The world could no longer hold him.

  After ascending to the Heaven Encompassing Immortal Stage, Li Fan felt the fabric of reality strain around his presence. Every breath he took stirred laws of existence. The winds no longer blew around him—they parted. Space no longer resisted him—it welcomed him.

  But the moment he tried to stabilize his aura, something else called.

  A rift.

  A jagged line in space carved by an unseen blade—pulsing, alive, and ancient.

  It was the Gate of Genuine Divinity, a threshold no one in the current age dared approach. Stories claimed even Golden Immortals perished simply by drawing near. But Li Fan was no ordinary immortal.

  He had no crown.

  No patron god.

  No path laid before him.

  Only the flame within—his Crownless Codex, forged from rebellion, ascension, and sacrifice.

  At the Gate

  The gate loomed at the edge of a ruined star system—remnants of a war from a time before time. Countless divine corpses drifted through space, some larger than mountains, their armor rusted, their eyes hollow.

  Yue Xian, now a Late Golden Immortal, arrived behind him. Her expression held concern, awe, and something deeper—a plea.

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  “Once you step through… there is no turning back.”

  Li Fan glanced back only once. His smile was soft.

  “I was never meant to turn back.”

  He stepped forward. The gate roared in response.

  Crossing the Threshold

  He did not walk through the gate.

  He fell.

  The moment his foot touched the edge, the cosmos inverted. Laws rewrote themselves. Space fractured into light and flame. Li Fan’s body disassembled—not destroyed, but unraveled, examined by the realm beyond mortality.

  The Realm of the Gods.

  Inside the Divine Spiral

  He awoke upon a skyless plane—where stars were born from thought and time dripped like dew. Divine beings watched him from thrones made of eternity.

  A voice boomed:

  “You are no God.”

  Another laughed:

  “He is Crownless. Unwritten. Dangerous.”

  The most ancient voice whispered:

  “Let him be tested.”

  Seven orbs of divine essence formed, each pulsing with a law of existence—time, fate, war, chaos, life, death, and truth.

  To step into the Genuine Stage of the Celestial King Realm, Li Fan must absorb them—not as a mortal seeking power, but as a being rewriting the concept of divinity.

  He raised his hand. The Godslayer Flame surged.

  Outside, in the Mortal Realm

  The stars flickered.

  Priests of forgotten temples trembled.

  In a ruined cathedral of a dead god, a voice wept with laughter:

  “He walks the God Path… And he bears no crown…”

  Li Fan had begun his trial to become a Genuine Celestial King.

  The gods would test him.

  But they had forgotten one truth—

  He was born not to kneel…

  But to burn Heaven itself.