The God Realm of Absolute Beginning. The Abyss of Nothingness.
For years, this place had been a scar on the God Realm, a gaping maw that represented Yun Che's departure and the world's failure.
Only one person had remained.
Jun Xilei.
She sat in eternal vigil, her white robes blending with the pale, cracked earth.
Her sword lay across her lap, and her eyes were closed, her cultivation in a state of constant, quiet flux.
She was the guardian of a memory, the last sentinel of a forgotten promise.
She had felt the wails of a million dying star realms.
She had heard Chi Wuyao's desperate plea for all profound practitioners to gather. She ignored it.
Her duty was here.
Her master had died here. And Yun Che... he had vanished here.
This was her place, until the end of all things.
RUMBLE...
A tremor shook the ground.
Jun Xilei's eyes snapped open, her hand instinctively gripping her sword.
The Abyss of Nothingness, usually a silent void, was vibrating.
"What...?"
She rose to her feet, her Divine Master aura flaring.
The gray mist within the abyss began to churn, not with malice, but with an immense, directed force.
It was being pushed from below.
RUMBLE... BOOM!
With a sound like a new universe being born, the center of the Abyss of Nothingness erupted.
It wasn't an attack. It was an arrival.
A colossal, perfectly stable spatial tunnel, thousands of miles wide, tore open the sky, connecting the God Realm to the unseen world below.
Jun Xilei was blasted back by the sheer force of the spatial displacement, her sword raised as she stared in absolute terror and disbelief.
"What... what is this...?"
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Was this it? Was this the final invasion?
Had something worse than the Devil Gods been lurking in the Abyss all along?
Her question was answered as the vanguard emerged.
Tens of thousands of massive profound arks, crafted from metals and materials she had never seen, began to pour out of the tunnel in an endless, orderly fleet.
Each one pulsed with profound power.
At the front, six flagships, each radiating the power of a True God, took formation.
Her divine sense, which she had pushed to its limit, recoiled in pain. She could feel them—Gods. High Priests.
Beings of a level that should not exist.
Her entire being screamed at her to run.
This was an invasion force that made the Devil Gods look like scouts.
She was about to flee, to warn... someone... anyone...
And then, from the lead ship, a figure stepped out.
He didn't fly. He simply was. One moment he was on the ship, the next he was in the sky of the God Realm, his black robes billowing softly.
Jun Xilei froze.
Her sword trembled in her hand. Her breath stopped. The world... dissolved.
That face. That aura. That presence.
It was him. But it was not.
The Yun Che she remembered was a storm of rage and pain, a desperate man fighting a losing war.
This...
This was a god. An emperor. His power was so vast, so calm, so absolute, that her own Divine Master cultivation felt like a single drop of water in his endless, silent ocean.
"...Yun... Che...?" Her voice was a broken whisper, a question she was terrified to have answered.