"…Ah," Wang Xiao murmured, scratching his chin as if suddenly remembering an unpaid bill.

"About that…"

He lifted his gaze leisurely toward the two frantic crimson eyes hanging in the firmament, lips curving into an almost gentle smile, one that made people die very unpleasantly.

The Yang Faction Great Lord finally cracked.

[SPEAK!]

His voice thundered like a collapsing hell-realm, fury tearing through the void.

[As long as you release Lian'er, I shall allow you to depart with your soul intact!]

"Hm?"

Wang Xiao blinked.

Originally, he had planned to pretend, dangle the girl like bait, twist the knife slowly, maybe watch a Great Lord beg a little more. But hearing that lofty, condescending tone…

His eyelids twitched.

"…Is that so?" he said softly. "Then I'm afraid you're going to be very disappointed."

He paused deliberately.

Let the silence ferment.

"I cooked her," Wang Xiao continued casually, like discussing lunch.

"And I ate her."

"!!"

The sky froze.

"As for where she is now…"

He tapped his chest with two fingers, expression innocent.

"Probably right here."

A ripple of soul surged outward.

Unless one possessed a supreme artifact capable of severing merged souls, like the one Wang Xiao just happened to own...

There was no separation possible!

Which meant only one thing...

Yang Lian, also known as Hei Lian, was dead!

Gone, digested, erased from the ledger of existence!

(A/N: Yang Lian used the false identity "Hei Lian" when captured alongside the Shura King by Wang Xiao.)

Wang Xiao's words were not an insult.

They were a death proclamation.

The heavens trembled violently.

Yang Lian was not merely a daughter.

She carried Primordial Essence, a substance rarer than worlds, heavier than fate itself, remnants of the Last Primordial, the solitary terror that once broke the entire Executioner race and made them kneel.

Only now, unknown to Wang Xiao, did the truth become apparent:

Primordial Essence was finite.

Each Netherworld faction possessed only a limited quantity, strictly regulating the number of heirs who could ever ascend.

Without it?

One could cultivate for a trillion years and still never touch the threshold of a Great Lord.

And now...

Wang Xiao had openly declared that he had slaughtered, refined, and devoured a Royal Princess standing in direct line of succession.

Not killed in battle.

Not erased in judgment.

But eaten!

The other Great Lords stared at him as one would stare at a lunatic smiling while cutting his own throat.

This wasn't bravery, rather suicide wrapped in arrogance, the Yang Faction Great Lord's presence twisted violently.

He was Shi Tian, Sovereign of Purgatory.

The war-mad monarch whose hands had shattered heavens, whose name made even ancient laws hesitate.

This Prison Dimension...

It was his creation.

A battlefield forged for slaughter and selection, opened once every hundred years, where warriors of all four factions bled for supremacy.

The victors joined the Shura Army, the Yang Faction's elite execution force.

Brutality was their scripture.

Shi Tian had come today to bargain.

Never once did he imagine someone would dare touch his reverse scale.

SHIIIIIIINNNNG—!

A blade-like resonance screamed through existence, cracks spiderwebbed across the Prison Realm.

This world was never meant to house a Great Lord's true descent, even their presence was enough to tear it apart.

Wang Xiao had been relaxed because of that.

At worst, he expected minions.

At worst, avatars.

But...

A golden pillar descended from the heavens.

It pierced the sky like divine retribution, carrying with it boundless slaughter intent, ancient rage, and a monarch's unrestrained will.

The Yang Faction Great Lord himself, descending.

BANG!

The arena exploded.

The circular coliseum, vast enough to resemble a moon-sized battlefield, shuddered violently as the shockwave rolled outward like divine wrath. Millions of spectator seats arranged in endless concentric rings stood completely empty, yet they did not escape destruction.

Stands shattered, tiers disintegrated, entire sections were erased into nothingness as if existence itself refused to preserve them.

The arena floor groaned under the pressure. Forged from Undead Obsidian, a forbidden black stone birthed in corpse-stars and steeped in resentful souls, capable of anchoring even wandering undead spirits, the surface finally cracked.

Spiderweb fractures tore across the ground as the stone screamed silently, unable to endure the weight of a Great Lord's true descent.

Coiled around the pyramids, the Serpent God Apophis finally revealed fear.

Its colossal pupils constricted as its massive tail slammed down repeatedly, smashing dunes into storms of dust and debris that spiraled violently through space.

Then an unseen force wrapped around it, space twisted, time folded, and before it could even hiss, Apophis and the pyramids were ripped from the arena in a violent teleport, fleeing like a coward yanking his head from the guillotine.

Even gods knew there were existences one did not challenge.

Silence descended...

At the center of the shattered arena, directly before Wang Xiao, stood a single being.

No aura leaked, no pressure spread, yet the world bowed instinctively.

He was tall, his body carved like a war-god's statue, muscles condensed not for display but for slaughter.

His otherwise fair skin bore a faint golden undertone, scars pulsing softly as if remembering ancient wars.

Long molten-red hair flowed loosely behind him, unmoved by wind, while deep golden eyes regarded Wang Xiao with the calm of something that had killed too much to bother screaming anymore.

In his hand rested a golden spear, its shaft forged from unknown divine metal. Blood-red veins crawled across it like living arteries, pulsing rhythmically, each throb carrying echoes of screams.

This was not a weapon but a war record, a monument to extinction. The Great Lord of the Yang Faction, Shi Tian, Sovereign of Purgatory, stood quietly, the spear's tip resting lightly against the obsidian floor, which collapsed into ash at the mere touch.

"You ate my daughter," Shi Tian roared, as if confirming a known crime rather than accusing one. "Then listen carefully, anomaly. Today, by the "Law of Slaughter", you will learn what blood truly costs."

His heart beat once.

The sound did not echo. It tore... invisible shockwaves crushed outward, snuffing Immortals like sparks and turning Quasi-Transcendent bodies into drifting ash before they could even scream.

Undead Obsidian buckled beneath their feet, its soul-binding structure groaning as if begging to be spared from witnessing what followed.

Above, one crimson eye trembled.

Then laughed.

[Hah…] the Yin Faction Great Lord exhaled, a breath heavy with relief. [Thirty percent of my domain. Countless beings rotted because of you.] The pupil narrowed. [This is justice.]

Shi Tian did not look up.

The golden spear in his hand began to scream, not a sound, but a chorus. Worlds erased, races butchered, entire epochs refined into one continuous howl.

Even a Transcendent would rupture internally hearing it directly, soul membranes peeling like wet paper.

This was not a weapon meant to be swung, it was a howl of extinction.

"To spare," Shi Tian said calmly, as if explaining a lesson to a child, "is to insult the dead."

He compressed his realm.

To descend and face Wang Xiao in this fragile prison dimension, Shi Tian forcibly compressed his realm, folding his Great Lord authority down into the Transcendent Lord Class.

Yet a Great Lord did not weaken by shrinking, he merely condensed infinity, compressing oceans of power into a point sharp enough to pierce reality itself.

Weapons were unnecessary for beings of this level, but when one was used, it existed only to refine and focus slaughter, to waste nothing, to ensure every fragment of strength ended as death.

Another eye dimmed slightly, its glow stabilizing, smoothing unnaturally.

[…Good,] said the Samsara Faction Great Lord, tone indifferent. [One fewer anomaly. One fewer deviation.] A pause. [The cycle proceeds.]

Shi Tian lifted his spear.

The sky brightened into dark crimson, painting a curtain of blood red.

"By the Law of Slaughter," he recited, voice layered with something older than heaven, "blood answers blood. Flesh repays flesh. A crown is weighed in kin, and inheritance is written in corpses."

Thunder erupted, not from clouds, but from his chest. Blood rain fell, striking and heavy, staining the broken arena crimson. This was not weather. This was grief, unsealed.

The final eye, of the Mysterious great-lord of Obsidian faction, rippled faintly.

[…Unexpected,] it murmured.

When power truly transcended all bounds, such beings could no longer be called existences. They were no longer life, nor soul, nor flesh, but fragments of reality itself. To kill them was to wound the world; to erase them was to erase a law. And thus, only one thing remained capable of disturbing reality at that height...

... emotion.

At this moment, Shi Tian's grief was genuine.

Heaven responded.

Celestial phenomena descended as blood rain and thunder bled across the land and sky. The other Great Lords, each with countless heirs and successors, could not fully understand Shi Tian's impulsiveness, yet a trace of resonance stirred within them. It reminded them of distant eras, when they too had walked the lands recklessly, slaughtered freely, fallen in love without restraint, before ascending beyond consequence.

Somewhere along the climb, meaning had thinned, emotions refined away, leaving only what they had become.

To gaze upon reality, one must become part of it.

And the closer one drew to transcendence, the more one resembled the indifference of heaven itself.

Shi Tian continued unbothered.

"I took one wife," he said, almost softly. "One." His grip tightened. "One day, she was chasing a treasure across the realms and then vanished... No corpse, no soul, not even a

farewell. All I had left was a daughter."

His gaze locked onto Wang Xiao.

"You did not kill her," he said. "You ended my Bloodline."

He did not pause.

"By the Law of Slaughter," Shi Tian continued, voice sinking into the marrow of the world, "the murderer does not plead. The devourer does not negotiate. And the eater of heirs is denied even the dignity of last words."

The spear left his hand.

There was no arc.

No wind.

No mercy.

It just... vanished.

For the first time, Wang Xiao reacted.

His eyes flicked, not in fear, not in rage, but with a faint, unreadable recognition, as if he had just seen something confirm a suspicion.

Then his body came apart.

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

Five severances in the same instant, head, limbs, torso, clean beyond cruelty, fate torn with surgical indifference. Blood did not spray. It was seized, compressed, folded into five pulsing crimson orbs, each imprisoning torn flesh, shattered bone, and screaming soul.

Shi Tian walked forward as if inspecting work already completed.

"Blood answers blood," he said, tightening his fingers.

Bones crushed.

"Flesh answers flesh..."