The forest where Qing Zhi had been taken was silent once more, but the echoes of her abduction reverberated through the souls of those left behind.
Lin Hai stood still, staring at the sky, his body battered, his spirit boiling. His oath burned within him like a brand. Lei Fan, knuckles torn and eyes narrowed, had already begun drafting strategies in his mind. Xu Min sat cross-legged upon a jagged boulder, his breathing calm, yet his resolve deepening with every moment.
They had failed.
And that failure forged something new within them.
"We underestimated him," Lin Hai said, not to his comrades, but to himself.
Lei Fan looked up. "He isn't just strong. He belongs to a power that eclipses ours by countless levels."
Xu Min opened his eyes. "It doesn't matter. If he thinks we'll back down, he's wrong. This isn't the end."
"No," Lin Hai agreed. "It's the beginning."
A storm gathered quietly in their hearts. Their defeat had been sudden, humiliating, but it had not broken them. Instead, it had chiseled their conviction sharper than steel.
—
Far, far from that world, on a barren, desolate planet no life dared call home—where even the feared Voidwalkers never set foot—an event occurred that had not been seen since the birth of creation.
The sky, dark and eternal, shattered like fragile glass.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the stars. A hum followed, resonating not in air but in the fabric of reality itself.
Then came the hand.
Pale. Boundless. Emanating a light so pure, so ancient, that space trembled around it.
From that fracture in the sky, a single hand emerged… and behind it, like water bursting through a broken dam, came a flood of gasping figures—one after another, cascading like stars falling from heaven.
One thousand beings.
Each of them collapsed upon the surface, breathing raggedly, faces pale, sweat pouring from their skin. Their robes were scorched. Their energies unstable.
They had crossed it—the Multiversal Barrier.
A feat thought impossible.
For hundreds of millions of years, the white universal path—the sacred bridge connecting all universes—had been broken, sundered by wars and forbidden truths lost to time. None had crossed it since. No celestial body, no god, no memory.
But now, they had done it.
At a terrible cost.
The effort of every last Celestial Bodies Being and Almighty Being had gone into this one act. Realms upon realms of power had been poured together. One Almighty and one Celestial Being were needed to send just one traveler across the broken veil.
And still, it was barely enough.
Even now, the air around them trembled, rejecting their existence. This universe—the last sealed one—resisted their intrusion.
The white universal path had been restored across all known realities… all, except this one.
This one—for reasons even the ancient ones dared not speak—remained closed.
Until now.
And now, it had been breached.
—
In the highest heavens, nestled within the Celestial Palace atop the highest plane of reality, the Heavenly Abode stirred.
The Almighty King, oldest and most revered of the Celestial Bodies Beings, sat in silent meditation beneath the Tree of Beginnings. His eyes snapped open.
He had felt it.
A ripple—no, a violation—of the natural laws. Something impossible had occurred.
The Almighty King vanished from the throne, leaving behind only silence and stardust.
—
In a space beyond time, buried within a pocket dimension hidden below the foundations of the Celestial Sect, another being stirred.
This one did not react with urgency.
No—he merely opened his eyes.
Eyes that had seen the birth of stars… and the silence that followed their deaths.
He did not speak.
He only smiled.
And the universe grew colder.
—
The sealed universe has been touched. The ancient path has been walked again. And all who live within it now stand beneath a sky that remembers what was forgotten.