Silence ruled the Pavilion. After Ji Xuan’s departure, no one dared approach Li Fan. Not even Yue Xian.

  He had not only battled a disciple of the Profane Court—he had survived. He had been gifted a heretical scripture, a deathly thing no sect would dare touch. And still he walked, silent, wounded, and unreadable.

  But that night, as stars cracked and the moon flickered—

  Li Fan saw it.

  He stood upon a mountain of corpses.

  Not mortals.

  Not beasts.

  Immortals.

  Clad in robes of galaxies, golden auras still clinging to their broken forms, they were piled into a great pyramid of divinity. Upon this morbid throne stood a single brazier of black stone, bound in chains, and from it rose a flame of shifting gold and crimson.

  It was the Godslayer’s Beacon.

  And it knew his name.

  “Crownless…” it whispered.

  “Child of the Broken Path… the Gate awaits. The Deep Realm stirs.”

  As Li Fan reached toward it, the flame leapt, piercing his chest—

  —and he awoke, breathless, clutching the Divine Ossuary Sutra.

  By dawn, he sat alone at the edge of the Pavilion’s Inner Sanctum. The scroll remained cold, untouched by time, wrapped in rib-bone string. The marrow inside hummed softly when near his blood.

  Yue Xian arrived, pale and nervous.

  “You’re not seriously opening that, are you?”

  “I saw the Beacon,” Li Fan murmured. “It’s calling me.”

  “Then don’t go near it,” she said, voice sharp. “That flame… it’s said to mark those fated to slay gods. And they never—never—live long enough to speak of it.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Li Fan didn’t answer.

  Instead, he broke the rib cord.

  The scroll unraveled.

  At first, it was blank.

  Then—blood seeped from Li Fan’s fingertips, as if the scripture demanded price. As it drank, letters bloomed in writhing red ink, forming lines not of mortal speech, but something older. Something dead.

  “Within the sea of broken marrow, where the spine of time collapses…”

  “…drink deep of death, and walk as neither man nor god, but as Truth Uncloaked.”

  The chant twisted reality. Wind halted. Sound faded. The Pavilion’s air turned thin, like space itself recoiled from what had been read.

  Suddenly, Li Fan’s body shuddered.

  A surge of power raced through him—

  His qi burst outward, ripping through the outer courtyard. A spectral form appeared behind him: a figure with no face, cloaked in the shattered pieces of divine armor, holding a sword split down the middle.

  His Nascent Soul had formed—

  But it was Crownless, like him.

  Unlike other cultivators whose soul forms mirrored divine guardians or ancestors, his reflected rebellion, exile, and potential.

  And from the heavens, somewhere high above, something felt him.

  A divine consciousness stirred.

  Thousands of miles away, atop the highest layer of cloud, the Heaven Encompassing Sect—second only to the Celestial Tribunal—fell quiet.

  Within a temple of floating starlight, a golden-robed elder opened his eyes.

  “A Godslayer has awakened,” he said calmly.

  “Prepare the Watchers. The Gate cannot be allowed to open again.”

  Outside, nine lights rose into the sky—watchful, wrathful, divine.

  Yue Xian knelt beside Li Fan, shielding herself from the wild, crackling energy pouring from his soul.

  “You advanced,” she said, astonished. “But… you look even farther away now. Like you're walking a path only you can see.”

  Li Fan slowly rose, his eyes colder than before—brighter, too.

  “The Path Beyond Heaven… has no map,” he said.

  “But the flame showed me a direction.”

  He turned toward the horizon, where red clouds were beginning to gather.

  “The Beacon is lit.”

  “Now the gods will come.”

  And he smiled, not in joy… but in defiance.