Ziyou Maque was a gang leader, and he wasn’t a good person. He had killed, slaughtered, coerced, and blackmailed sinners and innocents alike whenever it was necessary.

For his own interests, and for the betterment of his people.

That's what he liked to tell himself, to convince himself that the sins he had committed in the past were out of necessity.

That he was forced to become who he was today, the poor little sparrow playing in the dirt outside while the mean native ren kicked his whore of a mother to death! He had thought they were playing too rough. Only when her body was burnt in the fires of the mad heavens, did he realize that he would never see her again.

Never see her smile, never eat the porridge she made so lovingly from dry rice and wet grass.

That was the first moment he changed, nine-year-old Little Sparrow. He was forced to change; at least that’s what he told himself.

The day after, he and the adults from the gang sneaked into White Town, burnt down five fields and seven houses, taking the lives of the ren men who killed his mother and their three innocent generations.

Ziyou Maque, the freest of all sparrows, did not choose to be like that.

He was forced by the mad heavens. He had cried amidst the cinders, kicking the burnt corpse of a pregnant native townsgirl.

A few decades passed in the blink of an eye; all he could remember from that time was blood, plots, and cultivation.

But Free Sparrow then met another stupid townsgirl from the lower town spice bazaar, got married, and had Ling. He changed for the second time, as if returning back to the days he was the naive little free sparrow.

He stopped killing; he started building. He didn’t use his meridian building fists to cave the skulls of lower town rens whenever things got heated, didn’t burn down the alchemical fields of white town as retaliation, nor did he try to build more underground gambling dens so he could milk the natives dry.

They were all living in this cruel world hand to mouth, all trying to survive while protecting what truly mattered to them.

The slums got better; the Youjin stopped hounding them. His daughter grew up into a toddling waddler, and things were finally starting to go in a good direction.

But of course, how could his life ever be so smooth, not with his blood-stained hands?

A voidfiend outbreak happened. Right in the middle of the lower town. And spread in all directions like wildfire.

His dream of creation was ruined when the Wretched Bloodhounds tore his wife head to toe, only her bloody sarong left behind. Something she wore with pride despite being a native ren.

Maque turned again into a destroyer.

A bastard of revenge.

His third change.

But this time, it was different. He had a daughter now, he still had family to protect. He was no longer alone.

He bartered, traded, bargained, negotiated. With merchants and the clans, and other gangs both inside the city and in the neighbouring ones. But no longer did he shy away from using blades when it was necessary.

He could not be weak. His will was not to be denied. He would never let anything or anyone destroy what he and his wife worked so hard to build!

He didn’t let the world take away his choices. Not anymore, not like they took away his mother and wife.

After all, choice was what made a cultivator.

So Maque chose. He chose to be a good father, a cruel gang leader, a friendly madlander, and a cunning merchant.

Most of all, a savage cultivator.

For more than a decade, he toiled hard. He had nearly buried the pain from the voidfiend rush abandoned, in the deepest recess of his heart.

And after meeting Ziyou Yung, the strange boy more manic in his ideology than Maque could ever hope to be, he understood that his choice wasn’t wrong.

Nevermore had he seen the smiles of the slum dwellers so radiant in his nearly six decades of life. Never had he seen madlander kids playing with native ren children on the streets of White town. The dirt stream cleaned up, safe jetties built on the shore of the Red Hole. Free access to the archives in Dim Gold Market Square, and actual underground rice farms opened up, just for the madlanders, by techniques viciously guarded by ruling clans such as the Youjin.

All because of one boy, who was so kind it was scary.

And it worked. Somehow or another, the boy sweet-talked the biggest golden thigh on the land-bridge into caring about a tiny little slum in the middle of one of the weakest cities in one of the weakest kingdoms inside one of the weakest regions under the rule of a behemoth of a power that would grovel at her feet for an iota of attention.

Ziyou Maque liked to think that if he hadn't been rather peaceful in managing the slums in the last decade, Ziyou Yung’s plans would have taken much more time, money, and bloodshed to come true.

He liked to think that the conscious choice he made to become a gang leader like no other that existed before him in Dim Gold City, a half madlander half native ren boy like Ziyou Yung who hated neither side and wanted to do whatever he could to help both, could appear.

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He liked to think that his choices were right. The world was influenced by it, and in the right direction.

“A smooth integration,” Ziyou Yung had said. The term had an oomph to it.

Then these bloody cultists appeared!

Ziyou Maque learnt that these were the hidden scum that turned his life upside down once in the past. Finally, he could have his revenge after learning about the true cause of his wife’s demise!

The voidfiend rush, these bastards caused it! And now he learned that one of his most trusted friends was part of them.

Traitors! Voidfiends wearing the skins of Ren!

Maque could not help but laugh at the situation. He calmed himself, not letting thoughts of revenge cloud his judgment.

It was supposed to be a simple mission under the complete control of the Su Fox Clan. They had the support of sects like the Dawn Dragon Throne and Twilight Blood Palace.

Kill the Voidfiends. Enter the Cave. Recover the foxmoths and the highness’s missing ball.

They dug a shallow hole, but what came crawling out were vipers from another world.

Unfolding Heaven 1st Order monsters like the Wretched Emissary and legions of cultists, among them, bloody madlanders from his own damn backyard.

Who was he fighting for? Who did he sacrifice so much for if the very people he wanted to help turned into monsters to kill what was his?

Blood had rushed to his head. But he couldn’t join the fight with the Emissary or the cultists above. A random after wave from that fight was enough to turn him into a pale white paste.

But again, no way in hell would he let these cultists destroy that which he worked so hard to build a second time.

Revenge for his wife? That was a nice bonus. But nothing more than an excuse.

The cultists were cunning, they might be far weaker than the Su Fox Clan, but they cared for neither face nor their lives. They would gladly blow themselves up if it meant taking an innocent family of bystanders with them.

And according to his traitor of a friend, they had even managed to kill a Su Clan Cultivator?

The princess had denied it. But looking at Yung’s exchange with her, Maque knew something was wrong.

If Ziyou Yung went into the caves alone with the princess, what if he got killed too?

Would the Su Fox Clan still care about their dingy little city with the kind lad no longer around to sweet-talk them?

The world was not so kind. Yet, on the contrary, Ziyou Yung was one of a kind.

He needed to live.

And these cultist bastards needed to be killed to the last of their members.

Now and today.

For that, he would give his life if necessary.

“Mad heavens be damned, if I let sinister scum like you tear down the streets I clawed my way up, I ain’t named a Ziyou!” Maque roared. He had a giant grin on his face and a bigger axe in his hand. He readied his dao shard, pushing origin qi through his meridians as the edge of the axe made contact with the ground below, ripping through the three robed figures that stood between. The earth cracked, the wave of qi extending forward in a zig-zagging line and spraying shrapnel of rock and gravel onto the foes that came at him.

His 2nd realmer prowess, the might of a meridian building powerhouse at the peak of the realm, unfolded unbound.

He ducked, dodging a monstrous arrow fired by the Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realmer cultist, and took out another spear from his storage artefact.

But before he could throw it, he was hit by another arrow coming from the left. He flew up as the void qi-laden attack exploded on his hastily raised forearm and got separated from his subordinates.

“Pa! No—!”

He heard his daughter cry through the dust and smoke. He grinned; his Origin Qi had not stopped feeding into the spear even though he was injured.

“I ain’t gonna keel over that fast!” Ziyou Maque said with a bloody mouth as he threw the spear in the direction the arrow had come from.

But it was intercepted by another arrow and was blasted out of the air mercilessly.

Ah, useless I guess. So lame. Ziyou Maque clicked his tongue.

He took out another axe from his storage artefact. As he was dropping, he readied another dao shard and started spinning like a mill.

Earth Cracking Assault!

His blades tore through the robed figures as if they were made of straw.

The blood splattered on him like paint, and he roared like an animal. He screamed, watching one of his men get pierced through the head with an arrow from the snickering robed bastard that had been firing them from afar. He watched another madlander cultivator, the son of his right-hand man, get cleaved in half skull to toe.

Ain’t it a joke? Thinking we could take two hundred of them.

Ziyou Maque honed in on the arrow bastard with every bit of his concentration. He put his remaining qi, true qi, into his feet. His cultivation base cried. He laughed.

Like a meteor, he burnt bright as he shot towards his target. He could no longer bother to dodge the attacks from the grunts and rushed right up to the peak Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realmer Cultist, both his axes hoisted up high.

“See you in hell, scum,” he spat, bringing his blades down.

They were intercepted by two spears held by two other cultists that had appeared out of nowhere to his left and right. Invisible guards! Or perhaps their cunning ambushers.

I see, two more peak 2nd realmers. Ain’t this a bloody joke.

“Does it hurt?” The arrow bastard asked with grinning eyes. The gang leader had countless spears and blades puncturing his body, attacks he did not deign to dodge.

Maque roared, dislocating his shoulders and slipping between the spears to appear right in front of his foe.

He took the last of his true qi into the tiny spear-shaped knife inside his mouth and spat.

Meteor Spear!

The attack tore through the arrow bastard's hood.

“It huuuuurts!” The figure screamed, holding the left half of his face that had been shredded like pork. For the first time since the fight started, Ziyou Maque took a careful look at their enemies' faces. He then realized why these cultists felt so alien and uncanny.

Were they even Renyao?

“Deliver him!” Screamed the arrow bastard. He was neither a native ren nor a madlander, and neither did he look like any Yao that lived on the landbridge.

Because he was blue, and had tentacles for hair. His exposed head looked like an upside-down squid with the face of a really ugly ren. His skin was transparent, and he had octopi suckers dotting all over his body. They squirmed and suckled, the blue blood beneath the skin clear to see.

There was a flash of bright light, green and gold. As if a sun had exploded somewhere in the cavern. It didn’t come from the robed figures.

Ziyou Maque wanted to look in the light’s direction.

But he didn’t have the chance. Something sharp touched his neck, and the next moment, the world turned upside down.

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” A cry echoed.

He saw his body falling over. For his head was looking at it.

And then saw his daughter crying with tears and snot. He shouldn’t have brought her. The stubborn lass didn’t relent. He had underestimated the danger.

Midair, his head was looking in the direction the light had come from. But the light was now dimming.

But Ziyou Yung was kind. He promised. He promised to protect her—

Ling'er ran. The light dimmed completely. Only the Youjin Heiress and his daughter were left. Ziyou Yung and Fairy Su were both missing.

His daughter cried like a wounded beast; she rushed towards the cultists, took one out by burning her true qi, but then got skewered by spears from five directions.

“N—” NO! Ziyou Maque wanted to scream, but his lung was left in his body. He couldn’t believe his eyes! Was his trust misplaced again?

But it was too late. Death had come. With all the bad deeds he had committed, the only place he could go was hell.

His vision dimmed, as his soul was whisked away from his corpse into the darkest, deepest recesses of the underworld. And for some reason, hell was surprisingly warm.