The sun had yet to rise, but the Skyflame Sect was already in chaos. Word spread like wildfire: Tian Yang had defeated five inner sect elites, including the former chief disciple, in a single day. He had claimed his right not only to return to the sect but to challenge for its very throne. That declaration—audacious and wild—resounded in the ears of every disciple.
In the Grand Hall of Reflection, the nine core elders gathered beneath the ancient jade statue of the founding ancestor. Their expressions were a mixture of awe, suspicion, and anger.
"He's a monster," Elder Mo grunted, his withered hand tightening around the head of his cane. "If left unchecked, he'll consume everything in his path."
"A genius like him is born once every ten thousand years," Elder Yu countered, eyes shining. "We'd be fools to crush him."
Sect Master Han Wu, seated atop the high dais, remained silent. He looked down upon the heated discussion, his mind miles away. In Tian Yang, he saw a mirror of his own past—raw power, burning ambition, and a soul forged in the fires of pain.
"Let him walk the Path of Kings," Han Wu finally said. "Let him fight. If he falls, then it was never his to begin with."
---
Tian Yang stood before the sealed gates of the Ascendant Trials.
This was where the path to becoming a core disciple began. Every challenger had to walk the nine stages of the Ascendant Path—nine brutal trials designed to test a cultivator's heart, strength, spirit, and soul.
No one had cleared all nine in over a century.
He reached out, placing a palm on the gate.
A pulse of qi responded. The ancient formations shuddered, gears grinding as golden light poured from the engraved runes. The heavy stone doors trembled... and opened.
The first trial: The Mountain of the Fallen.
A vast, gray plain greeted him, dotted with the broken weapons of the dead. Towering in the distance stood a craggy mountain, its slopes crawling with skeletal warriors, ghostly cultivators who had once failed this path.
A voice echoed in his mind.
"Climb. Or die."
He stepped forward.
As soon as his foot touched the earth, the spirits howled. Spectral blades slashed toward him from all sides.
Tian Yang didn't draw back.
He stepped into the onslaught, fists blazing with crimson flame. The Codex within him pulsed, reading the spectral energies, adapting. He crushed the first ghost with a blazing punch, its form dissolving into embers.
More came. Dozens. Then hundreds.
They slashed, stabbed, screamed.
But Tian Yang fought like a man possessed. His flame-wrought gauntlets cleaved through phantoms, his body dancing between strikes with brutal efficiency. Blood dripped from his mouth, his arms burned from overuse, but he climbed.
Hour by hour.
Step by step.
Ghosts faded into ash. Bones littered his path.
He reached the summit as the moon rose high, a storm of flame and defiance.
Trial One: Complete.
---
The second trial: Mirror of the Heart.
Here, there were no enemies. Only himself.
He stood before a mirror made of crystal-clear lake water, and from its depths rose a reflection—not of his body, but of his spirit.
Tian Yang saw his younger self. Weak. Bleeding. Crying in the rain as elder disciples beat him senseless.
"You think you're strong now?" the reflection whispered. "You're still that same boy. Unwanted. Broken."
He clenched his fists.
The reflection morphed again—now showing him atop the sect, burning it to ash, his eyes hollow with rage.
"Power is consuming you. You'll become the tyrant you claim to despise."
Tian Yang's heart trembled.
But he breathed deeply, fire curling from his fingertips.
"I'm not that boy. And I'm not that tyrant either. I will forge a new path. One where no child bleeds in silence."
The mirror shattered.
Trial Two: Complete.
---
Days passed.
Tian Yang walked through realms of lightning, blood, illusion, and despair. Each trial chipped at him, carved him, reforged him.
He faced beasts made of flame.
He watched visions of loved ones die.
He endured an entire lifetime of solitude in the sixth trial, his mind nearly unraveling in the silence.
But he pressed on.
When he emerged into the ninth trial, his body was ragged. His robes had burned away. Scars marked every inch of skin. His eyes were sunken but shone with indomitable light.
The ninth trial was a battlefield.
Before him stood nine cultivators—each one an avatar of the sect's ancestral power. They bowed silently, then attacked as one.
It was not a test of cultivation level. It was a test of dominance.
They struck with blades of void qi, techniques older than the empire itself.
Tian Yang howled.
His aura exploded.
The Tyrant's Flame burst from his body, forming a swirling inferno that burned reality itself. He leapt into the fray, meeting each strike with ruthless precision. A sword of flame coalesced in his hands—willed into existence by the Codex's third seal.
One by one, the ancestral avatars fell.
When the dust settled, Tian Yang stood alone, the battlefield scorched into a wasteland.
Trial Nine: Complete.
---
Outside the gates, the elders had gathered in nervous anticipation. It had been nearly seven days since Tian Yang entered the Ascendant Trials.
When the gates opened and he stepped out, barefoot, bleeding, but still standing—no one said a word.
A golden beam of light erupted from the sky, enveloping him.
The heavens themselves acknowledged his victory.
A thunderous voice echoed across the mountain range:
"Ascendant King, rise."
---
Back in the inner sanctum of the sect, Tian Yang was summoned.
He stood before Han Wu and the core elders. Even the old monsters in secluded cultivation had emerged to witness the outcome.
Han Wu's eyes gleamed. "You have passed the Nine Trials. You are now the First Core Disciple. Your next step is to ascend to the Council and prepare for the final rites of succession."
Tian Yang bowed. "I am ready."
"You've drawn the eyes of the Empire now," Elder Yu said gravely. "And not all will welcome you."
"Let them come," Tian Yang replied. "I will burn the heavens if I must."
Silence followed.
Then Han Wu chuckled. "You speak as I once did. Very well. Your next challenge will be beyond the sect—at the Imperial Trials in Skyreach Capital. There, the prodigies of all great sects and clans shall gather."
Tian Yang nodded.
His flame had been born in the darkness.
But now, it would rise into the sky.
And none would stand in its way.
---
Far beyond the sect, in a palace of obsidian floating over a sea of stars, a cloaked figure watched the golden beam rising from the sect.
"So... the Tyrant has returned," the figure murmured. "The stars shift once again."
A raven landed on his shoulder, whispering a name.
Tian Yang.
The storm was just beginning.