The Scavenger Ancestor stood atop a jagged peak, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon, when his secure line shrieked with an urgent frequency. He answered, only to be met with the sound of roaring infernos and the frantic screams of his own men.

"Ancestor! They’re everywhere! The HQ is in flames! We’re being annihi—" The voice cut off with a wet *ughh!* and a sickening thud. In the background, a cold, mocking laugh echoed before the line went dead.

The Ancestor felt as if he were sitting on a red-hot stove. His blood boiled. "I have to leave," he hissed, turning toward the Deacon. "My home is being razed!"

"You aren’t going anywhere," the Deacon said calmly, tossing his own phone toward the brute. "Look at this. You aren’t the only target."

The Scavenger Ancestor caught the device, his eyes scanning the report. It was the global bounty. As he read Ethan’s offer and saw the footage of the miracle potions, his grip tightened until the phone exploded in a shower of glass and sparks. He let out a roar of primal fury that shook the mountainside.

"If you want your revenge, stay," the Deacon commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "The siphon is almost ready, but I will need your strength to anchor the void. Go back now, and you’ll find nothing but ashes. Stay here, and you’ll have Ethan’s head."

***

Thousands of miles away, the Celestial Union was living through its own nightmare. Their ivory towers were no longer pristine; they were stained black by soot and red by the blood of their disciples.

The Celestial Ancestor stood in the center of his courtyard, gasping for air. Before him loomed a nightmare of scales and mandibles—the Worm Queen. For five consecutive days, the titan had besieged their base. She would descend like a mountain of flesh, devour hundreds of cultivators, and vanish into the earth just as the Ancestor coordinated a counter-attack.

And the moment she disappeared, the "vultures" arrived.

Thousands of mercenaries and rival organizations had descended upon the Celestial territory like ants to a feast. Ethan’s bounty had been too effective. Every decaying sect and fading guild across the globe had an Ancestor or a Patriarch clinging to life with old wounds or incurable poisons. For them, Ethan’s potion wasn’t just medicine; it was a chance to reclaim their dominance. They attacked the Celestial Union with a suicidal ferocity, caring nothing for their own lives as long as they could claim a general’s head.

"Damn you, Ethan...!!!" the Ancestor screamed, his white hair disheveled.

He exchanged a thunderous blow with the Worm Queen. His fist, backed by the power of the Spiritual Collapse phase, struck her armored hide with the force of a falling star. But the Queen barely flinched. The Ancestor cursed the very sky—the world’s suppression matrix was limiting his offensive power to the peak of Body Refinement, while the Queen’s natural, monstrous biology ignored such trivial laws.

He was at the peak of the Spirit Gathering realm, but he couldn’t even scratch the beast. He had his one-use Ancestral Ability, but he didn’t dare use it yet. If he wasted it on the worm, he would have nothing left to kill the man who had turned the entire world against him.

He could only watch, heart bleeding with rage, as his lineage was systematically exterminated by a world gone mad for a drop of Ethan’s potion.

------------

Inside the high-altitude chambers of the Global Union Headquarters, the air was thick with tension and the smell of rage. The high-ranking officials were beyond furious; they were terrified. Thousands of years spent meticulously constructing a world of balance—a glass castle of order—had been shattered into a million jagged shards.

Ethan’s bounty had triggered a chain reaction far more devastating than even he could have anticipated.

As the desperate factions mobilized to hunt down the Scavengers and Celestial leaders to save their dying Ancestors, their own rivals saw an opportunity. These rivals couldn’t stand by and watch their enemies regain their strength; if a decaying sect cured its Ancestor, it meant the total extermination of their neighbors. To prevent this, thousands of preemptive strikes exploded across every continent.

Ancestors who hadn’t seen the light of day in centuries—monsters of old power—emerged from their secluded meditation chambers, bringing destruction to everything in their path. To make matters worse, a new wave of Outsiders had breached the atmospheric veil, drawn by the sudden surge of spiritual chaos. The Union, which usually commanded these smaller factions as pawns, suddenly found itself with no one to lead. They were forced to deploy their own elite peacekeepers, absorbing losses that should have been paid in the blood of lesser men.

In a private council chamber, a silver-haired elder slammed his fist onto the obsidian table, cracking the stone. "What the hell was the Deacon thinking?!" he roared. "How dare he bring his petty personal vendettas into the light and cause global chaos? We must inform the High Leader immediately!"

This was the Third Elder, a man whose faction had been locked in a blood feud with the Deacon for decades. To him, this wasn’t a tragedy; it was a gift from the heavens to finally strip the Deacon of his authority.

The elders aligned with the Deacon roared back, trying to suppress the situation and scrub the Deacon’s name of any filth. "Watch your tongue, Third Elder! The Deacon acts for the ultimate stability of—"

"Save your barking for your master!" the Third Elder interrupted, his eyes gleaming with cold triumph. "I have already sent the report. When the High Leader returns from his seclusion, he will investigate your ’Master,’ and we will see exactly how stable the world is then."

The Third Elder had been patient, a spider waiting in the dark. He had meticulously gathered evidence. He knew the chaos with Royal and the global collapse was the Deacon’s handiwork. The Deacon had poisoned Matriarch Blackwood, triggering the initial instability; he had deployed the Black Skull mercenaries—who everyone knew were the secret arm of the Union, but few realized answered only to the Deacon.

By framing the Deacon as a rogue agent who had jeopardized the Union’s secrecy and safety for a private grudge, the Third Elder saw a clear path to power. He burned with anticipation, waiting to see how the Deacon would survive the combined fury of the High Leader and the Truth Seeker, the world’s most feared internal inquisitors.