In a vast, luxurious mansion towering above the clouds, a solitary man meditated in silence.

The planet below was a nightmare of overpopulation. Forests, deserts, plains, and even the shallow parts of the ocean had been transformed into dense seas of endless buildings.

The man appeared to be no more than thirty to forty years old, despite his actual age already nearing thirty thousand.

He was clearly close to advancing to the realm of the Star Sovereign.

The laws around him bent as he kept his eyes closed, the dense Qi in the room vibrating under the pressure of his cultivation.

His name was Guo Lingyun, father of Guo Tianhao and Guo Longwei.

If anyone who had known him for some time were to learn of his current cultivation, they would likely be filled with shock.

Lingyun was known for many things.

He was a successful merchant, the ruler of an entire planet, an unparalleled talent in business and diplomacy.

But one thing he definitely was not, above all else, was a powerful cultivator. Quite the opposite.

Until two years ago, he had never progressed beyond the early stages of the Cosmic Origin Realm, such was the mediocrity of his talent.

Even his family’s incomparable wealth, invested entirely in him, should not have yielded results capable of increasing his cultivation so much, so quickly.

What kind of incomparable fortune had he stumbled upon?

Suddenly, Lingyun’s eyes snapped open, and his gaze swept across the luxurious room around him.

"Longwei is dead."

A voice echoed from behind Patriarch Guo, who slowly rose to his feet and turned around.

Standing by a window was a man in golden robes who exuded a powerful demonic energy.

He was old, with a long white beard and small horns sprouting from his forehead, clearly a demon of a different race than the Heavenly Demon.

He was a reader of fate. His race had evolved specifically to read, understand, and comprehend the fate around them.

The moment Longwei died, the old man sensed Guo Lingyun’s karma fracturing and did not hesitate to act.

That demon was the reason the patriarch was so powerful, and he was unwilling to throw away all the investment he had made in the Guo family.

"He was the only son with a chance of winning Xue Hua, and things with Tianhao and Rou’er aren’t going well either... can the sacrifice for our lady’s rebirth be anyone else?"

"Those girls were perfect... their fate, too grand even for me to be able to read." The demon shook his head.

He was a reader of fate, but he rarely used his abilities, as they were far too dangerous and a single misstep could cripple him or even destroy his soul.

He performed only a single reading every ten years, and this one needed to be carefully considered so as not to end in a miserable accident like so many others of his kind.

"If your sons fail, we’ll have to rely solely on the numbers. You know what that means, don’t you?" The demon’s eyes grew cold, and Lingyun shuddered.

His capital planet had a colossal population. As a totally urbanized world, it numbered over nine hundred billion inhabitants.

So many souls... even if a considerable portion were mortal, it would likely be more than enough for the sacrifice.

It was obvious that sacrificing his planet caused him pain. How could it not?

His family had fought for tens of thousands of years, eliminating and subjugating countless rival families and even escaping the expansionist ambitions of a powerful sect once.

All that work would be reduced to nothing, but it was necessary.

The old demon saw Lingyun’s constitution and promised that, once reborn, the queen would make him her fiancé.

Even if it cost the entire planet, the queen was a being of the celestial emperor’s realm in life. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Marrying a woman like that, even if only because of his constitution, immediately set Lingyun’s mind racing.

She would be his, he was sure of it!

What else could happen? Someone stealing her right from under his nose?

"And the man who killed my son?" Lingyun asked through clenched teeth.

He wasn’t exactly saddened by Longwei’s death, since he could have another son at any time, but still, as a father, he couldn’t help but feel a slight irritation.

He had given up a lot for the boy and for the chance to marry him to Xue Hua, to win her over as the sacrifice that would bring glory to his family.

Now, with Longwei dead, it had all been a waste.

"Hm... I’m not sure about that." The demon scratched his chin, closing his eyes and activating his reading ability.

It should have been just some random young talent, or perhaps a stroke of bad luck. But the moment he saw the karmas related to Longwei’s death, four in total, he shuddered.

His eyes widened. A mouthful of blood rose up his throat and trickled from the corner of his mouth as he fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

Among those four fates that shone with the light of a thousand suns, he saw a star. The Star of Heavenly Slaughter.

"Lingyun... forget revenge. Even if you discover who caused your son’s death, you must not get involved with that person in any way, do you hear me?" The old demon spoke, fear clear in his voice.

The star of heavenly slaughter was there.

What did this mean? What bloodbath was in store for the heavens in the future?

***

While the Guo family prepared for something grand, at the center of the celestial heavens, in a region so powerful and rich in Qi that even stellar sovereigns were like ants, barely comparable to the younger generation, stood a palace.

It was large enough for hundreds of millions of people, floating in the abyss itself and connected to nine moons that surrounded it by golden chains.

Each of these moons was commanded by a celestial emperor, and the palace itself, built of gold, was guarded by a thousand experts from the realm of the false deity and their leader, Long Tianjin.

The golden dragon, the scourge of the venerable spear, the wisest and most powerful expert in all of the celestial heavens.

At this very moment, he, so powerful, was being interrogated.