In the physical world, Zhi Xuan’s body—previously encased in black crystal—began to radiate a heavy, blood-red glow. The crystals shattered into pieces, disintegrating into dust before they could even touch the altar floor. The Five Soul-Plucking Mirrors surrounding him ceased their trembling and began to rotate clockwise with a speed that seemed to lacerate the very air.

  The second stage of the Fifteen Formations of Devil Purification was complete. It had been achieved not by pacifying memories, but by consuming the entirety of the bitter past illusions, preserving a truth of the past that no one—not even the Inner Devil itself—could replicate.

  "Haaaah..." Zhi Xuan let out a long breath. The air leaving his mouth carried a thick black vapor—the remnants of the Devil Seed he had now successfully separated. He raised his palm, opening his lone sapphire-blue eye. In his hand, a dark seed with an eclipse pattern condensed, appearing entirely submissive.

  Zhi Xuan gazed at the dark seed in his palm with a look that no longer held hatred, but absolute mastery. This Devil Seed was no longer a parasite gnawing at his soul; it was an entity forcibly harvested from his inner field. The sapphire light in his lone eye flickered, reflecting the eclipse pattern of the seed.

  "You sought to swallow me in falsehood," Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice carrying a majestic resonance. "But you forgot that the densest darkness is the place where the purest light was once born. Now, become the foundation for my path."

  At the center of the now-silent altar, the swirls of blood-red mist enveloping Zhi Xuan’s frame were slowly absorbed into his pores, leaving the youth with an aura that felt like an unshakeable primordial mountain. The Devil Seed in his hand lay still, as submissive as dust beneath a conqueror’s feet.

  Xiao Die, who had been hiding her face behind the legs of the Divine Furnace, slowly peeked out. Her rainbow wings, which had wilted, began to flutter hesitantly again. "Dragon Brother... look! The black mist... it's gone! And Senior Zhi Xuan... he no longer looks like a monster that wants to eat his own world."

  Ao Sheng let out a long breath, one that carried the remaining dragon tension from his small chest. He straightened his back, though his hands still gripped the Divine Furnace tightly. "I told you not to doubt him! Senior Zhi Xuan is one who can snatch fate from the Heavens; how could he lose to his own shadow? But..." Ao Sheng swallowed hard, his dragon eyes staring straight at Zhi Xuan’s pitch-black hair. "...that aura, Xiao Die. It feels like staring into an incredibly deep abyss. It’s cold, yet so calm it makes my scales crawl."

  Xiao Die fully awoke from her fear and shot toward Zhi Xuan with the speed of green light, but stopped exactly three fathoms in front of him, as if an invisible wall warned her not to step further. "Senior! Your hair! Why hasn't it turned back to silver? And your face... you look like someone who has just returned from the edge of death!"

  Zhi Xuan did not answer immediately. He slowly closed his palm, swallowing the purified Devil Seed back into his central meridian. He turned toward the two spirit beings, and for a moment, Xiao Die felt as if the world around her stopped spinning simply because of the gaze of that lone sapphire eye.

  Ruo Xianxue, who had been standing like an eternal statue at the edge of the altar, finally stepped forward. Her dark robes swept across the cracked altar floor, creating a scraping sound that broke the astral silence. Her sharp eyes looked deep into Zhi Xuan’s frame, searching for any small fissure left by the inner battle.

  "Consuming illusions with nothingness... You truly are mad, brat," Ruo Xianxue spoke, her tone flat but containing deep acknowledgment. "Most cultivators would try to wash their memories with heavenly light or cut them away with a sword of wisdom. But you... you used the hole in your heart as a mouth to devour everything."

  Zhi Xuan exhaled, a thin white vapor escaping his lips, which had returned to a healthy red. "Heavenly light is too blinding to cover the rot of the past, and a sword of wisdom is too blunt to cut through longing. If this world is a jungle, then I have just burned the most poisonous part of the forest within myself so that a new sprout can grow."

  "A new sprout?" Ruo Xianxue smiled thinly, a rare smile full of ancient mystery. "That sprout you mention nearly tore apart your gates of godhood!"

  "Auntie Fox is right!" Xiao Die exclaimed, flying in circles above Zhi Xuan’s head, scattering life pollen that this time was not rejected by his aura. "Look! Your meridians no longer emit a piercing cold! They are like... a river flowing calmly under the moonlight. Senior, does this mean you have become a God?"

  "Not yet, Xiao Die," Zhi Xuan replied with a slight shake of his head, a relieved smile touching his lips. "It is as if I have only just purified a part of my soul. I will proceed to the third stage of this purification to ensure the Devil Seed vanishes and fuses with my soul."

  Zhi Xuan refocused his entire attention on the energy flow within his body. Even though the Devil Seed had submitted, he knew the true refinement had only just begun. He didn't just want to tame the darkness; he wanted to pulverize it until there was no longer a separator between his identity and that power.

  "Third stage," Zhi Xuan murmured, his voice sounding like thunder muffled deep within a valley. "Five Heavenly Seals of Fate Reversal."

  Instantly, he moved his hands in mudras at a speed untraceable by the mortal eye. The Fifteen Formations of Devil Purification Jade Scroll hovering before him exploded—not into shards, but into thousands of golden characters that spun wildly around him. These characters then adhered to his skin, sinking into his flesh and locking every pulse point with immense pressure.

  "Hnngh!" Zhi Xuan groaned softly as he felt the most agonizing process: forced fusion. If the first stage was capturing and the second was purifying, then the third was shattering the shell to achieve union.

  Inside his central meridian, the dark seed with the eclipse pattern began to glow. But this time, it did not resist. Under the compulsion of the third stage, the seed began to melt, turning into a thick, searing hot black-purple liquid. The liquid began to crawl, merging with his pure heavenly essence to create a new energy flow the color of twilight—the color where day and night no longer have a boundary.

  "Devil-Heavenly Union," Ruo Xianxue muttered, the nine tails of darkness behind her glowing. "Use that separation well, Zhi Xuan. Release the Xuan-Huang from your frame; place it into the Divine Furnace where it belongs. I will teach you to separate the Evil Energy from the karma of slaughter and the malice you have gathered all this time."

  Ruo Xianxue moved her finger, touching her index to Zhi Xuan’s forehead, which was faintly decorated with the pillar patterns of the Slaughter Seal. Inside Zhi Xuan’s mind, the image of the Evil Crystal he had created from malicious energy gathered like a river providing enlightenment.

  "Separate it along with the Xuan-Huang," Ruo Xianxue commanded, her voice sharpening. "Draw your Divine Furnace; burden the Xuan-Huang upon the furnace that has been forged with the same energy."

  Zhi Xuan clenched his jaw, the veins in his neck bulging like the roots of an ancient tree trying to hold the weight of a mountain. Under Ruo Xianxue’s command, he pulled his consciousness toward the gravitational center that had long hindered his cultivation progress: the heavy and primordial Xuan-Huang essence.

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  "Return to your origin!" Zhi Xuan growled. He moved his right hand, his palm facing the Heavenly Trifold Reincarnation Cauldron held tightly by Ao Sheng.

  Instantly, the Divine Furnace vibrated violently and shot toward him, leaving Ao Sheng and Xiao Die behind, emitting a humming sound that shook the jade altar. From every inch of Zhi Xuan’s skin, a thick yellowish-brown vapor seeped out, carrying an impossible weight—the Xuan-Huang essence that had settled in his bone marrow.

  The vapor shot out like an earthen dragon crawling through the air, forcibly pulled from Zhi Xuan’s frame and absorbed into the mouth of the Divine Furnace. Every drop of Xuan-Huang that left his body made him feel lighter, as if the shackles binding his soul to the mortal earth had just been severed.

  As the Xuan-Huang burden exited, Zhi Xuan felt his meridians—once as heavy as lead—begin to vibrate at a finer, more agile frequency. However, the pain was not over. The Evil Energy gathered from the thousands of lives he had taken—a manifestation of the Slaughter Karma that had mixed with his soul essence—began to surge, refusing to be separated.

  "Heavenly-Blood Body Law," Zhi Xuan hissed, feeling the thousands of Slaughter Seals on his chest churn. "Energy Reversal!"

  With a roar that split the silence of the Great Constellation, Zhi Xuan reversed his energy circulation to an extreme degree. If previously energy flowed from the Sea of Consciousness toward the meridians, he now forced it to spin backward, creating a suction vortex at the center of his Dao Heart.

  "Out!" he screamed, his voice hoarse and saturated with unspeakable suffering.

  From the thousands of Slaughter Seals etched on his chest, a thick blackish-red liquid seeped out, smelling of sulfur and hatred. This was the Evil Energy—the crystallization of every killing intent, every scream of his victims, and every drop of blood he had ever spilled. The liquid crawled out of his skin like thousands of leeches unwilling to release their host.

  Zhi Xuan moved his violently trembling left hand. He pulled the Evil Energy, condensing it in the air into a pulsating orb of darkness. At the same time, the dragon of Xuan-Huang vapor continued to roar into the Divine Furnace, creating a strange harmony between the weight of the earth and the thickness of sin.

  The separation reached its peak as the Divine Furnace emitted a dim yet majestic golden light, swallowing the last remnants of the settled Xuan-Huang essence.

  Zhi Xuan’s body arched, his bones emitting a crackling sound like pressed bamboo—not from destruction, but because every joint was releasing the worldly burden that had hindered his ascension.

  "Now, crystallize that Evil Energy! Do not let it evaporate and contaminate your Sea of Consciousness!" Ruo Xianxue shouted, her hands moving like a shadow dance, forming a protective net around the altar so the deathly energy wouldn't spread toward Xiao Die and Ao Sheng.

  Zhi Xuan gnashed his teeth until drops of fresh blood seeped from the corner of his lips. He focused his entire inner will on the blackish-red orb pulsating before him. He felt every hatred, every grudge, and every bad karma from those who had fallen beneath his sword trying to pull his soul back into the darkness.

  "You are but the residue of my journey! You are not my master!" Zhi Xuan roared. He ground his teeth, his forehead pulsing faintly.

  With one burst of energy from the Heavenly Samsara Wheel, which now spun in a pure twilight-gray color, he crushed the orb of Evil Energy. The pressure was so immense that the space around his hand seemed to crack and warp. The orb grew smaller and denser until it finally hardened into a diamond-shaped crystal emitting a deadly cold aura—the Slaughter Karma Crystal.

  Zhi Xuan regulated his ragged breath. His upper body—half dark and bare—now looked different; the Slaughter Seals on his chest were no longer a disgusting blood-red, but had faded into calm silver marks, as if the fangs of his past sins had been pulled. Yet, the power remained the same.

  "Furnace, seal!" At his command, the Divine Furnace sucked the Karma Crystal into its inner space, merging it with the Xuan-Huang to be forged into a single new relic. Once the process was complete, the Divine Furnace spun once and re-entered Zhi Xuan’s Sea of Consciousness with graceful silence.

  Instantly, a burst of pure energy exploded from the center of Zhi Xuan’s being. Without the Xuan-Huang burden and the contamination of Evil Energy, his meridians were now like transparent, vast jade channels.

  "This... this feeling..." Zhi Xuan murmured. He felt his body as light as a feather, yet possessed a density capable of withstanding the weight of the heavens.

  His pitch-black hair fluttered without wind, while his lone sapphire eye radiated a much deeper light, piercing through layers of space and time in the Great Constellation. He could feel every vibration of the distant stars as if they were part of his own pulse.

  "You have done it," Ruo Xianxue stepped back, staring at Zhi Xuan with a glint of satisfaction veiled by her cold composure. "Your mortal frame has been purified to its most basic level. The barrier between body and soul has thinned. You are standing at the threshold, Zhi Xuan."

  Zhi Xuan rose slowly. Every movement now created no ripples, but merged entirely with the astral flow around him. He looked at his own palm; his skin was as smooth as marble yet radiated an aura capable of shaking the souls of those with lower cultivation.

  "That gate..." Zhi Xuan looked toward the void ahead. There, a gate of light woven from the Laws of Nature began to manifest. This was the gate to Soul Transformation, which had long been hidden behind the fog of his inner burdens.

  "Senior Zhi Xuan!" Xiao Die flew closer, her face filled with awe. "You... you smell so good! There's no more smell of iron and blood; you smell like... like dawn at the peak of a holy mountain!"

  Ao Sheng also approached, bowing deeply—a respect from the dragon clan to a new sovereign. "Congratulations, Senior. This foundation... I have never seen a foundation half-dark and half-snow in all my life!"

  Zhi Xuan looked at the gate of light, then reached into his storage bag. He took out the jade box containing the original Heavenly Eye given by Yao Gu. He stared at the eyeball pulsating calmly inside the box.

  "It is time," Zhi Xuan said with an unshakable tone. "I will enter Soul Transformation with sight capable of piercing the Heavens themselves."

  Ruo Xianxue narrowed her eyes; she knew that installing the Heavenly Eye during the soul transformation process was the greatest gamble a cultivator could take. "If you fail to unite that Eye with your Divine Spirit later, you won't just lose your life—your soul will be erased from the cycle of Samsara forever."

  Zhi Xuan smiled thinly, a smile carrying the arrogance of a warrior who had conquered his own devil. "If Samsara could not hold me when I was mortal, it will have no chance when I am a God."

  Zhi Xuan floated amidst the starry sky, looking like both a god and a devil with his half-darkened body. He sat cross-legged in the void, raising the Heavenly Eye, bringing it close to his empty right socket, while the energy of the Great Constellation began to center on him to start the true great transformation.

  Zhi Xuan took a deep breath, feeling a cold yet pleasant sensation coming toward him, as if the essence of the Second Great Constellation was welcoming him to truly step through the gate of Soul Transformation. Without hesitation, Zhi Xuan released his grip on the Heavenly Eye, letting it hang low before his face.

  "Great Saint, I will begin my meditation. I will use this essence to forge Divine Essence Blood and Divine Spirit," Zhi Xuan said to Ruo Xianxue. His eyes closed and he began his meditation; immediately, purple light came from all directions, entering Zhi Xuan’s frame.

  Ruo Xianxue did not answer with words; she only nodded slowly while folding her arms across her chest. The Sacred Devil stepped back, creating a vast space for the energy vortex that would soon swallow Zhi Xuan. She knew that what the universe was about to witness was the rebirth of an existence that would shake the order of the Nine Heavens.

  "Do it, brat. Become the sword that splits this eternal silence," she whispered very softly, nearly swallowed by the rising roar of energy.

  In the void of the Second Great Constellation, Zhi Xuan’s cross-legged frame became a center filled with purple light. The Heavenly Eye hanging before him began to vibrate violently, the golden web patterns in its pupil glowing, emitting strands of light that reached for Zhi Xuan’s empty right socket.

  Time passed without word, like a short breath on the Path of Cultivation. Exactly one hundred years of meditation in mortal world time passed. The gate that had sent him from the Yao Gu Main Hall was now closed, yet Zhi Xuan remained motionless. He knew the Empire Elder must have left the altar formation where he sat previously, as if knowing Zhi Xuan would not succeed anytime soon.

  Ripples of spiritual waves continued to sweep the surroundings. Ruo Xianxue several times commanded Xiao Die and Ao Sheng to absorb the essence radiating from Zhi Xuan’s meditation; as Verdant Titans, absorbing the essence of an ascension from the Five Element realm to the Soul Transformation stage was a harmless essence, unlike a Verdant Titan beast trying to devour the essence of a Crimson Lotus beast.

  Exactly in the two-hundredth year—a time spent by mortal men to build family dynasties—passed in a time that felt like a river...

  RUMBLE—!

  A thunderous sound, originating not from clouds but from the collision of natural laws, began to echo. The purple and silver essence of the Constellation poured down like an inverted waterfall, entering through every pore of Zhi Xuan’s skin.