"Benefactor, that teardrop..."
For the first time, Blood Chan Zi truly wiped the smile from the corners of his mouth.
"What was it?"
Blood Slaughter fell silent for a breath.
Then he spoke. The rough, muffled weight in his voice vanished completely, leaving only a calm, almost hollow indifference.
"When I killed the first person in my life, I shed a tear."
"I was only three years old then."
"The one I killed was my father."
"I sealed that tear onto my armor."
"From then on, every time I killed someone, I drew their final breath before death into that tear."
"By now, it has absorbed billions upon billions of lives."
"Does all the karma on that blade of yours even amount to a fraction of mine?"
The instant Blood Slaughter finished speaking, the Carved Tear on his left shoulder suddenly lit up.
The only gleam upon the pitch-black armor, like the lone star in the night sky.
The moment that tear lit up, all the blood-colored Buddhist light, scripture fragments, and karmic power across the entire Arena froze for an instant.
An instant later, those things were violently drawn toward Blood Slaughter, swallowing every remaining trace of law on the Arena in one gulp, like a gale sweeping away fallen leaves.
Blood Slaughter raised his right arm.
Upon the blade of that Double-Edged Great Axe, the auras of billions upon billions of lives awakened within the axe edge all at once.
They surged, howled, struggled, and gathered into a thick pillar of dark-red light that shot from the axe blade straight into the Sky Vault.
Blood Chan Zi stood amid the aftershock of that pillar of light.
His apricot-yellow monk's robes had already shattered into dozens of tattered scraps hanging from his body. Three scorched marks from the pillar's