"You've gone too far."
"You must be stopped."
"Even demons bow to the heavens… but you dared to challenge them."
The sky above Mount Hwan wept black as ash rained from the heavens.
Surrounding the blood-soaked peak were tens of thousands of martial elites — the righteous sects, the demonic clans, royal guardians, desert assassins, even foreign cultivators from the far reaches of the West. The entire martial world had gathered for one purpose:
To kill the man standing alone at the summit.
He stood barefoot on a mountain of corpses — shirtless, drenched in blood, body broken but unbent. His long hair flowed with the wind like ink in a storm. His left arm hung shattered. His ribs stuck out through torn flesh. His eyes, crimson and maddened, glowed with something... beyond life.
They called him the Heavenly Demon.
The one who defied every law of heaven.
A servant once — born low, beaten, broken.
Now feared as the greatest threat the world had ever known.
"You people worship the sky," he muttered, spitting blood. "But I... I was born beneath its feet."
He took a step. The entire mountain shook.
The army flinched. But they didn't retreat. Too late for fear.
He had destroyed empires.
He had slaughtered saints.
And now, he stood at the threshold of the Supreme Peak Realm — the level where a man becomes more than mortal, more than legend.
But they wouldn't let him ascend.
They swarmed him.
A thousand blades flew toward him.
Arrows blackened the skies.
Ten Grand Elders attacked in unison, their strikes carrying the will of the heavens.
He fought back.
With each swing of his arm, men exploded.
With each stomp, the earth cracked and screamed.
Heads flew. Bodies burned. Screams filled the void.
He roared, unleashing every ounce of his power — but even demons have limits.
He dropped to one knee.
Blood poured from his mouth. His vision swam.
And then… in that final breath... it happened.
A gate within him shattered.
"So this is it…"
"…the Supreme Peak."
Power surged through his veins like molten lightning. His broken body healed. His ruined core burned with divine fire. He had finally ascended — just as the world tried to erase him.
But there was no time to fight.
They were too many.
So he did what no one in history had ever done:
He sacrificed his peak — to defy death itself.
He formed the final seal.
A forbidden technique carved from ancient soul arts.
A reincarnation spell that would burn his soul into the cycle of life itself.
"I'll return," he said, eyes blazing.
"And when I do… I'll climb again. I'll conquer again. And this time…"
"…I'll reach higher than the heavens you all kneel to."
With a smile twisted in blood and fury, he exploded into a storm of dark light and vanished from the world.
The army stared in stunned silence.
The peak was empty.
The demon had died.
Or so they believed.