"Pathetic."
Drex Valen gazed at the Celestial Court spread before him, his expression darkening.
"This is what you've turned the Celestial Court into?"
Before him stretched a magnificent kingdom seemingly built atop the clouds themselves.
Towering palaces glead beneath heavenly light.
Ancient halls stood in perfect rows, radiating majesty and authority.
To ordinary mortals, the sight would have been overwhelming. One glance might convince them they were looking upon the true kingdom of the gods.
Unfortunately, appearances ant very little to Drex.
This Celestial Court was nowhere near as impressive as it looked.
In fact, he was beginning to think that coming here in person had been excessive.
The reason Earth's humans and the Masters of Kamar-Taj held such influence over the mystical side of this universe was simple.
Long ago, the various pantheons had fought one another so fiercely that they nearly crippled themselves.
By the ti the dust settled, they had been forced to surrender much of their influence over the mortal world.
The Celestial Court had suffered the sa fate.
After all, gods rarely got along.
Every pantheon believed itself superior.
That tension only worsened when Jehovah began proclaiming himself the one true God while labeling every other deity a false idol.
Conflict had been inevitable.
Drex barely spared the Southern Heavenly Gate another glance.
An invisible force spread from him.
The massive gate trembled.
Then stopped.
Drex raised an eyebrow.
"Oh?"
His first attempt had been casual.
He had deliberately restrained himself to avoid damaging the universe itself.
Even so, the force he released should have been enough to destroy a star instantly.
Yet the Southern Heavenly Gate had rely cracked.
Interesting.
The mont that thought crossed his mind, he reached out, tore the entire structure free, and threw it directly into the Black Hole Dinsion.
A useful artifact deserved preservation.
Then he continued forward.
The conquest of the Celestial Court had officially begun.
Among Chinese mythological figures, few nas were more famous than the Jade Emperor.
Yet fa and respect were not always the sa thing.
Throughout countless stories, folk tales, novels, and legends, the ruler of Heaven had often been portrayed in an unflattering light.
Cold-hearted.
Jealous.
Cruel.
Cowardly.
Scheming.
Many of those depictions had beco so widespread that they were treated as accepted truth.
Curiously, older Heavenly Sovereigns from ancient myths had rarely suffered the sa treatnt.
In those ancient stories, even when powerful figures challenged Heaven itself, the Celestial Emperor always remained above the chaos.
One famous legend told of Xingtian, the headless warrior who continued fighting even after his execution, using his chest as a face and his navel as a mouth. Even such a challenge failed to shake the authority of the ancient Heavenly Emperor.
Even then, Heaven endured.
The Heavenly Emperor remained seated upon the highest throne.
Unshaken.
Untouched.
Those ancient rulers appeared only rarely in mythology, but whenever they did, they carried an aura of absolute authority.
The Jade Emperor, by comparison, often seed diminished.
The reason was simple.
Legitimacy.
The ancient Heavenly Emperors were primordial beings.
They had been born to rule.
Their authority was woven into creation itself.
The Jade Emperor was different.
Before ascending the throne, he had rely been an immortal cultivator among many others.
Respectable.
Powerful.
But hardly exceptional.
His qualifications were neither the highest nor the most impressive.
Yet through fortune and the support of powerful allies, he eventually ascended to beco ruler of Heaven.
Many immortals never fully accepted that outco.
They might not openly rebel.
But resentnt lingered.
And resentnt had a way of finding expression.
Whispers.
Rumors.
Stories.
Mockery.
The endless stream of tales portraying the Jade Emperor as incompetent or ridiculous likely hadn't appeared by accident.
After all, ordinary mortals shouldn't have possessed such intimate knowledge of Heavenly affairs.
Not in ancient tis.
Soone had been talking.
Soone had been shaping the narrative.
And there was little the Jade Emperor could do about it.
His position lacked the absolute authority enjoyed by his predecessors.
If he reacted too aggressively, he would only reinforce the criticism.
So he endured it.
And over ti, even people with no stake in Heavenly politics began looking down on him.
Many immortals found the situation embarrassing.
The Celestial Court watched Buddhist influence expand into its territory.
Immortals often found themselves paying respect to Bodhisattvas and Arhats.
For a governnt claiming dominion over Heaven, it was hardly a glorious image.
The Celestial Court itself occupied one layer among the Thirty-Three Heavens.
Those heavens were not rely symbolic.
They were sub-dinsional spaces suspended between Heaven and Earth.
The various gods and immortals inhabited different layers.
The Celestial Court ruled from one of them.
Their choice of location wasn't motivated solely by pride.
The Thirty-Three Heavens occupied an ideal position within the structure of reality.
The power of the sun, moon, stars, and celestial bodies flowed through these realms before reaching the mortal world below.
Whoever controlled the heavens beca the first beneficiary of that energy.
Divine power was tied to divine authority and could not be increased easily.
Nevertheless, residing in the Thirty-Three Heavens offered significant advantages.
The celestial energies nourished rare treasures and heavenly resources unavailable anywhere else.
No immortal would willingly abandon such a place.
Because of their proximity to the stars, the immortals of Heaven were also the first to notice sothing was terribly wrong.
For over two thousand years, the constellations had remained stable.
Now they had erupted into turmoil.
The energy pouring from them had increased dozens, even hundreds of tis over.
No sensible immortal could view such a change as a blessing.
Then there was the disappearance of the Southern Heavenly Gate.
And the instability spreading through the Celestial Court Dinsion itself.
Everything pointed toward a monuntal upheaval.
Naturally, the Jade Emperor could no longer remain seated upon his throne.
He didn't know what had caused the disturbance.
But throughout his long reign, he had learned one lesson above all others.
Every major change carried danger.
His caution stemd from his own history.
No one understood better than he did how fortunate he had been to claim the throne.
And because he understood that, he was unwilling to risk losing it.
Any threat had to be crushed before it could grow.
That had always been his philosophy.
Others might call him ruthless.
Cold.
Paranoid.
He didn't care.
Power was addictive.
And there were few positions in existence more intoxicating than the throne of Heaven.
To keep it, he was willing to do anything.
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