He stood in the void, cloaked in stillness.
A golden world rotated beneath him — vast, radiant, and alive. Its continents stretched across a surface nearly forty times the size of Earth, pulsing with the light of countless lives and the hum of its world-soul. Around it floated thirteen hundred and ninety-three other figures like him — beings of terrifying power, each wrapped in an aura that could crush stars. Together, they were called the Foreign Gods, though among themselves they preferred the truer title: World Conquerors of the Great Subjugation.
Each of them had thrust their dao artifact deep into the body of that unsuspecting world. Each artifact was a spear of principle, a conduit that drank from the world's essence and spread their respective Daos — fragments of their higher realities — into its lands.
He watched as the world's skies shimmered with a thousand alien hues.
Mountains pulsed with demonic sigils, seas glowed with corrupted divinity, and the very air trembled under clashing laws.
What had once been a harmonious world, with its own will, rhythm, and natural Dao, was now a battlefield of ideologies.
---
The Slow Death of a World
At first, the native cultivators fought back. The World Will — that gentle, all-pervasive consciousness guiding its cycle — gathered its strength. It empowered its chosen, granting enlightenment, sending visions, and birthing storms that sought to wash away the corruption. For a time, it worked.
But they were too many — nearly 1,400 foreign gods, each injecting alien order into the veins of the world.
Slowly, the balance tipped.
Forests became fields of obsidian. Rivers reversed their course. Creatures born of light now whispered in tongues of shadow.
And above it all, the world's will screamed — silently.
He had seen this many times before.
This was the nature of conquest.
It was not war of armies, but of belief, law, and authority.
At first, only fragments of the world's Dao were corroded.
Then came the turning point — the number he had learned to dread and anticipate:
When less than one percent of intelligent life followed the original Dao.
That was when the world began to die.
---
The Collapse
He sensed it instantly.
The world's will flickered… and vanished.
The light of the core dimmed.
The flow of energy that sustained mountains and oceans began to reverse, retreating back to the hollow heart of the world like blood draining from a corpse.
The laws that had been spread evenly across its surface — the laws of gravity, growth, flame, and breath — began to fold inward. The sky darkened, not from clouds, but from the withdrawal of existence itself.
He looked down and watched entire regions unravel.
Forests wilted into dust.
Mountains groaned and sank.
Oceans boiled and evaporated into silver mist.
The crust split open to reveal veins of pure void, devouring everything.
The once-bright core at the world's center was shrinking, its light peeling away in ribbons of collapsing law.
The world was dissolving — returning to the nothingness from which it had been born.
---
The Foreign Gods did not mourn.
None of them cared for the dying world. What they sought was the core — the crystalline nucleus that held the world's original authority. Whoever reached fifty percent follower authority first would claim it.
It did not matter how ruined the world became.
It did not matter if all life perished.
The only thing that mattered was ownership.
Once the core was claimed, the victor could devour it, fusing it into their soul and raising their Dao toward the next tier of godhood.
And if the world died before that… it only made the claiming easier.
As the last fragments of the world's will faded, a subtle shift rippled through the void.
The restrictions lifted.
Until that moment, the laws of the void itself had prevented mass slaughter.
The void forbade senseless killing, forcing them to corrupt, tempt, and twist minds rather than simply destroy them.
But now? The leash was gone.
He felt it the moment it happened — that sudden, dreadful freedom.
A whisper ran through the ranks of foreign gods.
> "The will is dead."
"The restriction has fallen."
"Begin the harvest."
The order came like thunder.
A storm of divine energy rained down upon the dying world.
---
The Slaughter
The surface of the world erupted in madness.
Followers of one foreign god turned upon another.
Cities burned, skies shattered, and rivers ran black with divine blood.
Millions fell within a day.
Billions within a week.
Each foreign cultivator's dao artifact pulsed with light as it drank the essence of its dying believers, converting their souls into pure Dao authority.
It was a grotesque race — one where the measure of victory was not how many you saved, but how many of your opponents you exterminated.
He watched as continents collapsed, whole sects vaporized, and oceans evaporated into streams of spiritual vapor.
The world shrank further, its crust folding in upon itself like paper curling in flame.
From the void, the Foreign Gods watched in silence, their gazes filled with cold calculation.
He clenched his hand as his dao artifact dimmed.
His followers were losing.
Even now, the authority of another god — one whose Dao was of Chains and Subjugation — surged past everyones.
He saw the indicator within his perception flicker:
Authority: 48% → 51%
A heartbeat later, the world shook.
--
The victor had been decided.
The victorious foreign god spread his divine presence across the crumbling world, seizing control of its dying laws. The remnants of gravity, motion, and life bowed to his Dao.
Then, with a gesture of supreme arrogance, he folded the world — compressing it into a sphere of molten light no larger than a mountain.
The once-mighty world, once forty times the size of Earth, had now shrunk to a fraction — barely one-third Earth's size, its oceans gone, its sky torn, its surface barren.
The last few thousand beings still alive screamed as their reality folded inward.
Then silence.
The victor reached out, grasped the luminous sphere, and drew it into himself.
The world disappeared.
He had taken it within his divine body, turning it into an inner world. The void itself trembled as he tore through its layers, returning triumphantly to the higher realms.
The rest of the foreign gods — the defeated — simply watched as the void sealed behind him.
He remained still for a long time.
He could still feel the faint echo of his dao artifact returning to him — empty, cold, lifeless.
A sigh escaped his lips.
---
The Third Failure
> "The third time," he murmured. "Three worlds lost… three failures."
His voice carried no rage, only weary resignation.
He reached into his chest, touching the small fragment of his Dao — a sphere of luminous jade. Within it was his artifact, dim and cracked from defeat.
Each time he lost, it returned to him. Each time, it was weaker. And each time, so was he.
> "I should stop," he whispered to the void. "Return to my world, and recover. What's the point of trying again?"
But the thought faded almost immediately.
He could not return — not yet.
The Great Subjugation was still underway. The barriers between the lower strata of the void — where new worlds were born — and the higher realms remained sealed. The only way to return was to ascend once more… or wait until the cycle ended, when the barriers would lift naturally.
He was not patient enough for that.
> "To break through to the Tenth Tier," he thought, "I need a world core. Without it, I will stagnate for eternity."
He hesitated for a moment. Then the decision crystallized.
> "I'll try once more," he said softly. "At most… another thousand years to recover."
He reached into his essence and drew forth a single thread of power — the currency of the void, the Price of Passage. It was the same price he had paid before, a sliver of his divine source, a part of his eternal soul.
He held it in his palm, watching it flicker and fade.
Then he released it into the void.
A soundless transaction occurred. The void accepted the offering.
In return, it bent space, carrying his being across endless distances.
A heartbeat later, he appeared outside the new world.
---
He appeared outside Arin's world.
He gazed around. Thousands of dao artifacts already glimmered faintly around the planet, embedded within its crust or deep beneath its oceans.
Without hesitation, he raised his hand.
His dao artifact — a crystalline spear forged of violet metal — emerged, radiating an aura of divine authority. With a subtle motion, he directed it downward.
It pierced through the void membrane, through the world's atmosphere, and into its surface — embedding deep within the land.
Arin created dungeons around his dao artifact as well, and he joined 1000s of other foreign cultivators.
He had no idea what awaited him
And thus, with quiet arrogance and weary determination, the defeated foreign god began his fourth attempt —
the moment that would bring him face to face with Arin's creation.