The Reincarnated Villain Can Break the Fourth Wall!

"I'll slap back."

Su Xiaobai said it like it was a reasonable statement. Like slapping Heaven was just a minor inconvenience in his grand spiritual to-do list.

And honestly?

He wasn't lying.

Sure, he could no longer grow his own Divine Embryo (thanks, cannibalized Nascent Soul & Demonic True Spirit), but Su Xiaobai was not a man bound by silly things like natural progression or rules made by gods.

Instead, he had a plan.

"The Devourer's Womb."

Why make your own Divine Embryo when you can just rob someone else's, shove your soul inside it, and become the embryo yourself?

It's like trying to grow a fruit tree, getting bored, ripping out someone else's 300-year-old peach tree, and duct-taping yourself inside it like a peach-flavored mech suit.

His Divine Embryo?

Not self-born.

Not natural.

Stolen. Rented. Spiritually hijacked.

"It might rebel," Zhu Qing muttered, eyes twitching.

"Yes," Su Xiaobai said, "but I'll just keep it suppressed. Constantly. Forever."

Zhu Qing imagined it now: his spirit sea, filled with chained-up Divine Embryo howling foreign Daos like some kind of kidnapped heavenly choir, screaming in seventeen dialects of Enlightenment.

"It will leak Daos. Everyone will sense it. Everyone will know."

"I'll hide it in my sealed Spirit Sea. As long as I stay in Integration Realm, no one will notice."

"And how will you ascend to Deity Realm without a real embryo to hatch into immortal vessel?"

Su Xiaobai shrugged. "Then...I'll reforge immortality. I'll build a new path."

"...From what?"

"Corruption. Force. Stolen insight. And grit."

Instead of forming a spiritual Divine Embryo?

He'd go full "Corporeal Dao Embodiment".

Make his body the vessel.

Use the corrupted divine embryo as fuel.

Build a new vessel. Immortal vessel. From scratch. With stolen parts.

This man wasn't building a path.

He was duct-taping a FrankenDao together using stolen manuals, enemy corpses, and vibes.

____

"Great! So Master Su Xiaobai has everything figured out!" Zhu Qing clapped sarcastically.

"This is perfect! The Heavens will absolutely reject you, slap you, smite you, delete your existence the moment you try to ascend to Tribulation realm!"

Su Xiaobai raised an eyebrow. He paused. Then perked up.

"I'll just forge a false Divine Mark. A fake signature in the Dao to make it look like I walked the proper path."

Zhu Qing inhaled deeply.

"…I see."

"…So you plan to lie to the Heavens themselves?"

Su Xiaobai grinned.

"Heaven sees the surface. I'll make the surface pretty."

Zhu Qing closed her eyes. "... This man is going to be slapped to death by lightning wearing a fake smile."

Su Xiaobai lit up.

"That's a great idea! I'll add that to the plan!"

"…"

Zhu Qing's eye twitched.

"Nice idea, my ass."

"Your ass is nice."

"…I want to die."

_____

Su Xiaobai, full of smug enlightenment, stood tall.

"It's a Divergent Path. I created it myself."

He said it like he was Steve Jobs inventing iCultivation.

Zhu Qing watched him with the dead stare of someone who realized they were stuck babysitting the first spiritual outlaw to ever commit existential tax fraud.

He came from another world, after all.

For him, the cultivation system was just data.

Rules were suggestions.

Realms were mods.

And logic?

Uninstalled.

But Zhu Qing took a long breath, staring into the spiritual distance.

"…Do you even know what happened to the last person who walked the Divergent Path?"

Su Xiaobai blinked.

"Wait—there was someone before me?"

He was genuinely surprised.

He thought he'd just bullshitted "Divergent Path" on the spot.

He had no idea it was real.

"…Must be lazy writing by the author," he muttered.

Zhu Qing nearly coughed up her lung core.

This man—this absolute plague upon reason—was not taking her seriously at all.

Even if, somehow, Su Xiaobai cheated his way to Great Ascension Realm, even if he fooled every divine sense along the way...

He would still be caught.

"The Heavenly Court isn't full of idiots."

Her voice was cold.

"You might slip past karma's net—but once you ascend to the heavens… you'll walk into a palace full of gods who've lived longer than your entire bloodline."

___

"There was one," she said softly.

She turned toward the window.

The curtains stirred. Wind whispered through the villa.

Distant thunder rolled—soft, slow, ominous.

"And he was erased."

"Not killed. Not exiled. Erased."

"The Heavens do not tolerate thieves of fate."

Su Xiaobai blinked again.

"…Damn. Guess I'm not special after all."

"You're special," she muttered darkly, "Special enough to make me a widow."

Before she could step away, she felt arms slide gently around her waist.

His chin rested on her shoulder.

"What widow?"

His voice was low. Calm. Arrogant.

"Is it so easy to die?"

Zhu Qing snorted.

"Not for you. But for everyone around you? Yes."

Then—after a long pause—she finally began to speak.

____

There was a time, long ago, before the books were burned, before the heavens became so cautious.

There was a group—a secret society of cultivators who walked paths the Heavenly Law did not authorize.

Paths outside the cosmic script.

They studied the seams of the Dao.

They whispered of something ancient.

"The Divergent Path."

Su Xiaobai had never heard of it.

Of course he hadn't.

He was born in White Cloud Star, a sealed world, isolated from the thirteen major realms and the Four Heavens.

But out there—beyond his understanding—was a tale whispered by sages too old to be sane.

A cautionary myth in the realms that still dared to remember.

The Tale of the Last Star.

The "Divergent Path" isn't a technique.

It isn't a dao.

It isn't even evil.

It is simply: any path not laid out by the Heavenly Law.

Even heretics follow Heaven's structure—they just use wicked fuel. Slaughter. Cursecraft. Bone refinement.

But their foundations? Still within the system.

What Su Xiaobai proposed—what he was doing—wasn't just walking a crooked road.

He was building a new one.

Out of loopholes.

And expecting Heaven to not notice.

____

But if there is a system, there is an Administrator.

And in this world?

That administrator is not the Heavenly Court.

It is something higher.

Something that does not speak.

Something that does not judge.

Something that only enforces.

The Great Heavenly Dao.

____

It governs karma. Fate. Life. Death.

Reincarnation.

Everything.

It is neither righteous nor evil.

It simply is.

And when the Last Star walked the Divergent Path—

He twisted the rules.

He exploited truths not meant to be touched.

He declared:

"I will rewrite the heavens."

____

And Heaven responded.

Not with anger.

Not with war.

But with erasure.

___

His name was removed from the Books of Heaven.

His karma unspooled.

His past, present, and future—deleted.

He was no longer a sinner.

He was a nonexistence.

The Dao erased every thread of him—from time, memory, and even cause.

_____

But it didn't stop there.

He came from a race of stars—celestial bodies who had cultivated thought, soul, and will over eons.

And for his rebellion?

Heaven destroyed his entire realm.

That's why the tale is called:

The Last Star.

And he?

He was not allowed to die.

They say he was chained at the edge of reality itself—a place beyond time, beyond void, beyond existence.

All that remained was the myth.

He, the "Last Star," was said to be chained at the Edge of Reality.

___

"What's that?" Su Xiaobai asked quietly.

Zhu Qing shook her head.

"No one knows. It lies beyond void, beyond time, beyond space itself. It exists only in the will of Heaven. Only those who challenge it are cast there."

And there, the Last Star remains.

Eternally punished.

Eternally restrained.

A warning etched into the unseen sky.

Heaven's message was clear.

"You may climb my walls. But you will never escape them."

___

Su Xiaobai's arms slackened. Sweat dripped from his brow.

Zhu Qing's voice dropped.

"And right now... you are walking that same path."

She turned to him.

Her eyes—not angry.

Not afraid.

Just... tired.

"And you might get your name etched in history, Su Xiaobai."

"But I promise you—

It won't be in praise."

___

Su Xiaobai was no longer a sinner.

He had stepped beyond the bounds of karma and law.

He had become a paradox.

A man who should not exist.

Once his existence was truly noticed—

There would be no judgment.

No outcry.

No resistance.

Only divine erasure.

____

Far beyond mortal perception, deep within the primordial fabric of Su Xiaobai's spirit sea, two vast, golden eyes slowly opened.

Eyes that had slumbered for eras.

Eyes that had witnessed the birth of Realms.

The Void Thunder Dragon, slumbering sovereign of time-torn space, stirred for the first time in countless cycles.

Its immense breath roiled the world around it, nostrils flaring with ancient disdain.

A presence had invaded.

Not a soul.

Not a will.

But a calamity.

[A god empress?]