The sky split open.
But not by Jian Wuxin.
This time, it was the Heavens themselves.
A crack tore across the firmament like a celestial wound, visible across the continents of the mortal realm. All life looked up and trembled. Beasts fled underground. Cultivators halted mid-breakthrough. Even the oceans stilled.
From the opening came no angel. No divine light. Only a voice.
A voice that made the world kneel.
> "The traitor known as Jian Wuxin, once titled Heavenpiercer, has defiled the sacred order."
"The anomaly named Frostveil, born of dual Dao, has been claimed by chaos."
"These two now stand in opposition to all that is sanctified."
"Let it be known from now until eternity: they are enemies of the Heavenly Mandate."
"Their names are stripped from the Book of Spirits. Their fates are severed from the River of Karma."
"Let the ten thousand sects hunt them. Let the righteous strike without mercy. Let the heavens respond with war."
"They are to be erased."
The sky sealed itself in thunder. Light did not return for hours.
---
Jian Wuxin stood on a mountain of corpses in Kyoto.
The temple beneath him still burned, its soul wards shattered, its monks turned to ash.
Frostveil stood by his side, her silver hair stained with blood, her breathing steady.
"They were only level six cultivators," she said quietly. "Barely ranked."
"They raised blades," Jian replied, stepping down the temple steps as blood squelched beneath his feet, "and they wore the mark of Heaven."
No more was said.
---
Within two days, Korea fell into silence.
Jian walked through fortified strongholds and turned formations into fractured glass. The sects of Geumdo and Jinmu had gathered their elites, clad in ancestral armor blessed by saints long dead.
It made no difference.
In Jeonju, he cleaved through fifty-two cultivators in one step.
In Busan, he split a mountain in half to destroy a dragon-blood lineage trying to ambush Frostveil.
In Seoul, the Holy City, he stepped into their Hall of Judgment and left nothing behind.
Not a word. Not a prayer.
Just silence.
---
The cultivator world panicked.
Some fled their sects.
Others locked themselves in cultivation caves.
A few spoke his name with reverence.
But most whispered a new title in terror:
> The Emperor of the Killing Art.
They said he no longer wielded a sword.
That he was the sword.
His Dao was not bloodlust. It was finality.
His presence was not demonic. It was absolute.
He did not talk of justice, nor vengeance, nor wrath.
He simply walked. And the world bled for it.
---
Atop Mount Aso in Japan, three Great Clans allied with the Divine Temple of Amaterasu to bait Jian with an ancient relic: a memory shard of his original body—the one that pierced the heavens.
They failed.
The trap never triggered.
Jian arrived early.
And killed them before they finished setting the array.
Frostveil said nothing during the massacre. She moved with him like a shadow drawn in frost.
When one of the Grandmasters begged for mercy, Jian looked into his soul.
And whispered:
"You believed in Heaven. Then let it save you."
He severed the man's head with a thought.
No sword.
Just will.
---
Heaven grew nervous.
They began deploying Celestial Envoys, warriors born of divine essence. Even they failed. Jian's sword aura bypassed divine laws. His cuts were not against flesh, but against fate.
One envoy, before perishing, said: "This is not a man. This is the punishment for sins not yet committed."
---
In a ruined courtyard in Nagoya, Jian finally paused.
He sat beneath a bloodstained tree. Frostveil handed him tea.
He took it, drank, and sighed.
"How many days has it been?"
"Nine," she answered.
He looked at the sky.
"And still they call me enemy."
"They will," she said. "Because they fear you."
"They should," he said, voice calm. "Because I have remembered what I truly am."
She watched him in silence.
His aura, for the first time, wasn't suffocating.
It was tragic.
Not for him.
But for the world.
Because Jian Wuxin had accepted that he was not born to be saved.
He was born to end what others were too cowardly to face.
Even if the Heavens were first on that list.
---
By the thirteenth day, Jian had left a wake of destruction from the Sea of Japan to the edge of China's spiritual barrier.
The skies wept crimson Qi.
The earth refused to grow where his blade had passed.
And from the deepest sects to the highest palaces, one message now spread:
> He is not a cultivator.
He is a consequence.
And his name would never be forgotten.
Not as Jian Wuxin.
But as the Emperor of the Killing Art.