Cultivation World - Crimson City
The sky was a canvas of apocalypse.
King Aurelius and Queen Isadora were fighting Xotl to a stalemate. The King's life essence formed massive, constricting vines of pure green light that wrapped around Xotl's colossal throat, while the Queen's death-rays withered the shadows that tried to consume them.
But Xotl was a Mid Tier Nascent Soul entity. For every vine that crushed him, he rotted it into black sludge. For every death ray that struck, he simply phased that part of his body into the shadow realm, ignoring the damage.
Too slow, Xotl thought, his thousand eyes burning with frustration. I cant keep this battle going forever i need to move.
His massive consciousness looked across to the arena perched in the side of the cliff. The Golden Core avatar was currently preparing another attack.
But then, he saw it.
Lia stood frozen amidst the chaos. Her purple eyes glowed brightly with glowing purple light but her stare was empty. Her soul was vibrating, shocked into catatonia by a catastrophic injury sustained in another dimension.
She was vacant. Vulnerable.
Xotl didn't hesitate. He poured a surge of his main consciousness into the avatar below.
The Arena Floor
The avatar's speed doubled. It blurred across the water, a streak of jet black murder aimed solely at the girl.
Long Chen roared, stepping into the path to intercept the monster. "You shall not pass!"
He summoned a wall of dragon scales, bracing for impact.
BAM.
The avatar backhanded him. It wasn't a technique; it was raw kinetic force backed by the weight of a mountain. Long Chen's defense shattered like glass, and the prince was ragdolled across the arena, smashing through a retaining wall and disappearing into the rubble.
Lia didn't move. She was struggling to stay alive as Tim and her brain was brutally shaken by the memory that had broken free from being locked away.
The avatar reached her. Its hand expanded, fingers lengthening into spears of shadow designed to pierce her throat and rip the artifact from her cooling corpse.
It lunged.
SHING.
A crescent of pure white light shore through the air.
It was a line so thin it was almost invisible, but it carried the weight of absolute separation. The Dao of Cutting.
The avatar's hand was severed cleanly at the wrist. The shadowy limb fell into the water and dissolved into ink before it could touch Lia.
Xotl recoiled, his avatar hissing in surprise.
Varek landed between the monster and the girl. He wasn't smiling. The cocky swagger was gone. His eyes were dark, filled with a rage and hurt that mirrored the girl crying over a dying man in another world.
"Get away from her," Varek said, his voice low and vibrating with fury.
He swung his saber again. The air screamed.
The avatar shrieked and lunged with its remaining hand. Varek met it head-on, his saber becoming a blur of light against the encroaching darkness. They clashed, shockwaves of Qi blasting the ruble away from them, but Varek refused to give a single inch of ground.
Earth - Central Park
"Tim... Tim, look at me," Riku sobbed, her hands slick with his blood.
Tim was heavy in her lap. His breath was a wet, rattling wheeze. The burn across his chest was horrific—a jagged line of blackened, cauterized flesh where the void had rejected him, crisscrossed with the deep gash from the blood-sword.
"Don't you die," Riku begged, pressing her hoodie against the wound. "You promised. You said we're a team."
Tim's eyes fluttered, unfocused. "Still... here..." he gurgled.
Steps crunched on the gravel. Derek Morrison loomed over them, his skin glowing like a dying star, the blood-sword reforming in his hand.
"Touching," Derek sneered, raising the blade high. "I'll make sure you die together."
WHAM.
There was a sound like a car crash.
A metal street sign—"SPEED LIMIT 25"—embedded itself in Derek's chest. It had been thrown with such force that it punched through his ribcage and stuck out his back, the metal pole vibrating from the impact.
Derek stumbled backward, coughing blood, the sword dissipating into mist.
"What the..." Derek gasped, looking down at the signpost protruding from his sternum.
Himari stood at the edge of the clearing. She wasn't smiling. She wasn't the bubbly waitress. She was a Golden Core assassin trapped in a mortal shell, and she was pissed.
"You messed them up," Himari said, her voice devoid of emotion.
She walked toward him, her hands twitching. Derek tried to pull the sign out, but the Crimson Harvest formation pulsed, forcibly knitting his flesh around the metal, keeping him alive despite the fatal wound.
Himari saw Tim lying in Riku's lap. She saw the burns. She saw the blood.
Her face twisted. The cold mask of her Kira persona she was channeling cracked, revealing Himari's genuine, terrified worry.
"Fuck," she breathed. "He really messed you guys up."
She turned back to Derek. Shadows began to pool in her hands, forming two wicked, curved daggers made of condensed shadow.
"I am going to gut this motherfucker," she stated.
She launched herself at Derek. She moved like smoke, ducking under a clumsy swipe of his claw and slashing his hamstrings. Derek roared, falling to one knee, but the formation flooded him with stolen life, stitching his muscles back together instantly.
"I am immortal!" Derek screamed, ripping the sign from his chest with a spray of gore.
"Then I'll kill you until it sticks," Himari snarled, going on the offensive.
Cultivation World - The Arena
Lia gasped, air rushing back into her lungs. The resonance of pain from Earth faded to a dull throb as Tim stabilized slightly, kept alive by Riku's desperate plea's and his own soul resilience.
She blinked, the fog clearing. The memory of the void receded, leaving her standing in the flooded arena.
Varek was fighting for his life. The avatar was overwhelming him, its shadow-limbs striking from every angle.
"Varek!" Lia shouted.
She didn't run. She slammed her staff into the floor.
Fifty water serpents rose from the flooded arena. They swarmed the avatar, biting and constricting, buying Varek a second to breathe.
Lia charged in, staying at range but directing her army with furious precision.
From the merchant stands, a figure in brown robes watched the chaos.
Kira saw the opening.
The avatar was distracted by Varek. Lia was focused on attacking, her back exposed. The protective formations of the arena were shattered.
It was the perfect moment.
Kira moved. She didn't jump; she stepped through the Phase Walk, slipping through the solid matter of the stands and appearing on the arena floor in a blur of motion.
She shed her disguise instantly, the brown robes falling away to reveal her black stealth suit.
She appeared directly behind Lia. No sound. No killing intent. Just professional execution.
Her dagger, coated in a poison that could kill a soul, thrust toward the base of Lia's skull.
Varek saw her. Her blade was blackened so there was no flash but he saw the dao of cutting
"LIA!" Varek screamed, trying to disengage from the avatar, but a shadow-whip wrapped around his ankle, holding him fast.
He couldn't reach her. The roar of the battle, the crashing water, and the screaming crowd drowned out his warning.
Lia was oblivious. She was winding up for an ice spear to be thrown at the avatar.
The knife was inches away.
Earth - Central Park
Riku used her earth voice to try to let Lia know of the impending doom.
Desperation clawed at her throat. She screamed as loud as she could hoping to get through Tims half conscious state.
"LIA LOOKOUT!"
The scream tore through the air of Central Park—raw, terrified, and loud enough to startle birds from the withered trees.
Himari, mid-lunge at Derek on Earth, heard it.
In the Cultivation World, Kira's hand froze. The knife was a hairsbreadth from Lia's neck.
The voice... that was Riku. Riku was screaming for Lia.
Riku was with Tim.
The pieces slammed together in Kira's mind with the force of a train wreck. The shared glances. The "sect" jokes. The weirdly specific injuries.
"Fuck," Himari screamed on Earth, ducking a blood-blast from Derek. "Is Tim Lia?!"
"YES!" Riku screamed back, sobbing.
"FUCK!"
Himari and Kira shouted it in perfect unison across two dimensions.
In the arena, Kira's eyes went wide behind her assassin's mask.
Target: Lia.
Identity: Tim.
Status: Friend.
Contract: I must break it no matter the consequences. They are Family.
Kira didn't withdraw the knife. She flipped it.
She grabbed Lia by the shoulder and violently shoved her to the side, just as a spike of shadow shot from the Xotl avatar pierced the space where Lia's heart had been a second ago.
"Move, idiot!" Kira barked.
Lia stumbled, spinning around to see a woman in black standing where she had just been.
Kira flicked her wrist. The knife she had almost buried in Lia's skull flew through the air, wreathed in shadow Qi.
It embedded itself in the Xotl avatar's eye.
The avatar screeched, clutching its face.
Kira stepped up beside Varek, summoning two curved shadow-blades.
"New plan," Kira said, her voice cold steel. "We kill the big ugly one."
Varek stared at her, confused but grateful. "Himari?"
Kira glanced at Lia, then at Varek. Under her mask, she smirked.
"Meteor Sect Sticks together. "
Earth
The street sign embedded in Derek's chest should have killed him. Instead there was barely a mark it had been there.
The Crimson Harvest formation pulsed again, a heartbeat of pure, stolen vitality. Derek roared, the sound distorted and layered as if a hundred voices were screaming through his throat. His bones groaned as his chest expanded, his Qi reserves swelling, breaking the boundaries of mid-stage Qi Refining.
CRACK.
A shockwave of red energy blasted outward, knocking Himari back. Derek didn't just heal; he evolved. His skin darkened to the color of dried blood, and his aura flared with the suffocating pressure of Late Stage Qi Refining.
But then, the sky split open.
It wasn't thunder. It wasn't the sound of air displacement. It was the sound of the world's laws being violated. A deep, inhuman scream vibrated through the atmosphere, a sound so profound it made teeth ache and bones shudder.
The red pillar of the formation flickered. The clouds above Central Park began to swirl, not with storm gray, but with the terrifying, electric gold of divine judgment.
Derek stumbled, his eyes wide with genuine fear. "No... no, no, no! It can't be!"
He looked up at the gathering Tribulation Clouds. Heavenly Tribulation didn't descend for mere murder. It descended for defiance of the Heavens mandates. For crimes against the natural order so severe the universe itself stepped in to correct them.
"I followed the rituals!" Derek screamed at the sky. "I didn't break the mandate! Even the Devil Sects know better!"
He scanned the chaos of the park, his enhanced senses searching for the source. His eyes landed on the hill overlooking the ritual circle.
"It isn't me," he whispered, a twisted smile spreading across his face. "Someone else brought the hammer down. What a fool."
He turned back to Himari. She was recovering from the shockwave, her twin shadow-daggers forming in her hands.
Derek lowered his guard. He left his chest wide open, the perfect target for an assassin.
Himari saw it. Kira's instincts screamed TRAP, but Himari's desperation overrode them. Tim was dying. Riku was defenseless. She had to end this now.
She lunged.
Her shadow-blade pierced Derek's chest, sliding effortlessly through the spot where his heart should be.
"Got you," Himari hissed.
Derek grinned, blood coating his teeth. "Did you?"
His hand shot out, moving with the terrifying speed of his new cultivation level. He grabbed Himari by the throat, lifting her off the ground.
The blade in his chest didn't kill him. It didn't even slow him down.
"Heart Repositioning," Derek choked out, laughing. "Basic Devil Sect trick. Move the vital organs. Bait the hook."
He squeezed. Himari gagged, clawing at his arm, her legs kicking uselessly. Black spots danced in her vision. Her consciousness wavered as oxygen starvation set in.
"Haha, you bitch," Derek snarled, bringing her face close to his. "I have you now. I'm going to drink you dry while your friends watch."
The Hilltop
"PUSH, FATHER!"
Takeshi's scream was a raw, bloody thing.
His father, chest heaving, tears streaming down his face, shoved the wheelchair with the last dregs of his strength. He was pushing his son into hell. He knew it.
The wheelchair crested the hill and began its descent.
Gravity took over. The speed rapidly increased. 60 km/h. 80 km/h. The wind tore at his clothes, whipping his hair back. The wheelchair rattled violently, threatening to shake apart.
Takeshi didn't feel the wind. He didn't feel the vibration. He felt the needle.
In his soul, the final needle was being compressed into a point infinitely sharp. The last stitch. The one that mattered.
Through the heart.
To bind the soul to the heart was to fuse will with lifeblood. It was the step that Ethis had warned about. The step that broke minds.
100 km/h.
The curb at the bottom of the hill was rushing toward him like a wall.
Takeshi gathered every ounce of pain, every second of twenty years of paralysis, every moment of watching the world from a window.
"I AM NOT A SPECTATOR!"
110 km/h.
The wheelchair hit the curb.
It didn't stop; it disintegrated. Metal sheared, rubber exploded. The kinetic energy launched Takeshi's frail, atrophied body into the air like a ragdoll fired from a cannon.
He soared over the grass, a broken missile aimed at the heart of the formation.
Derek looked up. He saw the blur of motion. He saw the cripple flying through the air.
Himari's vision was fading to black. Through the tunneling darkness, she saw him. A decrepit, wasted body flying toward them, arms flailing, face contorted in a rictus of absolute determination.
Time seemed to suspend.
Takeshi was mid-air. He looked down at his chest.
He drove the soul needle home.
It pierced the ethereal barrier. It sank into the physical muscle of his heart. It stitched the two together with a thread of pure, agonizing will.
A shockwave of golden light exploded from Takeshi's chest mid-flight. The Heavenly Tribulation above roared in answer, a bolt of judgment lightning crackling in the clouds, hungry for the defiance it sensed below.
Takeshi's eyes snapped open. They weren't human anymore. They were burning of the bluish light soul matter.