Under a sky so bright it washed the horizon into a white seam, the wilderness stretching in green and gold colors.
Wind skimmed over reedbeds and crystal leaf shrubs, carrying the smell of river silt and flowering qi-grass from the borderlands of the Jade Floodplains.
At the continent's center, the Floodplains spread like an open palm from a hand, rivers braiding through marshes and basins, soil steeped in life aspected Qi so dense it made the air taste a little sweet. Crops there ripened in half a season, and vines could wrap around a man's leg in a single afternoon if left unchecked.
Lotus ponds birthed medicinal petals worth a city's ransom, and from this fecund heartland rose the greatest scholarly sects and healer lineages, filled with arrogant or confident men and women who claimed to read the pulse of the earth itself.
And here, at its quieter edge, mythic animals roamed without fear of anything, unless they ran into an enemy that is, obviously.
A stag with antlers of translucent jade lifted its head as a man passed, the horns glowing from within like lanterns had been set inside. A chimera-beast, lion-bodied with scaled flanks and a hawk's crown of feathers, lay sunning on a large boulder halfway embedded in the ground, its tail snaking around idly.
Small horned creatures no larger than foxes hopped and glided between silver colored leaf bushes, their hooves leaving motes patting behind them like extinguished pollen.
The man moved among them peacefully, moving swiftly like a falling leaf.
His hair fell long and white down his back, his skin carried the same porcelain clarity, and his eyes burned dark red. He wore layered robes of a blood red color, murim tailoring cut threaded with mysterious sigils worked in darker silk.
He paused beside a dark purple antlered stag and pressed two fingers lightly into the creature's flank. A thin red sheen surrounded him, keeping cloth and flesh from ever quite touching soil or fur. The stag leaned into his hand, and the man smiled as though gaining a fond habit of randomly tending to whatever random creature he came across.
From a pouch at his waist he scattered crushed spirit-grain for the horned foxlings, watching them nose at it with curiosity. He adjusted a vine that had grown too aggressively around a medicinal sapling, murmuring nothing in particular.
He moved way too tranquil like a man taking a morning walk through a garden…then he saw the basin.
In the middle of a fertile dip where the ground dipped soft and dark with life rich soil, a boy crouched alone, drawing lines with a stick. The earth parted easily beneath the pressure with the soil almost eager to be drawn on.
The boy looked thirteen, perhaps fourteen. Messy blonde hair fell into his face unevenly, and sun bleached at the tips. Light brown eyes focused intently on his work of a "masterpiece" he was drawing into the dirt. His sackcloth clothes were stained and worn thin at the elbows, and around his neck, scars traced jagged lines, based on how they looked, the boy had to have gotten those scars when he was much younger.
His right arm, from wrist to mid forearm, bore a patch of black rot. It sat there, matte and dirty against his skin, as if ink had permeated beneath the surface and made a home there forever.
The white haired man approached without any kind of sound, stopping at the edge of the drawings drawn into the soil.
Stick figures sprawled across the soil. One figure, slightly taller, wielded an exaggerated blade. Around it lay others, some with little Xs for eyes. Rough circles marked what might have been sect insignias. Lines radiated outward in brutal and gory enthusiastic violence.
The man studied it deeply. "What does this picture display?" he asked, his voice carrying easily without any effort.
The boy didn't look up. "Me. Fighting bad guys. Beating them up and stuff."
The stick figure blade seemed almost as tall as the basin itself.
The man lowered himself to sit. The red sheen around him held subtly, leaving a hair's breadth between his robes and the soil, not a single grain clung to him.
The boy glanced sideways and finally noticed. His eyes lingered on the faint distortion around the man's body, the way this man was literally hovering only a tad bit.
The man tilted his head slightly. "What's your name, child?"
The boy scratched another line into the dirt, then answered almost absently.
"Jaeha. Jaeha Ryu. What's your name?"
"Yoo Tae."
Jaeha continued drawing, deepening the grooves of a fallen stick-figure opponent. Yoo Tae's red eyes finally looked at the blackened patch on the boy's arm.
"Mothplague…."
Jaeha nodded. "Yeah. They told me it was strange I haven't started bubbling and transforming all nasty and monstrous and stuff like the others do."
"Who's they?"
"The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan sect. We lived in their providence… they were gonna kill me. Saying since the rot was delayed, it may wait and grow to be something even the entire Floodplains can handle. Mother and father got me out of there, but…"
His stick paused mid-line, and Yoo Tae did not press the matter any further. But in his thoughts, the sect's history arranged itself with clarity.
'The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdansect…a semi-autonomous militant branch formed by a coalition of orthodox sects after early Mothplague outbreaks devoured entire cities. Publicly they stood as healers' and protectors. In practice they were executioners, guided by a Founding Principle: Mercy to the infected is cruelty to the world. Their cultivators mastered techniques meant to cauterize corruption before it spread, but beneath titles and doctrine they remained mortal men and women, bound by fear as much as righteousness. Evil as the ground they walk on. And this boy managed to get away from them.'
He watched Jaeha carve another triumphant line into the earth.
"How long have you been on your own?"
"Two weeks I think." Jaeha's tone held casual certainty, as though measuring time by sunsets rather than days. "Sometimes I forget, sometimes I try not to think about it, and then some days I try and think about it. I don't know why."
Then, Jaeha glanced up suddenly. "Do you want to play with me?"
Yoo Tae's smile returned. "Sure, young one."
They stood facing each other in the basin.
Jaeha scanned the ground, then jogged to a nearby cluster pile of fallen branches. He picked up two long sticks, squinting at them, weighing them in his hands.
"Hmmm. This one looks much cooler…." He mumbled to himself.
He kept the straighter, slightly thicker one for himself and handed the other to Yoo Tae without an apology, obviously giving him the more shitty looking stick, but Yoo Tae accepted it without a comment.
"My mother and father used to write stories about me," Jaeha said, testing a swing that kicked up a spray of soil. "Heroic stories where I was the main character, and I was super strong, and I beat everyone up who tried to face me."
"That's nice," Yoo Tae replied. "What for?"
"The rot. This Mothplague. I couldn't really play with some of the other kids because of what I had gotten. I used to just watch them have fun without me. So when we moved to the Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan sect, I hid it well, and I was able to play with some. But I hated hiding it all the time, and always constantly worrying about what would happen if they saw it. But those stories where I was the strongest in the Murim world and beyond made me feel a little better. That's why I was drawing all of that."
Yoo Tae regarded him while his red eyes remained unreadable. "Do those stories of yourself keep you balanced, boy?"
"I think so…." Jaeha tapped the stick against his shoulder. "I wanna be sad, and I wanna cry, I want to beat those sect people up after what they did, but the version of me in those stories never cried, and was always fast and reckless, faster than fate itself."
"Is fate your enemy?"
"Mhm. I've…always been unlucky. That's why I think I'm reckless. I have to be reckless so I can be fast, and outrun fate before it takes anything from me. I just want to be happy. So maybe one day I'll get powerful enough to beat those guys up…"
He shook his head briskly, as if clearing away the weight of his own words.
"Now we play! I'll be Jaeha The Unshackled Realm Titan! And you'll be a bandit or a vagabond or something trying to take my stuff!"
Yoo Tae's gaze inspected on the boy's stance, on the rot that remained strangely dormant, and on the way the basin's life-rich soil did not recoil from him due to it
'Unshackled Realm. In Murim doctrine, the title Calamity belonged to those who broke past human limitation entirely. Most lost their names in the process. Some wandered as disasters given flesh. A rare few transcended sight itself. This child spoke of the Nine Realms and calamity with casual certainty, so he has knowledge of normal human cultivation realms…'
Yoo Tae raised his stick with his posture relaxed and smile unchanged.
"Very well," he said.
Sunlight spilled across the basin. The animals watched from the edges of the basin, antlers and feathers glowing as Jaeha and Yoo Tae prepared to begin their game.
They circled each other in the basin, sticks clacking against each other, Jaeha announcing every exaggerated strike as though the trees themselves needed to understand the scale of his greatness.
"BURNING STRIKE!" He made up an attack as he swung.
"OVERPOWERED DEATH SLASH!" He made up another attack with another swing.
"MONSTROUS BLOOD BLADE!" He yelled once again, basically spouting out whatever sounded cool in his head.
He dashed forward with a shout that cracked into laughter halfway through, swinging too wide, correcting, then charging again with insistence.
Yoo Tae stepped back each time with restraint, robes rippling around him without ever brushing the soil. He allowed the boy's stick to graze his sleeve once, then twice, widening his eyes in mock alarm as though he had underestimated a true master of the Nine Realms.
Jaeha darted in again, his hair falling into his face, breath coming quickly from excitement rather than exhaustion, then he thrust the stick forward with both hands.
The wood pressed against Yoo Tae's chest.
Jaeha's grin widened. "Ha! Realm Titan ultimate strike! Die!"
Yoo Tae looked down at the stick as though it had pierced him clean through. He staggered back a step, then another, hand drifting to the center of his chest.
His eyes dimmed theatrically, and he fell onto his back with dramatic surrender, robes settling in a perfect circle that still refused to touch the ground.
Jaeha planted one foot beside him and pointed his stick downward.
"I told you I'll beat you up…"
Yoo Tae's genuine laughter slipped out before he could stop it. He sat up smoothly, brushing nonexistent dust from his sleeve.
"That was fun."
Jaeha slung the stick over his shoulder, and his chin lifted. "Yeah!"
For a moment the basin held nothing but sunlight and the small rustle of grass. Then, Yoo Tae rose and stepped closer. His hand came to rest on Jaeha's shoulder.
"You want to go back and show the Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan sect that you're not afraid of them, don't you? You want to face fate head on?"
Jaeha's grin faltered at the edges. He looked down at the soil where his stick figures lay half trampled.
"I can't be afraid of them, or anything. I have to be faster than fear too, ya know!"
"The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan allow people to live within their providence for a reason," he said. "Their territory sits atop the richest veins of life-aspected Qi in the Floodplains. When the first outbreaks began, entire river towns dissolved within days. Families begged for sanctuary, and the sect opened their borders and built quarantined enclaves, believing proximity to concentrated life Qi and disciplined oversight would delay corruption. Many were executed."
His eyes peeled toward the distant wetlands as he continued, "They tell themselves that by gathering the vulnerable within reach of their blades, they prevent greater tragedy. In their eyes, shelter and judgment are inseparable."
Jaeha's had been set, though he kept staring at the ground, and he heard Yoo Tae's tone soften.
"But you have carried Mothplague for weeks. No bubbling transformation, no loss of mind, and no violent metamorphosis. That is not common, Jaeha Ryu. That is not ordinary. The Mothplauge is a mysterious disease that many well known cultivators and warriors themselves cannot figure out what it is."
He crouched slightly to meet the boy's lowered stare.
"You are special." Yoo Tae said.
Jaeha looked up at him, a splinter of pride finally returning to his expression.
"Yeah… I know I'm special!"
Yoo Tae allowed the corner of his mouth to lift. He paused, then spoke more quietly. "Blood remembers what the world tries to erase. If fate writes its decree upon your path, you answer by writing your name in your own blood across it. To conquer fate, you face it until your blood recognizes no master."
To Jaeha, the basin felt smaller after that. Jaeha stared at his right arm, at the black rot that refused to bloom him into a corrupt monster. His left hand curled into a fist at his side, knuckles paling as though he could squeeze some damn certainty into himself.
"I'll face it," he muttered. "And I'll win. I wanna go to the providence…"
Sunlight glinted in Yoo Tae's red eyes as he watched the boy stand there with his fist closed and chin raised against a world that had already marked him for burial.
…..
The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan province laid within Haneulmok Valley, a bowl shaped expanse nested into the eastern edge of the Jade Floodplains, guarded on three sides by the steep granite ridges of the Baekryeong Spine. The mountains rose like interlocked blades, their peaks wrapped in slow moving white clouds, and their lower slopes terraced with medicinal gardens that glowed where life-aspected Qi gathered.
Haneulmok did not resemble a town to put it simply, more like a military fortress, or at least a training ground. Either way, seeing it from a distance, or someone visiting for the first time would automatically think someone was training to fight a war.
Outer walls of pale stone quarried from the Baekryeong Spine itself, encircled the valley's lowest basin. Watchtowers punctuated the perimeter, each topped with mirrored panels that hugged sunlight and reflected coded flashes to one another across the ridgelines.
Inside the walls, structures stood in squared orderly rows, built from reinforced timber and pale brick.
At its center rose the main sect compound, with overlapping roofs of muted white tile. From the highest pavilion hung the sect crest: a circular emblem of white silk depicting a moth split cleanly down the middle by a vertical blade of silver thread.
Around the blade circled a ring of words that read, in austere calligraphy:
"Mercy Ends Where Corruption Begins."
Civilians moved through the courtyards, farmers hauled baskets of medicinal roots harvested from the terraced slopes. Children trained in supervised groups under the watch of junior cultivators, practicing breathing forms designed to strengthen meridians before corruption could take root. They would easily try and tend to the ones who have not grown any rot on their body, but once they see even a small speck of it, death would meet them by the blades of the sect.
Guards patrolled in unique routes, their uniforms were dark green with white shoulder guards embossed with the moth and blade crest. Each carried curved swords whose hilts were wrapped in white cloth carved with warding characters.
Their eyes were direct and assessing, accustomed to scanning for tremors in flesh and weariness in eyes that might signal infection. Life here was active but heavily structured, and seemed more like a base than a normal providence.
The front gates stood open, iron bound and reinforced with crossbars thicker than a man's thigh. Two senior guards flanked the entrance with their hands resting on sword hilts.
And Yoo Tae walked through them as though passing into a marketplace, and Jaeha walked beside him. His heart thudded so loudly he was certain the guards could hear it through his ribs.
'He actually brought us here…! They'll notice me! I don't even have a weapon…and I haven't learned to cultivate and get my power and stuff yet! Stop…don't be scared, don't be nervous, outrun it!'
His fingers twitched at his sides, the black rot on his arm felt suddenly conspicuous, like ink spilled across parchment.
A woman carrying medicinal herbs slowed mid-step.
"Jaeha Ryu….?"
A man unloading grain sacks turned fully.
"What's he doing back here?"
"He's still himself? It's been weeks since he ran out of here for having that plague! How has he not turned?!" Someone else shouted.
Voices rippled out like an explosion, their voices of concern getting louder and more annoying to Jaeha.
"It's Jaeha!"
"He's back!"
"He's come to curse us all!"
Stuttered and fearful movement from the hissing crowd broke into chaos, civilians backed away. Some just ran away, sandals slapping against the ground.
Guards converged on Jaeha and Yoo Tae with disciplined speed, blades drawn in an in sync move that sang against scabbards.
"Halt!"
"The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan sect does not harbor the infected!"
One guard stepped forward, eyes cutting toward Yoo Tae.
"State your business! Are you with this kid?! He's infected with the Mothplague!"
Yoo Tae's eyes moved lazily over the ring of steel pointed toward him, and he examined the nearest 'blade.
'Forged from floodplain iron, folded seven times. Edge treated with life aspected Qi infusion, meant to cauterize corrupted flesh on contact. The Qi signature hummed through the metal channels, circulating from hilt to tip in a closed loop that prevented backlash into the wielder's meridians. A respectable weapon.'
He inhaled faintly, tasting the Qi density in the air, and measuring the synchronization between guards, then he smiled.
"Steel that drinks life Qi must remember," he began softly, "blood is older than breath."
His red eyes brightened, a deeper glow spreading through the irises like embers coaxed by the wind.
"A blade may claim to sever corruption, yet blood carries memory through every cut. The river of lineage does not dry because men fear its flood. When blood stands unashamed before judgment, even fate must reconsider its verdict."
As he spoke, he reached for the ties at his collar. He untied them with unhurried fingers, and it slid from his shoulders, then gasps rippled through the guards.
His frame was lean and defined, muscle structured with the refinement of long cultivation rather than brute bulk; But the most shocking of it all was the tattoos that held them.
Across his chest and back coiled a red seven headed serpent, each head crowned with backward curving horns. The bodies of the snakes intertwined, forming a living sigil that wrapped around Yoo Tae's ribs and spine. Through the center of the serpent's mass were small dagger motifs, drawn as though piercing the snake creature from every angle.
Yoo Tae continued speaking with a steady voice.
"Blood that refuses to kneel becomes scripture. And scripture written in blood does not fade."
Without looking, he tossed his discarded top backward with one hand, and it landed squarely over Jaeha.
The fabric struck like a falling stone, Jaeha dropped to his knees instantly, breath knocked from him.
"H-Hey! I can't move! This damn thing is heavy! Yoo Tae!"
He clawed at the robe, but it felt as though a mountain pressed down on his shoulders. The cloth itself did not appear heavy at all, it was just some simple clothing, right? Yet it pinned him in place, his arms trembling beneath its mountain-like weight.
The guards stared at the tattoos on Yoo Tae:
"Those markings…."
"The Blood Sect…?"
"He's an assassin!"
"He can't be! They wouldn't just walk out in the open like this, fully revealing themselves!"
"Then he's an imposter. Knowing how Jaeha is, he probably ran off to find someone as crazy as him, trying to scare us after what happened to his parents!"
Under the crushing robe, Jaeha's face burned. "I'll beat all of you up! I'm special!" His voice cracked but did not waver at all under the pressure of the robe and his own rising anger.
The ground seemed to vibrate, well it did vibrate, and a booming voice rolled across the courtyard.
"That is enough."
The ring of guards parted in disciplined unison, and from the inner compound strode a broad shouldered man whose presence fought against the air itself.
Jongim, Sect Leader of Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan.
He stood taller than most by a full head, musculature wide and defined beneath sleeveless white and emerald robes reinforced with chest plating embossed with the moth and blade crest. His skin carried a bronzed tone from years training beneath the open sky, his black hair was bound high into a warrior's knot, secured by a jade clasp shaped like split wings. His eyes were dark, almost black in a way.
And In each hand he carried a spear; Twin weapons of equal length, shafts lacquered dark forest green, tips forged in elongated leaf shaped blades. Red ribbons were tied just beneath the spearheads, fluttering even in the still air. Qi streamed visibly along the metal, smoking in water-like currents that expanded and contracted with his breathing.
He was a Gate Temper Realm Cultivator; at this realm, the internal Gates open, hidden limiters on Qi output, and power becomes overtly superhuman.
And with each step, the ground answered in response with a strong thud. This man was the real deal.
He stopped several paces from Yoo Tae, his stare sweeping once over the serpent tattoos.
"How dare a member of a forsaken sect tread upon the soul of Cheonsaeng?"
The courtyard had fallen silent, the tension increasing between the spear and Yoo Tae's blood marked skin.
Jongim kept walking like the courtyard had been paved for the sole purpose of carrying his muscular weight. Dust rose around his steps and clung to the hem of his robes while refusing to settle the hell down.
The twin spears in his hands angled out with the casual confidence of someone who had already decided how this would end. The silk streamers tied beneath the blades lashed and twisted in the wind, catching on one another, tangling, then tearing free again.
"The Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan," he began, his voice rolling over the stone balustrades and tiled roofs, "came into being when river-cities drowned in silk and bones. When the first Mothplague nests split open and people clung to their sect elders, pleading for mercy instead of quarantine. We moved while others argued."
He turned one spear in his grip, more a test of balance than trying to be flashy in front of everyone. The metal gave a dry whisper at the exact same time as the movement.
"We take the vulnerable into our valley where corruption can be watched instead of ignored. We gather the infected so contagion does not wander nameless through markets and homes, and we purge them. And when a stain shows itself in the slightest, we remove it. Babies who became infected, the elderly, even pets…we do as much as we can, but if we cannot fix them, we take them out. We have been studying this plague for a while, searching for more and more ways and creating more and more concoctions to battle this plague, but failure has been more victorious on our side."
Yoo Tae deduced easily that this group does seem heartfelt to try and save those infected, but if something doesn't go in their favor, if one of their bullshit creations of herbs and whatnot doesn't work, they instantly kill the one they were trying to help, no matter the age. Automatically believing if they themselves can't heal them, nobody can.
Jongim's eyes slid toward the small struggling shape trapped beneath heavy fabric, staring down at Jaeha.
"The Mothplague leaves marks," he continued. "So do assassins."
His attention traveled over Yoo Tae's bare chest, lingering on the seven-headed serpent tattoo across muscle and collarbone.
"The Blood Sect works more quietly. Magistrates found collapsed over their desks, clan heirs who fail to return from festivals, sect leaders discovered kneeling in prayer halls, their heads placed several steps away; You gnaw at the spine of this continent and call it justice."
Yoo Tae also noticed it seemed like Jongim had been preparing this speech for a long time just in case he ever came across a blood sect assassin. Like he was trying to persuade himself that he and the assassins were nothing alike, trying to convince himself that what he's doing is right.
One spear lifted, its tip aligned with Yoo Tae's throat; The distance between them felt smaller than it was.
"A Blood Sect assassin might cleave his or her way through half my warriors if we were careless. I'll grant you that much. But you would not leave this courtyard alive. You come with an infected boy, a boy who we dare not even try to help, since he's an anomaly upon the land with his delayed transformation. He must die."
His mouth slightly formed into a menacing grin. "You're far from wherever you crawled out of. You die here."
Beneath the robe, Jaeha thrashed, fabric bunching around his face. His heel struck stone….
Fucking useless….
He sucked in air that tasted of dust and old dye.
"Let me out! I can take them!" He thrashed.
His fingers clawed at seams, nails catching on stitching that refused to split; The robe devoured his voice and turned it small.
Yoo Tae watched Jongim the way one watches a teacher repeat a lesson that never changes.
"A stain fears the cloth it soils," he said almost gently. "The wicked fear mirrors more than blades. When blood touches silk, it reveals what was already there."
The serpent tattoos across his torso brightened, each head deepening in color. The air above him bent in like glass pressed too hard, then it parted away.
He then rose up high, the ground simply losing its claim on him. His white hair flowed upward, strands lifting toward a sky that had begun to dim at the edges all of a sudden, and his eyes darkened until they resembled apertures.
And in his right hand, a shape of a blade gathered and manifested. It was mist first, then a narrowing spine of metal formed within it, blood red liquid threading along its length before hardening and sharpening into an edge.
The blade extended, then curved, settling into the familiar silhouette of a Hwando. Fissures of living blood coursed through channels along its bladed surface, circulating like the weapon possessed its own pulse.
Symbols crept across the steel like small organisms seeking purchase before fixing in place, and Jongim's teeth pressed together. A raging vein near his temple twitched and became visible.
"Form ranks!" He roared.
Blades pointed upward, the cultivators at the rear drew breath in unison, cycling Qi through memorized pathways, shoulders lifting and lowering together. Someone's sandal scraped half a step out of alignment and corrected itself due to his own nervousness.
Out of all days, they had to face a blood sect assassin?
Jongim stepped forward, spears crossing before his chest.
"Oath of Cheonsaeng!"
"We cleanse what festers!" the warriors roared back.
"We guard what remains!"
"We sever what cannot be saved!"
Qi surged through Jongim's limbs as he murmured his technique under his breath.
"Gate Temper Art. Twin Spear Doctrine of Merciless Harvest…."
Hidden Gates within him yawned wider, his frame swelled, his veins rising beneath his skin. The spearheads trembled while trailing white light,.
Above them, Yoo Tae lifted the blade.
"I swear," he said, and his voice traveled not only through air but through the souls of everyone listening to him, "that blood will answer blood. That those who hide behind righteousness will see themselves written across the sky. That the wicked will drown in what they have passed down."
The air around him grew dense, difficult.
"And yes, we assassins are wicked. When all evil is cut away, we will cut ourselves as well."
The sky dimmed, and high above, a massive circular mass gathered, a moon stained deep red, hanging directly over him. From his back burst streams of blood that twisted into red large snakes with dragon heads, long bodies twisting through the air, horned skulls yawning open as they circled him.
Behind him, immense heart-like organs manifested, suspended and beating in a slow rhythm that shook roof tiles loose and sent them clattering to the courtyard.
A serrated halo assembled above his head, a crown formed from hardened blood.
Jongim swallowed, the sound felt too loud in his own ears.
'Stand your ground….Cheonsaeng does not kneel!'
"Stand your ground!" he shouted because silence would have been worse.
"Cheonsaeng does not kneel!" the warriors echoed, some voices cracking.
Under the robe, Jaeha noticed the world outside had gone red, he could see it through the weave of the cloth on top of him.
Yoo Tae then raised his blade, and said, "We are all evil under the sun.."
Around him, swords began to appear.
Dozens….
…Then hundreds..
Each forged from blood fused with steel, clear as day yet solid. Within their blades, distorted human shapes writhed, faces pressed against the inner surface as though the metal were glass.
Then, the blades descended insanely fast. And for ten exact seconds, the sky had begun to plunder everything under Yoo Tae.
The first wave punched through blades as if they were thin paper. A captain drove his saber into the stone, invoking a technique called Bastion Wall, A dome of condensed life Qi bloomed out while shimmering green.
Three blades struck it at once, piercing through and nailing him to the courtyard before bursting apart, shards tearing into those behind him, blood and body parts spraying all over the area.
Another cultivator launched a technique called Lotus Severance, rotating crescents of energy whirling outward to deflect the rain of blades. The blood swords passed through the crescents as though they were water, and his torso separated from his hips a heartbeat later, his upper half sliding away while the lower remained standing for an awkward instant.
Jongim cast one spear upward in: [Heaven-Piercing Reap], The weapon elongated with Qi amplification, slicing a descending blade in two, a shred of hope stuttering Jongim's heart after seeing it; Both halves of the blade continued downward regardless, gouging trenches through assembled ranks and sending dismembered bodies tumbling across stone.
Watchtowers split, the central pavilion roof collapsed with beams cracking and tiles cascading. Civilians fleeing for cover vanished beneath falling timber or were pinned outright, their shadows slaughtered by the red glare overhead.
Blood gathered along drainage channels meant for rainwater, flowing toward the lower basin in uncomfortable streams.
And all of this took ten seconds exactly, then nothing but settling debris and the last blade embedding itself into the courtyard before dissolving into a steaming bloody residue.
The providence lay gutted, and Jongim remained standing amid broken stone and torn banners, both spears shattered halfway along their shafts, armor split across his chest.
His breathing came in roughly, one knee dipped and he straightened again because there was no one left to see him fall.
Yoo Tae descended until he hovered inches above the ground before him; his right hand formed a complex sign, thumb pressed to ring finger, index and middle extended, the others folded inside his palm; The gesture stopped a hair's breadth from Jongim's forehead.
Power streamed from him in visible red mist, his hair still floated upward, and the halo turned slowly overhead.
Jongim's voice finally scraped out something to say in his last moments, these moments that he knew would be his last time speaking.
"So in the end… you are what you say you are. You just killed…innocent families…innocent children…."
Yoo Tae regarded him with an expression that might have been kind if not for the stillness in his eyes, but he still kept that creepy smile on his face.
"No man is innocent."
Jongim's head burst apart in a violent burst, skull and brains scattered across the courtyard. His torso twisted as though seized by unseen hands, limbs tearing free and striking stone in separate directions.
The halo dimmed above Yoo Tae, finally melting into a blood puddle, and the dragons dissolved into bloodied vapor. Then the red moon took a hint and thinned put to suddenly vanish.
And only ruin remained, and still beneath the suffocating robe, Jaeha was still trying to escape.
"What's going on out there?! Yoo Tae!"
Jaeha's voice came muffled beneath the robe, his words eaten by fabric that still pressed down on his shoulders like a collapsed gate.
He twisted, knees scratching against stone. "I heard screaming… and explosions…! What really was that?! Did they kill Yoo Tae…? Did he kill them?"
His breath came ragged as it was catching in his throat. The darkness under the robe felt closer than it had a moment ago—he could hear something dripping nearby, a steady sound that refused to stop.
'Don't be scared….Don't be nervous….Outrun it…. Outrun it!' He thought to himself.
The weight lifted all at once, and light finally flooded in.
The robe peeled away and Jaeha pitched forward, palms slamming against bloody ground. He then pushed himself up, blinking hard.
The courtyard no longer resembled the place he had entered. Walls had split open, beams scattered across the ground. The sect crest lay torn from its hanging point, the silk soaked and crumpled. Bodies were everywhere. Some still, and some in pieces he refused to look at for more than half a second.
Yoo Tae stood a short distance away, still calm and sliding his robe back over his shoulders and tying it at the collar like he didn't just massacre over a hundred people, and the serpent tattoos disappeared beneath red fabric as if they had never been there.
Jaeha's heart battered against his ribs so hard it felt like it might punch its own way out. His hands trembled anyway, he clenched them, and they trembled harder.
He brought his knuckles to his mouth and bit down until skin split. The sting helped a little, a thin line of blood traced over his fingers and dripped onto broken stone.
He gulped hard and turned.
"You… killed everyone…?"
Yoo Tae did not look away from him.
"Yes."
There was no hesitation in his voice, Jaeha found that unsettling in the worst way possible. He glanced across the wreckage as though reviewing a completed task.
Yoo Tae said, "Cheonsaeng Silgwangdan built their providence on fear. Jongim's father helped found the militant branch after the first outbreaks, and Jongim inherited it and refined it. He believed containment justified preemptive execution, so records were altered, and diagnoses accelerated. Those who might have been healed by independent wandering physicians were declared unstable and eliminated before external intervention could complicate authority. They deserved their death. And anyone helping or aiding them did as well."
He adjusted the cuff at his wrist.
"There was a healer once. She demonstrated a method to slow progression in early-stage carriers by altering meridian flow and isolating corrupted Qi. Jongim dismissed her work as reckless optimism. Three families she petitioned for were executed within the week, and she vanished shortly after."
His look settled back on Jaeha.
"Jongim believed death was cleaner than risk. He enforced that belief with discipline and steel. The sect followed, and they were efficient and certain they were in the right."
The wind moved through the shattered courtyard, lifting ash, loose paper, and the hair of the dead on the ground.
"The assassins of the Blood Sect purge what festers in shadow. Corrupt officials, war profiteers, sect leaders who hide atrocities behind doctrine, even emperors who are wicked must be purged. That is our way."
Jaeha's jaw trembled. "You killed… families! I was gonna beat the people up who did what they did to my parents…and you took that away from me!" His voice rose, cracking in the middle.
Yoo Tae tilted his head slightly. "How were you going to do it? Pretending to be your story self? Extremely talented cultivators would've ripped you apart before you crossed the outer gate. If I hadn't been with you…you would've been smeared across their walls….The words landed harder than the falling swords had."
Jaeha felt it again, that cold sensation crawling under his ribs.
'No…..No….'
He bit into his hand again but deeper this time, his breath shaking through his teeth due to the pain. Blood smeared across his knuckles, and he wiped it against his sackcloth without thinking and stepped back, then forward, fists rising into a crude guard the way he had seen trainees do beyond the walls weeks ago. He was ready to fight…
Wind moved through his hair, lifting strands from his face.
"No one else deserved to die," he said, voice unsteady but loud. "Some kids I knew hung out with me sometimes. You're the type of bad guy from my stories that I took down, the ones I killed, and stood no chance against me." His fists tightened, still raised in an amateur fighting stance.
"I'll… I'll beat you up!"
Yoo Tae watched him without blinking. He observed the minute tremor in Jaeha's left shoulder, the way his right foot edged backward half an inch despite his attempt to stand firm. The boy's pupils were wide and his breathing came too fast, yet he didn't run at all.
'He is trying to crush his own fear…trying to bury it before it buries him.'
There was anger there, yes, but it braided itself with something else. The effort to remain upright in front of a man who had just reduced a fortified sect to rubble. The stubborn insistence that the world still made sense if he punched or fought hard enough.
Yoo Tae noticed the black patch on his arm had darkened slightly. Was it responding to Jaeha's rage…?
'Interesting…'
He opened his mouth to speak, but Jaeha was already moving. He blasted forward with some reckless commitment, springing from broken stone into the air, fist drawn back in a clumsy throw aimed at Yoo Tae's face.
'He's…unnaturally quick on his feet… unexpected… is it because of the plague on his arm…?' Yoo Tae did not step aside, he just raised two fingers and tapped Jaeha lightly on the forehead.
The contact was gentle and tranquil like Yoo Tae's face, and Jaeha's body stiffened in mid-air. His nose began to bleed instantly, red trailing down over his lips, and his eyes rolled back as consciousness slipped away.
Yoo Tae caught him before he hit the ground, one arm sliding beneath his shoulders, and the courtyard remained silent except for the whisper of wind through ruined rubble.
He adjusted the boy in his arms, studying his face, the bite marks on his hand, and that stubborn line of his mouth even in unconsciousness.
"You'll do perfect… Jaeha."
He turned away from the wreckage, carrying him through the broken gates.
Yoo Tae had barely crossed the splintered remains of the gates when the boy in his arms had twitched, which made Yoo Tae surprised after all his years alive. Every tendon in Jaeha's small frame drew taut at once, like a mangy rope pulled too far.
And Jaeha's eyes flew wide open.
There was no color left in them, only a flat and depthless white, like paper held too close to flame and stripped of its ink. It made his face look emptied out, like something had reached in and wiped him clean.
Yoo Tae felt the change in weight before he processed the movement. Jaeha's torso twisted fast, legs winding around Yoo Tae's forearm with startling control for a child who had been limp seconds earlier.
The grip was intentional, and Jaeha's heel swept toward Yoo Tae's throat in a clean spinning strike that carried no hesitation at all.
Yoo Tae drew in a quiet breath, and the heel stopped.
Jaeha's leg attack met resistance that could not be seen but only sensed. The air between them bended like heat over stone, and Jaeha pressed forward, small muscles trembling and trying to land the attack, teeth clenched hard enough to pale his lips, but the barrier did not give in at all, a simple reminder of the gap between Yoo Tae and Jaeha..
Then the white in his eyes receded, and his normal brown eyes rolled back, and the tension left him all at once. He slumped back to a few slumber like dead weight, and Yoo Tae caught him before his head could loll backward. His palm slid beneath the boy's spine, fingers splayed and adjusting without thinking.
Yoo Tae was just staring, this was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him.
"After 300 years…No one has ever broken the Sanguine Mandate technique," he murmured, almost to the trees themselves. "Not even seasoned cultivators….and certainly not a child who has never drawn a proper breath of Qi.."
He studied the boy's face more closely. The brow was pinched, even in unconsciousness. The mouth pressed into a stubborn expression as if he were arguing with someone in his dreams.
Yoo Tae thought, 'Conviction alone does not fracture a technique of that level. It simply does not…..Unless he could be…no, he can't be. He's just a mere child. I'm getting too ambitious out of my own amusement.'
Yoo Tae exhaled slowly through his nose, annoyed at his own thoughts racing ahead of reason. He adjusted his grasp, careful of the boy's shoulder joint, and walked past the dead grounds without looking back.
….
….
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