The battlefield did not exist until Hunluan Zi arrived.
One moment, the borderland plain lay silent beneath a bruised twilight sky—cracked earth, dead grass, the faint stench of old blood. The next, space itself seemed to hiccup, as if reality had taken a wrong step.
Then he was there.
Not descending.Not teleporting.
He simply stood, as though the world had always been waiting for him to arrive and had only now remembered to load him in.
Hunluan Zi stretched his neck lazily, joints popping one by one. His robe—once white, now permanently stained with layers of dried crimson and black—fluttered in a wind that did not exist a heartbeat earlier.
"Ahhh…" he sighed, eyes half-lidded. "Fresh air. Fresh fear."
The plain trembled.
Not violently. Not yet.
It was a subtle shiver, the kind that crawled up the spine before the mind understood danger.
Hunluan Zi grinned.
"Let's see," he muttered. "Heaven said this place was… what was it again?"
He tilted his head, pretending to think.
"Oh right."
A dozen distant figures appeared along the horizon, their auras flaring as detection arrays activated. Flying swords, spirit beasts, armored cultivators—organized, alert, disciplined.
Hunluan Zi snapped his fingers.
"A fortified extermination zone."
His grin split wider.
"HHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The laughter ripped outward, sharp and unrestrained, carrying no dignity, no restraint—only pure delight. The sound bent strangely, echoing twice, then three times, as if the air itself couldn't decide how to process it.
Miles away, cultivators flinched.
"Did you hear that?"
"That laugh—what cultivation technique is that?"
"I don't know, but my spiritual sense feels… wrong."
Hunluan Zi rolled his shoulders again and took a single step forward.
The ground collapsed.
Not cracked.
Collapsed—folding inward like rotten paper as gravity warped around his footfall. A shallow crater formed, then sealed itself as if embarrassed.
"Hm," he said thoughtfully. "Too fragile."
He lifted his gaze toward the incoming force.
"So," he called out, voice carrying effortlessly, "which one of you idiots volunteered to die first?"
The Azure Burial Formation activated instantly.
Hundreds of light pillars slammed into place, forming a dome that sealed the battlefield from all sides. Runes ignited midair. Space tightened, compressing movement, suppressing escape.
At the heart of the formation floated an elderly man with snow-white brows and a jade staff clutched in his hand.
"Hear this, demon!" the elder thundered. "You are Hunluan Zi, one of the Villains of Nine Heavens. By Heavenly Mandate—"
Hunluan Zi raised a hand.
"Stop."
The elder froze—not physically, but spiritually. His words died in his throat as pressure wrapped around his chest like invisible fingers.
Hunluan Zi squinted.
"You people always do this," he complained. "Long speeches. Big words. Zero personality."
He tilted his head, studying the formation.
"Azure Burial… ah, yes. The one that compresses space into layered coffins, right?"
The elder's pupils shrank.
"How—"
Hunluan Zi snapped his fingers again.
The outermost layer of the formation imploded.
Cultivators screamed as spatial pressure reversed, crushing some into bloody mist, flinging others into the dome walls with bone-shattering force.
Hunluan Zi laughed again, louder this time.
"HAHAHAHA! You even upgraded it a little! Cute! Very cute!"
He stepped forward.
This time, the ground screamed.
Literally.
A low, distorted wail rose as fault lines spiraled outward, the earth reacting too late to reject his presence. Dust and debris hung frozen in the air as gravity spasmed unpredictably.
Hunluan Zi lifted his hand, fingers twitching.
"Let's warm up."
He flicked his wrist.
Reality tilted.
Not sideways. Not up or down.
It tilted wrong.
Cultivators lost their orientation instantly. Some slammed headfirst into the ground. Others fell upward, smashing into nothing before snapping back down.
Blood sprayed.
"W-what is this?!" someone screamed. "My balance—my Dao—!"
Hunluan Zi clutched his stomach, laughing so hard he nearly doubled over.
"HHAHAHAHAHA—oh, this never gets old!"
He straightened, wiping a tear from his eye.
"Listen carefully," he said cheerfully. "I don't control gravity."
He snapped his fingers.
"I control context."
The battlefield fractured.
Not physically—conceptually.
Up lost meaning. Distance lied. Cause and effect lagged half a breath behind intention.
A Nascent Soul cultivator tried to flee.
He took one step—
—and arrived directly in front of Hunluan Zi, face pale with horror.
Hunluan Zi blinked.
"Oh. Hello."
The cultivator tried to scream.
Hunluan Zi poked his forehead.
The man's head twisted backward, spine snapping as if time itself had shrugged.
Hunluan Zi sighed contentedly.
"See? So much faster without speeches."
Above, the elder roared in fury.
"FORMATION SHIFT! SEVENTH SEAL! ALL UNITS, SACRIFICE ESSENCE IF YOU MUST!"
Golden runes ignited, burning cultivators' lifespans to reinforce the collapsing structure. The dome thickened, layers stacking, pressure multiplying.
Hunluan Zi's smile faded.
For half a second.
"Oh?" he said softly. "You're serious."
The air grew heavy.
Hunluan Zi's posture changed—not aggressive, not defensive—but attentive, like a predator acknowledging prey with a bit of fight left.
"Alright," he murmured. "Let me show you why Heaven calls me this."
He spread his arms wide.
"Chaos Domain: Unscripted Reality."
The world broke its own rules.
Sound arrived before actions. Blood splattered before wounds opened. Attacks landed before techniques were activated.
Cultivators screamed as their carefully practiced sequences unraveled.
A sword strike manifested behind its wielder.
A defensive shield crushed the cultivator it was meant to protect.
The elder's staff cracked as causality twisted, backlash tearing through his meridians.
Hunluan Zi walked forward, boots crunching on invisible fractures.
Each step rewrote local logic.
He grabbed a flying sword midair.
The sword tried to resist.
Hunluan Zi frowned.
"Oh, don't be like that."
He squeezed.
The sword screamed—a shrill metallic shriek—before liquefying into molten essence that dripped through his fingers.
Hunluan Zi sniffed.
"Low quality."
He tossed it aside.
Panic spread.
This wasn't a battle.
This was an environment malfunction wearing a human shape.
Cultivators began to break ranks.
"Retreat!"
"Formation is useless!"
"This thing isn't bound by Dao laws!"
Hunluan Zi heard them all.
He laughed again.
"Yes! YES! That's it! Say it louder!"
He clapped his hands together.
The sound detonated.
A shockwave of warped causality rippled outward, turning retreat into collision. Bodies smashed together midair, bones pulverizing, organs rupturing without visible impact.
Hunluan Zi stood at the center, hair whipping wildly, eyes shining with manic delight.
"This is living!" he shouted. "This is freedom!"
The elder coughed blood, barely holding himself together.
"You… you are an aberration…"
Hunluan Zi tilted his head.
"Hm?"
He leaned closer, bending space to shorten the distance.
"Aberration?" he repeated. "No, no, old man."
He smiled, sharp and gleeful.
"I'm what happens when the script gets boring."
He placed a hand on the elder's chest.
"Tell Heaven," Hunluan Zi whispered, voice suddenly cold, "that their rules are predictable."
He twisted.
The elder folded inward, body collapsing into a singularity of broken Dao and shredded karma before vanishing entirely.
The formation died with him.
Silence followed.
Not peace.
Just absence.
Hunluan Zi stood alone amid floating debris, blood drifting lazily like red snow.
He exhaled.
"Whew. That was… acceptable."
He stretched again, casual as if he'd just finished a light jog.
From afar, hidden observers severed their techniques in terror, hearts pounding.
Hunluan Zi glanced upward.
"You watching?" he asked lazily.
The sky did not answer.
He grinned anyway.
"Good. Tell them I'm bored."
The ground beneath him began to settle, reality slowly stitching itself back together now that his attention drifted.
Hunluan Zi turned, hands tucked behind his head.
"Xue Luo's having all the fun," he muttered. "Can't let little brother steal the spotlight."
He took a step—
—and vanished, leaving behind a battlefield that would take centuries to fully understand.
High above, beyond mortal sight, the Heavenly System logged the event.
—ANOMALY CONFIRMED——HUNLUAN ZI——THREAT LEVEL: UNBOUNDED——RESPONSE: DEFERRED—
For the first time, Heaven hesitated.
And Hunluan Zi laughed, somewhere beyond causality.
The battlefield did not return to normal.
It pretended to.
The earth slowly knitted itself together, fractures sealing, gravity regaining obedience—but the scars remained beneath the surface. Auras refused to settle. Spiritual energy moved in hesitant spirals, as if unsure which laws still applied.
Silence stretched unnaturally long.
Then—
A scream.
One of the surviving cultivators—barely alive, body twisted at an impossible angle—suddenly convulsed. His eyes rolled back as his meridians detonated from delayed backlash.
Blood sprayed.
Another survivor collapsed, clutching his head.
"No—no—this isn't over—why can I still hear him laughing?!"
There was no laughter.
But the echo remained.
Hunluan Zi's presence had imprinted itself onto the battlefield, like a stain reality hadn't yet learned how to scrub away.
Hidden observers emerged cautiously.
A mirror disciple from the Thousand Lens Sect materialized first, his projection flickering violently.
"T-this place…" he whispered. "It's still unstable. Causality loops every seven breaths."
He swallowed.
"Record everything. Heaven needs to see this."
Others appeared—shadows cloaked in concealment arts, spirit beasts bound by fear rather than loyalty, even a demon scout whose horns trembled uncontrollably.
None of them spoke.
They didn't dare.
A single step forward sent ripples through space, the ground subtly shifting its inclination, as if remembering Hunluan Zi's footsteps.
One cultivator laughed suddenly.
High-pitched. Broken.
"He's gone," the man said, smiling too wide. "He's gone, right?"
No one answered.
The man's smile froze.
Then his head snapped sideways.
Dead.
No attack.No cause.
Just residual disorder claiming another life.
That was when panic truly set in.
"Withdraw!"
"Pull all observers back!"
"Sever all karmic anchors—NOW!"
One by one, techniques were cut. Projections vanished. Beasts fled. Shadows dissolved.
No one wanted to be the last thing lingering in a place Hunluan Zi had grown bored of.
Far away, within the Heavenly Observation Vault, jade tablets shattered one after another.
Clerks froze mid-inscription as their brushes burst into flame.
"What's happening?!" one screamed.
A senior registrar stared at the floating projection, face drained of color.
"The battlefield… it's still rewriting itself."
"Impossible. The subject has already left!"
The registrar swallowed.
"Then the problem isn't the subject anymore."
A massive tablet rotated slowly, its surface filling with crimson fractures.
EVENT TYPE:Localized Law Collapse (Non-Reversible)
A murmur rippled through the vault.
"He didn't just kill them…"
"He damaged the region's compliance."
Someone whispered the unthinkable.
"This area may never fully return to Heavenly alignment."
Silence followed.
Then a new line carved itself into the records.
ANNOTATION:Hunluan Zi exhibits post-presence instability effects.Threat persists after departure.
For the first time in countless eras, Heaven recorded fear without disguising it as caution.
In the mortal realms, rumors ignited like wildfire.
"He didn't fight a sect. He fought the land itself."
"My master says the battlefield still kills people at random."
"They say even Heaven's formations malfunctioned."
A drunken cultivator slammed his cup down.
"Bullshit! No one can do that!"
A scarred veteran beside him laughed bitterly.
"You weren't there."
Across demon territory, the story spread differently.
Hunluan Zi's name was spoken with reverence—and hunger.
"A being who breaks rules just by arriving…"
"He would make a fine calamity ally."
Somewhere deep within a sealed domain, an ancient demon opened one eye.
"Interesting," it rumbled. "Very interesting."
Hunluan Zi, meanwhile, walked through a place that did not officially exist.
A corridor between moments.
Space folded lazily around him, reacting late, like a tired servant.
He yawned.
"Too easy," he complained. "They're adapting slower than I hoped."
He tilted his head, listening.
Faint vibrations echoed through the void—Heaven shifting strategies, fate recalculating priorities.
Hunluan Zi smiled.
"Oh?" he said. "Now you're thinking?"
He chuckled softly.
"Good. That's when mistakes happen."
He stopped walking.
For a brief moment, his expression sharpened—not manic, not playful.
Focused.
"Xue Luo," he murmured. "You better not finish the game without me."
The void rippled as his mood shifted, disorder flaring briefly before settling.
Hunluan Zi resumed walking, hands behind his head.
"Next time," he said casually, "I'll stay longer."
Somewhere far behind him, reality shuddered in anticipation.