Prologue

The sky was filled with fire and anguish.

These flames were not ordinary flames, each ember carrying Heaven's will to obliterate whatever it came across. The mountains had long since collapsed, seas evaporated and space itself beginning to crumble under the pressure of the Heavenly Dao.

At the center of it all stood a lone singular figure.

He was tall, though his back bent beneath countless tribulations. His hair, once black, had been stained red with blood. His face was thin and scarred, carved by centuries of survival. His eyes calm, colder than hatred itself. They were the eyes of someone who watched the entire world around him die and learned to feel nothing.

Blood flowed freely from his body, yet his eyes were clear and steadfast. Around him laid many corpses, cultivators, Dao Lords, once mighty figures which had ruled over continents. Some may have been his enemies. Others had been his allies. But one thing was all common between them.

They had all chosen Heaven. He had not.

Above him, the final tribulation came upon him, a vast, merciless and inevitable force.

"You have reached your end," Heaven's will echoed through the void. "Your Dao has been rejected, your existence is forbidden."

"So even now, you still call this justice?" The man chuckled quietly.

His body trembled. His cultivation on the verge of complete destruction. His soul cracked, and his Dao falling apart. Every path forward, each opportunity, each possibility had been sealed.

Heaven had won.

And yet, he reached into the depths of his Dantian. Deep within, hidden beneath layers of Heavenly suppression. A single, forbidden Dao mark flickered. It was Time.

"This wasn't a fight you could win in a singular lifetime," he murmured to himself. "So I simply will not fight you in this one."

The heavenly tribulation began to descend upon him. At that same time, he activated his Dao, the world freezing, flames stopping in midair. The lightning becoming unmoving threads of light. Even Heaven's will wavered for a fraction of a moment.

His soul began to burn. Memories, hatred, regrets, ambitions, all were drawn into the Time Dao, compressing into a single singularity. Heaven roared out in objection and fury.
"REGRESSION IS FORBIDDEN!"

But it was too late. As his body began to erase, the man smiled.

Next time, I will not fight Heaven at the peak! I will cut out its roots before it ever grows!

Darkness swallowed everything as a pair of eyes began to open in the far past.