Netherworld, after the Declaration....

For a breath, the world was silent.

Then....

"What the fuck did he just say?"

A low-ranking Nether Marshal of Yin territory stared up at the sky, mouth half-open, spear slipping from his grip.

"Did… did that voice just claim a fifth Overlord of these high skies?" another muttered. "Or am I finally losing my damn mind?"

A green scaly monster nearby laughed nervously. "Haha… good one. A fifth? What's next, six? Seven? Might as well crown the me as well."

No one laughed with him.

In a marketplace built from the bones of extinct worlds, a woman slammed her cup down hard enough to crack the table.

"Bullshit," she snapped. "Four factions... That's the rule, always has been."

An old man beside her, face etched with reincarnation scars, slowly shook his head.

"…The Obsidian Supreme didn't deny it."

Her expression froze.

Across the Netherworld, similar scenes played out.

"Wait-wait-hold on," a young soldier stammered, grabbing his commander's sleeve. "If there's a fifth… then whose side are we on now?"

The commander slapped his hand away. "Shut the fuck up. You don't pick sides when Sovereign Overlords are involved, you pray they don't notice you exist!"

In a dark tavern suspended over a chasm of screaming souls, someone whispered, "He named himself Infinity."

A drunk snorted. "Arrogant."

Silence followed.

Far above, in the halls of the Samsara Faction, an attendant swallowed and spoke with trembling reverence.

"My Lord… the declaration has spread. The lower realms are… panicking."

The Samsara Great Lord closed his eyes briefly.

"Let them," he said flatly. "Fear keeps idiots from doing suicidal things."

"And the Wuxian Dynasty?"

"…Exists," he replied. "Which is already a problem."

Elsewhere, within the Yin Faction's territory, a senior elder bowed nervously.

"Master… should we prepare countermeasures?"

The Yin Great Lord chuckled softly.

"No," he said. "Prepare gifts."

The elder hesitated. "Gifts?"

"A new Sovereign doesn't want war on his first day," the Yin Great Lord murmured, eyes glinting with cunning. "He wants recognition… let's give him that!"

Meanwhile, in the Yang Faction.

Recruitment halls roared like furnaces.

"Move your asses!" a general barked. "I don't care if you're missing a limb, if you can hold a blade, you're in!"

A subordinate whispered, voice tight, "My Lord… are we really going to-"

Yang Shi Tian's gaze snapped toward him.

The temperature dropped.

"Say it," Shi Tian growled.

"…are we going to fight a Great Lord?"

Shi Tian smiled.

It was not a pleasant expression.

"He calls himself Infinity," Shi Tian said quietly. "Good."

The floor beneath him cracked.

"I'll show him how finite grief can be."

A single declaration shattered the peace.

The Netherworld was incomprehensibly vast, but size was the least frightening part. It didn't just exist as a realm; it sat on top of countless universes, ruled some directly, controlled into others through access portals, relay dimensions, and communication chains stitched straight into law.

Those within its immediate reach had already received the news.

They watched.

Quietly.

Very carefully.

Because when immortals fought, it wasn't armies that died, it was everyone else, slaughtered like chickens caught between two drunk gods swinging clubs.

The sky itself grew tense.

Like half of existence had been plunged into an ice cave, no light, no warmth, no explanation. Nobody spoke loudly, nobody moved fast. Even the winds of the Netherworld dialed it down, like they didn't want to get noticed.

Far to the south... the Abandoned Cursed Lands.

A place where howling souls clawed at the sky day and night, where vision died past ten meters, and even perception started to rot if you stayed too long.

It hadn't always been like this.

Once, this land was the Kingdom of Guan, a realm ruled by Eldritchs so obscenely knowledgeable they treated causality like a puzzle box they'd already solved and gotten bored with.

Then one day... A lord from another world showed up.

And Guan got wiped off the map.

Just ruins were left...

Now the place was a scavenger's paradise and a graveyard rolled into one. Warriors came sniffing around for relics, forbidden techniques, or a glorious death they could brag about in their next life. The corrosive dark mist never left, seeping into flesh, soul, sanity, warping anything stupid enough to stay.

And unknown to everyone...

A pyramid had appeared.

Guarding it was a colossal serpent, coiled and sleeping, its body half-drowned in cursed fog. Each breath stirred the mist like tides. It didn't move.

Didn't need to.

Nothing dumb enough to approach survived long anyway.

____

Inside the pyramid!

All hell broke loose.

"AUAAAUAAUAA—!"

A Pharaoh raised his scepter, and exploded.

His body burst apart into thousands of shrieking poisonous bats, flesh unraveling mid-scream before collapsing into lifeless dust like it had never deserved to exist in the first place.

The interior was wrong.

Narrow corridors bent where they shouldn't, opening into vast halls stuffed with traps stacked on traps. No-exit chambers, floors made of living magma, arrow storms so dense they turned space into minced meat.

Guardian beasts roamed endlessly.

Sphinxes.

Bone colossis.

Mechanical sentinels puppets awakened by leftover necromancy.

This wasn't architecture.

It was an entire sealed world pretending to be a building.

Then, three shilouttes stepped into a chamber.

Stone walls dissolved like cheap illusions, revealing crystalline surfaces veined with luminescent blue light. The ceiling vanished entirely, replaced by a fake sun burning overhead like a bad joke.

A humanoid figure with the head of a hippo lunged forward.

It screamed, and dropped dead.

The three exchanged glances.

"…That was it?" one of them muttered.

Another shrugged.

They moved on.

One flicked her slender hand. The sky shattered like glass, the artificial sun blinking out as a vertical bridge of light formed in its place.

They crossed it without slowing down.

What should've been lethal felt like a kid's playground in front of these three Immortal powerhouses.

Hours passed, no other life.

No real resistance.

Then... CRASH.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The ground shook hard enough to rattle even the crystal walls.

"Um?" one of them murmured, her voice soft and gentle, carrying the clarity of a zither's note. "What was that?"

They paused.

Something big had just happened outside.

They didn't know, that beyond the pyramid, the guardian serpent was fighting for its goddamn life.

It lunged at a small, indistinct shadow and got blasted away by a single punch.

The serpent smashed through layers of cursed land, its massive eyes wide with fear as two radiant gazes slipped through the mist like execution rays.

A voice drifted out, amused.

"Hey," it laughed softly, "you're built like a mountain and guarding ruins, bit of a waste, don't you think?"

Blinding light erupted, the serpent screamed as its colossal body shrunk violently, scales compressing, bones folding inward like reality was crumpling it for storage. Its body coiled tighter and tighter... until with a final whoosh...

Silence!

Gone!

Back inside the pyramid, the tremors finally died.

Silence returned, not peace, but the kind that pressed against the pounding heart, one of the women tilted her head, golden hair slid over her shoulder, lashes flickering as faint surprise crossed her beautiful face.

"You two take that way," she said casually, pointing down a branching corridor. "I'll check here. If we keep marching in one line, we'll be crawling through this maze till next year."

The other two exchanged a glance. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Something about her tone felt… off.

But neither voiced it.

They nodded, silhouettes dissolving into the crystal-lit corridors without another word.

Once they were gone, the woman exhaled slowly.

A sigh full of tiredness, she turned toward a narrow side passage, one that hadn't been there a moment ago.

A hand waited in the shadow, crooked fingers, she recognized it instantly.

Her lips twitched.

"…Why is he acting so secretive-" she muttered, irritation tinged with exhaustion as she stepped forward.

Her sentence never finished.

Her wrist was caught.

She gasped as she was yanked inside, momentum stealing her breath as the corridor sealed behind her with a dull thud.

Her eyes widened, the chamber beyond was made of stone, with a vast dome above her head, suffocatingly, etched with ancient symbols that slithered like snakes..

She looked down, and met a dull gaze.

"…You," she breathed, her beautiful gasp betraying a faint tremor. "What happened to you?"