The Crimson Moon hung like a wound in the night sky, its baleful light painting the battlefield in shades of blood and shadow. Jin Kaze, the feared Blood Moon Demon, knelt in a pool of his own crimson, each labored breath sending ripples across the dark surface. Around him lay the corpses of a hundred righteous cultivators—the final army sent to end his reign of terror.
He had won. At the cost of everything.
His cultivation base was shattered, his meridians torn beyond repair, and his life force ebbing away like water through cracked stone. The grand hall of his fortress, once a symbol of his absolute power, now served as his tomb. Pillars carved with demonic runes lay toppled, their ancient power spent. The very air reeked of death and spiritual devastation.
"Master," came a familiar voice from the shadows, tinged with what sounded like genuine sorrow.
Jin lifted his head, dark hair matted with blood falling across eyes that had once struck terror into the hearts of nations. Through the haze of approaching death, he saw a figure emerge from the smoke and ruin—tall, handsome, with the bearing of a true cultivator. Baek Mu-jin, his most beloved disciple. The boy he'd found as a starving street orphan and raised into one of the murim world's most promising young warriors.
"Why did it have to end this way?" Baek asked, his voice breaking with emotion as he knelt beside his dying master.
Jin tried to laugh, but only managed a wet cough. "End? This... this is just the beginning, boy. You think killing me solves anything?"
"I didn't want this," Baek whispered, and for a moment, Jin almost believed him. Almost. "But you left me no choice. The path you walked... it would have destroyed everything. Everyone."
"And your path is better?" Jin's voice was barely a rasp now, but his eyes still burned with that terrible intelligence that had made him legendary. "Tell me, Mu-jin... when did you decide to betray me? When did the righteous alliance make you their offer?"
The mask slipped. Just for an instant, but Jin caught it—the flash of cold calculation behind those tear-filled eyes.
"You always taught me that power is everything in this world, Master," Baek said, his voice steadying as he abandoned the pretense. "That only the strong have the right to determine fate. I simply... learned the lesson too well."
Jin felt something pierce his chest—not pain, for he was beyond that now, but a profound sense of completion. Looking down, he saw the hilt of a familiar blade protruding from his heart. Shadowfang, the sword he'd gifted to Baek upon the boy's advancement to Core Formation. The blade hummed with his own qi signature, a technique he'd personally taught his disciple.
Even in death, he was a thorough teacher.
"You understand nothing," Jin whispered, and this time he did manage to laugh—a sound like winter wind through a graveyard. "Nothing about power. Nothing about strength. Nothing about... the true enemy we face."
Baek's eyes narrowed. "What enemy? You were the enemy, Master. You and your blood-soaked path. The murim world will finally know peace with you gone."
"Peace?" Jin's laughter grew stronger, more genuine. Blood frothed at his lips as his body began to fail completely. "Oh, my dear student. You sweet, naive child. Do you really think I was the monster in this story?"
"Stop talking in riddles!" Baek snarled, twisting the blade. "You killed thousands! Burned cities! Turned brother against brother with your demonic arts!"
"And yet," Jin said, his voice growing distant as darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, "I never betrayed a single person who trusted me. I never smiled while sliding a knife between the ribs of someone who called me family. I never—"
The sword twisted deeper, cutting off his words. But Jin Kaze was smiling now, really smiling, as if he'd just heard the most wonderful joke in the world.
"You think this ends with my death," he whispered, so quietly that Baek had to lean closer to hear. "But death... death is just another beginning. And I have so much left to teach you, my dear disciple. So very much."
"You're dying, old man. Your teachings die with you."
Jin's eyes fixed on his betrayer's face one last time, memorizing every detail. The cruel mouth. The pitiless eyes. The face of ambition wearing the mask of righteousness.
"We'll see," he breathed.
The Blood Moon Demon, scourge of the orthodox path, terror of three dynasties, died with a smile on his lips and laughter in his heart.
His last coherent thought, as consciousness faded into the eternal dark, wasn't of revenge or regret. It was a moment of crystal clarity, sharp as a blade and twice as cutting:
*Even at the end, everyone misunderstood me.*
The Crimson Moon reached its zenith and began its descent, taking with it the life of the most feared cultivator in living memory. In the silence that followed, Baek Mu-jin stood over his master's corpse, already composing the heroic tale he would tell the world.
He never noticed the single tear of blood that fell from Jin Kaze's closed eye.
He never saw the way shadows seemed to recoil from the body, as if reality itself rejected this death.
And he certainly never suspected that somewhere in the space between heartbeats, between breaths, between one moment and the next, the universe had taken note of a great injustice—and decided to offer a most unusual form of correction.
The Blood Moon Demon was dead.
But death, as Jin Kaze was about to discover, was just the beginning of his story.