When his consciousness returned, he was already amid a desolate range of mountains, gripping the dark-gold Sky-Shattering Axe tightly in his hand. The axe was icy cold, yet the once incomparably violent baleful aura was now unusually docile, like a tamed beast that revealed its sharpness capable of tearing apart all things only when stirred by his Magic Power. Yet this divine weapon, capable of cleaving apart the chains of laws, now seemed like a huge mockery, reminding him of his final failure.
"Uncle..."
That blood-soaked cry seemed to still echo through Mount Tao's cold air, only to be answered by Emperor Hao Tian's final judgment: "The Heavenly Laws cannot be violated."
Despair, like the deepest ice, spread from his heart through every limb and bone, nearly freezing his blood and thoughts. His humble kneeling before Mount Tao, the blood he had knocked from his forehead, the tears he had shed—all of it had become futile, even laughable, struggling.
Power... greater power...
The thought coiled in his heart like a venomous snake, endlessly gnawing and growing.
"Why?!" Yang Jian suddenly threw back his head and roared toward the heavens. The rolling sound waves shook the surrounding rocks until they tumbled down. "I have Sky-Shattering, forged from a fragment of the Sky-Opening Divine Axe! I cultivated the Nine Revolutions Mysterious Technique! I opened my Heavenly Eye! Why couldn't I save my mother?! Why are these Heavenly Laws, this Heavenly Court, so unjust?!"
He swung the Sky-Shattering Axe, and a dark-gold streak of fierce light swept forth. A mountain peak hundreds of zhang tall before him was severed in response, its upper half crashing down and kicking up dust that filled the sky. But such destructive power could not ease even one ten-thousandth of the pain in his heart.
"Because what you