All things are bound by gravity.
All things dragged against one another without cease, like a bucket crammed with crabs—trampling each other, pinching each other, exhausting every ounce of strength not to climb upward, but to yank at others' legs with even greater force, ensuring that no one could easily break free and ascend to loftier heavens beyond.
It was a colossal shackle, an inborn plight.
The soul was bound to the body, the body to the earth, and mortals to their social stations.
Even those who seemed to stand high above, already treading upon the heads of all living beings—the people above people—had not truly escaped this gravity.
They were dragged even more tightly by the tower of power built from countless people, trapped deep within it, unable to free themselves and not daring to do so.
Heaven and earth were like a mother who loved her children too indulgently, clutching all things tightly to her breast. Yet that love, too heavy and suffocating, also left every child forever unable to depart.
This was a theorem, a law inscribed into the very workings of the Great Dao.
And yet, there were always things that could transcend this theorem, that could break free from the gravity of all things.
Like a child's curiosity toward the unknown, like a hero's thirst for adventure in distant lands, like some supreme pursuit that transcended human nature and broke free of the soul's gravity.
Like...
A martial artist's yearning for strength!
There was no rebuttal, no wild boasting, no rage, nor any thought that "ganging up" was somehow wrong.
When an undisputed powerhouse stood before them, when "Heaven," when "Heavenly Fate," lay within reach before their very eyes, martial artists had no need for such low-purity things.
After an instant of deathly silence, killing