Three years passed in the blink of an eye.
"Xiao Xiao!" Zhuo Riyan bolted upright, sweat soaking his robes. Once again, he had dreamed of his brother—the one who had fought side by side with him—and the memory made his eyes burn red with grief.
The past three years had been hell. In Flame City, he had endured a grueling life, training relentlessly and tempering his body and mind, all to remind himself of the revenge he swore upon Xiao Xiao's tomb.
Meanwhile, Ao Shen had flourished. She remained high and lofty in Long City, rising to the position of a core disciple within the Great Bound Sect. She had never wavered, never faltered.
Zhuo Riyan, by contrast, had become the laughingstock of the sect. Rumors of a failed attempt to drug and violate a girl spread like wildfire. Even upon returning to Long City, the whispers did not stop—busybodies and ignoramuses pointing fingers, cursing his name, and laughing at his disgrace.
To make matters worse, the Celestial Stone he had once claimed as his own was said to have been obtained by Kin Dou through his own "efforts."
Zhuo Riyan clenched his fists, gritting his teeth.
"Public opinion is controlled by the powerful families. No one will believe a word I say."
The cruelty of the world felt suffocating.
It was already late at night. He stepped out of bed and moved to the window, staring silently in the direction of Long City, the heart of his humiliation and the stage of his revenge.
Then—
Something stirred within him.
His lifebound space—that mysterious, arcane space that existed in every person at birth on the Long Continent—was shifting.
"It's finally hatching… after three years?" His eyes widened.
Every lifebound space contained a hidden beast that would hatch after seven days. Practically everyone on the continent had one.
But Zhuo Riyan's space was no ordinary space.
Xiao Xiao had come into existence with him, bound to his very life. And beyond that, there were nine more mysterious eggs no one knew about. Zhuo Riyan had discovered them the day after Xiao Xiao's death.
Tonight, two of them were moving. One of the eggs had even begun to crack. Carefully, he shifted the cracking egg out of the lifebound space and placed it gently on his bed. Then he waited.
The cracks deepened, spreading across the egg like veins under intense pressure. A suffocating, oppressive aura pressed down on the room, making the air itself feel heavy.
Suddenly, a sharp snap echoed.
"It's out!"
The egg split apart, shards of shell tumbling aside. A soft glow leaked from within, and Zhuo Riyan's heart thudded uncontrollably.
Whatever emerged from this egg… would change everything.
---
Once, legends spoke of a time when the Heavenly Dao withers, and the cycle of reincarnation reaches its limit. When that day arrives, the endless realms would birth Primordial Cosmic Beasts, each possessing bodies vaster than the realms of Gods. In their wake, heaven and earth would collapse. All life would perish, spacetime itself would invert, and even the stars would die.
These Primordial Cosmic Beasts would vanish as the old world passed. Only then would heaven and earth take shape once more. The natural order would return, life would flourish, and a new world would be born.
---
Meanwhile, in Zhuo Riyan's room, the egg split apart with a sharp crack.
A figure wriggled from the broken shell.
"???"
Zhuo Riyan's heart raced. Surely this was the fearsome beast he had envisioned countless times in his dreams—something immense, terrifying, powerful enough to shake realms.
But no.
Before him, crawling on the bed, was nothing more than a tiny black cat. Soft, tender, and somehow impossibly cute. A purple mark adorned its forehead like a delicate tattoo.
Zhuo Riyan could only think one thing: this was cute… and also the perfect main dish for a hearty breakfast for his enemies. At least, he thought, the only thing keeping it alive for now was that it wasn't morning yet.
"How does a cat like you even release the aura of a fearsome beast…" He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on.
"Huh? Who's the cat here?! Don't look down on me, you nugget! I'm gonna beat your ass!"
The little feline stared at him fiercely, tail swishing, eyes blazing. It was as if it could kill him with a glare alone.
A newborn cat that threatened its master—that was a novelty Zhuo Riyan was not prepared for.
Lifebound beasts could communicate telepathically with their masters, but most could not speak. Mammal-types were an exception, and perhaps this tiny furball was one of those rare types.
Zhuo Riyan crouched closer, inspecting the cat's eyes. A tiny pinprick of light shimmered within the purple iris. A star.
"When a lifebound beast is born, the number of stars determines their tier…" he murmured, leaning back with a mix of depressed and exasperation.
Zhuo Riyan could still remember that Xiao Xiao had five stars when it first hatched, marking it as a rare five-star lifebound beast in Flame City. A lifebound beast's tier directly determined the potential of the beast, as well as the limits of the beastmaster's cultivation. A five-star lifebound beast was enough for Zhuo Riyan to be Flame City's top genius in the past three hundred years. This cat had only a single star, suggesting that it was only a miserable one-star beast.
The cat twitched its ears, as if mocking his tone.
"Hey, kid, I don't care about stars, fate, or anything else! But I really think you should get your eyes checked. If you look properly, you'll see how many stars I have. Hmph!"
Zhuo Riyan groaned.
Let's see what you've got, little cat…
"Wait—!"
As Zhuo Riyan leaned closer, staring into that tiny spark between the cat's pupils, his breath froze. The faint shimmer suddenly cracked—no, collapsed—scattering like a shattered universe. He blinked, unable to tell if it was illusion or reality.
Then he saw them.
Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands… and the number kept growing. At last, that single spark surged outward, swelling into an enormous starfield.
Inside it, countless stars burned—fiery, cold, ancient, newborn—each impossibly far apart yet merging into one breathtaking brilliance that forced Zhuo Riyan's eyes shut.
"What… what was that? That's… billions of star sparks!" His skull felt like it was splitting apart as his senses overloaded. His vision collapsed into darkness, and a terrifying pull dragged him toward the distant, boundless starfield.