Chapter 97 - 96: The Prince Who Dreamed of Heaven

Chapter 97: Chapter 96: The Prince Who Dreamed of Heaven Steel met spirit. They drove him back with perfect rhythm, one shadow, one spear. Skitz vanished and reappeared, bleeding him with every flick. Lumberling closed in with crushing thrusts, each one breaking through defense after defense. Nie Fenghun staggered. "I am destined to trample the weak!" he roared. "To carve a path with blood and fire! You... you are just another stone in my ascent!" Skitz scoffed. "Is he seriously monologuing right now? I don’t even know what he’s saying, and I still want to hit him." Lumberling stepped forward, calm and deadly. "No. He’s just louder than most." Nie struck again. A flurry of palm strikes blurred through the air, aimed at Lumberling’s throat, heart, and solar plexus with surgical precision. The movement was fast, flowing, strange, more dance than duel. But Lumberling had fought monsters that twisted through trees and men who struck from shadows. His body moved instinctively now. He ducked the first, turned with the second, then caught the third against the haft of his spear. The counter came without thought, a sharp thrust low and upward, straight through Nie’s shoulder. Steel met flesh. Blood hissed out. "Guh!" Nie staggered, only for a shadow to slice past him. Skitz. His dagger carved a shallow, red line across Nie’s ribs before vanishing again into the smoke. Nie stumbled back, chest heaving, arm hanging limp, blood soaking through red robes already torn to shreds. Then, he dropped to one knee. His eyes weren’t on them anymore. He looked upward, past the rooftops, past the battlefield, past the stars themselves. "Why... why is the heaven so cruel to me?" he whispered, voice cracking. "I, Nie Fenghun... will fall here? Like this? Before my legend has even begun?" He laughed, a hollow, broken sound that echoed off the stone. Blood streamed from his mouth, mixing with dirt and moonlight. "I was a prince. A dragon among worms. I was destined to rise, to seize the skies, to devour realms and rule worlds!" His eyes gleamed feverishly now. "I won’t die in the mud. Not like this. Not here." His whole body trembled. "I was chosen..." His hand lifted weakly, fingers trembling as if trying to claw the heavens themselves. And then... Lumberling appeared before him. Silent. Cold. Still. His spear gleamed in the firelight. His face unreadable. "What the hell are you blabbering about?" he said quietly. His spear didn’t waver. It drove through Nie Fenghun’s chest with ruthless finality A gasp. A twitch. Then stillness. The red-robed man sagged forward, his breath gone. The light in his eyes dimmed. And whatever dream he’d clung to... faded with it. ..... The battlefield had gone still. The clamor of blades, the scent of blood, even the groans of the wounded had faded. Only smoke drifted now, carrying the memory of chaos on its curling trails. Lumberling stood above the fallen man’s body, spear slick with blood. His heart still pounded from the battle, but his focus had narrowed. "Guard me," he said quietly. Skitz nodded, silent, stepping to his side and scanning the perimeter with his blade half-drawn. "What the hell was that guy?" Skitz silently muttered. Lumberling lowered himself beside Nie Fenghun’s corpse. Cross-legged. Calm. Alert. But inside, something twisted. ’Why does this feel familiar?’ he wondered. Not just the man... the feeling. The stranger’s final words, his delusion of grandeur, the grief in his eyes, even his name, Nie Fenghun. All of it clung like dust in his mind, refusing to settle. ’No time for questions.’ He drew a slow breath, centering himself. ’If I’m right... I’ll know soon enough.’ He placed a hand near the chest wound. Essence Devour. A thread of violet unraveled from his chest, ethereal, pulsing, reaching for the corpse like a siphon of will. It latched onto Nie’s body. And then it began. The flow. Only this time... it wasn’t just raw power. It shimmered, like oil over water. It folded in on itself, danced in strange pulses, vibrated with echoes of something ancient. Something... foreign. (You have devoured the Martial Artist’s essence. 500 Essence absorbed. Absorbing a portion of the Martial Artist’s memories and experience...) (Essence Acquired: Martial Qi - Foreign Variant.) Then it hit him. Flashes. Too fast. Too vivid. A jade palace on a snowy cliff, its rooftops lined with curved dragons. A young boy crying under a cane’s shadow. His ribs purple, his voice hoarse. A girl whispering, "You’ll never be enough." Her back already turning. A dagger in the dark. Betrayal. A woman’s kiss laced with poison. A presence, not human, not divine. It loomed beyond stars and soul. "Survive. Adapt. Rise again." It spoke. Then... (You have devoured a fragment of Divine Blessing: Qi Adaptation - A trait bestowed upon beings from the Martial Realms, allowing them to thrive in foreign energy systems.) Lumberling gasped. The link snapped. He opened his eyes, the world crashing back around him, the firelight, the distant cries of scavengers, the moon still hanging coldly above. He sat still for a long moment. Then: ’He wasn’t a mage,’ he realized. ’He wasn’t even born here.’ Lumberling slowly looked down at the corpse. ’Not just some rogue warrior. Not a fanatic.’ ’An outsider. Like me.’ But from another world, a world of martial sects, qi, cultivation, and ancient grudges. A world that once only existed in stories he used to read. One word surfaced in his mind: ’Murim.’ He stared at Nie’s body as the realization sank deeper. ’How many of us are there?’ he thought. ’And more importantly... Who brought him here?’ ... Meanwhile, in Another Realm... In a place where time had no meaning, where light bent around thought and substance obeyed no law, an eye opened. And it burned. A single, lidless eye, vast and ancient, floated in the void like a dying sun. It blinked once, if blinking could describe the momentary narrowing of something older than stars, and cast a terrible glow across the shattered wreckage of eternity. Cracked celestial rings hung suspended like broken halos. Chains of molten night wound through constellations. Planets flickered in and out of existence like breaths. Then something changed. A tremor. A twitch in the tapestry of fate. A thread was gone. A divine connection severed. Nie Fenghun was dead. And worse... A piece of the Blessing had been taken. The god saw it all in an instant, his gaze piercing across veils, planes, and lives. His champion had fallen. And now, his power, a spark of himself, drifted in the chest of another. Someone he did not know. A ripple of fury radiated outward. It was not noise. It was not light. It was reality unraveling. The golden-black abyss around him churned. The stars screamed in silence. The great bindings that coiled around his form, a million links of divine flame, frozen time, and anti-light, began to creak. He stirred. A throne of silence cracked beneath his weight as he rose, form half-formed, as if struggling to be remembered by the world. "Who dares?" The voice was not sound. It was collapse, whole galaxies folding inward under its weight. For a heartbeat, across realms forgotten by all but the dead, divine pressure flared. Slumbering gods flinched. Warped spirits screamed into the ether. Somewhere, temples trembled, though their worshipers knew not why. The god leaned forward, willing himself to rise. But the chains snapped tight. Runes blazed to life, orbiting him like celestial locks, their words not spoken but remembered by existence. Light cracked. Time reversed and corrected. The bindings pulled tighter. The prison held. "No..." he snarled, voice splintering into every tongue. "Not now..." The war, the real war, still raged far beyond the veil. Old gods clawed at their borders. Pale pantheons whispered curses. He couldn’t risk shifting focus. Still... rage burned. He strained. The chains glowed hotter, responding with perfect, divine cruelty. His power buckled back into the cage. His eye dimmed. His roar fractured, no longer a threat, only a promise. And with one final breath of fury... The eye closed. The god sank beneath the surface of unbeing.