### **The Devourer's Gaze**
The moon's fractured surface peeled open like a grotesque flower, its obsidian eye fixated on Huaxia. Cities trembled as gravitational anomalies ripped highways skyward, and civilians mutated into shrieking voidspawn—their bodies warped by the Devourer's gaze.
Lin Tian stood atop Shanghai Tower, his silver-starborn meridians now threaded with crawling void veins. Xia Qingyue's frostfire sputtered in his presence, repelled by the cosmic rot festering in his blood.
"The Codex called you an abomination," she said, voice brittle. "But you're still our Sovereign. *Act*."
A hologram flickered—General Kun's fleet descending through the cracked atmosphere, their ships shaped like serrated teeth. "You cannot outrun fate, half-blood. The Devourer's hour has come… and you are its herald."
Lin Tian clenched his fists, void energy bleeding from his pores. "No. I'll be its **grave**."
---
### **Awakening the Abyss**
In the Arctic vault, Lin Tian faced the inverted Lin crest etched into the Devourer's prison—a black stone altar older than time. The Patriarch's final words haunted him: *"The seal requires a vessel. Let go, Tian'er. Let it *in*."*
"You're not the Patriarch," Lin Tian growled, slamming his palm onto the altar. "And I'm not your pawn."
The void answered.
Darkness erupted, swallowing the vault. The Devourer's voice—a cacophony of dying stars—scorched his mind:
***"Mine. You are mine. Your blood, your power, your *soul*."***
Lin Tian's vision shattered. He saw:
- **The Lin Clan's first sacrifice**: A child offered to the altar, their screams birthing the Vein's golden qi as a counterbalance to the Devourer.
- **Ji Meiling's defiance**: Injecting her starborn essence into his infant veins to dilute the void.
- **The truth**: The Devourer's prison was never meant to hold. It was a *bargain*—a delay until the heir could merge with it.
"No more bargains," Lin Tian roared. He tore into the void's core, not to surrender, but to **consume**.
---
### **Void Supremacy**
The world went silent.
When Lin Tian opened his eyes, reality bent to his will. The void obeyed him—not as a master, but as an extension of his rage.
**Abyssal Techniques Manifested**:
- **Eventide Dominion**: Erase existence within a mile radius, leaving only void.
- **Eclipse Rebirth**: Resurrect by drawing mass from alternate dimensions (Limit: 1 use).
- **Singularity Command**: Collapse matter into black holes, controllable by thought.
General Kun's fleet fired planet-cracking lasers. Lin Tian raised a hand.
"**Cease**."
The lasers imploded. Ships crumpled like paper. Soldiers screamed as their atoms unraveled into nothingness.
"Impossible!" General Kun snarled, his armor cracking. "The Devourer's power cannot be controlled!"
"You confused a cage for a throne," Lin Tian said, voice echoing with the void's chill. He clenched his fist.
General Kun disintegrated mid-snarl.
---
### **Huaxia's Purification**
The Devourer's eye pulsed, its gaze corrupting Beijing into a crystalline wasteland. Lin Tian ascended, void energy swirling around him like a cloak of night.
"You want a vessel?" he whispered. "Try me."
He plunged his hand into the eye.
The Devourer's essence flooded him—an infinite hunger, a billion eons of devoured realms. Lin Tian's void meridians blazed, but he did not bend. He channeled the corruption into the Luck System, overriding its protocols.
***New Blessing Forged: Void Covenant.***
***Effect: Convert corruption into purification. Huaxia's land/mind restoration: 100%.***
The cracked moon healed. Mutated civilians gasped, their voidspawn traits dissolving. Xia Qingyue's frostfire reignited, now tinged with voidlight.
---
### **The Price of Godhood**
In the aftermath, Lin Tian collapsed at the Forbidden City's heart, his body flickering between flesh and entropy. The harem gathered—Luo Mei, Xia Qingyue, Lin Xue, Ling—their qi threads instinctively weaving to stabilize him.
"The void rejects life," Ji Yanling warned, her starborn aura dimmed. "Every use of its power consumes you."
Lin Tian laughed weakly, his eyes voids rimmed with starlight. "Then I'll make it count."
A system alert flashed:
***Huaxia's Luck Points: ∞/100 (Transcendent).***
***Warning: Sovereign's Mortality – 30 Days Remaining.***
Xia Qingyue grasped his disintegrating hand. "We'll find another way. The Ji Clan, the Codex—"
"No," Lin Tian interrupted. "The Ji Clan feared the void. But I am *Lin*. We don't fear. We **devour**."
---
### **Epilogue: The Last Sovereign**
Days later, Lin Tian addressed a healed Huaxia from the Dragon's Vein, his form half-shadow, half-light:
"The Devourer is not gone. It waits beyond the stars. But so do we."
As millions cheered, Lin Xue's sensors pinged—a distress signal from Xingyu. The Ji Clan's homeworld was under siege by entities born of the void… entities Lin Tian now recognized as kin.
Xia Qingyue stood beside him, her frostfire intertwined with his darkness. "What now?"
Lin Tian smiled, his voice a harmony of annihilation and hope.
"We go hunting."
---