Winds raged across the shattered plain, howling like the screams of ten thousand dying souls. Ancient mountains stood unmoved, silent sentinels carved from the bones of the world itself. Above, clouds drifted lazily—white wisps against an indifferent sky—as the chaos of slaughter continued below.
Heaven watched the spectacle with cold amusement.
To the divine eyes above, it was mere entertainment: ants warring against an owl. No matter how small the combatants, no matter how desperately they bled, it was nothing more than theater. A passing diversion in eternity's endless scroll.
But to the ants, it was apocalypse.
One owl against an entire army. What had begun as a calculated military engagement had devolved into a massacre, a one-sided butchery that stained the earth crimson for miles in every direction.
The owl stood atop a mound of broken bodies, untouched, pristine. His feathers—if they could be called such—gleamed like polished obsidian under the storm-lit sky. His beauty was terrible enough to make even the gods pause in their celestial games and lean forward, captivated.
The owl was a man.
Elegant. Untouchable. Untamed. Eyes of deep crimson burned with the fire of a thousand dying suns. Long white hair swayed in the wind like silk banners of war. His robes—once pristine white—were now painted with the blood of his enemies, yet he wore them like a king ascending to his throne.
The massacre intensified with every heartbeat.
A cultivator charged from the left, sword raised high, spiritual energy crackling along the blade. The white-haired man didn't even glance his direction. A casual flick of his wrist. The blade shattered like glass. The cultivator's head separated from his shoulders, blood gushing in a crimson arc that painted the stones.
Another leapt from behind, spiritual energy coalescing into a spear of pure light. The white-haired man sighed—the sound of boredom, of disappointment. He raised one finger. A massive spiritual palm materialized above—demonic, wreathed in black flames that seemed to eat the light itself. It descended like the fist of an angry god.
*Crunch.*
The cultivator didn't even scream. Just ceased to exist, reduced to a red smear on cracked stone.
An entire flank of the army—three hundred strong—rushed forward in perfect formation, banners high, war cries shaking the valley with coordinated fury. Surely their numbers would overwhelm him. Surely their combined strength would bring him down.
The white-haired man raised one hand. A single, lazy sweep.
They were gone.
Not dead. *Erased.* As if they had never drawn breath, never walked the earth, never dared to challenge him. Only dust and silence remained where three hundred warriors had stood moments before.
He frowned, studying the empty space where his enemies had been.
"Weak," he muttered, and the word carried more weight than any curse.
The remaining army trembled. Weapons clattered to the ground. Some men wept openly. Others stood frozen, minds unable to process what their eyes had witnessed.
Heaven watched, delighted.
The white-haired man's eyes—bold, detached, ancient beyond measure—lifted to the sky. Then he pointed upward with one blood-stained finger, steady as a spear aimed at fate itself.
"You pathetic fucks from above—come at me!" His voice boomed like thunder, cracking the clouds, making the mountains themselves shudder. "Don't just watch like cowards! Send your best, or admit you're nothing but spectators hiding behind divinity!"
Silence fell across the battlefield.
Then—laughter. Divine, mocking, delighted laughter that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, from the sky itself.
The clouds darkened. Swirled. Parted like a wound opening in reality's flesh.
A radiant rift tore open in the heavens, golden light spilling through like liquid dawn, like the blood of the world pouring from a fatal cut.
Then—*he* descended.
Long red hair flowing like rivers of blood in an impossible wind. Face calm as still water, but eyes wild like a beast finally unchained after centuries of captivity. His robes were crimson and gold, embroidered with symbols that hurt to perceive directly, patterns that seemed to move and writhe with their own terrible life. Killing intent rolled off him in visible waves, thick enough to choke the air, heavy enough to make the stones beneath him crack.
The white-haired man's lips curved into a genuine smile.
The red-haired immortal said nothing. He simply studied his opponent—every breath, every micro-movement, every flicker of will and intent, analyzing and calculating with the cold precision of a predator that had never known defeat.
The surviving soldiers cowered. The earth itself seemed to contract, as if trying to hide from what was about to unfold.
Two apex predators faced each other across the corpse-littered plain. An owl and a hawk. Their auras collided—
*CRACK.*
The sky split with lightning that wasn't lightning, with thunder that spoke in languages older than words.
The owl struck first.
He moved like a phantom, crimson eyes blazing with murderous joy. A claw of pure will slashed downward, tearing not flesh but *reality itself*, leaving a wound in the fabric of existence that screamed as it tried to heal.
The hawk raised its wings—massive constructs of divine light and spiritual energy—and blocked. The impact shook the mountains. Ancient stone cracked and crumbled. Rivers reversed their flow, fish leaping onto banks in panic.
The white-haired man laughed—a sound like breaking glass mixed with funeral bells—and *leaped*, propelling himself higher than the clouds, higher than the storm, until he was a white star against the darkening sky.
Behind him, a colossal demonic spiritual palm formed—hundreds of meters wide, fingers like black iron pillars, veins pulsing with corrupted will that made the air itself sicken and rot. It descended with the weight of a dying star, with momentum that should have been impossible.
The red-haired immortal's lips curved into a smirk.
He raised his own palm, so small, so insignificant in comparison.
The earth *shattered*.
A roar split the heavens—not sound, but pure force given voice. From the cracked and bleeding ground erupted a divine spiritual beast: massive, serpentine, scales of molten gold and eyes like twin suns that had learned to hate. It coiled upward with impossible speed, matching the demonic palm in size, in power, in *hatred*.
They collided mid-air.
*BOOM.*
Heaven and earth quaked. The surviving soldiers were obliterated in the shockwave—vaporized, crushed, torn apart by forces their mortal bodies couldn't withstand. Trees flattened for miles. Rivers boiled. The sky itself seemed to crack like thin ice over a frozen lake.
The battle lasted two days and two nights.
Two days of fire and blood and thunder. Of mountains crumbling into valleys. Of rivers being born and dying in hours. Of the sky bleeding colors that had no names, that burned themselves into the eyes of anyone foolish enough to watch.
When the dust finally settled, when the echoes of divine combat faded into terrible silence...
The white-haired man stood.
At his feet lay the red-haired immortal—body broken like a discarded puppet, robes in tatters, divine radiance extinguished, eyes staring blankly at the sky that had sent him to his death.
The victor threw his head back and laughed—a mad, triumphant howl that shook the ruins, that made Heaven itself flinch.
Then he glared at the heavens with crimson eyes full of mocking contempt, voice raw from battle but still carrying clearly through the devastation.
"Even the 'immortals' above..." He spat blood onto the corpse at his feet. "...are not truly immortal."
His laughter faded gradually, replaced by ragged breathing.
The crimson in his eyes began to dull, the fire slowly dying.
He swayed once. Twice.
Then collapsed, body hitting the blood-soaked earth with a soft *thud* that seemed far too quiet for the end of such a legend.
Silence descended over the broken battlefield like a funeral shroud. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. The wind itself had died.
Heaven grew quiet, the entertainment concluded.
Then—rain. Soft, warm, washing the blood into the earth as if the world itself wept for the futility of it all.
---
"Old Lu! Old Lu, come back here this instant!"
An old woman's sharp voice cut through the peaceful village twilight like a knife through silk.
The elderly storyteller—face weathered like old leather, eyes twinkling with the mischief of someone who'd lived long enough to stop caring what others thought—closed his worn leather-bound book with a soft *thump*. He smiled at the ring of children gathered around him on the village green, their faces flushed with excitement and horror in equal measure.
"Storytime's over, little ones," he said, voice warm but firm, the tone of a grandfather who knew when enough was enough. "If I keep going, my wife will have my hide—and trust me, she's meaner than any owl or hawk I've ever told you about."
The children groaned in dramatic unison, a chorus of disappointment.
"Old man, what a bummer!" one boy whined, kicking at the dirt with his bare foot.
"Yeah, please continue!" a girl begged, eyes shining with tears she'd practiced in the mirror at home. "What happened after the battle? Did anyone survive? Did Heaven punish them both?"
The old man chuckled, ruffling her hair affectionately. "Some stories end in silence, child. That's the whole point. Not everything gets a neat ending with all the answers tied up pretty."
But one child stood apart from the chattering crowd.
He didn't groan. Didn't beg. Didn't cry or complain.
His gaze was cold—yet not quite. His presence was faint, like a shadow at high noon, barely visible but somehow *there*. The other children never quite looked at him directly, never quite remembered to include him in their games.
He was quiet. Observant. Calm in a way that seemed wrong for someone so young.
He said nothing as the others filed away, their laughter and chatter fading into the evening air. The sun dipped behind the green mountains in a blaze of orange and gold. The moon rose, pale and watchful, like a silver coin dropped into the sky's dark purse.
A small hut by the river glowed warmly in the gathering darkness, smoke curling from its chimney like a lazy dragon's breath.
"Zhung! Go fetch water from the river!" A woman's voice called from within, warm and familiar. "We're making pork stew tonight—your favorite!"
The boy's eyes lit up instantly. A radiant, childlike smile broke across his face—pure, unguarded joy of the sort that only children can truly manage.
"Coming, Mom! Be right back!"
He grabbed the wooden bucket sitting by the door and dashed outside, bare feet slapping rhythmically against the cool earth, the picture of innocent enthusiasm.
But the moment he stepped beyond the glow of the hut's windows, beyond his mother's line of sight, the smile vanished like a snuffed candle.
His expression turned cold. Empty. Ancient.
*Eight years,* he thought, walking steadily toward the river. *This body is eight years old. But my mind... three hundred years as a grandmaster who may never have existed. Twenty-five more as a security guard in a world of steel and neon and indifferent cruelty. And before that... what? A dream? Reality? Does it even matter anymore?*
He reached the riverbank where moonlight painted the water silver. The surface was crystal clear, reflecting scattered stars like diamonds spilled across dark velvet. He knelt, filled the bucket with practiced efficiency, and couldn't suppress a low, bitter laugh that belonged to no child.
*The sun is life. The moon is the grave where daylight goes to die. And I...* He stared at his reflection—a child's face with eyes that had seen too much. *I am the shadow caught between them, belonging fully to neither.*
Back home, the hut was warm and fragrant—pork sizzling in the pot, herbs dancing in the aromatic steam. His mother hummed an old lullaby as she stirred, her back to the door, content in her simple life.
Zhung slipped quietly into their shared room—poor families couldn't afford separate spaces—and knelt by the corner where the floorboards didn't quite meet properly.
He pried up the loose board with careful fingers.
Inside his secret cache lay a book. Stolen three weeks ago from the town library when his mother had sent him to buy salt and ginger for preserving vegetables.
**Guide to Cultivation**
*By Bu Yue Jin*
The cover was worn, the pages yellowed with age and use. But the words within had burned themselves into his mind like brands, like prophecies he couldn't escape.
He flipped past the early chapters—endless moralizing, warnings about the dangers of pride, tips on meditation posture that assumed the reader had a master to guide them—and went straight to the sections that mattered.
**The Conflict of This World:**
*Beasts roam the wilderness and cultivate their strength through blood and will. Humans do the same, but with greater ambition and less restraint. Empires fear the growing power of cultivation sects, viewing them as threats to centralized authority. Thus a decree was issued generations ago: exterminate all unauthorized sects. Countless civilians perish in the crossfire of these conflicts. The cycle never ends. There is no peace, only brief pauses between massacres where both sides sharpen their blades.*
**The Three Realms:**
*The Nascent World—a realm of primordial monsters and ancient madness where only the strongest beasts survive and even they live in constant terror. Death is the only certainty. Even immortals fear to tread there.*
*The Mortal World—where we reside. A land scattered with treasures both worthless and divine, buried in forgotten ruins, guarded by death itself. Empires rise and fall like seasons. Sects flourish and are destroyed. Children die in wars they don't understand.*
*The Heavenly World—home of immortals who sit on thrones of cloud and light, viewing the Mortal World as their personal playground of insects. They send "champions" to crush any who grow too powerful, too defiant. They do not touch the Nascent World—there, even gods can die.*
Zhung's fingers tightened on the page as he read further into the mechanics of cultivation itself.
**On Mortal Cultivation:**
*To cultivate, a mortal must consume the blood of divine or demonic beasts while it still carries warmth and life. The body undergoes catastrophic reconstruction to form an Aperture—a spiritual organ that channels Will, the fundamental energy of existence. The Aperture may form anywhere in the body: head, heart, spine, limbs, even the eyes.*
*Failure means becoming a hollow shell—brain-dead, skin agonizing to the slightest touch, screaming for days before death finally claims you. Divine and demonic blood comes only from powerful mythical beasts. Most mortals who hunt them die horribly.*
*It is not advised for mortals to attempt cultivation. Only death awaits most who try.*
Zhung read the words three times, committing every detail to memory.
*Death awaits,* he thought coldly. *But so does power. And I've already died twice. What's one more time?*
"Zhung! Dinner's ready!"
He hid the book, slid the floorboard back into place, and hurried out with a child's eager expression perfectly plastered across his face.
Their small hut glowed with simple warmth. Mother and son ate in peaceful silence—thick pork stew with carrots and wild herbs, steam rising between them like incense at a temple. Outside, the night was gentle. Crickets sang their endless song. The river murmured its ancient secrets to the stones.
For now, in this small pocket of existence, the world was kind.
But Zhung knew better than anyone: kindness was just a lie the world told children before teaching them the truth.
---
**Meanwhile, in a village three days' journey to the north...**
Night had fallen heavy and starless, as if something had smothered the sky itself.
A night guard wandered into the forest to relieve himself, humming an old drinking song under his breath, slightly drunk from the festival earlier.
*Slash.*
No warning. No sound beyond the whisper of steel through flesh.
Blood sprayed across the trees in a silent arc, black in the darkness. His upper body fell, severed cleanly at the waist. His legs stood for one absurd moment—then toppled.
Red eyes opened in the darkness. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
The beasts descended like a plague.
The village bell clanged in sudden panic—*CLANG CLANG CLANG*—a desperate prayer to gods who weren't listening.
Guards scrambled to bar the wooden gates, hands shaking, torches flickering uselessly against the tide of darkness. Swords were drawn with trembling hands.
Too late.
The gates *shattered* inward with the sound of breaking bones, splintering like kindling before divine wrath. Beasts poured through the breach—wolves the size of horses with jaws that dripped acid, serpents with human faces that screamed as they struck, shadows with too many limbs and teeth that seemed to exist in multiple places at once.
Screams filled the night air, rising and falling like a terrible song.
Not even the children were spared.
Two boys ran for their lives through the burning streets, lungs burning, feet bleeding from broken glass and scattered debris.
One slipped on blood-slick cobblestones, tumbling hard into a drainage ditch with a cry of pain and terror.
"Help!" he cried, voice cracking with desperation, one hand reaching up. "Please—don't leave me!"
His friend skidded to a halt. Looked back. Reached down. Their fingers almost touched—
A massive wolf bounded from the smoke, eyes glowing with bloodlust, foam dripping from jaws that could crush stone.
Time seemed to slow, each second stretching into eternity.
The fallen boy's eyes widened in sudden, terrible understanding.
Then—*shove.*
He pushed his friend forward with his outstretched hand—straight into the wolf's path, using him as bait, as a sacrifice to buy himself seconds of life.
Their eyes met.
The betrayed boy's scream was cut short—*CRUNCH.*
The survivor ran without looking back, tears streaming down his face. Guilt would come later, if he lived long enough. Now there was only the primal need to survive, the animal instinct that cared nothing for friendship or loyalty or love.
*Even if you were my friend... I won't trade my life for yours.*
He dove through the door of a wooden hut, barricaded it with a heavy table, and curled into the corner, hands clamped over his ears as the screams rose outside—then, one by one, fell into silence more terrible than any sound.
Dawn broke pale and cold over the ruins.
The survivor emerged from the hut on shaking legs, hands raised in trembling triumph, looking at the devastation with eyes that couldn't quite process what they saw.
"I'm alive," he whispered to himself, to the corpses, to the indifferent morning sky. "I survived..."
A shadow fell across him.
A figure approached through the smoke and scattered ash, moving with casual grace through the field of death. Long violet hair that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. A face twisted with something beyond mere cruelty—skin sallow, eyes sunken deep, lips peeled back in a rictus grin that showed too many teeth.
The boy tried to cry out but his voice died in his throat, strangled by an invisible force.
He was yanked forward by nothing visible, feet leaving the ground. His mouth was forced open—wider, wider, far beyond what should be possible—until his jaw cracked with a sound like breaking branches.
Blood erupted from his throat in a torrent, impossibly thick, impossibly dark. It poured out like a river from a wound that shouldn't exist, more blood than a body his size should contain.
His eyes went dull, life draining with the blood.
The crimson fluid hovered in the air, defying gravity, coalescing into a perfect sphere that pulsed like a living heart, like a small sun made of suffering.
Then it rained down onto the violet-haired man.
He tilted his head back, eyes closed, mouth open in ecstasy. The blood soaked into his skin, vanishing like water into parched earth. His sallow complexion flushed pink with stolen life. His sunken eyes filled out. His grin widened with genuine pleasure.
When he opened his eyes, they glowed faintly purple, satisfied.
He turned and walked away through the ruins, leaving the husk of the boy behind like discarded garbage. Bodies lay twisted in the streets. Homes smoldered. The air reeked of death and smoke and something darker—the scent of cultivation, of power taken by force, of the strong devouring the weak exactly as Heaven intended.
This world was harsh. Cruel. Unforgiving.
And it rewarded those who understood its true nature.
---
**The next morning, by the river...**
Zhung sat on a flat stone, fishing pole in hand, line bobbing gently in the current. The sun climbed slowly over the mountains, painting the peaks gold, promising another beautiful day.
He stared into the water, thoughts drifting like the river itself, like leaves caught in an endless current.
*Rivers flow gently, like time. This world is strange. I, Zhung Hang, lived in two worlds—one a dream that lasted centuries, one a reality that broke me. But this world...*
He watched a leaf float past, spinning lazily in an eddy before continuing downstream toward an ocean it would never reach.
*My name was Zhung Hang in both past lives. Here, I am simply Zhung. So which world was real? Which was the dream? Or were they all just different chapters in the same endless nightmare?*
A fish bit. He reeled it in slowly, methodically—a fat silver carp, scales flashing brilliant in the morning light.
He held it up, staring into its blank, dying eye as it gasped helplessly in the alien air.
*If this world is Heaven's illusion, if I'm just another insect in their cosmic theater...*
He smiled then—slow, sharp, dangerous. A smile no eight-year-old child should be capable of making.
*...then I will cultivate until I can tear down their stage. I will rewrite Heaven's rules with my own blood and will. I will become strong enough that they have to acknowledge me as something more than entertainment.*
He laughed then—loud, defiant, echoing across the water and into the mountains beyond, carrying a promise that the world wasn't ready to hear.
A laugh that belonged to no child.
A laugh that Heaven would learn to fear.
**End of Chapter 4**