One hundred thousand years ago.
Southern Border, Hanging Magnet Mountain.
Night shrouded everything in pitch darkness. Wind and thunder rolled across the sky, and flashes of lightning occasionally illuminated a stretch of the battlefield.
On the slope of Hanging Magnet Mountain, over a dozen Gu Masters lay dead on the ground.
Torrential rain poured down, but it could not wash away the thick stench of blood.
A fierce battle was drawing to its close. Only two people remained on the battlefield, and the outcome was already clear.
"Hahaha!" A young man threw his head back and laughed, his eyes bloodshot and brimming with a thirst for blood. He advanced step by step toward another Gu Master.
That other Gu Master was an old man, gravely wounded and unable to continue fighting. He stumbled backward in a panic, only to trip and fall onto the muddy ground.
The young Gu Master slowly stepped through the heavy curtain of rain and stood before the old man, looking down at him with a gaze as cold and devoid of warmth as frozen steel.
Yet in the old Gu Master's eyes, there was no trace of fear—only an indignant disbelief bordering on fury.
The old man growled, "Why? Why, Xiao You? I am your own grandfather. I raised you with my own hands. I taught you everything you know. Every achievement you have today is because the clan poured its full resources into your cultivation. Why did you ambush the clan's leadership? Why repay kindness with betrayal? Why? Why?"
Facing the old man's impassioned interrogation, the young Gu Master lowered his eyelids and let out a soft chuckle. "Why? I've honestly never thought about it carefully. Hmm... if I had to give a reason, I suppose it's because I was fed up."
"Fed up?"
"Yeah. They kept saying that since our clan wasn't as strong as others, we had to swallow our pride. They kept saying I should respect my elders, be courteous and decent, and stop talking back to my seniors. They kept saying the clan would depend on me in the future, that I had to protect our reputation and think of our people. That only then could I become a wise patriarch someday... It was suffocating. I've felt suffocated since I was little. I thought I could endure it, but I kept enduring and enduring... and in the end, I just couldn't take it anymore." As he spoke, the young Gu Master's lips curled back, revealing sharp white teeth.
"Over all of this?!" The old Gu Master was furious. He sat up abruptly in his rage.
His eyes bulged as he hurled curses, "How could you become like this? What is going on inside your head? I was truly blind to have wasted so many years raising you! Ha ha... and I actually thought of handing the stockade over to you!"
By the time the old Gu Master finished his tirade, his voice had taken on a weeping edge, and he broke down into actual wailing.
"Enough! Enough!" The young Gu Master's face twisted with rage. The old man's wailing made him extremely agitated.
He raised his right hand high and brought it down in a vicious chop.
*Shhk.*
A soft sound. The old Gu Master was sliced cleanly in two. Blood gushed forth, internal organs spilled out, and his eyes remained open in death.
The young Gu Master suddenly became perfectly still.
Dressed in a black robe, he stood in the pouring rain like a stone statue.
He lowered his head, gazing at the corpse at his feet, and memories from the past surfaced unbidden in his mind.
Childhood. His grandfather taking him bamboo-riding and kite-flying. The beaming smile on his grandfather's face when his Grade A aptitude was revealed. After becoming a Gu Master, his grandfather teaching him step by step, hand by hand. And his grandfather bringing him along to handle clan affairs, patiently instructing him at every turn...
After a long time.
The young Gu Master exhaled a turbid breath and chuckled softly.
"Heh heh heh... hahaha."
Soon, his laughter rose high. He abruptly lifted his head toward the sky and spread both arms wide.
Tears streamed down his face, his heart filled with grief, yet his expression was one of utter satisfaction.
He felt as though he were a drowning man who had suddenly broken through the surface of the water and struggled onto shore.
He drew in deep gasps of air. The heavy stench of blood—mixed, it seemed, with the resentment and fury of his clansmen—rushed into his nostrils.
But to him, the air tasted goddamn fresh.
"It hurts... but is this what freedom feels like? Hahaha. I should have done this long ago. I should have killed all these noisy, chattering pests ages ago. From now on, anyone who rubs me the wrong way gets killed. Simple as that."
The young Gu Master shouted into the downpour, his exhilaration plain on his face.
*Crack.*
A bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating the young Gu Master's face—radiant with joy.
---
One hundred thousand years later.
Heavenly thunder rumbled, and electric dragons flashed across the sky, once again illuminating the face of that same young man.
Only now, his appearance had changed beyond recognition. He had transformed into a colossal monster a thousand zhang tall, with three heads and a thousand arms.
"Noisy! This rumbling—I've had enough of it!" Spectral Soul Demon Venerable opened his mouth and roared.
Nearly a thousand arms surged with power in unison. Demonic energy rolled and churned, flooding sky and earth, and tore apart every tornado column coiling around his body.
His howl shook the clouds for ninety thousand miles.
It suppressed the wind and thunder.
The lightning dissolved entirely within that roar.
The clouds parted and the sky cleared. The Myriad Tribulation Wind and Lightning Cage was shattered by the might of Spectral Soul Demon Venerable.
It seemed that even the Myriad Tribulations were no match for him.
Such was the terrifying might of the Demon Venerable!
Those who witnessed this—Fang Yuan and the other Heavenly Court Gu Immortals—were all struck with horror.
"Did he succeed?" Bo Qingying Wuxie turned to look, joy evident on his face.
But almost immediately, the sky darkened once more. Boundless gray clouds gathered directly above Spectral Soul Demon Venerable.
The second wave of the Myriad Tribulations was brewing.
Bo Qingying Wuxie's expression immediately fell.
The Heavenly Court Gu Immortals, on the other hand, all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Spectral Soul Demon Venerable's six eyes gleamed with contemplation.
Suddenly, he raised several hundred arms and thrust them simultaneously into the dark clouds gathered at his waist.
These clouds were the manifestation of the Ten Absolute Grand Formation. With Spectral Soul Demon Venerable's assistance, they began to roil and surge violently.
"No good—he's accelerating the formation!"