Far from the Leng Clan's compound, a naked man slumped at the edge of what looked like a cliff, two figures looming behind him.
His body was covered in scars and burns, his raven-black hair unkempt and matted.
With barely any life left in him, his clouded brown eyes staring down the abyss below the cliff.
Before he could even breathe, a taunting voice resounded.
Without any strength or will left in him, he was completely unmoving, just barely registering the words spoken.
"You know what that is, right?"
"Who am I kidding? of course you do, you know everything!"
He could hear the voice seething.
Not getting a reaction from the slumped man, the expression of the two others morphed into wrath.
"Once a time a mighty Core Formation cultivator at the age of 19, even that wouldn't have saved you."
For the first time since he was placed at the edge he slowly looked back at the other two people.
Both clad in expensive silk, one with the same black hair and brown eyes, and another with fiery red hair and eyes stared at him with hatred.
One must know, to safely travel the void between the billions of islands and continents in this realm, one had to be at least in the Soul Transformation realm.
And even then, it was a very risky move without any protective measures.
The scarred man slowly voiced a couple words for the first time in a couple of weeks.
"For my best friend and brother to have that expression, it makes me happier than I have ever been"
A man smiling without life in his eyes, truly a strange sight.
"Oh, happy are we!?"
"Let's make sure you die with a smile on your face!"
The red-haired teen closed the distance slowly with a menacing smile.
He grabbed the man's face with one hand and pulled a small knife from his storage ring.
Without pause, he shoved it into the man's mouth.
And carved.
From the corner of his lips to the ear.
The sound of tearing flesh enough to make most faint.
Blood pooled quickly, seeping from his mouth, running down his battered body like crimson tears.
Though the smile on the red-haired youth quickly disappeared as he saw no change in expression on the man.
He took a step back and looked at him once more.
"Then, smile all the way to your death!"
He yelled as he delivered a powerful kick to the back.
The body slowly fell down the cliff and into the endless void below.
A sheer drop into the endless void, a place where even Soul Transformation cultivators feared to tread.
The Void is an infinite abyss between the realm's shattered floating lands.
Falling towards what would certainly mean death, not an ounce of expression was shown on the man.
His jaw hanging open from the sheer brutality and dead eyes blankly staring ahead.
Falling for what might have been an eternity, he had no idea how long it had been since he was kicked off the edge.
Though, sure this was his end, a crack suddenly appeared before him.
Quickly absorbing him before closing, leaving only the endless void.
Slowly gaining sense again, the broken man stood up on solid ground again.
His entire body oozing blood as his emotionless eyes took in his surroundings.
A temple warped by time and madness.
The ground bleeds black fluid, divine murals twist and scream, and the air crackles with broken divinity.
It felt like a place that should not exist.
Taking in the sight, a single thought appeared in his mind.
'Where in the void am I?'
Though before he even had time to think, his body moved on his own.
Walking over the bleeding ground and walking past twisted and ominous murals, his body was walking further and further in.
He stepped through a cracked stone archway, its frame carved with forgotten runes that shimmered faintly with a sickly crimson light.
The air grew colder with every step, not the chill of ice, but something deeper, an ancient cold that seeped into the soul and whispered of things long dead.
The narrow passage opened into a vast chamber, swallowed by shadow save for the blood-red glow pulsing from the massive formation etched into the floor.
Pillars of black stone reached skyward like skeletal fingers, crumbling but still standing, defying time.
The chamber felt alive, the walls wept with corrupted qi, murmurs echoed, though he could see no mouths, it was as if the void itself watched.
And yet, he walked forward.
Drawn.
Not by courage, but by something deeper.
Fate.
In the center, surrounded by chains made from divine metals long extinct, sat a figure upon a ruined throne.
Once glorious, now grotesque.
Feeling like not even a second had passed, he stood in front of the being.
A grotesque figure, his divine body rotted and mutated, one side skeletal, the other fused with twisting demonic tendrils.
A being utterly consumed by corrupted qi and madness, it pulsed around it as if alive.
"Do you know what they called me? Arbiter. Scalebearer. Glorious, isn't it?"
Its tone cracks like glass, snapping into sudden fury.
"Until they gnawed my name into dust! Balance is a lie! All things fall!"
It leans closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"But you… you'll fall upward."
Before he had time to think, a voice shifting between wisdom and insanity, and his laughter scrapes at the soul resounded.
"A soul unfit for the light. A worthy heir to the abyss."
"Kekeke."
It felt like he would be consumed by madness by just hearing the voice, it seeped into the deepest part of his soul.
Before he was completely overtaken the being lifted one of its skeletal fingers and pointed at him.
It whirred with a corrupted black light before traveling towards him, he felt it hitting where his Dantian used to be.
As it touched it, he collapsed, spasming on the ground like some sort of insect.
A pain ten times worse than all the torture he had received over the past weeks assaulted him.
His eyes rolled back, and he started foaming out his freshly brutalized mouth.
Though, for some reason he was still conscious, probably by the meddling of the being.
He looked up at the being responsible and saw it slowly crumbling into black mist.
As the corrupted god's body collapsed, twisted remnants of divine flesh and rotting aura dissolving into black mist, its one remaining eye, milky and seething, locked onto him.
"Bear my name through the ashes…"
Its voice cracked and twisted.
"Mu Xian. Demonic Sage. Devour the heavens."
In a sudden moment of brutal clarity, its voice rose above the pulsing madness, echoing with a hundred tones, some weeping, some laughing, some screaming.
"Devour the heavens, child of rot! Let the stars choke on your name!"
A forbidden technique awakens, and the first seeds of a new demonic path take root within him.
His dantian burns crimson and the temple collapses inward like a screaming mouth, and darkness swallows all.