Some people called the process of conquering one's shadows "growth."
But for Tian Chang, it was precisely because he had worked so hard, pushed himself so relentlessly, and climbed step by step to his current level that he had earned the right to see that shadow—the right to be shrouded by it.
Only because he was strong enough could he see how powerful that shadow was.
Growth, instead, was an ascent toward true terror.
All these years, he had walked as though on thin ice, feeling at every moment that he stood on the brink between life and death. One wrong step, one misstep, and he would plunge into an Abyss of eternal damnation.
No one could enjoy fear. He merely told himself to be a little more careful, a little more cautious, not to be devoured by the shadows. Or at the very least... not to die too stupidly.
King Qinguang's gaze was a Yama Post. Wherever it fell, that place decayed; whatever it saw, it killed.
Yet that hand, its knuckles sharply defined, had indeed blocked that gaze.
The so-called real and unreal, the so-called life and death, all lay within the turn of a palm.
The owner of that hand was a man in a light shirt and thin trousers, barefoot and with his hair hanging loose.
He looked as though he had just stepped out of his bedroom after an unsatisfying afternoon nap, thrown on a garment, and casually pinched an annoying fly between his fingers—pinching hold of that force of decay and death.
There were no raging waves rising to meet the heavens beneath his feet, no dazzling radiance around him.
He simply stood upon the void, his slender shadow reflected in the water.
His face bore the pallor of one who had never seen