Silence covered the world like a heavy shroud. Nothing remained except a deep pulse echoing inside his soul, like the hidden drums of war announcing the birth of a new dawn. Ashen sat in the middle of the field, surrounded by petrified corpses. His eyes were closed, but every drop of blood around him trembled with the rhythm of his breath.
In the depths of his consciousness, a sea of crimson fog boiled. At its center floated his spiritual embryo — a shadow of his former self — surrounded by red light and circles of fiery ash.
The Devouring Rune was engraved on the embryo's abdomen like a glowing wound, consuming everything that came near. Every wave of beastly intent that entered the sea of consciousness was swallowed, broken, and reshaped within the embryo.
The beastly intent was no longer a deadly energy threatening his soul. Now, it was his nourishment.
Black threads flowed from the edges of the sea of consciousness into the embryo, but instead of corrupting it, they turned into a violet-red light that flashed like lightning within a calm storm.
The spiritual embryo absorbed the darkness and turned it into fiery purity. As the absorption deepened, new lines appeared on its body, wrapping around it like living tattoos that pulsed with the rhythm of both beast and man.
Ashen felt something change within him.
The intent that once tore his consciousness apart now grew inside him without pain, as if it was meant to unite with him. The hell inside him no longer tormented him… it bowed before him.
He slowly opened his eyes. The sky above him burned gray, as if about to explode.
He looked around with a cold, lifeless gaze and stood up. The ground groaned beneath his feet, and every trace of blood around him began to boil.
---
A month passed after that.
Everything had changed.
His soul was filled to the brim with purified beastly intent, and his body released a dual aura: majestic purity and indescribable savagery.
When he moved, the earth trembled. When he was silent, the air choked.
The beastly intent danced around him like transparent flames, feeding on his presence and taking the color of his blood.
By the seventh year, Ashen awoke to a roar that made the sky fall into heavy silence.
From afar, red fog began to move…
Armies of deformed giants emerged.
Hundreds of massive bodies stepped out of the void — mixtures of petrified flesh and exposed bone, faces without features, mouths dripping black tongues. Every step was a small earthquake, and every roar tore through the horizon like a mountain collapsing.
At their front stood the greatest of them — a thirty-meter-tall giant wielding a club made of spiked bones stained with dried blood.
Ashen looked at them, his eyes burning red.
He didn't feel fear — only a strange thrill.
"Come…" he whispered, his hollow voice shaking the air.
The ground exploded.
---
The massacre began.
The twisted beasts charged toward him like a black tide, and Ashen exhaled his first breath of battle.
With every breath, beastly intent rose from him like deadly steam, and with every step, time seemed to slow.
The first ten giants attacked together.
Ashen activated the Blood Crocodile Rune. His body was covered with a layer of crimson scales.
But this time, they weren't like before…
From each scale, long bloody spikes sprouted, twisting like hungry serpents.
When the giants piled onto him, the spikes burst outward in a storm of red, shredding everything nearby.
The scene turned into a whirlwind of blood. The giants were reduced to nameless pieces.
He didn't stop.
When a headless swarm attacked from the left, the blood chains around him moved on their own — alive, pulsing with lethal savagery.
They rolled through the air like infernal serpents, tearing, devouring, and screaming with unearthly sounds.
One touch could rip through flesh and bone alike, and every corpse they consumed made them shine brighter.
Then he moved.
He activated the Sky Leopard Rune and dashed.
He vanished, leaving only sparks of red lightning in the air.
He moved among the giants like a flash, seen only when one of them fell, split clean in half.
He walked among corpses as if walking through green fields.
When the largest giant swung its massive club,
Ashen leaped ten meters high and sent two blood chains forward like whips. They pierced the giant's arms, buried themselves inside, and dragged it toward him. At that instant, he activated the Blood Bear Fist Rune.
A terrifying aura of bear-shaped blood formed around his arms.
His muscles bulged monstrously, veins flaring, blood leaking from his pores — but the power that erupted within him defied reason.
When his fist met the giant's head, there was no sound…
Only the boom of a mountain exploding.
The air shook, and the giant's head shattered into a mist of blood.
---
Days passed… then months… then an entire year.
The seventh year of his life became an endless massacre.
He no longer slept or felt the passing of time.
Only battle. Only blood. Only the endless flow of beastly intent inside him.
Every beast that fell before him turned into pure energy that his soul absorbed, and every drop of blood that touched him became part of his sea of consciousness.
He no longer needed the celestial records to protect his soul…
His soul itself became the record.
The sight was beyond words: Ashen stood in a sea of giant corpses, his chains dancing around him like arms of hell, dragon scales covering his body, and beastly intent flowing from him like a red fire that could not be extinguished.
Every move tore the ground, and every glance crushed wills.
Even the giants — born without fear — began to retreat.
At the end of the seventh year, the last giant fell to its knees, its petrified eyes dimming slowly.
Its massive club dropped from its hand and sank into the ground like a fallen tower.
Ashen stood atop it, staring at the horizon, his body still dripping blood that refused to dry.
Strangely, not a single wound marked him.
He looked as if he had walked through a storm of blood untouched.
Everything about him was calm — unnaturally calm.
He looked around with an empty gaze and raised his head toward the sky.
He no longer knew how long he had been in this hell.
Time no longer had meaning.
Reality had twisted.
His only companions were regret and the fire of suffering burning within.
---
The following month, he entered the scheduled rest period.
He sat inside a deep cave within the mountain's heart, surrounded by glowing red crystals.
Everything was covered with a thin layer of solidified blood, and even the air dripped with a red thickness.
But he didn't feel suffocated — he felt peace.
During that month, he reorganized his thoughts.
His strength now surpassed anything he had ever imagined, yet he knew something was missing.
His attacks were deadly at close range, but limited in reach.
His blood chains extended only ten meters, and beyond that, he couldn't touch the enemy.
He also lacked wide-range techniques that could annihilate armies in a single strike.
He sat in silence, remembering a distant past — the mysterious man who had given him the old tablets before his life was swallowed by trials.
He remembered the man's voice, but his face was blurred.
In his memory were four dark tablets, each with a different symbol.
He had used only one: the one for the Celestial Records.
Three remained untouched.
He raised his head and looked upward, toward the void linking the world to the heavenly dao.
His voice came out steady as a blade:
"O heavenly dao, or whatever you are, I know you can hear me."
"Grant me what I seek."
The void stayed silent.
Then the ground began to shake.
"What empty arrogance,"
the dao's voice thundered inside Ashen's mind, full of absolute disdain.
From above, white threads pierced the darkness, carrying a golden light mixed with the sharp scent of evaporating blood.
A tablet descended slowly before him — an ancient stone engraved with veins of crimson gold.
When Ashen touched it, a chill ran through his body, as if the sky itself was watching.
On its surface was a single inscription, yet its meaning was vast as the ocean:
"Energy Shock."
At first, Ashen thought it was just a long-range attack skill, but its depth was far greater.
"Wait… I remember it being called Blood Shock or something like that," he muttered softly, then stopped.
The words echoed in his soul like ancient war drums summoning him to the abyss.
Then, without knowing why, he heard a whisper from within the tablet itself — a voice like his own, but older, deeper, and darker:
"One shock breaks the earth.
Two shocks pierce the heaven
Three shocks shatter the universe."
Ashen raised his eyes to the horizon, and a smile returned to his face — a smile not of joy, but of a promise.
His eyes glowed with blood and lightning, and behind them burned an unending fire.
There, in the silent cave, surrounded by the faint scent of distant corpses still haunting the earth's memory, a new intent was born…
An intent neither human nor beastly — something in between.
An intent that fell from the heavens themselves.