But it was on this day that he encountered Wang Lin, who had glimpsed the true nature of reality!

Wang Lin did not open his eyes. At the instant the illusory Heavenly Venerate’s essence, that shapeless wisp, recoiled, and as the azure-robed man drew near, witnessing the ghastly visage of the Heavenly Venerate being rent asunder, Wang Lin, eyes still closed, raised his right hand and touched his brow.

Beneath this touch, golden light erupted, revealing a single drop of golden blood, which welled forth from between Wang Lin’s eyes and was seized by his right hand.

At the moment he grasped this blood, a bow materialized within Wang Lin’s very being. As this bow appeared, an aura of chilling slaughter permeated the starry sky, and Wang Lin seized it in his grasp.

The Bow of Li Guang. Without the golden blood, Wang Lin could not wield it again. In truth, when his immortal bloodline was forced out in years past, the bow had merged with the blood, and the arrow likewise resided within.

Yet this blood was his, after all. So long as the blood was in hand, he could, through some mystical connection, summon forth the Bow of Li Guang and unleash its earth-shattering might!

With this bow in hand, Wang Lin feared neither heaven nor earth, nor any cultivator!

For this bow was, at this moment, Wang Lin’s greatest weapon!

Eyes still closed, Wang Lin held the bow in his left hand, drew back the string with his right, and aimed it distantly at the fleeing Heavenly Venerate. With a mighty pull, he drew the string taut.

A resonant hum echoed, and the starry sky trembled as if on the verge of collapse, or rather, as if it had already begun to crumble. Centered on Wang Lin, the cosmos roared and splintered in countless layers.

The illusory Heavenly Venerate emitted a silent shriek, and a sense of mortal peril overwhelmed him. He fled in a frenzy, merging with the very fabric of existence, vanishing beyond the bounds of Vermillion Bird Star in an instant.

The azure-robed man, too, was stricken with dread, tearing a rift in space and leaping through it.

As for the tens of thousands of cultivators scattered across the Kun Xu Starfield, already routed and fleeing, unaware of the events unfolding beyond Vermillion Bird Star, they were, in that moment, keenly aware of a deathly chill invading their very souls.

“With this arrow, I shall reclaim Kun Xu,” Wang Lin spoke calmly, his eyes still closed. Upon the drawn bowstring, an arrow, tipped with a ringed circlet, manifested from the ethereal, instantly solidifying into a true and deadly shaft!

As the arrow materialized, Wang Lin’s right hand snapped open, releasing the string with a resounding boom that shook the heavens and earth. The starry sky shuddered, collapsing in cataclysmic fashion. The bowstring recoiled with unimaginable force, propelling the arrow forth!

Beneath this arrow, the starry sky shattered anew, creating a chain of endless black hole vortices. As it hurtled onward, the arrow drew upon an indescribable power of heaven and earth.

None could stand against this arrow!

As the arrow flew, a ripple spread through the cosmos, revealing the azure-robed man forced from his hiding place in the far distance. He turned in horror to behold a colossal ring hurtling toward him. His face drained of color, despair filled his eyes. This was not the illusory realm of years past, where he had projected a mere shadow; this time, he had come in his true form!

If he were to die this time, it would be his true demise!

With no time to ponder, as the arrow closed in, the azure-robed man roared skyward in a desperate plea for survival. With frantic hand seals, he spat forth torrents of blood, heedlessly summoning every last ounce of his essence before him.

He tore open the Realm of Incense, extracting every last vestige of incense souls, without reservation, merging them into his blood and transforming it into layers upon layers of frozen barriers, millions strong, that enveloped his form. In a blink, his body was encased in a colossal block of ice, rivaling a cultivation star in size.

At that moment, the arrow struck! The instant it touched the immense ice formation, the layers shattered. The azure-robed man, trapped within the core, felt his despair deepen. He struck his own brow, shattering his tribal crest and converting it into even more power, hoping to withstand this life-or-death calamity!

But in the end, with a deafening roar that echoed throughout the Kun Xu Starfield, the arrow pierced the ice, sweeping through. As it passed, the ice shattered, and the azure-robed man trembled, spewing blood as his physical form disintegrated. His nascent soul attempted to flee, but it too quivered and perished.

This was the first Profound Void cultivator to fall in this war!

Throughout the Kun Xu Starfield, countless outer-realm cultivators felt the chilling specter of death. The arrow traveled in a straight line, yet from its tip emanated ring-shaped ripples, spreading outward in circles that encompassed all of Kun Xu.

Any cultivator touched by these ripples was instantly reduced to a lifeless husk.

In the eastern reaches of the Kun Xu Starfield, a group of several hundred outer-realm cultivators, disturbed by a sudden, unsettling dread, pursued a handful of internal-realm survivors fleeing before them. The handful of internal-realm cultivators were pale and exhausted, their life forces all but extinguished.

“Let us fight them to the death! Even if we perish, let us die in our homeland!” a middle-aged man amongst the fleeing survivors laughed bitterly, turning around to detonate his life force in defiance.

But in that instant, a ripple swept across the stars, passing through the bodies of the handful of internal-realm cultivators, yet leaving them unharmed. To their astonishment, they beheld the hundreds of outer-realm cultivators in pursuit, screaming in agony as the ripple swept over them, their bodies shattering into dust.

In the southern reaches of the Kun Xu Starfield, two outer-realm cultivators, both at the stage of Heavenly Tribulation, suppressed their unease with cruel grins as they pursued a lone youth, pale and bloodied.

But in that instant, the ripple echoed forth, and the two grinning outer-realm cultivators shuddered violently, their bodies exploding, leaving the youth to stare at the scene in stunned silence.
In the western reaches of the Kunxu Starfield, upon a once-proud cultivation star now fallen to ruin, a grim spectacle unfolded. The native sects lay decimated, their temples defiled by invading cultivators from beyond the stars. Driven mad by carnage, some of these interlopers descended upon mortal cities, their cruel laughter echoing amidst the screams of the innocent.

Worse still, a cadre of these foreign devils seized the comeliest female disciples of the shattered sects, intending to transform them into living cauldrons of energy, destined for sale on the alien markets.

But then, a ripple of power, an unseen force, swept across the ravaged star. Where it passed, every last one of the invaders shuddered violently, their bodies imploding into mere heaps of gore.

To the north of Kunxu, thousands of these extraplanar warriors coalesced into streams of light, hurtling toward the starfield’s edge, eager to bolster their brethren in other war-torn realms. Yet their desperate flight was intercepted by that same ethereal wave. One moment they blazed across the void, the next they were extinguished, a thousand streaks of hope turned to dust.

Across the breadth of the Kunxu Starfield, this horrific scene played out repeatedly. With each silent sweep of the mysterious wave, the invaders perished in staggering numbers!

At the juncture where Kunxu met the Sea of Clouds, the ethereal form of Voidspirit Celestial, previously an intangible wisp, coalesced once more into a humanoid shape. His face was a mask of dread, his eyes wide with terror as he fled headlong.

“With that arrow in his grasp, who can stand against him?!” he cried, a voice laced with despair. “Curse this fate! Were it not for that accursed bow, I could have borne wounds, perhaps, but not succumbed! Why… why must he wield such a weapon?!”

“Grandmaster, in gifting him that bow, you have committed a sin of cosmic proportions! With such a weapon, who, mortal or immortal, can hope to prevail against him?!”

“This battle… I renounce it! If this avatar survives, I shall merge it back with my true self and flee this accursed realm!” He was consumed by a primal terror. He neared the chaotic breach that led to the Sea of Clouds, his escape route back to his own domain, resolute never to return to this forsaken place.

But in that very instant, Voidspirit Celestial’s face contorted in horror. He spun around, his gaze fixed upon the star-strewn abyss behind him. The fabric of space itself was tearing apart with a deafening roar, and from the void emerged an arrow. It hurtled forward with unimaginable speed, with an unstoppable momentum that defied evasion or resistance, and pierced straight through Voidspirit Celestial’s very essence.

With a final, shattering boom, Voidspirit Celestial’s form dissolved, his power dispersed, vanishing without a trace.

In that same instant, on a primordial star deep within the alien homeworld, a bloodcurdling scream echoed across a star-spanning nebula. The swirling mists that enshrouded the region recoiled and compressed, coalescing into a single figure: the true form of Voidspirit Celestial.

He spat a mouthful of blood, staggered back, and raised his gaze, his eyes filled with profound dread as he stared back toward the realm he had fled.

On the fringes of Vermilion Bird Star in the Kunxu Starfield, Wang Lin opened his eyes. The bow in his hand dissolved, and the arrow returned from the void, merging into the golden blood coursing within his right hand.

He raised his right hand and pressed the blood to his brow. Then, lifting his head, he turned toward the swirling vortex of the Sky Gate above, still pulsing with untamed energy.

His third step toward ascension, toward transcending the limitations of mortal existence, hung by but a single thread.

Nearby, Zhou Jin, the sole surviving invader, trembled uncontrollably, paralyzed with fear. He could only watch as Wang Lin strode into the vortex, greedily drawing upon the Sky Gate’s power.

“Such strength… he… he has become so overwhelmingly powerful!” Zhou Jin’s mind reeled in disbelief, his face ashen.

Nor was he alone. Upon Vermilion Bird Star, the thousands of native cultivators stood frozen, the recent events defying all comprehension.

“A Venerated… This is truly a Venerated! Our realm’s hope in this war!” Nan Yunzi’s eyes blazed with fervor. Years of cultivation should have shielded him from such emotions, but the sheer scale of the Sky Gate’s power and the awe-inspiring force of that single arrow had shattered his composure.

Situ Nan roared with laughter, his eyes brimming with joy as he gazed upon Wang Lin within the swirling vortex.

“Glory to the Venerated!” It was a shout, a prayer, and an oath, all rolled into one. Soon, the thousands of cultivators joined in the chorus, their voices echoing through the heavens. Behind them loomed the statue of Wang Lin upon Vermilion Bird Star, its face upturned to the cosmos, its eyes radiating a sense of dominion over all creation.

Yet only Wang Lin knew that his tribulation, the final trial on the path to his third step, was about to descend.