You know that feeling when you're at the absolute top? The king of the cosmos, the "Heavenly Martial Sovereign" they called him—Raijin. The universe itself just did what he wanted. Stars, galaxies, everything was his playground. He literally thought he was untouchable.
He was dead wrong.
The betrayal hit him right where it hurt. First, his two most trusted disciples, the guys he practically raised, plunged their divine swords into his back. But that wasn't even the worst of it. The real knife-twist came from his "fated partner," the Celestial Maiden. She drove her own blade right into his chest, a sickeningly serene smile on her face. "The Cosmic Origin Pearl is wasted on someone who's already reached their limit," she said, her voice completely cold. "We can become true Creators with it."
The pearl, this pulsing ball of pure, primordial energy, just hung there between them. It was the ultimate prize, an artifact of creation itself, but it was like it knew their hearts were rotten. As Raijin's body turned to cosmic dust, his mind, burning with pure rage and a stubborn refusal to just let go, merged with the pearl in one final, desperate move. He wasn't going to let them win. No way.
So he just... existed. For what felt like forever. Eons blurred by. He was a disembodied soul, just a floating fragment of a sovereign, still fused with that pearl. He saw entire galaxies ignite and burn out. He was this screaming beacon of fury in the endless dark.
Then, he felt a flicker. A tiny, dying spark of a soul belonging to a young boy named Lin Feng. This poor kid was taking his last breath on a cold, unforgiving path in some backwater mortal world, beaten to death by a senior disciple.
And then, bang. In a flash of unimaginable energy, Raijin's cosmic mind and the boy's shattered soul slammed together. The Cosmic Origin Pearl, now a tiny seed of creation, nested inside the kid's body and started fixing him up. The pain was just... gone, replaced by this strange, humming warmth.
Lin Feng's eyes snapped open. His mind was a total mess, a chaotic mix of two lives. The hazy, bullied memories of a servant-disciple and the vast, cosmic knowledge of a sovereign. He was lying there in the outer courtyard of a place called the Azure Cloud Sect, a pathetic figure in a world he didn't even recognize, but was somehow a part of.
"I am Raijin… I am Lin Feng," he rasped, his voice all dry and foreign. He realized the spiritual root everyone thought was "shattered" wasn't broken at all; it was just sealed by a malicious curse. And he, as a cosmic sovereign, could totally fix it. The raw humiliation and pain of Lin Feng's death mixed with the sovereign's fury, creating a brand new, powerful resolve.
He pushed himself up, that golden warmth from the Cosmic Origin Pearl promising a future beyond anything this mortal world could dream of. He wasn't just going to get his strength back; he was going to completely transcend it. He wasn't going to be Raijin the Heavenly Martial Sovereign again. He was going to be the Ascendant Sovereign, and those betrayers? They were going to learn to fear that name all over again.
End of chapter 1