A new menu unfolded before Alex. One line at a time, each character burning itself into the air with the solemn weight of temple bells and old regret.
[New Quest Received: True King's Regret]
Objective: The True King of Heavenly Martial grew obsessed with the skill that defeated him on the Road of Imperial Ascension. He wishes to see that skill again.
Reward: Everything that belongs to the True King shall be passed down to you.
Alex read it once.
Then again.
The temple hall remained silent around her, but it was no longer the silence of shock alone. It had become the silence of people listening inward. Dominic stood several paces away, Eyeless Heaven still on his arm, gaze fixed on something only he could see. Emma's eyes moved slightly as if reading a menu of her own. Joanne's lips parted. Jake frowned in concentration. Janet had one hand over her heart. Jack stood unusually still, while Séline and Camille looked toward the mummified corpse on the altar with warrior focus sharpened by ancient challenge.
Yue Ting saw it too. Of course she did.
The Taoist master's expression did not change much, but Alex caught the faint shift of her breathing. A quest from the remains of Thiên Võ Chân Vương. The True King of Heavenly Martial. A direct inheritance trial involving the Secret of bīng - the first original secret to reveal its whereabouts. For someone carrying one copy of the Nine already, this had to be more than temptation.
It was a storm wearing the shape of opportunity.
The others began trying first.
Not physically, as no one moved from their place in the hall. But Alex could feel the change in mana. Memory stirred as intent sharpened. Dominic lowered his gaze, likely recalling the battlefield on the seven-colored road: the woman with the blurred face, the plain sword, the world drawn into being. Emma's fingers twitched as if trying to outline the structure of the poem in mana. Séline's expression became almost meditative, internal martial logic unfolding behind her eyes. Yue Ting was still as a carved statue, but the air around her bent in tiny, almost invisible strands as qián searched for the path that led to understanding.
Alex closed her eyes. She too tried to recall the mana memory.
First, the road of seven colors. Then. the armored man standing with one foot on a serpent and the other on a tortoise - a younger True King of Heavenly Martial, when he was alive. Bīng blazing above his head, the changing character that made all weapons betray their owners.
The woman whose face was blurred by authority, wearing clothes too simple for someone of her power. Tou guan crowned with the elephant-trunk dragon creature. The plain sword held tightly on the hand of someone who could paint a world into being. The poem of rebellion against the gods and heavens.
Lake, mountain, delta, forest, animals, humans, kingdoms. A world crashing into war.
Alex tried to hold the image exactly as the True King had seen it.
But the memory resisted.
It wasn't the sluggish resistant of mana turned denser, nor was it the resistant she sometimes felt when trying to consciously control too many psychic constructs at once. This resistance was stranger, softer. It slipped away whenever she grabbed too hard, as though the woman's technique had never belonged to the True King's perspective in the first place.
Alex breathed slowly. Again she tried. She reached for the image of the woman standing on the seven-colored road.
Again, the image blurred. This time, it was not only the face of the woman. Everything else melted together into a slush of grayish mana porridge. The rainbow road faded. The storm of weapons dissolved. The armored man's roar became distant. The ruined sect vanished from the edge of her awareness.
Then from that slush of grey, colors emerged once more. The memories changed again. Alex no longer stood in the temple hall.
She stood on a battlefield beneath a sky too crowded for weather.
Before her was the back of a woman.
Unlike in the True King memory about her, the back of the woman herself was straighter, closer, warmer. On the seven colored road she had been distant, terrifying, and far out of reach of every mortals. Yet, here, Alex could see the woman clearly, standing right among the commoners most would viewed as far beneath her. It was not truly temperature. The warmth Alex felt was something more a kin to... humanity, approachable, simple and humble.
The woman face remained turned away from Alex, refusing to be seen. Her hair was tied into a long ponytail that streamed in the wind. The same simple clothes wrapped her body, neat and tidy despite the storm gathering above. The plain sword rested in her hand, its unadorned blade pointed toward the earth for now.
High above her, clouds layered upon clouds, and they were not empty.
Gods sat on them.
Rode on them.
Stood upon them.
Not one pantheon, not one culture's heaven. Figures that felt Greek and Norse, Indian and Egyptian, East Asian and Mesoamerican, African and Celtic and nameless all at once. Some wore crowns of sun fire. Some had animal heads. Some held thunderbolts, tridents, spears, wheels, bows, books, skulls, mirrors, serpents, and stars. Some were beautiful beyond kindness. Some were monstrous beyond hatred. Some looked like humans enlarged until empathy had fallen away. Some wore halo of light and wings of cloud white feathers, or feathery white cloud, Alex could not tell the differences.
They stared down at the woman.
No.
They shot her with glare so sharp that if it could be physicalize, the woman would be turned into a target practice from these looks alone. The air between heaven and earth tightened with divine offense.
The woman lifted her sword, pointed it upward.
Her voice rang across the battlefield.
"I, the first Emperor of Humanity, announce today that we will no longer remain blinded by devotion or bound by fear."
Alex's breath stopped.
First Emperor of Humanity.
Not of a nation. Not of a dynasty. Of Humanity as a whole. As she spoke, Alex could instinctively, almost on a hunch, feel no sense of regal or arrogant, no feeling of high and mighty from the woman speaking. That woman had gained no benefits from the title, yet she had shouldered a responsibility so heavy it would break most people back on the spot.
"We will no longer live as cattle for the gods," the woman continued. "The days when we offered worship to bystanders, when we gave faith to those blinded by the cruelty of the world and deaf to our pleas for help, are behind us."
The words struck Alex harder than any roar.
They were not merely rebellion. They were accusation.
Blasphemy sharpened into public law. A mortal voice hurled upward at every heaven at once.
Alex felt the courage required to speak like that and found it almost impossible to measure. It was one thing to fight a monster, a tyrant, a boss, even a Pillar that stood before you with fangs bared. It was another to look up at every story humanity had ever knelt beneath and say: no more.
The gods reacted exactly as gods would. Offense led to violence, threat and pain move the pipeline that turned fear and oppression into obedience and submission. Then sweet lies told to one own ears made slavery become faith. It was the story as old as time. Gods killed millions and taught human to fear, to beg, to serve in the most bloodthirst way possible. Human learnt to fool themselves that they had chose obedience on their own free will because that would preserve their ego more than the ugly truth.
Until a blasphemous woman pointed her blade toward the nine clouds and exposed that lies both sides had told.
Clouds darkened. Crowns flared. Eyes became suns and storms.
War banners rose across the heavens as if forests had learned to fly. They unfurled in every color of divinity—gold, crimson, black, silver, blue-white, peacock green, ash grey, blood orange. Symbols blazed upon them: eyes, wheels, wolves, suns, serpents, lotus flowers, mountains, ravens, dragons, skulls, stars.
War drums sounded, booming as if thunder had learnt rhythm.
The sky shook with them.
Alex felt the sound in her bones. She understood, with a clarity that belonged more to instinct than thought, that this was not a duel. It was a declaration war. Humanity against heavens, the kneeling species against the watchers that had mistaken gratitude for duty.
The woman reached down.
From the ground beside her, she lifted a flag.
It was tattered, soaked with blood. Not ceremonial blood. Not symbolic red. Real battlefield blood, old and fresh, dark in the fabric, stiff at the edges, heavy with the dead of countries, of kingdoms, of cities slaughtered by the divinity to prove a point. Alex thought of the innocent unborn slaughtered in stories written to teach human that god should not be crossed, and blind obedience would be rewarded someday in the future, maybe. Blessed are those who had not seen yet believed was the virtue in most mythologies, after all.
The first emperor lifted the war banner high, and swung it over her shoulders, and wore it as a cape. Blood shed by generations on generations of her kind rest upon her back, as she looked up to the biggest fight of her life.
Then she turned her head slightly—not enough for Alex to see her face, but enough that her voice carried backward.
"Ladies. Gentlemen."
Behind her, beyond Alex, something moved.
Alex looked.
An army stood there.
People.
Soldiers, farmers, hunters, smiths, healers, mothers, fathers, children old enough to hold blades, elders leaning on spears, scholars clutching talismans with shaking hands, nobles stripped of silk, slaves still bearing chains turned into weapons. People from lands that should not have marched together. People whose clothes, faces, languages, and weapons belonged to different ages and civilizations, united only by the fact that all of them stood under the same sky and had decided kneeling was over.
The woman laughed once, bright and terrible.
"We will probably lose this fight."
A ripple passed through the army. No one denied it. Human in this memory seemed to have fought the divine enough time to know how futile this might be.
"Our names will be soiled for millennia to come in histories and sagas told by the gods," she said. "Our defeat will be made an example by divine will."
The war drums above grew louder. The gods leaned closer.
The woman raised her plain sword.
"Still—will you ride with me?"
For one heartbeat, silence.
Then the world answered.
"Yes!"
It rose from behind her.
Behind Alex.
A sea of voices. Not one language, yet one meaning. The word became wave, became mountain, became blade. Alex felt it pass through her body and into the ground. The answer was not confident because victory was near. It was confident because submission had become impossible.
"Yes!"
The woman laughed again.
This time, joy rode inside the sound.
"Then we fight, bravest of humanity!"
Her sword shone, not with light, but with attention. Every eye behind her, every heart, every fear, every grief turned toward that plain blade.
"Fight to straighten the spine of our people!"
The army roared.
"Fight to teach mankind how to stand upright again after kneeling for far too long!"
The gods descended.
Heaven came down as war.
Thunderbolts fell like pillars. Divine spears pierced clouds. Chariots of fire rolled across empty air. Serpents large enough to girdle cities uncoiled from stormbanks. Wings blotted out stars that should not have been visible in daylight. A thousand divine weapons aimed at the mortal army.
The woman began to recite.
"When Man's dread Sovereign, wroth, bids mortals rise,
Iron steeds and golden spears shall shake the skies.
War-drums and blood-soaked banners chill Heaven's throne;
We vow to cleave through Fate—and Heaven's own."
It was the same poem. The same ballad. But now Alex understood she was hearing it at its birth.
Not as a technique polished by memory, or a move repeated on the Road of Imperial Ascension.
This was the first time. A vow becoming skill.
As the woman recited, she drew with her sword.
Alex watched more carefully this time.
A lake appeared. Then a mountain, a delta, a forest. In the True King's memory, and through his lenses, it had looked like mana creating scenery, mana shaping images into weapons. A vast illusion condensed into force.
That had been wrong. Once again, the one who rule high above and consider commoners beneath him had failed to grasp what made these people so terrifying when united under one banner.
The woman was not using mana to draw a kingdom into the world. Mana was only the catalyst, the fuel catching fire because something deeper had already been gathered.
The lake was not water. It was memory of thirst answered, of villages surviving dry seasons, of people gathering at banks to share news, wash wounds, launch boats, bury ashes.
The mountain was not stone. It was endurance. The refusal to move when storms, kings, and gods commanded surrender.
The delta was not mud and river. It was abundance shared by many hands. Silt carried from far places, settling into land that belonged to no single drop of water.
The forest was not trees. It was shelter, wildness, the right of living things to grow without permission from thrones above.
Animals came next. But they were not drawn as beasts alone.
Birds became freedom from walls. Deer became gentleness that still deserved protection. Fish became communities moving together through unseen currents. Tigers became the anger of the hunted when cornered too long.
Then humans. Farmers bent over fields, not because gods had blessed them, but because human hands had turned hard and pebbles in the fields had turned soft. Smiths struck iron, not because fire was divine, but because mortals stole heat and made tools. Healers bound wounds, not because mercy descended from heaven, but because one human chose not to let another die alone.
Children ran beneath lanterns. Lovers held each other before battle. Mourners remembered names the gods would later try to erase.
Then kingdoms rose.
Communities, laws, markets weaved into one being. Walls built not to cage, but to defend. Roads connecting strangers. Banners raised by people who had chosen one another.
Concepts gathered into form: bravery, rebellion, solidarity.
The will to fight for freedom. independence.
The right to choose one's own fate.
All of it flowed into the woman's sword.
All of it answered her.
Alex understood now.
The attack that had defeated the True King on the Road of Imperial Ascension had not surpassed bīng through raw power. It had surpassed one of the Nine because it had not been merely a weapon technique. It was humanity's dream of independence wielded by its first champion: The Emperor of Mankind.
The gods struck.
The woman swung.
The world she had drawn rose with the sword.
Lake, mountain, delta, forest, beast, human, kingdom—no longer scenery, no longer metaphor, but the accumulated refusal of a species to remain livestock for heaven. Divine spears shattered against the mountain of endurance. Thunder drowned in the lake of shared memory. Chariots bogged down in the delta of common survival. War banners tore against the forest of sheltering lives. Heavenly beasts faltered before mortal animals that carried the meaning of freedom.
The army behind her charged.
Alex moved with them without moving.
Her mana pathways ignited.
Mindblade mana answered first, because that was who she was. Not psychic construct, not Bai Hu's storm, not raw telekinesis. The deep cutting principle of her class—the blade that existed in thought before it became force. It reached toward the woman's ballad and did not copy the images.
It copied the relationship.
Mana as catalyst, concept as blade, memory as weight, will as edge.
Alex did not realize she had raised her hand until light gathered around her fingers in the temple hall.
The others turned.
Dominic looked up sharply. Emma's eyes widened. Yue Ting's expression cracked for the first time, surprise cutting through perfect composure.
Alex did not see them.
She was still on the battlefield beneath heaven. Still behind the first Emperor of Humanity. Still hearing the sea of war cries.
Her Mindblade mana moved through pathways she had never used before, carving routes inside her like a song learning how to write itself into reality. The system watched, recorded, adjusted. acknowledging that she had made something repeatable from understanding.
A blade of translucent psychic light appeared before Alex.
Then around it, faint shapes formed.
Not full lake, not full mountain, not full kingdom. She was not the first Emperor. She did not carry all of ancient humanity behind her. But within the blade flickered the echo of what she did carry.
Team Nemean standing against impossible things. Phong saying, They didn't have me. Dominic tanking lightning because his teammates needed the opening. Emma giving support while pretending not to care too much. Joanne laughing through terror. Janet steadying everyone's hearts. Jake and Jack refusing greed. Séline and Camille turning precision into survival.
Rico was there too, constantly shifting between an actual power player and a comic relief.
Alex's own refusal to lose to Alexis Valantris, to the dungeon, to Josh, to gods, to dead futures, to anything that expected her to kneel.
She swung.
The temple hall trembled. The mummified corpse on the altar seemed, for one impossible instant, less dead. A clear sound rang through the air.
Ping.
The system notification appeared before her.
[Congratulations. You have gained a new custom skill: The Ballad of Blades, Symphony I — Uprising Against Nine Heavens.]
[The mana pathways for this skill have been recorded.]
Alex opened her eyes.
The battlefield vanished, the gods vanished too, and so was the blood soaked banner.
The back of the first Emperor of Humanity disappeared into memory, leaving only the temple hall, the altar, the mummified True King, Team Nemean, Yue Ting, and the heavy silence after revelation.
Then, before Alex, a character appeared.
It floated in the air.
Changing. Shifting through every possible angle of meaning while remaining itself. Weapon. Soldier. Army. Blade. Command. Edge. Spear. War.
Bīng - the original one and not a copy, one of the Nine Secrets.