I sat in the middle of a spacious room filled to the brim with stacks of books and piles of scrolls.
The walls, the floor, even the roof were hidden behind the messy hoard of precious texts, each valuable enough to send great sects scrambling.
Before me sat one of those precious scrolls.
"A record of divine swordsmanship."
To others, it was a priceless treasure with knowledge and insights capable of inducing enlightements in those following the path of a sword. To me, however?
It was just another book I've nearly memorized from reading it over and over again.
"Please, mercy!"
"NOOOOO!"
"ARGH, IT HURTS!"
I shut my ears to the pained and terrified screams coming from the outside.
The sounds of the raid reached even here, to the very top of the Divine Sect's most central peak.
"I can already smell the smoke," I muttered, my nose wrinkling as my face twisted in displeasure.
For the last three hundred years, I served as the ancestor of the Divine Sect. The greatest powerhouse and but a mere librarian of this precious collection.
A poor soul bound by the unbreakable oath I was stupid enough to make nearly a millenium ago, back when I didn't know better. And ever since then, I continued to suffer from my success.
'Just a little longer, huh?'
Another bout of shouts reached my ears.
I was the ancestor of this sect.
By all means, I should be outside, fighting against the raiders who dared to raise their arms against my sect, the powerhouse of the cultivation world.
And yet, I glued my eyes to the text I knew so well I could recite it in its entirety from my memory, studying the ugly calligraphy left behind by a man who mastered the way of the sword yet never learned how to properly use a brush.
'They should be getting here right about…'
BANG!
The doors to my study exploded open as a pair of two blooded cultivators in fancy robes stumbled inside.
Most of the blood on their robes wasn't theirs, its spiritual signature way too different to come from their veins.
Not all of it, thought. And even without sparing as much as a single glance, I could perceive more than a dozen of cuts on each of them.
"YOU!"
The woman was the first to shriek out of the two.
"RESPECTABLE ANCESTOR!"
Her partner clearly didn't get the note, falling down to his knees and instantly striking the floor with his forehead, kowtowing without a single regard for his own dignity.
"We beg you, step out of your study! Ward us off against the attack of those vile invaders! WE BEG YOU!"
'Just how a man who could cut the air itself with just a thought could write so damn poorly?'
After reading through this text hundreds of times, it has long lost the shine of knowledge, discovery and mystery I once saw in it.
Right now, it was just a compilation of the ramblings of an old master broken by the fact he couldn't find a disciple worthy enough to inherit his techniques.
'Maybe that's why his caligraphy is so disgusting?' I thought, not offering the slightest bit of regard to my guest.
"THEY WENT OVER THERE! TO THAT SHABBY SHACK!"
A voice from the outside reached the inside of my study without losing any of its clarity.
Those morons were too busy hoping I would solve their problems to bother closing the damn doors!
"KILL THE HERETICS!"
"SLAUGHTER THOSE DEVIANTS!"
"FOR THE RIGHTEOUS SECT!"
The sound of the hurried dash from a few dozen of feet gave my thoughts a perfect rhythm to follow.
Knowing full well they weren't a match for their pursuers, the cultivator duo ran over to the other end of my study, only to end up pressing their backs against the pile of books stacked against the back-wall of my shack.
Then, the raiders finally forced their way into the room only to then stop as they were, stunned by the sight.
The whole of the Divine Sect was up in flames.
Its might broken. Its authority challenged. Its prodigies and talents either poached or slaughtered without a shred of mercy.
Today would mark the change on the seat of a top dog in a world of cultivators sect.
That is, unless I did something about that.
And bound by my oath, with my eyes still on the long scroll unveiled before my eyes, I reached out for the one element that didn't fit the scenery of the study.
A long, elegant sword sheathed in its scabbard and without a single piece of excesive decoration on it.
With a single look anyone could tell it was a cheap, practical, well-made piece… but nothing beyond it.
Compared to the divine treasures carried by literally everyone else on the scene, it almost appeared laughable.
Then, after the moment of shock passed, the raiders rushed again.
Their swords blinked in the air as thousands upon thousands of slashes, cuts and thrusts rushed to met with my skin from every possible angle and direction.
Yet, whenever a blade would reach half a step away from me, a silvery light would flash up, deflecting the strike and leaving its force embeeded into the space around me.
"WOAH!"
A series of gasps filled the room as the raiders stopped their advance.
I have yet to even unleash my sword. And with just its intent alone, I managed to not only block all the thousands of attacks unleashed upon my back, but also store their cutting power and intent, imprinting it upon the aura around me, perfectly in control of it now.
I wasn't the ancestor of this poor excuse of a sect for nothing.
"Okay, that's enough."
Such a short sentence, yet packed with three different meanings, one for the surviving cultivators of my sect, one for the raiders… And one that only I knew about, that would only become apparent in the near future.
I stood up.
The eyes of the cultivation couple flashed with hope, while the practicioners behind me visibly slumped in despair.
My stomach revolted, nearly making me puke all over the floor.
Just seeing that hope on their filthy faces…
'Calm down. This is what you've spent years to arrange. Now, all you need to do is make your exit.'
With the sheathed sword still in my hand, I looked over my shoulder, sparing the attackers but a fleeting glance.
'They really grew up, huh?'
Following my head, I turned the rest of my body while finally releasing my supposedly simple blade from its scabbard.
This blade was just like me. To an amateur's eye, it would appear perfectly ordinary. But there was no amateur in this room. And just a single glance at the golden sheen radiating from the blade was enough for relief to fill the cultivators now hidding behind my back while filling the faces of the raiders with despair.
"Ultimate technique of the divine swordpath," I uttered out loud, acting as if merely invoking the technique was enough to put me in a trance.
One of the raiders, a young woman, stepped forth, her eyes twitching with disbelief, confusion and determination.
"Cut."
I swung my sword in a perfect motion. No movement wasted.
A perfectly precise strike where only the very tip of my blade would slide through my opponents neck.
In fact, I didn't even need to aim my strike. For the very moment I swung my arm, my technique powered up, causing my sword to explode with golden radiance as the very laws of the universe bent to the will of my sword, infusing the space itself with the idea of cutting through.
It was a divine strike by all means, one perfectly capable of splitting mountains and sundering heavens themselves.
And yet, with a metallic clang, this young woman parried it, and reflected this impossibly powerful attack straight back at me!
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
Behind my back, the woman screamed out in panic, watching how the rebounded attack rushed towards me…
Only to end up as yet another suspended strike, powerlessly stuck at the very edge of my manifested aura.
The girl in front of me stood still, the look on her face betraying her disbelief.
Her eyes screamed 'IT WORKED?!'
And seeing this, I merely offered her a small smirk.
"You did well, Sistine," I praised the girl before silently unleashing a gravity technique.
Everyone dropped down to their knees. Their faces struck the floor, their spines too weak to resist the sudden weight.
Then, I turned around. With one, snappy wave of my wrist, my face started to melt, turning, twisting, revealing a visage supposedly lost from history.
Long forgotten, dark-blue eyes zeroed in on the woman's face.
The source of my milenia old grief. The time when I truly suffered from success… and naive gooning. The origin of my oath that bound me never to raise my hand against them.
I was merely sworn to protect the sect, but with my naive, young self blinded by lust? I swore an actual oath.
And today, all my schemes came to a head, culuminating in the scene before my very eyes.
"That's right."
I stared right at this thousand old wench, who paraded around with her fucktoy after clenching my balls with the vise of my oath.
"It's me."
With a snap, my aura collapsed.
A combined might of the forty or so talented cultivators I've secretly groomed for the last four hundred years. The force of my very own "Cut" only further reinforced by Sistine's parry.
A skill that I've intentionally woven into the structure of my technique to make it suspectible to this counter before finding a whole bunch of people that could master it.
Among them, my low-key salvation, an up-and-comming glaive prodigy that took the mastery of her weapon to an unfathomable level.
In give or take two, three more centuries, she could even match my power!
And now, in a single instant, all those attacks, all this accumulated power and cutting intent grew to a point where no other factors of reality held any weight.
Within that single point, single instant, single frame of the universe, I've stuffed my very own existence.
"And once again," I smiled, looking down at the two before me, trembling in the corner of the room.
Nowhere were the proud cultivators that brought the divine sect to the very top. Now, they could only tremble at the realization of what was happening.
"After a whole damn milenium," my eyes widened to a crazy degree as I stared right back into that bitch's face.
Damned wench unworthy of a glance.
My lips twisted in a crazed smile.
"It's over."
The attacks struck.
The existence itself faltered, bubbled… and broke as an unstopable force of nature sundered every aspect of my existence, leaving just an empty vessel of my old self filled with nothing but essence of who and what I was.
With all of the information about my existence severed, I've cast the die of my reincarnation for the second time.
My information and my reincarnation, those were the two constants I've left after sundering everything else away.
I've managed to boot myself into a different set of rules, different place, whole different reality!
Just like over a thousand years ago, I've appeared confused, lying down, with nothing but the emptiness of my dark, unfamiliar room all around.
That, and a loud, marching song filled the air even though it clearly smelled of the earliest hours of the dawn!