For a heartbeat, the world was utterly silent.
The roar of armies, the hum of formations, even the faint whisper of wind between the ancient pines around Heavenly Dao Academy—all of it vanished.
It was as if the Mortal Emperor World itself held its breath.
High above the Everlasting Courtyard, Ling Feng floated alone—just one youth in simple black robes, hair loose, hands empty.
Below him, the Anti–Heavenly Dao Academy Alliance had lined up their entire fortune.
Seven colossal divine altars hovered in the sky like mountains ripped from the earth, stacked in a staggered arc that blotted out half the horizon. Each altar was carved from immortal stone, engraved with grand Dao diagrams from forgotten eras. Eleven old undyings stood upon them—frail bodies wrapped in ancient robes, pupils clouded with age but still burning with greed and experience.
Around them, Immortal Emperor Life Treasures floated quietly: spears and swords that could pierce epochs, pagodas suppressing karma, cauldrons and halberds and mirrors, each exuding a terrifying Emperor aura. One tremor from these artifacts could topple a great kingdom.
Beneath the altars spread a sea of cultivators—armies of Ancient Kingdoms and Ancient Clans, Supreme Elders and Virtuous Paragons, Royal Nobles and Enlightened Beings. Layer upon layer of formations locked together, turning the entire sky above Heavenly Dao Academy into a killing field.
On the academy's side, the mountain peaks stood quiet.
Under the Everlasting Tree, disciples and elders alike looked up in wordless tension. On one of the highest viewing platforms, Chi Xiaodie's fingers dug into the railing until her knuckles turned white. Bing Yuxia's folding fan had snapped shut, the edge biting into her palm.
Xu Pei, Li Shangyuan, Chen Baojiao, and Bai Jianzhen—all of whom had seen more of Ling Feng's depths than most—felt their hearts clench as if held in an invisible fist.
They had seen him erase Heavenly Sovereigns. They had watched him toy with Ancient Kingdom geniuses like bored children.
But this…
They had never seen him stand alone against this kind of formation.
Not against eleven old undyings and a wall of Immortal Emperor Life Treasures.
...
Ling Feng smiled.
"Not bad," he said lazily, his voice carried by a thin thread of Chaos to every ear, from the lowliest disciple to the oldest ghost. "You really did all line up for me."
The words were casual. The silence that followed was not.
Below, the alliance's ranks stirred. Several Virtuous Paragons scowled, faces dark.
"A mere junior Named Hero dares to stand before our army?" one snarled, aura surging as his own Life Palace trembled.
"Once the Immortal Emperor Life Treasures move at the same time," another old ancestor sneered coldly, "one word from the undyings and he will be crushed to dust. This brat doesn't even know how to write the word 'death'."
From the academy's side, Chen Baojiao's eyes narrowed dangerously. "These old fossils sure like to talk," she muttered. "If they're so confident, they should stop barking and start biting."
Li Shangyuan said nothing. Her Pure Jade Physique resonated faintly with the oppressive Immortal Emperor aura, but her gaze never left Ling Feng. Deep in her heart, something heavy twisted—fear, yes, but also… faith.
Up in the sky, Ling Feng scratched his cheek.
"Named Hero, huh," he mused. "Did you really forget me erasing Heavenly Sovereigns?"
His tone was light, almost amused, but the words landed like a slap.
Clusters of proud geniuses from sacred halls and Ancient Kingdoms—felt their faces heat.
On the altars, several old undyings stiffened.
They had lived through too many eras to care about junior rumors. But as their eyes focused on Ling Feng, as their withered souls probed his aura—
Something in them quietly recoiled.
"…This brat…" an undying murmured, voice low. "His aura is not… contained by the river of time…"
Their unease only deepened when Ling Feng's eyes half-lidded.
"…Alright," he said softly. "Since you went to the trouble of bringing so much noise—"
His smile faded.
"I'll show you something a little louder."
The world changed.
The change began inside him.
In his Inner Void, the Chaos Emeralds stirred.
The green gem—Space—flared first.
A cool, crystalline light flooded his meridians. The distances between heaven and earth folded and stretched in his perception like an obedient net. Mountains that should have been ten thousand miles away felt like they could be plucked with two fingers. Dao lines that spanned peaks and cities curled into neat loops in his eyes.
Space itself quietly acknowledged him as something that did not need to ask permission to move.
The red gem—Power—ignited next.
A heavy, ancient strength compressed around his Named Hero foundation as though some invisible hand had taken his current realm and hammered it into a denser, more terrifying form. Muscles, bones, blood, True Fate—every part of him synchronized around one brutal idea:
Absolute Force.
His Named Hero frame was still a Named Hero frame on paper, but the density of his power climbed and climbed, brushing past Royal Noble, past Enlightened Being, past Ancient Saint, past Heavenly Kings, rising steadily into the territory where Legendary Godkings would have to clench their teeth and take him seriously.
Yellow lightning threaded through his blood as the third emerald pulsed.
Energy sang in his veins; stamina and spirit surged, exhaustion becoming a distant, laughable memory. The ambient world energy, the Thunder Laws hidden in the sky, even the faint electromagnetic pulse between heaven and earth bent toward him, ready to be stolen, redirected, devoured at whim.
Last, the cyan gem brightened.
Time… loosened.
Chronos Perception unfolded. Each heartbeat of the world stretched wide, broad enough for him to examine from every angle. The flicker of Emperor runes on the altars slowed into a clear symbol. The alliance's vast ocean of power froze into a dozen overlapping frames, each one a different future he could choose to allow or deny.
To outside eyes, Ling Feng merely exhaled once.
To him, the battlefield became a painting he could redraw at any moment.
The Primal Chaos Genesis Physique woke fully.
His flesh turned fluid—not in appearance, but in essence. Muscles, bones, skin, even meridians loosened into something closer to living Chaos, ready to slip through blows, reshape around foreign laws, drink in every stray drop of Chaos Force pouring from a higher reality that did not care about the Old Villainous Heaven's decrees.
Chaos Energy flooded his spirit, elevating what should have been a "small" Named Hero reservoir into a sea no less dense than a Legendary Godking's. His Dao fragrance twisted, slipping out of the world's familiar patterns. Under the Old Villainous Heaven's gaze, his existence blurred at the edges, like ink refusing to stay inside the lines.
Across the academy, cultivators stiffened.
Virtuous Paragons who had been preparing to "teach the junior a lesson" suddenly felt their Dao Hearts lurch, as if they were standing barefoot on the edge of an abyss they had never seen before.
"What kind of Named Hero is this…?"
"He is not walking our path…"
"Is that… even worldly energy?"
On the seven altars, the eleven old undyings stirred.
Their eyes—cloudy with too many years, too much Dao—focused on Ling Feng for the first time, truly.
"…This aura…"
"Something beyond the epochs… not in any chronicle…"
For beings who had long since forgotten fear, a forgotten emotion slowly, clumsily crawled back into their hearts.
Unease.
Space thickened around Ling Feng.
It was subtle—no lightning, no roaring vortex. But a thin, invisible realm unfolded around him, a domain where his Chaos Control reigned absolutely. Distances bent, Dao lines curled, Emperor pressure slid around him like water around a rock that refused to be eroded.
He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the new weight settle onto him like a comfortable coat.
"Everyone who came to step on the academy," he said mildly, voice calm enough to soothe infants and infuriate sects, "listen well."
His gaze swept the altars, slow and unhurried.
"You brought Immortal Emperor Life Treasures. You woke up your old undyings. You stacked armies until your courage finally felt big enough to look this way."
He smiled, but it did not touch his eyes.
"Unfortunately," he said softly, "you're still not enough."
Then he moved.
To the watching disciples, Ling Feng vanished.
One instant, he floated calmly between academy and alliance.
The next, he was standing atop the foremost divine altar, one hand lightly resting on an Immortal Emperor Life Treasure, cyan light still fading from his pupils.
The old undying stationed there—a shriveled figure wrapped in azure robes, Dao echoing with the shadow of an Immortal Emperor lineage—jerked in shock, instincts roaring too late.
"You—"
Ling Feng's finger flicked his forehead.
A simple, almost casual gesture, as if he were flicking away a speck of dust.
Red and yellow Chaos surged out.
Absolute Force ignored the undying's Emperor-tempered body, punching straight through flesh, Dao body, and True Fate. Energy Manipulation seized the flood of retaliating power that tried to explode outward, twisted its direction, and fed it neatly into Ling Feng's own circuits like tea being poured from one cup to another.
For half a heartbeat, the old undying's Life Wheel spun wildly, the river of his long existence boiling.
Then it shattered.
From below, all anyone saw was this:
The imperial altar dimmed.
The Immortal Emperor Life Treasure hovering above it trembled, its wielder's Dao mark suddenly gone.
The old undying did not even have time to scream.
His body became a smear of ash, then less than ash, as Chaos ripped his True Fate apart.
"One," Ling Feng said calmly.
He stepped.
Space folded.
He appeared on the second altar before the first undying's robes had even finished burning.
This one reacted faster. A black pagoda Life Treasure crashed down, summoning a vast sea of karmic flames. Chains of law wrapped around Ling Feng's limbs, chains woven from cause and effect itself, trying to bind every step he had ever taken and would ever take.
"Heavenly Karmic Flame Pagoda!" someone gasped below. "That old undying was once the head of the Brilliance Ancient Kingdom's karmic division!"
Ling Feng smiled slightly.
"Nice trick," he said. "Wrong target."
Green Chaos flared.
Space around him peeled away like the shell of an egg. The karmic sea poured down—not onto him, but into an empty slice of reality that he severed cleanly from the main world and folded aside. The chains of cause and effect, suddenly deprived of their anchor, snapped with a brittle keening.
Ling Feng reached out and grasped the pagoda.
Yellow light surged.
Energy Manipulation seized the Emperor power within, reversed its flow, and turned it against its owner. The pagoda's own karmic flames erupted upward, devouring the undying's body and branded Dao.
He howled once.
The sound cut off midway, like a candle pinched between fingers.
"Two."
The third altar tried something different.
A spear Life Treasure thrust forward, time dilating, space locking. The old undying fused with his weapon, transcending mortal form, attempting to pierce Ling Feng's Dao Heart directly.
"It's that spear—!" an Ancient Saint cried from far below, face bloodless. "That undying once impaled an Immortal Emperor's incarnation with that spear—"
Cyan Chaos answered.
To the world, the spear was ungraspably fast.
To Ling Feng, it was… leisurely.
Chronos Perception slowed its "instantaneous" strike to a wandering stroll. Chaos Drift quietly accelerated his own timeline a notch higher; to him, the undying's "fastest sword" looked clumsy.
He simply sidestepped.
Red Force wrapped around his hand.
He grabbed the spear bare-handed.
The colliding Daos howled. Emperor might and Chaos Force screeched against each other, warping the small patch of heaven around them until the light itself seemed to twist.
Then the spear… bent.
Not because Ling Feng overpowered its raw strength—though he did—but because Space Control and Time Control reached into the weapon's history, plucking at the moments when its form had been forged and quenched, and pinned it into a new shape. To the spear, reality itself changed its mind about what it should be.
The undying's soul, fused to the spear, shrieked in terror.
Ling Feng clenched his fist.
The third True Fate snapped like a brittle twig.
"Three."
He did not stop.
In the distorted, slowed battlefield of his perception, the fourth and fifth altars were already lighting their formations. Old undyings chanted ancient mantras, eight Life Treasures flocking around them like protective swallows.
They had seen enough to know this was no ordinary "junior".
They still underestimated how wide the gap was.
Ling Feng exhaled.
Chaos Energy surged out of him in a wave—no longer hidden, no longer polite.
It rolled across emperor formations and undying Daos like a tide from another reality, one where the Old Villainous Heaven had no authority and its laws were someone else's suggestion.
"You lot sat on your power for too long," he said softly. "Let me help you retire."
Space shattered.
Time staggered.
For a breath, the seven altars existed inside a sealed battlefield of his making, cut off from the main world, stacked like plates in his palm.
Within that thin slice of stolen reality, he was no longer a Named Hero facing undyings.
He was the one holding the pen that drew their Dao lines.
Six more old undyings roared, unleashing Emperor-powered moves that had once shaken eras.
An undying clad in blazing armor summoned a sacred domain of holy light, saturating the sealed space with a blinding sun.
Another, draped in a robe of stars, pulled down constellations to suppress heaven and earth.
Yet another turned into a vast dragon shadow, its roar shattering the Yin-Yang of heaven and earth, trying to swallow Ling Feng whole.
Six Emperor moves. Six eras' worth of accumulated slaughter. Six different Grand Daos, all crashing down together.
Six pulses of Chaos answered.
Red: crushing bodies, smashing Life Wheels, shattering Grand Dao patterns as if they were brittle pottery instead of venerable scriptures.
Green: severing escape paths, folding space until their Life Wheels ran out of roads, every gate they tried to open leading them only back into the palm of his hand.
Yellow: drinking their unleashed power, refining it into rings and pure spirit that vanished into Ling Feng's Inner Void, stored neatly out of sight of this world's jealous gaze.
Cyan: freezing the moment of their "immortality" and then… letting it go, allowing time to catch up all at once.
Outside, the alliance saw only this:
Six altars flared.
Six Immortal Emperor Life Treasures screamed, their lights going wild as their wielders' marks disintegrated.
Then, in the span of a single breath…
Six old undyings exploded into mist.
No bones. No nascent souls fleeing. No lingering Dao marks or cursed remnants.
Just absence.
The kind of absence that made even Immortal Emperor lineages feel cold.
Silence crashed down like a mountain.
Disciples on the academy's peaks stared, mouths open, voices gone.
Heaven's Will competitors—Mei Suyao with her untouchable grace, Jikong Wudi with his proud, sky-splitting presence—felt their throats go dry. They had walked through Eastern Hundred Cities like dragons among snakes; now they felt like ants watching a giant.
Li Shangyuan's hand flew to her mouth.
Xu Pei's body forgot how to move, her gaze locked on the youth in black.
Chen Baojiao actually forgot to breathe for two counts, chest tight, eyes wide.
Bai Jianzhen's sword hand trembled—just once, just slightly, but enough for her to notice with searing clarity. Her Dao Heart, which had only bent for the sword, now had to make room for one more anomaly.
Chi Xiaodie's vision swam.
Bing Yuxia—who thought herself mentally prepared after seeing Ling Feng play with Heaven's will and Immortal Emperor Life Treasures—still felt a chill deep in her marrow.
"…So this is your 'playing small,'" she whispered, voice almost lost in the wind.
In a distant pavilion overlooking the battlefield, the Seven Ancient Ancestors of Heavenly Dao Academy watched, eyes narrowing to slits. Behind them, Old Daoist Peng's fingers dug into his sleeve.
"…Legendary Godking…" one ancestor muttered hoarsely. "At least…"
"Higher," another said, gaze fixed tightly on Ling Feng. "His Dao is beyond this era's measurements. He is not walking our Heaven's ladder at all."
On the remaining two altars, the last two old undyings stared at Ling Feng.
They had watched nine of their peers—their equals, rivals, and comrades that had crossed eras together—vanish in a storm of alien power.
Fear, the kind that could make worlds shiver, finally unfurled in their ancient eyes.
Ling Feng looked back at them.
Then—very deliberately—he relaxed his hand.
The sealed battlefield around the last two altars dissolved.
The main world's sky returned. The oppressive Emperor pressure, though shaken, flooded back into place.
The alliance's armies exhaled, half without realizing they had been holding their breath.
Ling Feng's tone was almost conversational.
"The last two," he said, nodding toward the surviving undyings, "aren't mine."
He lifted his gaze toward Heavenly Dao Academy.
"They're the academy's homework."
The two undyings roared in fury, seizing upon the slightest opening like drowning men grabbing driftwood.
Killing intent surged; Immortal Emperor Life Treasures buzzed; countless runes lit up as they hurled their combined might at Ling Feng, trying to erase him before he could move again.
They fused their Emperor treasures, conjuring a titanic strike that wasn't a single blade or pagoda or spear, but a composite of all three—crushing weight, cutting edge, and burning judgment. Emperor laws interlocked, forming a judgment from a bygone era to annihilate any who dared insult Immortal Emperor prestige.
Ling Feng did not dodge.
Cyan light flickered once in his eyes.
Time around the attack slowed to a crawl, every rune and Emperor sigil hanging in midair like insects trapped in amber. Ling Feng reached out with a bare hand and gently tapped the front edge of their combined technique.
Just a knock, as if testing the ripeness of a melon.
The attack shattered.
Not in a dramatic explosion, not in fireworks.
It just… fell apart.
Every component law lost its glue. Every chain of cause and effect slipped, beads scattering from a snapped thread. The Emperor Dao that had once beaten kingdoms into submission came undone like poorly tied straw.
He didn't take another step.
Instead, he turned his back on the two undyings and looked down toward the Everlasting Courtyard.
"Old man," he called, voice clear and relaxed. "You ready?"
The answer was a quiet tremor that shook the Heavenly Dao Academy from roots to branches.
Deep in the sect, a tablet woke.
The Perimeter of the Wise Sages rose from its resting place like a slab lifted by invisible hands. Its surface was covered in countless names—Immortal Emperors, monstrous geniuses, great characters who had once walked these halls before striding into history. Each name burned, not with individual ego, but with the accumulated will of eras.
Perimeter of the Wise Sages—one of Heavenly Dao Academy's defining treasures, a tablet that could summon the wills of its greatest disciples to suppress enemies.
As it ascended, a stain of Ancient Ming blood that had once splashed across it long ago flared in memory, and in the skies above the academy, illusions unfolded.
Heavenly Dragon soared across the horizon, its body as vast as mountains, every scale a scripture of dominance. Sea God rose from a phantom ocean, trident splashing primal waves of destruction. Immortal Emperor Ta Kong stood with hands clasped behind his back, Dao as deep as a universe, his gaze alone enough to make Ancestors avert their eyes. Countless mighty figures manifested as if the past itself had come to stand over Heavenly Dao Academy once more.
Countless people—disciples, elders, even enemies—felt their legs buckle.
Some prostrated involuntarily, tears leaking from their eyes as they saw faint shadows of their own ancestors among the Perimeter's summoned wills.
"The Perimeter of the Wise Sages…"
"It truly awakened…"
"The academy still has this level of foundation…"
On one of the altars, an undying choked.
"Those old ghosts… they dare bring that tablet out again…"
Ling Feng extended a hand.
He did not control the tablet—that authority belonged to Heavenly Dao Academy.
He simply… tilted the road.
Chaos Force wrapped gently around the Perimeter, letting its power unfold without interference from the Old Villainous Heaven. Emperor will that would have once shaken the entire Eastern Hundred Cities now flowed neatly along Space-Controlled channels, guided away from the academy's own buildings and disciples and toward two very specific targets.
The last two undyings looked up.
The sky fell on them.
Under the weight of immortal wills, their undying bodies creaked. Emperor defenses flared and cracked. Their Life Wheels groaned like ancient gears grinding against time itself.
They were still old monsters, still terrifying existences, still capable of struggling.
But now they were trapped in a cage Ling Feng had drawn and Heavenly Dao Academy had filled.
Old Daoist Peng stepped forward, emerging from the Everlasting Courtyard with the Seven Ancient Ancestors at his back.
They did not roar.
They did not posture.
They simply walked, each step falling in rhythm with Heavenly Dao Academy's lingering heartbeat.
Above them floated a simple cauldron.
The Chaos Cauldron.
To ordinary eyes, it was nothing special—no ostentatious decorations, no dragons and phoenixes swirling around it. Just an old cauldron.
But inside its shadow, entire worlds seemed to boil. This was one of Heavenly Dao Academy's deepest defining treasures, a cauldron capable not of refining mere herbs and ores, but karma and Dao themselves.
"Academy disciples," Old Daoist Peng said quietly, his voice reverberating through every hall, every stone, every heart. The usual lazy, joking tone was gone, replaced by solemn weight. "Remember this day. Remember who came for your foundation. Remember who bleeds to keep your Dao path open."
He raised his hand.
Heavenly Dao Academy's six halls answered from across the mountains—Grand Era's grounded practicality, Sacred Era's splendor, Emperor Era's sharp majesty, Idle Era's drifting profundity, Ancient Era Hall's remote depth, and the Everlasting Courtyard's stubborn, unyielding weight. Their Daos rose like six separate rivers, then converged, pouring into the waiting maw of the Chaos Cauldron.
The Seven Ancient Ancestors poured their lives' worth of understanding into it.
Each of them, by rights, should already have been dust long ago. They had been sealed in Blood Era stones beneath the academy, their remaining lifespan stretched thin so that they could exist only for this—just to protect the academy when its doom finally came.
Now, that price came due.
Ling Feng's sealed battlefield tightened around the two undyings, shrinking their possible movements to a thin slice.
"Your opponents," Ling Feng said softly, looking at them over his shoulder, "are not me."
He nodded once toward Old Daoist Peng.
"They're us."
The Chaos Cauldron tipped.
The Perimeter's summoned wills pressed down.
The last two undyings screamed—truly screamed this time—as their Daos, tempered over countless eras, were dragged into the cauldron's mouth.
Immortal Emperor Life Treasures thrashed wildly, trying to flee their doomed wielders. One was the Imperial Violet Hammer, once wielded by an Immortal Emperor of the Azure Mysterious Ancient Kingdom; another was a rod that had swept through the Brilliance Ancient Kingdom like a judgment star.
Ling Feng flicked his fingers.
Space folded; the treasures' attempted escape routes looped back into his waiting palm. Handles and spines of Emperor weapons that had once made Eastern Hundred Cities quake landed neatly in his hands with almost no fanfare.
He closed his fingers around them. To the outside world, it looked like nothing more than a youth collecting stray tools.
Inside the cauldron, the undyings' True Fates were refined, their karmas burned, their lingering hatreds sifted into nothing. The Perimeter's wills supervised, ensuring no trace of those ancient calamities would ever crawl back into the world.
When the Chaos Cauldron finally stilled, only two more sets of ashes remained.
The Immortal Emperor Life Treasures quieted in Ling Feng's Inner Void, their Emperor Dao branded, gradually falling under the shadow of Chaos.
The eleven old undyings of the Anti–Heavenly Dao Academy Alliance were no more.