For a long time, Zhi Xuan felt as if he were submerged in sleep, as if he had truly drifted off in a soft bed—the kind of homecoming he enjoyed every time he finished herding goats. He slowly furrowed his brow and awoke; his sapphire eye, usually sharp, now radiated relief after a restful slumber.

  Outside, the day had darkened. He turned toward the other beds he remembered belonging to Tang and Mingling, but he did not find them there. His brow furrowed deeper as he heard chaotic noises from outside—sounds like the thumping of talismans and the screams of villagers.

  "What is happening?" Zhi Xuan muttered. He moved his body lazily, rising from the bed and walking toward the door.

  Zhi Xuan’s steps felt heavy, not due to the pressure of spiritual essence, but from a human drowsiness that still clung to his eyelids. He pushed open the creaking wooden door of his barracks.

  However, the sight that greeted him was not the peaceful, star-filled night of Star Village, but a chaos that made his chest tighten with a painful sensation. Fire erupted in a blaze that seemed to consume his entire life.

  Orange-red tongues of flame licked the night sky, devouring the thatched roofs of the villagers' homes. The aroma of freshly harvested wheat was replaced by the acrid scent of burning wood and... a metallic stench he knew all too well: the blood spilled in every slaughter.

  "Zhi Xuan! Run!" A hoarse scream pierced the noise. Zhi Xuan turned and saw Tang dragging a blood-soaked leg, trying to move away from a shadow clad in moss-green robes holding a marble vial. Behind him, several villagers lay sprawled with blue-tinged faces, rotting from a rapidly spreading poison.

  "The Poison Sect...?" Zhi Xuan whispered. His memory throbbed. Had he not ensured that the Poison Sect was suppressed? He had made certain they would never return.

  The blood in Zhi Xuan’s body seemed to stop flowing. The warmth from Auntie Lian’s soup and the softness of the bed evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold chill that pierced his bones. He stood frozen at the threshold, watching how the world that had just given him its warmest embrace was now shattering into pieces in a sea of fire.

  "Tang!" Zhi Xuan shouted, his voice cracking. He ran down the wooden stairs, his bare feet hitting the ground that felt hot and muddy with blood.

  However, when he tried to move his inner essence to summon the Heavenly Samsara Wheel, he found only emptiness. No divine power, no law of seasons, no sword aura capable of splitting the sky. In this place, he was merely a shepherd boy who had nothing but a trembling mortal frame.

  "Why... why is my power gone?!" Zhi Xuan roared in overwhelming frustration.

  A Poison Sect cultivator turned toward him. His face was hidden beneath a hood, but his raspy laughter sounded like sandpaper grating on bone. "Zhi Xuan... the bastard child of fate. You think you can run from this blood debt? Today, Star Village will become a grave for you and everyone you love!"

  The cultivator’s hand moved, releasing a thick green mist that carried the scent of death. The mist glided low over the ground, killing grass and insects instantly as it passed.

  "Run, Xuan-er! Don't worry about us!" Auntie Lian’s voice rang out from behind the ruins of an old house. Zhi Xuan turned and saw the old woman pinned beneath a smoldering wooden beam. Her loving face was covered in ash and blood, yet her eyes still radiated a heartbreaking love.

  "Auntie!" Zhi Xuan lunged forward, ignoring the pain as his hands touched the scalding wood. He pulled, pushed, and exerted all his human strength, but the beam did not budge an inch. "Wake up, Auntie! We have to go!"

  "It's too late, child," Auntie Lian whispered, her voice weakening as the fire began to lick the star-embroidered cloth on Zhi Xuan’s arm. "This world... was never meant for us to be happy."

  CRACK!

  A shadow landed behind Zhi Xuan. It was Mingling, but he was no longer the cheerful youth who had embraced him earlier. Mingling stood with a body split from shoulder to waist, his internal organs clearly visible yet he remained standing, his eyes white without pupils, staring at Zhi Xuan with pure hatred.

  "This is your fault, Zhi Xuan," Mingling spoke with a voice that was not his own, but the resonance of thousands of lives Zhi Xuan had taken. "If you hadn't gone chasing the Dao, if you hadn't brought that devilish stain here, we would never have burned. You are the jinx... you are the fire that burns us all!"

  "No... not me... I did this for you!" Zhi Xuan stepped back, tears streaming down his cheeks. He clutched his head, which felt like it was about to explode.

  "You liar!" screamed Tang, who was now crawling closer, his face filled with poison maggots emerging from his pores. "You let us die for your achievements! You love your sword more than us!"

  Around Zhi Xuan, the villagers who had become corpses began to rise. They surrounded him amidst the blaze, forming a circle of hatred. Bashan, Zhuwei, the village children—all pointed at him with rotting fingers.

  Zhi Xuan fell to his knees on the ash. His world had collapsed. The peace he craved turned out to be the beginning of a deeper torture. He felt his soul being pulled by thousands of black hands emerging from beneath the village soil.

  "If I am indeed a jinx... if my existence only brings destruction..." Zhi Xuan murmured with a hollow gaze, letting the green poison mist begin to envelop his legs, letting his skin blacken and blister. "Then let me die here with you. I no longer want to see the light... I no longer want to chase the Heavens."

  Suddenly, a flash of reddish lightning surged in his eye. The silhouette of the Heavenly Sword emerged from his body, as if the Man-Sword Union was taking control of him. His hand gripped the Heavenly Sword, his eyes now blazing wildly with vengeance. The faces that were previously the corpses of villagers now transformed into the faces of the Poison Sect he had once hated.

  "Poison Sect," Zhi Xuan hissed. He swung the sword onto his shoulder, stomping the ground beneath his feet. "I will slaughter you all! Hiargh!"

  Zhi Xuan lunged like a storm that had lost control. The Heavenly Sword in his hand no longer radiated pure holy light, but a thick, blood-red glow, synchronized with the rage burning in every cell of his body. He no longer cared about pain or the absence of spiritual essence; all he felt was an unquenchable bloodlust.

  "Die! Everyone must die!" he roared. His first strike split the shadow of Mingling, who had just been lamenting his fate.

  However, as the blade passed through his friend's body, no blood sprayed; instead, black mist laughed mockingly. The figures of the villagers, which had been rotting, now fully transformed into rows of Poison Sect cultivators in their disgusting moss-green robes.

  Zhi Xuan slashed, stabbed, and tore. Every time his sword pierced an opponent's chest, he felt a horrific satisfaction—a dark vibration traveling from the hilt of the sword directly to his blackening Dao Heart. He did not realize that every life he took in this illusion was a fragment of his own sanity that he was destroying.

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  "Xuan-er... stop..." Auntie Lian’s voice sounded piteous from behind the flames.

  Zhi Xuan turned, his eyes burning red. He saw Auntie Lian being gripped by a Poison Sect elder who was laughing uproariously. "Look, old woman! Your shepherd boy has become the devil you fear!"

  "Let her go!" Zhi Xuan bolted, the speed of his feet leaving trails of scorched earth. He swung the Heavenly Sword with full force, decapitating the elder.

  Yet, as the head fell to the ground, its face changed back to Mingling’s, staring at him with eyes full of hatred. "You killed me again, Zhi Xuan... you killed us all with your own hands..."

  Zhi Xuan recoiled, his breath heavy like a cornered beast. Confusion began to gnaw at his soul. Whom was he killing? Enemy or family? Devil or human? The boundary began to blur, replaced by a red fog covering his vision.

  "No... they are enemies! They are the Poison Sect!" he screamed at himself, trying to convince his increasingly fractured mind.

  He attacked again. This time, he no longer used elegant sword techniques. He fought with primal instinct; biting, scratching, and slamming his head into anyone who approached.

  Every time he managed to strike down a figure, that figure would change into someone he loved, then back into a poisonous cultivator, spinning in an endless cycle of mental torture.

  Zhi Xuan no longer heard the sound of the wind or the roar of the fire. All that remained in his ears was his own heart, beating loudly like a war drum at the gates of hell.

  Each time he swung the Heavenly Sword, the weight of the weapon seemed to increase—not because of the metal, but because every slash carried the burden of the sins he carved into the shadows of his past.

  "Kill... cleanse... finish them!" he roared, his voice hoarse until his throat felt torn.

  A small child ran toward him, crying with outstretched hands—it was one of the neighbor's children he used to give sweets to. But in Zhi Xuan’s eyes, already veiled by the red fog, the figure was merely a venomous snake from the Poison Sect ready to spray death. Without hesitation, Zhi Xuan swung his sword.

  CRACK!

  The small body was thrown, but as it touched the ground, it turned into a lump of rotting green flesh, emitting a high-pitched laugh that mocked Zhi Xuan’s inner weakness.

  "Hahaha! Look at the savior! You are cutting down your own hope, Zhi Xuan!" the Inner Devil's voice echoed from all corners of the burning village.

  Zhi Xuan fell to his knees; his left hand, filled with black runes, now trembled violently. The runes seemed to come alive, crawling up past his shoulder and beginning to grip his neck, choking his breath with a chilling frost. He stared at his palm; there was no longer sweat, but a thick black fluid smelling of sulfur.

  "Not me... this isn't my wish!" he screamed at the night sky, which was no longer star-filled but occupied by a vortex of giant eyes staring at him with contempt.

  "Xuan-er... it's so cold..."

  The voice came from beneath his feet. Zhi Xuan looked down and found Auntie Lian crawling on the ground, her frail hand holding the hem of his burning robe. However, at the same time, Auntie Lian’s face began to shift; her skin peeled away to reveal the wrinkled face of a Poison Sect elder holding a rusted dagger.

  "Begone!" Zhi Xuan slammed his fist toward that face.

  THWACK!

  He felt the bones in his hand crack, but he did not stop. He continued to strike and pummel, drowning himself in pure madness. He no longer cared if he was bashing the face of his arch-enemy or the face of the woman who had raised him with love. To him, reality had become the enemy, and destruction was the only escape.

  His true Sea of Consciousness had now completely transformed into a boiling sea of blood. At the center of that storm, the purple-haired figure—the manifestation of the Devil Seed—stood with folded arms, staring triumphantly at the real Zhi Xuan, who was now beginning to sink into the thick red liquid.

  "Yes, keep going, Zhi Xuan," the Inner Devil whispered softly, almost like a song on a rainy night. "Let that hatred become your backbone. Let that resentment become your breath. This mortal world is too painful for a good person like you. Become me... become the void that will consume them all."

  In the midst of that raging madness, Zhi Xuan’s hand, stained with black blood, suddenly stopped in mid-air. He stared at the figure beneath him—a shapeless lump of flesh that kept shifting between Auntie Lian and his enemies. Bloody tears flowed from his lone sapphire eye, falling and soaking the soil of Star Village, which had now turned into an expanse of ash and pus.

  "Become the void..." Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice sounding like the grating of a broken sword.

  However, just as the black rune-fingers were about to snatch the remaining light from his eyes, a sharp cold sensation pierced his left arm. The star-embroidered cloth wrapped around his arm—the only object not burned by this illusory fire—suddenly emitted a dim but pure silver light.

  That light did not come from heavenly essence or divine power, but from the remnants of the prayers and hopes of an old woman who had sewn it with every drop of her affection. Another flash of memory surged—not a memory of slaughter, but of Auntie Lian’s rough hands bandaging his wounds when he fell from a cliff while herding.

  "Xuan-er, the sword is sharp, but do not let your heart become sharper than the blade. For if your heart becomes a sword, you will no longer be able to embrace those you love." Auntie Lian’s real voice—not the hoarse voice of the illusion—echoed like a soul-purifying bell within the recesses of his mind.

  Zhi Xuan jolted. His consciousness, sinking in the sea of inner blood, suddenly felt a pull. He looked at his hand holding the Heavenly Sword. He saw the red blade, and he saw his own reflection there—a youth whose face was filled with black veins, fangs beginning to grow, and eyes that had lost their luster.

  "This... is not my way of protecting," Zhi Xuan said, his voice now radiating a growing awareness. "This is my way of facing the Cruel Heavens."

  Zhi Xuan took a long breath, a draw of air that seemed to suck in all the hot and toxic atmosphere of that illusory Star Village. His previously trembling hand now gripped the hilt of the Heavenly Sword with a deadly calm. He no longer looked at the rising corpses, no longer cared for the mocking laughter of the Poison Sect cultivators.

  "Inner Devil," the growl came from Zhi Xuan’s deepest reaches; he slowly rose with a killing intent so sharp it cut the air. "How dare you use the hole in my Dao Heart to satisfy your Devilish Thoughts."

  Zhi Xuan stomped his foot. Immediately, the ground beneath him split in a massive crack as if the earth could not bear his weight. He tilted his face toward the Sky within the illusion. His long black hair now completely replaced the shimmer of his silver hair, as if the silver—always associated with his devilish manifestation—had vanished entirely, replaced by a figure who would harvest the devil himself.

  Zhi Xuan raised his hand, and something he was supposed to never use against himself now appeared in his palm. A small black hole, yet one carrying a pressure so heavy and impossible to resist, pulling everything in the vicinity toward it.

  "Eternal Star: All Returns to the Origin!"

  Zhi Xuan’s voice exploded, not as a cry of anger, but as the cold decree of a master of nothingness. In his palm, the small black hole pulsed slowly, but every pulse radiated an inescapable force that tore the fabric of the Star Village illusion.

  Instantly, the hot winds from the fire burning the thatched roofs stopped expanding outward; instead, they were sucked in, twisting like fire dragons forced into the dark spot in Zhi Xuan’s hand. The night sky, once filled with the vortex of contemptuous eyes, began to crack; shards of clouds and giant shadows were pulled with impossible speed, leaving behind a pure vacuum.

  "What are you doing?!" roared the Inner Devil, hiding behind the face of Mingling’s corpse. His body began to fade, elongating and being pulled toward the blood-red vortex in Zhi Xuan’s palm. "You will destroy everything! You will destroy this memory! You will destroy your own home!"

  Zhi Xuan stared at the fading figure of Mingling with bottomless, pitch-black eyes. "My home is not here. My home is the path I walk. If my Dao Heart has a hole, then let that hole swallow all this falsehood. You are not worthy of claiming to be the owner of my past memories."

  The vortex of darkness expanded. Star Village, the wheat fields, even the crawling figure of Auntie Lian—all began to unravel into their most basic essence. They no longer screamed, no longer cursed; they simply became streams of energy sucked into the black hole.

  Zhi Xuan stood tall at the center of the storm of nothingness, his black hair fluttering wildly, his face showing a horrific calm as if he were the only real entity in a collapsing world.

  BOOM!

  Zhi Xuan’s Sea of Consciousness shook violently. The illusion of Star Village vanished completely, leaving a silent darkness. Before him, the purple-haired Inner Devil no longer had a place to hide. Without the illusions of the past, the Devil lost its fangs. It stood trembling, chained by the law of nothingness created by the Eternal Star.

  "You... you use the hole in your heart to create a weapon?" whispered the Inner Devil, its voice now filled with pure terror. "Are you not afraid of the nothingness itself?"

  Zhi Xuan stepped forward, his feet treading the empty air of his inner batin. "Why fear the origin? If everything begins from nothingness, then let my power be born from there. Devil, you are finished."

  Zhi Xuan clenched his palm, closing the black hole. Instantly, an immense pressure exploded into the heart of the Inner Devil. The purple-haired figure groaned, his body exploding into thousands of dark glimmers that were then forcibly absorbed into Zhi Xuan’s Heavenly Samsara Wheel.