Ancient Asia Warrior

Episode 2 – Shadows Upon the Mortal World

My name is Zhao Yichen… I am 22 years old.

But in these 22 years, my world already feels two centuries old.

The air is no longer air—it has become poisonous smoke.

Anyone who lives beyond 23 years is called a miracle—

for as we breathe this filth, our very lives rot away from within.

The wealthy have built pure domes for themselves,

where clean air still exists. But the poor… their lives have become

a trade of selling each breath. This air has become a wall,

a barrier that divides the rich and the poor. Every breath descends like a fear,

and every morning feels like a punishment.

And then there's the talk of people richer than us......

The rich now live in palaces of glass—vast, transparent fortresses that seem completely apart from the poisoned world outside.

Within their walls, they draw upon leaked magic and fragments of realm-born power—to filter their air, to purify their water, to make their lives ever more splendid.

For them, air is a luxury, water is a pastime, and life itself is a game.

They have nothing to do with us.

They neither understand our hunger nor our breath.

To them we are only a crowd of shadows—

a mass of bent heads beneath their rule.

They know only how to control us,

how to rule over us.

Our lives are commodities to them, our suffering mere statistics.

And their laughter?

It rises when the air inside their domes is so pure, their pets are treated with more dignity than we are.

Their glass palaces gleam, while on the streets of our settlements lie only trash, corpses, and poison.

This is the truth of our world.

The divide between rich and poor is no longer just about wealth— it has eaten away at the very roots of humanity.

Morality, compassion, even the most basic honesty—all have vanished.

When even breath itself is sold, people stop seeing each other as human—

and instead as mere resources. Hospitals, courts, the police— once guardians of life—are now nothing but empty names.

No law, no justice— nothing remains for the poor. All that is left is survival—through the blade, or through the shadow.

It all began when a strange stone was unearthed. It was broken open— and from its shattered core, two different energies emerged.

Those who first touched it gained new powers. At first it was called an experiment. Then it became an industry. And finally… civilization itself came to depend on it.

This power was given a name—Void-Tech. Now the world has shrunk, reduced only to the Asian continent. Here remain five nations: China, India, Korea, Japan, and Russia. But governments no longer exist. Monarchies have returned, where warlords, corporate kings, and shadowed cults rule the land. They care only for themselves. Their dominion is not built on humanity, but on power and greed. The most terrifying truth is this: they have revived ancient, demonic rites. Blood sacrifices, dark incantations, cursed rituals— through these, they draw their strength. Many factions have risen, offering human lives to harness the energy of the realms.

In return, they gain powers like false gods. And among them, one faction has gone too far. They are draining energy without end—

so much that their humanity itself is vanishing. They are slowly transforming into monsters. If they succeed, there will be no power left in this world capable of stopping them. Even now, in small towns, people count their last breaths. In one place, children laugh; in another, death knocks at the door.

But hope… hope has already been sold. We have lost our dignity, our compassion, our very moral core. For a few, life remains…

for the rest, it has become nothing more than a commodity.I have seen it with my own eyes— parents dying, friends breaking, settlements reduced to ash. I have seen how people sell one another, how justice itself is auctioned away, how childhood has been turned into an object. And yet… somewhere, a whisper drifts— that someone has come. One who stands beyond even the Realms themselves.

Before I meet him,

I must tell you all this— so that when that day comes, you will understand what our world once was… and what it has now become.

But maybe… I don’t truly believe you’ll ever come.

Because deep inside, I know this is only a story—

one I’ve buried inside my own mind.

And even if someone like that does exist…

why would they save us?

Because deep down we know — we’re the ones who broke this world ourselves.

I know the world didn’t break on its own…

It all began the moment humans turned the power of Umbryal into their toy.

The poisoned air, the dried-up water, the shortened lives—all of it traces back to one cause:

we dug away the very ground from beneath our own feet.