The vortex's speed decreased at a visible pace. Even though it had already absorbed most of the corpses, there were still a few left lying scattered across the ground. Sixteen such bodies remained. One after another, these bodies too were being consumed. With each corpse it devoured, the vortex shrank by a measure equal to the number of corpses still waiting. When one body out of the sixteen vanished, the vortex reduced in size by exactly one-sixteenth.
Yet with every corpse it consumed, two of shades within it merged into one. One after another, the shades disappeared alongside the remaining bodies, as if both were destined to vanish together.
Finally, when only a fragment of its size remained, the vortex grew unstable, swelling and shrinking at random as though unable to contain itself.
At that exact moment, Jang Tang arrived at the place where Wen Xui and Wen Bo were. Of the sixteen specific bodies, eleven alone lay at this very spot. By now, the vortex had absorbed fifteen of them, and only one remained.
Then, smoke began to rise. It seeped from the soil of the island itself, lifting toward the small, flickering vortex. It was as if the very essence of the land was being devoured. The vortex turned pure white. But it did not stop there—the smoke rose from the waters surrounding the island, from the drifting clouds above, and even from the thin air itself, as if emerging from invisible spaces no one could perceive.
The smoke multiplied endlessly, flowing from every direction into the vortex.
By this time, Gu Dan had also reached the place.
"Gu Dan, how are you?" Jang Tang asked when he noticed him arrive.
But his words reached another's ears as well.
Wan Xui turned her head to look at the two. Her hair had completely lost its color, now grey fading into white, and her face bore the marks of age, making her appear as a weary middle-aged woman.
"You…" she muttered hoarsely as she stood, her gaze fixed on them.
"You two… I am going to kill you. Weren't you the ones who tried to kill my brother?" she declared, her voice trembling with both fury and grief.
Jang Tang's expression remained unreadable. As for Gu Dan, shivers ran down his spine.
"No… I've fallen to rank four. If she activates that again, I won't even know how I died…" he thought in terror. The memory of the earlier scene surged back, smothering him with fear. Damn it, in my rush to reach this place, I completely forgot about her!
Without a second thought, he turned to run. But the moment he spun around and took a single step, his body froze.
His leg exploded in a burst of blood and gore. A scream tore from his throat as his second leg followed, bursting apart in a spray of flesh.
"AA… AAAA… AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"
His shrieks echoed through the village, chilling every being who heard them. After his legs, his arms detonated, followed by his lungs and kidneys. Finally, his head ruptured, silencing him forever.
This was a Selective Death—an execution brought about by the Death Warrant.
The Death Warrant was infamous for being both unimaginably lethal and fatally burdensome. At lower ranks, it seemed limited in power, but the higher it advanced, the deadlier it became. It commanded two levels of death: single or masses. Within these, death could manifest in two terrifying ways—Random Death and Selective Death.
In Random Death, victims perished in countless forms. Some fell without a wound, others suffered horrific injuries. Some were marked with endless blade cuts, others collapsed from organ failure. Bodies were torn in half, heads and organs crushed, limbs burned, and still more twisted fates awaited countless others. It wielded infinite variations of death.
Selective Death, however, was something else entirely. Here, the wielder chose exactly how their victim would die, whether one or many, and death would follow the chosen path. They could make everyone die the same way, or craft deaths unique to each. But therein lay its curse—if the wielder hesitated, if they spared their target after initiating the process, the one to die would be themselves.
Once the Death Warrant's power touched someone, death was inevitable. Like a spider devouring its mate, if denied its rightful prey, it turned upon its master. While it usually drained the wielder's lifespan with every kill, sparing the enemy meant the weapon claimed the owner's life instead.
And worse still, Selective Death consumed far more lifespan than Random Death ever did.
That was why the Death Warrant was called useless despite its unmatched terror. For every life it took, the wielder's own span was consumed. The spider drank deeply of its master's blood, spinning its web and weaving its curse. By the time it reached higher ranks, its owner would almost always already be dead. Such was the fate of Cu Gil, long gone, and now Wan Xui, reduced to a frail shell.
These were Yang Zhai's thoughts as he stepped forward.
Wen Xui's face was deeply lined, her wrinkles carved further, and many of her grey hair was had whitened. The toll of Selective Death was clear, etched into her body with every life she took.
"I never told her about Selective Death," Yang Zhai thought. "I wanted her to massacre as much as she could. But her hatred, her ruthless desire to kill Gu Dan, shaped itself into an order. Subconsciously, she gave the Death Warrant its command, and it obeyed without question. She wrote instructions on it that were complied with."
Slowly, Yang Zhai advanced, his mind still dwelling on its truth.
"The Death Warrant, dismissed as useless by many, is in fact one of the most feared ires. Once in hand, no one willingly parts with it, even if it means their own death. Tai Qi never realized its true terror when he allowed it to be stolen by Cu Gil. In the past, it brought ruin to the world, slaughtering more than ninety percent of all existence—humans, beasts, and creatures alike. Nothing could stop the one who wielded it. The only reason any survived was because the wielder's lifespan drained too quickly, ending their life before the ire could consume the world entirely."
Yang Zhai's robe fluttered with the wind as he pressed forward. His footsteps were calm, deliberate, each step carrying the weight of countless thoughts. His black hair, streaked with white, swayed in the breeze.
"Corpses blanketed the earth, rivers of blood ran across the land, silence ruled all. A massacre so vast even the heavens and nature itself were dyed red. Those spared in its wake understood its terror. A terror deeper than anything they had ever witnessed, a terror that demanded to be destroyed. And so, at last, it was."
Wan Xui, unable to strike Jang Tang down with the Death Warrant, prepared to fight him herself. But suddenly, she froze, sensing something behind her.
As she looked her eyes widened.
Her brother's body was dissolving into mist, drifting helplessly toward the vortex.
"No!"
The Death Warrant slipped from Wan Xui's hand as she collapsed to her knees, clutching Wen Bo with trembling arms as if she wanted to hold him back by sheer will. She hugged him desperately, tears spilling down her aged face.
But it was futile. Wen Bo's body, piece by piece, continued to unravel into mist, fading into the pull of the vortex.
Her cries broke shrieks.
"Hahahaha!!!"
However, as if mocking Wan Xui's despair and the fading life of her brother, a laugh rang out.
"I can finally leave this cursed ocean! I can finally leave this damn ocean!" Jang Tang shouted, his lips stretched wide, his laughter spilling uncontrollably as though his long-awaited wish had at last been fulfilled. His voice trembled with exhilaration, and his wide smile revealed the madness of a man who could no longer contain his joy.
He bent down, picked up the Death Warrant, and his face lit up with even greater delight.
"After leaving this island, I will have this incredible ire in my possession. At rank five, I will be unstoppable! Wan Xui, thank you for such a marvelous gift!" His words came with a hysterical grin, his expression twisting as though his happiness had become too great to hold inside.
It was like a volcano finally bursting, its insides overflowing in an eruption of flames and molten ecstasy.
Meanwhile, Wen Bo's body fully dissolved into mist and was drawn into the vortex. Wan Xui staggered forward desperately, her trembling hands reaching out. Her right hand's fingertips grazed the drifting mist, but she could not hold on. The mist rose higher and higher, slipping through her fingers and escaping her reach.
The vortex consumed the last trace of Wen Bo and shrank to the size of a human hand. Slowly, it descended, steady and deliberate, until it came to rest at the height of six feet above the ground.
Jang Tang stepped forward, his eyes locked on the vortex, his hand lifting to seize it.
Wan Xui, however, sat motionless. Her tears fell to the earth, dripping silently as her head hung low. The strength within her was gone, her will extinguished. She understood bitterly that in her condition, she could not even strike down the true perpetrator of it all.
A heavy silence fell across the village. The stillness was so deep that even the faintest breath could be heard. The vortex itself spun quietly, almost reverently, its shape shifting ever so slowly in the silence.
Then came footsteps.
Each step was soft but heavy with meaning, echoing through the quiet village. They grew clearer, closer, until their rhythm seemed to beat into the hearts of all who listened.
A figure approached with calm certainty. His robe flowed with the passing breeze. His eyes, dark as the abyss itself, beneath his steady gaze. Every step carried an unspoken weight, an authority that transcended mortality, exuding the aura of an immortal walking the earth.
From his body, an aura unfurled like a rising tide, released from his body, drifting ahead of him before flowing directly into the vortex. Without resistance, the aura slipped into it and vanished.
Yang Zhai stepped through the village gate, his stride unbroken, and came to a halt beside the floating vortex. Across from him stood Jang Tang, his expression tight, his eyes narrowed with caution.
"What do you want?" Jang Tang inquired, his brows furrowed. His feet remained firmly planted; he dared not move away from the vortex. It was within his grasp now, and he would not allow Yang Zhai to steal it while it was taking shape.
But Yang Zhai moved first. With a sudden kick, swift and merciless, he sent Jang Tang hurtling backward through the air. The Death Warrant was released from his grip and fell to the ground.
Yang Zhai bent down, picked it up, and studied it in silence. His lips parted, and in a low voice he muttered,
"Many call it useless. But no tool is without its purpose… once you learn its language. And this one…it's a terror that once played with lives. It has already advanced to rank five..."
!<-<-<-§!§->->->!