The storm never truly left the air after Jian's declaration. His sword aura still lingered over the mountain peaks, a thread of killing intent in the clouds, as if the heavens themselves now listened to every breath he exhaled. But Jian had never believed in fate. He believed in choice. And this time, he chose war.
Frostveil stood beside him as the wind howled over the obsidian ridge, her long white hair fluttering like a banner of mourning and defiance. Beneath them, the world churned. Kingdoms whispered. Cultivators murmured legends into fires. The ones once called myths were now assembling their truths.
They needed an army.
Not pawns. Not blind followers. But blades.
They moved like ghosts through nations, seeking warriors who did not bow to Heaven's light, but those whose backs bore scars from it. In the ruined desert temples of the North, they found the Flameborn Monks—thirty-three warriors who had sewn molten fire into their veins to resist the Dao of Light. In the depthless ravines of the West, where nothing green had grown for a century, they uncovered the Lost Scales—cultivators who wore dragon hides not as armor but as penance for oaths long broken.
Each warrior came with stories, bloodlines, vendettas. And yet none flinched when Jian stood before them and said: "You are not soldiers. You are condemned men and women with sharpened souls. But sharpened souls can split Heaven."
It took two weeks, endless searching, battles beneath moons, debates that bordered on duels, but eventually they stood upon the spirit-bleached plains beneath Mount Ayin with two thousand cultivators kneeling to none.
Each chosen. Each ready to die.
But Jian would not let them be a nameless tide.
He split the army into five factions.
The Bladefang Division—a frontline strike force commanded by Jian himself. 500 elite sword cultivators who trained under no orthodoxy, wielding Daos that shredded logic. Their creed was simple: The blade decides.
The Soulveil Sect—under Frostveil. A phalanx of soul and ice cultivators, defensive and surgical. 400 members, mostly women, but each more dangerous than their number suggested. When they moved, the battlefield fell silent—not from awe, but because no one left alive to speak.
The Heavenbane Circle—led by a one-eyed strategist named Qiao Ren, who had once sat at the table of the very heavens he now sought to desecrate. He brought with him 300 loyalists: poisons, shadow walkers, illusionists. They were not meant to fight. They were meant to erase.
The Titan's Wake—commanded by a mountain of a man named Xu Lian, whose Dao was of endurance and destruction. 400 men and women who bore shields as tall as walls and strikes that shattered cities. They would hold the line while others carved the blade's path.
The Fifth Army—the most enigmatic. 400 drifters who followed no leader but one another, led by a woman only called Ash. No surname. No history. Only that she had survived a Dao collapse and came back burning. They were flame-walkers, void-steppers, cultivators whose power was as unstable as it was catastrophic. They were the coin flip of war.
These five leaders did not meet often. They did not need to.
Jian stood at the center of it all like an anchor. And yet, beneath the weight of command, he felt… smaller. He trained with them. Bled with them. But he never called himself general.
"Why not just be the Emperor?" Frostveil had asked one night as they watched torchfires shimmer on tents below.
"Because the last time I was worshipped," Jian said quietly, "I killed more friends than enemies."
She looked at him, expression unreadable, then reached out and held his hand.
No warmth was exchanged. Just understanding.
---
And yet, in the cracks between the gathering, something else stirred in Jian. A sickness of the soul. Not weakness—but a memory. The boy he now inhabited. Shen Mo. The boy who had once stood atop a building's edge with nothing left to live for.
That pain was not gone. Jian wore it like a second skin.
> "What kind of love must a person be denied to wish for nothing more than silence?" he thought.
He walked alone some nights into the outskirts, away from the fires and training grounds. The cultivators whispered when he passed. Some called him Demonblade. Some said he had no soul. All respected him.
But none loved him.
And for Jian… that was enough to doubt.
He knelt in a field one night, placing his sword on the ground.
"I am no savior," he said aloud to the empty stars. "I led massacres. I ended bloodlines. I brought a thousand years of night to a world that believed in morning. Why would anyone follow me?"
The wind answered nothing.
So he began to whisper—not to gods. Not to heavens. But to the boy whose soul still lingered inside him, weak but not broken.
"I took your body, Shen Mo. I desecrated your grave with my spirit. I mocked your pain by continuing to live. So if you can still hear me… I'm sorry."
It wasn't enough.
Apologies never were.
So he stood and walked back into camp.
If he could not be a hero, he would become a wall.
If he could not be loved, he would become the sword others used to carve their futures.
If heaven hated him, so be it.
But let it remember his name.
Jian. The man who chose to carry hell so others didn't have to.
Authors note: This chapter feels like a failure but I hope you like it, love my fans.