Deep inside the ancient temple, lit only by flickering blue torches whose flames burned without heat or sound, the air turned suddenly heavy—as if time itself had stopped breathing.
Li Wei stood frozen, his eyes narrowed, locked onto the man who had just stepped out from the swirling shadows. At first, he thought it was a trick. An illusion formed by the strange energy of the temple. But no—it was real.
Zun.
The man who was supposed to be dead—the man Li Wei had personally torn apart, broken, and left to rot in the bloody battlefield days ago—was now standing before him, alive, walking slowly and confidently across the ancient marble floor.
His presence was like a curse returning from the dead.
Zun was no longer the same as before. Half his body was still wrapped in layers of cracked bandages soaked in black fluid. His right arm was entirely metallic, forged from some dark alloy that pulsed with red veins of energy. His once-proud face was now partially covered by a dark mask that seemed fused into his skin. And behind that mask… was a twisted smile.
"You look surprised, Li Wei," Zun said, his voice low, hoarse, but filled with venomous joy. He walked forward, his boots clicking loudly, echoing across the grand hallway. "I can see the confusion in your eyes. You're wondering how I'm alive."
Li Wei didn't speak. He simply stared.
Zun chuckled—a laugh that didn't belong to a man, but something more unholy. "Yes… you did kill me. You broke my bones. You shattered my cultivation. You fed me to the battlefield like I was nothing more than trash."
He stopped a few steps away from Li Wei, the torchlight reflecting off his metal arm and the blood that seemed to ooze from his back like shadowy wings.
"But," he whispered, leaning slightly forward, "death doesn't touch those who've been chosen by the abyss."
Li Wei's brows furrowed, eyes sharp now. The Abyss?
Zun continued, "When I lay dying… half-dead beneath that mountain of corpses… something whispered to me. Something ancient. Something from the darkness below this world. It gave me a choice—fade away like a weakling… or give up my humanity."
His tone darkened, almost gleeful. "So I gave it up, Li Wei. I gave everything up. My name, my blood, my soul. In return… I was reborn. Not as a man… but as a harbinger."
The temperature dropped. Cracks formed on the walls of the temple around them as dark energy poured from Zun's body. Even the very ground seemed to resist his existence, rejecting his presence like a sickness.
Zun extended his arm. The veins on his metallic hand glowed red-hot, and from the palm, a black flame ignited—cold, demonic, and alive.
"You may have become powerful, Li Wei," Zun growled, "but you're still bound by human limits. I am not."
His words echoed like thunder.
Then he pointed the burning hand at Li Wei. "And now, you will pay for everything. No one can save you today. Not the heavens. Not your blood-soaked techniques. Not your twisted will."
Li Wei stood still for a moment. Then slowly, calmly, he smiled.
"I see," he said quietly. "So you're no longer Zun…"
He took a step forward, his voice low, steady—like the silence before a thunderstorm. "You're just another corpse waiting to be burned."
Zun's smile twisted. "Then come, butcher. Let's see if your new strength can kill death itself."
The temple shuddered.
The torches around them flared wildly. Walls began to bleed with runes. The spiritual pressure grew unbearable for any normal cultivator. In the center of this ancient place, two monsters reborn by blood and darkness now stood face to face—neither belonging fully to the mortal world.
One, the butcher of Dong City.
The other, the shadow that crawled back from the abyss.
And somewhere beneath the temple, something ancient stirred—watching.
The ancient temple trembled.
The moment Zun screamed, "Today I will die here, Li Wei!" —it wasn't a cry of surrender, but a mad vow of destruction. His eyes, burning like embers from the deepest pit, weren't pleading… they were daring. The kind of look a wounded beast gives before its final, suicidal lunge.
Li Wei stared at him coldly, expression unreadable, body unmoving. Then, in a low, brutal whisper, he said just one word:
"Status."
As that word echoed, something terrifying began to happen.
The walls of the temple rippled—not like stone cracking, but like flesh being peeled away. Ancient engravings began to crawl like living serpents. The symbols of the heavens and demonic underworld twisted, turned, and bled. The ground groaned under some unseen weight. It was as if Li Wei's mere presence had triggered the temple's forbidden layer—a realm that should never exist in the mortal world.
Zun, already half mad, didn't flinch. He launched a massive attack, pouring every last ounce of his stolen power into it. His arm, the cursed metal one, expanded and transformed into a grotesque cannon of dark energy. He screamed in fury, "I'll tear this temple down with my death if I have to!"
A searing beam of black-red energy erupted from his body, thick as a tree trunk, tearing through the air like a god's fury.
BOOM!
The attack slammed against the twisted temple wall—
—but there was no explosion.
No cracks.
No tremors.
The wall absorbed it.
Like a hungry beast devouring a drop of blood, the temple consumed the blast without a trace.
Zun's eyes widened in disbelief. "W-What is this…?! Why didn't it work?!"
Li Wei stepped forward, slowly, like a reaper descending toward a dying soul.
"You're not fighting me anymore," he said coldly. "You're fighting a tomb."
Zun fell to one knee, panting, blood running down his chin. Yet he laughed. A cruel, broken laugh. "You still don't get it, do you? I didn't come here to win."
He looked up, one eye glowing with hatred.
"I came here to make sure you die with me."
The temperature dropped. Zun clenched his bloodied fist and slammed it onto the floor, releasing a forbidden spell seal. The floor beneath him cracked, and from that crack, black roots began to grow, reaching toward the ceiling like hands of the dead.
He had activated a self-destruction formation—not just of his body, but of the entire temple layer.
"I've become a curse, Li Wei," he said with blood-soaked lips. "And if I must be buried, I'll drag your soul to the abyss with me."
But Li Wei… did not move.
His eyes glowed faintly red. His voice—calm, almost disappointed—cut through the madness like a blade.
"You don't get to choose where I die."
And in that moment, his body ignited—not with fire, but with living bloodlight, the remnants of one hundred thousand sacrifices. His skin cracked like molten rock, revealing the true face of the demonic body art he had been forging since Dong City bled.
He walked forward—slowly, surely—as the world collapsed behind him.
Each step Li Wei took crushed the very fabric of Zun's spellwork. The demonic shield on his skin burned the black roots to ash. The cursed ground shattered like glass beneath his bare feet.
Zun, coughing blood, looked up, face twisted in pain.
"Y-You monster…"
Li Wei stood over him now. In the red light of death.
He leaned down.
And with a voice like the judgment of heaven, said:
"No. I'm just the end you chose."
Zun's laughter echoed like shattered glass in the hollow, cursed temple.
"You'll kill me?" he cackled, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth, "You arrogant bastard… this isn't even my real body! This is just a clone, a puppet I made from the marrow of a demonic beast and the blood of a fallen cultivator. I'm not even here, Li Wei. What will you destroy? A shadow?"
He laughed harder, eyes wild with triumph.
But Li Wei didn't flinch.
He chuckled—low, cold, and calm. "I know it's a clone," he said, stepping closer. "But what you don't understand… is that even your shadows must bleed when they cross my path."
His hand moved like lightning.
He grabbed Zun's head, the clone's skull cracking under the force of his grip like an eggshell. Zun's twisted grin faltered. His eyes widened.
Li Wei lifted him like a rag doll, his feet dangling, blood dripping from his mouth. "A clone, yes," Li Wei said coldly, "but still… you dared mock me. You dared threaten me. You dared drag me into this game. Even your illusion deserves punishment."
Then—
BANG!
He slammed Zun's head into the temple floor.
Stone cracked, exploded outward. Blood splattered across the twisted runes and cursed carvings like paint on canvas. Zun screamed, but Li Wei didn't stop.
BANG!
Again.
BANG!
Again.
BANG!
Again.
Each strike was a message—not just to Zun, but to the real Zun, wherever he was watching from. "You hide behind tricks. You use flesh that isn't yours. You run, coward. So I will break everything you send—until you have to face me yourself."
Zun's clone was a mess now—face smashed, skull fractured, one eye hanging loose from its socket, jaw twisted at an unnatural angle. And still, Li Wei didn't stop.
He raised the broken head one more time—and with a final slam, the entire head caved in, like a melon smashed under a hammer. The clone's body went limp.
But then something horrifying happened.
Instead of fading like a regular clone, black blood poured out of the shattered skull, thick and steaming, forming a rune in midair. It was a transmission sigil—a watching eye. The real Zun had been watching everything through it. Li Wei turned to the hovering rune, his face splattered in blood, eyes glowing with unholy light.
"You watched all that?" he whispered. "Good."
Then, with two fingers glowing crimson, he drew a symbol of his own—a curse mark. A demonic glyph fueled by sacrifice and will.
With one motion, he slashed it through the sigil.
There was a high-pitched screech—the sound of reality being torn—and the watching rune burned into black smoke, the connection violently severed. Wherever the real Zun was… he would have felt that.
He would have felt fear.
Li Wei stood alone in the ruined temple chamber, surrounded by blood, shattered stone, and silence. He let out a slow breath, blood vapor rising from his skin like mist. He wiped his hands, tossed aside the remains of the clone like trash, and turned toward the deeper, darker halls of the temple.
"I'm coming for you," he said into the darkness.
"Next time, no clones."