The cave fell quiet again.
Not the kind of quiet that echoed peace—but one that hummed with anticipation.
Raizen hadn't moved for two days.
Void-scripts spun around him like a cocoon. Dozens of scrolls, techniques, and fragmented inheritances hovered in slow orbit, forming layers of light, shadow, and distorted laws. His mind pierced through them like spears, dissecting and absorbing.
What had once taken sects centuries to master, he unravelled in hours.
He wasn't just memorizing them. He was dissecting their flaws, comparing their overlaps, and rewriting parts that didn't make sense.
From sword arts that called starlight, to body refining paths that used dragon marrow, to void-phasing techniques meant to counter immortals—he understood them all.
And still, it didn't feel like enough.
There was something missing.
Something none of the techniques could explain.
A pattern.
A buried truth.
"Why did the Flameheart Sect erase every trace of their founder's original void scripture?"
"Why do so many void techniques suddenly stop after one or two realms?"
He frowned.
Even the god-level inheritances—like the ones found in the Whispering Tomb and the Silent Fang Valley—seemed incomplete.
Almost… cut short on purpose.
As if someone, somewhere, had deliberately stunted the path.
And then—he remembered.
The whisper from that realm between realms.
> "You're the type that doesn't just devour legacies… but prepares to burn them into others."
> "I'm watching, little void."
Raizen opened his eyes slowly.
The presence that had spoken to him wasn't an enemy. Not fully. It was something older than any current sect—something from the ancient void clans, perhaps even a primordial will from the Void itself.
"Watching… but why?"
He stood up, the ground under him slightly warping from the void pressure.
Just then—he felt a shift.
Not far away, in the outer reaches of the Spiritwild Continent, a group of divine cultivators pierced into one of the inheritance grounds he hadn't yet visited.
He tapped the void thread and listened.
> "It's here. The rumored Vault of Mirrors. Said to hold the reflection of every void wielder who died before reaching godhood."
> "But the boy's been here. We found traces."
> "Damn it—he's hunting every site. We need to move faster!"
Raizen smiled.
So they were trying to beat him to the next one now.
They wouldn't succeed.
But still, the pattern was clear—they weren't just reacting to him anymore. They were racing him.
That meant something else was in motion. Bigger than him.
And then, for the first time in a long while, Raizen spoke aloud—not to himself, but to whatever presence still lingered from that ancient whisper.
"If you're watching… then I'm listening."
No response came.
Instead, the air around him shifted.
Suddenly, a pulse of void energy shot across the realm—visible only to those attuned to it.
A beacon.
It wasn't his.
Raizen turned toward the north.
There, nestled in the freezing skies, was an ancient peak no longer listed on any maps: Frost-Tomb Expanse.
Raizen's pupils shrank.
That name… wasn't one he'd learned from sect scrolls. It came from a voice buried deep in the Void Archive. One that didn't belong to a human at all.
The Old One.
The creature had once whispered:
> "When the void forgets, it returns to frost. When it remembers, it burns again."
He vanished.
Teleportation was unnecessary. He folded the space between here and there like cloth and walked across.
---
The Frost-Tomb Expanse was silent.
Not the usual snow-covered calm, but a dimensional stillness—as if sound itself refused to exist here.
Raizen appeared at the center.
A broken shrine stood in front of him, buried in black ice. All around it, frozen corpses—some human, some beast, some neither—lined the mountainside like broken statues.
All had void cores inside them.
But none were alive.
Raizen's heart slowed. These weren't enemies. These were… former cultivators. Every one of them bore some version of a void root. All dead.
> "Is this what happens to those who don't bow?"
He reached out to the ice.
A whisper passed through his fingers.
And then… it opened.
Not the shrine.
But the space behind it.
A portal formed, built not of light, but memory. Every piece of him screamed not to enter.
But he walked in.
Inside… stood a withered figure.
Not alive. Not fully dead.
Just watching.
Its face was human, but its body flickered like a dying constellation.
> "Took you long enough."
Raizen didn't flinch. "Who are you?"
The figure smiled weakly.
> "The last one they couldn't kill. I refused every offer. Destroyed every hand that tried to bind me."
> "But I grew old. The void does not grant immortality. Only power. And I died with regret."
> "I left this for one like me. Not a follower. Not a servant. A fire."
Raizen said nothing.
> "You are not complete yet. But soon—soon they'll all come. Even gods."
> "And when they do, I want you to be ready."
The figure raised his hand.
A single orb floated toward Raizen—an inheritance not of power, but of understanding. A lifetime of insights, knowledge, and void secrets too dangerous to be spoken aloud.
Raizen took it.
And
everything changed.
The shrine behind him exploded into dust. The corpses disintegrated into light.
And Raizen…
Felt seen.
He wasn't the first.
But he'd be the last one they'd ever try to erase.