The transition was not a passage, but a violation. The Veil did not open graciously; it tore with the sound of a universe screaming. Lin Chen stepped through the ragged wound and found himself not in a paradise, but in a graveyard of divinity.
There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above his head. He stood upon a fragment of a broken constellation, adrift in a starless void. All around him floated the ruins of a lost heaven: continents of shattered jade, rivers of liquid starlight that defied gravity by flowing upwards into nothingness, and the hollowed-out palaces of black crystal that drifted like spectral tombs.
This was the Lower Immortal Realm. The Court of Fallen Stars.
---
His arrival did not go unnoticed. He landed softly upon the dais of a throne that had been cloven in two. Before him stood a being whose very presence was a elegy to lost glory.
She was an Immortal, or had been once. Her wings, once perhaps woven from the fabric of auroras, were now tattered and dim. Her armor, forged from the heart of a star, was scarred and pitted. And her eyes—her eyes held the slow, cold spin of two galaxies in their final, dying moments.
She did not look at him with pity or curiosity, but with a reverence so profound it bordered on grief. She knelt.
"First Flame.I am Xing Yao, the Starfall Sovereign. I fell from grace the moment the Veil was sealed. I have guarded this broken court, waiting in the silence of ten million years." Her voice was the chime of crystal breaking in deep space. "I waited for you."
Within Lin Chen's chest, the nine flames of his journey had merged into a single, steady, and terrifying Ascendant Flame. He looked down at the kneeling goddess, his voice calm, devoid of awe.
"Why kneel to me?"
Xing Yao lifted her gaze, and tears of pure, liquid light traced paths down her cheeks. "Because the prophecies were not mere words. They were a promise. You are the Ember That Was Promised. The spark that will ignite the pyre upon which the False Heaven will burn."
---
THE COURT OF FALLEN STARS
As if her kneeling were a signal, they emerged from the shadows of the ruins. The Fallen. A sword god, Mo Xie, his legendary blade snapped in two, his soul visibly bound in chains of light. A phoenix empress, Fen Ling, her magnificent feathers stained an unnatural black, her cycle of rebirth severed. A void titan, Kuang Shi, his form a mountain of cracked celestial flesh, the very laws he commanded leaking from the fissures.
Hundreds of them. Beings who had once shaped worlds and sung stars into existence. And one by one, they knelt.
Their voices merged into a single, resonant plea that shook the foundations of the broken realm:
"THE WAR FOR HEAVEN NEVER ENDED.IT WAS ONLY PAUSED. THE USURPERS, THE FALSE GODS, SIT UPON THRONES BUILT ON DECEPTION. LEAD US, FIRST FLAME. RECLAIM WHAT WAS LOST. OR WITNESS THE ETERNAL FALL OF ALL THAT WAS EVER HOLY."
---
Lin Chen turned and sat upon the broken throne. It was not an act of arrogance, but of acceptance. He understood that his journey had only been a prelude. The true cultivation began now.
First Flame Mantra: Ninth Stage — Starforge
He willed the Ascendant Flame to turn inward, to burn away the last vestiges of his mortal essence and forge something new, something capable of challenging heaven. His body did not merely glow; it shattered like porcelain, revealing the core of starlight and primordial fire within. It then reformed, his skin becoming like captured night sky, his veins rivers of contained flame.
True Immortal Realm — Achieved.
The very fabric of the Court of Fallen Stars trembled, as if a dead heart had suddenly, violently, begun to beat again.
---
The Starfall Sovereign, Xing Yao, rose to her feet, a new light in her dying eyes. "To lead the Fallen, you must possess a flame that can scar the face of divinity itself. You must enter the Stellar Crucible. Survive a single cycle of a star's death… or become another nameless cinder in the dark."
As she spoke, a black sun ignited in the void above them. It was not a source of light, but of consumption. The Stellar Crucible. With its awakening, it began to inhale, pulling entire continental ruins into its dark, silent heart.
Without a word, Lin Chen stepped into the pull, allowing himself to be drawn into the heart of the dying star.
---
This was a trial beyond pain, beyond endurance. The heat was not fire, but the unmaking of matter. The pressure was not force, but the weight of a collapsing reality. The very laws of physics and Qi were rewritten into a single, brutal command: Cease to be.
His newly forged True Immortal Body did not just hurt; it melted, dissolving into its constituent energies. Yet, the Ascendant Flame at his core held fast. It remembered rebirth. It remembered ash. His body reformed, only to be unmade again.
One thousand cycles. Ten thousand. The Flame itself began to dim, pushed to its absolute limit.
And then, it understood. It learned the rhythm of stellar death. It absorbed the lesson of the crucible.
When Lin Chen finally emerged, he was changed. His body was now forged of dark, resilient star-iron. From his shoulders swept great wings of solidified solar ash. The trial was complete.
---
He looked upon the gathered Fallen, their forms broken, their hopes a flickering ember. He did not speak a command. He spoke a new law, his voice the first note of a new creation.
"LET THERE BE REBIRTH."
The Divine Authority washed over the Court. Broken wings of aurora stitched themselves back together with threads of living light. The chains on Sword God Mo Xie's soul shattered into harmless motes. The black stain on Phoenix Empress Fen Ling's feathers burned away in a glorious golden fire, her connection to the cycle of rebirth roaring back to life.
For the first time in eons, the Court of Fallen Stars did not whisper in despair. It sang a hymn of rekindled hope.
---
Their song was cut short. The black sun of the Crucible, now dormant, spoke with a voice of cold, impersonal divinity—the voice of the False Heaven.
"FIRST FLAME. YOUR PRESENCE IS A CONTAMINATION. THE MIDDLE IMMORTAL REALM IS OURS. ASCEND FURTHER, AND YOU WILL FACE DIVINE JUDGMENT."
A spear of pure golden law materialized and fell. It was Heaven's Edict. It did not seek to kill him—it knew it might not succeed. Instead, it pierced his chest, not harming his flesh, but branding his very essence with a second, more profound Curse Mark. This one was not black, but a blazing, arrogant gold—the mark of a soul slated for divine execution.
---
Xing Yao bowed again, her posture now that of a general to her emperor. "The Usurpers rule from the unassailable Celestial Citadel. They have sealed away the True Heaven, the source of all pure divinity. To break their siege, we need the combined strength of all nine Fallen Courts. You are the key. You must unite them."
Lin Chen reached up and touched the golden brand on his chest. It seared with the promise of annihilation. A slow, sharp smile, the same one he had worn in the Fleshlands, finally returned to his lips.
"Then let's not keep them waiting," he said, his voice cutting through the void. "Let's start a war."
---
As the words left his mouth, a portal of violent black fire ripped open in the void. From it emanated the smell of ozone and molten metal. The Obsidian Forge, the first of the nine courts.
A hammer, large enough to shatter a moon, flew from the portal, aimed directly at his head. A voice, like grinding continents, roared forth:
"FIRST FLAME! THE FORGE DEMANDS A TOKEN! FORGE A WEAPON WORTHY OF THIS WAR… OR I WILL FORGE YOUR BONES INTO ONE!"
Lin Chen's hand snapped up, catching the star-metal hammerhead bare-handed, the impact echoing like a bell tolling the start of the conflict.
But as his Ascendant Flame flowed into the metal, causing it to glow and liquefy, the golden mark on his chest pulsed. A whisper, thin and cruel, slithered from the spear's point still lodged in him:
"YOUR GREATEST WEAPON WILL BECOME YOUR FINAL CHAIN."
The entire Obsidian Forge ignited around them, ready to consume its next master.
---