Vartha, a man who had spent eons climbing to the peak of the universe, had been reduced to a mere calorie for a being that shouldn't exist in this universe.

Noah stood on the balcony of his small bakery, his knuckles white as he gripped the railing.

Through his Eye of the Primordial, he watched the 9-Star Heavenly Sealing Array, a construct he thought would take effort to dismantle, simply evaporate under the passive pressure of the demon's presence.

Then, the demon moved.

One moment, the entity was light-years away at the galactic core.

The next, a shadow fell over the city of London that was so vast it blotted out the sun.

The demon stood in the air, his feet resting on nothingness.

He was massive, yet he seemed to compress his physical form to fit within the planet's atmosphere, though his aura could not be contained.

He was clad in armor that looked like hardened obsidian infused with the souls of crying children.

His eyes were not eyes.

They were twin pits of a collapsing universe.

"Finally," the demon whispered.

His voice didn't travel through the air.

It vibrated directly inside the marrow of every living being on Earth.

"After being locked up for billions of years... freedom. The air of a fresh reality. How sweet. How fragile."

He looked at his claws, flexing them.

"The royal family of the Demon World... you just wait. You will know the price of betraying me."

"You thought a dimensional seal could hold this King forever?"

His gaze then shifted downward.

The sheer weight of his look caused skyscrapers to groan and glass to shatter for miles.

"But before that, I need to replenish. I am hollow."

"This universe is young, untainted."

"If I eat every soul in this realm and then absorb its Origin Core, I will surely break through these shackles."

"I will not just be a King. I will transcend to a God."

He chuckled.

The sound was like grinding tectonic plates.

"I should thank that Void Eater for summoning me to such an alluring place."

"Though, I suppose I must fulfill the contract and kill the human he pointed at before he died."

Noah felt a sensation he hadn't felt since his earliest days in the Realm of Infinity.

Pure, unadulterated cold.

It was the chill of the grave.

Is he an Immortal King? No... he's beyond that, Noah thought, his mind racing.

He's a Demon King.

In a flash of crimson light, the demon appeared directly on the street in front of the bakery.

The pavement turned to lava instantly under his hooves.

Noah stepped off the balcony, floating down to meet him.

He forced his heart to slow down.

He forced his breathing to remain steady.

In the world of high-level cultivation, showing fear was an invitation to be erased.

"May I know who you are?" Noah asked.

His voice was steady, a feat of incredible mental fortitude.

He wanted to lead the demon away, to the moon or the void of space.

But the demon's aura had already locked the planet in a stasis field.

Moving would be like trying to swim through solid diamond.

The demon, Beelzebub, tilted his head.

He looked at Noah with the curiosity of a scientist looking at a particularly resilient microbe.

"I can tell you are very young," Beelzebub said, his voice surprisingly smooth now.

"To reach the threshold of the Venerable realm at your age... it is statistically impossible."

"Did you crawl out of a crack in the Realm of Infinity? Or are you a reincarnation of some old fossil?"

Noah felt the demon's gaze piercing through his skin, his muscles, and his very soul.

He realized with a jolt of horror that his Eye of the Primordial couldn't see the end of this creature's power.

It was like looking into a bottomless well.

"I should have killed that priest when I had the chance," Noah thought bitterly.

Arrogance.

I thought I was the hunter because I reached the top of this local pond.

I forgot that there are oceans outside the sky.

"I am a survivor of the Realm of Infinity," Noah replied aloud.

He was secretly channeling every bit of his energy into a distress signal.

He had already sent a message to Arthur, the prodigy of the hidden primordial empire he had encountered briefly.

He had attached a signature of the demon's aura to the message.

He didn't know if Arthur could help.

But he had no other options.

He needed to stall.

Beelzebub grinned, revealing rows of serrated, silver teeth.

"Stalling for time? For whom?"

"The Chaos Temple? Those insects couldn't stop me when I was at my weakest."

"Do you think a savior is coming?"

The demon crossed his arms, leaning back against the air as if it were a throne.

"I am interested, actually."

"Let us wait."

"I want to see the face of the one you think can challenge me."

"It has been a long time since I've had a proper audience for a massacre."

He was so confident in his supremacy that he was willing to wait.

To Beelzebub, this universe was a birdcage.

And he was the only hawk.

Deep within a hidden fold of the universe, where the laws of physics were dictated by the will of the Primordial Empire, Arthur was submerged in a vat of liquid star-essence.

He was undergoing the "Trial of the Sun-King" to solidify his path to the Immortal level.

Suddenly, a notification chime echoed in his mind.

A priority-zero emergency signal.

Arthur opened his eyes.

He swiped his hand through the air, bringing up the holographic message from Noah.

When he saw the sender, a small, rare smile touched his lips.

He respected Noah.

The man was a wild variable.

But as the message unfolded and the "Aura Signature" was decrypted, Arthur's smile didn't just vanish.

It was replaced by a mask of frozen terror.

The liquid star-essence around him began to boil as his own stress spiked.

He didn't finish his session.

He burst out of the vat, grabbing his robes and sprinting toward the inner sanctum of the palace.

He didn't care about protocol.

He didn't care about the guards.

He burst into his father's private study, gasping for air.

His father, Dave, the High Minister of the Empire and a powerful cultivator in his own right, was calmly writing a decree.

He looked up, his brow furrowed at his son's disheveled state.

"Arthur? What is the meaning of this? You are in the middle of your—"

"Father," Arthur interrupted, his voice shaking.

"Look at this. Now."

Arthur projected the aura signature Noah had sent.

The moment the dark, buzzing energy of the signature manifested in the room, the temperature dropped forty degrees.

Dave's pen snapped in his hand.

The ink didn't spill.

It froze in mid-air.

Dave stood up so fast his chair flew backward and shattered against the wall.

His face, usually tan and healthy, turned the color of parchment.

"Where... where did this come from?" Dave whispered.

"A friend on a primitive world," Arthur said.

"He says this being just arrived."

Dave didn't answer.

He turned and vanished in a blur of motion, leaving only a trail of displaced air.

He didn't go to the war room.

He went higher.

Dave reappeared in the gardens of Alexander's Castle.

Alexander was one of the Nine Dukes of the Empire.

A man whose age was measured in eras, not years.

He was a pillar of the empire.

A man who had fought in the Great Dimensional Wars.

Alexander was sitting cross-legged under a weeping willow tree made of silver leaves.

He looked like a handsome young man in his early twenties.

But his eyes held the weariness of a thousand lifetimes.

"Father!" Dave cried out, dropping to one knee.

Alexander didn't turn around.

"Dave. You know I do not like to be disturbed during my cultivation session."

"What could possibly—"

Dave didn't speak.

He simply released the aura signature.

Alexander's body stiffened.

The silver willow tree behind him suddenly shriveled.

Its leaves turned to black dust.

The Duke turned around.

His eyes were wide and pale with a horror that Dave had never seen in his entire life.

"No," Alexander breathed.

"The Seal of the Abyss... it shouldn't have been broken for another ten million years."

He stood up, his hands trembling.

He reached out and touched the phantom aura in the air.

Alexander looked at his son.

"Who is the target? Who is he facing?"

"A young man named Noah," Dave replied.

"On a planet called Earth."

"Earth..." Alexander's eyes flashed with a sudden realization.

He didn't waste another second.

He grabbed Dave's shoulder.

"We cannot handle this."

"If Beelzebub is fully unleashed, he will eat this galaxy as an appetizer and our Empire as the main course."

"We must go to the capital."

"I need to meet His Majesty."

Within seconds, the Duke and his son appeared before the Great Golden Gates of the Imperial Palace.

This was the heart of the Human Empire.

A place where Immortal Kings served as guards.

The air itself was saturated with Divine Qi.

Alexander didn't wait for an audience.

He released his own aura.

The aura of an Immortal King.

Signaling a Level 1 Existential Crisis.

The gates groaned open.

At the end of the long, marble hall sat a figure shrouded in a veil of golden mist.

This was the Emperor.

The man who held the destiny of trillions in his hands.

"Alexander," the Emperor's voice boomed, calm yet heavy as a mountain.

"You bring the scent of the Abyss into my halls."

"Speak."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.