A wave swept across the entire realm.
It was not sound.
It was not light.
It was fate.
Invisible and irresistible, it shattered the silence of midnight and rolled outward — beyond the trees where Li Qiong stood, into the mountains, the cities, the seas, the stars.
The world paused.
And then...
screams.
From every corner of the Three Realms, they rose like a tide:
"LI QIONG!!!"
"YOU DAMNED BASTARD!"
"I'LL KILL YOU — KILL YOU WITH MY OWN HANDS!!"
"DON'T THINK YOU WON!"
"DIEEEEEE!!!"
Across holy temples, sacred peaks, imperial courts, abyssal marshes, death valleys — thousands upon thousands of figures woke in unison, shrieking Li Qiong's name as though their souls had been set on fire.
Their bodies shivered, drenched in sweat. Their hearts pounded. Their bones ached with phantom wounds.
And then each of them froze... staring at their hands, their flesh.
Unscarred. Whole. Young.
The patriarchs of entire sects.
The elders who once reigned over fields of blood.
The holy sons and daughters who bore divine destinies.
The prodigies of the era, the monks who walked the way of emptiness, the daoists who preached eternity...
Each of them remembered dying by Li Qiong's hand.
In that final stand.
When the realms themselves trembled and the sky turned black.
When their combined armies tore at him for days, trying to grind his body into meat paste.
When they hated him so deeply it became the marrow of their bones.
Even at the very end, he stood tall. His hollow eyes smiled at them, as if mocking heaven itself.
And now —
Here they were.
Alive.
The moment stretched like a cruel dream.
And then, one by one, they laughed.
Mad. Elated. Grateful.
On a snowy peak, a patriarch in the middle of a sermon froze mid-word. His disciples stared as he suddenly howled, clawing at his face:
"LI QIONG!!!"
"The heavens... gave me another chance."
"Hahaha! I am young again! My youth... returned!"
"Good. Good! This time I will tear his corpse into a thousand pieces."
"You won't escape me now, Li Qiong. I'll make sure of it!"
[Celestial Lotus Sect — Jade Pagoda Hall]
Patriarch Yue Tianhe rose from his seat, his immaculate robes fluttering. His eyes burned red as memories of his death clawed at his mind.
"Li Qiong... I saw you gut my son alive. I felt your blade through my skull. And yet you stood there, laughing. This time, I'll make sure you don't even have bones left to bury!"
His disciples watched as he threw his prayer beads to the floor and stormed into the cultivation chamber, his murderous intent shaking the whole mountain.
In a warm bedchamber, a holy son pressed against a courtesan's bare skin jolted upright, tossing her aside as he screamed,
"LI QIONG!!!"
His nails drew blood from his palms as the memory of his own death seared through him.
[Blood Sea Sect — Endless Slaughter Marsh]
Saintess Yan Zhaoyu stood in her blood pool, her hands trembling. She remembered the Final Stand —
how she'd tried to drink Li Qiong's blood through a thousand screaming ghosts —
and how he simply fed her to her own ghosts, one by one, until they consumed her instead.
Her shriek split the night:
"LI QIONG! I WILL MAKE YOUR ENTIRE BLOODLINE BLEED!"
Her eyes glimmered, wet with hatred and joy.
"And now... hahahaha..."
[Sutra of the Silent Bell Monastery — Inner Chamber]
The nameless Arhat sat in darkness, beads of sweat running down his bald head.
His silent meditation broke as he whispered:
"You thought you could escape karma for all the evil you'd done... now karma has brought us back together."
"LI QIONG!!!"
His lips curled into a cold smile.
Nearby, a young monk copying sutras dropped his brush, staring at the ink spreading across the paper. His calm eyes darkened with fury:
"This karma... has returned. This time, your soul won't even reach reincarnation. I'll make sure of it, Li Qiong."
[Nine Heavens Dao Court — Hall of Radiant Samsara]
Holy Son Lin Feng crushed his jade flute in his grip, his once-serene eyes now full of venom.
He remembered begging the heavens to turn back time after the Final Stand — to give him one more chance to kill Li Qiong.
He laughed.
"They heard me. The heavens heard me! Thank you! Thank you! I will end him by myself this time."
At the altar of an ancestral temple, an elder kowtowing to his forebears gasped as the vision of his head rolling at the Final Stand returned in perfect clarity. He slammed his fists on the offering table and hissed:
"You'll die a thousand times for this, Li Qiong!"
In the murky depths of a ghost marsh, a demon saint paused mid-hunt, its claws still embedded in a spirit beast's throat. It turned its red eyes skyward, a jagged smile splitting its face.
"Ah... I'm still alive. Good. Good."
A daoist in the middle of exorcising a horde of demons stopped chanting, and the demons scattered in terror as his own voice rang out:
"You'll regret ever being born, Li Qiong!"
On a battlefield at dawn, a sect's prodigy locked blades with a rival — then staggered, dropping his sword. His breath hitched as his mind filled with the sight of Li Qiong's final smile. He fell to his knees and roared:
"Aaaaaahhhh!"
In every corner of the Three Realms, hatred bloomed like a thousand lotuses.
Sect leaders and saints, demons and immortals — their hatred for Li Qiong was eternal, undiminished even by death.
They lived now for one reason alone:
To erase him completely.
Yet none of them noticed —
And there he stood, in the stillness beneath the dark boughs.
The threads of fate stretched out from him in every direction — red, taut, glimmering faintly in the moonlight.
They ran through the forest, up into the sky, deep into the earth, and beyond, weaving a vast, tangled web that bound him to countless lives, countless destinies.
Sect masters, holy sons, demon saints, arhat monks... their hatred thrummed along the strings like a discordant song, though he could not hear it, could not yet know what had begun elsewhere.
He only saw the web.
And Li Qiong stood at the center of it all —
A single, quiet figure.
A moth caught in a spider's web of red strings.
His eyes, dark and unwavering, rose to the endless strands above as his hand closed into a fist.
"To walk the path of immortality..." he murmured, low and resolute.
"...I must cut them all."
"And so it begins again."