Somewhere between two Planes of Existence, amidst the vacuum of shattered galaxies and drifting Laws, a battle of ridiculous proportions was underway. Planets had been cracked. Suns had dimmed. Time, in some places, had politely stepped aside.
The cosmos had seen wars. But never like this. Somewhere between two Planes of Existence, amidst a vacuum of shattered galaxies, a battle of ridiculous proportions was underway. Cultivators drifted across the battlefield like celestial dandruff, every movement upsetting the delicate fabric of reality. One half-broken planet was trying to orbit a nearby sun, only to realize halfway through that it no longer had a core, while a confused comet spun in endless circles around a particularly radiant cultivator, mistaking him for a star.
The Laws here weren't just thin. They were drunk. Gravity hiccuped, Karma misfired, and Cause and Effect had filed for divorce. Someone had even attempted to use a Time Rewind Art, only for the spell to get stuck, failing and re-failing in an infinite, pathetic loop. Amidst this cosmic circus, thousands of cultivators floated like ants around a single, unmoving man.
Bhishma..
Bhishma was not from this universe. He was a simple repairman for a local electronics store. He was a happy man on Earth, had a beautiful wife, a daughter who was still learning to walk without tripping. Those memories were the only thing keeping him sane after more than forty thousand years of this bullshittery, you-dare-I-dare tropes. All he wanted in this life was to return to his wife and daughter—and maybe play COD again.
It had been more than forty thousand years since Bhishma became part of this world. His legend as a deity-level cultivator was renowned in countless realms. He had been sectmaster of too many sects to remember, faction leader of armies that shaped epochs, master of Dao that scholars wrote novels about just to feel inferior. But today, none of that mattered. Today, he was surrounded by enemies, allies, betrayed lovers, forgotten drinking buddies, and at least one guy he owed spirit stones to.
White hair like the unraveling of fate. Eyes dim with exhaustion, and wisdom so dense it had collapsed into sarcasm. Blood dripped from his lips, clothes torn, Dao fractured... and still, the man floated in the center of the cosmic brawl like an old uncle who just wanted everyone to shut up and let him rest. He had been running, fighting, hiding, and cursing for the last twenty-seven years. Not a poetic number—just twenty-seven. He had counted.
Now, finally, cornered at the edge of a remote Plane, where the Laws were thin and the locals were still debating whether potatoes counted as spirit herbs, Bhishma had nowhere left to go.
The siege force included every cliché imaginable. There was Long Ayung, whose eyebrows had ascended two realms above his actual cultivation. There was Fairy Jadecloud, whose beauty could collapse nations and whose simping fanbase currently made up a third of the siege. There was Patriarch Ninefire, who had combusted twelve times mid-speech and was now more ash than man.
There was also General Hotying of the Heavenly Army. Bhishma had a very unique relation with the Heavenly Army. At one point, he was the General. He was the one who trained and taught the current general—and so many of the members of that army. To many of them, he was a father figure. Or maybe a grand-grandfather figure.
And of course, the usual peanut gallery of Core Elders, Nascent Grandmasters, Unnamed Background Characters (soon to die), and that one guy who kept yelling, "I call dibs on the treasure!"
Bhishma paused. Who was that guy? How did he know about dibs? He was barely an Earth Immortal—what gave him the audacity to think that deity-level cultivators would respect his dibs call? Was he deranged? Was he being possessed by some old, property-hungry aunty from a neighborhood association? The absurdity of it almost made Bhishma laugh. Almost.
They had come for the artifact. A myth-level, reality-grade, Plane-bending, timeline-breaking divine object of unknowable value. The thing Bhishma held in his palm like a half-crushed soda can.
"You've run far enough, Bhishma," shouted someone, probably one of the Longs or Yun-somethings. "Hand over the treasure! Let a new generation rise!"
Bhishma coughed blood. Not because he was injured—he just found the line particularly stupid. "New generation, huh... You do know I've been listening to that exact speech since the fall of the Jade Heaven Era?"
A beautiful woman floated forward, revealing half a thigh and the full extent of her ambition. "Senior Bhishma... give me the treasure, and I promise you anything. Power, position... companionship."
Bhishma looked at her. Blinked. Then turned to the side and vomited blood more aggressively.
"Right, that's a no," he muttered. "You kids and your dramatic offers. At least back in my day, people just stabbed each other."
"ENOUGH!" someone yelled, unleashing a flurry of overcompensating sword energy.
The cultivators closed in. All of them.
Bhishma finally sighed. He stared at the artifact in his hand—the item he had chased across time, reality, and at least one shady auction house in the Underground Markets. It pulsed. Not with power. But with hope. Not hope for revenge, or conquest, or enlightenment. Just... Home.
"Forty-three thousand years," Bhishma whispered. "I've had enough."
Someone launched a Heaven-Severing Palm.
Bhishma smiled. "I'm going back to Earth."
He snapped his fingers.
The explosion was not silent. It was sarcastic. A bubble of light expanded outward, bending reality like wet paper. The thousands of attacking cultivators were flung backwards, their bodies intact, their pride not so much.
Long Ayung's eyebrows disintegrated. Patriarch Ninefire was now just Patriarch One Ember. Fairy Jadecloud's clothes had spontaneously become conservative.
A pulse of spatial light tore through the surrounding Planes. In neighboring cosmic territories, cultivators looked up from their closed-door cultivation sessions and muttered, "The hell was that?"
Fragments of the divine artifact scattered like seeds. Some embedded themselves into the skeletons of dead beasts. Some slipped into caves beneath long-forgotten sects. Some crashed into the dreams of unborn children.
And in that exact moment— Far, far away in a mundane corner of reality, a microwave beeped.
Bhishma was gone.
But Somewhere, his legacy had just clicked "I agree to the Terms and Conditions."