Long ago, before the rivers were stained with ambition and the mountains echoed with slaughter, martial arts were nothing more than tools.
Tools for survival.
The people of Jianghu learned to wield blades not for glory, but for protection. A farmer learned to grip a spear so bandits would hesitate. A traveler memorized a fist form so he might return home alive. Martial arts were crude, direct, and honest.
But human desire was never honest.
As conflicts grew, so did methods of killing.
The simple punch evolved into linked sequences.
The crude breath turned into refined circulation techniques.
Mere strength gave birth to internal energy.
What was once instinct became system.
What was once survival became ambition.
Manuals were written.
Artifacts were refined.
Inheritance halls were built.
Secret techniques were buried beneath ancestral tablets.
With each generation, martial arts grew sharper. A martial artist could run across treetops as lightly as a drifting leaf. He could shatter stone with his palm. With a single stroke, he could cleave through iron and bone alike. They were no longer mere humans. They called themselves the people of Murim.
But power breeds comparison.
And comparison breeds dissatisfaction.
Soon, lone wanderers gathered under banners.
Small gatherings became sects.
Sects became factions.
Those who wrapped themselves in morality and proclaimed justice named themselves the Righteous Sects. They spoke of honor, yet sharpened their blades in secret.
Those who discarded restraint and embraced cruelty were branded the Evil Sects. They did not pretend — they simply took.
But there was a martial artist who looked at both sides and laughed.
Justice? Hypocrisy.
Evil? Short-sighted.
Killing for territory, reputation, or fleeting dominance was meaningless.
There existed a different pursuit.
A path beyond righteousness.
A path beyond evil.
A path that sought only one thing.
To break the limits of flesh.
To transcend time itself.
To live forever.
He was not bound by reputation.
He was not restrained by morality.
He was called—The Demon of Murim.
The mountain peak was already drenched in blood long before the final encirclement formed.
Corpses lay in uneven layers across fractured stone. Some wore the golden robes of the Righteous Sects, their sleeves embroidered with moral maxims that now meant nothing. Others bore the dark insignias of the Evil factions, whose practitioners had lived by slaughter and now died by it. Their blood mixed freely, without regard for doctrine or alignment.
Death was the only impartial judge in Murim.
Do Mu-Jin stood at the center of the summit, surrounded on all sides.
The encirclement had formed at dawn. It was now near dusk.
For nine hours neither side had acted.
This was not mercy. It was fear.
Even wounded, even exhausted, even standing alone — Mu-Jin remained a variable none dared underestimate.
The Righteous Sects had spent three centuries condemning him as the calamity of Jianghu. The Evil factions had cursed him for disrupting the balance of power. Entire bloodlines had vanished because of his experiments. Cities had burned so that he could refine a single artifact.
Yet the reason they stood here today was not vengeance.
It was possibility.
The Heaven-Defying Mirror rested in Mu-Jin's hand, faint ripples of light flowing across its polished surface. It did not radiate overwhelming power. It did not emit oppressive pressure. In appearance, it was almost ordinary.
But its function was not ordinary.
It represented a theory.
A hypothesis against heavens.
That was enough.
One elder stepped forward, suppressing the tremor in his voice.
"Do Mu-Jin, you have reached the end of your road. Hand over the Heaven-Defying Mirror. Preserve some dignity."
Dignity.
Mu-Jin considered the word carefully.
Dignity was a concept created by the strong to regulate the weak. It was a leash disguised as virtue.
When a person lost power, others would urge him to die with dignity — because a desperate man was unpredictable.
He did not reply.
Another voice shouted from the crowd, thick with hatred.
"You slaughtered my sect to refine that artifact! You killed thousands who had never even drawn a blade against you!"
Mu-Jin remembered.
He had required blood rich in qi resonance. The sect had possessed an ideal lineage. Efficiency had dictated the outcome. It had not been personal.
That was the difference between them.
They framed everything through emotion.
He framed everything through utility.
The Righteous Sects claimed he was evil because he disregarded human life. The Evil Sects resented him because he disregarded alliances. Both were correct.
But neither understood him.
He did not kill for pleasure. He did not kill for chaos.
He killed because immortality required sacrifice.
And in this world, sacrifices were always made by the weak.
The sun began its descent, casting long shadows across the mountain. The sky gradually turned crimson, as if reflecting the years of accumulated slaughter that had led to this moment.
Mu-Jin's body was at its limit.
His meridians were cracked.
His internal energy was nearly exhausted.
Blood loss blurred the edges of his vision.
He was fully aware of his condition.
There was no escape.
Even if he slaughtered another hundred today, more would arrive tomorrow. The alliance of righteousness and evil was fragile, but the fear of immortality falling into one man's hands was stronger than their mutual hatred.
This was cause and effect.
For three centuries he had destabilized the balance of Murim. He had attacked righteous sects and evil clans alike. He had disrupted inheritances, stolen techniques, manipulated conflicts to acquire rare materials.
He had treated the entire world as a resource pool.
Now the resource pool had responded.
This outcome was inevitable.
Mu-Jin did not resent them for it.
If their positions were reversed, he would have done the same.
He slowly lifted his gaze and observed the faces surrounding him.
Some were young heroes who believed they were participating in history.
Some were aging elders who saw opportunity beneath moral rhetoric.
Some trembled.
Some burned with fanatic conviction.
None were truly free.
All of them were shackled by lifespan.
That was the true enemy.
Mortality.
Talent could be compensated with time.
Injury could be healed with resources.
Reputation could be rebuilt through effort.
But lifespan was absolute.
A peak expert at one hundred years old was still closer to death than a mediocre cultivator at twenty.
This fundamental inequality disgusted him.
From the moment he understood this truth, everything else became secondary.
Righteousness? A tool of governance.
Evil? A method of rebellion.
Sect loyalty? A resource network.
Human relationships? Bargaining chips.
All transient.
Only immortality held intrinsic value.
Mu-Jin tightened his grip on the Heaven-Defying Mirror.
For two hundred years he had refined it piece by piece, correcting flaws, replacing materials, testing resonance patterns. Entire cultivation realms had been spent solving a single theoretical problem: If time moved forward, could it be made to fold?
If cause led to effect, could effect be forced to precede cause?
The Mirror in his hand was incomplete.
He knew that.
Its success rate was uncertain.
But certainty was a luxury reserved for cowards.
A shout broke through the tension.
"He's activating it! Stop him!"
Thousands of warriors surged forward simultaneously.
Mu-Jin did not panic.
He had already calculated the probability of interruption.
His lips curved slightly.
If this attempt failed, then his path ended here.
If it succeeded—
Then next time, he would begin not as a hunted demon at two hundred years old.
He would begin young.
He would conserve resources more efficiently.
He would eliminate threats before they matured.
He would not repeat this mistake.
There was no regret.
Only adjustment.
Internal energy poured into the Mirror.
Light erupted outward.
The mountain trembled.
For a brief moment, Mu-Jin felt something unfamiliar.
Not fear.
Not excitement.
Possibility.
"If there is another chance," he thought calmly,"then I will still choose this path."
The explosion swallowed everything.