked stone still warm from the blast. The dust had yet to settle, but Elder Shi Qiran was gone. Not even bones remained.
Only that final, golden light before the explosion… and the last words.
"You're already past me. Go higher."
They echoed in his mind like a curse. His fists clenched, nails digging into the bloodied stone.
He didn't cry.
He couldn't.
A part of him had burned away in that explosion.
Behind him, footsteps crunched softly. Su Xue stopped a few paces away.
"You didn't protect him," she said, voice cold.
Lu Xuan didn't rise. "He protected me."
"Because you're always the one left alive," she said bitterly. "A whole world burns around you—but you always survive."
The words were like daggers—but he didn't flinch.
She stepped closer, eyes shimmering. "Do you remember what I told you in the Blood Lotus ruins? About what the Demon God did?"
He looked up slowly.
Yes."
"My mother. My father. My entire bloodline. The Su clan was a noble house. The Demon God wiped them from the continent—said they bore the scent of heaven."
Lu Xuan stared at her.
"You think that was me?"
"No," she said. "I think that was you. The last you. The previous life you never chose to forget."
She turned, cloak swirling behind her. "You may try to resist it, but it's already growing again inside you."
She's right, a voice inside him whispered. You know it too.
His breath came slow, heavy. The world had shifted. His master's death had broken something inside him—but it had also unlocked something.
A pressure pulsed in his chest, resonating with his Immortal Demongod Body.
The First Level had awakened in the Blood Lotus Sect—granting him tenfold strength, enhanced perception, and a soul immune to severing.
But now… something deeper stirred.
Not the Second Level. Not yet. But the hunger of the Demon God—that instinctual, buried wrath—had begun to resurface.
He could feel it watching.
Waiting.
The next day, silence hung over the central hall.
Lu Xuan stood before the remaining elders of the Celestial Dawn Sect—his robes torn, his aura burning with suppressed rage. The council seat meant for Elder Shi Qiran remained empty, draped in black silk.
The Sect Master, Yun Taizhen, regarded him with unreadable eyes.
"The Shadow Envoys," she murmured, "a declaration of war by the Zhao Emperor."
Lu Xuan didn't speak.
One of the elder guardians, Sun Hailong, scowled. "What is his goal?"
To destabilize the sect before the Annual Competition," Yun Taizhen answered. "To eliminate Lu Xuan before he becomes a threat to the throne."
"Too late," Lu Xuan said softly.
Yun Taizhen's gaze sharpened. "Explain."
"I've already reached the Nascent Soul Realm."
Murmurs rippled through the room. Lu Xuan was still under twenty. His rise was now beyond logic—an anomaly the heavens themselves had once feared.
"Send assassins if he must," Lu Xuan continued. "But if the Zhao Emperor wants war, I'll give him a burial ground."
The Sect Master rose. "Enough blood has been spilled. You are not the only one grieving."
Lu Xuan looked at her, and for a brief moment, the ancient bloodlust beneath his skin nearly rose to the surface. The Demon God's hatred for celestial hierarchy, imperial tyranny, and fate itself throbbed within him.
But he nodded and said nothing.
Yun Taizhen sighed. "You may go."
As he turned, she added, "Your master gave everything to protect what was still good in you. Do not waste it."
That Night
The moon hung low, casting silver across the training cliffs.
Lu Xuan stood on the edge, shirtless, his skin marked by faint runes of the Immortal Demongod Body, glowing like molten lines beneath his skin.
He stared at his reflection in the sword—the nameless blade he had drawn in a past life. Its edge seemed to shimmer with memory. Pain. Blood. Victory.
Then he heard the wind shift.
Su Xue.
"Why are you here?" he asked without turning.
"To see if there's anything left of the man who knelt by a broken sword."
He said nothing.
"I thought you might mourn."
"I don't have the luxury," he said. "Not anymore."
Su Xue's eyes flickered. "You still blame yourself?"
No," he said, voice low. "I blame them. The Zhao bloodline. The world that keeps turning while everything I love burns."
"You sound just like the Demon God," she said coldly.
Lu Xuan turned then, and for the first time, she saw something new in his eyes—not rage. Not pain.
But silence.
The kind that came after everything else had died.
"I am the Demon God," he said. "But I'm also Lu Xuan. And if fate wants to test which version of me survives…"
He turned away.
"…then let the heavens prepare their graves."