In the silent, eternal vacuum between realms, a man sat upon a throne of frozen galaxies. He was Kai Leyan—The Celestial Devourer. The Last Immortal.
For three thousand years, he had conquered. He had ascended from a mortal on a backwater planet called Earth, fueled by a cold, relentless wrath. His power was absolute. His celestial palace, carved from the bones of dragon gods, was a monument to his victories.
And he was empty.
The grand hall echoed with a silence deeper than the void. His eyes, older than stars, were closed. Before his mind's eye played not a memory of godhood, but a mortal one. Fragile. Human.
A rainy night. Neon reflections on wet asphalt. The screech of tires. Guttural laughter. His mother's cry—"Run, Leyan!"—cut short. His father on his knees in a puddle, begging. The cold, sneering face of a young man in a luxury car: Jin Feng. A dismissive flick of a wrist. Then, pain and darkness.
That moment of powerlessness was the seed. The knot in his Dao heart. It had propelled him to these impossible heights. And now, at the peak of existence, it was unraveling him.
A tremor passed through the palace. Leyan's eyes snapped open. In their depths flickered the lost gaze of an eighteen-year-old boy.
"Heart demon," he whispered.
He had tried to sever it. To burn it away. But this was a crack in his very foundation. His universe was flawed. His cultivation, stagnant for a century, was fracturing.
A realization, cold and final, settled upon him.
To survive, he could not destroy the memory. He had to consume it. He had to return to its source and rewrite it. Not as a detached god, but with the vengeance of the boy he had been.
It was a suicidal paradox. His godly body would not survive the qi-thin modern Earth. His soul would be shredded.
But Kai Leyan devoured paradoxes.
He stood. He initiated the most forbidden ritual: The Soul's Regression.
He began to tear himself apart. Not his body—that he left behind, a magnificent shell already crumbling to stellar dust. He unraveled his cultivation, strand by agonizing strand. Universe-shattering power was condensed, refined, and sealed away into the deepest marrow of his soul essence, hidden behind locks of his own design. He stripped himself of godhood, layer by layer, howling in silent agony.
He was left with only the core: his consciousness, the sealed reservoir of his potential, and the burning, unquenched fire of that rainy night.
With a final, wrenching scream that echoed through dead galaxies, he hurled his soul essence across the dimensional barriers—a shooting star aimed at a single point in space-time.
Target: Earth. City: Skyhaven. The night of the humiliation.
Consciousness returned with the violence of a dying star.
Sound. Rain. Sirens. Ragged breathing.
Smell. Wet asphalt. Blood.
Sensation. A throbbing agony in his ribs. A sticky warmth on his temple.
Leyan's eyes flew open.
He was in a filthy alley, propped against a dumpster. Neon painted the puddles pink and green. He was soaked, wearing a cheap jacket and jeans.
This… is right.
He pushed himself up, wincing. He looked at his hands. Young. Calloused. Weak.
A wave of disorientation hit him—the crushing weight of mortality. The suffocating lack of spiritual qi. This pathetic, fragile flesh.
But beneath it, humming like a slumbering dragon, was the seal. Vast. Infinite. His true power, locked away. He could sense it, but accessing it here was like drinking an ocean through a straw. A potential, not a weapon.
Memory, sharp and vicious, completed its work.
Tonight.
He was Kai Leyan, eighteen. His father, Kai Ming, had been ruined by the Jin Corporation for refusing a "partnership." Tonight, they had gone to plead. They were ambushed. His father was taken. Leyan was thrown here, into this alley, like garbage.
In the original timeline, he would crawl home broken. Tomorrow, his father's body would be found. His mother would follow soon after.
That timeline was now ash.
A slow, predatory smile touched his bloody lips. The smile of a god in a boy's skin.
"Jin Feng," he whispered. "The play has just begun."
He took a breath, forcing his body to obey. He was catastrophically weak. But he had knowledge of the future, and a will forged in cosmic fire.
He closed his eyes, reaching inward. The ocean of power was inaccessible, but… there were puddles. Minute cracks in the seal, leaking the faintest wisp of celestial essence. It was less than a trillionth of his strength, but in this qi-barren world, it was a supernova in a matchbox.
He directed this wisp through his meridians, following the most basic technique—the "Iron Bone, Granite Sinew" art. Laughably primitive, but all this body could handle.
A fierce warmth spread from his core. The ache dulled. The bleeding stopped. The chill burned away.
He opened his eyes. His vision was preternaturally sharp. He could see individual raindrops. Hear a rat three alleys over. His body, still frail, was cleansed and buzzing with vitality.
It was enough.
He stood, fluid and sure, and walked out of the alley. The city of Skyhaven, a jungle of glass and steel, stretched before him. He knew all its dirty secrets.
But first, he had to get his father back.
He knew where they would be: the "White Orchid" Warehouse by the docks.
Kai Leyan began to run. His enhanced body ate up the pavement. He was a ghost in the rain-slicked night, moving toward the first act of his vengeance.