The air at the top of the Heaven-Shattering Spire? It wasn't air you could breathe. It was like swallowing ground glass made of pure, tortured energy. It burned Ye Chen's throat raw and stank of dying lightning and something metallic, like blood – but blood from things way beyond human. He hung there, trapped. Not by chains you could see, but crushed under the combined weight of the Nine Celestial Overlords' will. Imagine beings so powerful, snuffing out stars was a casual thought. Yeah, that kind of pressure.
Pain was his whole world. Not just the physical kind – though that was bad enough. His body felt like it had been ripped apart and badly stitched back together after a battle that wrecked whole dimensions. Worse was the deep-soul wound. The utter violation. He was Ye Chen! The Nine-Sun Sword Emperor! A name that used to make entire realities tremble. Now? He was just a broken trophy for these god-like jerks.
"Ye Chen." The voice didn't hit his ears; it vibrated deep in his bones. The speaker, draped in robes that looked like stolen night skies, his face hidden by swirling constellations, was the Azure Overlord. The guy who'd set him up. "Your little rebellion stops here. You messed with the Ancient Rules. Now you stop existing."
Ye Chen forced his head up. Agony ripped through him again. His eyes, once bright as suns, were just dim embers of defiance now. He spat a gob of shimmering gold blood onto the dark floor; it hissed like acid. "Messed with? I found your dirty secret! You're parasites! Sucking the life out of thousands of stars just so you can climb a little higher. Truth scared you, didn't it?"
A wave of anger pulsed through the other Overlords. The Crimson Matriarch, looking like living, molten rubies, hissed. "Worm! You broke into the Forbidden Vaults! You touched the Void Resonance!"
"And found your grubby fingerprints all over it!" Ye Chen choked out, managing a bloody grin. "That 'Unraveling' disaster? Not an accident, huh? You caused it. Tried to turn pure chaos into a weapon. I was getting too close to proving it."
The Azure Overlord's star-mask flared bright. "Doesn't matter. You die. Now. Not just this body. Your soul. Every echo of you across time. Poof. Gone. And that pathetic little clan of yours, the Azure Night Clan… we ended that too. Root and branch."
The Azure Night Clan. Those words hit Ye Chen harder than any cosmic punch. Images flooded his broken mind: his father's stern but kind face, his little sister Xiao Mei giggling as she chased fireflies, the damp, clean smell of the clan's sword hall after rain. Home.His people. A cold terror, worse than any pain, froze him solid. "What... what did you do?"
"Centuries ago," the Azure Overlord said, voice flat and cold as space. "In your tiny little star. The Scarlet Moon Sect paid your clan a visit. Total annihilation. Wiped clean from history. Fitting, for the source of such… trouble."
No. The denial was a silent scream tearing through what was left of his soul. Not just his death. The erasure of his entire past? His family, destroyed centuries before he'd even become powerful? The sheer unfairness, the horror of it, crushed the last flicker of fight in him. He'd failed them. Completely.
"Burn," the Azure Overlord commanded.
Nine beams of pure, star-death energy slammed down from the Overlords. They focused on Ye Chen like blowtorches. There wasn't an explosion. It was like reality itself imploded. Space shrieked. Time hiccuped. Ye Chen felt his body disintegrate, atom by atom. The pain was beyond anything.
Then came the soul-death. The beams drilled into his core – where his will as Sword Emperor lived. He felt it tearing apart. Memories flashed and died: mastering the ultimate sword technique, brewing impossible pills, seeing quiet pride in his father's eyes.
Father... Xiao Mei... Clan... Failed...
Just as the last spark of him was about to wink out… something shifted. Not in the Overlords' power, but deep in the absolute darkness inside his dissolving soul. A coldness deeper than the emptiest void. A hunger that swallowed everything. It wasn't alive. It wasn't thinking. It was just… emptiness. Primal and ravenous.
It met the beams of annihilation not by fighting, but by eating them. Like dumping light into a black hole. The overwhelming cosmic energy sputtered, dimmed, got sucked into the void growing inside Ye Chen. A crack ripped open, not in space, but in the ritual itself.
The Azure Overlord's mask blazed. "Impossible! The Void Resonance… it's fused to him!? Stop it!"
Too late. The hungry void, woken up by the stress of being erased, reacted on pure instinct. It didn't fight the Overlords' power; it warped it. The beams, meant to erase him across all time, twisted under the void's chaotic force.
Ye Chen didn't feel destroyed. He felt yanked. Torn through a whirlwind of shattered timelines, broken pasts, and impossible futures. The void was a chaotic lens. The last thing he sensed was the Azure Overlord's furious roar, mixed with something new… something like horrified understanding: "You… you were the first spark!?"
Then… nothing. Just the silent, endless hunger of the void.
Ye Chen woke up slowly. It felt like dragging himself onto a rocky shore after drowning. Exhaustion weighed him down to the bone. He felt… strangely small.
He was lying on something soft. Rough homespun sheets. The smell hit him first: healing herbs, a whiff of woodsmoke, and underneath it all, that deep, comforting scent of the Azure Night Clan's eternal pill furnace. A smell he hadn't truly known in lifetimes.
He forced his eyes open. Blurry shapes swam into focus: wooden ceiling beams, warm sunlight streaming through a paper window, lighting up worn floorboards. The air was thick and humid, like late spring in the Southern Azure Continent. Home.
Where…?
He tried to push himself up. His body screamed no. Weakness like he'd never known. He looked at his hands. Small hands. Thin wrists. He lifted one, trembling. A child's hand. Smooth. No calluses from gripping a sword for centuries.
Cold panic jolted through him. He threw off the light quilt. Simple cotton sleeping clothes. Stick-thin legs. He scrambled out of the low bed, legs wobbling like a newborn colt, and stumbled to the polished bronze mirror on the wall.
The face staring back stole his breath.
Ten years old.
Round, soft cheeks he hadn't seen in millennia. Messy black hair. Big, dark eyes wide with shock and dawning terror. But those eyes… they held something ancient, a terrible knowledge that didn't belong in a child's face. It was his face. Ye Chen. Son of Ye Zhan. Heir to the Azure Night Clan. But… years before he became the Sword Emperor. Years before the Scarlet Moon Sect wiped out everyone he loved.
The Azure Overlord's words echoed like a death knell: "Centuries ago... Annihilation. Complete. Utter."
He was back. Back in his kid body. Back home. But the clan… his dad, Xiao Mei, everyone… they were all walking dead. Doomed. Unless…
He lurched to the window, shoved the lattice open. The familiar sight of the clan compound spread below – the noisy training yard where kids practiced clumsy sword swings, the pill hall puffing fragrant smoke, the sturdy walls guarding against the wild woods. Laughter floated up from the kitchens. Life. Loud, messy, alive.
It was real. It was now.
Then, cold, hard focus slammed down, cutting through the shock and terror like a knife. Eight years. The Azure Overlord said the massacre happened centuries ago from his execution time. That meant, right here, right now… the Scarlet Moon Sect was coming in eight years or so.
Eight years to save his family. It was time to start building revenge against beings who made gods look small. And he had the body of a scrawny ten-year-old and the messed-up soul of a fallen emperor.
Dizziness washed over him, deeper than just weak legs. Inside, where his immense sword emperor power and master alchemist spirit should have roared… there was only emptiness. A cold, gnawing void. It wasn't quiet. It hungered. It was the same darkness that twisted the execution. His Void Power. Not smart, not friendly, but terrifyingly strong. A raw, chaotic force stuck right in his soul now.
He clenched his tiny fist, pressed it against the wooden window frame. The grain felt solid, real under his knuckles. The smell of the clan furnace was like an anchor. The laughter below? Precious. Fragile. Something he'd tear the heavens apart to protect.
He was Ye Chen. Sword Emperor. Master Alchemist. And now, stuck with a Void inside him. He'd failed his family once. He would not fail them again. The path ahead looked impossible, crazy dangerous. But in those ancient eyes staring back from the kid's face in the mirror, a cold, unbreakable flame sparked. Yeah, vengeance burned. But hotter, fiercer, was the raw, desperate need to protect what was his.
He looked down at his small fist, focusing on that icy void deep inside. It stirred. A silent whirlpool of dark… potential. For a split second, the air around his clenched fingers seemed to warp, making the wood grain underneath ripple weirdly.
"Eight years," Ye Chen whispered. His kid-voice sounded raspy, but the iron will behind it was pure emperor. The Void inside him seemed to echo, a silent, hungry hum. He had work to do. Anyone coming for his family would find hell waiting. Starting right now.