The rain had never fallen this hard on Mount Hwaejeong. It lashed against stone like the wrath of the heavens themselves, as if the sky wished to drown out what it had allowed to happen. But Jin Seong was past caring.
His robes, once bearing the crimson sigil of the Celestial Tiger Sect, were torn and soaked through. His body was bruised, bloodied, broken. He knelt at the very summit where disciples were sworn in, where oaths were spoken beneath the Ninefold Bell.
Now, that bell was silent.
"I didn't steal it," he said, his voice raw.
Master Jang, the head elder, stood unmoved. His beard dripped rain, his gaze colder than steel. "The Forbidden Scripture is missing. You were the last seen near the Vault. That is enough."
Beside him, the other elders nodded in ritualistic judgment. There was no trial. No defense. Only tradition dressed as justice.
"You trained me since I was six," Seong whispered, teeth clenched. "You held me when I broke my first meridian. You called me son…"
"Enough." The command shattered whatever pity might have lingered.
The Grand Disciple, Do Yun—Seong's senior, his sworn brother—stepped forward. His sword gleamed, unsheathed. "You brought shame to our sect."
Seong's eyes locked with his. "You took it, didn't you?"
Do Yun didn't answer. He didn't need to. The flicker in his eyes was enough.
Betrayal was heavier than any blade.
The punishment was ancient. They shattered his dantian. A single strike to the core beneath his navel, a surgical blow with spiritual intent. The pain was not only physical—it was the disintegration of potential. The death of destiny.
When it was over, he collapsed in a heap of flesh and regret. The heavens above did not weep for him. The sect turned away.
He was no longer a disciple. He was no one.
They left him at the summit, amidst the ruins of his shattered cultivation, expecting him to die by morning.
But something else found him.
As the rain slowed and clouds parted for a moment, a scroll unrolled beside him—blown by the wind, or perhaps guided by fate. It was charred at the edges, the ink pulsing faintly red like a heartbeat. The title was burned in calligraphy darker than blood:
"The Heaven-Slaying Scripture"
His fingers, trembling, reached toward it.
And it spoke—not with words, but with instinct. A heat that ignited behind his broken dantian. A hunger that answered his pain. The scroll slithered into his hand like it had been waiting for him all along.
Power surged.
Not clean, not righteous—but raw, vicious, alive.
His body convulsed. Symbols seared themselves into his bones. He screamed—not in agony, but in rebirth.
And the heavens… finally trembled.