Volume 2, Chapter 73: The Broken Script
The custom dimension I built looked like a cracked glass jar floating in a dark room.
The air tasted like a copper penny left under the tongue too long. It carried that sharp, dry smell of burnt insulation, the kind that comes when an old television finally dies. Across the fake horizon, purple lightning storms rolled and twisted without making a single sound. The air density kept shifting, so every sound wave simply died before it could travel far.
In the middle of this silent mess, my God King avatar sat on a floating chunk of grey granite.
I tossed a flat, smooth pebble up and down with my right hand. It was a boring little game, but it kept me awake. Around me, the young gods were sweating through their armor, lungs burning as they launched soul skills one after another.
Ma Xiaotao stood near the front, her Phoenix fire still burning but starting to flicker from exhaustion. Long Aotian kept his fists raised, the Strength God core in his chest pulsing with steady force. Ji Juechen held his iron sword in a tight grip, eyes never leaving the two enemies. And standing a little to the side, her golden light still bright despite the strain, was Ye Guyi — the Goddess of Dawn. The position Qian Renxue had created for her suited her perfectly. Her radiance cut clean lines through the greasy red fog, keeping the worst of the Crimson Mother's influence away from the others.
Up above, the Crimson Mother floated like a bloated red tick, her fog spreading in greasy waves. Opposite her stood Chen Feng, the God King of Nihility, his dark energy twitching like black oil.
I wasn't really fighting them. If I wanted this over, I could have ended it five minutes ago. That wasn't the point. I was acting like a tired gym coach. Every time Chen Feng tried to throw a world-destroying void strike at one of the kids, I simply waved my hand.
I didn't need my full strength. I just used the Phoenix Heart God Core to run a quick check of the attack's pattern, matched the frequency, and sent back a counter that was exactly a little stronger. The two forces would meet and pop like soap bubbles.
"Keep your left shoulder up, Xiaotao!" I called out. "If you drop your guard like that again, I'm going to let her next attack hit you. See how you like being a pincushion!"
I checked my fingernails. They were dusty. I really wanted a cup of coffee, but there was no running water in a pocket dimension. Why does every major fight have to happen when I'm thirsty?
Then the entire dimension took a sudden, deep breath.
It didn't feel like an explosion. It felt more like a giant hand had reached down, grabbed the corners of our pocket world, and pulled them tight.
The purple lightning storms froze. The greasy red fog around the Crimson Mother shrank back toward her body like a dog getting kicked off a porch. A heavy, cold stillness leaked in from somewhere outside, carrying the quiet scent of winter lakes.
Chen Feng stopped mid-swing. His dark sword stayed raised over his head, but his arms locked in place.
As a transmigrator, Chen Feng had always thought he held the advantage. When he first arrived in this era, he realized the entire history of the world was broken. He had read the original books back on Earth. He knew Tang San was supposed to destroy the Martial Soul Hall. Instead he found a massive Federation established twenty thousand years too early because a man named Lakan had unified the continents ten thousand years ago. He knew Tang San was dead, his Asura Core taken and given to someone else.
In Chen Feng's mind, Lakan was just a senior transmigrator — some lucky bastard who had arrived during the first book, snatched a mortal body, and ruined the entire plot from the inside out. Chen Feng had spent years trying to use his system to outplay that broken history. He thought he could still control the board. He thought he knew how the characters were supposed to develop.
But the heavy presence that just entered the dimension was unmistakable. It carried the weight of the God of Emotion, yet it was not a standard First-Class level. It was a full God King.
Chen Feng's face turned grey. The skin around his jaw tightened. His eyes went wide with a hollow kind of terror.
His knowledge was failing him completely. The pages of his mental script had been torn out and thrown into the fire. Huo Yuhao should not be a God King yet. He should not have this kind of density. The entire sequence of the world had been skipped. Lakan hadn't just tweaked the past ten thousand years ago. His actions had created an entirely new kind of future.
Space didn't explode. It didn't make a loud tearing noise.
A clean, silent line appeared in the empty air, as if someone had taken a sharp razor to a piece of black silk. The line parted, and Huo Yuhao stepped through.
He did not look like the kid who had been gasping in the mud an hour ago.
Yuhao wore long, heavy robes the color of a midnight sky. The fabric shifted as he moved — soft pink for longing, sudden silver for sorrow, deep gold for quiet resolve. His hair had lengthened into the color of deep glacial ice, drifting around his shoulders as if he stood underwater.
Behind him, nine divine rings spun. The first eight were bright and clear. The ninth was a massive wheel of gold and grey smoke that turned with a slow, heavy rhythm, warping the local gravity around his boots.
But the most striking thing was his forehead. The vertical slit had opened wide. The Eye of Destiny glowed like polished golden topaz. Inside the lens, countless glowing threads stretched outward in every direction — not a single path, but many branching possibilities layered over one another.
Right beside him stood Wang Qiu'er.
She wore brilliant golden scale armor that fit her frame perfectly. It looked heavy, functional, and built for war. In her right hand she held the Golden Dragon Spear, but the old gold metal was gone. The shaft had absorbed Yuhao's Chaos Qi and turned a dark, dangerous platinum. Five fiery orange-gold divine rings spun around her waist, humming with a physical density that made the surrounding space vibrate.
They looked like a hammer and an anvil. One carried pure mental sight. The other carried absolute physical force.
"Teacher," Yuhao said. His voice was steady and deep. "We are here."
"About time," I answered, tossing my pebble away. "I was starting to think I'd have to clean this mess up myself."
Chen Feng couldn't take the silence any longer. The panic in his chest turned into a screaming need to do something — anything — to prove he was still in control.
"I don't care what you changed!" he roared, voice cracking. He lunged forward, dark sword cutting a wide path through the dimension. "Nothingness eats everything! Return to zero!"
He unleashed his main power — Nihility.
Most gods fight by adding things to the world. They add fire, ice, or force. Nihility works by subtraction. It is an empty drain at the bottom of a sink. It looks at a divine attack, a body, or a soul core, and simply turns the value to zero. Throw a mountain of fire at it, and the void eats the heat and leaves nothing behind. It is a terrifying defense because you cannot fight an enemy who turns your energy into a blank page.
But Yuhao's Eye of Destiny was the perfect answer to subtraction.
When Chen Feng swung his sword, the Eye did not simply watch the blade. It saw the full spread of possibilities branching out from that single action. Countless glowing threads stretched forward and sideways at the same time. Some were bright and solid. Others were thin and fragile. Yuhao saw not only where the sword was going, but every possible path it could take, every weak point in the attack's structure, and the exact moment where the concept of "erasure" could be broken.
Nihility wants to erase the present. Destiny already holds the weight of what comes next. How do you turn a man to zero when he can already see the many ways the fight can end?
As the black wave of Nihility rushed toward him, Yuhao did not move. He did not raise his hands. He simply looked at the attack with the golden third eye.
With a soft, clean focus, he cut the main thread of Chen Feng's attack.
The black wave did not hit a shield. It did not explode. It simply lost its shape mid-air. The concept of the attack was removed from the path it was trying to take. The black energy dissolved back into harmless grey mist, vanishing as if it had never been formed.
It was a quiet, terrifying exchange. One man wanted everything to become empty. The other had already seen the many possible endings and chosen which ones would not be allowed.
Behind us, the young gods stood frozen.
Ma Xiaotao's flames flickered and died down to a dull glimmer. She stared at Yuhao's nine rings, her mouth slightly open. She had known him back at the academy when he was still figuring out his spiritual detection. Now the sheer weight of his presence made her own divine fire feel small.
Long Aotian lowered his fists. The Strength God core in his chest thrummed with a deep defensive vibration. He looked at Wang Qiu'er's five orange-gold rings and the platinum spear in her hand. Even with fewer rings, her physical output carried a density that rivaled the higher seats in the realm.
Ji Juechen said nothing. He only gripped his sword tighter, dark eyes fixed on the way Yuhao had cut the void. To a man who had spent his life studying the perfect strike, that movement was not just powerful. It was clean. Controlled. Complete.
Ye Guyi stood a little apart from the others, her Dawn light still steady. She watched Yuhao with calm, assessing eyes. There was no shock on her face — only recognition. She had always known the boy carried something heavy inside him. Now that weight had finally taken its true form.
"How… how did you do that?" Chen Feng stumbled backward, his dark sword shaking. He looked at his weapon, then at Yuhao's calm face. "That's not how your skills work! You're supposed to use ice! You're supposed to use illusions!"
"The old story is finished, Chen Feng," Yuhao said quietly. He stepped forward. The nine rings behind him hummed with a deep, planetary tone. "We're writing a different one now."
The Crimson Mother let out a high-pitched shriek of fury. She realized the tide had turned and tried to launch a desperate needle of red light toward Yuhao's side.
Before she could release the energy, I stood up from my granite rock.
With a casual flick of my finger, I activated the Phoenix Heart God Core. A small spark of white-blue flame shot across the dark space. It did not burn her. It simply hit the space in front of her face and locked her personal timeline a few moments before she decided to attack. Her red needle vanished. Her body froze like a statue.
"Hey. No interfering while the kids are talking," I said. I pulled a wooden folding chair out of a small tear in space, set it down on the grey rock, sat down, and leaned my head back with my hands behind my neck.
I looked over at the young gods, who were still standing there in shock.
"Alright, kids," I said, pointing toward the two panicking villains. "The captain is finally here, and his partner brought a very heavy dragon spear. Ye Guyi, keep that Dawn light steady on their flanks. Xiaotao, Aotian, Ji Juechen — get behind them and support. Let's see if you actually learned anything during my lectures."
I gave them a small, lazy grin.
"Go make a mess."
End of Volume 2, Chapter 73