The void was screaming.
High above the Nine Heavens, at the very precipice of the God-Realm, the stars were bleeding. Shen Yuan, known to the three thousand worlds as the Abyssal Dragon Sovereign, stood amidst a sea of lightning. His golden armor was shattered, and his chest heaved with the weight of a thousand battles.
Before him stood a woman of peerless beauty, her robes white as fallen snow, and a man holding a spear that hummed with the power of a dying sun.
"Why, Liu Xi?" Shen Yuan's voice was a low rumble that shook the foundations of the firmament. "I gave you the Dragon's Marrow. I paved your path to immortality with the bones of my enemies."
The woman, Goddess Liu Xi, didn't look away. Her eyes were cold, devoid of the warmth he had cherished for centuries. "The world can only have one True God, Yuan. You were the mountain blocking our view of the peak."
"And the Nine Evolutions Scripture," the man beside her added, his voice dripping with envy. This was Mu Feng, the man Shen Yuan had called 'brother' for a millennium. "It was never meant for a beast like you. Hand it over, and we might let your soul enter the cycle of reincarnation."
Shen Yuan let out a laugh that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. "A beast? You survived the Void Storms only because I shielded you with my scales! You want the Scripture? Then come and take it from the heart of a Dragon!"
As Mu Feng's spear lunged forward—a strike fast enough to pierce time itself—Shen Yuan didn't dodge. Instead, he reached into his own chest, grabbing his burning Soul-Core. With a roar that deafened the gods, he ignited his very essence.
'If I cannot ascend, then no one shall rule!'
The resulting explosion didn't just destroy the physical plane; it tore a hole in the fabric of Karma. As his consciousness faded into the cold embrace of the void, a golden scroll hidden in the deepest recesses of his soul began to glow.
[Condition Met: Death of the Mortal Shell.]
[Initiating First Evolution: Rebirth.]
"Is he dead?"
"Who cares? If he's dead, it saves us the trouble of dragging him to the Black Stone Mines."
A sharp, stinging pain in his side forced Shen Yuan's eyes open. He didn't see the cosmic lightning of the Nine Heavens. He saw a damp, rotting floor and felt the chill of a winter draft.
He tried to draw breath, but his lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. He reached for his Qi—the vast ocean of power that could move planets—but found only a dry, withered wasteland.
My Dantian... it's not just empty. It's shattered.
Memories—pathetic, agonizing memories—surged into his mind. He wasn't in the God-Realm. He was in the Azure Cloud Continent, a low-level plane where the air was thin and the 'experts' were no better than children. He was 'Shen Yuan,' the shame of the Shen Clan.
Three days ago, his cousin Shen Tao had struck him with a Viper Palm, purposefully destroying his cultivation base to ensure he could never compete for the position of Clan Heir. The 'Genius' of the family had been reduced to a beggar in his own home.
"To think..." Shen Yuan whispered, coughing up a glob of dark, clotted blood. "That I, who once commanded the Nine Dragon Legions, would be kicked by a common slave."
He looked at his hands. They were thin, calloused, and trembling. But beneath the skin, he felt a faint, rhythmic throb. It was the Nine Evolutions of the Dragon God.
In his past life, he had obtained the scripture after his foundation was already set. He had been a human trying to mimic a dragon. But now? His human foundation was gone. His Dantian was a ruin.
'The Heavens have given me a clean canvas,' he thought, a terrifyingly cold light gleaming in his eyes. 'Mu Feng, Liu Xi... you think you won? You stole my throne, but you left me with the one thing I needed to truly surpass you: A body with no limits.'
He dragged his broken frame into a meditative posture. Each movement was a battle against agony, but his will was a blade forged in the fires of a billion years.
"The Dragon God does not seek the path of man," he muttered, beginning the first breath-cycle of the forbidden scripture. "He creates his own."
Inside his broken body, the golden scroll began to unroll. The shattered fragments of his Dantian didn't mend. Instead, they began to glow with a primal, predatory heat. The First Evolution was calling for blood, and Shen Yuan was more than willing to pay the price.
Outside the shed, the sun began to rise, oblivious to the fact that a monster had just been born in the dark