High in the frozen sky, Lord Nether-Bane was at the absolute peak of his immortal existence.
For ten thousand years, he had dreamed of this moment.
He stood at the prow of his flagship, surrounded by a swirling maelstrom of one million wailing specters. The necrotic fog had swallowed the sun. The floating islands of the Radiant Dawn Academy were shivering beneath his feet, helpless, shivering cattle awaiting slaughter.
He held his Soul-Severing Scythe aloft with both hands.
Black necrotic lightning gathered along the curved bone blade, crackling with enough concentrated spiritual malice to level a mountain range.
"WITNESS THE MIGHT OF THE SPECTRAL VOID!" the Ghost King roared, his voice shaking the heavens. "MORTAL SECT, BEHOLD YOUR END! THE NETHER OBLIVION STRIKE——!"
Across the seven spires, thousands of disciples squeezed their eyes shut and braced for death.
Elders dropped to their knees, weeping as they activated their final defensive barriers, knowing full well that paper walls could not stop a tidal wave.
***
Down on the cedar porch of Solitude Spire, Felix Vance had reached his limit of tolerance.
He didn't care about the ancient gods. He didn't care about the First Epoch.
He just wanted his tea warm and his room temperature set back to twenty-two degrees Celsius.
Another vicious gust of icy wind blew across the porch, whistling through the railing balusters and biting into Felix’s bare shins.
"That does it," Felix muttered through gritted teeth.
He sat up on the edge of the Zero-Gravity Recliner.
He didn't stand up. Standing up required engaging his core muscles, which burned unnecessary energy.
Instead, he leaned forward, reached down with his right hand, and grabbed his right footwear from the cedar floorboards.
It was an old, frayed straw slipper.
He had bought the pair for three copper coins from an elderly street vendor in the academy bazaar three months ago. The straw along the toe was coming loose, the heel was compressed flat, and the sole had a faint green grass stain from walking to the outhouse.
A translucent HUD box flickered above the footwear:
【Item: Frayed Straw Slipper (Right Foot)】 【Durability: 12/20】 【Attack Power: 1-2 (Physical)】 【Inspector Note: Cheap bazaar junk woven from river reed straw. Smells faintly of cedar wood and foot powder. Completely useless for combat, unless used to discipline a disobedient puppy.】
Felix didn't read the tooltip. He wasn't planning an assault.
He was just annoyed by the cold draft.
When you're lying in bed on a winter morning and a cold breeze slips through a crack in the window, your natural human instinct is to swat at the air in frustration.
Felix lifted his right arm.
He held the straw slipper loosely between two fingers, flicking his wrist in an upward swatting motion toward the sky.
"Get out of here with that cold air," Felix grumbled.
He meant it as a lazy, half-asleep swat.
He forgot one minor detail.
Deep inside his dantian, anchored directly below his solar plexus, rested a **2.0-Earth-Mass terrestrial core**.
Two whole planets worth of compressed iron-nickel density, degenerate matter, and primordial gravitational inertia were bound into his skeletal structure. When Felix rested, the mass remained dormant, perfectly balanced by his AetherDeck’s physics engine.
When Felix moved with sudden, irritated intent...
The conservation of cosmic momentum engaged.
The straw slipper in Felix’s hand did not move at normal human speeds.
To the local space-time continuum, the slipper was an extension of a celestial body possessing twelve sextillion kilograms of forward kinetic authority.
*Zero to Mach 55 in 0.003 seconds.*
The frayed straw slipper whipped upward at forty-two thousand miles per hour.
At that velocity, atmospheric gas no longer behaves like air. It behaves like solid granite.
The air molecules directly in front of the straw slipper could not compress or move aside in time. Under the incomprehensible kinetic pressure of twelve sextillion kilograms of mass pushing through a three-inch straw sole, the ambient nitrogen and oxygen underwent instantaneous, violent nuclear-grade ionization.
*KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The sound was not an explosion.
It was the universe screaming as physics broke.
A blinding, cone-shaped beam of pure white-gold hyper-kinetic plasma erupted from the tip of the frayed slipper.
The kinetic atmospheric shockwave didn't just push the air. It carved a clean, five-hundred-yard-wide vacuum tunnel straight through the troposphere!
The localized air pressure spike reached twenty thousand atmospheres.
The temperature inside the shockwave column spiked instantly to fifteen thousand degrees Celsius—hotter than the surface of the sun.
High above the clouds, Lord Nether-Bane was halfway through his dramatic villain monologue.
"—AND UPON THE ASHES OF YOUR SECT, I SHALL ERECT AN EMPIRE OF—"
The Ghost King never finished the sentence.
The Mach-55 plasma beam tore through the lower cloud deck, moving faster than the human brain could register light.
It struck the central dreadnought *Titan’s Rib* dead center.
The three-hundred-yard bone flagship didn't break. It didn't splinter.
Under the sheer thermodynamic fury of the kinetic shockwave, every single molecule of ancient prehistoric leviathan bone underwent instantaneous vaporization. The entire ship transformed from solid matter into glowing white dust in a microsecond!
Then, the shockwave expanded.
The atmospheric displacement wave swept outward in a roaring, circular kinetic wall.
One million screaming wraiths, ancient banshees, and spectral shock-cavalry were suspended in the sky.
Ectoplasm and necrotic yin energy are completely immune to physical swords. They pass through steel like smoke.
They are not, however, immune to fifteen thousand degrees of ionized atmospheric plasma traveling at hypersonic speed.
*PSSSST.*
The sound was identical to a hot iron dropping into a bucket of water.
The million-ghost armada vanished.
Zero wails echoed. The wraiths had no time to turn or flee.
In less than one-tenth of a second, the entire spectral host of the Abyssal Crypt was incinerated into clean, odorless ozone.
The pitch-black necrotic fog that had suffocated the continent was obliterated.
The shockwave blasted the clouds forty miles across the horizon in every direction, tearing an enormous, immaculate circular hole in the skybox.
Blinding, radiant golden sunlight poured through the opening like a waterfall of liquid honey.
The ambient temperature over the Seven Spires instantly surged from minus thirty-four degrees back to a glorious, pleasant twenty-three degrees Celsius.
The frozen mountain waterfalls thawed in mid-air, splashing into the gorges with pleasant, musical gurgles.
The dark winter of the First Epoch was over.
The entire event had lasted precisely one point two seconds.
***
High in the empty blue sky, a solitary figure tumbled downward like a sack of damp laundry.
It was Lord Nether-Bane.
His imperial funeral silks had been burned away, leaving him wrapped in smoking, charred rags. His glorious Soul-Severing Scythe had been stripped down to a broken six-inch bone stub. His pale violet hellfire eyes were flickering like dying birthday candles.
"What..." the Ghost King wheezed, spiraling uncontrollably through the air. "What... was that...?"
His immortal mind could not process the event.
He had gathered a million souls. He had marshaled hundred-yard dreadnoughts.
And something—some incomprehensible primordial entity dwelling upon the southern peak—had casually snuffed out his ten-thousand-year army like a candle flame between two wet fingers.
*A divine palm? An imperial god-slaying array?! A primordial solar tribulation?!*
The Ghost King screamed in terror as gravity pulled him down, hurtling straight toward the lush green meadows of Solitude Spire.
***
Down on the First Spire, the Grand Assembly Hall was in a state of catatonic shock.
Headmaster Alistair was kneeling on both knees, his hands pressed flat against the stone floor. His long white beard was singed by the passing hypersonic heat wave, his eyes wide as saucers.
Behind him, nine Great Elders and forty Inquisitors lay sprawled in various states of undignified terror.
Chief Diviner Master Vance crawled to the edge of the balcony, his spectacles hanging from one ear.
He looked at his sacred scrying basin.
The basin had not just shattered; the heavy granite pedestal had been sheared off at the base by the atmospheric backdraft.
"The... the fleet..." Master Vance croaked, his voice cracking into a high-pitched squeak. "Where is the fleet?!"
"Gone," Headmaster Alistair whispered, his voice trembling with reverent dread. "Vanished. Erased from the river of time."
"What array did Solitude Spire activate?!" Elder Vance cried out, clutching his chest. "Was it the First Emperor's Hidden Solar Array? Did the ancestors awaken?!"
"No array was activated," Alistair said, pointing a shaking hand toward the southern peak. "The spiritual sensors recorded zero spell circles. Zero elemental mana. It was... pure kinetic divine authority. A single strike that shattered the sound barrier fifty times over. The Sovereign of Slumber did not even stand up."
A profound, terrified silence fell over the hall.
Every elder looked toward Solitude Spire, their spines chilled by an awe far colder than the Ghost King’s frost.
"He... he struck the heavens while lying in his chair," Elder Vance whispered, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. "What terrifying realm of inaction is this? He views an ancient apocalyptic armada as nothing more than a bothersome mosquito!"
***
Back on the porch of Solitude Spire, Felix Vance was inspecting his right footwear.
He held the straw slipper up to the warm afternoon sunlight, squinting at the toe.
A tiny wisp of pale white smoke curled up from the front weave. The tip of one dried river reed had been lightly singed, glowing with a tiny orange spark before turning to gray ash.
Felix clicked his tongue in disappointment.
The HUD tooltip hovered over the slipper:
【Item: Frayed Straw Slipper (Right Foot)】 【Durability: 10/20 (-2 Durability from Air Friction)】 【Inspector Note: Waved through the air at Mach 55. Slightly toasted. We recommend purchasing leather sandals next time if you intend to swat drafts with relativistic speed.】
"Cheap three-copper bazaar junk," Felix grumbled, shaking his head. "One quick swat and the threads are already coming unglued. The durability on mortal items in this game is an absolute joke."
He dropped the slipper back onto the cedar floorboards with a soft *slap*.
Beside him, Lyra Ashford stood frozen like a stone statue.
Her silver rapier had dropped halfway out of its scabbard. Her golden eyes were dilated to full width, reflecting the golden sunlight that bathed the porch.
She had watched the entire sequence from five feet away.
She had seen Senior Brother sit up. She had seen him pick up a battered, frayed slipper that cost three coppers.
She had seen his wrist twitch.
And then... a column of divine solar fire had pierced the vault of the heavens, vaporizing an army that could have swallowed the continent.
*A straw slipper,* Lyra thought, her mind spiraling into complete spiritual collapse.
*He didn't use a primordial sword. He didn't invoke an ancient scripture. He banished an Epoch-tier calamity with a frayed, three-copper straw slipper that he uses to walk to the latrine!*
*This is the true Dao of the Absolute Sovereign! To Senior Brother, the laws of the universe are merely his personal playthings! If he uses a slipper, the slipper becomes a God-Slaying Divine Relic!*
Lyra slowly sank to her knees on the cedar floorboards, bowing her forehead against the polished wood in profound, holy submission.
"Senior Brother's divine palm," Lyra murmured, her voice shaking with religious tears. "I am blessed beyond mortal measure to have witnessed the truth."
Felix didn't hear a word of it.
He picked up his celadon teacup, tilted it back, and sighed.
The tea was still a frozen cylinder of green ice.
"Great," Felix muttered, leaning back into his Zero-Gravity Recliner with an irritated scowl. "The draft is gone, but the tea is still an ice cube. Does this place have a microwave, or am I supposed to wait three hours for room temperature?"