The hunchback looked up and saw a great deal of chest. And higher, he saw a thick neck and jaw. And higher still.

  Hunchback Lang had never cried, even as a child. He had never known fear in his life. How could you fear when you could not hurt?

  So when he met Zane’s eyes, he felt something very strange, something he’d never known, stab at his chest. His mouth went dry.

  This man…

  “You were looking for me,” said Zane, a hard edge to his voice. “Right?”

  The hunchback stared. Then he gave a reedy laugh. It did a poor job of covering up his nerves.

  “Zane, I take it? The Young Master described you well—big indeed! So much meat for pulping…”

  He showed his teeth.

  But the fear he hoped to see—the fear that might loosen up that iron grip on his wrist—failed to show on Zane’s face.

  He swallowed.

  “Is that what you’ll do to me?” Zane said flatly.

  “What? You really thought you’d spit in the face of the Yi Family and get away with it?” He made a wheezing, snorting laugh. Then he gave his arm another, harder pull.

  Zane did not budge.

  ***

  This fellow sure liked to bark. Not the brightest thing to do when he couldn’t even free his arm. But he did have something else up his sleeve.

  “You’re stalling,” said Zane. “Is it to crack me with that fist?”

  The hunchback froze.

  The hand behind his back, slowly swelling with blood, froze too.

  He laughed again—shriller. “Caught me! Cleverer than you look, Master Zane—”

  “Go ahead,” said the big man. “Hit me.”

  ***

  The hunchback couldn’t get a read on this man, and the hunchback could read anyone. He knew the ways of men, the things that’d make their hackles rise, their hearts run faster and faster, like scared rabbits…

  There was nothing of the rabbit in Zane.

  He couldn’t even tell the man’s level—he’d guessed early Foundation. Mid at most! How many peak experts were there? Now he wasn’t sure.

  Zane was a stone wall.

  All he could sense was danger—an animal danger, prey before apex predator. Aninstinct all living things had, deep down, even a creature as inhuman as the hunchback.

  It screamed—RUN.

  “We’re playing a game, are we?”

  Zane stared him down, and this time, the hunchback did flinch. “Hit me,” he repeated slowly. “You have one shot.”

  The hunchback just stared at his wrist, then swallowed a great mouthful of saliva.

  “Heh! Very well… let’s play.”

  Then he wound the arm all the way back, a lightning motion—and in a blink, it swelled three times its size.

  This Zane thought he was the same kind of creature as Young Master Yi. He giggled just to think of it; a mad bravery, a twitching rush, took over the hunchback. He knew something Zane didn’t.

  In a fair fight, this brute might have beaten him.

  But pride had brought low greater men before.

  With this fist, the hunchback had strangled a Grand Elder of the Silverwind Sect. With this fist, it had torn out the guts of the Blackheart Sage!

  All great men, greater than the Hunchback—

  —but none quite as dirty. He knew the soft, vulnerable parts of man and knew just how to break them.

  These were the things he told himself, the things flushing him with confidence, with glee, as he lunged.

  “Die!”

  CLANG!

  Blood went fifty feet high.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  And in that moment, the Hunchback discovered in violent fashion there was no softness in Zane.

  In the distance, Liu Yi made a choked sound.

  “Okay,” said the big man. “My turn.”

  Then he hit him.

  ***

  Ten thousand li away…

  Twin Phoenix City, the Capital of the Four Winds Kingdom.

  Twin Phoenix City lay in a valley framed by four mighty snow-capped peaks—one for each cardinal direction. On each peak stood observatories of silver and crystal, laden heavy with magical instruments. Instruments that judged the signs of the four winds.

  Four Winds master artificers—the most sophisticated on the continent—had tuned them so they'd pick up even the smallest fluctuations. It was with these instruments that the Kingdom recorded treasure drops, or monster hordes, orhappenings as small as the weather.

  In the West Wind Observatory, the readings blurred before Official Wang’s bleary eyes. His long mustache fluttered with each slow, sleepy breath.

  He jerked upright—“Eh?”

  He scrubbed his glasses. “Eh!?”

  Ittook a moment for him to realize just what he was looking at.

  Then he was on his feet trembling.

  He scrambled to a glass and hailed the Grand Marshall.

  “Sound the Great Bell!” he cried. “Prepare the citizens—phoenix-level disaster!”

  “What?!” roared a gruff voice.

  “The force—it’s—it’s inconceivable! No essence to it, it’s pure raw force—it’s got to be a super-massive earthquake, or—or Mount Thistle erupting—the power levels—”

  “Calm down, good man—what is it? Ten dragonbreaths? Twenty?”

  “Your honor,” croaked the Official. “We do not have a word for this level of power.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Gods...” He saw the blood drain slowly from the Grand Marshall’s weathered face.

  The last dragon-level disaster had brought down the last Golden Empire. Not even Core experts were safe.

  It was the kind of event that would shape the course of history.

  Then—“Eh?!”

  Official Wang rubbed his eyes, got so close to the glass his face was almost touching—but it was true.

  The signals had just… stopped.

  “What is it?” shouted the Marshall. “Speak, good man, speak! Lives hang in the balance!”

  He looked up, face slack. Somehow even more pale than before. It could mean only one thing.

  “It was no earthquake,” said the Official. “That… was the work of one man.”

  The Marshall’s face reddened. He looked like he was bursting with protests, but before he could get a word out—

  RIP!

  He looked up.

  A river of howling void tore the sky in two.

  ***

  Deep on the ocean floor lived a creature who could very well be described as an apex predator. But the term would not be nearly enough.

  Its name reverberated through legend.

  Men knew it as the Rage of the Drowned. The mer-folk, the Yawning Maw. Its name had slipped in and out of legend over the millennia, but every civilization named it and put onto that name the fears of the empty dark.

  It called itself Wraeclax, the Elder Dragon. It hibernated on a nest of pearls and silver, as it had for the past fifty years.

  Then it shuddered—its great yellow eyes snapped open.

  It looked to the surface, not seeing light, but the Astral Plane. Feeling the fabric of reality crying out, forced open.

  The Elder Dragons held deep connections to the natural world. They could feel the rhythms of the waters and the earth—and in that moment, Wraeclax felt the world submit to the power of one man.

  It let out a long, low note. It couldn’t help but bow its scaly head.

  ***

  Emperor Cloudless floated in a temple of polished marble, resting on a field of clouds.

  He was the oldest man alive. His beard flowed nearly to his feet, and it was said he hadn’t touched solid ground since the founding of the Four Winds Kingdom. He’d seen stars rise and civilizations fall.

  This was a man who would stroll through meteor showers with a mind as tranquil as a pond, for he had seen it come before, and he knew it, too, would pass.

  He was in the middle of receiving a prince of a distant kingdom. Cloudless did not go to the courts of earthly princes; they came to him for his wise counsel.

  Then skies opened up beneath his feet.

  The prince hadn’t seen—he was still looking at the Emperor and got something of a shock.

  The Emperor’s face was slack.

  “…Your highness?”

  The teacup fell from Cloudless’s trembling fingers and shattered against the marble.

  ***

  The Wandering Monk sat cross-legged atop his staff, perfectly balanced on Mount Starcry—the highest peak in the Sealed Demon Continent, breathing the air closest to heaven.

  He breathed deeply, meditating, reaching for Ascension.

  He was one of the so-called Peerless. So-called because he was one of the handful of true powers on the continent. Powers like a nation unto themselves—peerless under heaven.

  Then he saw the rift and fell off his staff.

  That day, he resigned the peerless title—and all the other Peerless across the land did so too.

  From that day on, no man across the whole Sealed Demon continent had the face to call themselves peerless.

  Not while the Sky Breaker still lived.

  The question was—

  Who was it?

  ***

  Back at ground level, Zane’s fist connected. And the great many things happened at once.

  Reality shattered with such force it tore a great black river of a void across the sky, stretching the length of the continent, slashing open the sunset.

  The hunchback’s bones didn’t break—not instantly.

  There was too much force going through them. So much force it somehow held the man together, as though the bones were so shocked they couldn’t remember to break in time. They bent and bent—the hunchback bowing the other way, like a bow of flesh and bone. There was a moment the hunchback, stretched excruciatingly, stared into Zane’s eyes.

  He had a moment to shriek.

  Then his bones erupted. His skin blew. So much force shot through him that every atom of his being underwent spontaneous combustion.

  It would’ve leveled the whole region if Zane hadn't contained the blast by sheer force of will.

  The force rippled down the mountain’s face and wiped the trees bare. It rolled over, peak after peak, like thunder moving through the ground.

  He was surprised how angry he was.

  “Senior Zane…” Jin was in tears.

  Zane knelt and uncorked a vial. It was Reina’s elixir—the one she’d made to cure True Gods of permanent scars. He poured a drip into the boy’s bloody mouth.

  The instant he tasted it, Jin’s eyes began to roll back; he yawned.

  His body began to glow with a soft green light.

  It wasn’t just healing. Within seconds, impurities were being expelled from his body.

  He laid Jin gently on the ground.

  Then he turned to the frozen young master.

  Liu Yi screamed and ran.

  It was that kid again, from the Yi Family. He remembered what the hunchback said.

  It was clear they wouldn’t stop unless someone made them.

  “S-senior Zane!” It was Jin. The kid was almost out, but his face was all scrunched up. He was determined to say what he had to say.

  “If you’re gonna fight them, just please leave Fei-Fei be…she doesn’t deserve it, Senior Zane!”

  “You’re a good kid,” sighed Zane. He nodded. “I’ll only do what I have to.”

  He turned back around.

  “What happens now depends on them.”

  He made his way down the mountain, fists smoldering.