As the assassins vanished into the trees, the wind died down. The ashes stopped swirling. They began to settle in a very specific pattern.
In the silence of the forest, a cold, mechanical voice resonated, not in the air, but in the very fabric of the soul that refused to move on.
[Alert: Extreme Hostility Detected.]
[Condition Met: Death by Betrayal.]
[Soul synchronization with 'The Great Swordmaster System'... 100%]
[Rewinding Causality... Loading Save Point: Age 15.]
"Do you wish to sharpen your blade for vengeance?"
.
.
.
The question hung in the void, a monolith of cold blue text against the absolute nothingness that followed death.
"Do you wish to sharpen your blade for vengeance?"
Moyong Ha-jun heard it.
The words registered somewhere in the dissipating smoke that used to be his consciousness.
He wanted to scream Yes. He wanted to roar it until the void shattered, to claw his way back up the well of existence just to sink his teeth into Moyong Chen's throat one last time.
But he had no throat to scream with. He had no teeth to bite with.
He was ash on the wind in a silent forest. The final, suicidal ignition of his dantians, followed by the black alchemist fire, had done more than destroy his flesh; it had traumatized his very soul.
What remained of the "Shield of the Moyong" was a fractured, incoherent smear of spiritual energy rapidly dissolving into the ether.
He tried to form the intent. Vengeance. The concept slipped away like water through nonexistent fingers.
He remembered red. He remembered betrayal. But the memories were losing their shape, blurring into a peaceful, terrifying gray.
The pull of oblivion was sweet, a promise of an end to the pain of the fire that still echoed phantom-like across his missing nerves.
He was drifting apart. The "I" that was Ha-jun was becoming "none."
The System waited for an answer that could not come.
[No response detected.]
[Analyzing Subject State: Critical Spiritual Dissolution.]
The mechanical voice, previously detached, took on a harder, more urgent cadence. It resonated not just with him, but through the scattering particles of his being.
[Subject is unable to confirm the directive due to extreme soul trauma. Total existence failure imminent in 3... 2...]
The countdown was a hammer blow against the fragile stained glass of his remaining self.
[Emergency Protocol Initiated: Forced Synchronization.]
[Bypassing consent parameters to preserve the host entity.]
If dying had been peaceful, being saved was an act of violence.
Ha-jun felt a sudden, horrific constriction. It was as if a thousand icy fishhooks had snagged the drifting wisps of his soul and yanked them violently back toward a central point.
The scattering consciousness was crushed back together into a dense, vibrating singularity of pure awareness.
The oblivion retreated. The pain returned, amplified a thousandfold because now, there was something solid enough to feel it.
[Soul anchored. Stabilization in progress.]
[Beginning assessment of physical vessel.]
Ha-jun existed as a pinpoint of tormented consciousness suspended in a dark data stream. He was forced to perceive what the System perceived.
A holographic projection unfurled in the darkness, a schematic of a human body.
It was a ruin. It was his ruin. A blackened, twisted husk of carbonized bone and melted flesh, lying in the center of the Death Forest clearing.
[Assessment Complete: Vessel Destroyed. Irreparable thermal damage.]
[Analyzing Root Structure: Moyong Ha-jun (Previous Life).]
[Bone Root: Mediocre Iron Quality.]
[Meridian Channels: Narrow, partially calcified due to improper early training.]
[Dantian Capacity: Below average Grade-4.]
[Innate Talent: Severely lacking. Success achieved solely through suicidal effort and forbidden techniques.]
The System's analysis was a cold autopsy of his life's failures. He had known he wasn't a genius like Chen or the Clan Head's sons.
He had compensated with blood, sweat, and eventually, pieces of his own soul. Hearing it laid bare by a godless machine was a different kind of torture.
[Conclusion: The original vessel is incapable of sustaining the parameters required for the 'Great Swordmaster' trajectory. Returning to the previous save point with this root structure will result in a 94% probability of recurring failure.]
The System paused. The silence was heavy with judgment.
[Directive Updated: Vessel Reconstruction Initiated.]
[Since the original body is reduced to ash, a complete physical genesis is required before temporal regression. The System will utilize five 'Genesis Slots' to forge a superior foundation capable of bearing the weight of vengeance.]
A warning flashed, pulsing with an ominous red light that bled into the blue interface.
[WARNING: SOUL-BODY DISSONANCE DETECTED.]
[Reconstructing a transcendent physical vessel while the subject is fully conscious in a spiritual state will cause extreme synaptic feedback. The process involves forging matter from pure energy and grafting the traumatized soul onto the new biology in real-time.]
[Estimated Pain Threshold: Fatal x12. The subject will experience the sensation of death by dissection and immolation repeatedly throughout the process. This cannot be dampened.]
[Proceed? Y/Y]
There was no "No." There was only the inevitable.
[Beginning Genesis. Phase 1: The Adamantine Skeletal Forge.]
It began at the core of his non-existent being. Ha-jun felt a searing point of white-hot pressure materialize where his spine should have been.
It wasn't the heat of fire; it was the heat of creation, of atoms being smashed together against their will.
If he had lungs, he would have shrieked until they burst. The pressure elongated, driving upwards into his skull and downwards into a ghostly pelvis. It felt like a molten iron rod was being slowly hammered through the center of his soul.
The System was not growing bones; it was forging them.
He felt the phantom sensation of ribs erupting from that central pillar of agony. They weren't gentle arcs of cartilage; they were jagged protrusions of dense, heavy metal forcing their way through resistant spiritual flesh.
His skull was crushed inward and then explosively remolded, every suture a canyon of grinding pain as the System knit together bone dense enough to shatter steel.
He was being drawn and quartered from the inside out.