The banquet ended in a haze of candlelight, veiled threats, and gilded whispers. But I had no interest in lingering. Instead of taking the floating palanquin escort like the others, I walked calmly to the edge of the Floating Lotus Palace's outer platform—the final terrace before the void. A gale rushed past. Below me?
Three thousand feet of open air.
And far in the distance, nestled like a jewel in the folds of the mountain range, the Great Circle Arena—a titanic coliseum fifteen miles wide, surrounded by crumbling spires and an ancient city fossilized in war and time. I smiled. Then I stepped off the edge.
The wind howled past my ears and over my azure crystal spiral tyrant armor, that magnified my crimson ember scales underneath. My Uwagi whipped around me like a banner of defiance. My body burned with joy—finally free of politics, formality, and questions wrapped in riddles. It was just me and the wild again. I flipped midair kicking off a cloud feather glyph accelerating and angling downward like a falling star. My physique, now hardened by countless battles and body strengthening techniques, handled the pressure like a joyride.
KA-THOOM!
I slammed into the outskirts of the Great Circle Arena with a boom, cratering the old stone causeway beneath me. Cracks spiderwebbed in every direction. Birds fled the rooftops of nearby ruins. Dust swirled upward like incense from a god's altar. I stood slowly, shaking off the rubble, and exhaled. "That was a rush."
These days my legs barely touched the ground. My muscles felt like coiled springs. My sense of taste was still incredibly sharp. I flexed my taloned hand, watching the glow ripple faintly beneath my skin. I could leap over mountains if I truly desired it. A half-smile tugged at my mouth.
And then—
I sensed it.
Cold sharp killing intent, like the pins and needles sensation you experience when the hand or leg falls asleep. It then evolved into a chilling sensation that made my blood run cold. I froze and my body stiffened. Not from fear, but from an even further heightened sense of things.
The scales on my arms shifted. My pupils dilated. Then—whoosh!—a sudden gust of smoke exploded all around me. Shadows with blades inside them. Five figures landed in perfect formation, barely making a sound—only the swish of robes and the whisper of poisoned steel. They wore black cowls. Faceless. Featureless.
Even their auras were camouflaged by layers of spirit-sealing silk. No emblems. No words. No mercy. I straightened slowly, cracking my neck to the side. "Well," I muttered, "That didn't take long." The lead assassin took a half-step forward. His qi was cold. Controlled. Not reckless like a rogue—but trained like an executioner. Their blades gleamed with void-glass edges, able to slice spirit threads from the body.
"These aren't amateurs. These are elites." Their formation was surgical. Precise. They weren't here to test me. They were here to erase me. Unbeknownst to him these were the Black Cowl Clan. The legendary shadow clan that believed no cultivator may bear the Divine Spirit Body unless sanctioned by Heaven itself.
Their hidden dogma: "The Divine must be born of lineage. All else is heresy."
Ash?
He was an anomaly.
A threat, that if left allowed to grow could change the destiny and political structure of a continent. An unsanctioned god.
And now?
They were here to clip his wings before they even unfurled. The circle of assassins tightened. Their knives gleamed with soul-poison. Each one held a perfectly measured fighting stance—silent, synchronized, and deadly. I rolled my neck once.
Then, a voice sizzled through my bloodstream like liquid flame. Felicity, the silver blooded phageal, whispered into my thoughts. "Want me to deal with them, Master?"
Her voice was a sultry hiss, eager. "I can peel their skins before they scream."
I replied, calm and firm, while stretching my arms.
"Only interfere if I'm about to die."
A pause. Then:
"As you command…"
I lowered my stance and smiled at the assassins.
"Show me pure power and speed."
And then—
"Serpent Step Mirage!"
I vanished.
Or rather, multiplied. A dozen blurred afterimages exploded outward in a perfect ring, each leaving behind a mist of spirit-warped dust. The ring of assassins staggered back—eyes wide behind their cowls. The air shimmered. To them, Ash was everywhere and nowhere—each mirage shifting, weaving, dancing, all poised to strike from any angle.
The Black Cowl Leader Thought to himself; "What level of movement technique is this? He's creating afterimages that are Intent-anchored—real enough to mask aura threads! Impossible at his age!"
From within the vortex of mirages, I appeared mid-sprint—my golden qi spiraling like a storm around my right hand. I thrust my palm forward. "Thousand Lords Spirit Palm!"
I launched the delayed attack and leapt back into the blur of mirages A moment later one giant, golden palm surged forth—wide as a wagon, blazing like divine fire, rumbling with delayed impact. It didn't strike immediately. Instead, it hung in the air like a god's judgment waiting to fall. The assassins scattered like leaves—too late.
Just as they dodged—
SLAM! The palm snapped forward with a boom of compressed qi, flattening the center of their formation with crushing force. Pavement cracked beneath the blow. Stone flew like shrapnel. But I wasn't done.
"Second Technique—One Thousand Palms of Death TIER II!"
I shouted the last part of the sentence to put emphasis on what was about to happen next. As I circled the five assassins using burst shuttle footwork, I launched a simple palm strike that was followed by five more afterimage strikes! One by one, my five animated afterimages that raced around the assassins launched precise palm strikes followed by five proceeding strikes, each bursting with vestigium qi.
Each targeting a different assassin! One clipped a ninja's shoulder, dislocating it with a sickening crunch. Another hit a leg mid-dodge, sending the assassin cartwheeling into a shattered wall. Another slammed into the ribs of a ninja attempting a counter throw—shattering his guard and sending blood spewing from his cowl.
No one screamed.
The Black Cowl Clan trained in silence. But their eyes widened behind the silk cowls.
"He's not supposed to be this strong. He's only sixteen!" I stood at the center of the chaos, golden palm still steaming at my side. I exhaled, cracking my knuckles. "You sent five," I said calmly.
"You'll need fifteen next time."
One of the assassins vanished in mid-air, his cowl slipping into full cloaking, a treasured technique of the Black Cowl Clan. He reappeared inches behind me—his short sword gleaming with soul toxin, aimed right at my kidneys.
The blade surged forward—
FWWWWIPP!
A split-second before contact—
Silver tendrils of living blood exploded from my back, writhing like vipers made of quicksilver. They seized the assassin blade mid-lunge—binding his arms, legs, and neck in a flash of motion so violent it cracked the air. The blade clattered to the ground, untouched.
The assassin screamed once. Then, the tendrils pierced his body at every pressure point—draining him dry in a matter of heartbeats. His flesh withered. His bones collapsed inward. His soul-animus bled through his mouth in ghostly tendrils—all of it drawn into me. I blinked. My pupils briefly flickered silver. My blood glowed under my skin.
"...Tch. Too slow."
Behind me, the other assassins froze in absolute horror. One stumbled backward. "I-It can't be…" "That technique… those tendrils…"
"IT'S A BLOOD PHAGE!" They vanished. All of them activated emergency smoke talismans—vanishing in black fire and flashing light—retreating into the shadows, their mission aborted. I took a deep breath and turned to the face the empty ruins of the ambush site. Inside my blood Felicity awakened, and laughed.
"Mmmm. Delicious. That one was fresh." I watched the last motes of life essence swirl into her thread count. Deep beneath the Sable Mountains, inside a crypt of silence and folded shadow, the remaining assassins knelt before their Grand Elder—a blind man in a black robe stitched with glyphs of forbidden moons.
His voice was like dry paper tearing.
"You failed."
The lead assassin shook. "Grand Elder, forgive us. We were prepared for strength, but not for… that." "We saw it with our own eyes. Tendrils of silver blood. It drained Kana in moments."
Another chimed in, voice strained. "A Blood Phage, Grand Elder. We swear it." The Grand Elder's head slowly rose. Even without eyes, they felt his gaze.
"…Are you certain of what you saw, the eyes have a way of lying."
His voice trembled—not with fear, but memory.
The silence stretched. "A Blood Phage?" he repeated. Behind him, a dusty old scroll unfurled on its own. A single glyph shimmered on it: "Calamity from the Sky." The Grand Elder leaned forward. "Kill him…before he awakens more."
"Kill him before…they spread again."
I stepped over the crumpled remnants of the assassin's husk. I stripped the empty dry husk of the armor set and stored them into my pocket ring. The Ninja Gear appeared to have stealth cloaking properties that I wished to investigate later. The desert wind kicked dust up in swirling gusts, but I barely noticed. I let out a small sigh and started walking—hands in my pockets, shoulders loose—as if nothing had happened.
My bare feet crunched over loose gravel as I sauntered back toward the outer walls of the Great Circle Battle Arena, the shattered gate yawning wide in front of me. But something gnawed at me.
That name.
That title.
''Calamity from the Sky'' I murmured aloud, eyes narrowing slightly. I called her, "Felicity…" A purring hum echoed through my bloodstream like liquid bells.
"Yes, Master?" I licked my lips, hesitant for once. "Back when you first introduced yourself to me, In the river of cursed blood- you called yourself the ''Calamity from the Sky'' remember?"
Just now—those assassins. They said the same thing. Why were they afraid of you? What exactly… are you?" There was a pause. For the first time since we'd met, Felicity was quiet. Then she spoke. "Ah…so it's that time, is it?" Her voice, usually teasing or smug, now held a trace of something different—reverence...and remorse. Inside my mind the truth was revealed. "We came from beyond the heavens…from a shattered world of blood and crystal. My kin—our kind—traveled inside a star that we created to burn through the skies."
"When we fell... it cracked the sky and wounded the great super continent Pangaea Prime." I stopped walking. The world seemed to go quiet. Felicity continued.
"We didn't have names back then. We were just instincts and hunger—shards of living desire. But as we touched the blood of this world… its beasts, its people… we learned. We adapted. We grew." "Some of us—like me—became more than just alien parasites."
"I…had an awakening. I learned language. I learned beauty. I learned loyalty. I learned not to be parasitic, but symbiotic. I chose the symbiotic path of enlightenment.
"But others…"
Her voice darkened.
"Others chose the path of carnage. There were Blood Phages that devoured whole cities, that learned to mimic entire armies. They didn't just drain bodies—they stole cultivation paths, martial techniques, legacies. They even drank the souls of sacred beasts and twisted them into their own forms."
My mouth went dry. "…So what happened?"
"War."
The Great War.
The Shattering."
Felicity's voice was accompanied by flickering mental images—hazy but powerful. Empires crumbling in red tides. Heaven-tier cultivators being pulled from the sky by living threads of blooded silver. Great beasts going mad as their blood was hijacked. Mountains melting. Oceans torn upward. One massive landmass—the Super Pangaea Continent—shattering apart like brittle glass.
"The Ancients sacrificed everything to drive us back. They used forbidden martial arts and elemental anomalies to collapse the ley lines around our hives. Whole sects committed suicide just to cause massive spiritual detonations that could kill us in nests. We burrowed beneath continents.
Underneath sea beds.
Some of us burned.
Some froze.
And me?"
She laughed softly.
"I went into hiding. I watched. I waited."
My legs finally moved. I sat down on a fallen slab of sandstone, staring out toward the massive arena-city beyond. I muttered, "You're telling me… the entire continent shattered because of your species?"
"That your race is the Calamity from the Sky?"
Felicity purred again. "We were only trying to survive.
But yes. We journeyed from the stars...and this world cracked open to hold us."
I stared down at my hands. They still shimmered faintly from the silver tendril surge. "And now… I'm bonded to one of you."
"You're in my blood."
"...What does that make me?"
Felicity whispered in reply.
"Something new.
Something terrifying.
Something wonderful."
And maybe… something this world isn't ready for."
I leaned back, letting the cool pre-dawn breeze wash over my sweat-slicked brow. I grinned faintly.
"Yeah… that tracks. I've never really fit in anyway."