Tian Cang could no longer stand.
That truth came to him as simply and ruthlessly as every significant fact in his life—without warning, without time to prepare. Both hands braced against the cold stone floor; blood from his wounds mingled with dust to form a grimy slurry beneath his palms. His body had ceased following his brain's commands at some point during the battle that he hadn't managed to notice. Every muscle fiber protested. Every vein felt hollow—not in the sense of lacking blood, but lacking something more fundamental than blood.
The recent Blood Devour had drained his final shards of energy, leaving an ancient soul carrying memories of a hundred battles trapped within a body fracturing piece by piece.
"Still not enough... not strong enough..."
He gritted his teeth until his lips bled, forcing his trembling legs to rise. In response, there were only involuntary convulsions—the final reflex of muscles when the nervous system has run dry of signals. This wasn't ordinary fatigue; this was the systemic collapse of a biological machine forced to operate at triple capacity with only a third of the fuel.
Around him, the remaining pursuers kept a safe distance. Their eyes held the wariness reserved for a wounded monster—the prudent caution of those who understand that the most dangerous beast is the one dying, for it has nothing left to lose.
They stood there, waiting for orders.
The Collector slowly wiped a smear of blood from his lip with a pristine white handkerchief, his movements meticulous and intentionally slow, as if giving everyone in the room time to realize he was still in control. His gaze never left Tian Cang for a second.
"Do not approach," he commanded, his voice regaining its inherent composure as if the recent battle had merely been a slightly off-plan experiment. "This specimen has too much research value to be handled carelessly."
Two subordinates stepped forward from behind him, carrying shackles that emitted a faint, ethereal blue glow. They dragged across the stone floor with a rhythmic clinking. Each link was forged not from ordinary metal, but from an alloy that conducted mana in reverse—sucking energy inward rather than radiating it outward, turning any flow of mana into something that strangled its wielder.
Tian Cang recognized them instantly from the painful memories of his past life. These were Blood-Seal Chains, specifically designed for those with mana deviations, locking down every energy current in the body and turning the bearer's power into a self-destruct weapon.
He gave a thin smile. Blood seeped through the gaps of his teeth.
"Just try it."
He clenched his fists; the glowing red fissures on his arms began to flicker, accumulating for one final eruption. The last remaining energy—the kind he would burn entirely in a single pulse.
The chains were about to touch his flesh.
BOOM!!!
The entire ceiling of the old warehouse was torn open from above.
The sound arrived before the light—a world-shaking explosion directly overhead, powerful enough to make everyone in the warehouse lose their balance for a split second. The stone floor buckled; the remaining metal shelves tilted in a domino effect. Then, a brilliant white light descended into the arena like a pillar of something that had just decided to drop its full weight right there.
The stone floor where the pillar of light struck shattered into a hundred pieces, flying out like shrapnel in every direction. Metal crates weighing tons were bent like thin tin. The pressure from the blast blew everything away in a radial pattern—including Tian Cang.
He was hurled into a pile of rubble, his back slamming into a stone wall, his vision spinning. His body drifted amidst a cyclone of brick and ash before colliding with something solid and coming to rest.
As the thick dust gradually dissipated, the massive hole in the ceiling revealed the grey sky of the Firmament above. And standing at the edge of that hole, looking down with the nonchalance of one who had just smashed a ceiling like others smash thin glass, were figures in dark-crimson armor.
Tian Cang recognized that color. The color of dried blood after many days.
Blood Flame.
A Blood Flame warrior descended through the gap, plunging like a controlled meteorite, the pressure of his frame and compressed mana creating a whistle in the air.
THUD.
The floor boards where he landed fractured into a spiderweb pattern, cracks spreading in every direction. He stood straight from his landing posture—no adjustment needed, no extra movement to regain a combat stance. The pressure radiating from him was heavy and solid, like something that had existed long enough to become part of the surrounding terrain.
The Collector's faction stood frozen in place. The chains in the hands of the two subordinates still hung suspended; no one had remembered whether to drop or hold them.
The Collector narrowed his eyes. For the first time that entire afternoon, his gaze revealed something other than cold calculation.
"You have gone too far," his voice was calm, but beneath it lay a new sharp edge—the edge of someone weighing whether or not to escalate. "This is a testing zone of The Directorate. Blood Flame has no authority to intervene."
The Blood Flame warrior glanced around the room. His gaze swept over the corpses, the pools of blood, the Blood-Seal chains lying scattered on the floor, and Tian Cang, motionless in the rubble-strewn corner.
"The Directorate," he repeated the words with the tone of someone chewing something bitter. "Keeping those with the blood of warriors in this filthy cage and calling it an experiment. You still keep those twisted habits after all these years."
The Collector smiled, his hands hidden behind his back making a discreet signal. "And what of you? Knowing only destruction and war. Coming to steal the research fruits of others." He paused, his voice softer but sharper. "Or does Blood Flame have plans for an unstable Blood Firmament deviation subject?"
The atmosphere grew so tense it felt as though a single mistimed breath would be enough to detonate everything.
SLASH!
A blade of light carved down from the void, dividing the ground precisely between the two factions, sinking deep into the stone floor and vibrating for several seconds before standing still.
That light was white and pure in the sense of a surgical blade—chillingly clean.
From high above, a figure in a white cloak descended gracefully along a thin trail of light, landing with almost no sound. He stood tall, looking around with the cold, detached gaze of one standing at a different altitude from everything in sight.
The Holy Kingdom of Lumina.
Tian Cang recognized the emblem on that white chest from the corner of the rubble where he lay. The same organization as the one who had severed his arm.
"A low-level anomaly," the white-clad man glanced at Tian Cang with the look of someone staring at a stain on the floor, then looked across the other two factions. "And two factions squabbling over it."
He raised a blade of light high; the blade emitted a cold white aura that caused the temperature in the warehouse to drop several degrees in an instant.
"Purify everything. This is the command of the Holy Kingdom."
Combat erupted instantly—three factions at once.
The Blood Flame warriors lunged head-on with their preferred style: offense as defense, no dodging, trading injuries for advantage. One of them used his own body to take a light-blade strike from a Holy Kingdom Inquisitor, in exchange for crushing the opponent's ribs with both hands. The way they fought was like people who had decided that pain was something that happened to others.
The Holy Kingdom Inquisitors fought with terrifying precision, each strike aimed at a vital point, each footstep placed at the optimal position—a swordsmanship honed to the point of removing all emotion, leaving only pure efficiency.
The Collector's faction dissolved into the shadows in an organized fashion, vanishing into blind spots and beginning to counterattack from directions no one could identify. From the darkness came the sounds of strange weapons Tian Cang had never seen—things that combined technology and mana in ways neither of the other two factions were prepared for.
The old warehouse turned into a literal hell. The white light of the Holy Kingdom, the dark-crimson of Blood Flame, and the pale blue sparks of the Collector's faction slashed through each other in the dark, creating brief flashes that illuminated the faces of those fighting and the corpses of those fallen.
In the eye of that storm, Tian Cang lay there.
The blood still flowed. The pain remained. But his consciousness—fragile and precarious as a candle before the wind—was still there.
He watched the three factions slaughtering each other because of him. Because of something each faction called by a different name: a specimen, a dangerous seed, a low-level anomaly.
And suddenly, he laughed.
A faint, raspy laugh because of the blood in his throat, but genuine. The laugh of someone who had just seen something so both hilarious and bitter that the two became one.
He was the reason three great factions of the Firmament were killing each other in a scrap warehouse. A small excuse wearing grand titles: research value, a threat needing purification, a trophy needing recovery. In all their eyes, he was a piece of merchandise. An anomaly to be possessed or liquidated depending on the perspective of the one holding the pen of judgment.
"Am I just a small chess piece?"
He looked down at his bloodied hand. The red fissures were darker than before, less brilliant, like embers cooling down. The power that had drained the Collector's life force and hurled him away was smoldering in his every muscle fiber like a coal slowly cooling in a cold hearth.
He had one use left. Perhaps. If he tried.
But try for what? To join this chaotic fray only for the three factions to turn back and look at him?
The decision came in a single breath.
Tian Cang braced his hands, funneling all his remaining will into his legs. Broken ribs throbbed like someone pressing a finger into an open wound with every pulse. His left shoulder was literally stiff; the muscles there had ceased functioning some time ago. His head felt thick in the way of someone who had lost much blood.
He stood up.
Slow. Heavy. But he stood.
Standing on trembling legs, amidst a battle of three factions who had no time to notice him, Tian Cang looked once toward the battlefield behind him. White and red light tore at each other in the darkness; screams rose and were cut short. The Collector was cornered against a far wall, still barking orders to subordinates hidden in the shadows, his face calm, but for the first time, he was defending rather than advancing.
Tian Cang turned his back.
He stepped into the darkness of a side corridor that had just collapsed; the roof had fallen, creating a low, narrow space that those in heavy armor would have to stoop to pass. Each step was heavy but steady; he moved with the instinct of one who had learned in his past life that victory sometimes only means being alive after everyone else has stopped paying attention to you.
When the tigers are clawing at each other, that is when the fox should leave.
The darkness of the corridor swallowed him step by step.
The explosions, the screams, and the light of mana continued to echo behind him, but with every step he took, those sounds weakened a little. Then a little more. Until they became something very far away, like the thunder of a storm he had just stepped out of the influence of.
The corridor led to a small courtyard at the back of the camp; the surrounding wall had partially collapsed, creating a gap just large enough for a lean person to squeeze through. The grey sky of the Firmament appeared above; the wind carried the scent of ash and something further—the scent of an empty space that no one owned.
Tian Cang looked at that gap.
Then he looked down at his hand one last time. The red fissures had darkened further, but they were still there, still smoldering with the rhythm of his heart like a reminder that the thing living in his blood had not gone back to sleep.
"This world..." He clenched his hand, feeling each red fissure throb and then settle. "I will tear it apart myself to find my own path."
He squeezed through the gap and stepped out to the other side of the wall.
Behind him, the Blood Flame selection camp was burning, both literally and figuratively. An era in his life—brief and brutal—collapsed in the explosions of three great factions settling old accounts with each other.
Tian Cang walked forward, into the undefined void, into something he did not yet have a name for.
His footsteps faded into the darkness, leaving behind a collapsed era and advancing toward something whose shape he would decide for himself.