---
He stepped into the night.
But this was no sky of the mortal realm.
Above him stretched a vault of swirling black, pierced by crimson cracks that oozed light like bleeding wounds. Each crack pulsed—not with stars, but with screams. The heavens themselves seemed to suffer.
Zhu Yan walked forward, and the world shifted beneath him.
Stone melted into glass.
Glass into ash.
Ash into the bones of beasts too ancient for names.
He had crossed into the outermost reach of the Fourth Gate—the place where the Heaven-Slaying Path was named.
And in its center stood the blade.
It floated—untouched, unheld, unwilling.
Forged from metal that devoured light, etched with runes that twisted if stared at too long. A weapon of legend, but not one that chose heroes.
It chose enemies.
---
Zhu Yan approached.
Each step dragged at his soul like gravity inverted.
His mind screamed with names of long-dead cultivators who had stood where he stood—each one torn apart not by force, but by truth.
Because the blade did not test strength.
It tested resolve.
> "Why do you seek to slay heaven?"
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
Zhu Yan answered without hesitation.
> "Because heaven never weeps for those it breaks."
The blade trembled.
> "Then prove you are not one of them."
---
Visions erupted.
This time, they weren't illusions. They were futures.
He saw himself conquering a sect.
He saw himself turning into his former master.
He saw his flames devouring entire cities—men, women, children screaming as Wrathfire consumed the innocent along with the guilty.
He saw himself forgetting his sister's face.
Becoming what he once swore to destroy.
> "This is the cost," the voice warned.
"Will you still lift the blade?"
---
Zhu Yan stood still.
Let the pain come.
Let the future rot.
He reached for the blade.
The moment his fingers touched it—his body exploded.
Not in flesh.
But in conviction.
Every doubt. Every mercy. Every regret—burned.
The Wrathfire within him screamed in joy.
The Soulbrand across his back flared, fangs growing, flames spiraling into black halos.
And then—
Silence.
He was no longer holding the blade.
He was the blade.
---
> 「Fourth Gate: Heaven-Slaying Armament – COMPLETE」
Blade and bearer have become one.
---
Zhu Yan stood at the center of that broken sky.
His body no longer moved like a man's.
He had become something that heaven feared.
And now, at last, he smiled.
Not out of triumph.
But out of clarity.
Because he knew what came next.
The Fifth Gate.
And the gods waiting behind it.