LightReader

Chapter 1 - CHAPTER 0: The Fall

The sky above the **Li Clan** wasn't falling—it was rotting.

**Khai** stood paralyzed. His breath hitched in a throat that felt filled with powdered glass.

Above, the ***Higher Heavens*** were being torn apart. Not by thunder, but by a sickening, divine silence.

A thousand silhouettes descended from the ***higher dimensions***. They didn't just fly; they poisoned the very air.

Their radiance was predatory. It was a golden, blinding heat that stripped the skin of its moisture. It turned the oxygen into a searing, dry gas.

**Khai's** retinas burned. He didn't just see the gods; he felt their arrogance as a physical weight crushing his lungs.

***

Then, the mountain moved.

**Li-Feng** stepped forward. He didn't take a battle stance. He simply stood there.

The entire ***Multiverse*** felt it.

With every inch his foot lowered toward the ground, space-time groaned like a dying beast.

Distant galaxies, billions of light-years away, shifted out of their orbits in fear.

The '***Laws of Reality***' didn't just bend; they shattered.

Gravity ceased to exist for a heartbeat, then returned with a vengeance that cracked the planet's crust open like an eggshell.

"You dare to descend upon my soil?"

**Li-Feng's** voice wasn't sound. It was a ***conceptual strike***.

The shockwave of his words alone disintegrated the nearby moons, turning them into a fine silver mist.

A thousand '***Lower Gods***' charged. Their spears were forged from the hearts of dying stars.

**Li-Feng** didn't even draw a weapon. He flicked his wrist. A casual, bored gesture.

There was no explosion. No 'BOOM'.

Only a sudden, agonizing *pop* in the ears as the atmospheric pressure of a thousand lives disappeared instantly.

One moment, the sky was crowded with divine light. The next, there was only a hollow, terrifying silence.

They were erased so cleanly that even the echoes of their battle cries were deleted from history.

The space where they once stood began to bleed a dark, oily substance.

Reality itself was weeping, unable to heal the wound **Li-Feng** had carved into existence.

"Is this the limit of your ***Association***?"

**Li-Feng's** aura flared. The stars in the distance flickered and went out, as if afraid to be seen by his cold eyes.

The ***Multiverse*** was no longer a vast expanse. It was a cage, and **Li-Feng** was the beast that had outgrown it.

***

But then, the smell changed.

The incense of his mother's clan drifted through the void. Sweet and cloying, like flowers on a fresh grave.

He saw her. His mother. A ghost in chains of '***True Reality***.'

The betrayal hit **Khai** harder than any cosmic strike. It felt like being drowned in ice water.

"**Khai**..."

His father's voice was a jagged rasp. When **Li-Feng's** hand touched his shoulder, it felt like a death sentence.

"The world is a lie, **Khai**. The heavens are nothing but a gilded cage."

Before **Khai** could gasp, his father's palm slammed into his sternum.

*CRACK.*

It wasn't just bone breaking. It was his world ending.

The ***Null-Link*** entered him like a cold, metallic parasite.

**Khai** felt his muscles turn to liquid, then evaporate.

His skin, once royal, began to cling to his bones like wet, decaying parchment.

He was being drained. Every happy memory, every bit of warmth—consumed by the black hole in his soul.

"Run," **Li-Feng's** voice echoed, sounding miles away. "Become the key that breaks the lock!"

The shove was brutal.

**Khai** fell. The transition was a violent, sensory assault.

He felt the '***Pure Aether***' of ***Universe 3*** being stripped away from his skin, replaced by a thick, suffocating layer of filth.

The golden light was gone. Replaced by a sickly, grey haze.

The smell of divine nectar vanished. It was instantly overtaken by the stench of ancient rot, sulfur, and dried blood.

*THUD.*

He hit the grey grit of ***Planet 1***.

The air here was wet and heavy. It was the smell of a place where hope went to die.

**Khai** lay in the dust, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling breaths.

**[VITALITY: 0.01%]**

**[SYNC: 0.00%]**

He looked at his twig-like fingers clawing the dirt.

He was twenty-three years of potential trapped in the shriveled body of a starving ghost.

In the absolute darkness of the ***Abyss***, **Khai** felt the first spark of something more dangerous than the ***Null-Link***.

Pure, unadulterated hatred.

*"The world is a lie..."* **Khai** closed his eyes as the sulfur-heavy wind of the mines howled over his broken form.

He wasn't just a prisoner. He was the ghost that the Heavens had forgotten to kill.

More Chapters