The Golden Core Shatters

At the Golden Core Tournament finals, thirty thousand pairs of eyes watched Shen Du crush his own Golden Core in public.

A genius had fallen, and the sect was in an uproar. He asked to be demoted to an outer-sect disciple, moved into a drafty shack in the northwest corner, and became the laughingstock of the entire Tianheng Sect.

But no one knew that while other cultivators walked toward higher realms, he was cultivating by walking backward.

Every time he dispersed a layer of cultivation, a rune lit up on the nameless black stele in his sea of consciousness. The first, "Sense," let him hear heartbeats thirty feet away. The second, "Direct," let him crush a scheme he had laid himself. Dispersing his cultivation was no downfall. It was a key. Beneath the stele's seventh layer lay the path he had failed to complete a thousand years ago.

Until one night, the sect master summoned him to the inner hall.

Su Xuanheng offered him a Renewal Pill, the position of chief disciple, even the sect master's seat as bait, urging him to stop. Shen Du looked at the pill that could restore him to his peak, then pushed it back.

Because beneath the Pill Well, he had seen things he should never have seen: a seal fueled by living people's Golden Cores, his opponents from the tournament hanging from the well's walls, and the being at the bottom that had been hungry for a thousand years. That being was speaking to a shadow on the stone wall, a shadow identical to him.

"At last, you've come. I've waited a long time."

A thousand years ago, he had been nailed to the square while thirty thousand people watched indifferently. In this life, from the day he shattered his Golden Core, he had never intended to lose again.

Others painstakingly cultivate upward, seeking immortality.

He disperses his cultivation little by little, all for the sake of...

pushing that door open with his own hands.