The air in Cloud Edge City's central plaza felt as thick as freezing mud.
High above the celebrating masses, suspended on a crystalline lotus palanquin, Ye Xiyue, the Saintess of the Fallen Moon Palace, stared down at the crowd. Her eyes, cool and distant as the dark side of the moon, swept over the sea of faces—and stopped dead on Lu Chen.
Lu Chen did not flinch. Under his drab gray robes and the mud smeared across his cheeks, his muscles coiled like a striking viper. He drew his Qi inward, condensing his cultivation down to a near-undetectable hum, anchoring it in the abyssal hollow of his newly forged Void Root.
Ye Xiyue's brow furrowed slightly. The 'Heart of the Sword' technique gave her the ability to perceive the harmony of the world. Every living being radiated a subtle hum of destiny. But the man in the gray robes... he was a black hole. Where his providence should have been, there was only a gaping, terrifying void. It was as if the fabric of reality had been cleanly excised in the shape of a human.
"Saintess?" An elder from the Fallen Moon Palace murmured, floating near her palanquin. "Is something amiss?"
Ye Xiyue blinked, the connection broken. She looked back at the spot, but a surge of eager disciples chanting Fang Tianyou's name had shifted the crowd. The gray-robed man was gone.
"Nothing," Ye Xiyue replied, her voice like chimes in a winter wind. "Just a shadow in the light."
***
Far from the opulent inner rings of Cloud Edge City, the Eastern Outskirts were a festering wound of poverty. Here, the Age of Fading Providence was not a philosophical debate; it was a slow, grinding execution.
The Azure Cloud Sect demanded a tithe of spiritual stones and rare herbs from every city they protected. To meet this quota, the city's mortal and low-cultivation refugees were forced to excavate the ruins of ancient battlegrounds on the city's edge.
Lu Chen slipped through the labyrinth of decaying mud-brick alleys, his boots making no sound. He needed resources. The Imperial Providence he had absorbed in the Abyss had pushed him to the absolute Peak of the 9th Stage of Qi Refinement, but breaking into Foundation Establishment with a Void Root required an oceanic amount of energy. He needed a catalyst.
*Crack!*
The sharp snap of a leather whip echoed through a dusty courtyard ahead, followed by a chorus of terrified gasps.
Lu Chen slowed his pace, blending into the shadows of a crumbling archway.
In the center of the courtyard, surrounded by dozens of shivering refugees, stood a young man clad in the light-blue robes of an Azure Cloud Sect branch division. He held a spirit-infused leather whip, which crackled with tiny arcs of lightning.
"Dig faster, you worthless dregs!" the disciple spat, kicking a malnourished old man who was bleeding from his fingernails. "The main sect is celebrating Senior Brother Fang's ascension today! If my branch cannot offer a suitable tribute, I will peel the skin from every last one of you!"
Lu Chen's eyes turned instantly glacial at the mention of Fang Tianyou.
He assessed the disciple. The youth's spiritual pressure hovered around the 8th Stage of Qi Refinement. A minor talent, likely inflated by the Azure Cloud Sect's hoarding of resources.
Normally, Lu Chen wouldn't waste his time on such garbage. But as he turned to leave, a familiar, phantom weight thrummed within his mind. The Luck-Binding Mirror, merged with his very soul, trembled.
Lu Chen blinked, channeling a sliver of Qi into his eyes.
The world's colors washed out, replaced by the ethereal tapestry of Providence. Above the heads of the refugees, thin, sickly gray threads of luck drifted—the mark of the doomed and destitute.
But above the arrogant Azure Cloud disciple? A towering, pulsing aura of brilliant gold.
It wasn't his innate luck. It was a 'Heavenly Opportunity'—a localized concentration of the world's fragmented providence, converging entirely on this one moment. The golden aura stretched outward like a pointing finger, directing its blinding light toward a young, mud-caked refugee girl cowering near the rubble.
More specifically, it pointed to the filthy, sealed clay pot she was clutching to her chest.
A Heavenly Opportunity is triggering, Lu Chen realized, a predatory smirk touching his lips. The Heavens are literally handing this arrogant fool a treasure.
The disciple, driven by an inexplicable, sudden intuition, turned toward the girl. His eyes locked onto the pot.
"You there," the disciple barked, marching over. "What are you hiding? Have you been stealing from the excavation?"
"N-No, Immortal Master!" the girl cried, shrinking back. "It's just water! Just dirty water for my grandfather!"
"Liar!" The disciple snatched the pot from her frail hands with a cruel twist, sending her sprawling into the dirt. He smashed the clay vessel against a nearby stone.
Water splashed across the dust, but inside the shattered remnants of the pot, something else tumbled out. It was a root, caked in thick, black mud.
For a moment, it looked like trash. But as the disciple's aura of luck flared, the mud cracked and fell away. A blinding, sharp aura exploded from the dirt. The plant possessed three translucent leaves, each shaped like a perfectly forged miniature longsword. A distinct, ringing hum of Sword Qi filled the courtyard, vibrating in the marrow of everyone present.
"By the Heavens..." the disciple whispered, his arrogance momentarily replaced by awe. "A Three-Century Sword Heart Grass!"
The refugees gasped, shrinking further back. Even mortals knew of the Sword Heart Grass. It was a legendary catalyst that could cleanse a cultivator's meridians and instantly solidify their comprehension of Sword Intent during Foundation Establishment.
"Hahaha!" The disciple threw his head back and laughed maniacally. "The Heavens truly favor me, Ma Bo! With this, I can step into Foundation Establishment! I can enter the inner sect! I will cultivate at the side of Senior Brother Fang!"
Ma Bo carefully stored the glowing herb into a silk pouch at his waist. Then, his laughter died. He looked down at the terrified refugees, his eyes turning cold and murderous.
"A treasure of this magnitude cannot be known to the public before I refine it," Ma Bo muttered, drawing his azure steel sword. The blade hummed with killing intent. "Consider it an honor. Your worthless lives will pave the way for my Heaven-defying destiny."
He raised his sword, preparing to slaughter the entire courtyard in a single sweep.
"Leave it."
The voice was calm, devoid of any inflection, but it cut through the courtyard like a physical blade.
Ma Bo halted his swing, spinning around. From the shadows of the archway stepped Lu Chen, his gray robes rustling slightly in the stagnant air.
"Who the hell are you?" Ma Bo sneered, his spiritual senses sweeping over Lu Chen. Finding only the aura of a Qi Refinement cultivator—and a seemingly unstable one at that—Ma Bo's arrogance flared anew. "A rogue rat from the slums? You dare interrupt an Azure Cloud Sect disciple when the Heavens themselves have blessed my destiny?"
Lu Chen didn't draw a weapon. He merely walked forward, his footsteps echoing softly.
"Blessed your destiny?" Lu Chen's voice was laced with an ancient, weary mockery. He stopped ten paces away. "You think the world chose you? You think finding that grass was your brilliant fortune?"
"The Heavenly Dao rewards those with the strength to claim it!" Ma Bo roared. "My luck is absolute! Die!"
Ma Bo lunged. Azure Cloud Art: Piercing Crane!
His body blurred, the sword thrusting forward with the force of a localized hurricane. Azure Qi spiraled around the blade, locking down Lu Chen's avenues of escape. It was a flawless strike for an 8th Stage cultivator, amplified by the sheer arrogance of a man who believed he could not lose.
Lu Chen simply raised his right hand, extending his index and middle fingers.
He didn't summon a dazzling aura. He didn't shout a technique. He merely tapped into the hollow expanse of his Dantian.
Void Sword Intent.
A ripple in reality shot forward from Lu Chen's fingertips. It was entirely invisible, devoid of light, sound, or spiritual pressure. It was not a force that pushed; it was a force that erased.
The invisible ripple met the roaring azure sword strike.
There was no explosion. No clash of titans.
The azure spiraling Qi simply ceased to exist. Like a painting wiped clean by a solvent, the technique vanished into the void. Ma Bo's eyes widened in sheer horror as the invisible force traveled up his sword. The azure steel blade silently dissolved into fine gray ash.
"W-What—"
Before Ma Bo could process the destruction of his weapon, the Void Intent struck his chest.
It punched cleanly through his defensive Qi, his robes, and his flesh, leaving a perfectly smooth, fist-sized hole directly through his Dantian.
Ma Bo collapsed to his knees, staring down at the void where his spiritual center used to be. He looked up at Lu Chen, blood bubbling past his lips, his eyes wide with disbelief.
"My... my luck... my destiny..."
Lu Chen walked forward, his expression colder than the Abyss he had crawled out of. He bent down, effortlessly snatching the silk pouch from Ma Bo's waist.
"You're not lucky," Lu Chen whispered, his voice solely for the dying man. "I just hadn't arrived yet."
Ma Bo's eyes rolled back, and his corpse hit the dirt.
The instant Ma Bo died, Lu Chen activated the Luck-Binding Mirror. Through his inner vision, he saw the massive pillar of golden Qi Yun that had surrounded Ma Bo suddenly sever its tether. Before the luck could scatter back into the Heavens, the invisible vortex in Lu Chen's soul roared to life.
Devour.
The golden providence rushed into Lu Chen's body like a tidal wave. His Void Root drank it greedily, converting the abstract concept of destiny into raw, violent cultivation base. Lu Chen's meridians throbbed, stretching to their absolute limits. The barrier to Foundation Establishment trembled violently.
He suppressed the breakthrough. Doing it here, in the open, was suicide.
Lu Chen turned his gaze to the refugees. They were huddled together, weeping, staring at him as if he were a demon crawled from hell.
Lu Chen felt nothing for them. But he reached into a secondary pouch he had looted from the Azure Cloud scouts days ago, pulled out a handful of mortal silver taels, and threw them at the feet of the old man.
"Take the girl. Buy passage on a merchant caravan out of the Eastern Province," Lu Chen said coldly. "If you're still in Cloud Edge City by sundown, the Azure Cloud Sect will slaughter you for this."
Without waiting for their gratitude or terror, Lu Chen turned and walked swiftly down a narrow, sunless alleyway, eager to find a secluded place to refine the Sword Heart Grass.
He had only taken a dozen steps when the temperature plummeted.
Frost began to bloom rapidly across the filthy cobblestones, creeping up the mud-brick walls. The stagnant smell of the slums was instantly replaced by the sharp, pristine scent of alpine snow and ozone.
Lu Chen froze, his hand dropping naturally to his side, his fingers coiling with Void Intent.
At the far end of the alley, blocking his only exit, stood a silhouette.
She wore robes of purest white, embroidered with faint silver crescent moons. Her long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her hand rested lightly on the hilt of a slender longsword at her waist.
Ye Xiyue.
The Saintess of the Fallen Moon Palace tilted her head slightly. Her eyes, crystalline and terrifyingly perceptive, locked onto Lu Chen. She didn't look at his muddy disguise; she was staring directly into the space where his luck should be.
"An attack that leaves no trace in the natural order..." Ye Xiyue's voice echoed softly down the frosted alley, calm but carrying a weight that made the air heavy to breathe. "And a destiny completely devoid of light."
She took a slow, deliberate step forward, her thumb pushing the guard of her sword up by a fraction of an inch. A terrifying, transcendent Sword Intent flooded the alleyway, suffocating Lu Chen's senses.
"I finally found you, Sovereign."