“Fairy Xin’er, have you heard? They say the Dao God was once a talentless mortal."

  Silk robes drifted behind the Immortal as she glided through the boundless sky, her voice filled with casual curiosity.

  Fairy Xin’er’s brow furrowed. She didn't slow her pace, her expression cooling into a mask of disdain.

  "Nonsense. Hmph! How could a Dao God ever be a talentless mortal? People will spread any baseless rumor these days."

  The first Immortal let out a soft, melodic laugh. A flicker of doubt crossed her face, but she quickly shook it off.

  "I thought the same... it's too ridiculous to believe. If that were true, I might as well become a Dao God myself."

  Their laughter echoed across the empty sky.

  They continued their journey, chatting casually about the God who governed their very world—never noticing the irony of their own words.

  Their voices faded into the distance, leaving only the vast, silent sky behind.

  ---

  Deep within the void, a man stood alone.

  His eyes were no longer clear. They had turned a dull, bloodstained red—stained by the countless lives he had crushed beneath his feet to reach this height.

  Hundreds of realms shimmered below him like drifting stars.

  "I once cursed my parents for the body they gave me," he whispered, the sound vibrating through the emptiness. "In that curse, I ended them."

  His gaze drifted, as if seeing ghosts from a million years ago.

  "I once looked at the gifted with such envy that it burned. So I tore their brilliance out of them and made it my own. I chased godly elixirs, begging for redemption, only to watch every miracle turn to ash in my veins."

  He looked at his own hands—now holding the laws of the universe.

  "I stood at the edge of doubt. I asked the heavens if this path was truly mine to walk. But I never turned back. I wagered the only thing I truly owned."

  He paused, a cold smile touching his lips.

  "My humanity."

  He gestured toward the infinite expanse.

  "And now... look at me. I have reached the summit. Not even an ant dares meet my gaze. The heavens that once mocked me now rest within my palm."

  The silence of the void pressed in, but he didn't flinch.

  "Do I regret what I became? No."

  His voice grew heavy, resonant with a power that made the nearby star-clusters tremble.

  "Even if time gave me another life, I would embrace the demonic path without hesitation."

  "For I, Han Tianyi, will never kneel."

  "Not to heaven, not to fate... not even to death itself."

  His roar thundered across the vacuum, sending violent tremors through the realms resting in his grasp.

  Slowly, the God-Emperor closed his eyes, his mind drifting back through the eons—back to the very first time a talentless boy tried to feel the breath of the world.

  ---

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  "WHYYYY?! WHY CAN’T I GATHER SPIRITUAL ENERGY?! WHYYY!!!"

  The scream ripped through the training courtyard as the manual flew from Han Tianyi’s hands, skidding across the dirt.

  His chest heaved.

  At only ten years old, he was supposed to be the pride of the Han Clan, a lineage that breathed the very essence of heaven and earth.

  He didn't wait for his attendants.

  He bolted toward the main hall, his face flushed with a desperate fury.

  "He can’t cultivate? Preposterous!"

  Han Fei Yu, the Patriarch, didn't even look up from his scrolls at first.

  "Our bloodline has birthed Immortals for a hundred generations. My only son is a genius. He will lead this clan."

  But as the days passed and the spiritual stones in Tianyi’s hands remained dull and cold, a divine physician was summoned.

  The old man’s fingers trembled as he pulled his hand away from the boy’s wrist. His face went white.

  "P-Patriarch… this is… the Cursed Body Constitution."

  "Cursed Body?" Han Fei Yu’s voice shook the rafters. "Speak clearly!"

  "Your son... he has no spiritual roots. The heavens have sealed his meridians. He is... he is bound to remain a mortal."

  Tianyi lunged forward, his eyes burning with a dark fire.

  "What nonsense are you spewing, old man? Are your eyes merely for decoration? Look again! Both my parents are high-ranking Immortals! How could I be a cripple?"

  Han Fei Yu nodded coldly, his jaw set.

  "Examine him again."

  The physician obeyed. The result didn't change.

  Tianyi kicked the man out of the hall himself, screaming about "useless charlatans."

  A second physician was called.

  Then a third.

  By the time the tenth divine doctor lowered his head in silence, the air in the hall had turned frigid.

  The truth settled over Han Tianyi like a shroud: He possessed a body abandoned by the heavens.

  "NOOOOO!!! THIS CAN'T BE!!! I AM A HAN! I WON'T ACCEPT IT!"

  He didn't wait for his father’s pity or the elders' whispers. He stormed out of the hall, the sound of his heavy, mortal footsteps echoing painfully loud.

  From that day on, the young master vanished.

  He didn't go to the training grounds or the banquets. He buried himself in the deepest corners of the Han Clan’s library.

  Surrounded by the scent of old paper and fading ink, he clawed through forbidden scrolls on body constitutions and dark arts, searching for any crack in the fate the heavens had forced upon him.

  ---

  Ten years vanished before he realized it.

  He researched. He experimented. He forced every elixir the realm had to offer down his throat.

  Divine pills, miracle medicines, sacred elixirs—he consumed them all, yet his meridians remained cold and silent.

  It was as if the heavens had carved a "No" into his very bones.

  He began to realize the true horror of being mortal.

  It meant watching his parents remain youthful while his own skin began to lose its luster.

  It meant he was a flickering candle beside two eternal suns.

  A mortal might see a hundred years; his parents would see thousands.

  To Han Tianyi, that gap was a chasm deeper than any grave.

  After a decade of watching his failures pile up, his parents’ eyes finally changed.

  The hope died out, replaced by a quiet, stinging pity.

  They chose to have another child.

  The final blow came five years later.

  His younger brother was born—not with a curse, but with a constitution so brilliant the heavens themselves seemed to smile upon the cradle.

  The irony was a cruel joke that the entire Han Clan seemed to be in on.

  “How tragic~ The elder brother is cursed by the heavens, while the younger is their chosen favorite~”

  The whispers began to leak through the cracks in his door.

  Servants who once pressed their foreheads to the dirt at the mere sound of his footsteps now straightened their backs when he passed.

  They didn't even bother to lower their voices anymore.

  “Shhh! Quiet, he might hear you!” a maid snickered, her hand barely covering her smirk.

  “And what if he does?” another laughed, her voice trailing down the hallway outside Han Tianyi’s chamber. "What can a mortal possibly do to us?~"

  Each word was a jagged blade, twisting in his stomach.

  “No... this... this isn't possible... No!!! I will never accept this!”

  But instead of collapsing, the shame fueled a cold, manic obsession.

  Han Tianyi retreated, abandoning his chamber for the lightless corners of the library once more.

  This time, he didn't look at the manuals of the righteous. He reached for the ancient records—texts buried beneath thick dust and blood-red taboos.

  His mind, sharper than any spiritual root, began to unravel scripts that had baffled cultivators for centuries.

  He crossed the final line.

  He felt the cold tingle of forbidden tomes as he touched books hidden even from his parents’ sight.

  The moment he cracked the first seal, the warmth of the "light" path vanished from his life forever.

  A month later, the decree was made official.

  The news rippled through the clan like a shockwave.

  Han Tianyi’s title as heir was stripped away—and placed onto the small, glowing shoulders of his five-year-old brother.

  It wasn't just a change in rank.

  It was a public execution of his dignity.

  “Those bastards...”

  His fingers trembled, his nails digging into the yellowed, forbidden pages until they nearly tore.

  “Just you wait... I will make every single one of you regret this.”

  He didn’t stop.

  Day and night became a blurred cycle of ink and shadow.

  He buried himself in records that whispered of blood and sacrifice, walking deeper into a darkness that no righteous cultivator would ever dare to touch.

  As if to offer "mercy," his father appeared in the library.

  "Tianyi," Han Fei Yu said, his voice heavy. "You may no longer be the heir… but I am appointing you as the Chief Strategist of our clan."

  The Patriarch waited for an outburst.

  Instead, Han Tianyi offered a smile—soft, obedient, and so calm it made Han Fei Yu’s skin crawl.

  "Do not worry, Father. I understand," Tianyi said quietly. "I will do my best to ensure the Han Clan becomes the supreme power of this realm."

  There was no arrogance in his tone, only a terrifying certainty.

  For the first time, Han Fei Yu didn't feel like he was looking at his son; he felt like he was looking at a predator.

  In truth, Han Fei Yu had come prepared to kill the boy if he refused.

  He could not leave such a brilliant, bitter mind alive outside of his control.

  But seeing Tianyi’s loyalty, the Patriarch let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

  'So, he has accepted his fate. He wants to leave a mark on history despite being mortal...'

  Han Fei Yu reached out and patted his son’s head, the relief of a man spared from staining his hands with his own blood.

  Tianyi beamed under the touch.

  The heavy doors groaned shut, and the "creak-thud" echoed through the silent room.

  The moment the latch clicked, the warmth vanished from Tianyi’s face.

  He wiped his forehead where his father had touched him, his expression twisting into pure disgust.

  "How dare he..." A low, broken laugh escaped his throat. "Strategist? He offers me a seat at the table he stole from me? Hahaha... how laughable. I was born to rule, not to advise."

  To him, the title wasn't a gift—it was a cage.

  They had stripped his birthright, handed it to a child, and expected him to be grateful for the scraps.

  "You took everything... and now you mock me with a job?" He tilted his head back, his eyes burning with a manic light. "Oh, Father... just you wait."

  He turned back to the forbidden scrolls, his fingers flying through the pages at feverish speed.

  Suddenly, his movements froze.

  Deep within a blood-stained record, he found it.

  A clue.

  A method to tear the curse from his flesh.

  But the price was painted in betrayal: the key was held by the Han Clan’s mortal enemy—the Yu Clan.