Malcolm dropped to one knee. Icy sweat streamed down his brow. He had kept the Door for years, yet he had never truly met the master behind it until now. It was only a concept, a symbol of the Laws of Reincarnation… Or so I thought…
Morven, nearly sixty millennia old and undefeated by even High Immortal Realm Level Four cultivators, stood rigid. Confronted by those eyes, even defiance refused to form. This was oppression at the level of existence itself. No thought of resistance could survive beneath it.
Again, the voiceless voice rolled through every heart. “Why have you gathered here? State your desires.”
The voice of the Lord of Reincarnation rolled across the sky like distant thunder, solemn and unhurried. Those ash-white eyes, vortices that seemed to drink in all light, drifted over the sea of cultivators below, counting every trembling soul one by one.
For a heartbeat, the Wailing Soul Plains fell into a silence so complete it felt funereal. Then, somewhere in that ocean of fear, one desperate throat found its courage and split the hush.
“Immortality! We want immortality!”
“Resurrection! Bring my beloved back from the grave!”
“A breakthrough! I want to break through the bottleneck!”
The cries multiplied until they rose in crashing waves. Every defector dropped to both knees, foreheads pounding the soil as they worshipped the burning silhouette hanging in the heavens.
The Lord of Reincarnation remained in silence, his flame-rimmed form perfectly still. Within those swirling eyes flickered, for the briefest instant, something that looked suspiciously like amusement.
“Your wishes are simple,” he said, the words cold as winter steel. “But they demand a price.”
Before the final syllable faded, he lifted a single arm forged from ghostly flame and made the faintest downward sweep. There was no earth-shaking roar, no cataclysmic burst of force, only a soft resonance.
Buzz!
Reality itself shuddered as the laws governing the Wailing Soul Plains rewrote themselves in an instant. Gray-white currents poured from the Door of Reincarnation like billions of hair-thin tentacles, darting forward to stab with cruel precision into the forehead of every kneeling follower.
“Argh!” Agonized screams erupted, climbing higher until even the clouds seemed to tremble from the sound. Each person felt a glacial force invade the very seat of the divine soul, tearing through meridians, burning flesh, and remolding foundations.
The pain was akin to ten thousand ants gnawing at the heart, and it didn’t take long before weaker cultivators dropped into merciful unconsciousness. Just as torment crested, the heavens detonated with three thunderous booms.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Before long, bursts of breakthrough aura speared skyward like pillars of pale fire, one after another.
“I-I’ve done it! I’ve attained Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Eight! Three millennia of shackles, shattered!” a white-haired elder howled, tears streaming down his face.
“So have I! I’ve gone from Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Five to Level Seven!”
“My hidden wounds… Every injury I got from three hundred years ago is gone! I’ve recovered fully!”
Shouts of wonder, sobs of relief, and wild laughter braided together, ringing across the plains in an unbroken chorus. Those who had reeked of decay only moments earlier now stood reborn—withered skin plumped, gray locks turned glossy black, and the stoop of age replaced by the vigor of youth.
Yet even more astounding were the old elites who had lingered for ages at Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine, fiends whose every breath once made lesser cultivators tremble. What happened next shattered every concept they held sacred.
A thunderclap ripped across the void. In its wake rolled a pulse so savage and vast that space itself seemed to buckle. That shockwave burst from deep within Morven’s chest. For nearly ten millennia, he had clawed at the iron wall of his own bottleneck, trapped a heartbeat short of High Immortal Realm Level Four.
Now, under a single, unseen stimulus, the barrier splintered like glass. He did not merely step across the threshold; he vaulted straight into the High Immortal Realm Level Four middle phase, power roaring through veins that glowed the color of fresh magma.
Morven stared down at his hands. Black pupils widened with incredulity as he tested out his demonic techniques. Every facet of his being—realm, arcane circulation, the very purity of his demonic aura, even his grasp of the laws of nature—had leapt an entire order.
“H-How is this possible?” he whispered, voice quivering, terror and awe braided so tightly they were indistinguishable.
Around him, the other Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine cultivators did not break through the final wall, yet each ascended half a step. They now hovered a single breath from the High Immortal Realm, senses ringing with unbelieving joy. It had taken only one casual sweep of an unseen hand for tens of thousands of cultivators to level up together.
In that instant, every doubt, hesitation, and hidden scheme dissolved like mist struck by the burning sun. A dull crack echoed as knees slammed the frozen floor.
Morven dropped first, forehead thudding against the icy stone. When he spoke, fervor blazed hotter than the lava now coursing through his meridians. “Long live the Lord of Reincarnation! I, Morven Bloodshade of the Ninefold Nether Palace, swear eternal fealty. Command me through flame or abyss! I shall face death a thousand times without regret!”
The sound spread like falling dominoes. Tens of thousands collapsed in unison, their prostrations swelling into a tidal roar that seemed ready to upend the heavens.
“We pledge eternal allegiance to the Lord of Reincarnation!”
“We will brave any danger, face a thousand deaths without hesitation!”
Malcolm also knelt, but the blaze in his companions’ eyes never touched his own. There, only cold dread flickered. This power had shattered every paradigm he understood. With a flick of the wrist, it had rewritten the cultivation of tens of thousands—a feat even legends of the Golden Immortal Realm might fail to match.
If a gesture held such force, what magnitude of reality hid behind the Lord of Reincarnation? A deeper chill crawled across his spine. Within that effortless wave, Malcolm had sensed a familiar cadence—the aura of the three ashen humanoids who guarded the Reincarnation Pool, but magnified beyond comprehension.
Could a presence more terrible than those wardens stand behind them?
High above the ruined hall, the Lord of Reincarnation hovered like a living eclipse. Those eyes, twin gray-white vortices, drifted across the ocean of kneeling souls before, at last, pinning Malcolm to the stone.
In that single glance, the latter’s spirit iced over. Every buried secret, each half-formed scheme, and every yesterday he hoped to forget unfolded, naked and helpless, inside the entity’s indifferent stare.
Before Malcolm could react, the voice of the Lord of Reincarnation echoed deep within his soul. “You have done well. Continue to harvest divine souls. When the moment is ripe, I will bestow upon you true immortality.”
With those words, the blazing outline of the entity dissolved, ember by ember, into the weary sky. The swirling eyes lingered on the world one last heartbeat, then shuttered, and the Door of Reincarnation fell silent. The blue flames inside the skull-crowned arch sank back to a sullen whisper, yet Malevolent Path Hall would never again be the same.
Tens of thousands of cultivators remained prostrate, unable or unwilling to rise. New power coursed beneath their skin; age spots vanished, flesh tightened, and tears gleamed on faces suddenly made young.
