Chapter 1397: An Immortal God Who Stole the Coffer

"Yes," Danton said, and now there was no sweetness in his voice at all. "We planned for centuries. I know. I’ve heard that sentence enough times today that I’m considering carving it into my skull so everyone can stop reminding me. We planned for centuries, and I succeeded in every stage placed before me. The Coffer reached outside Anarctica; the Chained were there. Soon the eleven World Transcendents stood under our control ready to transport it; you know how much caution I put into this! Everything our families spent generations sacrificing for was finally within reach."

His Saint Stage cultivation aura began leaking from him.

It started subtly, heat gathering around his body while golden flame Essence crawled beneath the skin of his hands, but the pressure grew with every word until the enormous chamber seemed to inhale around him. The formations inside the floor awakened instinctively, ancient runes glowing beneath his feet as if the estate itself had noticed Danton becoming angry and decided furniture insurance was suddenly relevant.

"But you all keep speaking to me as though being a Progenitor means I should’ve somehow reached into my ass and produced enough power to fight a fucking Immortal God."

The Lord’s eyes narrowed.

Danton took another step, the floor giving a quiet groan beneath him.

"I understand your expectations. Better than anyone. I am a Progenitor even before fully awakening what I truly am, and yes, that makes me stronger than almost every useless bastard sitting in that hall outside. I am not pretending otherwise. But underneath every ancient title, every bloodline and every prophecy you people like wrapping around my neck whenever it suits you, I am still just a Saint Stage."

His voice rose.

The walls trembled:

"Tell me, Lord, how does a Saint Stage being stop an Immortal God?"

The question struck considerably harder than Danton needed to shout it.

He continued before the Lord could answer. "I didn’t even get an instant to sense the attack. I didn’t see the being move or even a fucking hand reaching toward me. One moment I was standing in Anarctica surrounded by everything we’d worked toward, and the next I was underwater."

His fist closed.

The hall shook again:

"Deep underwater."

Danton’s face twisted with fury now, and there was something almost ugly about finally seeing his usual confidence stripped away. "I was sinking in darkness with enough ocean above my head to turn a normal cultivator into paste. I had no Coffer. I had no prisoners. I had no World Transcendents around me to break me out. I had nothing."

His teeth clenched before the next words tore out of him.

"I lost every fucking thing."

The sound rolled through the chamber hard enough to awaken several dormant protections within the ceiling.

The Lord did not look like someone deciding whether Danton deserved punishment.

He looked like someone mentally rearranging the entire disaster against the same terrifying force: an Immortal God!

Danton laughed, although there was nothing remotely amused in the sound. "And then I come home to people whose combined courage would barely fill a wine cup standing around discussing my failure."

His gaze shifted toward the closed doors behind which the Maxtons and Heavenchilds remained.

"Which one of them wants to demonstrate?"

The Lord said nothing.

"Which one of those people who judged me can stand against me?"

Danton spread his arms slightly, his smile becoming cruel: "Send the strongest one in." His Saint Stage aura rolled through the hall again. "Actually, send several. It might make the humiliation shorter."

The Lord’s jaw tightened because the most irritating part was that Danton was right.

Very few beings currently gathered in the Heavenchild estate could survive a serious confrontation with Danton, and almost none would volunteer to test the theory.

Danton turned back toward him. "So if they cannot stop me, and Icould not even perceive the existence that removed me from Anarctica, then what exactly was I supposed to do?"

His voice dropped: "Punch the Immortal God?"

The Lord’s silence deepened.

"Perhaps ask him politely to return the Coffer?" Danton’s smile contained something poisonous now. "Maybe explain that our family spent centuries filling it and stealing it would be terribly inconvenient?"

The Lord’s wings slowly lowered.

The humor vanished from Danton’s face just as quickly as it appeared.

"A being at that level can kill Gods with a single breath."

That finally landed.

The Lord stared at him.

This was no a newly ascended divine existence they were talking about her or some Lesser God struggling to stabilize a fresh transformation; it was an Immortal God.

Something standing so far above ordinary cultivation that even beings worshipped as Gods could become little more than inconvenient corpses if they drew its attention.

The Lord suddenly understood why nothing after Anarctica fit together cleanly.

Why the battlefield had become impossible to interpret. Why they’d returned with fragments instead of answers when they went to investigate and why the Fallen had sensed nothing she could properly identify.

’If an Immortal God had intervened, then what exactly were any of us supposed to have detected?’

The thought produced another question far less comfortable than the first.

Where could they hide?

The Heavenchild ancestral grounds contained formations layered over generations. Sealed Realms existed beneath their control. They had defensive treasures capable of withstanding attacks that could flatten countries. The family possessed enough hidden shelters to survive nuclear wars that would erase ordinary civilizations.

Against an Immortal God, all of it suddenly felt like children hiding beneath a dining table because thunder sounded loud outside.

The table might be beautiful.

It might even be ancient.

Lightning would remain profoundly unimpressed.

"Why..." the Lord began.

Danton’s eyes sharpened immediately. "Why didn’t I tell the others?"

The Lord gave a slow nod.

Danton looked toward the doors and scoffed. "Because have you met them?"

Despite everything, the Lord’s expression twitched.

"Half the people outside decided I was lying before I finished my first sentence. If I stood in front of that hall and said an Immortal God arrived from nowhere, stole the Coffer and threw me into the Indian Ocean before I could blink, what would happen?"

He lifted one hand and mimicked one of the older Heavenchild elders with enough accuracy to become insulting.

"’How convenient, Danton. You lose the greatest treasure our families ever assembled and suddenly an Immortal God appears to explain everything’."

His expression changed, becoming another imaginary elder.

"’Perhaps the mighty Progenitor finally discovered shame and needed a sufficiently powerful excuse’."

Danton dropped his hand. "They would spend the next three hours arguing whether I invented the Immortal God instead of asking why one was interested in our operation."

The Lord did not answer because that was exactly what would have happened.

Quite possibly for longer than three hours.

Danton studied his face and knew he had won that point.

"Exactly."

Then he reached beneath his collar.

The Lord’s attention followed the movement automatically.

A necklace emerged from beneath Danton’s clothing.

At first glance there was nothing particularly remarkable about it; it was a slender dark chain rested between his fingers, holding a beautiful crystalline pendant whose surface seemed almost colorless until light touched it from certain angles.

The object was small enough to disappear inside Danton’s palm but the air cracked when it appeared.

The Lord’s head snapped upward.

Gold-white Essence recoiled violently around his avatar, the six wings spread behind him without conscious command as every instinct contained within the projection reacted at once.

The pendant had released almost nothing but a residue.

That was all.

It was a single fragment of Essence so faint that an ordinary cultivator might have mistaken it for some lingering spiritual stain.

The Lord knew better.

He knew that pressure.

He had stood near Gods before after all and so, he’d ever witnessed divine Essence descend and watched entire landscapes alter merely because something higher had touched them. He knew the difference between overwhelming cultivation and power that had already stepped across the boundary separating mortals from divinity.

Something divine had touched that necklace.

At least a God.

Perhaps something considerably much much more powerful!

The Lord’s face became utterly colorless while Danton held the pendant between two fingers and watched him with cold satisfaction.

Since the private audience began, Danton stopped trying to convince him.

He no longer needed to.

The proof was already sitting between them, and whatever had left that residue behind was powerful enough that even the Lord’s avatar had recoiled before his mind understood why.