The heavens were breaking.
Massive cracks spread across the sky as countless floating mountains collapsed into storms of chaotic qi. At the center of the ruined world stood a single figure, his black robes torn apart and his body covered in wounds.
Valerian Ash.
The name that shook the Three Realms.
To some, he was a monster. To others, a calamity wearing human skin. The title of Demonic God was not given because he sought worship, but because countless lives had been sacrificed beneath his path toward the peak.
He had never been a hero. He had never claimed to be one.
He took what he needed, destroyed those who stood in his way, and discarded anything that no longer served his purpose.
Around him stood the strongest cultivators of the age. Ancient Sovereigns, Heavenly Monarchs, and countless experts from every major faction had gathered together for the first time in history.
Their purpose was simple.
To kill one man.
"Valerian Ash. Hand over the Primordial Samsara Lotus. Surrender now, and we will grant you a dignified death."
Valerian remained silent.
After thousands of years, hatred, curses, and accusations had become nothing more than meaningless noise.
He had destroyed sects for resources. He had manipulated enemies into killing each other. He had used allies until they had no value left.
If another person's death could bring him one step closer to his goal, then their life had already served its purpose.
The world called him evil.
He never denied it.
A black lotus slowly bloomed above his palm.
The expressions of every Sovereign changed.
"The Primordial Samsara Lotus..."
"Stop him!"
Thousands of attacks descended at once, shaking heaven and earth. Divine swords tore through space, flames burned the laws of reality, and ancient formations covered the entire battlefield.
Valerian only smiled.
He had walked this path knowing where it would lead. If heaven gave him another life, he would still choose to be a demon.
The black lotus pulsed once, twice—then erupted.
A wave of absolute darkness swallowed every attack, every formation, every divine technique that had been thrown at him. For a single, breathless moment, the entire battlefield fell silent. The Sovereigns froze. Even the heavens themselves seemed to pause, as if the world recognized that something irreversible was about to happen.
Valerian's broken body trembled, blood pouring from his eyes, his ears, his mouth. The cost of activating the Primordial Samsara Lotus was not measured in qi or spiritual energy. It demanded something far more fundamental. His cultivation—every layer, every realm he had painstakingly carved through millennia of suffering and slaughter—began to dissolve. His flesh cracked like dried earth. His meridians shattered one by one, each rupture sending a wave of agony that would have driven any lesser being to madness.
But Valerian did not scream.
He looked at the gathered army of the righteous, the hypocrites who called themselves protectors of the world while hoarding power and crushing the weak beneath their feet, and he spoke his final words in this life with a voice like grinding stone.
"You think killing me is victory? You think destroying this body ends what I am?" His lips twisted into something between a smile and a snarl. "I have already seen the shape of what comes next. Every one of you... every throne you sit upon... every legacy you've built... I will return, and I will take it all. Not because I hate you. But because your existence is simply... in my way."
The lotus consumed him entirely.
His soul plunged into the river of time, torn apart and reassembled, dragged backward through centuries of history until—
Silence.
Warmth.
Darkness.
The first thing Valerian became aware of was the unbearable smallness of his body. Tiny lungs. Fragile bones. A heartbeat so weak it barely registered. And beside him, pressed close in the suffocating warmth of a womb that was no longer a womb—another heartbeat.
Stronger than his own.
Steady. Calm. Innocent.
His twin.
Valerian's ancient consciousness burned behind newborn eyes that had not yet opened, and a single thought crystallized with perfect, terrifying clarity:
It begins again.