The sky did not merely crack; it peeled away like burnt parchment.
Above the shattered remnants of the Lower Realm's firmament, the massive golden hand of the High-Emperor of the Sun blotted out the stars. Each of the five descending fingers resembled a pillar of molten celestial jade, engraved with millions of blazing solar runes that hummed with the absolute authority of the Upper Realm.
The sheer atmospheric pressure alone caused the surviving mountain ranges thousands of miles below to groan and sink several inches into the earth. Oceans boiled into instant, blinding steam.
"Is this... the true might of an Upper Realm Sovereign?" Lin Xiruo whispered, her knuckles turning white around the hilt of her frost-jade sword. Even with her defensive Qi flared to its absolute limit, the radiant heat singed the edges of her robes, turning the hem to gray ash.
Beside her, Su Yue stood remarkably still, her sharp eyes darting across the geometric patterns etched into the colossal palm. Despite the blood trickling from the corner of her lips—a testament to the spatial suppression—her mind was already racing.
"It is not his true body," Su Yue said, her voice tight yet analytical. "It is a manifestation of Supreme Solar Law, projected across the dimensional barrier. He isn't trying to fight us, Han Feng. To him, a lower world that refuses to remain a 'farm' is simply a flawed canvas. He is wiping the slate clean."
Han Feng stood at the forefront, his dark hair whipping violently in the scorching gale.
In the center of his palm, the Primordial Purification Mirror pulsed with a rhythmic, resonant thrum—thump-thump, thump-thump—like the heartbeat of an awakening titan. Having just devoured and refined the Arch-Arbiter's essence and the Book of Skin, the ancient artifact was brimming with an unprecedented surplus of purified origin energy.
Han Feng looked up at the blinding, incandescent palm descending toward them. Most cultivators—even peak Ascension experts—would see divine majesty, unstoppable wrath, and absolute purity in that golden light.
Han Feng, however, activated the Mirror's True Sight.
Through the crystalline reflection in his mind's eye, the blinding golden radiance stripped away its deceptive holiness. Beneath the dazzling solar fire, Han Feng saw what the High-Emperor truly was: a bloated, parasitic accumulation of stolen world-essence, forcefully compressed and stained with the karmic filth of a billion harvested souls.
"Divine?" Han Feng scoffed, a cold smirk cutting across his dust-streaked face. "It's just oxidized grease dressed up in gold leaf."
"Han Feng, watch the thumb!" Su Yue called out sharply. "The runes along the thumb and index finger are interlocking—he's sealing the spatial coordinates so you can't use void-stepping to evade!"
"Who said anything about dodging?"
Han Feng took a single step forward into the empty air. Beneath his boot, invisible ripples of silver-white purification law spread outward like a lotus blooming on a still pond, momentarily pushing back the crushing gravity of the Upper Realm.
"Mirror of the Primordial," Han Feng murmured, raising his right hand toward the falling sky. "You've eaten scraps from outer elders, corrupt sect masters, and an Arbiter's ink. Today, let's see how a Sovereign's finger tastes."
HUMMMMM!
The Primordial Purification Mirror lifted from Han Feng's palm, expanding rapidly until it spanned a hundred丈 (zhang) across, hovering horizontally between the earth and the descending golden hand. Its surface was no longer dull bronze; it gleamed like a sliver of the primordial chaos before light and darkness were ever separated.
"Ant of the mire," a voice boomed from beyond the dimensional rift. It did not travel through the air; it vibrated directly inside the marrow of every living being in the realm. "You slew my scribe and broke my ledger. For that insolence, your entire bloodline—past, present, and future—shall be reduced to cinders."
The golden palm accelerated. Space folded inward, creating a vacuum of absolute annihilation.
"Su Yue, Xiruo—anchor the domain!" Han Feng barked, pouring every ounce of his newly consolidated cultivation base into the mirror. "Don't let the backlash tear the continent apart!"
"Understood!" Lin Xiruo's sword sang as she thrust it downward, unleashing a ten-thousand-mile glacier of Absolute Yin Qi to freeze the tectonic plates beneath them. At the exact same moment, Su Yue tossed thirty-six formation flags into the void, weaving an octagonal spatial lattice that redirected the ambient heat upward into the upper atmosphere.
BOOM!
The golden hand collided with the surface of the Primordial Purification Mirror.
There was no sound for the first three breaths. The sheer collision of two opposing supreme laws—the High-Emperor's Incandescent Solar Tyranny and Han Feng's Primordial Cleansing—created a sphere of absolute silence.
Then, the shockwave erupted.
A ring of blinding white and gold light sliced across the horizon, parting the clouds across half the planet. The silver surface of the mirror buckled downward, spiderweb cracks of straining spatial energy flickering around its rim. Han Feng's boots skidded backward through the air, carving two glowing trails of friction across the sky.
"Break!" the High-Emperor thundered, his golden fingers curling inward to crush the mirror into dust.
"No," Han Feng gritted his teeth, veins bulging along his forearms as silver light erupted from his eyes. "Scrub!"
SHING!
The surface of the Primordial Purification Mirror liquefied. Instead of resisting the golden palm with brute force, the mirror acted like a vortex, latching onto the point of contact and spinning at an incomprehensible speed.
"What is this?!" For the first time, a flicker of genuine shock echoed in the High-Emperor's majestic voice. "My Solar Law... it isn't being blocked! It's being stripped!"
To the horrified awe of the surviving cultivators watching from the distant ruins, the blinding, untouchable golden radiance of the giant hand began to flake away like dried mud under a rushing waterfall.
Wherever the mirror's silver light touched, the dense, tyrannical energy of the Upper Realm was forcibly broken down into its most primitive, unaligned state—pure, colorless, ownerless spiritual essence.
"You built your throne on stolen cultivation and harvested worlds," Han Feng shouted, his voice echoing back up through the dimensional tear. "Without your stolen impurities, what are you?!"
CRACK!
The index finger of the giant golden manifestation shattered first, dissolving into a cascade of pure, harmless silver-white rain that drifted down toward the scorched earth. Where the rain fell, withered forests instantly sprouted fresh emerald leaves, and cracked earth healed itself in seconds.
"Impudent worm!" the High-Emperor roared, realizing his projection was not just failing—it was actively feeding the mortal below. With a violent surge of wrath, he severed the connection himself, forcefully withdrawing the remaining four fingers back through the dimensional rift before the mirror could trace his karma back to his main body.
RIIIIP!
The tear in the sky slammed shut, leaving behind a bruised, twilight-colored firmament and a silence so profound it felt unreal.
In the center of the sky, the Primordial Purification Mirror shrank back down to palm-size, hovering happily above Han Feng's hand while emitting a satisfied, crystalline chime. A dense, swirling sphere of pure Upper Realm origin energy floated just above its surface—the refined harvest from a Sovereign's strike.
Han Feng exhaled a long, shaky breath, letting his shoulders drop slightly as he absorbed the purified sphere into his dantian. Instantly, his cultivation base surged forward, effortlessly smashing through the bottleneck he had felt only moments ago.
Lin Xiruo sheathed her sword and flashed to his side, catching his arm to steady him as the adrenaline began to fade. "You actually forced back a Sovereign of the Upper Realm..."
"Forced him back?" Su Yue floated over, her eyes gleaming with a mixture of exhaustion and fierce excitement as she looked up at the sealed rift. "Look closer, Xiruo. Han Feng didn't just block him—he gave him a permanent stain on his Dao Heart. And more importantly..."
Su Yue turned to Han Feng, a knowing smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "That golden hand left behind a residual spatial coordinate before it retreated. We no longer have to blindly force our way through the Ascendant Gate."
Han Feng looked down at the Primordial Purification Mirror, where a faint, golden thread of energy was pointing steadily upward like a compass needle. His eyes narrowed with cold determination.
"Good," Han Feng said softly, turning toward the horizon where the remnants of the old sects were still trembling in the aftermath. "Let's settle our affairs in the Lower Realm first. When we ascend to the Upper Realm, I intend to pay the High-Emperor a personal visit—and clean his entire palace from top to bottom."