"Some live their entire lives just to kill one person...
But there is also one who revives... just to defy the entire heavenly realm."
Heavenly Realm – Ancient Heaven Spirit Platform
In an ancient heavenly realm, where clouds draped like white silk, twelve Daoist figures, clad in robes of heavenly emperors, sat cross-legged around a colossal bronze bell – the Heavenly Mandate Bell.
A voice resounded from the void:
"Primordial Chaos has been reborn. The laws of heaven have been pierced.
The Life-Snatching Ceremony – commence."
BOOM!!
The bell tolled. From that tremor, all heavens received an order of absolute extermination – to not allow any to embark on the path of defying fate from the ashes.
After leaving the Ancient Tomb where the Empress was in deep slumber, Lin Mo arrived at a small town by the forest – to seek temporary shelter for the night.
He sat drinking tea under a wooden eaves, holding an ancient, fragmented book, like a leisurely scholar.
But...
The sky trembled. The air thinned. Dark figures in Divine Palace armor appeared – without a word, without a signal.
They acted immediately.
Lin Mo did not evade.
He led all the assassins into the ash forest, where the terrain was complex and the climate mutated.
"You want to snatch my life?"
"Fine. Then let's see... if heavenly mandate can preserve itself."
He did not use magical artifacts, nor did he summon his Divine Consciousness.
He only used his own body, which had shattered its spirit meridians – rebuilt from the Dao of ash.
During the death battle, his body began to disintegrate piece by piece, as if the ash was transforming back into nothingness.
But from that very nothingness, a new form gradually emerged – the Primordial Dao Body, composed of ancient Dao script, not relying on bloodline, nor on heavenly roots.
"The Dao is not something granted."
"It is something I rewrite from the ruins."
BOOM!!
With just one punch, the entire Myriad Spirit Shadowless formation shattered.
The Divine Palace lost contact with all sixteen assassins.
In the sky, an ancient soul-phantom appeared. It was one of the seven Soul Lords of the Upper Palace – an existence capable of annihilating a nation with but a thought.
"You are not qualified to oppose us."
"Primordial Chaos must die in its infancy."
Lin Mo looked up at him:
"I am not opposing you."
"I... do not believe you are worthy enough to stand above me."
He stepped into the Soul Lord's Dao pressure, his body almost withered – yet he did not kneel.
"If my Dao, newly kindled, must die,
Then I choose... for it to explode amidst the heavens!"
At the very moment the Soul Lord unleashed his finishing move, a pale white hand, like ice and snow, reached out from the void, blocking the Dao attack.
From behind the curtain of gray ash, the white-clad woman slowly emerged.
Lin Mo was stunned:
"It's her... she's awake?"
She did not answer. She merely looked directly at the Soul Lord:
"You are not qualified... to touch him."