Wang Chen watched the Thousand Soul Flag hover in midair, utterly still.

The air around it had grown dense—unnaturally so—cold enough to prickle against his skin, as if the space itself had briefly forgotten how to breathe.

"Hm… it really worked…"

He muttered the words softly, genuine relief threading through his voice. No matter how confident he had sounded earlier, until this moment it had all been nothing more than theory. A gamble dressed as certainty.

Then—

The banner rippled.

Like water disturbed by something swimming beneath its surface, the Thousand Soul Flag surged violently, its fabric twisting as if something inside was trying to break free.

Swoosh!

A muted glow burst outward, and in the next instant, a familiar figure emerged.

Mo Huyan stepped out of the banner as if crossing an invisible threshold.

Her amethyst eyes were wide, pupils trembling faintly. For once, the Nether Empress's composed exterior cracked—shock written plainly across her face. In that moment, she looked no less stunned than Wang Chen himself.

She had only tried out of idle curiosity. A whim. A gesture meant to humor him.

Yet it had worked.

Truly worked.

For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke.

Mo Huyan's emotions churned beneath the surface, far more violently than she let on. When she had first been sealed within that cursed palace, rage had burned through her like hellfire. Hatred had sustained her—hatred for those who betrayed her, those who sealed her, those she swore would one day die screaming by her hand.

Thousands of years passed.

Then tens of thousands.

Then millions.

And somewhere along the way, the fire burned out.

What remained was despair—thick, suffocating, absolute. A hopelessness so heavy that even the idea of freedom became distant, almost unreal.

And now…

That freedom stood before her.

Mo Huyan lifted her gaze and looked deeply at Wang Chen. The weight behind her eyes was immense—so heavy it made him pause unconsciously, his thoughts stumbling.

Wait. Hold on. Where's my reincarnation knowledge…?

The question nearly escaped his lips, but he swallowed it down. Asking now would feel wrong—like breaking a fragile moment.

As it turned out, he had worried for nothing.

Just before her figure began to fade once more, Mo Huyan flicked her wrist casually.

A symbol appeared where she had stood.

A purple rune, intricate and profound, hovered in the air—its surface flickering with dense runic light, layered meanings unfolding endlessly within its structure.

Wang Chen's pupils contracted.

"Wisdom Rune…"

He recognized it instantly.

This was no ordinary construct, but a rune condensed from Mo Huyan's own essence—containing the complete, unabridged knowledge of the reincarnation cycle she possessed.

Everything.

The promise had been fulfilled.

Wang Chen's nerves finally relaxed.

This was the best possible outcome—better than he had dared to hope for. If Mo Huyan had stayed behind and explained everything herself, it would have been exhausting for both of them. More importantly, it would have taken far too long. And even then, her explanations would inevitably be colored by her own path, her own biases.

That was not what Wang Chen wanted.

He had no intention of walking in another person's footsteps. He wanted to understand reincarnation on his own terms—to carve out his own comprehension, not inherit someone else's conclusions wholesale.

His eyes gleamed sharply as his fingers tightened around the Wisdom Rune. Its surface was rough, uneven, yet strangely warm. Subtle streams of qi circulated within it, seeping into his palm and sending faint tingling sensations up his arm.

"Alright," Wang Chen murmured quietly, resolve hardening in his chest.

"We're not leaving until I fully understand how to create a reincarnation cycle."

With that vow, he sat down cross-legged.

The Formation of Absolute Concealment flared silently into existence around him. Invisible layers of suppression spread outward, sealing off a hundred-meter radius. Any resentment ghost that drifted too close instinctively recoiled, terrified, unable to approach even by accident.

Wang Chen's face became utterly still.

No distractions.

No wandering thoughts.

Only focus.

His consciousness plunged into the Wisdom Rune.

The moment it entered that fog-shrouded inner space, his mind was assaulted.

Foreign knowledge crashed into him in waves—vast, dense, incomprehensible. Concepts stacked atop concepts. Structures of logic twisted around paradoxes that contradicted everything he understood about life and death.

Pain lanced through his skull.

It felt like shoving an entire library into the mind of a toddler.

The knowledge was there—every formula, every principle—but possession did not equal mastery. His mind could barely grasp the outlines, let alone apply them.

Time flowed on.

In what felt like a single blink, one year passed.

By the end of that year, Wang Chen had finally managed to scratch the surface—barely. He could sense the outermost shell of the reincarnation cycle, faint outlines of how souls circulated, fragmented, and reassembled.

Yet when he withdrew his consciousness and looked again—

The Wisdom Rune was unchanged.

Not even one percent of its brilliance had dimmed.

That meant something terrifyingly simple: he hadn't truly comprehended even one percent of its contents.

Wang Chen knew this already. And because he knew it, he wasn't panicked.

Reincarnation was not a mere law. It stood beyond laws, bordering on Authority itself. He had expected this level of difficulty. Compared to this, understanding the Thief Supreme's Legacy almost felt… merciful.

So he continued.

Another blink.

Ten years passed.

The Wisdom Rune remained the same—radiant, inexhaustible, mocking him with its completeness.

Suddenly—

Wang Chen's tightly closed eyes snapped open.

Something was wrong.

His brows furrowed deeply as unease crept into his heart.

"This doesn't make sense…"

Even the Thief Supreme's Legacy—absurd, heaven-defying as it was—had not been this resistant. He had struggled, yes, but progress had always come eventually.

So why not now?

What was he missing?

What fundamental mistake was he making?

Countless thoughts raced through his mind, colliding and unraveling one another—but none offered an answer.

Only a growing, unsettling realization remained:

This wasn't just about effort.

Or time.

Or talent.

He was approaching reincarnation the wrong way.

Another year slipped by.

Wang Chen sat in meditation as he always did, posture unmoving, breath steady, consciousness buried deep within the Wisdom Rune. He focused on the very beginning of the reincarnation cycle—the moment a soul shed its final imprint and entered the flow—but no matter how many times he traced it, the logic collapsed in his hands.

Nothing fit.

Nothing aligned.

It felt as though some invisible force was deliberately twisting the knowledge, blurring the moment comprehension was about to dawn. Each time he thought he grasped it, the understanding dissolved like mist.

Frustration welled up in his chest, sharp and suffocating.

Just as he was about to cry out, a familiar voice echoed faintly in his mind—calm, indifferent, merciless:

"You need to be at least the Nascent Soul Realm…"

Wang Chen's breathing faltered.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe this wasn't something a mere Foundation-Building cultivator was meant to touch.

The thought lingered, poisonous and tempting.

Should he stop?

Should he abandon this after already spending over a decade clawing at something clearly beyond him?

The instant that idea formed, Wang Chen shook his head violently, as if to physically cast it out.

No.

Giving up was never his way.

If ten years weren't enough, then he would use a hundred.

If a hundred failed, then a thousand.

If even that wasn't enough—then ten thousand. A hundred thousand.

By the time his thoughts settled, a faint, dangerous gleam flickered in his eyes.

This was the madness that had carried him this far.

The stubbornness that refused to bow before reason.

Wang Chen had learned long ago that opportunities never waited. If something could be seized today, then delaying until tomorrow was nothing more than self-betrayal.

Today, reincarnation.

Tomorrow, something else.

With renewed resolve, he sank back into meditation.

Time lost meaning.

In the dim, frozen wasteland of the Tower's first floor, the scenery barely changed. Jagged terrain stretched endlessly. Resentment ghosts wailed and screamed in the distance, their soul-rending cries once unbearable—now nothing more than background noise.

At some point, the screams stopped feeling hostile.

They became… familiar.

Without Wang Chen realizing it, a thousand years passed.

A thousand years of pure torture.

Every single day, he pushed himself to the limit.

Every single day, he gained nothing.

It was like sprinting with everything he had, nonstop, for a millennium—only to find himself standing exactly where he started. Even Wang Chen was forced to confront an ugly truth:

Not everyone was meant to do everything.

Some things simply lay beyond one's reach.

And yet…

That realization didn't change anything.

He continued anyway.

And finally—after one thousand years—something shifted.

One percent.

Just one percent of the Wisdom Rune dimmed.

The moment that sliver of understanding settled into his mind, Wang Chen's heart went cold.

Because that single percent revealed the truth.

The reason the Nether Realm had been destroyed.

The price of meddling with reincarnation.

The scale of cause and consequence bound to the cycle of souls.

Wang Chen's breath caught.

"…What the hell did I get myself into?"

A heavy, suffocating dread crashed down on him, as if the ground beneath his feet had vanished entirely.

For the first time in a thousand years, Wang Chen felt his heart sink—plummeting into an abyss so deep it made the first floor of the Tower feel merciful by comparison.

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