Ye Jun stood loosely at the edge of the plateau, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his Ember Sword as his eyes remained fixed on the deep blue tear in space. The absolute quiet following his complete demolition of the first rift vanguard lasted only a handful of breaths.

Before the surrounding Orthodox and Unorthodox soldiers could even begin to process the ridiculous display of his newly advanced Soul Tempering base, a tremendous rumble vibrated through the bedrock beneath his boots.

Far to the western ridge, a magnificent column of blinding white starlight violently pierced the churning dark clouds, accompanied by a sound like a small moon being dragged across a metal anvil.

Boom—!

The atmospheric shockwave swept across the chasm, carrying with it a wave of dense, freezing Sword Intent that made the air itself crackle with frost.

Ye Jun blinked, his sharp senses tracing the coordinate trajectory of the starlight blast. He recognized it easily. ’Fallen Star Sword Art. Final Form: Cataclysm Starfall.’

A lazy chuckle leaked from his lips as he tapped his fingers casually against the flat of his blade. ’Looks like Liangxue has already started clearing her own farming zone over there. Not even an hour into the emergency and she’s already flexing her new Origin Core powers.’

For a split second, a glint of disappointment passed through his eyes. ’A shame, really. I wanted to see Meihui in battle.’

It had been months since they met and he still hadn’t seen her in a proper fight. He was curious to see what kind of techniques she would use, what kind of combatant she was and, most of all, he found it hot seeing his lovers in a fight.

’Ah! Whatever. Can’t let those two surpass me so easily.’

As he turned his gaze back toward the deep blue tear, his Threat Assessment flared up with a violent, rhythmic pulsing. The air became thick, heavy, and saturated with a silver, shimmering residue that began to drift from the spatial fractures like falling snow.

The second wave was crawling out.

From the distortion emerged creatures that easily dwarfed the malformed Hollow Skins from before. Foremost among them were giant flying entities with a wingspan of over five meters.

Soul Lantern Moths.

Their massive wings were completely translucent, but inside the fragile membrane structures floated hundreds of tiny, twisting humanoid faces, their mouths warped into expressions of absolute agony. They didn’t make any physical sound, but their silent, collective screaming resonated directly inside the spiritual plane.

With every sluggish flap of their translucent wings, a thick cloud of fine silver dust cascaded downward, blanketing the plateau.

’Soul Dust,’ Ye Jun’s mind noted quietly as a sudden, creeping heaviness pressed against his temples.

His Soul Sense wavered slightly, the boundary lines of his perception blurring as if he had been forced to stay awake for three days straight. ’What a cute trick. It’s trying to throw a sleep trigger directly onto my consciousness to shut down my awareness.’

Beneath the fluttering moths marched a vanguard of skeletal horrors... Bone Choirs. They were tall, asymmetrical humanoids constructed from hundreds of mismatched bones stitched together incorrectly; some human, some bestial, and some from entities that didn’t belong to the four-dimensional universe. Across their hollow ribcages, multiple jagged mouths split open, their throats vibrating in a horrific, overlapping harmony.

The moment the song reached his ears, the voice shifted. It wasn’t a monster’s growl like he expected, instead it was the sound of Ye Jun’s mother, old regrets, and forgotten memories of his past life on Earth, the cold alleys, the sound of the sniper trigger, the blood pooling on the carpet.

The stronger the soul, the clearer the song, and since Ye Jun possessed an indomitable, nine-tribulation refined soul base, the madness was screaming inside his mind with the clarity of a high-fidelity speaker.

"This is getting old," Ye Jun frowned, trying to ignore the madness coursing through his mind. "Seriously, come with some new abilities instead of trying to use other people’s trauma against them."

Fortunately, he had passive skills protecting him from such mental attacks so he wasn’t that affected. But he was also just a First-Stage Soul Tempering Realm Cultivator, which meant his soul wasn’t that strong to begin with. The only reason he was holding on was because of his unusual soul and the passive skills.

Before the Bone Choirs could spear him with the long, jagged bone lances molding out of their own forearms, the space behind them collapsed entirely. A massive silhouette, eight meters tall, stepped through the blue border.

A Void Stalker.

The thing was a terrifyingly thin shadow wrapped tightly around a hyper-elongated skeleton. It had no eyes, no nose, no ears, only a vertical, bleeding crack that split its face entirely down the center. The moment that crack parted, a suffocating pressure dropped from the sky, locking onto his soul like a giant magnet.

The Void Stalker didn’t need vision. Its Blind Hunt target tracking was locked straight onto the immense, volatile soul fluctuations radiating from Ye Jun. It let out an absence of sound, a vacuum hiss, and its elongated limbs snapped forward, tearing the air apart as it lunged.

"Alright, alright, I didn’t ask for this either," Ye Jun’s lips twitched. "Tier 4 directly, seriously? But I’m not going down without a fight either."

He planted his boots into the slagged rock, activating his Rooting Stance to lower his center of gravity until his physique felt entirely welded to the bedrock.

Crimson Flame Lotus Art.

Fwoosh—!

An explosive, white-hot burst of high-density fire erupted from his skin, rapidly weaving into a massive, flaming lotus that enveloped his body in three defensive layers. But this time, he used the technique freely. The moment the Soul Lantern Moths swarmed downward to drop their silver dust, Ye Jun willed the lotus to expand violently.

"Disperse!"

Dozens of razor-sharp, flaming petals fractured away from the core, spinning outward like circular saw blades. The high-density Yang fire caught the Soul Lantern Moths mid-flight, instantly incinerating the translucent wings and melting the screaming faces into boiling void ash.

Simultaneously, the Bone Choirs closed the distance, their long bone spears thrusting down with enough structural velocity to pierce through enchanted steel walls.

Ye Jun didn’t dodge as he trusted his Iron Skin Conditioning and the raw durability of his Qi-Tempered Physique. His muscle fibers swelled beneath his ash-gray robes as he pulled his right arm back, condensing his fire Qi directly into his knuckles.

He drove his fist straight into the center of the leading Bone Choir. The sheer physical output of his strike produced a pressurized shockwave that blasted the creature’s mismatched bones into thousands of jagged splinters.

The stacked burn effect of Scorching Path triggered an absolute chain reaction, the residual heat leaping from bone to bone until the entire squad of Choirs erupted into twin bonfires of deep red flame.

Attribute bubbles formed and disappeared just as quickly as his Soul Sense collected them. A part of his mind was still keeping an eye on that side.

Soon, the Void Stalker was already upon him. Bypassing the floating lotus petals, the eight-meter shadow loomed over his frame, the vertical crack on its face splitting wide open to unleash its soul pressure.

The sheer weight of it felt like an entire mountain range trying to crush his Sea of Consciousness. Weak Soul Tempering cultivators would have collapsed into hollow husks instantly.

Ye Jun’s vision shimmered with purple sparks, his breath turning short as the Blind Hunt gaze pinned his movements to the stone.

"Nice tricks, long-neck," Ye Jun growled, his indomitable willpower rising from inside him like dry wood catching flame.

He refused to bend, even the Heavens failed to achieve that. Pushing past the spiritual pressure, he bypassed the creature’s shadow-like limbs and closed the distance in a single blur of Ashen Phantom Steps.

Channeling his vast Qi reserves into his heel, he executed a brutal, rising strike directly beneath the creature’s split face.

Sweet Chin Music.

CRACK—!

The terrifying physical impact ran straight through the shadow skeleton, shattering the creature’s skull structure and sending its thin, eight-meter frame crashing sideways onto the wet stone floor.

It writhed for less than two seconds before the remaining flaming lotus petals drifted down and reduced its core to black cinders.

Ye Jun stood alone in the clearing, breathing steadily through his Combat Breathing as a massive wave of attributes poured directly into his Soul and body, broadening his reserves to a whole different level.

But his smile died instantly.

The deep blue tear in space didn’t close. Instead, it fractured outward with a sickening, wet sound. Across the valley floor, dozens of fresh rifts tore through the four-dimensional structure of the universe all at once. Hundreds... no, thousands... of bizarre, mindless aberrations began to pour onto the plateau.

And every single vertical eye, faceless mask, and translucent wing snapped in unison, locking straight onto Ye Jun’s position. They didn’t care about the fort any longer. They didn’t care about the Orthodox soldiers. It was as if his very presence was acting like a massive celestial magnet, pulling the entire dimensional horde straight toward him.

’Fucking hell,’ he almost cursed out loud. ’Did they sense my connection with the Chasm? The entire zone is coming for me.’

Before he could even adjust his stance to engage the swarming thousands, a sudden, absolute absence of sound swallowed the entire battlefield.

The air froze.

An invisible, high-tier psychic spike crossed past the physical dimensions, bypassing his Iron Skin Conditioning and striking his newly formed soul with the weight of a dying star.

Ye Jun staggered, his blood running cold as his vision rapidly fractured into jagged lines of deep purple darkness. His hands lost their grip, and his knees struck the cracked earth.

As his consciousness began to slip into an endless, heavy void, his Soul Sense recorded a cacophony of several disturbing, ancient voices echoing in a strange, terrible harmony inside his mind.

The voices spoke with the hollow certainty of a finished world.

"The Last Cycle has started!"