Centuries passed as I cultivated Miasma from the world around me. I consumed more than any one man had ever been able to contain and found I was still infinitely hungry for more. I held the power of universes inside, and yet it was as a tiny drop of water in an endless abyss. Perhaps this imposed captivity was not a curse as the traitor had intended, but an unforeseen boon. In time, perhaps I could overcome the tiny rock that I had become and return to human form, reaching beyond any power any cultivator before had ever achieved. Satisfaction unlike any I’d ever known filled my stony prison at this ultimate victory over not only my enemies and traitors, but Death itself.
It wasn’t until the first Death cultivator found me that I learned the true extent of the torture laid out for me.
Endless stores of Miasma, centuries of accumulated knowledge and power, but I couldn’t lay a hand on it. Every treasure I’d saved up for myself went to her, and for nothing more expensive than a simple request!
Hungry Ghost, lend me some of the Miasma you’ve cultivated.
No amount of resistance would allow me to refuse. None of the techniques I had created could I execute for myself. All my power, all my knowledge belonged to her.
Over the course of torturous years, I learned to bend the Death cultivator to my will, lead her with helpful suggestions and promises of strength. My victory over her was the death of everyone she once loved.
When she took her life, I lay in wait for the next Death cultivator. Him I drew in with honeyed whispers, and he died with an enraged shout. They became easier and easier to entice, easier to control. I fathomed the depths of all desire, knew how to gain trust and bide time, when to allow them to see that I was all-knowing and when to play as if I knew nothing.
As endless lifetimes passed, I learned that there were ways and moments when I could become what I was meant to be once again. Heartbeats of insanity when Death cultivators were so desperate or power-hungry that they would do anything for my aid—even give me possession of their body.
Unfortunately, their bodies never lasted long after that. They began to rot around me, and when they finally fell apart, I always returned to the tiny grinning skull stone that was my prison.
This Death cultivator I wore now had not been hard to ensnare. Far past the age when any halfwit should have begun cultivating, the boy had known little, including to beware of those offering power in return for nothing. Even my feints at being drained of Miasma fooled the boy as intended.
Seeing the beginnings of the Devil Corruption spreading through him, I thought to use suggestions of strength to turn him to me faster, but his loyalty to his friends was his true undoing. He wanted to be a hero and a savior. To protect them at any cost, not only for their sakes, but to prove to himself that he was good and pure, someone worthy of this accidental second chance at life he had been afforded.
I gave him his reward. Let him watch from one tiny corner of his former body as I slaughtered the host of flying creatures, dropping them out of the air and turning the building into the mass grave my technique was named for. The Devil Corruption receded from him for a moment, and realization of what he’d done flooded his consciousness as the winged dead piled up. He had asked for this, begged me to do it.
The catfish in his pinstriped finery began to speak to my new body in self-satisfied tones, burbling that he’d known all along that the Death cultivator was a good investment and that all the Death cultivator had needed was the right sort of nudge to get started on his path to greatness.
I made my new face smile at the catfish, then reached out again and began slaughtering his precious probationary Dragons before his cold, round fish eyes.
As corpses fell around me, I felt the consciousness of the Death cultivator scream and rage, then shrivel in defeat as he realized there was nothing he could do to stop me. His body was mine now, willingly relinquished in exchange for squashing a small swarm of pests.
Without warning, my connection to universes upon universes of Miasma was severed. The catfish smirked, red gill rakers disappearing back into his wide head. He thought his trivial Antimatter ability had stopped me.
I threw back my head, howling with laughter. With my merriment still ringing from the rafters, I summoned the immortal’s Lunar Scythe.
In my childhood, long before I discovered my true purpose and became Khan Over the World, I had held the record as the longest undefeated slave to ever spill blood in the death pits. Beasts, adults, other children—none had been able to kill me. Even without my storehouses of Miasma, a pathetic Antimatter cultivator was no match for me. They died just like anyone else.
I hefted the scythe in both hands, seeing the flesh melt away from my body at the edge of my vision, and attacked. The catfish dodged, but I was faster, slicing into his shoulder.
Before I could finish him, a wall of Warm Heart Spirit slammed into my side, spinning me off-balance. I kept my feet, but the force shoved me across the arena floor. When I came to a stop, I locked eyes with my attacker.
The fat Selken stood in front of me in a stilted fighting posture that had only ever been applied to battles in worthless sword legends—one leg beneath him holding his entire bulk, the other
