A man could be seen standing very still in the middle of Heaven.
Not the romantic kind of heaven that mortals prayed to when they were desperate - the real one. The kind that had been built, brick by immortal brick, by hands that believed history itself should kneel.
Heavenly Court.
A place where palaces floated like islands, where white jade bridges connected halls of gold, where starry rivers curved through the sky as if someone had dragged a brush of light across the world and refused to clean the mess.
From far away, it looked flawless.
Up close, it looked like a blade that had been sharpened too many times.
Li Xiao Bai stood among the gathered immortals, neither at the very front nor at the back. The front was where people went to be seen - or to be used. The back was where people went when they hoped nobody noticed their fear. His place was in the middle, where sight lines were clean and escape routes still existed if Heaven decided to bite down.
He did not move much.
Moving drew eyes.
Eyes drew questions.
Questions led to attention.
And attention, inside Heavenly Court, had a habit of turning into a grave.
The air felt wrong.
It was clean - painfully clean. Every breath carried a cold purity that would have made a mortal cry from joy, yet the purity was so perfect that it became suffocating. Like the world had been scrubbed until even the smell of life was considered a stain.
Moonlight fell across the grand formation, not because the moon was kind enough to shine here, but because Heaven had stolen light long ago and learned how to hang it wherever needed.
The formation dominated the sky.
Layers upon layers of glowing patterns revolved in slow, precise circles. Symbols rose, sank, and vanished. Star lines intersected like threads in an enormous loom. Every few heartbeats, those threads tightened - then loosened again - as if the formation was breathing.
And at the center of everything, floating calmly as if it owned the place, was a fruit.
Qi Harvest Fruit.
It was about the size of a human head, pale and translucent like milky jade. Inside it, thick currents of qi rolled and churned. Those currents did not behave like mist or wind. They behaved like a sea trapped inside glass, surging with patience and force, pressing against invisible walls.
The fruit pulsed faintly, as if alive.
The immortals around Li Xiao Bai looked at it the way starving men looked at bread.
Some were quiet - the kind of quiet that belonged to worship.
Some whispered prayers under their breath.
Some stared with wide eyes, as if they were afraid that blinking might make the miracle disappear.
'He is coming back.'
'Primordial Origin is returning.'
'Heavenly Court will rise again.'
Li Xiao Bai listened to all of it and kept his face empty.
He was not here for worship.
He was here for information.
Even now, even in this place, even surrounded by the righteous path's finest, he could not afford to forget what kind of era this was. Three venerables existed at the same time. A single wrong step could turn an immortal into a footnote - or worse, into a resource point somebody else looted.
Heavenly Court had been looted before.
The thought tasted bitter.
It was hard not to remember. Spectral Soul had once torn through this place like a mad storm. Treasures vanished. Vaults were emptied. The immortal graveyard had been burned thin. Even now, the scars remained hidden under fresh paint, like bruises covered by makeup.
But that was not the danger today.
Today, the danger was success.
Because success meant Primordial Origin Immortal Venerable truly returned - and if that happened, the balance of the world would tilt so hard that the rest of existence might crack.
Li Xiao Bai shifted his gaze and studied the formation instead of the faces.
Information Path did not rely on strength.
It relied on details.
The formation was flawless on the surface. The outer rings rotated with perfect timing. The star patterns never collided. Every pulse of qi from the fruit was captured, refined, and redirected back into the core. The entire mechanism looked like a divine machine that had never known failure.
Which was exactly why his instincts kept whispering.
Something that perfect was either controlled by an absolute genius - or trapped inside a cage built by one.
A low murmur rolled through the crowd.
Not words.
A change in mood.
The kind of shift that happened when people sensed something large approaching, even if they could not explain how they sensed it.
Li Xiao Bai followed the direction of the immortals' attention and saw Star Constellation Immortal Venerable.
She stood closer to the core than anyone else.
No guard wall.
No defensive formation hovering above her head like a halo.
Her presence was the defense.
She looked calm, like the sky. But her calm did not feel gentle. It felt sharp. Every line of her posture seemed measured. Every breath seemed planned. Even the way her sleeves hung carried a quiet threat, as if the air itself had been taught to behave around her.
Everyone in Heaven knew she was the mind of Heavenly Court.
The one who calculated.
The one who planned.
The one who decided what was worth sacrificing - and what deserved to survive.
The immortals around Li Xiao Bai found comfort in her calm.
Li Xiao Bai did not.
Because Star Constellation's calm always meant one thing.
She had already accepted the cost.
And Heavenly Court's costs were never small.
The fruit pulsed again.
This time, the light inside it brightened for a brief moment, and the currents of qi shifted - not violently, not chaotically - but with a subtle change in rhythm, like a song that had altered a single note.
Most immortals did not notice.
Li Xiao Bai noticed.
He stared at that change until his eyes ached.
Then he felt it.
A pressure.
Not the obvious kind that crushed bones. Not killing intent.
A pressure like a hand resting on the back of your neck, guiding your head to look in a certain direction whether you wanted to or not.
Li Xiao Bai realized something with quiet certainty.
This was the sensitive stage.
The stage where the method demanded purity.
The stage where the core began to shape.
If a flaw existed, it would not show itself early. Early stages had too much noise - too many layers masking the truth. But when the method reached the point of giving a body to a legend, even a grain of sand could crack the entire structure.
And Heaven was about to give a body to its greatest legend.
The whispers grew louder.
'Look - it is forming.'
Inside the fruit, the qi currents condensed.
A shape appeared.
At first, it was vague - a suggestion rather than a form. Something you could blame on imagination.
Then the vague shape became undeniable.
A spine.
A rib cage.
Shoulders.
A head that was still faceless, smooth as stone, yet heavy with presence.
Several immortals trembled.
One dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face.
Li Xiao Bai did not kneel.
He simply watched.
He did not need to worship Primordial Origin to understand what the man's return meant.
Heavenly Court believed it was building salvation.
Li Xiao Bai suspected it was building a weapon.
The fruit pulsed again.
The outer formation rings flared to compensate, their symbols brightening, their circuits accelerating. The air around the core grew so luminous that weaker immortals had to turn their faces away.
The faceless head inside the fruit gained definition.
A brow line.
Cheekbones.
A jaw.
The outline of closed eyelids.
A mouth that had not yet spoken.
A god sleeping inside a womb of qi.
The crowd began to sound drunk on relief.
They were not cheering yet.
But they were already cheering in their hearts.
Li Xiao Bai's mind wandered, uninvited, to the real reason this fruit could exist at all.
Qi Sea Ancestor.
Not the original - the clone.
That fact mattered.
Heavenly Court had not captured a random Qi Path expert. It had captured the correct ingredient. The clone's origin was tied to the fruit's foundation. That was why the method needed him. Not for his strength. Not for his attainment. For his birth.
For his identity.
For his relationship to the very thing Heavenly Court was trying to complete.
Star Constellation had sealed him, extracted his Gu, drained his aperture, then refined his body into a component. His soul had been sealed. His flesh had been forced into transformation.
People called it victory.
Li Xiao Bai called it inevitability.
Because Fang Yuan had known Star Constellation wanted that clone.
He had known she would capture it.
He had known she would seal it.
And Fang Yuan was the kind of person who did not lose pieces by accident.
He lost pieces the way a gambler tossed chips onto the table - with intent, with calculation, with a half-smile that made everyone else uncomfortable.
A memory surfaced in Li Xiao Bai's mind, like a shard of ice.
A voice, calm as death.
'The highest point for a lifeform is to reach immortality.'
Wealth, beauty, reputation - those were toys.
Tools.
Masks.
Everything could be used.
Everything could be discarded.
And that was why Fang Yuan was terrifying.
A man obsessed with wealth could be bribed.
A man obsessed with love could be trapped.
A man obsessed with pride could be baited.
But a man obsessed with immortality treated everything else as fuel.
Even his own clones.
Even his own name.
Even other people's salvation.
Li Xiao Bai breathed in, slow and quiet.
He forced his thoughts away from Fang Yuan.
Fang Yuan was not here.
Fang Yuan was not attacking.
That absence should have been comforting.
It was not.
The fruit pulsed again.
For a brief moment, the qi currents inside it hesitated.
It was small.
A single stutter.
Less than a blink.
But it was there.
The surrounding formation reacted instantly, flaring brighter, tightening its circuits, smoothing the stutter away.
The crowd did not notice.
Li Xiao Bai did.
His heart tightened.
Not because he feared the fruit failing.
Because he feared the fruit succeeding in the wrong way.
A second stutter followed.
Longer.
The formation corrected it again, but the correction looked strained for the first time. The symbols flickered too quickly. The star patterns rotated faster, as if the method was trying to reach the finish line before something caught up from behind.
Star Constellation shifted her stance.
It was a small movement, almost invisible.
But Li Xiao Bai felt the meaning behind it.
She was bracing.
The faceless face inside the fruit grew clearer.
A nose.
A mouth.
Closed eyelids that looked almost peaceful.
The presence in the air thickened until it felt like the world had gained weight.
Some immortals began to gasp.
Some whispered their prayers louder.
Li Xiao Bai remained silent.
His eyes were fixed on the center.
Deep inside that method, where the clone's transformed body had become the foundation, something was wrong.
He could not see the foundation.
Nobody could.
That was the point of the formation.
But Information Path did not need direct sight.
It needed patterns.
It needed cracks.
It needed the places where the world tried too hard to pretend everything was fine.
Li Xiao Bai saw one of those cracks.
A reflection.
For a heartbeat, in the fruit's translucent surface, a distorted image appeared as the qi tide twisted.
Not Primordial Origin.
Not Star Constellation.
A calm gaze.
A gaze that did not look at the fruit with hope or fear.
A gaze that looked at it the way someone looked at a tool placed on a table - already measured, already understood, already doomed.
Li Xiao Bai's blood ran cold.
Fang Yuan.
The reflection vanished immediately, swallowed by swirling qi. It might have been an illusion. It might have been a coincidence. It might have been nothing at all.
Li Xiao Bai did not believe in coincidences anymore.
The fruit's glow surged.
Light expanded from the core, swallowing the colors of the sky. The formation's rings accelerated, their symbols flashing in rapid sequence. The entire method felt like it was rushing, as if time itself had become an enemy.
The face inside the fruit gained the final details.
The curve of the lips.
The lines around the eyes.
A familiar calm.
A familiar heaviness.
A legendary presence that made every immortal in the area feel small.
For one breath, everything held still.
Then the world broke.
The explosion did not come with flames.
It came with rejection.
A rejection of structure.
A rejection of balance.
A rejection of the world agreeing to remain the world.
The core erupted.
A wave of force blasted outward, silent for the first fraction of a heartbeat. The innermost formation layers vanished - not shattered, not cracked - simply erased, as if their dao marks had been wiped from existence.
Then sound arrived.
A roar so vast that it did not feel like noise. It felt like the sky screaming.
Immortals screamed too.
Defensive killer moves ignited in panicked bursts, some too slow, some misfiring, some collapsing instantly under the force. Immortal palaces cracked like brittle shells. Jade bridges snapped. Star rivers twisted and scattered, their currents flung into spirals.
Li Xiao Bai felt the ground lose meaning.
He did not feel himself falling.
He felt the idea of 'up' and 'down' slipping.
Space cracked.
Real cracks - black lines opening across the sky, spreading like wounds. Those fissures did not bleed. They swallowed everything near them. Halls, formations, immortals, light - swallowed without leaving debris.
Voices cut off mid-scream.
Li Xiao Bai's breath caught.
A second wave struck, sharper than the first.
The explosion tore a massive chunk of Heavenly Court loose.
Not a small fragment.
A piece of immortal land bound together by violence - broken halls, shattered formations, collapsing roads, and bodies thrown like dust inside a storm.
Li Xiao Bai was inside that chunk.
He reached out, reflexively, and his fingers caught air.
The chunk surged forward like a falling star, thrown toward the edge of Heaven itself.
The boundary of Heavenly Court was supposed to be absolute.
It was supposed to separate this sacred world from the chaos outside.
Now that boundary cracked like thin glass.
The chunk punched through.
For an instant, Li Xiao Bai saw the inside of Heaven behind him - light, order, star patterns, desperate immortals - all collapsing into confusion.
Then he saw what waited beyond.
A blackness that was not night.
Not shadow.
Not fog.
A blackness that erased meaning.
Light did not enter it.
Sound did not echo within it.
The space near it looked wrong, as if distance had stopped being a promise.
The chunk of Heavenly Court fell toward that blackness.
The first edges touched it.
And the edges vanished.
Not broken.
Not torn.
Not reduced to dust.
Gone.
Li Xiao Bai stared, and his mind failed to build a proper thought.
One word rose anyway, heavy and final.
Chaos.