As I crested the hill, stepped between the myriad bodies that littered the scorched and eroded ground, I saw something truly impossible.

All six of the strongest otherworld heroes were in the presence of the Heavenly Demon, the greatest, most evil foe in the millennia-long history of the jianghu. And who was currently fighting him?

Not all of them.

Xu Leifeng, gleaming gold and blood-stained gauntlets in hand, was trying his best to even land a hit against the darkly-clad apparition of a martial artist, whose long white hair swished and trailed behind his every graceful movement, dancing on the battlefield to a tune more sophisticated than his partner could possibly follow. Xu Leifeng, along with Wang Qiang, were friends with Zhang Wenhao, all of whom a lifetime ago used to give me a hard time while we were still in school, and then after we had been transmigrated.

None of that enmity mattered to me at that moment more than the sight before me.

The Heavenly Demon eventually had enough and caught Leifeng by his throat, lifted him up with one arm in defiance of physics, all the while Leifeng’s gauntleted fingers clawed at the naked hand to relieve the pressure. Relief never came.

The Heavenly Demon squeezed. Leifeng went slack.

The others clicked their tongues. Not in irritation at the death of their comrade. Just at the fact that he had left the Demon entirely unscathed.

“My turn!” Wang Qiang roared.

I still couldn’t believe it.

The thought replayed in my mind over and over and it still didn’t make sense.

“Mine right after,” said Zhang Wenhao, the Golden Hero, the one who had the most talent of us all. True to his name, his hair was a vivid shade of gold, made so after he had unearthed the Golden Emperor’s legacy and passed a test that no one else could have passed. The Golden Emperor had been the greatest legend of the jianghu several centuries ago, a hero the likes of which had never before—or again for that matter—graced the earth. And not even his legacy would see to that.

Something had cracked Wenhao’s mind. Something had cracked all the minds of the people in attendance.

Mei Ying tittered. “You won’t last another second longer than your mediocre friend did!” She was dressed in purple and black robes, and an aura of poison suffused her surroundings, bringing an additional death to the already dead ground she walked on. Mei Ying the traitor, the right hand of the Heavenly Demon, who had in the end turned her back against him, but not before wreaking havoc on the jianghu and taking innocent lives for her own twisted gain.

Mei Ying’s depravity was no surprise. The others? Liu Xinyi, the Star Goddess? Wei Jingshu, the Second Kongming?

They were taking turns.

This, too, like all other contests they had engaged in during their fifteen years on this world, was a contest of pride and ego. Not even the devil himself would get in between that objective, to be the strongest.

All my hatred fizzled out. The teachings of the Shaolin monks, the droned sutras and the texts I had transcribed and copied, all of it came into crystal clarity in my mind.

My burlap clothes no longer chafed. Everything felt right with me, but for this situation. Was this the Insightful stage of the Infinite Enlightenment Fist?

The hatred left me entirely. What replaced it was even stronger, even more painful.

Disappointment. Raw, undiluted disappointment.

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“Have you no shame?!” I cried. They all looked at me for one moment, and then summarily dismissed me, looked back at the fight with the Heavenly Demon, who was dismantling another one of our classmates.

Killing another one of us, while no one flinched.

The only one who had heeded me was the Heavenly Demon. “Your compatriots have no ears for a song whose refrain does not feature their names. Do not bother with them. After I am finished, the cleanse shall be complete. All will be reduced to the primordial wu. And your time will come as well, monk.”

I bowed my head. It was true. I would die if he won.

I took a step forward, and the others glared at me, bloodlust flowing from them in rivers. I received the message loud and clear: don’t interfere.

Very well. My blood was wasted on a death that served the Heavenly Demon. If I had to wait with these others, I would. I would play this twisted game with them, because I had no other choice.

Wang Qiang met his end as a head separate from his body, decapitated by the Demon’s flat hand, and Wenhao approached to fight.

The ensuing spectacle did more damage to the Heavenly Demon than anyone had anticipated. I watched with muted hope that he would win.

The Heavenly Demon, bleeding and battered, eked out an advantage, and shoved his fist through the Golden Hero’s heart.

Next was the Star Goddess, Liu Xinyi, the undisputed strongest female warrior, second only to the Golden Hero. Xinyi fought until the Demon was at his last legs, bleeding, bones broken, some jutting out from his skin.

And for that, Xinyi was left on the ground an unmoving corpse, her head twisted a full revolution the wrong way.

The scholar-robed Wei Jingshu then activated his arrays, trapping the Heavenly Demon in ethereal binds while an ethereal, sword-wielding asura bore its eight swords down on him.

Huge mounds of flesh had been sliced off from the Heavenly Demon, reducing him to naught but a standing corpse. A standing corpse that managed to break free from his binds and cut the distance between him and Jingshu with a single step before caving in his entire ribcage and sending him flying hundreds of meters away.

I sensed Jingshu’s lifeforce flicker and fade away within moments.

Then finally, there was Mei Ying, who opted for a simple clash of inner energy against her erstwhile mentor. They clashed auras from a distance, his white-green aura of pure, concentrated death forming a wide maw that sought to devour Mei Ying’s purple and black aura of ethereal, crawling centipedes, snakes and scorpions.

Mei Ying laughed, and I could sense why. If the Demon devoured her aura, he would also devour her poisonous energy. She would die, but he wouldn’t follow far behind.

The maw closed. Mei Ying fell on the ground like a doll with its strings cut. Out of all the people in attendance, her death was the cleanest, and yet she was the least deserving of such an easy fate.

I approached the Heavenly Demon and he refocused his glare on me.

I put my hands together and prayed so he would pass on peacefully.

The Heavenly Demon’s voice rang clear in my head. Voice transmission. He had probably lost his ability to speak during this battle and this was all he could do. “Do not pray for me. Fight me! I don’t subscribe to your creed! If you wish to send me away with dignity and peace in my heart, then destroy me! Only then—”

His words resonated with me, and I found it to be truth.

The sutras rang in my heart once more. I could hear them now.

I could feel it, finally.

I raised my hand and swatted it down in a symbolic gesture, testing the power of the Insightful stage.

The world obeyed my intent as the earth around the Heavenly Demon flattened, along with him. His lifeforce flickered out in an instant.

There.

All done.

The Heavenly Demon had won in every aspect, even the terms of his own death.

As the Heavenly Demon's lifeforce waved and sizzled out like a put-out candle, the world around us seemed to tremble. The battlefield, once filled with the echoes of clashing swords and the cries of fallen warriors, began to dissolve like mist in the morning sun. The sutras that had resonated within me now faded, leaving behind a haunting silence.

In the midst of this ethereal transition, an unseen force seized me, lifting me off the ground. It felt like an invisible tide pulling me backward, away from the vanquished Heavenly Demon. Time itself seemed to unravel, and the battlefield blurred into a surreal tapestry of light and shadow.

I found myself hurtling backward, sensations of weightlessness and disorientation accompanying the journey. The echoes of the Heavenly Demon's voice, urging me to fight and reject prayers, still lingered in my mind. Yet, the sutras, now distant but persistent, continued to weave their mystic melody.

In an instant, the chaotic swirl of colors and energies coalesced into a blinding flash. I braced for impact, expecting to collide with something solid, but instead, I found myself standing in a familiar classroom. The scent of chalk, the hum of fluorescent lights, and the chatter of students filled the air.