As the tenth breath echoed, a blinding radiance erupted from the Thunder Sigil encircling Wang Lin, within which pulsed the fiery essence of his four Suzaku Awakenings.

“What kinship bound the Ancient Immortal Sovereign and the Ancient Immortal Emperor?” he roared, his voice battling the oppressive aura.

“In your world, he who is called Emperor, in my time, was known as Sovereign…” the aged Suzaku spoke, its voice devoid of all emotion.

But as the words left its beak, the flames beneath Wang Lin’s feet surged anew, a fiery tempest coalescing into a colossal Suzaku. This ancient avian, seemingly etched with the passage of countless ages, possessed eyes of chilling malevolence. A deafening Suzaku cry tore through the air as it plunged downwards, a fiery comet aimed directly at Wang Lin.

With the eleventh breath, madness ignited in Wang Lin’s eyes. With a frantic weaving of his hands, the flame-infused Thunder Sigil around him swelled to immense proportions. As the spectral Suzaku descended, he rose to meet it, thrusting the sigil upwards with a thunderous bellow.

The ethereal, age-worn Suzaku crashed against the Thunder Sigil, unleashing a cataclysmic collision that reverberated across the heavens. A shockwave of unimaginable force erupted, tearing through the celestial expanse.

Wang Lin staggered, his spectral form rent asunder by the force of the impact, his soul essence dissipating into the ether. Back on the Great Emperor Star, his corporeal form reeled, blood erupting from his lips. His face was a deathly mask, and crimson mists billowed from his body as his lifeblood was vaporized.

Tens of thousands of onlookers stared in stunned silence. The aged Suzaku’s eyes narrowed, and with a guttural growl, it surged forward, arriving before the Heaven-Scent Incense. Raising its right claw, it pressed down upon it, its divine sense erupting forth like a tidal wave, plunging into the Tian Fang Realm.

Within that realm, its voice echoed with wounded fury.

“Ancestor! What is the meaning of this?! Is he not of our Suzaku blood? Was he not born of the Vermillion Bird?! ”

“Withdraw!” came the droning reply, a surge of invisible force slamming into the aged Suzaku’s divine sense, forcefully ejecting it from the Tian Fang Realm.

“I have my reasons!”

As the twelfth breath faded, the Thunder Sigil shattered, cascading back into Wang Lin’s eyes in shimmering fragments. The ancient Suzaku faltered in its fiery onslaught, recoiling dozens of paces.

Wang Lin, with a sweeping gesture, conjured a shimmering rift into his storage realm. With a flash of crimson light, the Bloodsword erupted forth, streaking across the sky towards the Suzaku at his snarling command.

In that same instant, as the Bloodsword hurtled ahead, Wang Lin wove his hands again, pointing a finger towards the heavens, and cried, “By my name as Thunder, I conjure anew the Myriad Thunder Sigils, open the Ancient Thunder Realm!”

With the thirteenth breath, his voice amplified to a deafening roar, shaking the very foundations of existence. As his words echoed, Wang Lin tore through the void with his bare hands.

The heavens convulsed, and a gargantuan rift, thousands of feet long, ripped open across the sky. From within the abyss came a cacophony of roars, and glimpses of colossal, Ancient Thunder Dragons coiled and writhed within.

The opening of the Ancient Thunder Realm, a technique mastered by the Great Elder of the Lightning Flash Clan, now wielded by Wang Lin through stolen knowledge and the perfection of his own Thunder Origin. The Thunder Dragons roared, their immense forms erupting from the chasm, but in that moment, the voice of the progenitor Suzaku boomed.

“Suzaku Seal, bind!” With chilling indifference, the ancestral Suzaku, which was located beyond the Thunder Dragons, shrieked, diving straight for the newly opened realm. Instantly, its flames grew to cataclysmic proportions, solidifying into a massive Vermillion Bird seal.

From afar, the Suzaku looked to be transformed into a gargantuan seal, slamming shut the tear into the Ancient Thunder Realm. The Thunder Dragons snarled and struggled with the force of nature, trying to break free, but no matter how they battered the avian seal, they could not break through.

As the fourteenth breath approached, Wang Lin shuddered and, without hesitation, redirected the Bloodsword soaring through the sky. The weapon turned and lunged towards the towering stone statue. The sword was a blinding flash of red, but the statue, which had been blind until this point, opened its eyes.

They were orbs devoid of emotion, and as they opened, an invisible force encased the Bloodsword, halting its advance before the statue’s brow.

“This sword… in your hands?” For the first time, the Suzaku progenitor’s voice trembled with shock.

Outside the Great Emperor Star, the aged Suzaku, his hand tingling from the sudden impact, took several steps backward, looking towards Wang Lin with a complex expression. The bird could not comprehend the progenitor’s true intentions or his own behavior.

“Fourteenth breath… This Third Young Master has reached the fourteenth breath!” An observer exclaimed, watching the clock closely. The onlookers gasped when they noticed that Wang Lin had achieved the fourteenth breath.

“The fourteenth breath is this man’s limit. Look at his flesh… it is almost destroyed, and the blood is being evaporated!”

Simuzi squinted, and with his advanced cultivation, he could see the darkness in the elder Vermillion Bird’s face. He snickered to himself.

“Looks like there has been another accident. This trial is full of waves! It would be best if this piece of trash died, so I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”

The Heaven-Scent Incense burned, the aroma becoming more and more powerful. The incense was quickly depleting, and was now only dozens of feet away from being extinguished. Hot air was rising from the smoke, and with the passage of the fifteenth breath, the hand that Wang Lin stood on moved! The hand clenched into a fist as it barreled towards Wang Lin. Before Wang Lin could ask his third question, the five fingers slammed down.

An unexplainable force descended, stopping Wang Lin from escaping. As the five fingers descended, Wang Lin roared and lifted both of his arms. “Crack… crack…” resounded through the Heavens as the five fingers pushed down on his arms.

Wang Lin felt like his entire being was about to collapse. His face turned demonic, and he released a roar. His legs collapsed under the force of the powerful hand.
For sixteen, seventeen, eighteen breaths, Wang Lin’s mortal shell crumbled, his sight stolen by five colossal fingers that blotted out the sun, a grotesque new firmament. As he persevered, into the nineteenth breath, the hand clenched into a fist of monstrous proportions. Yet, in that very instant of crushing finality, the cry of the Vermillion Bird erupted from within its confines, a sound that shattered the heavens themselves. Spectral fire, stolen from the underworld, flickered between the tightly locked digits; Wang Lin’s soul, reborn as the great Vermillion Bird, was unbound.

The statue of the First Vermillion Bird, its eyes ablaze with eldritch light, gazed upon its own fist. That piercing gaze seemed to penetrate the unyielding flesh, to witness the desperate struggle of Wang Lin’s avian soul trapped within.

From the First Bird’s brow flared nine colors of ethereal flame, a phantom fire that shot forth and enveloped the monstrous hand.

The unseen fire melded with the fist, and in that instant, the entire limb became wreathed in roaring inferno.

“Your life hangs by a thread, a mere whim of mine! Even now, you refuse to speak the truth? I saw the deception on the Dragon Armor Star. Had I not sought your true identity, I would have crushed you then and there! The ruse of the Young Emperor, the orchestrated arrival, the trials – all were designed to bring you here, before me! Now, reveal yourself! Who are you, that you dare impersonate one of my Vermillion Bird bloodline? The lesser birds may be fooled, but not I! You cannot hide from my sight!”

With these words, the First Vermillion Bird’s gaze intensified with furious fire, its eyes locked upon Wang Lin, searching for any telltale sign of deceit.

At this revelation, Wang Lin, though battling for survival, paused, then erupted into a laughter born of defiance.

“So be it! Since you remain blind to the truth, I shall grant you oblivion!” The eldritch light in the First Bird’s eyes flared anew, fixed upon Wang Lin within. With a final utterance, the phantom fire upon the fist surged inward, directly into the heart of the Vermillion Bird formed by Wang Lin.

As the spectral flames entered, the First Vermillion Bird beheld a vision, a cascading series of phantom images: the Fifth Vermillion Bird imprinting its mark upon Wang Lin’s brow; Wang Lin’s first awakening, then his second, and finally, his third.

The First Bird did not simply glance at these visions, but scrutinized them a thousand, ten thousand times in the blink of an eye. Finally, it exhaled a deep breath, the harsh light in its eyes softened by a tenderness it had never displayed before.

Its fist slowly loosened. “Can you endure?” Its voice was no longer cold and merciless, but tinged with a trace of admiration.

Wang Lin, still in the form of the Vermillion Bird, glared at the ancient progenitor, silent.

“Long ago, I made a grievous error, mistaking an imposter for a true son of the blood… and for that, I am bound here, never to leave the boundaries of Tian Fang… Your sudden arrival, though superficially matching the traits of my kin, demands caution. Understand that all that has transpired was necessary.”

Wang Lin remained silent, the Vermillion Bird fading, reforming into his human guise. “The Third Vermillion Bird?” he asked.

“Indeed. Even soul-rending could find no falsehood, and every test revealed nothing amiss… until the very end, when I learned that he had been artificially created…” A dark hatred laced the First Vermillion Bird’s words.

“Without the aid of ancestral incense, you possess five nascent origins. This is a rare gift. However, the path you walk is misguided!” The First Vermillion Bird gazed upon Wang Lin, speaking slowly and deliberately.

“When you forged the Lightning origin, a void gate should have appeared… but it remained shut. You believed you lacked the strength, and in a way, you are both right and wrong. Your intent is to wait until the Fire origin is complete, then to batter down that gate once more. You disregard the so-called Five Declines of Man, seeking to ascend directly from a Zenith Nirvana state to a single step to the heavens! If this is your path, you are gravely mistaken!”

Wang Lin paused, speechless.

The First Vermillion Bird sighed softly, its eyes slowly closing as its voice echoed through the cosmos.

“Do you know why humans possess five fingers on each hand? In my time, we too faced the Five Declines, though we called them the Five Fingers of Sundering… Cultivation, in truth, whether for you or for me, is merely the mastery of a single hand: the palm in the first step, the lines of the palm in the second. These lines are the rules, and as each person’s palm lines differ, so too do their rules.”

“The Five Fingers of Sundering, or the Five Declines of Man, are simply the fingers upon that hand. If you wish to block out the sky with a single hand, you must first complete all five fingers. If you understand this, you understand the key. If not, you will never sunder the void.”