The gods did not descend with fanfare. There were no thunderclaps, no flashing wings, no proclamations carried on the wind. They came as stillness. As absence. As inevitability. The Mandate of Heaven had been broken, and the heavens themselves trembled at the audacity of a mortal who dared to judge what was eternal.
Ying Zheng stood alone on a field of black stone, the ground beneath him fractured by centuries of uncounted grief. His blindfold was soaked with sweat and blood, the silk sticking to his skin, but he did not remove it. He did not need to. The chi of the divine radiated like a heatwave, striking him in waves, yet he absorbed it as he had absorbed every pain of the living and the dying.
The first voice spoke through the air itself, a vibration that shook mountains and whispered through cities far below.
"Bend," it commanded.
"Yield your throne. Submit your soul. Accept the law of the eternal."
Zheng lifted his chin, the silk of his blindfold brushing against his nose. His hands clenched, veins standing out on his pale skin.
"The law of the eternal does not serve the living," he said quietly. "I will not bend. I will not yield. And I will not allow suffering to pass unmeasured."
Then the strike came—not a sword, not a bolt of lightning, not even a command—but a pressure that bent time itself. Stars trembled. Mountains remembered being oceans. Rivers reversed course. Moments stretched until they cracked.
Zheng's first move was instinctual. He raised his hands, and the Ethereal Lock sprang forth. Invisible chains wrapped around the chi cores of beings older than time, binding them in judgment. The gods recoiled. Some cried out, a soundless scream that filled Zheng's chest with unbearable pain, and yet he endured it.
The Lock struck not to kill, but to measure. To weigh ambition against consequence, justice against mercy, eternity against suffering. Some gods became Eternal Chi, their radiant essence absorbed into the weave of the world and the king's own body. Others were erased, their existence removed from the stars and the memories of all living things.
Every strike of the Lock tore at him as much as it struck them. Pain that had once belonged only to mortals now cascaded from heaven itself, and Zheng felt it all. Every heartbeat of the divine echoed in his chest. Every whisper of rebellion in the stars twisted his bones. He screamed—not from fear, but from the unbearable weight of endurance.
Yet he did not falter. He had learned, long before, that a king's strength was measured not by what he could destroy, but by what he could bear. And in this, he was the strongest being in existence.
When the clash ended, the heavens were not defeated. They were shaken. The Mandate of Heaven had been fractured, its laws rewritten by a mortal's resolve. Zheng's blindfold remained in place, his eyes never opening to see the devastation he had wrought. The world beneath him trembled, but it endured, anchored by the pain he bore in silence.
The first law of the Ethereal Lock had been tested against divinity—and the king had not yielded. In the stillness that followed, every mortal, every god, every immortal who watched from afar understood the unshakable truth:
A ruler who could bear all pain alone could bend reality itself.
And Ying Zheng, blindfolded, silent, unbowed, had become more than a king. He had become the measure by which Heaven itself would be judged.