The obsession gripping Taiyi Minor Xuantian was unlike anything Su Yan had felt. It surpassed the undying resentments of the White-Clad Nuo Immortal. It rivaled the climbers in the Abyss of Cangwu, clawing toward a sky they would never reach.
Fear. That was the core of it. The fear of the strongest cultivators from ten thousand worlds, dying together in a single battle.
The other Su Yan walked through the sand and passed straight through him. Reality twisted. Su Yan's perspective shifted — he was no longer watching. He was inside the other one's skin.
He looked up. The bell was gone. The divine light was gone. Yuan Qi had never existed. His memories blurred, replaced by a single truth: he was the demon. The one who had broken the road and destroyed everything.
"No." Su Yan forced clarity back into his mind. "This isn't the past. This is their obsession."
Minor Xuantian was a battlefield. The deadliest in history. Cultivators at the Tower-Scaling and Spirit-Bridge stages had gathered here, representing the peak of every world, to stop a single monster.
Their obsession had fused with the land itself. And now it replayed the final battle.
White skeletons rose from the sand. The desert reversed into green paradise. Shattered treasures reassembled in midair and flew backward to their owners. The ruined Xiyi Domains returned. From Stone City, hundreds of peak-level cultivators emerged, smiling, confident, certain of victory.
Then they saw Su Yan.
"Demon!" a beautiful woman spat.
A battle-axe fell from the sky. Su Yan — no, the demon — caught it between two fingers. The blade's shockwave split the earth for a hundred li, but the ground beneath his feet remained untouched.
He laughed. No one heard the words.
Treasures rained down. He walked through them. A pagoda shattered against his palm. He seized a god from the crowd and tore off its head. Blood sprayed across the immortal palace walls. Bodies piled in the wells and ruins.
The survivors summoned the Yin-Yang Vine itself. He seized the阴藤 and wrestled three hundred cultivators for control. They called down heavenly tribulation. He endured it, then killed the two hundred sixty-seven immortals waiting beyond.
The vision ended. Sand returned. Su Yan stood alone, trembling.
"In their eyes," he whispered, "I was the monster."
A scream tore through the silence. A nuo master ran past, clawing at his own face. "Don't come near me!"
Another cultivator from Yuan Ding charged, eyes wild, calling Su Yan the great demon. Su Yan raised a palm instinctively. His six secrets connected in a way they never had before. The attacker's ribs shattered. His primordial spirit tore from his soul.
The man collapsed, clutching Su Yan's robes. "You... are the terror..."