[POV: Zhong Fu]

  This had been the most shameful moment of my life.

  I was curled into myself like a wounded animal, a cauldron jammed over my head, while two upstarts beat me senseless.

  Rage flooded my veins, hot and corrosive, yet I could do nothing to vent it properly. Each time I attempted to rise, another blow descended. Each time I gathered qi, another disruption followed. The humiliation was far worse than the pain.

  I clawed at the rim of the cauldron again, fingers digging into its edge, but powerful qi bound it firmly in place. The silk-like energy woven into it was peculiar and irritatingly persistent.

  Under normal circumstances, this would have been manageable.

  Even with my eyes closed, my spiritual senses were more than sufficient to dominate cultivators of their level. Although this domain suppressed my realm, my foundation was still profound. I could defend myself without sight. I could calculate trajectories by air displacement alone.

  Yet the cauldron was forged from strange materials that dulled and distorted my perception. It interfered with my senses like static clouding a signal.

  Lang Bo. Xin Chin.

  Where were those two fools?

  Surely they had noticed the commotion by now. The shockwaves alone should have alerted half the city. Was I truly to rely on juniors to extricate me from this disgrace?

  The thought curdled my pride.

  To be cornered like this… I had lost face before the cult. Even if I survived, whispers would spread.

  I maintained a dense gravity field around my body as the pair assaulted me so one-sidedly. It was the only thing preventing my bones from shattering outright. If I attempted a large-scale spell, the fox-eared lass would drop another monstrous chunk of frost from above. If I tried to flee, the lad would tug at his silk-like qi and drag me back as though I were hooked prey.

  They had learned my patterns quickly.

  There was only one viable option.

  I drove one hand into the fractured ground and activated Ninefold Gravity Press upon myself in a controlled inversion. The crushing force pushed downward instead of outward, drilling me into the earth like a descending meteor.

  The soil split apart under the immense pressure as I burrowed deep enough to gain temporary cover.

  My body had been tempered for decades beneath my own gravity arts. It could endure my techniques without significant damage. Ordinary weapons barely left marks upon me.

  However, I could not say the same for my enemies’ weapons.

  Their tools were abnormal.

  Deep underground, I attempted to extend my spiritual senses once more, but the cauldron’s interference persisted, muting and scattering my perception. It was like trying to see through fog with one’s eyes sealed.

  The earth above trembled as shockwaves penetrated downward.

  I crawled through packed soil and shattered stone, dodging bursts of qi that tore through the ground like subterranean lightning. It was an undignified motion, and I was keenly aware of it.

  If I could not rely on my spiritual senses, then I would adapt.

  Everyone possessed gravity.

  Every living being exerted its own minute pull upon the world.

  Yes… it should be possible.

  Through my cultivation technique, I shifted my focus away from sight and spiritual projection and instead attuned myself to the subtle distortions in gravitational flow around me.

  There.

  A fluctuation.

  “I found you.”

  My hand shot upward through the soil and closed around an ankle. I tightened my grip and yanked.

  “Shit—”

  It was the man.

  I surged from the ground, qi flooding into my arm.

  “Tell me your name, warrior!” I demanded, more out of instinct than courtesy.

  I struck forward with a concentrated technique.

  “Heavy Earthly Palm!”

  The blow should have crushed his ribs into powder.

  Instead, he parried.

  The impact redirected, deflected with alarming precision. I had suspected as much. This lad was no ordinary cultivator. Like Meng Rong, he likely possessed a special background or inherited advantage.

  “My name is Yakuza Man,” he declared boldly. “Man of Chivalry!”

  The absurdity of it grated against my ears.

  I felt the shift in his stance, a downward swing forming beneath my center of mass, intending to launch me skyward again as they had before. I blocked the rising force and simultaneously reversed gravity around my body, using the redirected momentum to propel myself upward.

  Before I could fully stabilize, an intrusive resonance assaulted me.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  The sound reverberated violently inside the cauldron, amplified and distorted. It was not physical impact but illusion, an auditory assault that destabilized concentration. The fox lass had resumed her interference.

  The cauldron magnified the effect to intolerable levels.

  I had anticipated this possibility.

  Without hesitation, I inverted gravity within my own skull and ruptured my eardrums. Pain flared briefly, then dulled into distant pressure. Silence replaced the tormenting clangs.

  “What is this?” I muttered as a sudden chill encased my body.

  The air around me thickened. Movement became sluggish, as though the sky itself had frozen into an invisible barrier.

  No.

  Meng Rong.

  She had reclaimed control over the barrier surrounding Xincheng.

  I could feel its structure now, an enormous formation interwoven with frost and illusion, shifting from passive defense into active suppression.

  What was Xin Chin doing?

  I had left her in charge of maintaining the barrier and preparing it as a killing array.

  Yet now, the very formation was turning against me.

  “I’m falling, no…”

  I struck the ground with a resounding thump.

  The impact shattered what little integrity my body still possessed. I felt bones give way throughout my frame, ribs collapsing inward and limbs twisting at unnatural angles. Blood surged up my throat and spilled from my mouth, smearing across my chin and the inside of the cauldron that still encased my head.

  For a moment, I could not distinguish between pain and humiliation.

  I forced my hands against the earth and attempted to rise. My arms trembled violently, and the most I could manage was to slump into a half-squat upon my heels before collapsing again. My strength had abandoned me.

  Ah.

  Where had it all gone wrong?

  We had prepared meticulously. We had infiltrated quietly, secured the barrier, calculated the variables. It should have been manageable. The lad from the Phantasm Star Sect had nearly accomplished the objective himself before events turned.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  And yet, here I lay, reduced to this state.

  At last, the cauldron slipped from my head and rolled aside of its own accord, its enchantment having finally exhausted itself. Cool air struck my bloodied face.

  Through blurred vision, I fixed my gaze upon the two figures who had reduced me to this condition. Their silhouettes wavered before my eyes. They were speaking to one another, but I heard nothing.

  My life force flickered faintly within me, a dying ember.

  I was going to die.

  The thought did not arrive with serenity. It arrived with disbelief.

  This could not be my end. I had been destined for greater ascension, for a higher seat within the Celestial Blood Cult. My devotion had not been shallow. My cultivation had not been meager.

  “Lang Bo… Yes… I must get to him… He can heal me…”

  The words slipped from my lips before I realized I had spoken them aloud.

  Meng Rong stood over me. I could not hear her laughter, but I saw it in the widening of her mouth and the cruel amusement in her eyes. She reached into her storage artifact and produced a headless corpse clad in the robes of my cult.

  Even in my fading state, I recognized the garment.

  Lang Bo.

  The silver fox that lingered at her side drifted toward me, its luminous form brushing against my face. A tingling sensation spread through my skull. My ears itched violently, and sound returned in a rush.

  “…first time I am hearing of an organization the likes of yours,” Meng Rong was saying coolly. “What is the Celestial Blood Cult? Where do you operate? I pride myself on knowledge of demonic matters, yet you are unfamiliar to me. Cooperate, and I may grant you a swift death.”

  I laughed.

  The sound was hoarse and wet, but it was laughter nonetheless.

  “Glory to the Celestial Blood Cult,” I proclaimed. “Hail the Red Sun. When the sky is dyed crimson by flame and the rivers run red with blood, our faith shall spread across the myriad domains. Mortals shall know true liberation.”

  Yakuza Man stepped forward, fury plain upon his face. “Do not make this difficult for yourself, old man—”

  I did not allow him to finish.

  Gathering what remained of my qi, I activated Ninefold Gravity Press inward, directing it not upon the earth, but upon my own heart.

  The organ ruptured within my chest.

  Agony erupted through every nerve, but I welcomed it.

  “I offer you the sacrifice of my heart and soul,” I intoned, my voice deepening as something ancient and infernal answered my call. “Grant me strength, O demons of hell.”

  The air thickened.

  My broken bones realigned violently, reshaping under a force that was not entirely my own. I rose to my full height, which doubled in size as my frame expanded grotesquely. Muscles swelled. Skin darkened until it became pitch black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it.

  Two enormous horns tore through my forehead, curling upward toward the sky.

  My eyes burned with unquenchable pain, yet within that pain was power.

  Meng Rong staggered back slightly, her expression tightening. “What have you done?”

  “Liberation,” I answered.

  I lifted one massive hand and gestured downward.

  “Tenfold Gravity Press.”

  The technique detonated outward in a vast radius.

  The entire city trembled. Buildings fractured under the multiplied force, and the estate that had once stood proud was flattened into ruin beneath the crushing weight of my will.

  “Ha ha ha ha!”

  The laughter tore from my throat, deeper and fuller than it had ever sounded before.

  I hovered high above the shattered estate, suspended effortlessly within my own gravitational dominion. The Tenfold Gravity Press continued to weigh upon the land, grinding stone into powder and pressing roofs flat as though they were made of parchment.

  Yet no satisfying chorus of screams followed.

  Meng Rong and Yakuza Man endured.

  The survivors of the residence had already scattered beyond my immediate radius, scrambling like insects fleeing a boot. Their escape irritated me, but I consoled myself with the thought that eliminating these two would suffice. Their resistance had embarrassed me. Their deaths would restore balance.

  “This power that flows within me,” I murmured, flexing my enlarged fingers as black qi coiled around them. “Oh, it is delicious. Why did I deny myself this for so long?”

  The demonic force saturating my meridians was intoxicating. Every motion bent the air. Every breath distorted space. Even pain had become distant, drowned beneath the roaring current of borrowed might.

  I extended my hand and grinned.

  “I am going to savor this.”

  With a lazy flick of one finger, I invoked the next degree.

  “Elevenfold Gravity Press.”

  The atmosphere thickened violently.

  Meng Rong cried out, “Aaah!”

  Her body buckled, knees slamming into the fractured earth as the multiplied force bore down upon her. The spectral fox around her flickered under the pressure.

  Curiously, Yakuza Man remained standing.

  He staggered, yes, but he held on. He caught Meng Rong before she collapsed completely, anchoring her with surprising stubbornness. He lifted his head and glared at me through that absurd pair of eyewear.

  “So, a second phase, huh?” he remarked.

  I frowned.

  Second phase?

  It was an odd choice of words.

  “You possess fighting spirit,” I conceded. “I grant you that.”

  I was not blind to my own condition. This demonic state would not endure. The power I had summoned would eventually consume what remained of my reason. When that happened, I would either perish or descend into madness. In practical terms, the outcome was the same.

  However, if this was the price to crush them here and now, then so be it.

  Still, I had obligations. The Meteor Child remained the true objective.

  I turned, scanning the ruins for her fading gravitational signature. She could not have gone far.

  “You are not going anywhere!” Yakuza Man shouted.

  Silk-like qi snapped taut around me. In the blink of an eye, he yanked himself forward along those invisible threads until he stood directly before me.

  “Annoying mutt,” I muttered.

  I drove my fist forward, saturating it with demonic gravity.

  “Dark Rending Fist!”

  My blow tore through the air with catastrophic force… and struck nothing.

  The figure before me dissolved like smoke, an illusion forged by Meng Rong.

  “I am here!” Yakuza Man’s voice rang from above.

  I glanced upward just as his bat descended.

  The impact smashed me downward. Even in this empowered state, I felt the force rattle through my bones. I crashed into the ground with enough weight to fracture it anew.

  Meng Rong was already waiting below.

  Her sword flashed in a flurry of frost-laced arcs, each strike aimed at vital points. I parried them with qi-infused palms, deflecting steel and ice alike. Despite her transformation and the additional tails now swaying behind her, she could not penetrate my defense directly.

  Yakuza Man dropped from above again, swinging with reckless vigor.

  “I admire your resolve,” I told them evenly, “but this ends here.”

  Though this domain suppressed me to the Qi Refinement realm, the demonic augmentation far surpassed such limitations. My techniques now bore weight beyond ordinary classification.

  “The power of a true demon of hell flows within me,” I declared. “You are nothing.”

  Meng Rong snarled. A fourth tail burst forth behind her, and a colossal mirage of a silver fox manifested around her body, its jaws parting in silent fury.

  Yakuza Man glanced sideways and muttered, “Lend me your strength already, you stupid yakuza—”

  Before he could finish, dark flames erupted along his bat.

  The change was immediate.

  The air around him shifted. His posture straightened subtly, and when he lifted his head, the gaze behind those lenses no longer felt entirely mortal.

  “I will not fight your battles for you,” he said, though his voice carried a resonance that did not belong to the man I had been trading blows with. “But this has dragged on long enough. I will lend you a fraction of my power.”

  I felt it then.

  A presence.

  It was not the crude demonic energy I had invoked. It was deeper. Older. Refined.

  “What are you?” I demanded, unease threading into my tone for the first time. “I sense the aura of a demon, yet… this is different. It cannot be. You harbor a demon within you?”

  The figure only grinned.

  “Immortal Art: Defying the Heaven’s Decree.”

  The sky dimmed.

  The sun itself blackened, swallowed by an unnatural eclipse that spread across the heavens like ink.

  The oppressive gravity that I commanded trembled in response.

  “I leave the rest to you,” the strange presence said calmly.

  The light within Yakuza Man’s eyes shifted once more. The dark flames receded slightly, though they did not vanish. His hair wavered as though stirred by a wind that did not exist.

  Then the mortal voice returned.

  “Yeah, thanks, man,” he muttered casually, adjusting his grip on the bat. He flashed a sideways smile at Meng Rong. “I told you, Meng Rong. He is a cool guy.”

  She scoffed, frost curling from her lips. “I refuse to believe that. An evil spirit is still an evil spirit, regardless of how polite it pretends to be.”

  I had a bad feeling about this.

  The darkened sun overhead was no trivial phenomenon. In ancient records, a black sun was an omen of calamity, a harbinger of upheaval that sundered heaven and earth. The myth of the Red Sun within the Celestial Blood Cult had drawn inspiration from such portents. We revered the image of a burning crimson sky as the herald of purification.

  But this?

  This was not crimson.

  It was void.

  “Just what are you, Yakuza Man?” I demanded, my voice carrying across the trembling air.

  He laughed, as though this were a tavern jest rather than a battlefield beneath an eclipsed sky. “Just your super awesome streamer—”

  Meng Rong tilted her head innocently. “That is rather inappropriate.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “So what if you urinate frequently?” she replied with unsettling seriousness.

  “H-Hey, that is not what I meant when I said ‘streamer.’”

  “Does it not colloquially imply excessive urination?” she continued. “And to declare it so proudly in the presence of a lady. That is… crass.”

  “I did not mean it like that!” He flailed a hand toward me. “Old man, back me up!”

  Despite everything, despite the demonic power raging through my veins and the eclipse looming overhead, I found myself answering reflexively. “If one were to say that Zhong Fu is a streamer, what would be the first interpretation that comes to mind?”

  He paused.

  “Oh. Y-yes. I see it now…”

  For a fleeting, absurd moment, I considered ending my own existence simply to escape the indignity of their banter.

  Instead, I roared and unleashed a barrage of invisible gravitational hammers that cratered the sky itself.

  “My bladder is perfectly fine, you mongrels!”

  Yakuza Man flicked his silk-like strings, and the cauldron I had cast aside earlier hurtled back toward me. I swatted it away with a sweep of my arm, only to discover that the figures I had just struck earlier were dissolving into mist.

  Illusions.

  Again.

  “Dark Rending Fist,” I intoned, thrusting forward with a jab meant to rupture space itself. “You can’t hide from me forever! I can feel your presence!”

  “Yet, you miss again,” remarked Meng Rong who appeared besides me, while my fist hit nothing.

  A searing pain tore across my chest as a deep gash opened from Meng Rong’s fatal swordsmanship layered with illusions. Behind me stood Yakuza Man, his silk threads coiling around my limbs, binding me in place with unnatural precision.

  They moved as one entity.

  Yakuza Man seized the cauldron and began wielding it in tandem with his bat, striking from unpredictable angles. Meng Rong slipped through the gaps like a phantom, her blade darting in with swift, precise cuts whenever my focus shifted.

  I attempted to ascend higher into the sky, but shards of frost manifested in my path, forming temporary footholds that allowed Yakuza Man to rebound unpredictably while Meng Rong pursued with relentless accuracy.

  My techniques were formidable, yet my casting was perpetually interrupted. Whenever I gathered qi for a decisive strike, one of them disrupted the rhythm. Whenever I targeted one, the other exploited the opening.

  Their coordination was unnatural.

  Meng Rong suddenly withdrew, retreating to a distance as Yakuza Man’s silk threads carried her along.

  She smiled faintly. “It appears my role is over.”

  Only then did I look up.

  The eclipse had grown.

  Or perhaps it had descended.

  The black sun loomed closer, its edges writhing like living flame. From its depths, nine colossal dragons of dark fire burst forth, their forms twisting and coiling as they plunged toward me.

  I exhaled.

  “Ah,” I muttered, bitterness threading through my voice. “I truly hate my life.”

  The dragons swallowed me whole.

  Agonizing heat consumed my demonic flesh, burning beyond mere physical sensation. The power I had borrowed screamed in protest as it was devoured by something older and more absolute.

  In that final instant, as my form disintegrated beneath the eclipse’s judgment, my last words escaped me without dignity.

  “Fuck me.”