The endless march stretched on.
It was not a march of feet on solid ground, but of spectral forms drifting over cracked, gray plains that rolled into an oppressive, starless sky. The only light came from the dim, pervasive glow of the Samsara sky itself, a ceiling of bruised purple and charcoal that offered no warmth, no hope, no memory of a sun. A cold, psychic wind moaned across the void, carrying with it the faint, overlapping whispers of ten thousand-thousand regrets.
"Walk faster!"
A thunderous voice rang out, sharp with cruelty. It cracked through the shuffling silence, a sound of pure malice.
A towering demon soldier, easily twelve feet tall, strode alongside the procession. Its skin was the color of scorched iron, and its face, framed by two great, curving horns, was a mask of gleeful malice. It snapped a crackling whip, a tendril of dark energy that sizzled through the air, lashing the nearest spectral bodies of the dead.
The ghosts shuddered under the impact. The whip did not cut flesh—they had none—but it struck the soul itself. The impact was a jolt of pure agony, a reminder of every pain they had ever felt, magnified a hundredfold. Their once-proud souls, stripped of mortal rank and power, trembled like flames in a gale.
"You've already died and become a ghost. Faster! Do you think this is your Imperial Garden? Keep moving!"
Among them, a spectral figure, his translucent form flickering with a faint, silvery light, stepped forward in quiet contemplation. Di Tian walked among the lost. His gaze, clear and unnervingly calm, swept over the thousands of wandering spirits. They were all shapes and sizes, their spectral forms still clinging to the memory of their mortal shells—old men, young women, soldiers in ethereal armor, scholars in wispy robes. All of them, from the king to the beggar, were now equal, swallowed by the boundless, gray void of reincarnation.
Another guard, this one with the head of a crocodile and the body of a man, shoved a cowering spirit. "You! Why are you weeping? Death is your new beginning!" The guard laughed, a wet, guttural sound. "A beginning in hell, perhaps!"
"No... no, this can't be," the spirit whispered, a woman who looked as if she had just been pulled from a lavish party, her spectral gown still shimmering. "I was... I was happy."
"Silence!" the guard roared, raising its own barbed lash.
Di Tian watched, his expression unmoving. He learned more in silence than he ever had in speech. He observed the guards—their casual cruelty, their obvious authority. He observed the souls—their terror, their confusion, their lingering arrogance. And he observed the land itself—a place of absolute finality.
"You are a prince?" The demon soldier's voice boomed again, dripping with contempt. It had stopped before a spirit who held his chin high, his form brighter than most, radiating a weak aura of nobility.
"I am!" the soul declared, his voice shaking but defiant. "I am Prince Jian! I ruled over tens of millions of citizens and thirty thousand armored horsemen! My father is the Emperor! You will release me, or he will grind you to dust!"
The demon soldier stared for a moment, its twisted face breaking into a horrific grin. "An Emperor? In the mortal realm?"
It raised its whip.
"In Samsara, human princes," the demon hissed, "are nothing!"
The whip fell again and again, a relentless torrent of dark energy. It sliced into the ghost who had just boasted of his past life. The blows rained down with merciless precision, each strike shattering a piece of the prince's defiant light. His ethereal form flickered violently, breaking apart as his soul barely held together. His screams, once proud, became thin, desperate shrieks that faded into the vast, shuffling procession of nameless ghosts. His former glory was reduced to nothing but a shuddering, whimpering light, now dimmer than all the rest.
The demon guard spat a glob of ectoplasm near the broken soul. "Thirty thousand horsemen? They are all here with you, worm. Keep moving."
Di Tian observed in silence.
He had felt the prince's arrogance. He had felt his defiance. And he had felt the moment his pride shattered, turning to pure, unadulterated terror. This place, Samsara, was a forge designed to break souls, to burn away all that they had been.
I should've died... So this is Samsara?
The realization, which had been hovering at the edge of his consciousness, now settled in, heavy and undeniable. This wasn't a nightmare. This wasn't a fever dream from a poisoned blade or a qi-deviation. He had truly died. He remembered the feeling… the cold spreading from his chest, the failure, the sight of his own blood pooling on the ancient stones. He had lost.
And now, he had stepped into the realm of judgment, where souls were sorted, condemned, or reborn. He was no longer Di Tian, the schemer, the survivor, the man who clawed his way to the peak of the mortal world. He was just... a soul. Another nameless ghost.
His gaze flickered toward the broken prince, who was now being dragged along by the current of spirits, his form barely cohesive. A phantom doubt lingered, a question. If he was a prince, what was I?
Before Di Tian could dwell further, a massive, glowing minotaur demon turned its piercing, red-hot gaze toward him. It had sensed his focus, his awareness, which was so different from the weeping confusion of the others.
"Faster!"
Its deep, guttural bray left no room for defiance. It was a sound that vibrated in the very essence of his soul.
Di Tian lowered his gaze immediately, blending back into the endless stream. He followed the others, a ghost among ghosts.
The long line of white-clothed spirits flowed through Samsara, a spectral river of sorrow. It stretched beyond sight, both forward and back, like a serpentine dragon winding through the abyss. At the tail end of the procession, new souls appeared without warning, popping into existence as they took their first, bewildering steps in this gray, forgotten world.
Some sighed, their faces filled with a profound melancholy as the shock wore off and the reality of their loss settled in. Others wept, not with loud wails, but with the silent, soul-deep sobs of those who had lost everything. Some cursed the heavens, their spectral forms vibrating with rage, unwilling to accept their fate.
And others boasted.
"Do you know who I am?" a portly soul bellowed, still clutching the remnants of his arrogance. He, like the prince, refused to acknowledge his fall into nothingness. "My father is the Demon King of the Great Snowy Mountain! I am royalty! How dare you strike me!"
"I'll eat you!" snarled another, a brutish soul whose form still held the memory of sharp claws and fangs.
"Stop hitting me! I command you!"
"Ahhh!"
Their protests were met with the same indifferent cruelty. Whips and beatings forced them into submission. The guards seemed to relish this part of their duty, the breaking of the proud. Soon enough, the truth settled in for them, as it had for the prince. They had died. No matter how glorious or terrifying their past life had been, in death—they had nothing. Their power was gone. Their titles were meaningless.
Di Tian remained wordless, walking through the void, keeping his gaze low. He had walked for what felt like an eternity, his mind sharp, his senses alert. He was uncertain and cautious, unwilling to provoke the wrath of the guards. He had spent a lifetime learning to survive by observing, by waiting for the opportune moment. Death, it seemed, had not changed that.
Ghosts did not hunger. Ghosts did not thirst. Ghosts only drifted toward judgment.
Then—he saw it.
It was not a landmark. It was not a building. It was a painting.
It hung suspended in the void, perhaps twenty feet high, by a path that all souls had to pass. It was the only object of color or beauty in this entire gray expanse. Di Tian's gaze locked onto the image.
A woman, her feathered robes adorned with a celestial elegance that seemed to hum with a forgotten power, stood within the delicate strokes of the painting. She was not looking at the viewer, but off to the side, as if observing a different, more beautiful reality. Her lips carried a mysterious smile, a look of serene and absolute knowledge, more profound than the silent Buddhas of forgotten temples. Her presence alone, a mere two-dimensional image, stirred something deep within Di Tian's soul—a memory, a longing, a pang of regret so sharp it almost made him gasp.
"Oh?"
A new voice, not a demonic guard, cut through his thoughts. It was quiet, cultured, and ancient. A blue-robed man, who looked almost as ethereal as the ghosts but carried an air of authority, lifted his gaze from a scroll. He was sitting at a simple wooden table by the roadside, unnoticed by the other souls.
He was looking directly at Di Tian, his eyes holding the same ancient depth as the painting.
"I didn't expect one with such perception… so he was a supernatural when alive. Interesting."
The words lingered, cryptic and unsettling. A supernatural? Before Di Tian could ponder the meaning, a dark-robed, ghost-like figure beside the blue-robed man spoke. This one was all shadow and cold, and its voice was the scraping of gravestones.
"He has been judged by the Painting of Sylanra. He stops. He is aware. Send him to the Judge."
"Wake up."
The chilling command shattered his trance. Di Tian realized the procession had moved on. He was standing alone before the painting and the two robed figures. The minotaur guard was now beside him, its massive hand gripping his spectral shoulder. The touch was burning cold.
"This one goes to Lord Judge," the dark-robed figure said.
The minotaur grunted and shoved Di Tian out of the line, pushing him toward a small, dark pavilion that stood alone on the plain.
Di Tian blinked, his consciousness returning fully. The painting was gone, or perhaps he had been moved. He now stood before a massive desk of black, petrified wood. Behind it sat Lord Judge of death.
The Judge was an ancient being, his long white beard flowing over his dark, embroidered robes. His face was a web of deep lines, but his eyes were as sharp and bright as chips of ice. Lord Judge closed his ancient tome, the cover of which was bound in what looked like human skin. His expression was unreadable, a mask of perfect, bureaucratic neutrality.
Di Tian's gaze fell to the cover of the book, and his pulse—an echo, a memory of a pulse—froze. He recognized the swirling, archaic script of the book's title: The Book of Life and Death. The tome that dictated fate itself.
Lord Judge's piercing gaze settled upon him. The silence in the pavilion was absolute, heavier than any mountain.
"I've just finished reading your life, Di Tian."
The Judge's voice was like the rustling of dry leaves, but it held an undeniable finality. A tense silence followed. Di Tian did not speak. There was nothing to say.
"You are quite the paradox," the Judge continued, tapping one long fingernail on the book's cover. "A human who lived only three hundred years, yet your karmic sin equals that of a ten-thousand-year devil. You have plotted, you have schemed, you have betrayed, and you have slaughtered. The scales are... quite stained."
The Judge paused, as if to let the weight of the words sink in.
"At the same time, your merit... it amounts to nothing more than that of an eighteen-year-old human who gave bread to a beggar once. You have one, single act of recorded merit, buried beneath a mountain of sin. You saved a child from a runaway carriage. Why?"
Di Tian's mind flashed back. He remembered it. A moment of pure instinct, an action so contrary to his calculated life that he had puzzled over it for a decade. He had no answer.
The Judge did not wait for one. The decision came swiftly, devoid of emotion. "Your sins far outweigh your merit. You will not enter the cycle of reincarnation. You will go to hell for punishment."
Di Tian's heart, his soul, turned to ice. Hell. Not oblivion. Not rebirth. Torment.
Before him, the mist behind the Judge's pavilion thickened, swirling into a vortex of utter blackness. It was the Portal of Hell, an abyss from which no soul, not even their screams, ever returned.
"Go on."
A nearby minotaur soldier gestured, his voice devoid of sympathy.
Di Tian stepped forward. He had schemed his entire life to avoid fate, only to be cornered by it in death. He looked into the black portal, an maw of eternal suffering, and felt the first true flicker of despair.
Then—chaos erupted.
A deafening BOOM tore through the fabric of existence. The gray plains of Samsara buckled. The skies shattered like black glass, and the earth quaked violently, throwing the desk of Lord Judge to the ground. The mist of the hell portal ripped apart, exposing the terrified, countless souls waiting in line behind Di Tian. Ghosts vanished into dust by the thousands, their faint screams fading into the overwhelming roar.
Lord Judge sprang to his feet, his face no longer neutral, but a mask of pure shock and fury. "What is the meaning of this?!"
Above, millions of black dragons descended. They poured from the cracks in the sky, weaving through the broken heavens. Their colossal forms loomed over Samsara, larger than mountains, each scale brimming with a primordial malice that choked the air.
Then, in unison—
The dragons vomited forth black lightning. Trillions of bolts pierced through existence, a storm of pure annihilation. They rent the heavens, vaporized the demon guards, and struck the very foundations of the underworld, obliterating the Six Paths of Samsara.
A divine voice, ancient and powerful, roared through the destruction, shaking Di Tian's very soul.
"Primordial Devil Dragon! How dare you attack Samsara? You commit a grave sin! This is an act of war!"
Di Tian lifted his gaze, shielding his spectral form as the ground split open beside him.
Above, a colossal golden figure had risen—Earth Emperor, the Ruler of Reincarnation. His divine radiance, a sun in the darkness, collided with the sea of black dragons.
The battle shook all existence.
The River of Forgetfulness, a landmark Di Tian had only glimpsed in the distance, surged over its banks, its waters of amnesia drowning thousands of ghosts.
The Bridge of Despair shattered, a magnificent arc of white stone collapsing into the abyss, sending countless spirits tumbling into oblivion.
The Six Paths quaked—the six glowing portals of reincarnation: Deva, Asura, Human, Animal, Hungry Ghost, and Hell. Their tunnels twisted, flickering, unstable and chaotic.
Di Tian froze in terror, a speck of dust in a war of gods. But then—as a stray bolt of black lightning struck the ground near him, the invisible bindings upon his soul—the judgment, the sentence—dissipated. The minotaur guard that held him was gone, erased by the divine power.
He was free. The path to hell was gone, but so were the other paths, all of them flickering and collapsing.
This was his chance.
Di Tian's terror was eclipsed by a lifetime of instinct. He ran forward, eyes locked onto the closest reincarnation portal. It was the tunnel for the Human realm, flickering wildly like a dying candle. The tunnels were unraveling, collapsing into the void, but this was his only escape.
He leapt into the unknown, abandoning the path to hell, ignoring the war of gods above, seeking only survival.
As his body disappeared into the chaotic, fractured light of the reincarnation cycle.