Chapter 33: The Grim Judge and His Nefarious Schemes
The next day, Justinian woke with a weight on his chest and a resolve cold and hard as the rocks of Greedius's mountain.
“If this place accepts only violence, then my justice… needs to be violent too!”
The path he cultivated centered on pursuing his unique sense of justice. He had no intention of abandoning it or attempting to ignore the reality around him. This however didn't mean he couldn't change his means to align with his end goal.
“If the only thing devils respect is strength, then I… will show them strength.”
He still remembered that his revenge required attaining a particular power at the level of Foundation Stabilization. This place would be just another milestone on the road he would conquer.
With that thought, he left the grotto and headed toward the spot from which, for the past few days, the loudest sounds of fighting and suffering had echoed.
“Community Heart” — proclaimed the ironic inscription on a wooden sign in front of a field of sandy arenas.
The air there trembled with screams, the metallic scrape of steel, and the dull thud of fists on flesh. Around the makeshift fighting pits swarmed crowds of devils, placing bets, jeering at the losers, and cheering for the winners.
“Kill that loser!”
“Hahaha, that knocked-out idiot wet his pants!”
“H-hey, there’s no need to rip his limbs off!”
There was no finesse here, only brutal, unrestrained struggle for dominance. This was the mountain’s pulse—chaotic, feral, and merciless. The victor took all: respect, resources, and sometimes even the loser’s life. The loser was nothing.
“Looks exactly as one would imagine…” the young man thought, still unnoticed by devils absorbed in themselves.
He watched the local chaos in silence for a while. He saw the strong bully the weak, gangs extort protection money, and arrogance mistaken for power. Each scene reinforced his resolve.
“Well then, time to begin…” he sighed softly, drew in a breath, and in a bass voice amplified by his cultivation, shouted loudly.
“Which one of you is the strongest?!”
His voice rolled across the square, making the devils—until then focused solely on themselves—suddenly stop what they were doing.
“Who’s this chump?!”
“Hahaha, who let this little human in?!”
“Wait, don’t I know him from somewhere?”
It didn’t take long for baleful gazes to fix on him and for several figures to move his way. They were just about to answer his challenge when the ground began to shake and heavy footsteps resounded.
“That’s…”
“A show’s coming!”
Slowly, a gigantic, two-and-a-half-meter-tall devil stepped out before Justinian, his mere presence instilling fear in bystanders! He gave the human a once-over. He saw a scrawny novice. A target so easy it was pitiful.
“Get lost, human trash, before I break something.”
Justinian looked at him without emotion.
“Whoever loses will be bound to the victor’s will.” - the young man stated calmly.
A murmur of disbelief rippled across the square. The onlookers shook their heads at the newcomer’s idiocy, and the giant, visibly irritated, furrowed his brow. He didn’t refuse, though.
Instead, he immediately moved to attack!
Justinian didn’t budge. As the devil charged, he did something no one expected. He didn’t dodge, didn’t block. He simply… looked him in the eyes, and something happened that took everyone’s breath away!
“H-h-help me! M-my t-throat!”
The massive devil, who moments before had been charging with unimaginable force… toppled onto his belly and began growling utter nonsense, begging for help!
“H-hel—” he tried to shout, when suddenly he realized there was no gaping wound at his throat at all. Confused, he began to boil with rage when… his head was pinned to the ground by the heavy foot of the human he was fighting!
“Surrender, or in a moment I really will slit it,” Justinian hissed darkly, emanating the aura of Five-Marks Qi!
“Wha…”
“Who the hell is this human?!”
“Did you see what he did to him?!”
Of course, the giant had no choice but to submit—much to his shame…
Silence fell over the arena. The crowd that had just been cheering now stared at Justinian with a mixture of shock and uncertainty. The young man glanced at the defeated devil and pronounced his demand.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“From now on, you are forbidden to attack anyone with weaker cultivation.” He then walked to the very center of the square without looking back.
Everyone watched his steps in absolute silence and shock! It didn’t take long for that silence to turn into a hurricane of sensational voices and whispers that seemed to shake the whole mountain!
What’s more… before long, someone who had recently made a pilgrimage to Eusebius's mountain recognized the man.
“That’s the Grim Judge! The greatest monster of this year’s pilgrimage! A horrid manipulator more demonic than the devils themselves!”
As soon as the local fiends heard that he carried a title and of his dark—though undeserved—reputation, Greedius's mountain, for the first time in recorded history… began to fear a human cultivator!
That day Justinian fought several more times. Each time he picked the biggest and most menacing challengers. Each time his victory was swift and decisive.
News spread like lightning. The Grim Judge from Eusebius's mountain, the demonic man with a cruel heart, had begun making trouble on Greedius's mountain!
His dreadful fame took on a new, even more fearsome dimension. The devils whispered of his tyrannical strength and resistance to pain. They said his body was hard as steel and his blows broke bones. He quickly ceased to be a target and became a threat.
He had everyone’s attention. Exactly as he wanted.
That evening, at the edge of the guest cave’s entrance, Belisara could not get over the state Justinian was in. The young man… wasn’t injured at all!
“You look like you came back from vacation, not a murderous arena,” she whistled lightly, a hint of envy in her tone.
The young man only shook his head.
“It’s nothing. I doubt truly strong devils waste their time in the arena,” he said grimly, then fell into thought. “At least not until someone provokes them.”
The sun was slowly sinking, painting the sky blood-red. It promised to be another cold night.
Belisara was pouring out the water in the bowl she had brought for his bandages when Justinian sighed inwardly and made a certain decision.
“Have you ever been in the human realm?”
The demoness, who had been in a rather good mood, froze at those words. After a moment she lowered her gaze, as if out of guilt, and shifted nervously. She knew this moment would come sooner or later.
“I spent quite a lot of time in the Kingdom of Peace,” she said quietly. “Much more than I would have liked…”
As soon as those words left her lips, Justinian felt as if time stopped. He had suspected that Belisara had something to do with the human world, but his beloved kingdom specifically? He felt chills run down his spine.
“Did you…” he began, but the demoness, eyes fixed on the floor, continued.
“I didn’t end up there of my own will. I was summoned as a little imp, the kind humans sometimes call for mischief.”
Her voice strengthened, but it was a strength laced with bitterness.
“A bishop from the Church of Justice summoned me. Ambitious and devout. He spoke of purification, of fighting evil.”
She clenched her hands into fists so tightly her knuckles turned white.
“Shame he didn’t add that I was the evil he wanted to purify. He used some holy magic, a relic that bound me to that place. I couldn’t return, and for long months he tortured me.”
Justinian listened, cold anger beginning to course through his veins. The image of the Kingdom of Peace, already cracked in his mind, now began to crumble to dust.
“He kept me in the chapel’s underground. Every day he came and invented new torments,” she spat the words like poison. “He drowned me in water that burned my skin. He used strange chants that drove me mad.”
She paused, taking a deep breath.
“Each day I was closer to breaking. Death seemed better than that pain.” Here she looked Justinian in the eyes. “One day he announced he wouldn’t be able to visit for a week and hoped devils could last that long without food.”
The young man paled at those words.
“How could anyone treat a child like that?”
“The following days were agony, but during that time the magic that held me weakened greatly. It was enough for me to break free.”
When she finished, Belisara hid her face in her hands.
They sat in silence as the last rays of the sun disappeared beyond the horizon.
In one of the caves on Greedius's mountain, a shapeshifter sat on the floor. He was drawing something in the sand when a messenger arrived with the day’s news.
“Hmm? He really issued a challenge like that?” the amused devil asked, to which the messenger could only nod.
The adept pondered for a moment, then waved his hand.
“I’ve seen this human in action before. His foundation is useless to me,” he said without hesitation.
Yet a thought flickered in his eyes that moments like this shouldn’t be wasted. Slowly standing, he brushed the sand from his hands and smiled at the young devil.
“We can use this situation another way. You’ll deliver my message to Sagitarius.”
Soon he penned a few lines on a sheet and handed it to the messenger. After a polite farewell to his employer, the messenger set off at once for the designated place.
The shapeshifter watched him disappear into the mountain’s darkness, going farther and farther from the cave.
His mind spun with the implications of the opportunity that had just arisen.
“It’s time to settle the story that formed between us, Belisara,” he thought, suppressing the excitement of drawing closer to his long-awaited goal.
He looked up at the stars, exceptionally beautiful that night, and smiled to himself.
“I wonder what power I’ll gain from someone who has received Greedius’s gift.”
Shaking his head, he went back into his cave. From the excitement, his hands—covered with leather gloves—were itching more and more.
The next day, on the devils’ battlefield, Justinian once again sat cross-legged in the center. He tried not to show it, but the earlier conversation with Belisara had truly shaken him.
“I must become stronger…” he repeated inwardly. “Only then can I protect my loved ones…”
He hadn’t expected that someone from the Kingdom of Peace could be as evil as the bishop she had described, but he had been in hell too long to dismiss such stories as untrue. When Ignatius had spoken of the Ever-Beautiful Queen, he had demolished the first wall in Justinian’s heart. Yesterday, the demoness’s tale of a vile scoundrel leveled a second.
“I think I even know which bishop she means…” the young man thought of one of the former clerics overseeing the Church of Justice in the Kingdom of Peace.
He couldn’t continue that line of thought, because a tremendous commotion rose nearby. The crowds, already buzzing with excitement, grew feverish.
“That’s…”
“What’s he doing here?!”
“He must’ve come to defend our demonic honor!”
Justinian frowned, unable to see through the masses.
The situation clarified shortly, when the ranks of devils parted and someone he had already met stepped forward to face him.
“I hear you’re accepting challenges, human,” the newcomer said, looking him straight in the eyes as he slowly released his energy.
“And do you want to issue one to me?” the young man replied calmly.
The devil grinned, and suddenly a powerful, baleful energy burst from him at the level of five marks of qi-gathering!
It was none other than Sagitarius—one of the most dreadful adepts of Greedius's mountain, known for brutal hunts on other adepts.
