I stood between certain death.
There was no path before me that led to victory, no future in which this encounter ended without consequence. To stand between two gods was to stand between two absolutes, and yet I found myself unmoved.
Both stood at my sides.
One divine.
One devilish.
Yet beneath those titles...
They were the same.
One sought to use Lu Bu as a vessel to further his own agenda, poisoning the warrior with whispered lies and carefully woven truths. The other wished to wield my strength for her own designs, granting me the illusion of freedom while fastening invisible chains around my neck.
Gods.
They ruled the heavens...
Yet schemed like men.
I let the silence settle before drawing a slow, measured breath. Even the forest seemed to still itself, as though every tree, every bird and every blade of grass had become an audience to what was about to unfold.
"Chiyou... Amaterasu."
"You stand at my sides, each staining the world in your own image. One cloaks it in endless darkness. The other blinds it beneath everlasting light. Yet neither of you is beyond desire."
I slowly turned my head, first toward Chiyou, then toward Amaterasu.
"I can smell your intentions from here. No matter how divine you believe yourselves to be, your emotions are no different from my own. You fashioned yourselves human vessels, yet forgot that the hearts beating within them speak louder than any lie."
I took another step, my footsteps echoing softly through the forest.
"I hear those hearts. Every beat. Every hesitation."
"I smell the ambition that seeps from your souls."
"You call yourselves gods..."
A faint smile found its way onto my face.
"...Yet all I see are beings desperately convincing themselves they stand above the very creatures they created."
I closed my eyes.
And took a deep breath.
The world answered.
The earth did not shake. It yielded.
Reality itself seemed to bend, not as though it were breaking, but as if creation had remembered an older command—one spoken long before gods inherited the heavens. Beneath our feet the ground began to rise, slowly at first, then with impossible elegance. Great cliffs folded over themselves, valleys carved their own paths, and stone thrust upward toward the sky as though the mountain had always existed and the world had merely forgotten where it belonged.
Neither Amaterasu nor Chiyou spoke.
For perhaps the first time in their immortal lives...
The gods were confused.
Life answered the mountain's birth without hesitation. Rivers carved themselves through newborn valleys, waterfalls leapt from cliffs still forming, and ancient forests erupted from bare stone. Flowers bloomed in impossible colours, their fragrance carried upon winds that had not existed a heartbeat earlier. Entire ecosystems came into existence within moments, not hurriedly, but with the quiet certainty of something fulfilling a destiny written before time itself.
Within seconds, the mountain stood complete.
A monument that scraped the heavens.
Amaterasu found herself standing upon a colossal pillar of radiant white stone, while Chiyou stood upon another carved from black obsidian, both resting on opposite ends of the mountain as though they had been placed there by an unseen hand.
"...Where is Lu Bu?"
I looked around, struggling to understand what had happened.
My body felt... hollow.
Not weak.
Not injured.
Empty.
I raised my hand before my face, studying it carefully. The warmth that had surged through my veins, the feeling that made me believe I could challenge divinity itself...
Had vanished.
I felt neither mortal nor divine.
I was simply a shell waiting to be filled.
Across the mountain, Chiyou stared at his own hands.
Dark.
Cracked.
His four mighty arms, which had ended civilizations and painted battlefields crimson, trembled ever so slightly. Fury swelled within him, but beneath it lurked something he had not experienced in thousands of years.
Confusion.
The Demon God of War, who had feasted upon slaughter since before kingdoms learned to speak, could not understand what had been done to him.
For the first time...
He did not understand war.
He did not understand himself.
Both gods instinctively lifted their gaze toward the summit.
High above the clouds...
A lone figure stood.
He overlooked both heaven and earth with nothing in his hands. No armour adorned his body. No weapon rested upon his back.
Only a man.
Yet somehow...
He seemed greater than the mountain beneath his feet.
His voice drifted down the slopes like scripture carried upon the wind.
"Power is an interesting concept. Those blessed with it often become its greatest servants. Those deprived of it spend their entire lives clawing toward it, believing it to be salvation. Yet neither pauses to ask why they seek it in the first place."
"It matters not whether one is a god enthroned above the heavens or a homeless man abandoned beneath them. In the pursuit of power..."
"They are equals."
I breathed deeply, allowing the mountain wind to pass over my skin. Sky Piercer was gone. My armour had abandoned me. For the first time since I could remember, there was nothing separating my body from the world around me. Only the wind remained, and strangely enough...
It was enough.
As I cleared my throat and swallowed, the mountain answered once more. Small villages formed along its slopes, smoke curling from freshly built homes as if families had lived there for generations. Animals wandered through fields that had not existed moments before, while children laughed in places where silence had once ruled.
"Amaterasu... Chiyou."
"Alexander of Macedon sought the same dominion you seek. Men have always believed that enough power could bend the world to their will."
I lifted my eyes toward the heavens.
"I know He watches."
"I know He hears."
"You are precious to Him in your own ways."
"But me..."
I smiled.
"What am I to Him?"
"A nameless mortal?"
"An inconvenience?"
"...Or the first man Heaven has ever been forced to acknowledge?"
The mountain continued to ascend, its peak piercing through the clouds until even the heavens seemed too low to contain it.
"Lu Bu knows nothing of what he is becoming."
"But he will."
"He was merely a man days ago."
"He learns."
"He grows."
"And one day..."
"He will outgrow every one of us."
I looked toward Amaterasu.
"You felt it within the cave."
Then toward Chiyou.
"You vanished before Sky Piercer because you felt it too."
"You both know."
"You simply fear giving it a name."
Silence answered me.
Then...
The world gained four shadows.
No tremor announced them. No light heralded their arrival. They did not descend from heaven nor rise from the earth.
They simply existed.
Four colossal figures surrounded the mountain, each so impossibly vast that even its towering summit barely reached their waists. Their faces betrayed nothing. They neither breathed nor blinked.
They only watched.
Their gaze carried no anger.
No hatred.
No mercy.
Only judgment.
Then, as one, they spoke.
"Fengxian."
"Fengxian."
"Fengxian."
"Fengxian."
Their voices rolled across the land like an ancient decree, and for the first time since the world had taken its first breath...
Everything fell silent.
The rivers ceased their flow.
The birds forgot their song.
Even the wind dared not move.
"You have been acknowledged..."
"...by the Heavenly Mandate."
For the first time since Heaven crowned itself above the earth...
It looked down.
The sky parted once more.