The Azure Dragon Sky Sect was unusually quiet. The mountain peaks that once echoed with the clashing of disciples sparring and the chanting of cultivation hymns now carried a rare stillness. For the first time since the Convergence, peace seemed to blanket the sect like a veil of mist.
Haotian spent his days recovering within the Saint Residence, his body still pale and frail from forcing open his dormant meridians. Though pain lingered in every breath, determination shone in his eyes. At night, Lianhua remained by his side, tending to him, guiding his chi flow with her own delicate hands. Sometimes they spoke softly about the future; other times they sat in silence, needing no words as moonlight streamed across their chamber.
The Four Saints came often to observe his condition. Their gazes lingered not only with pride, but also concern."You've inherited a dangerous path," Yangshen said one morning, stroking his beard. "Your strength is remarkable, but restraint will be the key."
Lianhua bowed politely, yet her hand never left Haotian's."He won't face it alone," she answered firmly.
The Saints exchanged looks—smiles that held both relief and secrets unspoken.
At the end of the month, their time in the Azure Dragon Sect came to an end. Duty called them back to the Zhenlong household, and the courtyard filled with disciples as the four prepared to leave. Haotian, pale but standing tall, offered a spatial ring to Yangshen.
"Inside," he said, voice steady despite his weakness, "are crystal vein pills and resources I forged. For the Zhenlong household. For the army. To strengthen them."
Yangshen took the ring, his thunderous aura softening into a warm smile. "Even when broken, you give to others. Very well—I'll accept. Rest, boy. The world will demand enough of you soon."
The Saints departed with the grace of immortals, their figures vanishing into the horizon.
Silence returned. Haotian leaned heavily on Lianhua as they walked back to their residence. His face was pale, his body trembling. Yet his golden eyes still gleamed faintly with resolve.
"I'll recover," he whispered. "When the time comes, I'll be ready."
Lianhua tightened her grip on his hand, her expression gentle but fierce."And I'll be with you. Always."
The Azure Dragon Sky Sect awoke that morning under clear skies. Disciples bustled about the training grounds, unaware that the day would be written into their sect's history with blood.
Far beyond the mountains, hidden beneath the cloak of distance, countless sect masters and Saint realm elders gathered in a clandestine alliance. These were the proud leaders of the sects humiliated at the Convergence. Their eyes burned with resentment, their pride unable to endure the rise of Haotian and Lianhua.
Today, they would exact their revenge.
The timing was perfect. The Azure Dragon Sect Master had departed to the Central Continent on urgent business, and even the Alliance Leader had left for the same matter. The strongest pillars of defense were gone.
"Strike now," hissed one Saint, his aura boiling the clouds above."End the Zhenlong brats before they grow into saints themselves," another added coldly.
Their combined killing intent shook the heavens.
When the betrayal began, it was like thunder splitting a clear sky.
Flames, lightning, and torrents of sword-light tore down from the horizon as the armies of the traitorous sects descended. The Azure Dragon Sect's protective formations flared, but the might of dozens of Saint experts struck like an ocean tide. Mountain peaks shattered, valleys crumbled, and disciples screamed as their homes were consumed by fire.
Azure Dragon elders rose desperately into the skies, their robes whipping against the storm. "Traitors! What madness is this!?" they roared.
But the answers were only blades.
The first clash resounded across the continent. Elders were struck down, blood staining the sect grounds. Loyal disciples tried to rally, but the sheer weight of the enemy's numbers and cultivation tore through them like grass before a storm.
And above it all, the traitorous sect masters watched from the clouds, their eyes glinting with cold satisfaction.
"Crush them," one ordered. "Leave none alive."
The Blades of Betrayal had been unsheathed.
The Azure Dragon Sky Sect stood at the brink of annihilation.
The Azure Dragon Sky Sect was in chaos.
Saint-level powers clashed above the mountains, shattering the skies with every exchange. Pavilions and towers burned, disciples screamed as they clashed with enemies and traitors alike, and the grand defensive formations cracked under the relentless storm. The once-proud sect had become a battlefield soaked in flame and blood.
Amidst the devastation, one truth became clear: the true targets were Haotian and Lianhua.
In the inner courtyard, loyal disciples formed a desperate circle around the Saint Son and Daughter. They shouted defiance, blades flashing, but the pressure was overwhelming. For every traitor cut down, two more rushed forward.
Haotian's spear flickered, the butt smashing into the ground to shatter shockwaves that broke enemy formations. Beside him, Lianhua's sword flashed like silver lightning, each stroke cutting down another would-be assassin. Their teamwork was seamless, but even they could feel it—the tide was endless.
Then came the worst betrayal.
Within the circle of supposed defenders, three disciples suddenly turned. Their swords plunged into the backs of their brothers. Screams erupted. Blood sprayed across the tiles.
"B-brother… why!?" one loyal disciple gasped as he fell.
Haotian's spear cut the traitors down instantly, his face shadowed with rage."They've infiltrated us this deeply…"
Before Lianhua could answer, the courtyard darkened. Four immense auras descended, pressing down with suffocating weight.
Four Saint Realm Elders.
Their robes shimmered with the insignias of their sects, but their faces bore only cruelty and cold determination. With their arrival, the loyal disciples collapsed to their knees, unable to withstand the crushing presence.
One of the elders sneered."End the Saint Son and Daughter here. Let the Azure Dragon Sky Sect bleed from its roots."
The four moved as one, surrounding Haotian and Lianhua. The ground cracked beneath their steps, and the very air screamed under their killing intent.
Haotian and Lianhua tightened their grips on spear and sword, standing back-to-back. Their hearts pounded, but their eyes burned with defiance.
The courtyard had become their cage.
And the storm was about to break.
The four Saints closed in, their combined pressure cracking the very foundations of the inner courtyard. Roofs buckled, walls collapsed, and disciples within a hundred meters coughed blood just from standing too close.
Haotian and Lianhua stood at the center, back-to-back, their weapons trembling in their grips—not from fear, but from the crushing force bearing down upon them.
One elder raised his hand, conjuring a mountain of earth essence that blotted out the sky. Another gathered lightning in his palms until the heavens themselves screamed. The other two drew weapons infused with Saint might, their edges humming with destruction.
There was no escape.
Haotian's voice was steady, though his chest heaved with effort."Lianhua… if I fall here, you must—"
"Don't say it!" she cut him off, her sword blazing with qi. "We fight together, we live together!"
But before they could clash, a streak of light tore through the battlefield. A battered figure appeared like thunder, his robes torn and blood soaking his chest. His aura blazed fiercely despite his wounds—Elder Renshu.
His voice was a roar."You will not touch them!"
He slammed his palm into the ground. Spiritual waves burst outward, forcing the four Saints back half a step. It was only a moment, but it was enough.
In one motion, Renshu seized Lianhua's arm. "I'll take her—Haotian, hold them off!"
"No!" Lianhua struggled, her sword flaring with resistance. "I will not leave him!"
Haotian's spear spun, intercepting a descending strike that would have split them in two. His arms shook with the force, blood splattering from his lips, but he held firm. He turned, eyes burning into hers.
"Go! That's an order!"
Lianhua's eyes blurred with tears. She reached for him, but Renshu's grip was iron. He dragged her back as his spiritual light shielded them from another crashing strike.
"Haotian!" she screamed, her voice breaking as she was pulled away.
Haotian stood tall, bloodied but unbending, his spear leveled toward the heavens as the four Saints advanced once more. His figure grew smaller in her vision, swallowed by the storm of destruction.
The last thing she saw before the world erupted in fire and sound was Haotian's silhouette, standing defiant and alone.
The courtyard shook beneath the clash of Saints. The shattered walls glowed faintly with residual qi, and the blood of loyal disciples ran like rivers across the stones. In the center, Haotian stood alone—spear in hand, eyes blazing with defiance.
The first elder struck, his fist wrapped in earth essence. The blow collapsed a pavilion and sent shockwaves rippling through the mountain. Haotian barely raised his spear in time, the impact sending him flying through the air. He crashed into stone, bones cracking, blood erupting from his mouth.
Before he could rise, the second elder descended, sword flashing like lightning. The blade split the air and slashed across Haotian's shoulder, tearing muscle to the bone. He staggered, barely holding his weapon upright.
The third elder unleashed lightning, arcs of violet energy that scorched the earth where Haotian stood. His body convulsed as the bolts struck him, the smell of burnt flesh rising into the night.
The fourth elder swept in last, flame engulfing his palm. He smashed it forward, the inferno exploding across Haotian's chest. His robes burned away, skin blistering under the Saint's power.
Haotian dropped to one knee. His spear wavered, his vision swam. The world blurred between smoke and blood.
Too strong… he thought, his grip loosening. Am I… going to die here?
A memory surfaced—Lianhua's voice, trembling as she screamed his name. Her tears as Elder Renshu pulled her away. Her stubborn defiance.
No. He couldn't fall. Not here. Not now.
Haotian roared, slamming the butt of his spear into the ground. His qi erupted in defiance, but it wasn't enough. The Saints pressed down harder, intent on crushing him utterly.
And then—it happened.
From deep within his dantian, a blazing light surged forth. His first core, long cultivated, erupted like a dragon awakening, flooding his meridians with raw, burning power.
But the surge triggered something deeper.
The second core, long dormant, suddenly stirred. For years it had slumbered, half-formed, untamed. Now, faced with annihilation, it ignited with a thunderous roar.
The two cores resonated.
The sound was deafening, as though heaven's war drums were beating from within his body. Golden light burst outward, shattering the Saints' oppressive auras. The ground beneath him split apart, the storm of qi reaching toward the heavens.
The elders faltered, their eyes wide."What is this…!?"
Haotian rose, blood dripping from his mouth, his eyes glowing with galaxies. His spear no longer trembled—it pulsed with divine power.
His voice was hoarse, guttural, filled with fury and resolve."This… is my power!"
He surged forward, spear blazing like a dragon's fang. With a single thrust, he pierced the chest of the first elder, obliterating his Saint defenses. The man coughed blood and disintegrated into ash.
Spinning, Haotian struck the second. His spear shattered the elder's ribs and heart, ending him in one blow.
The third unleashed lightning in desperation, but Haotian's strike cleaved through storm and Saint alike, erasing both from existence.
The last elder turned to flee, terror etched across his face. But Haotian hurled his spear. It whistled through the air and struck the man in the back, tearing his heart apart. The elder fell, lifeless, his body collapsing in silence.
Four Saints lay dead.
The courtyard was still, save for Haotian's ragged breathing. His body shook, blood still dripping from dozens of wounds. But within, his twin cores blazed, resonating together for the first time.
Then the brilliance dimmed. His body trembled violently, the strain overwhelming. His knees buckled, and he collapsed face-first onto the shattered tiles.
From afar, Lianhua screamed his name, thrashing in Elder Renshu's grip as he dragged her toward the escape routes of the sect. Her sword arm shook with desperation. She wanted to break free, to turn back, to reach him—
When suddenly, a voice brushed against her mind.
"I will be fine."
She froze, eyes wide. The voice was Haotian's, but strange… heavier. And then the words struck her:
"Actually… Haotian will be fine."
Her heart jolted. Why would he refer to himself in the third person?
Her breath caught. "…Alter?"
A soft chuckle reverberated in her mind. "Smart girl. You guessed right."
Tears welled in her eyes as she pleaded, "Please—please don't let anything happen to him. I can't lose him!"
The voice grew calm, certain, carrying an authority that shook her soul."Do not fear. I am only here to help him pass this tribulation. When it is done, I will go back to sleep. I will not merge, nor take what is his. But until then… trust me."
Lianhua bit her lip, her struggles weakening as her tears streamed freely. "Swear it…"
The voice laughed softly. "I will promise you—in the heavens I once destroyed."
Her knees nearly gave out at the sheer weight of those words. She whispered through her tears, "…Haotian… Alter… please both come back to me."
Renshu pulled her farther away, and the battlefield vanished behind them.
But in the ruins of the courtyard, Haotian's body stirred. His eyes opened again—no longer his own. Cosmic spirals blazed within, and a different soul looked out upon the world.
The silence deepened.
The War God had awakened.
The battlefield held its breath.
Haotian's battered body lay amid shattered tiles and drifting cinders—until a tremor ran through his frame. Fingers twitched. A slow breath dragged into his lungs. Then his eyes opened.
They were not his.
Twin spirals of galaxies turned within those pupils, vast and depthless, reflecting no firelight, no ruin—only the cold sweep of eternity. The air changed. Even the smoke seemed to hesitate before moving again.
All around, traitorous disciples froze mid-step. A surviving elder at the courtyard's edge lowered his blade without meaning to, throat working in a dry swallow.
"…That isn't Haotian," someone whispered, voice breaking.
The silence thickened, weighted by an aura older than the mountains. Haotian—no, the being inside him—rose to his feet. Blood sheeted down his chest; wounds still gaped; yet he stood as if the injuries were nothing but stray paint upon a statue of the heavens.
Far away, carried by Elder Renshu, Lianhua felt a calm voice brush her mind one last time—rest; trust—and then even that thread went quiet.
In the ruins, the star-forged eyes surveyed the living.
When the voice came, it wasn't the hoarse rasp of a youth who had bled for his sect. It was still, unhurried, and terrible.
"…Four Saints," it said, as if tasting ash. "For this?"
A disciple stumbled back, knees buckling. "W-who are you…?"
The lips curved—amused, almost gentle, and somehow far crueler than a snarl.
"I am the hand that broke heavens. The blade that drowned gods and demon gods alike. Names are mist." A pause, as the spirals narrowed. "But tremble, if you must, before Alter."
The word rolled across the courtyard like a bell that only the soul could hear. Clouds shivered. Cracks spidered through the already-torn sky.
A traitor elder found his courage too late, roaring as he raised a saint treasure to strike. The starry gaze slid to him, and the treasure dimmed in his grip as though ashamed to be seen.
Alter tilted Haotian's head, almost curious. "You brought armies to butcher a house with its guardians away. You chose a child as your spearpoint." The calm went colder. "Understand me: your arithmetic ends here."
He lifted the spear—not in strain, but in benediction denied.
The survivors felt it then—the certainty that what stood before them was not a cultivator ascending toward heaven, but an ancient height from which heaven itself had once been judged.
"Run," someone sobbed.
No one moved.
Alter took a single step, and the mountain groaned.
Judgment began.
The step resounded like thunder. The mountain's foundations quaked, dust billowing into the air. Every pair of eyes locked on the figure standing among ruin and corpses—yet not a soul could move. Fear bound them tighter than chains.
Alter raised Haotian's spear. Blood dripped from its tip, dark against the golden-blue light beginning to pulse along its shaft. His voice, quiet but carrying across the battlefield, pronounced a verdict:
"Your sin is betrayal. Your sentence is obliteration."
He drove the spear's butt into the ground.
The world split.
Light erupted in a wave so vast it seemed to swallow the sky. Stone shattered, buildings crumbled, entire swaths of the sect grounds vaporized. Disciples, elders, traitors—hundreds of them—vanished in an instant, their bodies erased before their screams could leave their throats.
The heavens shrieked. A crack tore through the firmament, spilling threads of raw starlight into the mortal world. Space warped, bent, and then snapped apart in jagged seams.
Saint-tier elders who had thought themselves unassailable flung up treasures, weapons, defensive arrays—all useless. The wave of destruction rolled over them, reducing flesh and artifact alike into nothing but drifting ash.
The few survivors clinging to the battlefield were broken things: one clutching the stump of a severed arm, another weeping as his shattered core bled qi into the void, disciples trembling so violently they could not stand.
One survivor whispered through blood and terror, "Th-this… this is no cultivator… this is a calamity wearing human skin."
Alter's cosmic gaze fell on him. The disciple's heart seized. He collapsed dead, not from a strike, but from the unbearable weight of being seen.
Still the War God moved.
He swept the spear in an arc. The motion was graceful, almost casual—yet the stroke birthed a crescent of light that cut the battlefield in two. Entire squads of fleeing disciples disintegrated, the earth itself groaning as a canyon was carved by the force.
The sky cracked wider, and through it shone not sunlight but constellations never meant for mortal eyes.
Alter's voice echoed, calm, unhurried, merciless:
"You believed your rebellion could erase the name of the Azure Dragon Sky Sect. Instead, your cowardice has called forth me. And I do not forget."
The survivors broke. Screams erupted as what remained of the traitorous armies tried to scatter in all directions. Some clawed at the ground, desperate to crawl away. Others begged, voices hoarse with terror.
It didn't matter.
Each strike fell like judgment. Waves of golden-blue light detonated, swallowing men and mountains alike. No Saint weapon could stand. No barrier could resist. The rebellion, in mere breaths, was no longer an army—only fragments, blood, and dust cast into the void.
By the time the shockwaves calmed, the land itself had been remade. The once-proud courtyards of the Azure Dragon Sky Sect were unrecognizable, carved into gorges of molten stone and broken reality.
And amid the devastation stood Alter in Haotian's body, spear in hand, eyes still burning with the quiet eternity of the stars.
The silence was suffocating.
Only one truth remained: the wrath of the betrayed had been unleashed, and it would not stop until nothing remained of those who dared raise a hand against the Azure Dragon Sky Sect.
The battlefield lay in ruin, but the devastation had only begun.
Above, the heavens groaned like a wounded beast. The cracks that Alter's strikes had torn into the sky widened, bleeding rivers of starlight. Constellations twisted into shapes unrecognized by mortal eyes, burning brighter and closer as though the entire firmament were collapsing upon the world.
The ground buckled in sympathy. Mountains crumbled, rivers boiled into steam, and trees within leagues burst into ash from the residual waves of divine force. The sect's ancestral grounds, carved by generations, warped into unrecognizable terrain—broken valleys where courtyards had been, molten ridges where pavilions once stood.
The traitors still breathing clutched their heads and screamed. The weight of existence itself bore down upon them, crushing bones and shattering wills. One Saint elder fell to his knees, coughing blood, muttering endlessly, "No… no… this is not a man… this is apocalypse."
Loyal disciples, huddled at the distant edges of the sect, could only stare in awe and terror. Their hearts thundered with reverence and dread, for they could not reconcile the truth—this was their Senior Brother, the Saint Son… yet not. This was something far greater.
A loyal elder whispered, trembling, "We thought Haotian a genius touched by heaven… but this… this is not heaven's touch. This is heaven's scourge."
Lightning split the rifted skies, yet the thunder never came. Instead, silence reigned—an oppressive stillness broken only by the slow rhythm of Alter's steps. Each movement bent the world, reality straining to contain him.
The survivors tried to flee further, only to find the space around them twisted—corridors of warped reality trapping them like flies in amber. Even running was futile.
Alter's voice rolled outward, neither loud nor soft, yet filling every ear:
"You wished for destruction. You invoked it. Now the heavens themselves answer."
The cracks above screamed, light bursting in torrents. For a heartbeat, every living thing beheld the vast silhouette of something titanic—wings that spanned galaxies, a blade that split eternity—reflected in the shattered sky.
Then it was gone. But the impression lingered, stamped into their souls.
The traitors collapsed, their courage broken utterly. Loyal disciples fell to their knees, weeping—not from despair, but from the unbearable magnitude of what they had witnessed.
The world itself shuddered. The sky had split. And in that rift, they realized: Haotian was no longer merely a prodigy. Alter, the War God who had once shaken gods and demons, had returned.