Time has a way of distorting when violence is imminent.
Early the following morning, the atmosphere in Sifang City was heavy, weighed down by an unspoken threat. In a secluded corner of the city, far from the bustling markets and prying eyes, a solitary carriage came to a halt before a quiet, dilapidated courtyard.
Jiang Dao stood before the carriage, his imposing frame casting a long shadow. He looked up at the silent compound, his senses extending outward like invisible tendrils. Ten minutes had passed in absolute silence. To the untrained eye, the house was empty, but nothing could hide from Jiang Dao. His ears picked up the faintest rhythms of breathing; his nose caught scents that didn't belong to the decay of autumn.
"Daoist Master," Jiang Dao said, his voice low and rumbling, breaking the stillness. He turned to the withered figure beside him. "Shall we go inside and see what they have prepared for us?"
Old Daoist Linghu swallowed hard, adjusting his robes nervously. "As you say, Gang Leader Jiang. After you."
Jiang Dao stepped forward, the gravel crunching beneath his boots, and rapped his knuckles against the weathered wood of the gate.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three sharp knocks echoed through the street. Before the sound had even faded, the pitch-black gates groaned and swung inward of their own accord. There was no lock, no gatekeeper—only a gaping maw leading into darkness.
The courtyard beyond was a portrait of desolation. Dead leaves were piled in rotting drifts, shifting restlessly in a cold, whistling wind that seemed to originate from nowhere. It looked abandoned, a place where humanity had long since fled, leaving behind only the chill of the grave.
Jiang Dao walked in as if strolling through his own garden. Old Daoist Linghu followed, his eyes darting anxiously from shadow to shadow.
It was a theater of the macabre. The yard was overgrown with tangled, withered grass. Rows of white lanterns, tattered and decayed, swayed on rotting strings. The corridors flanking the main path were choked with thick, grey spiderwebs. It was difficult to imagine that the prestigious Heavenly Spirit Prefecture had chosen this ruin for a diplomatic meeting.
Jiang Dao's heavy boots crushed the dry grass, the sound rhythmic and deliberate. He scanned the area, his gaze settling on a corridor to his right.
"Hee... hee hee..."
A burst of laughter, high-pitched and erratic, cut through the silence. It came from the depths of the complex, sudden and disorienting.
Jiang Dao didn't flinch. He glanced upward, his expression bored, and continued walking. Linghu, however, stiffened. The color drained from the old man's face, though he quickly forced a mask of calm. He realized what was happening.
This was a test.
The Heavenly Spirit Prefecture was measuring Jiang Dao. If the Gang Leader of the Flame Gang couldn't handle a few parlor tricks, he wasn't worth their time. If he failed here, the Southern Region wouldn't be courted; it would be annexed. The Flame Gang would face a simple choice: submission or annihilation.
Linghu felt a weight settle in his gut. He looked at Jiang Dao's broad back and felt a familiar sense of doom. Every time he accompanied this man, reality seemed to bend toward chaos. Linghu hadn't even reached the Dragon Level of cultivation yet; walking in Jiang Dao's shadow felt like walking a tightrope over a volcano.
They moved into the corridor. Dust motes danced in the gloom, and thick webs barred their path. Jiang Dao didn't bother to brush them aside with his hands. A surge of Blazing Sun True Qi radiated from his body, a wave of invisible heat that disintegrated the webs meters before he even touched them.
They reached a spacious main hall flanked by sealed rooms. Jiang Dao's eyes swept over the main structure, dissecting its layout in a second, before turning his attention to a closed door on the side.
"Let's search the perimeter," Jiang Dao said, his voice flat. He walked toward the door.
Creak.
The rotting wood protested as he pushed it open. The room was a tomb, sealed away from the sunlight for years. The air was thick with the cloying scent of mildew and stale incense. Furniture lay overturned in the corners, chaotic and broken.
In the center of the room sat a black coffin.
It was stark, ominous, and clearly tended to. In front of it lay a spread of paper ingots, candles, and spirit money—offerings for the dead, fresh enough to suggest a recent visitor.
Jiang Dao approached the coffin, his gaze critical. He was about to move to the other side of the room when the air temperature plummeted. A gust of Yin energy—cold, biting, and unnatural—swirled behind him, sending dead leaves skittering across the floorboards.
Jiang Dao stopped. He didn't turn his body, only his head, glancing over his shoulder with a look of mild annoyance.
There, perched on his left shoulder, was a head.
It was tiny, the size of a newborn's, with skin the color of bruised indigo. It grinned at him, a grotesque expression that split its face, revealing a maw of needle-like teeth. Its eyes were two voids of pitch black. Its hands, small and thin as chicken claws, were wrapped tightly around Jiang Dao's thick neck.
"Is this the best the dignified Heavenly Spirit Prefecture can do?" Jiang Dao asked, his tone dry.
BOOM!
He didn't move a muscle, but the air around him detonated.
A terrifying torrent of Blazing Sun True Qi erupted from his pores. It was a force of nature, pure masculine energy hot enough to melt stone, piercing through the entity on his back like a spear of lava. The force was so violent that the door behind him shattered into splinters, and the room's temperature spiked to blast-furnace levels.
And yet, the indigo infant didn't burn.
It clung to the back of his neck, motionless. Its dark eyes locked onto Jiang Dao, its smile widening until the corners of its mouth seemed to touch its ears. It mocked the heat. Suddenly, it unhinged its jaw and bit down savagely on Jiang Dao's neck.
A foul, rotting stench washed over Jiang Dao.
He didn't panic. The moment the teeth grazed his skin, Jiang Dao's massive hand snapped up, covering the creature's face. He squeezed.
It felt like grabbing a slimy, freezing eel. The creature was slick, exuding a bone-deep coldness. As Jiang Dao applied pressure—enough to crush steel—the infant's head simply deformed. It caved in like gelatin, fluid and rubbery, shifting shape under his fingers but refusing to break.
Jiang Dao frowned. He yanked his hand forward.
Splat.
The sound was wet and sickening. Despite the creature's immense grip, Jiang Dao's brute strength ripped it from his neck. He held the writhing, indigo mass in front of him.
Bang!
He slammed it against the wall. The creature bounced off, seemingly unharmed, and let out a chittering laugh. It blurred into motion, a streak of black light ricocheting off the walls, faster than the eye could track, launching itself back at Jiang Dao's throat.
Jiang Dao didn't dodge. His palm, now wreathed in visible flames of divine energy, met the creature in mid-air.
The impact sounded like a cannon shot. The infant's chest collapsed, flattened into a pancake. But instead of exploding into gore, it rebounded like a rubber ball, flying backward and tumbling across the floor. Jiang Dao watched as the deep handprint on its chest popped back out, the flesh knitting itself together in seconds.
"Hee... hee hee..."
The creature skittered along the floor, baring its teeth. It began to run circles around him, accelerating until it was nothing but a green blur, a cyclone of malice.
Then, it vanished.
Jiang Dao felt a shift in the air pressure behind him. He didn't turn. He simply reached back, his fingers hooking into claws.
Squish.
He caught it. The infant had teleported directly to the nape of his neck, intending to strike, but had effectively thrown itself into Jiang Dao's grip.
"Enough," Jiang Dao rumbled. "This meaningless probing is boring me. If you want to recruit me, show your faces. These parlor tricks are for scaring children."
His fingers turned obsidian black, transforming into the terrifying grip of a demon. He squeezed, crushing the infant into a twisted, distorted shape. It shrieked—a high, piercing sound—but it did not die. It was indestructible, a construct of rubber and malice that absorbed kinetic energy without failing.
Jiang Dao's patience evaporated. He flooded the creature with the Blazing Sun Divine Fire, channeling thousands of years' worth of cultivation into its small body.
SCREECH!
The infant wailed, but it didn't melt.
Before Jiang Dao could escalate further, a scream echoed from the courtyard. It was Old Daoist Linghu.
Jiang Dao spun around, slamming the infant into the floorboards and stomping on it with the force of a pile driver. The floor disintegrated. Stone and wood exploded outward, and the ground beneath turned to magma. The infant was buried deep in the earth, flattened and screaming, as Jiang Dao launched himself out of the room like a rocket.
He landed in the courtyard. Beneath the black locust tree, Linghu was slumped on the ground, his face a mask of sheer terror.
"Don't come closer, Gang Leader!" Linghu shrieked.
Jiang Dao sensed the danger a split second before he saw it. The hairs on his arms stood up. On the trunk of the black locust tree, a black Swastika symbol manifested. It sizzled with necrotic energy, surrounded by the aura of death.
It shot toward him.
Jiang Dao crossed his arms, his Blazing Sun Field expanding instantly into a ring of fire around him. It was futile. The black Swastika ignored his defenses, phasing through his arms and sinking directly into his chest.
A chill spread through his veins. He looked down to see the black mark branded onto his skin, pulsing, sending waves of cold rot toward his organs.
"What is this?" Jiang Dao asked, his voice dangerously low. "Another curse?"
Linghu looked at him with despair.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Applause broke the tension. The dilapidated courtyard shivered and dissolved like a mirage in the heat. The ruins, the webs, the rot—it all vanished.
In the blink of an eye, Jiang Dao and Linghu were standing in a pristine, beautiful garden.
Four young men stood around them, relaxed and smiling.
"As expected of the Flame Gang Leader," said a young man in a white scholar's robe. He was handsome, holding a folding fan, with the air of a wealthy aristocrat. On his shoulder sat the indigo infant, glaring at Jiang Dao with pure venom. "A dazzling performance. And yes, you are correct. That was a curse."
Jiang Dao stared at him, his expression unreadable.
"It is the Blood-Melting Demon Curse of the Old Buddha Temple," the scholar continued, his tone condescending. "You really are too careless for a man of your position. How could you approach the locust tree without checking for traps? It's disappointing, really."
Jiang Dao ignored him entirely, turning his gaze to a young monk in orange robes.
The monk smiled serenely, palms pressed together. "Gang Leader Jiang, do not fear. The curse is mild. It will merely cause you to rot into a puddle of foul-smelling sludge within three days. However... if I were to plant a few more, you wouldn't last an hour."
"Is that so?" Jiang Dao asked. "We've never met. Why the hostility?"
Internally, Jiang Dao's body was a battlefield. His Extreme Yang Divine Fire rushed to purge the black Swastika, but something strange happened. A dormant, pre-existing curse within Jiang Dao's body woke up and swallowed the Swastika whole. It absorbed the necromantic energy like a nutrient, erasing the monk's attack in a heartbeat.
"There is no 'why'," the monk said, his smile never wavering. "I am simply teaching you the new rules. We know you dominate the Southern Region. But times have changed. The Heavenly Spirit Prefecture is here to establish order."
"The new order is simple," interjected a man in red robes. "The Flame Gang will answer to us. You will provide horses, fabric, and jewels. Furthermore, you will remit fifty percent of your annual revenue to the Prefecture. We believe this is... generous."
Jiang Dao looked at them. The scholar, the monk, the man in red. They looked at him like a wolf looks at a sheep.
"So that's how it is," Jiang Dao murmured. He cracked his neck. "Since you've shared your rules, perhaps you should hear mine."
He grinned. It wasn't a nice smile. It was a mouth full of teeth, predatory and cruel.
"My rule is simple: My turf, my rules."
The air pressure in the garden dropped.
"You came to my territory. You cursed me. You threatened me. You have broken my rules. And the penalty..." Jiang Dao's eyes began to glow with a terrible light. "...is death."
BOOM!
The transformation was instantaneous. Jiang Dao's body exploded outward, muscles swelling, bones lengthening. He grew to five meters in height, a tower of vascular muscle and jagged bone spurs.
He moved faster than thought.
The monk's eyes widened, his serene smile vanishing as a shadow eclipsed the sun.
"You—"
Jiang Dao's hand, now the size of a shovel, slammed down.
It wasn't a fight; it was an execution. The impact drove the monk into the earth like a nail into soft wood. The sound of breaking bones was sickeningly loud—a wet crunch of arms and legs shattering under impossible pressure.
"Stop!" the others screamed.
Jiang Dao ignored them. He raised his hand and brought it down again. And again. The monk was reduced to a paste of meat and robes embedded in the garden soil.
A screech cut the air. The ghost infant launched itself at Jiang Dao's back.
Jiang Dao spun, his movements blur-inducing for a creature of his size. He clamped his hands together, catching the infant in mid-air.
"Cannot be killed?" Jiang Dao roared, his voice now a demonic bass. "Resentful?"
He grabbed the struggling creature and shoved it into his mouth.
His teeth, now serrated and massive, clamped down.
CRUNCH.
The rubbery, indestructible flesh sheared apart. The infant screamed as Jiang Dao chewed and swallowed, its spiritual energy fueling the furnace in his gut.
With the infant still screaming in his stomach, Jiang Dao lunged at the remaining three.
The scholar in white tried to dodge, relying on his legendary speed. It was useless. Jiang Dao's reach was inescapable. A backhand swat caught the scholar mid-stride. He exploded into a mist of blood and bone fragments, sent careening into the distance.
Reality flickered. The garden vanished. They were back in the ruined courtyard.
The illusion had shattered under the weight of Jiang Dao's killing intent.
"An illusion?" Jiang Dao laughed, a sound like grinding stones. "You think a fake reality can hold me?"
He expanded further. Black fur sprouted from his skin. He grew to eight meters, a primordial Demon Ape wreathed in solar fire. He slammed his fists into the ground, pumping pure Yang energy into the earth, destabilizing the very foundation of their array.
RUMBLE.
Four small flags in the corners of the yard erupted from the soil and disintegrated. The illusion broke completely, revealing the terrified faces of the survivors.
"What kind of monster are you?" the red-robed man shrieked, backing away.
Jiang Dao appeared in front of him. Clap. The man was reduced to a red stain on Jiang Dao's palms.
The blue-robed youth turned to flee. "Elder! Save me!"
Jiang Dao's claw descended, catching him by the waist.
"Stop!" a booming voice commanded from the sky.
Too late. Jiang Dao squeezed. The youth popped like a ripe grape, blood raining down on the dry grass.
A figure slammed into the courtyard—an older monk, radiating power, moving like yellow lightning. He met Jiang Dao's strike with a palm of his own.
KA-BOOM!
The shockwave stripped the topsoil from the earth. Jiang Dao staggered back two steps, his massive bulk trembling. The older monk slid back four steps, his face pale, eyes wide with shock.
Three more figures landed silently around the courtyard. The Heavenly Spirit Prefecture's reinforcements.
Jiang Dao shook out his wrist, the bones clicking back into place. He looked at the circle of enemies, his eyes burning with golden fire.
He stepped forward and stomped his foot down.
SPLAT.
Beneath his heel, the first monk—the one he had planted in the ground earlier—finally expired, crushed completely.
"Stop!" the older monk roared, his face twisting in fury.
"Stop what?" Jiang Dao sneered. The heat radiating from him withered the locust tree. "I told you. My turf. My rules."
He glared at the newcomers, his aura rising to meet theirs.
"I wanted to talk reason," Jiang Dao rumbled, his voice shaking the walls. "But you insisted on talking rules. So let's play by the rules. I'll bury every last one of you."