The horned entity registered the variation in a single instant.
Not as a threat. As a memory.
*Liang Feng.*
The name did not resurface. It had never been forgotten. For decades—every second of its forced immobility within the frozen layers of the Blue Star—it had been present.
The sealer.
The architect of its humiliation.
Its eyes of void fixed themselves upon the silver silhouette below. Wang Lin, suspended higher within the fractured sky, had become nothing more than background. A useful detail. Nothing more, for now.
The plan assembled itself in a single second—cold, precise, devoid of emotional fury. Hatred had not burned. It had crystallized.
The elements aligned with glacial precision.
Liang Feng was not to be destroyed.
His body represented a perfect structure—a vessel capable of supporting a complete reincarnation, without loss or distortion.
Wang Lin, already shaped by the laws of this world, would serve another function.
He would become the vector.
The receptacle intended for the Demonic Emperor.
A rebirth for her.
A restoration for the Emperor.
And when order was restored—when roles had been properly reassigned—only one conclusion would remain inevitable:
Her absence would be justified.
And forgiveness would be granted by the demonic hierarchy.
She no longer wished merely to kill the sealer. She wished to *wear* him—to inscribe herself into his flesh like a second nature, and to use his essence to be reborn in accordance with the ancient laws. Wang Lin would serve as the offering, the catalyst for the Emperor. Order would be restored. Her absence justified.
The strategy was immediate. Relentless.
---
Liang Feng tore himself free from gravity as though it had never held dominion over him.
In an instant, he crossed layers of distorted air and halted within the fractured sky, stopping at the same altitude as the entity. At that height, the world below was nothing but a mass of ruptures and crushed clouds. The demon's presence destabilized space itself, as though each second threatened to collapse beneath the weight of two incompatible realities.
Liang Feng inhaled slowly.
Despite the apparent mastery of his body, something still betrayed his humanity—an imperceptible tension in his posture, a restrained hesitation in his gaze.
"How did you break free?" he finally asked.
His voice was steady, but not empty. A trace of fear remained—contained, lucid.
"I sealed you… decades ago. How did you—"
He stopped.
The entity transformed.
Its massive silhouette contracted, reorganized. Vast proportions refined themselves into a slender humanoid form, floating within the fractured sky as though gravity and spatial flow had never applied to it. No turbulence. No oscillation. The air around it had frozen, as though it had forgotten the very concept of motion.
Its garments were white. Too white.
Not the familiar whiteness of cloth, but a cold, stratified clarity—layers overlapping with an unbearable slowness. The folds of its attire drifted without wind or logic, responding to a law Liang Feng had never learned. Each infinitesimal movement bent the air aside to make room.
Dark symbols marked its body. Liang Feng could not understand them, but his essence recognized them instantly. A dull pressure descended upon the area, as though those markings were never meant to be seen—even by transcendent eyes. They were not decorative. They existed to hold something in place.
Its head was veiled. No face. No gaze to anchor oneself to.
And yet, Liang Feng knew he was being seen.
Two immense horns emerged from the pale fabric—black, smooth, curving backward. They evoked neither savagery nor chaos. They evoked time itself. The weight of countless eras stacked without ever fading. Observing them too long induced a conceptual nausea, as though the mind refused to compute such antiquity.
Above it floated a ring of light. Not radiant. Not sacred. Stable. That stability was more terrifying than any display of power. It was not a blessing. It was a constant—something that had never required justification.
Behind it, a dark shape extended slowly—a tail, thin and supple, tracing a languid arc through the air. It did not strike. It did not threaten. It simply existed, a natural extension of its presence, making Liang Feng understand that nothing—absolutely nothing—about it was superfluous.
Around it, the sky was unreal. Monumental clouds tinted in rose and blue piled upon one another like formations too beautiful to be honest. Luminous fragments drifted slowly through the air. Liang Feng blinked, certain they would vanish.
They remained.
Everything remained.
And that was when he understood.
It was doing nothing.
It was not acting.
It was not attacking him.
It was simply *there*.
And that presence alone was enough to destabilize the world—to crush causal structures, to make something scream within the foundations of reality—something that was never meant to awaken so soon.
"You don't even say hello?"
The demon's voice resonated—deep, laden with ancient irony.
"My old friend, Liang Feng."
A heavy silence settled between them.
Then the creature continued, with deliberate slowness:
"Or should I say…"
It paused.
"Dragon God."
The words struck like a blow. Not a proclamation. A statement of fact.
"Water Dragon God…" the demon went on in a falsely conciliatory tone. "You are the one who sealed me, decades ago."
A brief silence.
"I am willing to forgive you," it continued. "Give me your body."
The reply was immediate.
"Even in your most beautiful dreams, you will never have my body—nor the Sacred Body."
The demon burst into laughter. A deep, dissonant sound that made the fractures in the sky tremble.
"Ah… ah… ah…"
"You truly believe you stand a chance against me?" it continued. "You spent years maintaining that barrier. And let us not forget…"
Its gaze grew heavier.
"…that decades ago, you resorted to a forbidden technique to seal me."
---
The weight of its gaze shifted once more.
This was no longer observation. It was an evaluation of resources. Liang Feng understood before the intent fully manifested: he was not the target of blind vengeance. He had become a component within a calculation.
He felt neither fear nor urgency.
Every second of that fixation was data. The slowness of the approach. The trajectory of the gaze sweeping over Wang Lin before returning to him. The micro-oscillations of the seal, perceptible through atmospheric pressure.
Everything was information.
His body did not tense. It optimized. The flows he aligned around himself ceased to be passive defense. They became an active protocol.
He would wait.
Every movement of the entity, every breath, every fixation would be absorbed, analyzed, integrated.
The demon advanced.
Not abruptly. Not to strike.
To control.
To measure.
To prepare.
The world around them no longer mattered. There was only the sealer, the demon, and the future each sought to impose.
The world registered a new parameter: two incompatible points of reference had entered direct contact. The equation trembled. Several kilometers away, fractures that had been expanding since the apparition froze in place. Entire regions of the Blue Star ceased responding to cosmic impulses, as though the planet itself were holding its breath.
The game had begun.
The sealer and the demon faced one another.
Between them, Wang Lin remained suspended—still unaware of why he existed.