Ah…!

Ye Fan was like a wounded wild beast. His white hair was wild and disheveled; his eyes bled and wept at once. His best friends had all died in battle. His most beloved disciples had all withered away.

And his daughter — so clever, so adorable, only a few years old — had been left to struggle in that place, with no future ahead of her.

And as for Ziyue — even after the secret technique of tracing to the source had been used, he had not seen her final moment. Only those faint spots of blood within the ruins, and a corner of purple fabric. His heart felt as though knives were carving it apart. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Never in any moment of his life had Ye Fan felt so desolate as he did now. Never had he hated himself so much. Why had he not been at their side? Why had an entire era separated them?

Heaven was so cruelly indifferent — it had let him witness such a scene, and yet given him no way to take part in the battle. He was filled with a profound, helpless powerlessness.

“Mama, don’t leave me. Xiao Zi is scared.” A small, childlike voice reached him. The crack in the void closed — yet she had not been transported away.

Because those two massive hands had locked down eternity itself. No one could escape. No matter how exhaustive and ultimate Xiao Song’s final strike had been, it had not been enough to tear open even a single crack through time and space.

When Ye Fan saw those two great hands close together and cover that place, he shut his eyes. The tears were salty, running into his mouth.

Since the day he had begun cultivating, this was the first time he had felt such exhaustion. He could not stop himself from weeping in sorrow. He had known heartache before, and regret — but never had he felt despair like this.

“Father, where are you? Xiao Zi is scared. Mama is gone… Waaah…”

Those childlike words drove into Ye Fan’s heart like a blade, and his entire body shook with each one. He clenched his fists.

Ah…!

Ye Fan roared in grief, cried out, raged, and sent his strike hammering up into the sky — launching against those two great hands, trying to stop all of this, refusing to allow anyone to harm his daughter.

With a single punch he shattered the vault of heaven and broke those two great hands into nothing, made them vanish without a trace. But this… this was only the shattering of the image, not a true crossing of ten thousand years to do battle.

The final image froze there. Xiao Zi was sobbing, her large eyes open and helpless, gazing up at the sky.

And then everything shattered and disappeared. No future could be seen. No outcome.

Ye Fan could not bring himself to look upon Xiao Zi a second time. His heart was riddled with a thousand wounds — the pain had long since grown beyond what he could contain. Blood flowed from his fists where the tendons had burst and broken through the skin.

His power surged with wild force, shaking the cosmos, sending tremors through all these ruins. Many of the already-fractured stars and constellations exploded into further pieces.

Ye Fan sang a song of grief. He was filled with hatred and madness. He forced himself to bear the wounds and the pain and walked forward, step by step, deep into the ruins — this place that he had once guarded, once lived in, the sacred land that had been his home. And now there was nothing left of it.

Rubble, broken weapons, bloodstains — all bore witness to how brutal that battle had once been, and how desolate it had now become.

Beneath his feet, the broken head of a wolf-fang club made his eyes flash with grief again. This was the weapon of the Wild Man — the outcome was not unexpected, and had been among the sorrowful possibilities he had already imagined.

If the Heavenly Court had been destroyed, then there would have been few survivors. Those friends who had once fought side by side, who had lived and died together — all of them were gone now, departed forever.

Ye Fan was like a wandering ghost, walking through the silent ruins. Hot tears slid down his cheeks. No words, no sound. He did not want to stop — he just wanted to keep walking forward, onward and onward without end.

Why? He had not been able to take part in that battle of the past. This kind of regret could never be made whole!

He wanted to cry out — yet it caught in his throat. He wanted to roar — yet when he opened his mouth, his voice was so hoarse, so raw. In this moment all he could do was stare at the ruins, his heart cut as if by knives, and bear it all in silence.

How could it have come to this? Ye Fan grabbed his own hair. He began to hate himself — why had he left? How could he have entered seclusion and remained there for ten thousand years?

Walking through the cold of the starfields, unable to find even a trace of the warmth that had once been there, Ye Fan was like a man who had lost his soul — dazed and wandering, ice-cold throughout. This kind of wound could never fully heal.

He sank into deep, consuming self-reproach. Why had he not been at their side? Why had he missed that battle? This was unforgivable!

Ye Fan was a shell of himself, living in loneliness, tasting bitterness, gnawing on suffering in the silence. He walked forward without stopping, refusing to rest. His heart was shattered, his spirit was wounded.

If he could have wept openly and freely, perhaps it would have eased the ache somewhat — yet he could not. So many people were gone. So many.

Ziyue’s radiant smile — buried beneath the ruins, leaving behind only bloodstains. Xiao Zi’s sobbing cries — the mischief gone from her voice. Pang Bo’s magnificent, powerful body — unable to withstand even one strike from the Underworld’s great power, leaving behind only a flash of vivid, tragic crimson…

Ye Fan moved like a puppet, his footsteps mechanical, his tears falling without a sound. The pain and anguish in his heart were this raw, this overwhelming — watching it all happen, unable to return to the past.

He was like a ghost, lingering and wandering here for many days. There was no sun, no moon — only darkness, because everything had been broken apart.

In the end, Ye Fan knelt here like a child, and cried aloud.

He was no longer young — white hair hung loose around him, and wrinkles had been carved like knife-cuts into his skin. The years had left upon him marks that could never be erased.

A sit of ten thousand years. When at last he looked back — how much love, hatred, sorrow, and joy had all been consigned to the river of time?

How could he be content? How could he bear this? Ye Fan let out a grief-stricken howl to the sky. Like a lone wolf, he cried out alone in this expanse of blood and desolation — white hair streaming wild, his wail carrying unspeakable melancholy and inexpressible sorrow.

What kind of loss was this? After a parting in those earlier days, they could never see each other again — he could only watch from across time and space as the curtain came down in blood, powerless to intervene.

For many long days, Ye Fan sat alone in that place. His tears dried up. He had no words. Many days later he finally rose to his feet. He drew upon his great power and moved star after star from the depths of the cosmic void, refining and condensing each one down to a very small size. Then he piled them together, and built here a mausoleum of stars — burying everything that had belonged to the Heavenly Court.

Rubble, dried blood, shards of bone… He could not tell which belonged to his daughter, which to Ziyue, which to his friends. Within his heart there was only boundless, unending grief.

Since the Heavenly Court had been destroyed, and everyone had fallen together in that one battle, then he would build a great mausoleum and let them all be together forever — buried beneath the starfields of ten thousand ages.

Then, with decisive resolution, Ye Fan turned and walked toward the stars. He was going to war!

Where was the Underworld? Where was the phoenix nest?

The blood in Ye Fan’s body roared and surged. The war-spirit within him was boiling. He wished he could pit himself against the very sky and reclaim everything from the past.

Yet as he walked through the starfields, he could not see a single living soul. Had every last living being died in battle? Countless ancient star systems had been broken and ruined — including many of the ancient life-sites he had once visited.

Could he truly find no one?

Throughout this vast and boundless cosmos, through the endless star clusters, there was nothing but ruin — not a single thing remained whole. He had nowhere to enter to seek revenge against the Underworld or the phoenix nest.

At last he discovered a single ancient life-site where life still existed — yet he saw not a single powerful master there. They were all as good as ordinary mortals. There were cultivators, but none who could break free of their home star, let alone venture out into the cosmos.

What had become of this world, that it no longer held even a single powerful cultivator?

Ye Fan traversed all the stellar domains, seeking out the ancient sites he had once known — yet nearly every last one had been ruined. He sensed the residual traces of great-emperor-level power everywhere. Another great dark war?

Even on the rare occasions when he found a living ancient star, he saw no sages or great beings — and not a single person from his own era. In a world like this he felt utterly alien, as though he belonged nowhere and to nothing.

The white-haired Ye Fan — his aged face written over with sorrow — was looking at the closing of an era. Had that previous world simply become his own alone?

Following the memories of the past, Ye Fan pressed forward into territory that the Underworld had once ruled. After an endless, grueling journey, what he saw before him was vast desolation and immense, sweeping ruin.

“Even here has been shattered — was it Xiao Nannan after she awakened? Did her great decisive battle against the Underworld Emperor and those other ancient supreme beings reduce it to this state?”

Ye Fan’s gaze swept the scene. He pressed onward. Even without knowing the Underworld’s exact location, he had to find at least one clue.

The truth exceeded his expectations. After pushing deep into a shattered sea of stars, he came upon a stretch of dark mist that blanketed the myriad heavens — it was a vast, immense nether soil. Stars burned like fireflies and fell ceaselessly down into it.

The nether soil had been broken open. Within it stood a collapsed underworld gate. A fractured bronze plaque, stained with the terrifying blood of an ancient emperor, lay half-buried in the dust, its face reading: “The Underworld.”

“So this is the place — yet it is empty.”

Upon witnessing this, Ye Fan felt no joy, no excitement. Only boundless, inescapable melancholy. Could he not even kill them with his own hands?

All his friends and loved ones were gone. What was the point of him still being alive? The only thing sustaining him was a torrent of grief and hatred — to cut his way through to the very end, and obliterate the Underworld and the phoenix nest.

He walked in lonely solitude, treading across the nether soil, passing through it — the place was now ruins.

He walked out again into the starfields, following the celestial paths, striding through the heavens. Decades later, he found the phoenix nest — yet that nest had long since been smashed to pieces, struck until it was shattered to the four winds!

“There is nothing left…” Ye Fan felt no joy at seeing his great enemy’s stronghold destroyed. Within him there was only endless sorrow. How much of the past could be done over from the beginning?

How many people, once missed, could never be seen again? He could not hold back a great roar. Everything had concluded like this — he could see no familiar faces, could find no foes.

In this moment, in a world this vast and empty, he could find no place to rest. He felt profoundly, utterly alone.

“They are all gone. You have all left me behind…” Ye Fan smiled a bitter smile — the face of an old man, turned toward the high sky, filled with grief and pain.

It had all been just one single seclusion. Yet it surpassed even the most extreme legends of antiquity — the old saying about seven days in the mountain cave being a thousand years in the world falls far short of describing it. For this had been ten thousand years gone by in an instant!

His loves and his hatreds, his joys and his sorrows, his grief and his madness — all of it had been buried in the past. In this lifetime there was no longer a single person he knew.

Go north to the Beidou. Enter the forbidden zones of life!

Ye Fan stormed toward the Beidou. When he arrived, he found only ruins again — the stellar rivers here had long since collapsed. There was nothing left.

He was a lonely wanderer. He walked for a hundred years without stopping. His body grew steadily older. Even the Underworld had ceased to exist — and the curse upon him had never appeared again.

He had no purpose, no future ahead of him. He could see no loved ones, no old companions — and even his enemies had all died out. These were the things he had feared most deeply, in the most hidden places of his heart. And now they had truly come to pass.

“Was my life supposed to end here?”

Ye Fan had fallen into a state of utter hopelessness. He felt that living had lost all meaning.

“I am not willing! I could not even protect Xiao Zi. I could not guard my friends or my wife. What kind of man does that make me?!” Ye Fan let out a low, self-lacerating roar.

He had been drifting in a daze, his eyes having already lost all their light — yet in that very moment, he suddenly blazed with fierce intensity. His gaze shot out like twin beams, burning through nine tiers of heaven.

“This life of mine must not end like this. My child, my friends — they must not have died like that. I will shatter the bounds of immortality, reach the end of eternal life, and demand an answer from the heavens!”