Zhong Dahong, his eyes burning with a predatory fire, fixed his gaze upon the man of middle years. A fierce nod punctuated his words, his hand pressed against his chest as he bit back a pained groan. “There can be no mistake. It is him!”

The middle-aged man’s face drained of all color, turning ashen in an instant. Without a moment’s hesitation, he stumbled backward, his hands weaving intricate gestures, summoning ancient power. Upon his brow, the tribal sigil of a scorpion pulsed, writhing as if brought to life, casting an eerie, otherworldly glow.

But in that very heartbeat, Wang Lin, his face a mask of serene indifference, raised his right hand and pointed a single finger toward the heavens. As the finger extended, the very skies twisted in turmoil, the winds roared in chaotic frenzy, and deafening peals of thunder rent the air. Above this forsaken planet, storm clouds coalesced with terrifying speed, blanketing the sky in an ominous shroud.

With Wang Lin’s wordless command, a bolt of celestial wrath, thicker than any ancient oak, descended from the heavens, its descent a blinding spectacle. Before the middle-aged man could fully retreat, the lightning struck, impacting directly upon his head.

A wave of annihilating force, like an unleashed tempest, surged through the man’s skull and into his body. Within the thunder’s deafening roar, sickening cracks and pops echoed as flesh turned to ash, bone shattered like glass, and the very essence of his soul was extinguished.

When the thunder faded, the middle-aged man was gone, as if he had never existed at all. The air hung heavy, devoid of even a trace of his presence, leaving only the faintest scent of ozone and despair.

Silence descended upon the shattered landscape, a silence so profound it pressed upon the ears. The terrified cultivators who had fled the ruined city watched, their eyes wide with a terror that bordered on madness. They gazed upon Wang Lin, and within their gaze lay a fear so potent it threatened to consume them.

To summon storms with a mere gesture, to call down divine retribution that obliterated a Void Gazer without a trace – such power was the stuff of legend. It was a spectacle that would forever be etched in the minds of those who witnessed it, a tidal wave that crashed upon their very souls.

The gaunt, old Zhang, held captive nearby, was ashen. Even his breath seemed to catch in his throat, his eyes frozen in a horrified stare.

Even Zhong Dahong trembled. Though he had witnessed Wang Lin’s might within the halls of the Thunder Clan, the sight of it now stirred within him an awe so profound it bordered on the terrifying.

Wang Lin remained unmoved, his face betraying not a single emotion. Though pursued by unseen foes, forced to seek refuge in this desolate place, he would not be deterred. Others might have sought to avoid confrontation, to remain hidden in the shadows.

But Wang Lin was no ordinary mortal. His cultivation reached for the heavens, and his life had been forged in the crucible of countless trials. He had danced with death and returned again and again. Let those who hunted him discover his presence! Even the threat of powerful enemies would not dissuade him from righting a wrong done to one who served him.

As he had declared before, he would not stand idly by.

Few, if any, could force him to bend to their will. The Wang Lin of this moment was no longer the man he once was. He had become a force to be reckoned with, possessed of both power and the unwavering will to wield it.

They say a tiger fallen into the plains is preyed upon by dogs, a dragon stranded in shallow waters tormented by shrimp. But the truth of it lay not in circumstance, but in the tiger’s willingness to be hunted, the dragon’s consent to be abused. Should they refuse, who would dare step forward?

The slaying of the middle-aged man was but the beginning. Having drawn his blade, he would strike with the fury of a storm, obliterating every seed of future strife. Wang Lin brought his right foot down upon the earth.

The topmost chamber of the ancient pagoda shuddered. Cracks spider-webbed across the floor, radiating from his foot with explosive force. In an instant, the entire surface was a shattered mosaic.

With a deafening roar, the roof of the pagoda crumbled, and Zhong Dahong steadied the frail Zhang as they floated in the air, watching the scene below.

Wang Lin descended into the second-highest chamber. As he touched the floor, he was immediately met with a torrent of malice and a surge of killing intent, accompanied by a guttural growl. A bolt of shadowy energy streaked toward him.

Wang Lin’s face remained impassive. As the shadow engulfed him, he raised his right hand and made a grasping motion. A gargantuan, spectral hand materialized, clamping down upon the shadow, holding it fast despite its desperate struggles.

Within the ethereal hand, the shadowy energy pulsed violently, revealing itself to be a violet pearl. Its aura was thick with malevolence, and its light grew brighter.

“Dark Scorpion Orb – Detonate!” A voice roared, and the pearl began to spin with devastating power, on the verge of unleashing a cataclysmic explosion. Wang Lin’s grip tightened.

With a single, crushing squeeze, the pearl shattered, unleashing its pent-up energy. The force obliterated the chamber, tearing it asunder in a cloud of dust.

Within the debris, the young man – the “young master” of the middle-aged man – stumbled backward, his face ashen. His eyes were fixed on the figure before him, and within them, a dawning horror began to bloom.

“This trinket holds some artifice, I will concede,” Wang Lin’s voice was a cold whisper as he emerged from the dust cloud, unscathed.

The young man’s jaw dropped in disbelief. He was intimately familiar with the power of the Dark Scorpion Orb. Under the right circumstances, a well-aimed strike could injure even a Nirvana Expyrean cultivator. Yet this man, having taken the full force of the explosion, stood before him without a scratch. Fear curdled in his heart.

He turned to flee, but Wang Lin merely flicked his wrist. An arc of crackling energy erupted, enveloping the young man in a web of light. The light contracted, sealing away his power, leaving him paralyzed and suspended in the air.

Wang Lin ignored the captive, brought his right foot down upon the earth once more, and entered the next chamber. As he stepped inside, he unleashed a torrent of roaring flames that engulfed the two elders who had been lying in wait. The elders were blasted backward, coughing up blood. The flames seared through their skin, forming arcane seals that imprisoned them in mid-air.

“Like scorpions, you thrive in the darkness, in the hidden fissures beneath the earth. And yet, even now, not all of you have emerged…” Wang Lin spoke calmly as he strode toward the next chamber.
Beneath its myriad layers, the pagoda thundered ceaselessly. Amidst the mournful cries, more and more of the Dark Scorpion Clan were sealed and flung into the air. Soon, the number of Dark Scorpions adrift in the heavens exceeded mere dozens.

“Thou dost trespass beyond measure!” A furious roar erupted from the deepest, earth-buried level of the pagoda as Wang Lin ventured ever deeper.

Simultaneously, a force vast and terrible surged upwards, forming a gale that unleashed itself upon Wang Lin, who stood in the pagoda’s central levels.

This tempest, heedless of the tower’s destruction, hammered its way up, layer by layer, each level adding to its fury. In an instant, it breached the very earth beneath Wang Lin’s feet and burst forth into the open air!

There, before Wang Lin, stood a phantom scorpion, ten fathoms in length, conjured forth by arcane power. It lunged directly at him.

Wang Lin’s eyes gleamed. Without retreating, he clenched his fist, channeling the full might of his Ancient God blood. As the spectral scorpion neared, Wang Lin struck with all his force!

The moment his fist flew, the phantom of an Ancient God materialized behind him, mimicking his strike. Their blows met the scorpion head-on.

The resulting cataclysmic boom echoed across the heavens and earth, a shockwave of indescribable power that swept outwards. The very heavens shifted, the earth quaked, and the cultivation star trembled, erupting in vast clouds of dust. With a rending crack, the pagoda’s exposed portions shattered into countless fragments, annihilated by the shockwave.

Even the buried foundations buckled and collapsed, sending earth surging like tidal waves in all directions.

Amidst the ruins, scores of cultivators were hurled from the shattered pagoda, faces ashen, spitting blood, their eyes wide with terror at the sight of Wang Lin.

Onlookers scattered in fear, utterly stunned by a spectacle the likes of which they had never witnessed.

At the epicenter of the tower’s destruction, Wang Lin stood unyielding. His robes billowed in the tempest, his long hair danced in the wind, yet he remained unmoved. He lowered his gaze to the chasm below, declaring coldly, “To wound my servants is considered ‘trespassing’? You are all far too weak.”

Beneath him, a gaping hole of a thousand fathoms now scarred the land, revealing the once-hidden depths. Where the pagoda had stood, now only darkness reigned.

In the depths of the chasm, upon a shattered flagstone, sat an old man cloaked in black, an embroidered scorpion emblazoned upon his robes. It was a peculiar beast, possessing nine tails!

A scorpion sigil adorned his brow, though less elaborate than the one on his garments, bearing only four tails.

Those four tails drooped down, obscuring his face, making him appear fearsome. Yet, his face was now pale, and he coughed up a mouthful of blood before looking up, his eyes burning with a vengeful light. He surged to his feet and charged toward Wang Lin.

“Though the Dark Scorpion Clan may be small, we are one of the three hundred and seventy-two clans recognized within the Fallen Lands! To oppose us is to oppose all the Fallen Lands! The Fallen Emperor will surely not spare you!”

“A mere second-stage Celestial Decay dares speak such words to me?” Wang Lin replied serenely, his gaze piercing the old man’s eyes like lightning. The world roared as a sudden flash of lightning blazed in his right eye.

The old man’s face contorted in terror. The figure before him had vanished, replaced by a thunderbolt descending from the heavens, piercing his eyes and striking his very soul.

His spirit reeling, the old man coughed up more blood and stumbled backward, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Fourth-stage Celestial Decay! This is surely the power of the fourth stage! Accursed, how did the Dark Scorpion Clan draw the ire of such a monster?!” He was about to retreat when Wang Lin flicked his sleeve and reached out, his hand hovering in the air.

The old man felt the very fabric of space surge, as if the heavens themselves had become his foe. The world twisted around him, forming an invisible cage, closing in from all sides.

His bones screamed in agony as he felt himself being crushed. Sensing imminent death, he abandoned any thought of retreat. He struck his own brow, and the scorpion sigil pulsed with unnatural life.

The four-tailed scorpion peeled away from his forehead and floated before him, swelling to a hundred fathoms in size, its tails thrashing, creating a deafening din.

The monstrous scorpion screeched to the heavens and lashed out at Wang Lin with its four tails. Not content with this, the old man clenched his fist and waved his hand, summoning a hundred puppet warriors, each radiating the power of a Yin Void Yang Solid cultivator, instantly surrounding Wang Lin.

“Destroy him, all of you!”

The old man roared with rage, and without hesitation, he turned to flee. But Wang Lin merely smiled, his eyes never leaving the man. He took a single step forward, and with a ripple of space, vanished from sight.
The elder, fleeing with desperate haste, found his escape cut short. A ripple in the very fabric of reality marked Wang Lin’s emergence, his figure coalescing from the void. With effortless grace, he raised a single finger, the index digit of his right hand, and aimed it towards the elder’s brow.

A chilling premonition of demise seized the elder’s heart. Terror widened his eyes as he sought to evade the impending doom, but the gulf in their power rendered him helpless. He could only watch, paralyzed, as the finger approached his third eye. Even before contact, the mere aura emanating from its tip surged into his being like a thunderclap.

*BOOM!*

The elder’s body convulsed violently. Under the weight of that single digit, his nascent soul was forced from its corporeal prison, hovering in the air, frozen in terror, a silent plea for mercy etched upon its spectral face. The four-tailed scorpion, his bonded familiar, dissolved into ethereal light, retreating to form a brand upon the elder’s soul.

The vacated husk of his physical form arced backward, crashing into the earth with a sickening thud, sending a cloud of dust billowing upwards. Crimson stained the parched ground.

“Still harbor thoughts of escape?” Wang Lin’s voice, a chilling whisper, accompanied the touch of his finger against the elder’s spectral brow.

“A mere brush of his aura, and my soul is ejected, my body crippled and cast aside! Should that finger truly pierce me, annihilation is certain! This being… he is no mere Celestial Fifth Decay!” The elder’s soul trembled, his head shaking violently. He was utterly defeated, stripped of all will to resist. The finger had not even struck, yet in its restraint, it held a power that dwarfed his own.

“From this moment forth, your Dark Scorpion Clan shall bend knee to me, obeying my every command. Disobey, and face extinction!” Wang Lin retracted his hand, his gaze like glacial ice upon the elder’s soul.

The elder, shivering, nodded repeatedly. “This Forsaken Star is ruled by strength. To be sheltered by such power is our clan’s fortune! The one hundred and seventy-six souls of the Dark Scorpion Clan are yours to command, Master. None shall dare defy!”

“Hold! My Lord, heed not his honeyed words! They must swear the Oath of the Ancient Clans upon their very life-sigils. Should they break this oath, their sigils will turn against them, consuming them in agony until their very existence is erased from the tapestry of time!” Zhong Dahu’s voice cut through the air, a flicker of cunning in his eyes.

The elder recoiled, a venomous glance darting towards Zhong Dahu, but his malice crumbled into a grim acceptance. He bowed his head. “So be it. I swear the Oath of the Ancient Clans upon my life-sigil, to serve you as my liege. Should I betray this vow, may the sigil turn against me, consuming me and extinguishing my bloodline.”

As the words left his spectral lips, the Clan Sigil flared with an unearthly light. The four-tailed scorpion writhed in silent agony, its form weakening as an ancient, weathered mark seared itself into its essence, a brand of servitude.

At Wang Lin’s command, the clan’s prison shattered, freeing the Dark Scorpion warriors. They witnessed the recent display of power, and fear now mingled with the shadows in their eyes. Even the one hailed as the “Young Lord” quailed before Wang Lin’s might.

One by one, they swore the oath, binding themselves and their clan to Wang Lin’s will. Thus, upon this Forsaken Star, the Dark Scorpion Clan became the first Ancient Clan to fall under Wang Lin’s banner.

Wang Lin’s cave became a sacred sanctuary, ringed by the Dark Scorpion warriors. Through arcane arts, they transformed the surrounding lands into a desolate desert, a new domain for the clan upon this desolate world.

The elder, a man named Zhang, having witnessed Wang Lin’s overwhelming power, resolved in his heart to cling to Zhong Dahu’s favor, seeking to rise alongside the new overlord.

As for Zhong Dahu, he strutted about, his nascent godhood amplified by the sheer terror he inspired in the Dark Scorpion Clan.

“This Forsaken Star is fragmented into three hundred and seventy-two smaller clans. The Dark Scorpion clan is among the weakest, clinging to this desolate rock and dwindling in number…”

“Beyond these stars lies the Council of Elders, but here on the Forsaken Star, we have the Council of the Fallen. Thirteen Elders hold dominion, their power absolute. Above them stands the enigmatic Fallen Emperor, said to be a cultivator of the Third Step. It is his presence alone that keeps the Council of Elders from laying claim to this land.”

“The positions on the Council of the Fallen are not permanent. Every century, a challenge is offered. The victor claims an Elder’s seat. It is whispered that the Council of Elders has sent countless spies, attempting to seize a seat, but all have met with untimely ends before the challenge could begin.” He paused, his gaze meeting Wang Lin’s. “Those who do not seek a seat on the Council face no such danger.”

He stood within Wang Lin’s sanctuary, laying bare all that he knew.

“As for the puppets you seek, Lord, they can only be acquired upon the stars held by the Elders of the Council. The Dark Scorpion Clan’s own puppets are purchased there. The greater the cultivation of the puppet, the harder it is to obtain. They are not sold to common cultivators, only to the clans of the Forsaken Star.”

“It is said the crafting methods were gifted by the mysterious Fallen Emperor, but the secrets remain locked within the thirteen Elders.”

“The Dark Scorpion Clan possesses a puppet of the Nascent Soul stage. It is beyond price, a treasure worthy of countless artifacts and elixirs beyond these borders!” As he spoke, he struck his life-sigil. A pulse of ghostly light emerged, coalescing into the form of a man in his middle years.

The puppet’s gaze was vacant, almost indistinguishable from a living being. Yet, closer inspection revealed a lack of vitality, and countless seals concealing its inner workings.

Wang Lin’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the puppet. After a long silence, he finally spoke. “Does the Forsaken Star hold puppets of the Nirvana Shatterer stage?”

The elder hesitated, then whispered, “It does.”

Wang Lin’s heart pounded, but his face remained impassive. “And puppets of the Celestial Decay stage… do they exist?”

The elder remained silent for an even longer duration. “I… I cannot speak with certainty, Lord. But it is rumored that such puppets have been sighted… though whether the tales are truth or fable, I cannot say.”
A glint ignited in Wang Lin’s eyes, sharp as shards of starlight. Within this forsaken corner of the immemorial starfield, a place of fallen grandeur, he had stumbled upon the unimaginable. A puppet animated by the very tribulations of celestial ascension! A truth too startling to fully grasp.

“If even a puppet of such power exists, could there also be puppets… of Third Step Immortals?” He dared not voice the query. The notion was too blasphemous, a concept his mind vehemently rejected.

“Tell me,” Wang Lin finally inquired, breaking the pregnant silence, “of the Fire Sparrow Clan. What is their influence here?”

“The Fire Sparrow Clan, a lineage of ancient prominence, has sent its scions to this forsaken land in recent years. Though their numbers are but a few hundred, they have established a foothold. It is known to many that they serve the clan’s ambitions, yet, they have never embroiled themselves in the endless squabbles for dominion. Thus, they have remained secure. They mingle with the tribes, participate in the傀儡 trade, and, in secret, gather the Flamespawn Crystals, sending them back to the Fire Sparrow Clan with regularity.”

“Flamespawn Crystals, you say?” Wang Lin’s gaze sharpened.

“A treasure unique to this Blighted Realm. It is whispered that the Fallen Emperor himself brought them, that they are crucial in the crafting of 傀儡. Alas, they are rare, and difficult to find… I… I possess a small piece, which I offer to my lord.” The old man hesitated, then produced a grain of white sand from the folds of his robes.

With a gesture, Wang Lin summoned the crystal to his palm. He scrutinized it, and his pupils contracted, a flicker of shock that was swiftly veiled.

“You are dismissed. Gather all information regarding the Fire Sparrow Clan here, and present it to me with all haste.” Wang Lin waved his hand, and the old man, bowing low, retreated from the cavern.

As the heavy doors of the cavern boomed shut, sealed with Wang Lin’s own wards, he lowered his gaze to the fragment of white sand in his hand. His eyes burned with a growing intensity, and a tremor of awe ran through him.

“Flamespawn Crystal… So *this* is also called Flamespawn Crystal! The Ancient Sacred Emperor of the Vermillion Bird once spoke of the Four Holy Sects, originating from beyond the border, in this very ancient starfield… His words ring true!

The Fallen Emperor brought the Flamespawn Crystals… Why would he possess such a thing? Could it be… could it be…?” A blaze of insight erupted in Wang Lin’s eyes, revealing a flicker of barely contained excitement!