The Heavenless Sword Emperor

CHAPTER 5

The mist here was thick, smelling of old copper and stagnant water, swirling around him like the ghosts of the millions who had died in this pit before him.

"Is that it then?" he whispered, his eyes fixed on the crimson pulse in the distance. "I fall a thousand feet just to die an inch away from the light? Not likely."

He pulled again. His fingers bled, leaving dark smears on the ancient stone. Every inch felt like a mile. Every breath felt like swallowing needles.

"You're watching, aren't you, Zhao Huai?" he muttered, his mind drifting into the feverish delirium of the dying. "Looking down from your high perch. Thinking I’ve finally been recycled. Well, sod you. Sod the lot of you."

He reached the first step of the altar. It was obsidian, polished to a mirror finish, reflecting nothing but the dim, red glow of the weapon above. He hauled his torso onto the first tier, his breath hitching in a sob of pure exhaustion.

"Almost there," a voice murmured.

Xiaochen froze. He pressed his ear to the cold stone, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Who’s there?"

Silence. Only the thrum of the crimson light, rhythmic and heavy.

"Great. Now I’m hearing things," he sighed, pulling himself to the second tier. "Go on then, ghost. If you're going to eat me, do it while I'm still warm. I don't fancy being a cold snack."

I do not eat rubbish, little spark.

The voice didn't come from the air. It resonated inside his skull, a deep, vibrating baritone that made his teeth ache. Xiaochen rolled onto his back, gasping, his eyes searching the dark ceiling of the chamber.

"Where are you? Show yourself!"

Look up, boy. You’ve spent your whole life looking at the dirt. Look at what you’ve spent your last strength to find.

Xiaochen forced himself upright, propping his weight on his good elbow. He was at the summit of the altar. There, thrust into a crack in the obsidian, was the sword. It was longer than any blade he had seen at the Qingyun Sect, its metal a matte black that seemed to drink what little light remained. At the crossguard, a single, crimson orb—an eye—pulsed with a slow, deliberate cadence.

"A sword," Xiaochen whispered, his awe momentarily dulling the pain. "A bloody sword. All that fuss for a bit of steel."

A bit of steel? The voice laughed, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. I am the edge that severed the Heavens. I am the truth that your 'Masters' spent ten thousand years trying to drown in blood. And you call me steel?

"I call you a hallucination," Xiaochen snapped, his fear turning into the sharp, defensive anger of the desperate. "I’m dying in a hole, and my brain is making up fairy tales to pass the time. Just my luck. I couldn't even get a pleasant dream about a feast or a warm bed."

A hallucination cannot give you what you crave, Ling Xiaochen.

Xiaochen flinched at the mention of his name. "How do you know who I am?"

I know the shape of your soul. I know the bitter taste of the energy you’ve tried to swallow for eighteen years. That thin, watery Qi they fed you... did it ever feel right? Did it ever feel like it belonged to you?

Xiaochen looked down at his chest, where his withered Qi core should have been. "They said I was a waste. A hole in the bucket. They said the Heavens didn't want me."

The Heavens are a lie, the voice hissed, the temperature in the room dropping even further. They didn't want you because you have no tether for them to pull. You were born free, and they call that a defect. Reach out, boy. Touch the hilt. See the world as it truly is.

"And if I don't?" Xiaochen asked, his hand trembling as it hovered inches from the leather-wrapped grip. "If I just sit here and wait for the end?"

Then you die as a footnote. A piece of refuse discarded by a sect of cowards. Zhao Huai will marry a beautiful girl, he will become an Elder, and he will tell stories to his grandchildren about the 'trash' he once kicked into the Abyss. You will be the punchline of a joke told in a warm hall while you rot in the dark.

Xiaochen’s fingers curled. The image of Zhao’s smug face flashed in his mind—the way he had ground his boot into the marble, the way he had laughed as Xiaochen tumbled down the stairs.

"He won't," Xiaochen growled.

Then take it. Take the power to pull the stars from the sky and drown them in the mud.

Xiaochen’s hand closed around the hilt.

The world didn't just change; it shattered.

The moment his skin touched the grip, a surge of black lightning raced up his arm. It wasn't the warm, soothing flow of the Qi he had studied in the manuals. This was a torrent of ice and shadow, a violent, screaming energy that tore through his meridians like a flood through a paper pipe.

He shrieked, his body arching off the stone. His eyes rolled back, and suddenly, he wasn't in the Abyss anymore.

He was standing in a void. There was no floor, no ceiling, only an endless expanse of grey mist. And standing before him was a man.

He was towering, draped in robes that seemed to be woven from captured starlight and dried blood. His hair was long and white, flowing in a wind that didn't exist, and his eyes... they were the same crimson as the eye on the sword.

"Who are you?" Xiaochen gasped, his voice echoing in the emptiness.

"I am Ye Cangtian," the man said. He didn't move his lips, but the words shook Xiaochen's very soul. "The Emperor of the Black Sword. The first man to see the chains on the world."

"The Demon Emperor?" Xiaochen recoiled, his heart freezing. "The history books... they said you slaughtered millions! They said you tried to poison the very light of the world!"

Ye Cangtian took a step forward. The void groaned under his weight. "History is written by the survivors, boy. And the survivors are the ones who currently harvest your world like a field of wheat. Tell me, do you feel 'holy' when you pray to the Pillars? Does the Qi of the Heavens feel like a gift, or does it feel like a leash?"

Xiaochen staggered back, his mind racing. "It... it always felt thin. Like I was breathing through a cloth. But the Elders said that was because I was weak."

"You were not weak," Ye Cangtian said, his voice softening into something almost like pity. "You were simply refusing to be cattle. The energy they call 'Surgawi' is a parasite. It enters the body, binds the soul, and when you die, it carries your essence back to the high halls of the Taixu Palace to be consumed. You were a 'waste' because your soul wouldn't let itself be eaten. You should be proud."

"Proud?" Xiaochen laughed, a hysterical, broken sound. "I’m at the bottom of a grave! I have nothing! No home, no family, no future! What is there to be proud of?"

"You have me," the Emperor said, holding out a hand.

"I don't even know if you're real," Xiaochen spat. "You're a voice in a sword. For all I know, you're just another demon looking for a snack."

"I am a prisoner," Ye Cangtian corrected. "Bound by the very ones you call gods. They feared my blade because it could cut their tethers. They feared my truth because it would end their feast. I have waited ten thousand years for a soul with enough spite to pick me up. Ten thousand years for someone who hates the sky as much as I do."

He gestured to the mist around them. Images began to form—flickering shadows of the world above. He saw the Qingyun Sect, glowing with golden light. But as he watched, the light changed. It looked like a web, thousands of thin, shimmering threads connecting every disciple to the Great Pavilion, and from there, a massive, invisible umbilical cord stretched up into the clouds.

"Look at them," Ye Cangtian whispered. "They think they are ascending. They are merely being fattened for the slaughter."

Xiaochen watched as a thread snapped.