Time had lost its meaning inside the arena.
Every second felt like an eternity, and every eternity was reduced to a single moment of bleeding.
Ashen no longer knew how many days or years had passed.
All he knew was that the sky still bled, and the ground still trembled beneath his steps,
as if it feared him—or feared to swallow him whole.
The savage intent inside him had reached its peak.
It was no longer just energy in the air or an aura around him;
it had seeped into his blood, his veins, and the deepest corners of his mind.
It breathed a cold fire into his chest, a feeling of greatness and danger at the same time,
like a demonic whisper from an unseen mouth.
At first, it started as a faint sound in his mind,
like the whistle of wind through a dark cave.
Then it turned into scattered words, and finally, into clear whispers:
> "Kill more… they are watching you… intent spares no hesitation…"
At first, he ignored it.
But soon, he realized the voices were not illusions.
They were voices he knew.
Every tone, every echo belonged to a spirit of one of the beasts he had killed over the years.
It was as if their souls had melted into the air and settled inside his own,
haunting him, reminding him, whispering things no one dared to say.
> "You are one of us now. Your blood is like ours… there is no turning back…"
At that moment, when the voices screamed with every heartbeat,
Ashen felt something inside him break.
The pain was not physical this time—it was mental.
It was as if his consciousness was being torn away piece by piece,
while his eyes stared into an endless red void.
His mind began to collapse, his memories scattering like shattered glass.
He saw the faces of his clan, his father, the blood that night,
but they were no longer clear. They were twisted, covered in mist,
until even his father's face began to merge with those of the beasts he had slain.
He no longer knew who he was.
Was he really Ashen? Or was he something else—something born and killed again with every heartbeat?
In the middle of this collapse, amid the roaring blood and screaming minds,
a faint image slipped into his memory… a shadowy figure standing before him.
Its features were blurred,
its image unclear—but he remembered.
It was like his soul was searching for a last thread of salvation,
digging through the depths of his mind for a vision or memory—
something that could guide him back.
Then, from the haze of pain, blood, and madness, a faint memory appeared, half-eaten by time:
"Why, Ashen… how can you drink blood without purifying it? That will lead you to madness."
"You must cleanse the blood of the wild intent buried within it."
A familiar voice from an ancient time echoed in his mind.
"These are four tablets, Ashen."
"One of them contains a meditation technique that purifies the blood from the insane aura within it."
"But don't forget, you owe me, Ashen."
The word "tablet"…
The word alone sparked something in his mind,
like a single thread of light in a sea of madness.
He remembered that mysterious man who had given him an ancient tablet long ago,
before this infernal trial began.
It was said to contain a technique related to the soul—
a method to purify it from harsh auras and evil energies.
But the tablet wasn't with him.
He had left it with his physical body before the trial began,
and nothing from the outside world was supposed to be summoned here.
Still… in his moment of total despair, he decided to risk everything.
During the month-long rest granted to him after a full year of fighting,
Ashen sat in the middle of a sea of charred corpses,
the sky raining ashes of burned beasts above him.
His body was covered in scars, and his eyes drowned in the blood aura that hadn't faded for years.
He raised his head, looked toward the massive hourglass in the sky,
and spoke in a rough, broken voice:
"If you, Heavenly Dao, placed me in this hell…
then at least give me the tool to survive it.
I want that tablet…"
He waited in silence.
He expected rejection.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the sands within the massive hourglass stopped falling.
Time itself froze.
Everything around him—the blood, the air, even his heartbeat—stopped.
Then, in a sharp instant, the sky above him cracked open,
and from it descended a tablet glowing faintly with blue and crimson light,
moving slowly toward Ashen as if crossing unseen dimensions.
When he touched it, it felt like he was holding the heart of a living creature.
The tablet pulsed in his hands,
then melted like liquid fire and sank into his forehead.
A muffled scream escaped his lips,
and visions of intertwined worlds, spirits, rituals, and moving symbols flashed before his eyes.
Amid that chaos, words appeared before him:
The Heavenly Records of the Pure Soul.
A technique created to cleanse harsh and evil auras, strengthening the soul through pain and purification.
But what Ashen had received was only the first level—
the ability to separate the corrupted parts of the soul.
Instructions appeared before him, written in light:
> "The soul cannot survive corruption without accepting pain.
To separate is to burn.
To purify is to bleed."
Ashen sat cross-legged upon the corpses,
blood flowing beneath him like a river of life and death.
He closed his eyes and began to meditate.
The first stage was complete silence.
But the silence didn't last.
Inside his consciousness,
he found himself standing in an endless red ocean,
shards of the beasts' souls flying around him,
each screaming his name, demanding vengeance,
trying to tear his inner self apart.
He repeated the teachings in his mind:
"Separation does not mean rejection, but understanding…
The savage intent is not an enemy—it is another face of the soul."
Slowly, he began to see dark threads creeping toward a light within his chest.
That light was his soul—tainted, deformed, half white, half red like blood.
He reached into his consciousness, grabbed the threads of corruption,
and pain erupted through his entire being.
It felt like his bones were crumbling, his mind being shredded by countless voices.
But he did not stop.
Each time he tore away a piece of corruption,
the pain grew stronger, but so did the clarity inside him.
Every wave of agony washed away another layer of madness.
As days passed, he learned when pain began and when it ended,
until meditation itself became a bloody war.
While others used their rest period to sleep or heal,
he dove deeper into torment,
turning rest into another battlefield.
Sometimes blood poured from his nose and ears,
but his eyes remained still—mirrors of both madness and awareness.
Weeks passed. Two, then three, then four.
At the end of the rest period, Ashen sat silently,
surrounded by a calm aura unlike before.
But that calm was not peace—it was a storm waiting to break.
Inside him, something had changed.
The voices no longer whispered only of killing.
Some whispered gratitude.
Others vanished completely.
The savage intent was no longer an enemy;
it had become an energy he could touch without being consumed.
He lifted his head toward the sky.
The hourglass began to turn again.
He knew the rest was over, and the hell would start once more.
But this time, he was not the same man who entered it a month ago.
Inside him burned a small, pure spark of awareness—
a flame that would not easily die.
> "The soul is not purified by calm… but by fire."
Those were his last words before standing up.
The savage intent was still there,
but it no longer controlled him.
Now, he was the one reaching for it,
pulling it in, turning it into a weapon of will instead of a curse.
As the hourglass turned again and another year of hell began,
Ashen had crossed the first stage of collapse.
He was no longer just a fighter in a heavenly trial.
He had become something else—
a being walking the edge between man and beast,
and in his eyes burned a crimson spark that looked like the beginning of salvation.