On the road from Lhasa to Gyantse, passing by the legendary Mount Sumeru’s great snowy peak, the foot of the mountain basked in brilliant sunshine and clear skies, while atop the snowy summit, clouds suddenly surged, sending ripples through the air.

Clouds at the horizon spun rapidly, soon forming a massive vortex that seemed capable of swallowing the entire snowy peak of Mount Sumeru. Lightning tore through the sky, silver snakes dancing wildly. Amid the thunder and flashes, a dark, oppressive pillar of wind shot out from the center of the vortex, sending rocks flying and trees snapping throughout the land.

He had no idea why such a violent tornado would suddenly appear over the clear and cloudless Mount Sumeru. He didn’t have time to escape before being swept into the black wind pillar, dragged into the air by its immense suction.

At the top of the wind pillar was not a chaotic void of clouds, but a dark, sunken hole—pitch black, with not a trace of light, and the nearby light was violently twisted and distorted.

When the dark hole first formed in the void, it wasn’t large—only about the size of a millstone sometimes seen in rural villages—yet it possessed infinite suction, mercilessly devouring countless giant trees and boulders swept up by the wind pillar, as well as all manner of antelopes, yaks, and other living or dead things from near and far.

Ethan Brooks was sucked to the edge of the void hole in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, a ferocious giant face with a huge blue horn on its forehead thrust out from the hole—blue-skinned, fanged, with a blood-red gaping mouth and three enormous blood-colored eyes. The central eye on its forehead emitted a dark, eerie glow, and the breath from its nostrils reeked of volcanic sulfur.

At the sudden sight of the six-armed demon, Ethan Brooks was nearly scared out of his wits.

When half of the demon’s body struggled out from the narrow space of the hole, Ethan Brooks could see clearly that four of its six arms were severed at the elbows. Its body was covered in natural black scales, dull and lusterless, with large patches peeled away, revealing countless wounds both deep and shallow, from which blue, smoking blood oozed.

Strangely enough, whenever a drop of the demon’s blood fell, countless forked lightning bolts would strike from the surrounding space, instantly vaporizing the fallen blood, as if refusing to let any foreign substance contaminate the earth.

An even greater power of thunder was brewing between heaven and earth, with blue arcs of electricity flashing everywhere. The demon seemed afraid to crawl out of the void hole because of this.

The demon saw Ethan Brooks floating at the edge of the hole and immediately asked, “What realm of heaven is this?”

The demon’s voice was like thunder, and Ethan Brooks was instantly knocked unconscious—perhaps more accurately, scared into unconsciousness.

When he woke again, Ethan Brooks was lying stark naked in the deep valley of Python Fang Ridge.

Countless pillars of purple lightning crashed down from the void, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times more violent than any thunderstorm ever seen on the wasteland. Yet the six-armed demon sitting before him seemed to have an invisible giant screen behind it, shielding it from the countless bolts of lightning carrying the might of heaven and earth, not letting a single spark through.

The distant mountains towered tens of thousands of feet high, but even a touch of the purple lightning would cause them to collapse and shatter.

One after another, the most magnificent mountain ridges crumbled to dust right before Ethan Brooks’s eyes.

Heaven and earth grew dim. Amid the thunder and lightning, Ethan Brooks saw that the six-armed demon was even larger than when it had appeared on earth. Sitting down, it was thirty or forty meters tall, like a stone mountain looming before him. The blue horn on its forehead was broken in half, with blue-black fluid seeping out.

Every drop of blue fluid that fell to the ground sizzled and corroded a bottomless hole, dissolving earth and stone alike, frightening Ethan Brooks into scrambling away on all fours.

Ethan Brooks had long since been so terrified his limbs were weak.

Outside the invisible screen, the purple lightning released from the void had nowhere to vent, striking the surrounding mountains and causing landslides and devastation everywhere.

Countless enormous beasts and fierce birds perished under the lightning between the mountains.

There was even a dragon-shaped creature that burst from the ground, but as soon as it flew into the air, its flesh and blood were reduced to ashes by the thunderbolts, leaving only a massive skeleton to fall into the valley.

Where could he possibly escape to?

A dragon-shaped creature?

Ethan Brooks’s limbs went limp—what kind of world was this?

The six-armed demon, which had previously had a giant eye capable of emitting a dark glow in the center of its forehead beneath the blue horn, now no longer revealed that eye. The other two, like blood-red deep pools, gazed at Ethan Brooks and spoke in a low, eerie voice:

“Dao Xu, that old man, broke off this emperor’s demon horn, crossed the endless void to come here and still seeks to utterly destroy me. Yet now, only you, this ant, benefit. I am unwilling…”

Dao Xu?

Demon horn?

This emperor?

Endless void?

Utterly destroy?

Me, this ant?

Ethan Brooks’s mind was in chaos, his body barely able to move, as he watched the six-armed demon tear open its own chest and pull out a heart larger than a horse, pounding like thunder, and hold it in its hand.

The enormous heart floated in midair, rapidly shrinking, and finally, in a strange light, condensed into a tiny drop of golden blood, like a teardrop, which fell onto Ethan Brooks’s chest.

The golden blood, like the hottest fire, landed on Ethan Brooks’s chest and began to smoke. In the next instant, it seeped into Ethan Brooks’s body through his pores at lightning speed, like molten metal, boring into Ethan Brooks’s heart.

It felt as if countless metallic spikes were stabbing him, as if he were being burned in the fiercest flames. Wave after wave of excruciating pain tore through his muscles and bones, making Ethan Brooks’s entire body twist and convulse uncontrollably.