Rain dripped through the cracked concrete ceiling, pattering against a rusted metal bucket.
Dust clung to the damp air of the abandoned apartment block. It smelled of decay, wet plaster, and the cheap instant noodles Mina had managed to scavenge from a nearby convenience store.
Ruan stood near the grime-covered window, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his wooden sword. He didn't need to look back to know Mina was shivering. She sat on a dilapidated mattress, her knees pulled tight against her chest.
"This place is safe," Mina whispered, her voice trembling. "It’s a red zone. The monsters were cleared out last month, but the mana density is still too low for hunters to bother patrolling here. The Guilds won't think to look for us in the slums."
Ruan remained silent. His gaze swept the fractured skyline of the city below. Glowing holographic advertisements painted the dark clouds in neon pinks and blues, celebrating the very gods who had enslaved them.
"Tell me," Ruan said, his tone flat, cutting through the silence like a cold blade. "How does this system of yours operate? How do they measure a man's worth?"
Mina blinked, startled by his sudden question. She pulled a small, glowing rectangular device from her pocket—a hunter's terminal.
"You mean... the Status?" she asked, her voice quiet.
Nodding slowly, Ruan turned his head slightly, his dark eyes locked onto her. He wanted to understand the depth of humanity's corruption.
"When a human awakens, a Constellation reaches out," Mina began, tapping the screen to project a blue holographic window. "If you accept their gaze, a golden thread binds your soul to their divine realm. The System acts as the arbiter, translating that bond into numbers and ranks."
She pointed to a series of glowing runes on the projection.
"System protocols measure your soul's capacity to channel their divine grace," she continued. "That capacity determines your rank. E-rank, D-rank, all the way to S-rank. The stronger the contract, the deeper the thread bores into your soul. You get their power, but in exchange..."
"In exchange, you become a dog on a leash," Ruan interrupted. His jaw tightened, the muscle pulsing beneath his scarred skin.
"Yes," Mina admitted softly, looking down at her lap. "If you disobey, the Constellation can snap the thread. It burns your soul from the inside out. You either serve them, or you die a screaming husk. There is no middle ground. The System keeps track of everyone. It registers every soul that touches mana."
Ruan sneered, a sound of pure, unadulterated disgust. This was what humanity had traded their martial pride for.
They had traded decades of disciplined training, of forging their own blood and bone into weapons, for a golden leash. It made him sick to his stomach.
"A lazy path," Ruan muttered. "They bought their strength with their freedom. And they call it a blessing."
Mina didn't argue. She knew he was right, even if the truth was a bitter pill to swallow. She had seen too many hunters discard their humanity just to climb a single rank.
"I need to rest," Ruan said, turning away from the window.
"Empty rooms lie across the hall," Mina offered, pointing toward a door hanging off its hinges. "I'll keep watch, though I doubt I'll be of much use if anyone finds us."
"They won't," Ruan said. He stepped out of the room, his boots making no sound on the shattered floorboards.
---
Inside the small, ruined bathroom of the adjacent apartment, a cracked mirror hung precariously above a rusted sink.
Ruan approached the glass. His reflection stared back at him—haggard, ancient, yet carrying an aura of absolute, terrifying stillness. He looked at the deep lines around his eyes, the remnants of a century of isolation and nine hundred years of forced slumber.
Suddenly, a strange, itching sensation flared in his lower abdomen.
His dantian, the absolute core of his internal energy, throbbed with a cold, invasive heat.
Squinting at his reflection, Ruan noticed a microscopic, shimmering speck of gold hovering right over his chest in the glass. It wasn't on his skin. It was projected from some unseen dimension, trying to drill into his flesh.
Writhing with desperate hunger, the golden thread pushed harder, sensing his immense, boundless pools of internal energy. It was a parasitic thread. It was the System itself, attempting to force a contract, to measure his soul and assign him a rank like a beast in a slaughterhouse.
"Pathetic," Ruan whispered.
He refused to be registered. He refused to let some cosmic parasite catalog his soul.
Ruan closed his eyes, turning his focus inward.
Deep within his core, the ancient martial flame—the true, uncorrupted Qi forged through a century of brutal, agonizing training—began to stir. It wasn't the borrowed magic of a god. It was his own life force, refined into a blazing, sun-like furnace.
He gathered a tiny droplet of that internal fire and directed it toward his chest, driving it straight toward the invasive golden intruder.
Sparks of spiritual lightning crackled along his collarbone as the two forces collided. The golden thread violently convulsed as the internal flame made contact, shrieking in a frequency only his soul could hear, desperate to escape the sudden, terrifying heat.
"Burn," Ruan commanded.
With a silent explosion of sheer mental will, Ruan unleashed the full force of his martial flame.
Ash and burnt sparks were all that remained of the parasite. The golden thread was vaporized, turned to nothingness before it could even begin to anchor to his soul.
But the destruction of the thread triggered a massive, violent backlash from the cosmic source that had sent it.
Darkness rushed over Ruan's vision, dragging his consciousness into a cold, infinite void.
Space itself seemed to warp around him, stripping away the walls of the ruined apartment.
Millions of white, bleached human skulls floated in the weightless vacuum, forming a shifting, grotesque sea of bone. It was a graveyard of civilizations, a monument to the countless worlds these Constellations had consumed.
And then, it opened.
An colossal, ancient eye materialized in the center of the void. Its iris was a swirling vortex of dying stars, and its pupil was blacker than the deepest abyss. The sheer, overwhelming weight of a divine entity's gaze bore down on Ruan, trying to crush his spirit into absolute submission.
Blinking slowly, the eye radiated an aura of supreme arrogance and cold curiosity.
*Who dares defy the registry?* a voice boomed, rattling the very foundations of Ruan's soul.
Ruan did not flinch. He did not bow.
Instead, he drew his mental blade, his spirit projecting a massive, sharp edge of pure intent that sliced straight through the oppressive divine pressure. He stared back at the colossal eye with a gaze so lethal, so filled with absolute hatred, that the cosmic entity actually seemed to flicker.
"I am the one who will put out your light," Ruan growled in the vision.
With a sharp snap, the connection severed, dragging him back to reality.
---
Gasping for air, Ruan stumbled backward, his back hitting the damp bathroom wall.
Sweat dripped from his chin, sizzling as it hit the cold floor. His heart hammered against his ribs, not from fear, but from the raw adrenaline of facing a god's true gaze.
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, his eyes burning with a cold, predatory fire. Now he knew. The gods were watching, searching for any anomaly that didn't fit into their neat, enslaved system.
Heavy, frantic footsteps echoed from the hallway, shattering his train of thought.
Mina didn't even bother to knock before she burst through the ruined door, her face completely drained of color. Her hands shook so violently she almost dropped her hunter's terminal.
"Ruan!" she gasped, her voice cracking with terror. "You... you need to see this."
She held up the glowing screen, displaying a live global broadcast.
Guild Alliance leaders just issued an emergency declaration, their faces grim as they stood before a massive crowd of reporters.
"They've placed a ten-billion-credit bounty on the 'Faceless Demon of Mount Hua'—and every S-rank hunter in the world is already hunting you."