The jade peaks of the Xu ancestral mountain range stood cloaked in silence, shrouded by a thin veil of mist and the first snow of winter. Cracked statues of long-forgotten ancestors lined the path to the dilapidated ancestral hall, their stone eyes worn smooth by time and neglect. Once, this place had been sacred, vibrant with incense and immortal qi. Now, only ruin remained.
Kneeling before a shattered spirit tablet was a youth clad in threadbare robes, his frame thin, his body trembling from cold and hunger. His name was Xu Lingxian.
No one remembered that name in reverence. To the world, he was a cripple—the fallen scion of a crumbling house, cursed with a broken meridian core and shunned even by his kin. But beneath that gaunt face and sunken eyes, behind the thin veil of mortality, slumbered a soul that once stood atop the cosmos.
He had once been Xu Qingmu, the Supreme God-King of Ten Thousand Laws, the ruler of the Immortal Courts and protector of the Ninefold Heavens. Revered. Worshiped. Invincible.
Until betrayal struck.
Mo Tian, his sworn brother, the one he had raised like blood, turned upon him in the final battle of the Celestial Calamity. With a blade forged from the bones of a void beast and soul poison from the Nether Abyss, Mo Tian sealed his cultivation and fed him to the Heavenly Tribulation, severing his divinity.
And so, the greatest god of his era fell.
His soul wandered through samsara, bound in karmic fire, until it descended once more upon the Continent of Reincarnation—Tian Shen. Reborn into the lowest of conditions, his spirit now resided within Xu Lingxian, a youth whose shattered meridians rendered cultivation impossible. A boy born into the decaying branches of the once-glorious Xu Clan.
He could not cultivate. He could not fight. He could not even protect his own.
But he remembered everything.
The heavens. The betrayal. The power. The oaths.
He pressed his forehead to the cold stone, tears mixing with blood as they fell upon the broken spirit tablet of his former self.
"The Dao is eternal, yet the heavens are blind," he whispered. "But I am not."
The wind howled louder, as if in answer. Far above, clouds gathered unnaturally, pulsing with faint thunder. A tremor ran through the earth.
From deep within his shattered dantian, something stirred. A single spark faint, ancient, and crimson gold floated within the darkness like an ember refusing to die.
He gasped. The pain was searing.
And then he heard it.
A whisper. Not in words, but in the language of Dao the eternal rhythm of existence. It called to him.
His blood, spilled upon the stone, began to glow faintly. The tablet, cracked and eroded, shimmered for the briefest moment with celestial light. And in that moment, Xu Lingxian saw a vision:
His past self, bathed in divine light, eyes as deep as the stars, standing atop the Firmament Throne, gazing down on Mo Tian - his betrayer.