What is a god?

A being above the nine heavens. One who could cover the sky with a flick of the hand, pluck stars, seize the moon.

And now, at the ancestral rite of the Blackmoor family in Fengye City, one mortal boy stood straight before heaven and earth, saw the gods, and did not kneel.

His name was Tristan Blackmoor.

He looked fifteen, maybe sixteen. Clean features. Tall and straight-built. White robe, black hair, both stirring in the wind. There was a cool, lonely air around him, as if he did not belong in the dust of this world at all.

All around him, hundreds of Blackmoor disciples in white fitted robes were kneeling on prayer cushions. Their heads were pressed low to the ground, pious to the bone. Against that sea of bowed backs, Tristan’s upright figure was like a spear rammed into the earth—hard, sharp, impossible to ignore.

“Tristan Blackmoor, why aren’t you kneeling before the gods?” a young man barked coldly from atop his cushion, his face dark and mean. “Don’t tell me you still think you’re the heaven-blessed genius of the Blackmoor family from a year ago.”

That man was Fletcher Blackmoor, the legitimate son of the main branch.

“The myriad daos of the heavens collapsed... This Emperor actually reincarnated?”

The haze in Tristan’s eyes faded all at once.

In its place came something deep. Dark. Old.

Fletcher frowned.

The others heard it too.

“What did Tristan just say? Did he call himself ‘This Emperor’?”

“Good heavens... even the ruler of Great Xia Border Nation wouldn’t dare call himself ‘Emperor,’ right? He’s gone mad for real.”

“A year ago, Tristan Blackmoor was called the number one genius of Fengye City. Shame how it ended. Tried to defile Princess Nishang, got his cultivation crippled, and now he’s half-lost in the head, talking nonsense. Pitiful, really.”

The hundreds of Blackmoor disciples whispered among themselves.

Most of them were enjoying the show.

A few looked at him with pity.

“‘The myriad daos collapsed’?” Fletcher sneered, venom flashing in his eyes. “He really is sick in the head.”

Then he turned and raised his voice.

“Father, Tristan Blackmoor relies on the fact that his father is the Blackmoor family head. He has no respect for those above him and dares profane the gods. Shouldn’t we have the servants seize him, slam him to the floor, and make him kowtow to beg forgiveness?”

At the front of the great hall, Cedric Blackmoor stood in sacrificial robes. His brows sank, and his face turned stern.

“What are you all standing there for?” he shouted. “Do as Luo—”

He cut himself short, then roared, “Do as Fletcher said! Take down this sinner who profanes the gods!”

Thud. Thud. Thud.

At once, several Blackmoor guards charged over with heavy steps. In the blink of an eye, they had surrounded Tristan in the center.

Tristan did not move.

He stood there in white, calm as stone, and his gaze swept over the shrine as if he were looking at dust.

Then he spoke, voice low and hard.

“These ants are not worthy to receive my bow.”

His gaze swept across the Ancestral Hall. On both sides stood more than a dozen spirit shrines in neat rows. In Tristan Blackmoor’s eyes, light seemed to turn and flow like sun, moon, and stars, deep and strange, carrying a truth no one here could fathom.

He remembered.

He was the Tatian Dragon Emperor.

A supreme being who had once stood above the Nine Heavens, looking down on all living things, commanding heroes across the world.

Ten thousand years ago, when he fought through the Ancient Immortal Domain, so-called gods like the ones enshrined in this hall had died by his hand in numbers beyond counting.

Kneel to the dead beneath his sword?

That would be an insult to himself.

“What did Tristan Blackmoor just say? He... he actually said the gods are all ants? Said they can’t bear his kneeling? This...”

“Heh. What, just because his name has ‘Tatian’ in it, he really thinks he stands above the heavens? Fears no god, respects no immortal?”

The young disciples in the hall were dumbstruck. It was like seeing a river run backward. Not one of them could believe what they had heard.

Cedric Blackmoor’s face darkened even more.

“Bastard. Pin him to the floor for me. I want to see for myself how these gods can’t bear his full bow.”

Tristan Blackmoor stood straight as a spear. His voice came out cold and hard, full of force.

“Cedric Blackmoor, if you insist on making me kneel, then whatever follows, you bear it yourself. Do you accept that?”

Morning light poured through the hall in strands of gold, falling across his body. He looked less like a ruined youth and more like a deity descended into the mortal world, carrying a majesty no one dared touch.

Cedric Blackmoor laughed from sheer anger.

“You little beast, putting on airs. Even if your kneeling really brings this Ancestral Hall crashing down, I’ll take full responsibility.”

His eyes turned sharp and vicious.

“But if it turns out you’re just bluffing, playing tricks, and delaying the ancestral rite, then you’ll bear every last consequence yourself.”

He was the acting head of the first branch of the Blackmoor family. He had endured for years before finally getting the chance to preside over the ancestral ceremony on behalf of the family.

What honor was that?

And now some junior brat dared wreck it in front of everyone. How could he swallow that fury?

Led by Fletcher Blackmoor, the hundreds of disciples all stared at Tristan Blackmoor as if they were watching some clown who did not know the height of heaven or the depth of earth.

In their eyes, he was playing with fire.

And the end waiting for him would be miserable.

“In the one-million-eight-hundred-thousandth year of the Tianyuan Calendar, a hole split open in the vault of heaven. Heavenly fire fell. The mortal world burned into scorched earth. My Great Dao had only just taken shape then. I entered the Buried Heavens Devil Abyss, took a divine stone with one hand, and mended the sky. It took me eight hundred and eighty years. That spared the world a ruinous calamity. Such merit was mine. So tell me—what right do a pack of ants living off mortal incense have to receive a bow from me?”

Tristan Blackmoor’s voice rolled out like a dragon’s roar, deep and vast, with the faint ring of bell and cauldron buried inside it. It struck the sky and made the whole hall feel tight.

Rumble—!

As his knees bent just a little lower, the entire great hall shook hard.

Inside the hall, those gilded shrines, solemn and imposing, split at the surface at once. Cracks spread across them like dry riverbeds tearing through clay.

“W-what’s going on? Did the earth dragon turn over?”

“That can’t be right. Mapleleaf City has stood for thousands of years. The records never mention anything like this!”

The floor heaved so violently that the disciples kneeling on the ground scrambled up and ran in panic, like ants whose nest had just been kicked open.

Deep down, none of them believed a youth not yet past twenty could possess power this monstrous.

But then why had heaven and earth started shaking at this exact moment? Why now—right after Tristan Blackmoor had spat those blasphemous words at the gods?

“In the one-million-eight-hundred-and-twenty-thousandth year of the Tianyuan Calendar, at the eastern shore of the Eastern Sea, a demon dragon ran wild. It ravaged the living, drowned the nine divine kingdoms, left corpses piled like mountains and the starving dead scattered across the land. I killed that evil dragon with one finger and pulled countless millions from flood and fire. That was the virtue of saving the world…”

His voice drifted broad and high, like clouds rising into the Great Void, like wind sweeping across endless wilds.

Then Tristan Blackmoor’s knees sank again.

Rumble—!

The Ancestral Sacrifice Hall lurched even more violently. Among the many shrines, a full third had already cracked apart and collapsed in chunks.

“D-don’t kneel anymore!”

Cedric Blackmoor was scared out of his wits. Even his words came out broken.

He could not make sense of this cursed sight in front of him, not one bit. But one thing he knew clear as iron—if the Ancestral Sacrifice Hall fell and the shrines shattered, the matter would explode beyond control. No one in the Gu family would be able to cover it up.

“In the one-million-eight-hundred-and-fifty-thousandth year of the Tianyuan Calendar, demons, devils, evil spirits, wraiths, and other heretical races rose in chaos, trying to overturn the human realm. That age was called the Dark Turmoil.”

Tristan Blackmoor ignored everything around him and went on, his face cold, his back straight as a spear.

“I held the Heaven-Slaying Divine Sword and stood above the Ninth Heaven. With one sword and one man alone, I cowed the Four Great Primordial Forbidden Zones. My divine might shone over Tianyuan. The ancient horrors hidden in those forbidden lands did not dare emerge. Thus was the human race spared the doom of extinction. So these few ant-like idols—what merit do they have, what right do they have, to bear a kneel from this Emperor?”

“Rumble—!”

When Tristan Blackmoor’s knee was only a few inches from the ground, the dozen-odd divine shrines in the hall burst apart on the spot, blasted straight into nothing.

In an instant—

Stone shards flew everywhere. Dust surged up like a doomsday storm and swept through the whole ancestral hall. Everyone’s sight went blurry. Coughs rose one after another. No one could even open their eyes properly.

Only after a long while did the choking dust slowly settle.

As the air cleared and their vision returned, those disciples who had just clawed their way back from disaster lifted their heads and looked around. Even though they had braced themselves, they still sucked in a cold breath.

The entire ancestral hall was covered in palm-wide cracks. They crawled across the walls like wounds, dense and jagged, as if the place could collapse with the next breath.

The massive stone pillars holding up the hall—each so thick it took several men to wrap around one—had half of them shattered and fallen. Broken walls, ruined stone, split beams, collapsed supports. The main beam had snapped clean in two. Countless tiles had crashed down and piled up into heaps taller than a man. The whole place was a wreck.

From beneath the gaps in that broken ruin, weak groans and faint cries for help drifted out now and then.

“Luoyu! What happened to you?”

“Don’t scare your father! Don’t you dare scare your father!”

A shrill, broken cry tore through the hall.

Cedric Blackmoor was half-kneeling on the ground, clutching Fletcher Blackmoor in both arms. Fletcher’s body was covered in blood. He lay limp and motionless, with no sign of whether he was alive or dead.