Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Her inner palace was an inferno of howling formless shadows.

The moment she closed her eyes, the silence of the night cracked as thousands of phantom whispers began to scrape against the back of her skull like dry fingernails dragging across slate.

’You stole the heavens’ child...’

’Demon...’

’Butcher...’

’You will die in the dirt, unmourned and unburied...’

Heart demons crawled through her meridians, manifesting as cold slimy hands that clawed at her throat, suffocating her breath every time her consciousness began to drift toward sleep.

Rèn sat shivering in the dark with her teeth chattering violently against each other and her fingers digging through her linen sleeves until her nails drew blood from her forearms.

...She needed an anchor.

She needed the one safe harbor that had kept her sane through the cattle pens and the bone-pit.

Rèn squeezed her eyes shut, fighting past the shrieking voices of the heart demons, reaching deep into the oldest most sacred corner of her memory.

She tried to picture the Quiet Pine Sect on a sunny autumn morning and she tried to picture Qiu Ling.

She remembered the wooden comb... She remembered the clean sweet scent of camellia oil... She remembered the gentle warm fingers working through the stubborn tangles of her wild black hair, and she remembered the neat, tight red-ribbon braid resting over her shoulder.

Rèn reached for her Senior Sister’s face... she searched for the lotus-like jawline, the soft dark eyes that crinkled into crescent moons, the gentle smile that had made the leaking hall feel like a palace, however nothing came.

The space where Qiu Ling’s face should have been was a flat, gray, hollow void of mist.

Rèn’s breath hitched in her throat.

A sharp agonizing spike of pure terror pierced her chest, far worse than any wound a sword could carve.

She tried again... She clawed frantically at the memory, searching for the curve of her cheek, the line of her nose, the sound of her laughter... however it was gone.

The Heavenly Dao had collected its debt.

For every drop of fate she’d stolen, it had reached into her and torn something out in return, and it had started with the most precious thing she owned.

She remembered the hands, she remembered the unraveled braid on the bloody threshold but the face of the only person who had ever loved her was gone.

A single scalding tear rolled down Rèn’s cheek, cutting through the dried clay on her skin, dripping off her jawline to splash against the cold basalt.

Rèn slowly pushed herself up from the stone floor.

Her tall, muscular frame straightened in the freezing night wind, her untamed black hair cascading in wild jagged waves down her back.

Her dark crimson eyes opened, burning with a lightless void of pure slaughter that swallowed the shadows around her.

”Ke... kekekekkekekekekekeke...”

She picked up her notched iron sword.

She turned her boots toward the southern horizon, toward the distant, jagged silhouette of Mount Xueha, and began to walk through the dark.

...

The moonless dark over Mount Xueha smelled of iron filings and stagnant marsh water.

Rèn stepped onto the first granite riser of the Blood Demon Sect’s front stairs, her iron sword already naked in her right hand.

The blade was scarred, notched along the center ridge, and cold with mountain moisture... however her heavy leather boots made no sound against the stone.

Two sentries in high-collared crimson robes stepped out from behind the spiked wooden palisades with their iron-shod staves lowered to block the path.

”Halt, bitch,” the taller one hissed, his spiritual sense flaring with late Foundation Establishment demonic qi. ”The inner mountain is sealed by order of the Hall of Caul—”

Rèn did not break her stride.

Her center of gravity sank half an inch, her left foot sliding forward along the wet flags.

Step... Guard... Cut!

SHHK!

The notched iron edge tore horizontally through the taller sentry’s windpipe before his jaw could snap shut.

The second guard froze, his pupils dilating in paralyzed horror as Rèn’s dark crimson eyes locked onto his chest.

She simply tilted her chin with the stolen golden favor of the Heavenly Dao humming beneath her skin.

”Run,” she said, her voice sounding as dry and flat as slate.

The sentry dropped his staff, spun on his heels, and bolted down the dirt switchbacks into the pitch-black forest, his boots slipping in gravel until the night swallowed his ragged gasps.

Those who turned and ran lived.

Those who reached for steel, those who drew talismans, and those who stood upon the ancestral stairs attempting to invoke rank or lineage died where their shadows fell.

Rèn of course did not climb toward the high towers first.

She turned downward, following the cold familiar draft of sulfur, rancid tallow, and old sickness that seeped from the underground fissures.

She descended through the lightless tunnels, stepping past the iron-grated checkpoints, cutting down the overseers who fumbled with bronze keys and leather scourges.

When she reached the lowest pens, three hundred feet beneath the rock, the iron cages were as cold and silent as the day she had been thrown into their straw.

Rèn took the heavy iron keys from an overseer’s severed belt.

CLANG!

She unlocked the first cage, kicking the rusted gate wide open until the hinges groaned and warped against the damp stone.

She moved down the long three-tiered aisle, her notched blade shearing through iron padlocks where the keys failed.

CLATTER!

”Get out,” she told the hollow-eyed children huddled in the straw, their small faces gray with their wrists bound with dried leather strips. ”Walk down the mountain road... Don’t follow the river. If you see a man in white or red, hide in the culverts until the dawn comes.”

The children stared at her tall, black-clad frame, trembling like trapped birds, then scrambled past her boots in a silent, frantic wave of bare feet and fluttering rags, vanishing into the upper tunnels.

Once the lowest corridor was empty, Rèn turned back toward the mountain’s throat.

She climbed the stone spine of Mount Xueha, moving through the Outer Court, the Hall of Cauldrons, the Pavilion of Disciples, and the Elder Sanctuaries.

Every elder who stepped onto the polished basalt terraces with a flying sword or an obsidian lancet met the same three movements... a forward step that claimed the distance, a high guard that deflected the blow into empty air, and a downward cut that parted flesh, severed tendons, and sundered spirit roots.

As the bodies fell across the high courtyards, Rèn’s Primordial Blood Root expanded outward from her chest, humming like a drawn iron wire.

The vital red fluid pooling across the flagstones, the arterial spray clinging to the pillars, and the hot runoff overflowing the drainage troughs shuddered, broke free of gravity, and began to rise.

Thousand-drop beads of dark crimson floated into the cold night sky, gathering beneath the swollen storm clouds like an inverted red ocean suspended above Mount Xueha.

When the cloud layers grew too heavy to bear the weight, the sky tore open.

SPLATTER!

The blood of the entire sect fell back toward the earth in a warm, thick, torrential downpour, coating the black tiles, the pine branches, and the stone parapets in a suffocating shroud of iron-scented crimson rain.

Rèn walked through the downpour with her hair soaked and heavy until she reached the highest crest of the mountain.

Standing alone amidst the jagged basalt cliffs was the Great Hall of Black Stone.

The double doors of solid obsidian lay thrown wide, illuminated by the guttering light of twenty bone-carved brazier stands burning blue tallow.

Waiting inside, seated upon an ancient throne carved from a single petrified dragon skull, was the Heavenly Demon.

He was vast and ancient beyond reckoning, his shoulders broad as a carriage axle, his bare chest crisscrossed with three thousand years of scar tissue and ritual brands.

He had consumed the blood of ten thousand children to sustain his withered core, until his skin had turned the dry terrifying color of rusted iron.

His hair was sparse and white with his crimson eyes sunken deep beneath heavy craggy brow-bones, and his long fingernails were tipped with jagged obsidian talons.

He looked at Rèn standing on the threshold, her black clothes dripping red rain onto the black basalt floor, and a deep rattling rumble rolled up through his massive chest.

”Hah...” the old monster wheezed, his lips parting in a wide, yellow-toothed grin that tore the dried crust at the corners of his mouth. ”Hahahaha! Look at you... Look at the marrow humming in those skinny bones! I remember when the buyers dragged you down the mountain road... I tasted a drop of your broth from the cauldrons and thought you would crack within forty days!”

He gripped the ivory armrests of his throne, his fingernails gouging furrows into the petrified bone.

”The finest blood cattle I ever raised,” the Heavenly Demon rasped, his voice echoing through the vaulted stone rafters like dry thunder. ”You fed on my elders, you stole the marrow of the heavens’ favorite whelp, and now you bring the harvest back to my doorstep... Kneel, little beast, and let your ancestor drink!”

”Thirty-two years old, and already gorging yourself on the fate of heaven’s favorite son...” he crooned, licking his cracked lips. ”You threw your whole youth into the cauldron to get here, and you chose the most cursed path under heaven to do it. I know it’s the most cursed, girl... because I walked it first.”

Rèn raised her notched iron sword, holding the hilt level with her collarbone.

”The Master told me to sweep the steps,” Rèn said softly. ”These are the last ones...”

BOOM!

The Heavenly Demon detonated off his throne with the concussive force of an erupting volcano.

The black basalt beneath his bare feet splintered into a thousand jagged shale fragments as his massive rust-colored frame closed the thirty-pace gap in a single, blurring lunge.

His right hand clawed downward, his talons whistling through the air with enough concentrated demonic qi to split an iron pagoda from roof to foundation.

SWOOSH!

Rèn did not retreat.

She took a forward step with her left heel sliding into a seam in the floor, lowering her weight beneath the sweeping arc of his talons.

Her notched blade drove upward, aiming for the brachial tendon beneath his armpit.

CLANG!

The iron edge struck his arm and rang off it like a hammer striking a temple bell.

Three thousand years of compressed petrified blood-iron had long since replaced his mortal skin.

The shockwave traveled back down the blade, tearing the skin between Rèn’s thumb and forefinger and sending fresh crimson weeping down her wrist.

The Heavenly Demon laughed, his sunken eyes flaring like twin embers in a crypt.

”You think common steel can reap an ancient core?!” the monster roared, raising his left arm toward the high arched windows.

’Blood-Tide Spear!’

WHOOSH!

The crimson rain pouring outside the hall froze mid-air, reversing its trajectory.

Hundreds of gallons of falling blood condensed into sixteen jagged, twelve-foot javelins of solid, crystallized crimson glass, screeching through the windows and detonating toward Rèn’s spine at screaming speed.

Rèn’s crimson irises contracted.

She threw her center of gravity to the left, pivoting along her hip-joint, using the Master’s basic guard to brace the flat of her sword against the side of the nearest black pillar.

CRASH! CRACK!

Ten of the blood spears shattered against the pillar, blasting five-foot craters into the obsidian stone and showering her back in razor-sharp shards of coagulated glass.

Three pierced through her black linen tunic, slicing open her left shoulder, her outer thigh, and the meat of her ribs, painting her sides in hot, streaming scarlet.

She did not flinch, and she did not cry out.

Rèn reached out with her Primordial Blood Root, locking onto the three remaining floating spears that hovered in the air behind the old monster’s shoulders.

’Blood-Reversal Thread!’

She severed the Heavenly Demon’s spiritual grip with a violent tearing mental wrench, seizing the crystallized blood with her own core.

The spears whipped around in a tight snapping circle with their jagged points driving straight into the Heavenly Demon’s thighs and lower lumbar.

THUMP! THUMP!

”Insolent worm!” the old demon snarled, his muscles contracting with terrifying density, instantly snapping the crystallized shafts off at his skin with his wounds weeping thick blackish-red fluid that immediately began to bubble and knit together.

He lunged again, his talons sweeping in a ferocious three-claw combination at her throat, sternum, groin.

Rèn moved within the pocket of his reach.

Every step she took was an exercise in brutal battle... She gave him two inches of space, parrying his wrist with her crossguard, deflecting his second strike with the hardened ridge of her forearm bracer, and ducking beneath the third so close that his talons parted the black bangs on her forehead.

Step! Guard! Cut!

Her notched blade whistled downward, shearing through the thick leather wrapping of his left calf, parting the tendon down to the white bone.

SHHK!

”Hah!” Rèn laughed.