The sky over the Central Domain was not blue. It had not been blue for three days.
Instead, a suffocating, blood-red hue choked the heavens, swirling like a bruised eye around the peak of Mount Heaven. The air itself was heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of impending slaughter.
At the very summit, sitting cross-legged in the center of a shattered formation array, sat a man.
He looked young, perhaps thirty or maybe forty years of age. His robes were white, pristine, and unblemished, contrasting sharply with the blackened, scorched earth beneath him. He had the refined features of a scholar, a face that could have belonged to a mortal teacher or a kindly physician.
But the ten thousand cultivators surrounding the mountain knew better.
They knew that behind those calm, dark eyes lay a madness that had drowned the Five Domains in blood.
"Li Fan!"
The roar thundered from the east, carried by spiritual pressure so immense it cracked the rocks at the mountain's base. An old man floating on a giant azure sword descended, his beard trembling with rage. This was the Sect Master of the Azure Sky Sect, a Dao Seeking expert who commanded the respect of millions.
"You slaughtered the Thirty-Six Cities of the Mortal Dust Empire!" the old man screamed, his voice breaking with genuine horror. "Three million mortals! Men, women, children… you drained their blood to fuel this accursed array! Do you have no heart? Do you have no fear of Karma?"
Li Fan did not open his eyes. He sat motionless, his hands resting gently on his knees, his breathing shallow and rhythmic.
"Karma?" Li Fan thought, the corner of his lip twitching slightly. "In my two hundredth life, I saved ten million people from a plague. The Heavens rewarded me with a lightning bolt to the spine at age thirty-six. In my five hundredth life, I lived as a saint, touching no gold and harming no fly. A passing demon ate me at age thirty-three. Karma is a fairy tale you tell children so they sleep at night."
"Don't waste your breath on him, Old Ghost Azure!"
A harsh, grating voice erupted from the west. A cloud of black mist coalesced into a hulking figure wrapped in chains—the Patriarch of the Blood Soul Sect. Even the demonic cultivators, men who flayed enemies alive for sport, looked at Li Fan with wary, fearful eyes.
"This bastard," the Blood Soul Patriarch spat, pointing a trembling finger at the silent figure on the peak. "He came to my sect ten years ago. He offered us an alliance. He learned our supreme arts, the Blood Sea Scripture. And what did he do? Did he help us fight the Righteous Path? No! He poisoned our water supply and refined my three sons into Spirit Pills! He is not a demon. He is a calamity!"
The accusations flew like arrows, raining down from every direction.
"He stole the Foundation of the Divine Phoenix Clan!"
"He burned the Library of the Thousand Dao Alliance!"
"He killed my wife just to test the sharpness of a sword he found!"
The sheer variety of the gathered army was unprecedented. Righteous Sword Immortals stood shoulder-to-shoulder with vile Necromancers. Noble Beast Kings from the Southern Wilderness growled in unison with Imperial Generals. They were enemies who had warred for thousands of years, united today by a singular, terrifying purpose: To kill Li Fan.
Finally, Li Fan opened his eyes.
They were not red, nor glowing with power. They were tired. They were the eyes of an old man who had seen the sun rise and set too many times.
He looked at the Azure Sky Sect Master, then at the Blood Soul Patriarch.
"You are all so noisy," Li Fan said softly. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the screaming wind, resonating in the ears of every cultivator present.
"We are noisy?" The Azure Sect Master turned purple. "You are about to die, Li Fan! The Heavens have rejected your Ascension! Your array has shattered! You have failed!"
Li Fan looked up at the red sky. The swirling vortex of clouds was indeed condensing. But it wasn't the Golden Light of Ascension. It was the Black Lightning of Erasure. The Heavens weren't opening the door; they were bringing down the hammer.
"Failed..." Li Fan murmured, tasting the word.
He stood up, dusting off his white robes.
"You think I slaughtered those cities because I enjoy killing?" Li Fan asked, his voice flat. "You think I betrayed your sects because I desired power?"
He shook his head slowly. "I did it because it was the fastest way. The Righteous Path is too slow. The Demonic Path is too chaotic. I needed resources. I needed speed. I needed to reach the gate before the bell tolled."
"What bell?" someone shouted.
"The bell of thirty-four," Li Fan whispered to himself.
He raised his hand, looking at his palm. "I reached the Dao Seeking Realm at twenty-nine. I prepared the ritual at thirty-three. I activated it today, on my thirty-fourth birthday. And still... too slow."
The sky roared. A bolt of black lightning, thick as a mountain, began to descend. The pressure dropped the surrounding cultivators to their knees.
"Kill him!" The Blood Soul Patriarch screamed, panic seizing him. "If that lightning hits, it will wipe out everything within a thousand miles! Kill him before the Heavens strike!"
Countless attacks launched simultaneously. Flying swords, blood skulls, beast claws, elemental dragons—a chaotic rainbow of destruction converged on the white-robed figure.
Li Fan didn't block. He didn't dodge.
He smiled. A cold, self-mocking smile.
"Nine hundred and ninety-nine times," he said to the void. "I have played this game nine hundred and ninety-nine times. I have been the hero. I have been the villain. I have been the king, the beggar, the lover, and the monk."
He reached into his chest, his hand phasing through his own flesh to grip his heart—or rather, the object fused to his soul.
"The Dao is ruthless," Li Fan recited, his voice turning steel-hard. "It treats all living things as straw dogs. I have failed nine hundred and ninety-nine times. But I only need to win once."
BOOM!
Before the enemy attacks could touch his skin, Li Fan clenched his fist inside his chest.
He didn't wait for them to kill him. He didn't wait for the Heavens to erase him. He detonated his own soul.
A blinding white light swallowed Mount Heaven. The sound was not an explosion, but a silence—a vacuum that sucked all color and sound from the world, followed by the shattering of reality itself.
The River of Time
Darkness. Cold, familiar darkness.
Li Fan's consciousness floated in the void, a tiny speck of light carried by a rushing, invisible current.
He was used to this.
As he drifted, fragments of memory—shards of previous lives—floated past him like debris in a flood.
Life 1.
He saw a starving boy, kneeling by a muddy riverbank, clutching a gray, nondescript stone he had found in the silt. The boy was fifteen. He was hungry, weak, and dying. He swallowed the stone in a delirium of starvation.
He didn't become a god. He didn't gain superpowers. He lived a mundane life as a farmer and died of the plague at age thirty.
That was the beginning.
Life 20.
He saw a young man in green robes, sweating as he practiced a sword form. He had reached the 9th Layer of Qi Condensation. He was happy. He was going to marry the village beauty.
Then, a stray arrow from a bandit raid pierced his throat. He was thirty-two.
Life 108.
He saw a scholar reading ancient texts. He had realized the pattern. Every time he died, he returned to the moment he was fifteen, the day after he swallowed the stone. But he also realized the Curse.
No matter what he did—whether he hid in a cave or ruled an empire—death would find him between the ages of thirty and forty. It was as if the Universe itself was an immune system, and he was a virus that had to be purged before he could mature.
Life 450.
He saw a crazed man laughing amidst a burning city. He had tried to destroy the world that kept killing him. He was executed by a coalition of heroes at age thirty-nine.
Life 999.
The image of the white-robed demon on Mount Heaven faded away.
Li Fan watched the memories drift by. He felt no nostalgia. Only exhaustion. An exhaustion so deep it permeated his very soul.
"The Cycle Stone..."
He sensed the artifact fused to his essence. For thousands of years, it had been a perfect, smooth sphere of gray light.
But now, looking at it with his mind's eye, Li Fan saw a crack.
A hairline fracture ran down the center of the stone. It wasn't glowing anymore. The light was dim, flickering like a candle in a gale.
Warning, a vibration echoed in his soul. It wasn't a system voice, nor a spirit. It was just a fundamental understanding transferred from the object to his mind.
Energy depleted. Temporal lattice destabilized. Soul Integrity at critical limits.
Li Fan understood.
He didn't need a detailed explanation. He knew.
"This is it," he thought, his consciousness fading as the River of Time began to spit him out. "There is no Life 1001. If I die again... I truly die. My soul will dissipate into nothingness."
The realization didn't bring fear. It brought a strange, cold clarity.
He had no more safety nets. He had no more "next time."
"Good," Li Fan whispered into the void. "I was getting tired of repeating the tutorial."
The darkness swirled, twisting into a vortex of vertigo. The sensation of falling—falling from the height of the heavens down into the mud—overtook him.
The Small Pond Sect, Outer Disciple Quarters.
Year 1 of the 1000th Era.
Gasp!
Li Fan sat up violently, his chest heaving as if he had just surfaced from deep water.
The air smelled of mold, wet straw, and unwashed bodies.
He wasn't on the peak of Mount Heaven. He wasn't surrounded by the spiritual pressure of Dao Seeking experts. He was sitting on a hard wooden plank covered by a thin, scratchy blanket.
His hands gripped the edge of the bed.
He looked at them. They were not the pristine, jade-like hands of a near-Immortal. They were rough, stained with dirt, and trembling with weakness. There were calluses on the palms from chopping wood and hauling water.
He looked around.
A small, cramped room with peeling gray walls. Four beds squeezed together. Three other disciples were snoring loudly, oblivious to the man who had just returned from the end of the world.
Li Fan closed his eyes, circulating his Qi.
Nothing.
Or rather, almost nothing. A tiny, pathetic wisp of spiritual energy drifted sluggishly through blocked, narrow meridians.
Cultivation: Qi Condensation, Layer 1.
Talent: 5th Grade Spirit Root (Trash).
Age: 15.
Li Fan let out a long, slow breath. The tension in his shoulders dropped.
He was back.
He raised his head to look out the small, barred window. The moon was high—a normal, silver moon, not the blood-red eye of judgment.
"Thirty-four years," Li Fan whispered, his voice raspy and young. "I have nineteen years of absolute foresight. And perhaps... a few more years before the Curse tries to kill me."
He clenched his weak fist.
"This time, I don't need to conquer the world. I don't need to be a hero or a villain. I just need to Ascend."
Bang!
The peaceful moment shattered instantly.
The wooden door to the room flew open, kicked by a heavy boot. It slammed against the wall with a crack that woke the other three disciples, who scrambled up in terror.
A figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the moonlight. He was a large youth wearing the gray robes of an Outer Disciple, but with a green sash tied around his waist—the mark of a low-level enforcer.
Senior Brother Zhao.
Li Fan looked at him.
He remembered Zhao.
In Life 3, Zhao broke Li Fan's arm because Li Fan was one day late with the payment.
In Life 50, Li Fan poisoned Zhao's tea.
In Life 200, Li Fan ignored him, and Zhao eventually died in a beast mouth.
Tonight, Zhao looked exactly as he had in every other life: arrogant, greedy, and stupid.
"Wake up, trash!" Zhao barked, stepping into the room. "It's collection day. The Sect protects you, feeds you, gives you a roof. It's time to pay your dues."
The other three disciples began frantically digging through their meager belongings, trembling.
Li Fan sat on his bed, his legs dangling over the edge. He looked at Zhao, but he wasn't seeing a bully. He was seeing a corpse. He was seeing a bag of spirit stones. He was seeing a stepping stone.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Li Fan's lips.
"Finally," he thought. "The game begins."
He reached into his robe, his fingers brushing against the three jagged spirit stones he had saved for six months.
"Senior Brother Zhao," Li Fan said, his voice steady, polite, and completely devoid of fear. "You are early this month."
"I'm early because I need to buy—none of your business!" Zhao sneered, stomping forward. "Hand it over, Li Fan. Unless you want to spend the next month in the infirmary."
Li Fan held out the stones.
"Here," he said softly. "Take them."
Take them and enjoy them, he added silently. Because dead men have no need for currency.
The 1000th life of Li Fan had officially begun.