The next "morning" he stepped into wasn't Kuoh's.
It was swamp.
Air heavy enough to chew, thick with moisture and the sour-sweet stench of rotting plants. Mist drifted low over murky water. Trees with twisted roots clawed at the sky, their trunks furred with moss and hung with limp, colorless vines.
The Southern Wilderness.
Once, long ago, this had been a Divine Kingdom—land personally shaped by a Sorcerer whose name had become half prayer, half myth. He had left behind seventy-two smelting trial pagodas and a road of life-and-death trials meant to pull his descendants back up from the mud. Twenty thousand some years later, most of that grandeur had sunk beneath swamp water. Poisonous insects and man-eating tribes ruled where refined cultivators had once walked.
Ren stood on a patch of half-dry ground, one boot sinking slightly into the soft soil.
He inhaled.
The miasma bit at his lungs like a swarm of tiny fangs.
The Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique under his skin flexed once. The poison shuddered, then broke apart—filtered, shattered, turned into nothing. In his blood, the Ancient Ming Bloodline stirred, tasting the foreign energy like a predator sniffing unfamiliar meat. It devoured what was useful, flicked the rest away as scraps not worth swallowing.
"Colorful," he murmured.
He let his true essence sink deep, aura folding in on itself. To the world's eyes he was nothing more than an early-stage Body Transformation martial artist astray in the swamp. Beneath that cheap disguise, Heretical God Force's first four layers—Strength, Flesh, Viscera, Altering Muscle—coiled quietly through his muscles and bones. Burning Heat's first level lay banked in his meridians like a tamed furnace, ready to be drawn out with a thought.
Ashura intent flickered around him, a thin, cold halo of killing will that he held tight, bleeding only the faintest suppressed echo into the surroundings. It brushed against the swamp's savage will, testing, measuring.
His Spirit Sense expanded out.
Drums answered him.
Low, ugly, rhythmic thumps reverberated through the mist. Beneath the sound, he heard voices—coarse shouts, harsh laughter, the wet impact of something heavy dumped into water.
The Fire Worm Tribe.
Cannibalistic. Brutal. In a land where tribes still cooked and ate their enemies, they were infamous even by local standards. They regarded tribes like the Na, who clung to the Sorcerer's inheritance, as pagans and food.
Ren's lips thinned.
He had met their hunting parties yesterday, before stepping back to Kuoh for a night. Men with tattoos that crawled like worms, eyes bright with madness and hunger. He had used them as whetstones for his first steps in this world. They had died fast; their screams had not carried far.
Apparently, that had been enough to make the nest nervous.
He moved.
His body flowed over roots and through mist with the ease of long practice and recent refinement. Each step fell silent. Each breath adjusted itself to the swamp's rhythm. Myriad Origin's neutral circulation filtered the ambient true essence, catching impurities and turning waste into fuel, slowly weaving this world's qi into the loops of his Dao.
He wasn't hunting beasts right now.
He was waiting for a particular melody.
Fear. Desperation. Bitter hatred—the kind carried by people who had already lost too much but still clung to something sharp inside. And woven near it, the ugly, coarser tones of men like the ones he'd killed before: greed, cruelty, petty ambition.
He walked for half an hour.
Twice, Fire Worm scouts crossed his path.
The first time, he simply stepped aside into a pocket of twisted roots, letting their crude divine sense slide past his cloak of neutral chaos without finding purchase. They trudged on, muttering about "strange winds" and "bad omens".
The second time, he let them see him.
Four men in ragged armor splashed through the shallows, bone charms clacking against their hips. Tattoos like crawling worms wound around their arms and faces, pulsing faintly with bloodlust. Their eyes shone with the manic light of men who had long ago decided that other humans were meat.
They jeered when they saw him.
"New meat," one of them laughed, licking his lips. "Little lost lamb."
"Pretty boy," another sneered. "We'll carve him up slow."
They rushed.
Ren didn't bother drawing his sword.
He opened his hand.
Fire blossomed in his palm—not a wild, flaring blaze, but a thin, white-hot strip of flame so dense it barely flickered. Where it touched their weapons, iron hissed, then vanished. Axe heads and spear tips dissolved mid-swing, shafts splintering as the metal supporting them ceased to exist. Where it brushed flesh, there was no smoke, no char, no blood.
Just absence.
Limbs separated from torsos along lines that looked too clean to be natural. A shoulder, a jaw, half a ribcage—gone, erased as if some careless god had taken a brush and wiped them out of the painting.
Not true Annihilation.
Not yet.
But close enough that their bones didn't get a chance to complain.
The swamp reacted.
The miasma around the flames boiled away in a clean ring. Poisonous insects dropped from branches, bodies still twitching as their life patterns tried and failed to reassert themselves where whole segments had been removed. For a breath, the local law web of Martial World gnashed its teeth, protesting the foreign erasure.
Ren listened to that protest.
Listened to where it weakened.
Where it accepted.
His comprehension ticked forward by an almost imperceptible notch.
Then he closed his hand, extinguished the flame, and kept walking.
The third group he felt was… different.
He heard them before he saw them.
"…Heh. Look at her glare. Still not broken? Na Yi, Na Yi, your eyes are too sharp for a little witch whose tribe is gone."
A man's voice, rough, mocking.
Another laughed—higher, meaner. "Let her glare. It'll be fun when their precious Sorcerer pagoda opens and we take everything."
Ren stepped lightly onto a thick root, parting hanging vines with a casual gesture.
The clearing below opened before him.
Two men stood with their backs to a twisted tree.
He recognized them from descriptions he'd recalled from his previous life: the Double Devils of the Southern Wilderness.
Baldy was big and heavy-shouldered, scalp gleaming with grease and sweat, a short axe dangling from his hand. Zhou was thinner but taller, with a long, monkey-like face twisted in a permanent sneer, a mace propped on his shoulder. Mismatched armor hung from them, bone trinkets clacked at their belts.
Peak Bone Forging, both of them. Not weak for this backwater. Infamous as scavengers who prowled the ruins between tribes, picking off the wounded, selling captives to whichever cannibal tribe paid more.
Bound to another root in front of them were two figures.
No.
Women.
Na Yi knelt with her hands tied behind her back, spine straight despite the ropes biting into her wrists. Black hair fell over her shoulders, framing a face smudged with dirt but still marked with a quiet dignity. Her eyes were dark and calm, lips pressed into a thin line that had more steel in it than most men's weapons.
Priestess of a fallen tribe.
Na Shui, younger, huddled against her side. Her eyes were brighter, more expressive, trembling with fear and anger. The lines of her face echoed Na Yi's, but softer; the witch-blood in her aura was less tempered, more wild.
Bugs crawled lazily over the bark around them, but none touched their skin.
Traces of sorcery—instinctive wards, the last reflex of an inheritance that refused to let its witches be eaten like common livestock.
Ren's eyes narrowed.
So. He had shaken the Fire Worm nest badly enough that they'd pushed their dogs forward in a hurry. The Double Devils had caught the Na sisters before the tribe could disappear completely into the swamp.
He stepped off the root.
"Lively scene," he remarked.
Four heads turned.
Baldy's hand tightened on his axe. Zhou's fingers flexed around his mace. Na Shui flinched, eyes going wide; Na Yi's gaze sharpened, the calm surface of her eyes taking on a wary gleam.
He didn't look like a Southern Wilderness warrior.
His clothes were simple but clean. His sword was plain. His aura felt… wrong. Too calm, too deep, without the usual stink of bloodlust and madness that clung to the tribes.
Zhou's eyes flicked over him, then curled in disdain.
"Where'd you crawl from, brat?" he sneered. "Lost your way in the swamp? This isn't a market road. Turn around and—"
He stopped.
His feet didn't.
He had already begun to swagger forward, mace lifting—
—but his boots froze half a step into the motion.
His throat moved once.
Ren hadn't done anything obvious.
He had simply looked at him.
Ashura intent stirred, sliding along the edge of his gaze. For a heartbeat, Zhou didn't see a lone youth on damp ground. He saw a figure standing ankle-deep in corpses, under a sky burning with blood-red lightning. He felt the heavy, silent pressure of a Dao that treated lives like numbers on a ledger.
His hand trembled.
"…You," he managed, voice thin. "You're not from the tribes."
Baldy frowned.
"Brother?"
Zhou forced his jaw shut.
Ren smiled.
"Correct," he said. "I'm from further away."
He didn't unfurl his aura any further. There was no need. The Southern Wilderness laws shivered under his bare feet anyway, faintly aware that something that did not belong to their rank tables had stepped onto their mud.
Na Yi's eyes narrowed by a fraction of a degree.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Her voice was hoarse from thirst, but steady.
Ren looked at her.
For a moment, the swamp faded.
He saw her standing under a different sky—a patch of the old Divine Kingdom hanging broken over her shoulders like a cloak, Sorcerer's incomplete inheritance smoldering in her blood. He saw her father's corpse beneath Chi Guda's spear, her mother torn apart by men who called themselves warriors, the Na Tribe's temple burning. He saw hatred compressed into a blade aimed at one man's throat.
His Dao Heart pulsed once.
Right.
There you are.
"Me?" he said lightly. "Name's Ren. Just a traveler. Sensed something wrong, so I came to see if you needed help."
Baldy barked a laugh.
"Help?" He thumped his axe on the ground, mud splashing. "Little brother, you picked the wrong swamp. Those two witches belong to us. We're taking them to their Sorcerer Holy Land. We'll open their pagoda, take its treasures, and maybe give them a nice, quick death if they behave."
Na Shui flinched.
Na Yi's fingers curled into fists behind her back, rope fibers grinding against raw skin.
Zhou, having mostly recovered from his instinctive chill, smirked.
"Tell you what," he said. "You look weak, but at least you're not shaking. Come with us. Carry our things. When we open the pagoda, we'll let you live. Maybe throw you a bone."
Ren tilted his head.
"That's generous," he said.
"Of course." Zhou spread his hands. "We're kind men. Not like those Fire Worm lunatics. They're tearing up tribes left and right after some monster started killing their scouts. If we hadn't moved faster, these little witches would already be in a cookpot."
Ren's smile didn't change.
But something very cold flicked through his eyes.
"Is that so," he said.
Na Yi's gaze sharpened further.
She had good instincts.
She watched the angle of his wrist, the relaxed line of his shoulders, the way his aura didn't match his apparent cultivation at all.
"Sir," she said abruptly. "We are grateful for your concern. But this is a matter of our Na Tribe. We do not wish to implicate outsiders."
Na Shui whipped her head around.
"Elder Sister—!"
Na Yi kept her eyes on Ren.
Zhou sneered.
"Ha! Listen to her. Still thinks she has a tribe. Little witch, your people are scattered, your holy land is rotting in the swamp, and your Sorcerer has been dead for tens of thousands of years."
"You don't know anything about our Master," Na Yi snapped, composure cracking for the first time.
Zhou lifted his mace, irritation flaring.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "He's dead. You're ours. And this brat is wasting my time."
He swung.
Ren moved.
He could have erased them from where he stood.
He didn't.
He stepped in instead, closing the distance in a single, relaxed stride that looked almost slow—but the mud didn't have time to splash.
His cheap sword slid out of its scabbard with a soft rasp.
Zhou's mace came down in a brutal arc, muscles bulging. Peak Bone Forging strength turned the air in front of him into a hammer.
Ren turned his wrist.
Fire wrapped his blade.
No showy aura. No roaring blaze. Just a tight sheath of white heat hugging the steel so closely the metal itself seemed to blur.
Metal met metal.
There was no clear ringing sound.
Only a sharp, drawn-out screech—like something being dragged off the edge of existence.
Zhou's mace head glowed, then glared white, then simply… flowed. Iron turned to molten light, streaming away in droplets that vanished before they hit the ground. The wooden shaft, suddenly unsupported, splintered in his hands. The force of his own swing rebounded; his arms jerked, bones sending up a chorus of protest.
Baldy roared and lunged, axe hacking at Ren's neck.
Ashura intent stirred.
Ren pivoted, bringing his sword around in a low, almost lazy arc.
The blade never touched Baldy's flesh.
The fire did.
It passed under Baldy's ribs, along his spine, tracing the cords of muscle in his shoulders with eerie precision. Wherever it touched, there was no blood, no char, no smell of cooked meat.
Segments of his body simply ceased to be part of the world.
For a brief instant, the Double Devil hung together, his pattern refusing to accept what had just been removed from it.
Then the universe remembered its own rules.
His upper body slid away from his lower half, his right arm fell in a different direction from his left, and his head toppled into the swamp with a dull, almost apologetic thud.
Silence crashed down.
Zhou stared at the pieces.
His brother's body looked like an anatomical diagram cut by a mad surgeon—edges too clean, too neat.
"B–Brother…?"
Ren didn't give him time to find the rest of the word.
He stepped in.
His left hand rose, two fingers extended.
A thread of flame flicked out—so thin it was almost invisible, so compressed it didn't even distort the air. It touched Zhou's forehead like a single, casual tap.
Zhou convulsed.
He didn't burn.
Not outside.
Inside, his spiritual sea exploded into light.
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone sang quietly along the flame, slipping through the cracks opened in Zhou's soul. Complexity became simplicity. For one breath, Zhou's entire life unfolded in front of Ren:
A starving boy in a nameless tribe learning that meat was meat, whether it bleated or cried.
The first kill in a hunting party, the taste of cooked human flesh on his tongue.
Meeting Baldy, laughing together over a pile of bones.
Years of prowling the borders between tribes, selling captives here, stealing offerings there.
The first time they heard the words "Na Tribe Sorcerer Holy Land" whispered in fear and greed.
Chi Guda's shadow falling over their deals.
Their plan to use Na Yi and Na Shui as keys, to let the Fire Worm open the gates, then betray both sides and run with whatever treasures they could carry.
Fragments of maps. Landmarks. A stone forest, half sunk in water, where the Na Tribe's Holy Land lay hidden.
Yan Mo, a name they didn't understand but had heard in legends, spoken with drunken reverence by old witches who had survived too long.
Ren took what he needed.
Nothing more.
Then he cut the flame.
Zhou's body sagged. For a heartbeat, he lived—eyes wide, pupils shaking, the shadow of what he had seen reflected there without comprehension.
"You—" he croaked.
Ren tapped his chest.
The second flick of fire was almost gentle.
It touched bone and pattern.
Zhou vanished.
His body did not fall; it crumbled where it stood, collapsing into fine gray ash that sifted down onto the damp root as if he had never been there at all.
Ren exhaled.
Ashura intent settled back into his bones.
In his meridians, Burning Heat coiled more obediently, pleased by the delicate surgery he had performed—erasing form without tearing the surrounding law web. Another small piece of the path toward true Annihilation clicked into place.
He turned.
Na Yi and Na Shui stared at him.
Na Shui's eyes were huge, pupils pinpricks. Her breath came in shallow, fast gusts.
Na Yi's expression had gone very still. Only the slight white line of her clenched jaw betrayed her state.
Ren wiped his blade on empty air. The edge flickered once; the cling of blood and ash that existed more in the world's memory than on the metal itself disintegrated.
He slid the sword back into its scabbard.
"Alright," he said softly. "Now that the trash is taken out…"
He stepped toward them.
Na Shui flinched, shoulders jerking before she could stop herself.
Na Yi shifted, instinctively angling more of her body between him and her sister despite the rope biting her wrists.
Ren stopped a few arm's lengths away.
Up close, the toll of capture showed itself more clearly. Rope burns ringed their wrists, some raw, some crusted with half-dried blood. Faint bruises marked their arms and shoulders where hands had gripped too hard. Sorcery runes, drawn in diluted blood, curled along their forearms—half-finished rituals the Double Devils had forced them to prepare, keys meant to unlock the Sorcerer Holy Land in chains.
Ren's gaze cooled.
"My name is Ren," he repeated. "I'm not Fire Worm. I'm not their allies. I don't have any interest in selling you, eating you, or using your tribe's Holy Land as a stepping stone and leaving you behind."
Na Shui made a small, strangled sound.
Na Yi's eyes narrowed.
"Then what," she asked quietly, "do you have an interest in?"
He smiled.
"Opening roads," he said. "Fixing things that were broken. Killing people who deserve it. And… maybe meeting interesting women along the way."
Na Shui's face went red despite everything.
"W-What…?"
Na Yi's cheeks twitched, but she held his gaze.
"Fine words," she said. "But the Southern Wilderness is full of men with 'interests'. If you intend to help us, we must remember this grace. If you intend to toy with us…"
Her voice turned colder.
"Then you should have let those two kill us instead."
Ren's smile didn't fade.
"Fair," he said. "Then let's start with the immediate."
He lifted his hand.
Thin strands of Fire essence slipped from his fingertips. They didn't flare or scorch. They sank into the ropes like warm water into old cloth, dissolving fibers from the inside out, unwinding the knots without touching skin.
The bindings fell away.
Na Yi hissed as blood rushed back into her hands. She drew her wrists to her chest, rubbing them once and then stopping herself, forcing her posture straight.
Na Shui flexed her fingers, blinked down at the fallen rope, and then back up at the empty space where the Double Devils had been.
Na Yi rose slowly.
Her legs wobbled a little, but she didn't let it show.
She bowed.
Not low enough to call him "master," but deeper than a casual nod.
"…Thank you for saving us," she said. "This grace is not something Na Yi will forget."
Na Shui scrambled up and bowed too, less gracefully.
"Th-Thank you!" she echoed. "I… I thought we were…" Her voice shook.
Ren raised a hand.
"Breathe," he said gently. "You're exhausted. Sit."
They didn't.
Southern Wilderness instinct. One did not sit in front of strangers one might need to run from.
Ren sighed inwardly.
"Alright," he said. "Then I'll sit."
He dropped cross-legged onto a nearby root, entirely unconcerned with the damp.
Na Yi blinked, thrown off for the first time.
Na Shui let out a tiny, involuntary laugh at the sight of the man who had just erased two notorious devils from existence plopping down like he was at a village gathering.
Ren rested his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped.
"I know you're Na Tribe," he said. "I know those two planned to use you to open your Sorcerer Holy Land and its pagoda. I know the Fire Worm Tribe destroyed your home. I know you want Chi Guda's head on a spike."
Both women stiffened.
Na Yi's eyes sharpened into knives.
"…How do you know that?" she demanded. "Are you a sorcerer?"
He tapped his chest.
"Something like that," he said. "Let's just say I read the Double Devils before they disintegrated. Surface memories. Plans. I don't dig around inside people's souls for fun."
Her jaw tightened.
"That kind of soul search is…" She shook her head. "Very rare. Very dangerous."
"For the target," he agreed. "Not for me."
Na Shui swallowed.
"If you know that much," she whispered, "then… you know our tribe is… gone."
Her voice broke on the last word.
Ren's gaze softened.
"I know your village is scattered, burned, swallowed by swamp water and Fire Worm hunger," he said quietly. "I've done research around here. And I've come to know your Master's Divine Kingdom has been rotting for almost thirty thousand years. The seventy-two smelting trial pagodas are the last ordered bones of that kingdom, and your tribe is one of the last that remembers how to knock on their doors properly."
Na Yi stared.
"What are you?" she whispered. "You speak like an ancient from Master's era."
He chuckled.
"No," he said. "I'm younger than I look. Most days."
He straightened a little.
"Here's my proposal," he said.
Na Shui's shoulders jumped.
"P-proposal?"
"Yes." He met Na Yi's eyes. "You want revenge. Not just on those two idiots, but on Chi Guda, on Fire Worm, on everyone who turned your Master's inheritance into a joke. You also don't want your tribe's legacy to disappear. Am I wrong?"
Na Yi's lips pressed white.
"You are not wrong," she said softly.
"Good." He gestured toward the direction Zhou's memories had shown him—the stone forest, the hidden entrance to their Holy Land. "Your Holy Land is still there. So is your Sorcerer Pagoda. And so is its guardian. Alone, with your current cultivation and your tribe shattered, you can't use any of that properly. With me…"
He smiled, slow and easy.
"We can."
Na Shui's eyes rounded.
"You… you know about the guardian?"
He nodded.
"I told you, I did some homework. Yan Mo," he said. "Contract beast of your Master. Guardian spirit of the pagoda. Lives between life and death, feeds on dreams, offers Life and Death Smelting Trials to those with the right key. Trials that temper blood, soul, body, cultivation. Trials that can raise a mere Bone Forging martial artist to the threshold of realms this swamp forgot how to name."
Na Yi's breath caught.
"The key," she whispered.
Her hand drifted unconsciously toward her chest, where a small, warm weight hung hidden under her tattered clothes.
Of course she had it.
Of course the Double Devils hadn't known what it truly was.
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone hummed quietly, tracking the faint fluctuation of the hidden item without reaching for it.
"Let me help you use it properly," he said. "We go to your Sorcerer Holy Land. We open the pagoda. You take the Smelting Trials. I'll make sure you don't die in there, and I'll… tune things, as needed."
"'Tune,' he says," Na Yi muttered under her breath, somewhere between disbelief and laughter.
Na Shui bit her lip.
"And… Chi Guda?" she asked. "The Fire Worm Great General…"
Ren's eyes turned flat.
"He's trash sitting on a throne he doesn't deserve," he said. "I'll handle him. Personally."
No boast.
Just simple, terrifying fact.
Na Yi looked at him for a long time.
"With what price?" she asked at last. "People like you do not help for free. Do you want our tribe's techniques? Our bodies? Our faith?"
Na Shui flushed crimson.
"Sister!"
Na Yi didn't look away.
Ren leaned back slightly, gaze drifting up to the tangled canopy.
"That's a fair question," he said. "I don't need your faith. My Dao stands on its own. Your techniques are interesting, but with my foundation I can learn the skeleton without stealing the flesh. As for your bodies…"
He let the words hang just long enough to see Na Shui sputter.
Then he smiled, softer.
"If fate pushes us that way," he said, tone calm, "we can talk about that later. For now, what I want is simple."
Na Yi's eyes narrowed.
"And that is?"
"People walking roads they deserve," he said. "I hate seeing legacies rot. I hate cannibals squatting on Divine Kingdom bones. I hate locked doors over trials meant to uplift, hoarded by idiots as trophies. I want to fix some of that. And I want comrades with backbone who remember who they are even when everything is taken away."
He looked at her directly.
"You qualify," he said. "Both of you."
Na Shui's heart thumped so hard she could feel it in her throat.
Na Yi's ears burned.
"…You speak nonsense very smoothly," she muttered.
"Thank you," he said, utterly sincere.
She almost choked.
"That was not praise."
"For me, it is," he said.
Silence stretched.
Wind murmured through the strange trees. Somewhere in the distance, a beast roared, the sound quickly swallowed by mist.
Na Shui fidgeted, fingers twisting in her torn sleeves.
"Elder Sister," she whispered. "He… killed the Double Devils like they were nothing. If he wanted to harm us, he could have already. Maybe… maybe we should…"
Na Yi closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them, they were calmer.
"Na Tribe is finished," she said quietly. "All that remains are two witches carrying Master's last key."
She took a breath.
"Ren," she said—without honorifics, but with respect. "If we follow you into the Sorcerer Pagoda and you deceive us, we will die. If we do nothing, we will live… as cowards, hiding in a swamp that already swallowed our home."
Her lips curved in something like a smile, empty of humor.
"I choose the first."
Na Shui swallowed.
"…Me too," she whispered. "If we can… if we can even scratch Chi Guda…"
Ren nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Then it's decided."
He rose in one smooth motion.
"Rest a bit," he added. "We'll move soon, but I can at least fix some of the surface damage."
He stepped closer—slowly, openly—giving them time to step back if they wanted.
Na Yi didn't move.
Na Shui tensed, then forced herself to stay still, nails digging into her palms.
Ren lifted his hand.
Dao essence gathered at his fingertips, patterns shifting subtly. He didn't bring out the heavy, alien essence he used in DxD. He tuned his essence to Martial World's laws, weaving Myriad Origin's clean loops with a gentler life force.
He didn't probe deep—no soul, no cultivation.
He brushed rope burns, bruises, the half-finished sorcery runes drawn on their arms.
Skin warmed, then cooled.
Angry red marks faded to faint shadows. Swelling went down. The blood-lines of the runes unraveled, foreign intent dissolving into harmless wisps that Myriad Origin quietly ate.
Na Shui gasped.
Na Yi inhaled sharply, then clamped down on the reaction, refusing to give more than that.
He stepped back again.
"There," he said lightly. "You'll still need food and proper rest. But at least you won't limp into your Master's front yard looking like you lost to two clowns."
Na Yi blinked.
"Clowns?" she repeated blankly.
"Idiots," he supplied. "You know the type."
Her lips twitched despite herself.
"Mn," she said. "I know the type very well."
Na Shui covered her mouth, a helpless giggle slipping out. The knot of pure terror in her chest loosened by a fraction.
She looked up at him.
"Ren… ge?" she tried, using the address that felt right on her tongue even if his accent was strange.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Mm?"
"…Thank you," she said softly. "For… for seeing us."
He smiled.
"You're welcome," he said. "Now. Tell me everything about your Holy Land that I didn't already rip out of those two's memories. I don't like walking into someone's Master's house without hearing a few stories first."
Na Yi exhaled.
This time, she sat of her own accord, back straight on the root. Na Shui sat beside her, closer than before, shoulders touching.
In steady, halting words, Na Yi began to speak.
She spoke of the Na Tribe's Sorcerer Holy Land—a stone forest shaped by old divine power, its pillars arranged according to laws the current tribes no longer understood. Of the pagoda that rose from its heart, its interior world linked to the remnants of a Divine Kingdom. Of the trials her ancestors had entered and failed, the ones they had survived and returned from with new strength. Of the last witch of their line who had gone in alone and never come back.
Ren listened.
He didn't interrupt.
He let his Immortal Soul Bone trace every detail, mapping them onto the framework he'd already pulled from Zhou's mind and from his own distant knowledge. The Sorcerer's design was clever—life-and-death tempering wrapped around Samsara, a cycle meant to rebuild body, soul, and will in layers.
As she spoke, his Dao Heart settled further.
This was right.
This was a road worth walking.
When she finished, her voice a little rough, he rose.
"Alright," he said. "You've trusted me this far. Time to see if I'm worth it."
He extended a hand.
Not for a contract.
Not for a slave seal.
Just an offer.
Na Yi looked at it.
Her fingers trembled once.
She placed her hand in his, grip firmer than he expected, smaller than his but not the least bit weak.
Na Shui's hand landed on top of theirs a heartbeat later, as if she were afraid her courage would evaporate if she hesitated.
Ren's smile warmed.
"Let's go pay your Master a visit," he said. "Then we'll start carving a road from this swamp to a sky that actually deserves you."
He released their hands, turned, and stepped off the root.
The path ahead wound through toxic fog and twisted trees, toward a stone forest that hid the Na Tribe's last sanctuary. The swamp's miasma curled around his ankles, parted, then flowed back together in his wake.
He walked at an easy pace, cloak of neutral chaos barely stirring in the thick air.
Behind him, two witch sisters followed—hearts pounding, eyes sharp, fate lines already bending around the simple fact that they had chosen to trust the man with the cheap sword and the impossible Dao.
Ren's Dao Heart beat in time with theirs.
Different worlds.
Same road.
He led the way.