The sky was torn apart.
Right above, the vast expanse that humans once called "the heavens" had shattered into jagged shards like a smashed mirror. It revealed a nameless darkness within—a void that swallowed the very concept of depth. From those cracks, primordial mana bled out like ichor from the wound of a colossal entity—a chaotic, viscous, and pungent purple light that dripped onto the long-dead earth, evaporating into mist the moment it touched the ground.
The Soul-Withered Plains. People still remembered that name from old chronicles. It was once the most fertile land in the Lower Realm, where golden wheat fields stretched to the horizon, and small villages with red-tiled roofs breathed peaceful hearth smoke into the twilight.
Now, there was only ash. Only bones. Only the twisted steel skeletons of structures that once stood tall, now clawing at the sky like the broken fingers of a drowning man. The wind blew through, carrying the stench of rusted iron mixed with charred flesh and the strange, tar-like odor of crystallized mana left behind after the destructive energy had cooled.
In the center of this devastation, Tian Cang stood.
He looked like a beggar who had just survived a Great Flood.
His ash-colored combat gear had long since frayed into rags. His frame was tall but lean—the kind of leanness belonging to one accustomed to survival rather than satiety, with every muscle forged from pain. His hair was long and matted, crusted with dried blood around his temples.
His right hand gripped the hilt of a sword. The blade was jagged and notched, resembling the broken fangs of a wild beast, coated in the black, dried blood of countless enemies who had fallen beneath that dilapidated steel. His left shoulder was still bleeding; a deep, gaping wound from a previous encounter that hadn't yet scabbed over. Hot, fresh blood slid down his arm, dripping onto the ash and being instantly swallowed by the bone-dry soil.
Drip. Drip. The rhythm of life leaking out, drop by drop.
His gaze remained sharp and cold, even though swollen eyelids partially obscured his vision and purple shadows flickered in the corners of his sight. That gaze moved constantly, scanning the mist like a cornered wolf choosing its next prey to drag down to hell with it.
In front of him, the purple mist parted.
They appeared in absolute silence, and that was the most terrifying part.
Three figures emerged from the fog like ghosts painting themselves onto the air, stroke by stroke, limb by limb, until three complete forms stood still about twenty paces from Tian Cang. Their flesh was grey, like salt-cured fish, stretched tight over distorted muscles that bulged in the wrong places. Beneath that skin, glowing blue veins crawled like the roots of ancient trees, converging toward eyes that were nothing but hollow black pits—voids that made anyone who looked into them feel a cold wind blowing from inside their own chest.
"Outworlders..." He spat out a mouthful of blood and dust, his voice rasping like two heavy stones grinding together. "The High Firmament sent three of you to kill me alone? Are they... flattering me?"
The three figures stood motionless, looking at him with the clinical detachment one might show an insect twitching its legs before being pinned to a specimen board.
That was what made the hair on his neck stand up.
The one in the center was a melee warrior, as massive as a mobile stone tower. Standing nearly two and a half meters tall, its shoulders were so broad that the walls of any normal house would buckle if it stepped inside. Its arms hung loosely at its sides, but its thick, claw-like fingers had begun to twitch in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
To the left was an archer—leaner and smaller, but the danger radiated from its crouched stance, its center of gravity shifted forward like an arrow already notched. Its hands rose slowly. Between its grey palms, crimson mana began to coalesce, stretching into a shimmering bowstring of light that vibrated in the air. The heat emanating from it was enough to make the surrounding ash dance. An arrow formed, forged from pure pressure compressed into a razor-sharp point.
The mage stood at the very back. It was unnaturally gaunt and tall, as if its bones had been stretched by an invisible hand. Its face was as flat as stone. When it raised its hand, the gesture was so gentle it seemed as if it were merely shooing a mosquito, but the air around it immediately solidified. From that invisible mass, dozens of ice spears materialized, so cold they turned the surrounding air into a fine mist. They hovered there, their tips aimed straight at Tian Cang's heart, swaying slightly like a whispered threat.
Three directions. Three types of pressure.
Tian Cang glanced over the three of them one last time, calculating with the coldness of a man who had done this too many times to feel fear.
The archer first. Cut off the long-range fire before that arrow finishes forming. The mage second; it's still far, and the ice spears haven't launched. The warrior is the biggest problem. Must deal with the other two before it closes in.
The plan was so simple it was insane. But in this situation, only the insane had a chance to live.
He closed his eyes for exactly one heartbeat.
The mana flow within his gaunt body was tattered, like the last threads of a rotted cloth. He was at the peak of the Soul Firmament, the thin boundary between the second and third tiers of the Firmament Realm hierarchy. In a world where power escalated through five ranks—Mortal Firmament, Soul Firmament, Battle Firmament, Blood Firmament, and the ultimate Shattered Firmament—what he possessed was only enough to see the vast gap between himself and the entities before him.
But he had one thing they lacked.
He wasn't dead yet.
And sometimes, that alone was enough to achieve the impossible.
"Alright..." he whispered to the thing sleeping deep within his veins—the thing he hadn't dared to fully awaken because every time he did, he lost a small piece of his humanity. "I need you. One more time."
A moment of silence. Then, from deep within his marrow, something answered.
A dry crack echoed.
The first fissure appeared along Tian Cang's right arm.
His body was breaking itself. Blood vessels burst by sheer will; red blood cells transformed into a different kind of energy—denser, darker, heavier. Blood ignited right beneath his skin, turning from bright red to a murky black in a process so agonizing that any ordinary person would have blacked out within the first second.
Tian Cang roared through the pain.
His pupils dilated, the deep brown vanishing, replaced by a dark, lava-like crimson—the color of something more ancient than blood, more primal than instinct. It was a light that ordinary creatures had never seen and should never look upon directly.
"BLOOD FIRMAMENT — OPEN!"
The world shifted.
Tian Cang's perception spiked to a point where everything around him slowed down as if in a dream. The archer's arrow of light began to tear through the air, but it looked as if it were wading through thick honey. The whistling of the ice spears sounded like a long, drawn-out groan in his ears. The heavy footsteps of the giant warrior became as easy to read as a book he had already memorized.
He moved—the kind of movement found only in those who have pushed their bodies to the edge of life and death enough times to learn how to slip out of the concept of "position" for a millisecond. An afterimage stood there momentarily before vanishing.
He appeared beside the archer. A distance of twenty paces, closed in less than a heartbeat.
The notched sword swung. A dark, ruthless arc, sharpened by the experience of a hundred life-and-death battles. The scarred steel cut into the archer's neck with cold precision.
Shlik.
A decisive sound. Then, half a second of eerie silence before the archer's body fell in two different directions.
Its head hit the ash. The blue light in its veins flickered out. The remaining torso stood for another half-second before buckling, dissolving into faint trails of purple smoke.
The price of such power was paid immediately.
One of the mage's ice spears, launched the moment Tian Cang moved, pierced through his right shoulder from behind.
Thud.
The initial sensation was cold—a bone-chilling cold that tore through flesh and bone, exiting through the other side. The ice spear sucked the heat from the wound, leaving a freezing vacuum around the point of impact.
His teeth ground together so hard they creaked, but his lips remained shut.
He looked down at the ice spear protruding from his shoulder. Calculation within a single breath: Pull it out—lose more blood, lose more time. Leave it—lose the range of motion in the right arm.
A bad choice and a worse one.
He chose the worse one.
Tian Cang utilized the momentum of the spear's impact as a fulcrum, spinning his body ruthlessly around that axis, converting pain into rotational force. His body swung in an arc, and the sword in his left hand was hurled straight at the mage twenty meters away. Blood Firmament mana compressed behind his knuckles, turning the steel blade into an object moving so fast it left a dark blur in the air.
Thud.
The sword buried itself up to the hilt in the mage's chest.
Its stone-like face remained flat even in death. It looked down at the jagged blade deep in its chest as if observing an interesting phenomenon that didn't particularly concern it. Then, the blue veins beneath its skin faded from the extremities inward, and it slumped down silently.
The giant warrior had arrived.
He triggered his Blood Firmament reflexes to slide aside, but a body carrying an ice spear through the shoulder and losing a significant amount of blood could no longer achieve the speed his mind demanded.
The warrior's fist, as large as a human head and as heavy as a cast-iron block, smashed directly into Tian Cang's hip and ribs with a force that sent air exploding outward like a shockwave.
BOOM.
His body was sent flying, staggering, his feet sliding through the ash before he forced both hands into the ground to stop himself. Dust and ash billowed violently.
When the screen of ash cleared, Tian Cang was still standing.
His knees touched the ground, but his upper body was straight. Blood streamed from a new wound on his forehead, running down both sides of his nose to his chin, dripping steadily onto the earth. At least three ribs were broken; he knew because every breath brought a sharp, knife-like pain.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward.
"Not enough force..." He looked up at the warrior approaching slowly, confident in the way of one who never needs to hurry. "...to kill me."
The warrior remained silent. Its presence was already the most complete answer to everything.
Tian Cang raised his right hand—the hand of the impaled arm, the hand every nerve was screaming not to use—and clamped it onto the opponent's massive arm as it stepped close.
A flickering interface appeared before his eyes, trembling like a ghost:
[Skill Activated: Blood Devour — Rank 1]
Effect: Absorbs 15% of the target's vitality through direct contact.Conversion: Enhances muscle density, heals minor wounds.Duration: 3 seconds. Cost: 40% of current Blood Firmament.
A stream of crimson light began to be sucked back from the warrior's body into Tian Cang's palm. The creature jerked violently—the reflex of a being feeling a loss from within—but Tian Cang's fingers did not let go. The tendons on his hand stood out like white-hot steel wires, his biceps bulging under skin that was gradually turning the deep red of a peak Blood Firmament state.
Three seconds.
In those three seconds, the warrior struck his body twice more. He stood firm by allowing his torso to tilt with the blows and then absorbing the force, like a reed bowing before the wind without breaking.
Three seconds ended.
Tian Cang roared and unleashed a straight punch into the warrior's chest, the Blood Firmament mana compressed into a single point, exploding outward upon contact.
CRACK!
The warrior's stone-like chest shattered from the inside.
Its corpse collapsed, trembling once, then twice, as the blue veins faded from the edges to the center like a dying lamp. Finally, what was once a combat entity disintegrated into purple light fragments that scattered in the wind and vanished.
Silence returned.
Tian Cang collapsed, his knees hitting the ash hard, kicking up a small cloud of dust around him. The Blood Firmament state receded like a tide—slowly, painfully—leaving his body like a crumpled piece of paper smoothed back out: the shape remained, but the integrity was gone.
The real pain began. Broken ribs pressed against his lungs. The impaled shoulder grew stiff. The forehead gash refused to stop bleeding. And beneath it all, the bone-deep exhaustion of one who had burned too much, too fast.
"The price..." he muttered, his lips cracked and dry, his hands trembling as they clutched his chest as if trying to hold his body together by sheer will. "...is still too high."
The sky did not care what he needed.
The largest crack above suddenly expanded with a deep, booming sound like a giant bell. The purple light softened, giving way to darkness. From that darkness, a pressure emerged—the pressure of one who stands high enough to look at an entire world like a chessboard.
A voice rang down. Deep, muffled, carrying absolute authority without needing volume. It merely spoke, but the space around Tian Cang vibrated like a guitar string plucked too hard.
"Interesting."
A moment. Then:
"An ant... actually reaching the threshold of the Blood Firmament without his body shattering."
Tian Cang struggled to lift his head.
On the shattered firmament, seated upon a throne made of space-shards arranged with total indifference, was a figure cloaked in black. His face was submerged in shadow. The absolute weight of that presence pressed down on the world below like an invisible hand on his shoulders.
For the first time in his life of combat—through countless battles, countless enemies, and countless times standing on the edge of life and death—Tian Cang's gaze wavered.
He recognized that pressure. This was the pressure of one who was paying attention. And sometimes, being noticed by a god was more terrifying than being killed.
"You..."
The voice paused for a moment as if the entity were considering, then resonated with the certainty of one who had seen the ending before the battle even began.
"...shall be the key I seek."
The purple mist closed around Tian Cang like a folding hand.
————————————————————
Firmament Realm System — Power Hierarchy:Mortal Firmament → Soul Firmament → Battle Firmament → Blood Firmament → Shattered Firmament
Current Status: Peak Soul Firmament / Unstable Blood Firmament.