Months had bled into each other since that devastating day of public rejection and betrayal. Time, however, had done nothing to heal the wounds. In the corridors of the university, the mockery had become a permanent fixture. Ye Chen couldn't walk ten steps without feeling the weight of a thousand judging eyes. People would stop, point, and snicker, their whispers loud enough to graze his ears like jagged glass. The shame was a constant, suffocating companion that followed him everywhere, from the lecture halls to the quietest corners of the library.
One evening, the air felt unusually heavy. Ye Chen was walking back from his grueling shift at the garage, his muscles aching and his clothes stained with grease. As he turned into a sparsely populated, dimly lit alleyway, the silence was violently shattered. A black van screeched to a halt beside him, its tires screaming against the asphalt.
Before he could even register the danger, several men with masked faces lunged out of the side door. Their movements were practiced and ruthless. Before a single cry could escape his throat, a thick cloth was shoved into his mouth and bound tightly around his head. Strong arms pinned his limbs, dragging him into the dark maw of the van. The door slammed shut, and the vehicle roared back to life, speeding away toward the desolate, lawless outskirts of the city.
The Valley of Death
The van finally came to a halt in a barren wasteland, a place where the city's lights were nothing but a faint, distant memory. They dragged him out like a sack of garbage and threw him onto the cold, hard earth near a withered, solitary tree.
As he lay there, gasping for air through the suffocating gag, the sound of cruel, jagged laughter erupted around him. It was a chilling sound—the sound of predators enjoying their prey.
"The boss gave us very specific instructions for this one," one of them sneered, his voice dripping with sadistic pleasure. "He said to give him a 'warm' welcome and make sure his hands and feet are snapped like dry twigs."
Ye Chen's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Terror, cold and paralyzing, surged through his veins. He tried to speak, to beg, to ask 'why', but the cloth was tied so tight that it forced its way into his mouth. He could only produce muffled, desperate whimpers—sounds of a man already being buried alive.
The thugs didn't wait. They moved in one by one, their fists and heavy boots raining down on him. Each strike was a thunderclap of pain. Then, the man who seemed to be the leader, a hulking figure with a cold aura, signaled them to stop.
"Enough of this. Stop playing around," he barked. "Bring the iron rod. Let's finish the job and break his bones."
A heavy iron rod glinted under the pale, sickly moonlight. A man stepped forward, raised it high, and brought it down with sickening force onto Ye Chen's leg.
CRACK!
The sound of the bone snapping was loud and final in the midnight silence. Ye Chen's body arched in a violent convulsion, his nerves screaming in a white-hot flare of agony. His entire frame trembled uncontrollably, but the gag ensured that his screams remained trapped in his throat, a silent explosion of pain. Seeing his pathetic state, the thugs erupted into even louder laughter. To them, this wasn't a crime; it was entertainment.
Another man stepped forward, swinging his rod toward Ye Chen's arm. Ye Chen, blinded by pain and knowing another devastating blow was coming, tried to twist his body in a desperate, last-ditch effort to shield himself. But fate was a cruel mistress. As he turned, the iron rod missed his limb and slammed with full, unbridled force directly into his temple.
The sound was a dull, wet thud.
The impact was so severe that blood began to seep through the cloth, staining it a dark, visceral crimson. The laughter died instantly. A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the wasteland.
"Damn it! What the hell did you do?" the leader shouted, his voice cracking with sudden panic. "The boss said to cripple him, not kill him! He wanted him to live the rest of his life as a pathetic invalid!"
The thug who struck the blow stood frozen, his eyes wide. Another man knelt down and ripped the gag from Ye Chen's mouth. He pressed two fingers to the boy's neck, searching for even the faintest flutter of life. After a few agonizing seconds, he stood up and looked at the leader, slowly shaking his head.
"He's gone, boss. No pulse."
The leader spat on the ground in annoyance. "Tch. The fun was just starting, and you had to go and ruin it." He glared at the man with the rod before turning his back on the body.
"What about the corpse, boss?" one of them asked nervously.
"Who cares?" the leader dismissed. "This place is a graveyard. By the time the sun rises, the wolves will have picked him clean. Let's get out of here."
They piled back into the van and sped off, the sound of their engine fading into the distance. It was in that void of silence, in that moment where one life ended, that another—one far more ancient and powerful—crossed the boundary of time and space.
The Sovereign's Wrath
As the fragmented memories of the young man merged with the soul of the Sovereign, Ye Chen's eyes slowly opened. But they were no longer the eyes of a weak, broken student. They were deep, swirling vortices of ancient power and cold, calculated fury.
The memories felt like a boiling ocean in his mind, and for a moment, the blood of the previous owner seemed to flare up in his veins. Ye Chen slowly clenched his fist, feeling the dry soil of the wasteland beneath his nails.
"Your story... is an echo of my own," Ye Chen whispered, his voice sounding different—sharper, heavier. "Betrayal, humiliation, and the cruelty of those who think they are gods. Since you have met me in this abyss and I have taken your vessel, your life is now mine. And your vengeance? It is now my burden to carry."
He tried to shift his weight, but the agony of the shattered leg and the fractured skull hit him like a wave. He examined the body with a cold, analytical eye. It was pathetic. Frail. Weak. To return to the peak of the universe, this vessel would need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
"I need to heal," he mused. "But here, there are no spirit herbs, no divine pills. My only choice is to force open my Dantian and begin the process of drawing the world's Qi to repair this flesh."
With a grit of his teeth, he forced his broken body into a cross-legged meditative position. He first reached for his most familiar path: the Nine Heavens Celestial Immortal Decree. It was the technique that had once made him a god among men. But the moment he tried to circulate the first breath of energy, a violent, blinding pain erupted in his brain, nearly making him lose consciousness again.
In that haze of pain, a vision appeared—a massive, ancient, nine-story black tower. It stood there, radiating an aura of primordial chaos. In his previous life, Ye Chen had stood before this very tower as a Supreme Immortal, yet even then, its secrets were beyond him. Now, in this weak body, the tower seemed to resonate with his soul.
Suddenly, a new stream of information began to etch itself into his mind. It was a technique he had never seen before, yet it felt as old as the universe itself.
Ye Chen's eyes snapped open, glowing with a terrifying intensity.
"This... this is impossible," he breathed. Even with his vast knowledge of the Upper Realms, he was stunned. This technique, The Supreme Origin: Myriad Chaos Sovereign Art, was leagues beyond the 'Nine Heavens' decree. It reached depths of power that he hadn't even known existed.
But what truly made his heart race was its nature. Most cultivators had to choose between the path of energy or the path of the body. But this art was a perfect fusion. It was Dual Cultivation of the highest order. Every time his Qi increased, his physical body would be tempered by the chaos, becoming as indestructible as a divine weapon.
A dark, ambitious smile played on his lips. He clenched his fists, ignoring the searing pain in his bones.
"A second chance," he said, his voice echoing with an authority that could shake the heavens. "I will not waste it. Whether it is this lowly mortal world or the realms that think they are supreme, I will make them all tremble beneath my feet. And if there is something beyond... I will find it and conquer it too."
The air around him began to ripple as the Myriad Chaos Sovereign Art began its first cycle. The return of the Sovereign had truly begun.