A cold rain fell, washing the blood from the fields of the dead.
"You have slaughtered legions, Jin!" bellowed the Crimson Knight, his voice a thunderclap over the storm. "Far too many! With millions as my witness, I shall strike you down!"
Clad in magnificent crimson armor, the hero stood defiant. He unsheathed his greatsword, lifting its blade to the heavens as if to channel their fury. A confident smirk etched itself onto his face as he unleashed his ultimate technique.
"CRIMSON MOON!"
He vanished, charging forward with impossible speed as a colossal, blood-red moon tore itself into existence on the battlefield. The sheer force of the technique warped the air, a testament to a man rightfully known as one of the strongest mortals to walk the earth.
But to Jin, it was nothing. Why should the apex predator concern himself with the strength of a single sheep? he thought, his expression an unmoving mask of stone. The gap between 'one of the strongest' and 'the strongest' was an abyss.
His gaze locked onto the oncoming inferno. "You are not worthy," he whispered.
Jin swung his hand in a simple, almost lazy gesture from left to right.
In that instant, silence fell. A single, horizontal line of impossible sharpness bisected the world. The Crimson Knight, his cataclysmic technique, and the million-man army arrayed behind him were all severed in two, their bodies separating an instant later without ever knowing they were dead.
Jin glanced towards the storm-wracked heavens. "Was that not a grand enough spectacle?"
"Hardly," a voice boomed from above, parting the clouds themselves. "I did not think he would be quite so useless."
A figure descended, landing on the decimated field without a sound. He was a being of pure gold—golden armor, golden hair, and eyes that blazed like twin suns. He was the Sovereign of Justice, a name known and feared by all: Arthur.
"Today, Jin, your reign of terror ends," Arthur declared, a radiant, almost joyful smile upon his face. "But please, do try to entertain me. I have not faced a worthy challenge in centuries."
Jin, who had been waiting for this very moment, met his gaze. His blood-red eyes narrowed, and a slow, predator's grin spread across his lips.
"I may fall today, but I die with no regrets," Jin vowed, his voice a low growl. "For on this day, so do you!"
With that, he drew his gleaming silver katana. The air grew heavy, and reality itself seemed to groan as he invoked the name of his art.
"Book of Heaven and Earth — First Chapter: WRATH."
A violent, blood-red aura erupted from him, so immense it vaporized the falling rain and warped the very ground upon which he stood. He lunged, a crimson comet aimed at the heart of a god. In response, a barrier of pure, golden divinity flared into existence before Arthur.
"Shield of the Goddess!"
The collision was apocalyptic. The ground for a mile in every direction shattered, but the divine shield held firm against Jin's demonic wrath. But Jin was already gone, his afterimage the only proof he had ever been there. He invoked his next principle.
"Book of Heaven and Earth — Second Chapter: LIGHT."
Faster than thought, faster than light itself, he became a streak of silver vengeance, his katana appearing at Arthur's neck from an impossible angle. A mortal would not have even perceived the attack before being decapitated. Yet the golden warrior was his equal. Arthur didn't move; he simply commanded.
"Oh Goddess, keep watch over my enemies."
Space itself seemed to bend around the blade's edge, forcing Jin's perfect strike wide by a hair's breadth. He reappeared a dozen yards away, his expression unchanged.
"My turn, I believe," Arthur's voice resonated with celestial pride, his joyful smile widening. He raised his legendary greatsword, Excalibur, and its golden light intensified, becoming a miniature sun. A vortex of raw power erupted from the blade, drawing in the ambient energy of the storm, the earth, and the sky. The very essence of the million dead soldiers was torn from their corpses, rendering them to dust as their life force was siphoned into the attack.
"Let us see if you can withstand oblivion!" Arthur roared, and swung his sword. He did not unleash a beam of light, but a wave of absolute annihilation that erased everything in its path.
Faced with a power that could unmake creation, Jin simply smiled. The torrent of destruction washed towards him, and he spoke the final invocation.
"Book of Heaven and Earth — Third Chapter: TRANQUILITY."
The violent red aura vanished. His killing intent disappeared. His very presence faded from the world until he was a ghost, a void within the storm Arthur had created. As the wave of oblivion hit, it passed through him as if he were nothing but a phantom.
Wrath was his power. Light was his speed. Now, Tranquility was his state of being. With all three chapters of the Book of Heaven and Earth invoked, Jin was no longer just a man. He had become an axiom of battle, an untouchable concept standing against a god.
Arthur's golden eyes narrowed. Jin's state of Tranquility had rendered him a ghost, imperceptible even to a god. The joyful smile vanished from the sovereign's face, replaced by a look of divine frustration.
"If you choose to hide within the world," Arthur bellowed, his voice shaking the heavens, "then I shall simply destroy the world!"
He shot skyward like a golden meteor, ascending until he was a second sun in the storm-blackened sky. He raised Excalibur high, gathering all the power of his divine authority into a single point of light. Then, he brought it down upon the earth.
A silent, golden wave of energy expanded from the point of impact, scouring the very foundations of the continent. For thousands upon thousands of miles, the land was flash-boiled into glass and fire, mountains were vaporized, and seas boiled away into steam. It was an act of unmaking, leaving a planetary scar visible from the heavens.
And yet, at the epicenter of the new-forged hellscape, Jin stood. Amidst the seas of lava and plains of obsidian, he remained, utterly unharmed. He looked at the devastation around him, then back at the golden god descending from the sky.
"Was that your answer?" he asked, his voice calm and clear.
A booming, joyous laugh erupted from Arthur, echoing across the wasteland he had created. "Magnificent! To think a mortal could push me this far! It would have been a cosmic tragedy for you to perish in a mere scouring of the landscape."
"Now," Arthur declared, his smile blazing brighter than ever, "let us truly begin!"
He charged, and Jin met him.
Upon the continent-spanning wound they had created, they fought. For three days and three nights, their duel raged, a maelstrom of silver and gold that painted the sky in apocalyptic light. Green plains turned to seas of lava; mountains were ground to dust under the force of their blows.
And through it all, the cold rain never stopped falling.
As the third day bled into the fourth night, amidst a world of ruin, Jin knew his end was near.
He felt no fear, only a cold, stark clarity. Arthur was everything the legends claimed: the chosen of the heavens, a being of absolute, unassailable power that perhaps not even the goddess he served could overcome. The question echoed in the ruins of Jin's ambition: If he could not surpass this man, what right did he ever have to call himself the strongest under the heavens?
Any other warrior would have felt pride, a profound honor in having been such a tough challenger to a god. But such sentiment was alien to Jin. There was no honor in glorious defeat; there was only the failure to win. In his heart, there was only the bitter, suffocating weight of regret for being unable to kill this man.
Ironically, his final vow—to take Arthur with him into death and die without regret—had been a desperate gamble to escape this very feeling. And he had failed.
He could not recall the final blow. There was only a blinding, all-consuming sun—the golden light of Excalibur—and the sensation of his existence being unwritten, atom by atom. As his consciousness dissolved into the endless, falling rain, his last thought echoed into the void, a final, chilling verdict on his own life.
"Truly… a shame."
He began to hear them first—a cacophony of chanting voices, distant and muffled.
"Are the spirits of the slain still haunting me in death?" he wondered.
Then, sensation struck him like a thunderbolt: the biting cold of a harsh stone floor, the chafing of restraints on his wrists. He forced his eyes open.
"Oh, faithful of the Great Becoming!" a man's voice bellowed, dripping with fanaticism. "Today, we offer this sacred blood and summon forth our lord of shadow!"
"Alive?" A new, childish voice echoed in his mind. Jin tilted his head, his gaze falling upon the small, frail limbs of his new body. It was that of a child, no older than seven. A slow, chillingly bright smile spread across the boy's face. "It seems the heavens have granted me a second chance."
A low chuckle escaped his lips, growing into a full, unhinged laugh that was entirely out of place in the tiny frame. Never in his long, bloody life could he have imagined this. Another chance to reach the apex.
"Ten pure maidens and one male vessel!" the High Priest shouted. "This tribute will be more than enough to please our magnificent lord!"
Only now did Jin take in his surroundings. He was laid upon a crude stone altar in a vast, torchlit cavern. To his left, a man in ceremonial red robes stood before a congregation of hundreds clad in black. To his right stood ten women, blindfolded, half-naked, and bound.
"A glorious death for our glorious lord!" the priest screamed, and with a flash of his ritual dagger, he slit the first woman's throat. He moved down the line, a butcher in a trance, taking one life after another as the crowd roared in ecstatic approval.
The air grew thick with the stench of blood and urine as the maidens wept, their bodies betraying them in their terror, which only fueled the vile worshippers' feverish delight. Jin watched the depraved spectacle with cold detachment. A single word echoed in his mind: Disgusting.
He knew he was meant to be the final sacrifice, the vessel to complete the ritual. But he would never allow himself to be killed by these insects. The problem was his body; it was pathetically weak, its spiritual channels still dormant.
But as he felt the overwhelming waves of agony and terror from the dying women wash over him, his laughter returned, quiet and predatory.
"Sacrificing ten maidens..." he thought, his smile widening. "...I'll gladly accept their offering."
On the heels of his disgust came a predatory realization. The First Chapter of his soul-bound art, WRATH, did not require a strong body. It required fuel. It fed on resentment, on terror, on the agony of the dying. This vile cave was not his tomb; it was a feast. And his technique, an extension of his very soul, could be used regardless of his body's constitution.
After the last maiden fell, the High Priest turned his attention to the altar, his eyes gleaming. He walked toward Jin.
"Now for the final piece, boy," he hissed, dragging a blood-soaked tongue across his blade. "A pleasing death to you."
He swung the dagger down.
The child on the altar simply smiled.
In that instant, the crimson aura of WRATH erupted from Jin's tiny frame, fueled by the distilled horror of ten sacrificed souls. It was not a fire; it was pure, weaponized resentment given form. The High Priest didn't even have time to scream as the aura washed over him, turning him and his blade to ash on the wind.
Jin, now free of his molten restraints, stood. He looked out upon the congregation of worshippers, who seemed frozen in place, their minds unable to process what they had just witnessed.
"Did... did that child just... disintegrate the High Priest?" one of them stammered in utter shock.
Jin simply regarded them. He felt no anger for his near-death experience. On the contrary, he felt a profound, chilling joy. After a lifetime of struggle and a final, bitter failure, he had been given the one thing he never thought possible: a new beginning. This was, without a doubt, the happiest day of his life.
To honor this grand occasion, he deigned to look upon them—insects he would normally never have graced with his gaze.
The ambient resentment in the cave, amplified by the maidens sacrifice, was a roiling sea of power. Even his weakened soul, channeling a fraction of Wrath's true potential, could effortlessly command it to erase these lowlifes.
The prey had become the hunter.
He unleashed a wave of the crimson aura, carefully modulated to what he thought the child's body could withstand. It swept through the cavern, and the black-robed figures began to burn, their screams of ecstasy turning to shrieks of agony as the weaponized resentment consumed them from the inside out.
A sharp pain lanced through his chest, and Jin coughed, spattering a spray of blood onto the stone floor. "Even this paltry amount... This body is fragile," he noted with clinical detachment.
He walked slowly back to the altar and sat upon it in a lotus position, claiming the sacrificial slab as his new throne. With the vast, vile energy he had just absorbed, he could begin the process of reforging this vessel and awakening its spiritual pathways.
For any other cultivator, absorbing such tainted power would mean madness and corruption. But Jin's will was a sovereign force, an indomitable singularity that had been forged in a war against the world. It could bend any power, no matter how corrupt, to his command.
Amidst the fading, agonized cries of the last dying worshippers, a new vow was forged in the silence of the cavern. His childish voice was low, yet it held the weight of an unbreakable oath.
"I will climb the Five Realms again," he declared to the shadows. "And this time, Arthur, our debt will be settled."