Zhuo let go.
And the universe took.
It started small. So small, he barely noticed.
The first thing to slip away was his sight.
No, not his vision—the true sight. The kind that saw beyond light, beyond dimensions, beyond time itself. The sight that let him gaze upon the very fabric of reality and unravel its secrets with a mere thought.
Now?
Now, all he saw was black.
A vast, empty void stretching endlessly around him.
For the first time in countless eons, he was blind.
"Ahh… so it begins," Zhuo muttered, exhaling through his nose. He closed his eyes and reopened them—only to be met with the same suffocating darkness.
This again?
"Tch. Annoying."
Then came the next.
His presence.
A force that had always existed, even when he wasn't trying. He had never needed to announce himself—existence itself acknowledged him.
But now?
Now, he was fading.
His body was still there. His mind, his soul—they still existed.
But something fundamental had been stripped away.
The stars no longer bent toward him.
The air no longer whispered his name.
The cosmos no longer held its breath at his presence.
It was disorienting.
It was like stepping into a world that had never known him.
And it pissed him off.
"Ugh," Zhuo groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This part never gets any less frustrating."
Then came his power.
And this?
This was the worst part.
It didn't vanish all at once. No, it was painfully slow.
Like watching a candle burn away—flicker by flicker, ember by ember.
He could feel it slipping from his grasp, pouring out of him like an endless river being dammed bit by bit.
One moment, he could snap his fingers and bend time to his will.
The next, he could barely feel the echoes of his former self.
One moment, he could rewrite reality on a whim.
The next, he was… normal.
He flexed his fingers, rolling his wrist.
No resistance. No weight.
Before, every movement had carried power—as if the universe itself recognized that he was something greater.
Now?
Now, he felt light.
Not the freeing kind.
Not the relieving kind.
The weak kind.
The kind that made his stomach churn with frustration.
His voice dropped into a mutter.
"So this is what powerlessness feels like…"
A laugh. Bitter. Dry. Almost amused.
"I hate it."
Then came his instincts.
The way he thought, the way he perceived.
Before, he could analyze a battle before it even started. See the paths of fate weaving before his eyes. Predict an enemy's next ten moves before they even considered their first.
But now?
Now, his mind was slow.
No omniscient calculations.
No infinite foresight.
Just… thoughts.
"Gods, this is infuriating." Zhuo sighed, running a hand through his hair. "How do mortals live like this?"
Then, the final part—the most crushing of all.
The certainty.
The certainty that he could not be touched. That no force in the universe could truly threaten him.
It had always been there, a constant reassurance in the back of his mind.
Even when he was careless. Even when he was lazy. Even when he let things play out just to see what would happen—he had never truly worried.
Because he had always known: if he wanted to, he could end it all in an instant.
But now?
Now…
That certainty was gone.
His fingers curled into fists.
A strange, unfamiliar feeling crept into his gut.
Not fear.
Not dread.
Not even hesitation.
Just… awareness.
Awareness that for the first time in a long, long time—
He could die.
And that?
That was a dangerous thought.
Because it made him feel something he hadn't felt in a while.
Alive.
Zhuo smirked.
"Well, shit," he muttered. "This is going to be interesting."
And with that—he fell.
Zhuo descended slowly, his body slicing through the atmosphere like a comet without fire. He felt the warmth of his homeworld's embrace, the familiar pull of gravity reeling him in like an old friend.
For a moment, just a moment, nostalgia flickered in his chest.
Home.
But as he drew closer—
That warmth twisted into something else.
Something was wrong.
His casual descent slowed, his gaze sharpening as the landscape below began to take shape.
Vast cities, once towering with brilliance and bustling with life, lay in ruins. Skyscrapers, once symbols of human ambition, had been reduced to broken skeletons of steel and stone. Roads had cracked apart like dried earth, nature slowly reclaiming what once belonged to man. Green vines crawled up shattered buildings, trees sprouted from the remains of concrete jungles, and silence… silence reigned.
Not the kind that brought peace.
Not the kind that made one feel at ease.
No—this was the silence of the dead.
Zhuo hovered above the broken world, his expression darkening.
The air felt off.
It carried something beyond the natural—an undercurrent of something tainted, something old. A strange hum vibrated in the atmosphere, almost like the echo of countless battles that had already been fought and lost.
Zhuo's brows knitted together.
"What the hell happened to my planet?"
His deep voice cut through the stillness, but no one was there to answer.
He narrowed his eyes, scanning the ruined city below.
"Where did I even land?"
A ghost town?
A battlefield?
Some forsaken wasteland where time had simply stopped?
"Did I just drop into the middle of an abandoned city or something?"
He sighed, rubbing the back of his head.
"Great. I finally get back, and my welcome party is a bunch of corpses and empty buildings."
No response. Just the eerie whistle of the wind slipping through the cracks of a dead city.
Zhuo exhaled through his nose, pushing his emotions down before they could take root. He needed answers.
And he knew just the way to get them.
"Echo Rend."
His voice carried weight, not just as a command but as an unshakable truth—a law unto itself.
The moment the words left his lips, the world shuddered.
Invisible tendrils of energy surged outward from him, weaving through the air, diving into the very fabric of reality. Echo Rend wasn't just a skill—it was a searchlight through time.
Where mortal eyes failed to see, it reached.
Where memories faded, it pieced together.
Where answers lay buried, it unearthed.
Even in his weakened mortal form, its reach was still formidable.
And what it found…
Was horrifying.
Fragments of the past crashed into his mind, like shattered glass forming a distorted reflection.
—The sky splitting apart, massive gates tearing open the heavens.
—Monstrous entities spilling forth, their forms twisting, devouring, consuming.
—Warriors—no, legends—rising to meet them.
—And then… a number. A simple, yet world-shattering truth.
10,709 years.
Zhuo's eyes snapped open.
His breath hitched.
His body stiffened.
His fingers curled into fists.
"Ten thousand…?"
His voice was barely a whisper.
Then, louder—"What the fuck… it's been ten thousand years?!"
His words thundered through the ruins, shaking the broken silence like a war cry.
Ten thousand years.
He stood there, floating amidst the ruins of what was once civilization, trying to process what he had just learned.
He ran a hand through his black hair, his composure slipping for the briefest moment.
"Ten thousand fucking years?"
He let out a sharp, almost hysterical laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Man, I really outdid myself this time. What's next? Did humanity go extinct? Did cockroaches evolve and take over? Is some idiot parading around calling himself the 'King of the Universe'?"
His tone dripped with sarcasm, but beneath it…
Beneath it was something else.
A storm of emotions—disbelief, anger, an unshakable sense of loss.
Ten millennia.
Everything he had once known?
Gone.
The world he had left behind?
Buried under the weight of time.
He had slept through entire eras.
Through entire histories.
Through the rise and fall of civilizations.
"...The hell happened while I was gone?"
Zhuo took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. There was no point in standing here like an idiot, screaming at the wind.
Answers wouldn't come to him—he had to go find them.
His glowing eyes narrowed as he looked toward the horizon, the ruins of civilization stretching out before him like a graveyard.
He exhaled.
Then, finally—a smirk.
A wry, almost amused smirk tugging at his lips.
"Well, Earth…" He cracked his knuckles. "Looks like we've got some catching up to do."
And with that—he descended.
Down into the broken remnants of his once-familiar world, ready to rip the truth from its bones.