It was a day like no other. The sky was blue under the midday sun. The mountains kept the skies above the Hong Kingdom clear of clouds, contributing to the dry, hot climate. And most importantly, the Pale King watched over his dominion from the seat of his power.

  Then Day became Night.

  A beacon of darkness pierced through the sky, splitting the heavens in two. Mortals across the Hong Kingdom panicked, their superstitions leading some to kowtow with their faces upon the ground, others to scream and run aimlessly, and still others to give up all hope.

  And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. Nearby practitioners could see wisps of unidentifiable qi dissipating into dark clouds, before fading from reality entirely.

  In the east, dark forces stirred, eager even in their eternal slumber to serve their evil masters. The voidbeasts of the bygone era lay still, their corpses long since harvested with bleached bone picked clean, but their descendants convened in their place. Foul beasts laid in wait, their once noble bloodlines twisted and corrupted by the nature of the void itself.

***

王

  At the seat of his power, the Pale King gazed upon his dominion with displeasure. He expanded his false domain, absorbing the information that defined the world around him like a sponge. He drank in the stories of his subjects with apathy.

  In the beginning, those many cycles ago, his soft and pliable heart couldn’t withstand this technique. Oh, how he’d wept for his subjects, so often victims of tragedy. Children separated from their parents only to grow up in brothels or slums. Beautiful young girls preyed upon by the nobility with neither respite nor repercussions. Mothers mourning children sent to die in petty wars.

  But eventually, his heart turned to stone. He learned the truth of his subjects and their despicable ways. The child separated to pay off a gambling debt. Young girls fall victim to their own family’s moral despondency. Mothers raising children to be violent, cruel, and crass.

  If he cried a tear for every child slain within his realm, he’d have no time to rule.

  Love was an illusion. It was as his teacher had told him long ago, may her ancestors be kind to her.

  “Little Prince,” she’d said. “Though my words may befuddle you now, there will come a time when you understand.” Her eyes were like glaciers, each spawning a river of burning blood that boiled away as it dripped from her face. “The world fundamentally revolves around violence. Cultivation is the path to power, which itself only serves to protect you from violence, or enable you to perform violence upon another.”

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  Love was simply the understanding that another individual did not wish to perpetrate violence upon them. Likewise, fear was simply the expectation of violence in one’s future.

  The Pale King sighed with exhaustion, years of fighting, killing, and politicking having ravaged his body and mind.

  What happened next defied all mortal comprehension.

  Acting on pure instinct, the Pale King constricted his aura, cutting the connection to his throne. When his mind finally caught up to his body, his abnormally gaunt features turned white as fresh snow. The presence he’d detected was monstrous; it felt like an unholy amalgamation, the presence of the Enemy with the power of a god. Worst of all, it was within his kingdom.

  Faced with such overwhelming power and violence, he could only pray its target was not him.

***

前辈

  In the shadows, the Grand Elder of the Void Sect was perplexed. As he watched royal proceedings from his perch, his attention split from his body. For he recognized this feeling, this power.

  No voidbeast has broken free in millenia… I’ll send scouts to investigate.

  Exquisite pain cut through his thoughts like a knife. It was always unpleasant to rejoin separate thought processes, but pain was an old friend to the grizzled elder.

  In an instant, he went from crouching to standing, with no evidence that he had moved. It was as if the world itself had forgotten the elite assassin had ever been crouching to begin with.

  He took a single deliberate step forward onto open air. He waited a heartbeat, then another, for the laws of the plane to constrain him once more, forcing him to obey gravity.

  His cloak fluttered in the wind as he fell. Constructed from the pelt of a juvenile voidbeast, it drank in all but the quickest of photons before returning to feeding upon his own flesh. Had anyone been watching, they would have seen a dark flash where something should have been.

  His target never saw him coming.

  I am the weapon, he thought, reciting the mantra of his sect.

  The weapon is me.

  His hands transformed into daggers as he dived, beginning with his fingers. Nails turned into claws, and then claws into a single blade on each appendage. The daggers had no pommel, meshing seamlessly into flesh, or whatever lay beneath his cloak. Thunder rumbled in the heavens, and he knew it would not bear his presence much longer.

  But it didn’t matter, because his target was already dead.

  One moment, Hong Bao had been walking in formation with his guards. The next, his head was simply nonexistent.

Hong Bao, 2nd Contender for the throne of the Hong Kingdom, and a mid-stage Core cultivator, died without a sound.

  His body kept walking, not realizing its own demise even as blood fountained from the gaping wound atop his body. To their credit, the Royal Guards fell into formation within seconds of the assassination.

  But the culprit was already gone.