A dense silence enveloped the Crimson Cloud Valley. The night sky, usually adorned with twin moons, now bore only one. The second moon had shattered a few hours ago, fragments of its celestial body still streaking through the atmosphere like fireflies lost in mourning. Its pieces painted flaming trails in the sky before disappearing behind mountainous horizons. The cultivators across the Mortal and Divine Realms stood in stunned reverence, sensing the celestial shift and its profound omen. Even the beasts of the spirit forests refused to howl, and the wind carried a mournful hum, as if the cosmos itself had sighed in grief.
Zhao Lianxu stood at the heart of the valley, his robe tattered and torn from the recent confrontation with the Envoys of the Broken Sky Sect. His left shoulder still bled, dark against his skin, the blood not red but threaded with streaks of silver and black—a mark of the demonic inheritance and the space-time legacy battling for control within him. The Five Elemental Body Technique surged within his meridians like a roaring tempest, barely containing the internal chaos that gnawed at his soul.
"The moon's destruction wasn't natural," whispered Princess Anmei, who had arrived with the Empress of the North Flame Palace. Her once regal composure had been replaced by a cold steel resolve, her aura no longer simply noble but honed like a warrior's blade. Her voice carried both grief and purpose, her eyes locked on Zhao Lianxu with unreadable emotion. They had once fought side by side, bled together under a shared banner. Now, trust hung suspended between them, a bridge singed but not entirely collapsed.
"It wasn't," Zhao Lianxu replied, his voice grave, like stone grinding against stone. "It was the Tianmo Seal cracking. The World Eater beneath the Abyssal Womb has begun stirring."
The group gathered around him—Elder Shun of the Skyward Pavilion, Mo Lingyue of the Obsidian Lotus Sect, and a war-weary Zhou Ren, Crown Prince of the Dragonborne Dynasty. Each bore wounds of soul and flesh, their garments torn, their spiritual energy flickering like dying stars. But none dared complain. Their enemy had grown beyond mortal rivalries; it was no longer about sect or dynasty—it was about survival.
Mo Lingyue took a cautious step forward, glancing up at the skies, where the remnants of the shattered moon still glowed faintly. "We need to activate the Tri-Fate Seals. If the World Eater awakens fully, even the God Realm cultivators won't be able to contain it."
Zhou Ren grunted, wiping dried blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "Tri-Fate Seals are myth. No one's found all three in over ten millennia. Some say they never existed."
Zhao Lianxu extended his palm. In it lay a piece of celestial jade, glowing faintly like a heartbeat in stone.
"I found the first in the Chrono Rift. The second lies in the Bone Temple, deep within the Realm of Silent Flames."
Anmei frowned, her brows furrowing with restrained emotion. "And the third?"
Zhao Lianxu's voice dipped into a whisper, one that seemed to chill the air. "It's buried in the Eternal Frozen Lake… guarded by your mother."
Silence fell. Anmei's breath caught in her throat.
Far away, in the Eternal Frozen Lake, Empress Meiyan, Anmei's mother and Guardian of the Eternal Seal, stood motionless upon a spire of ice. She stared at the sky with unreadable eyes. Cracks of divine frost spider-webbed beneath her feet, betraying her tightly clenched emotions. She had served the original cultivator who sealed the Tianmo World. She knew the consequences of what had just begun and what it meant for the future.
"So it has come again," she murmured, almost reverently.
Behind her, a shadow emerged from the icy caverns, dragging chains carved from cursed obsidian. It was General Hel'zan, once a human cultivator, now turned half-fiend after fusing with one of the Broken Sky Sect's cursed artifacts.
"You cannot protect the Third Seal forever, Empress," he hissed. "Even your daughter will betray you for it."
Her response was a flick of her sleeve. A wave of frost engulfed the chamber, freezing the fiend's mocking voice mid-laughter. His body encased in crystal-clear ice, his sneer preserved like a grotesque sculpture. But his warning echoed in her heart, reverberating through years of sacrifice.
Back at Crimson Cloud Valley, the group had split. Zhao Lianxu traveled with Mo Lingyue to the Bone Temple. The journey took them across blackened lands where fire rained upward like inverted comets, and the wind whispered forgotten names in dialects lost to time. Mo Lingyue, ever analytical, remained suspicious of Zhao's shifting aura, her keen senses pricked by every fluctuation.
"Your aura... it's evolving," she said during one of their rests beneath a bone-laced cliff. "The space-time power isn't stable. It's as if you're becoming something else entirely."
"I am," Zhao admitted, his eyes reflecting swirling galaxies. "My body is now a battlefield between three bloodlines. The space-time inheritance, the Demon World's darkness, and the Multiversal essence of my father. If I lose balance, I become the very chaos we're trying to seal."
She looked away, the firelight dancing across her sharp features. "Then why risk it? Why put the world's fate in a vessel so fragile?"
"Because if I don't, there will be no world left to risk it for."
The Bone Temple loomed before them—a giant skull-shaped citadel buried beneath the earth, exhaling plumes of sulfur and sorrow. The guardians here were not of flesh but memory, intangible and cruel. They battled illusions, faced regrets manifested as specters born from their deepest guilt. Zhao saw visions of the Princess killing him again, her eyes filled with love, her blade quivering.
He battled it not to destroy the vision, but to forgive it. Only then did the second Seal emerge, radiant in sorrowful light.
Meanwhile, Princess Anmei stood at the gates of the Eternal Frozen Lake. Her heart pounded like a war drum. She had not seen her mother since the day she plunged a sword into Zhao Lianxu's chest and shattered both of their hearts.
Her mother emerged in white armor, her gaze like winter's edge. "Why have you come, daughter?"
"To take the Third Seal."
"To finish what you failed to last time?" Meiyan's voice was soft, but laced with fury and disappointment.
"To redeem what I broke."
They clashed.
Ice and flame. Mother and daughter. Legacy and rebellion.
Each strike was a story. Each block, a memory. The clash of steel on steel echoed across the frozen lake like thunder. Blades danced. Spells shattered glaciers. Screams of heartache pierced the wind.
As their final blows collided, Anmei dropped her sword. "You taught me duty. But I had to learn pain on my own. Now, let me choose redemption."
Meiyan stared into her daughter's soul, her own hands trembling. And slowly... she lowered her weapon.
She stepped aside.
And handed Anmei the final seal, tears forming like frost in her lashes.
Elsewhere, in the depths of the Tianmo World, the World Eater opened its single eye for the first time in eons. Its breath shook mountains. Its whisper turned rivers black. Storms gathered without wind, and the sky wept blood.
The seals had been found.
But time was no longer on their side.
Zhao Lianxu stood on the edge of the Realm of Fallen Stars, three seals floating before him in a constellation of fate.
His body trembled, not from fear, but from the convergence of destinies.
The final ritual would begin soon.
And not all would survive it.