Green light surged like a tide through the passage and poured into Luxiao, met the crimson ember already caged in him, and settled like a lake after storm.

This place didn’t feel as lethal as that Angel had warned; a cold, wordless unease crawled over him like moss on stone.

He could feel it: his flesh was shifting, a caterpillar sealed into an unseen chrysalis.

There was no other path; resignation weighed like rain, yet he braced like a cliff.

He stared into the corridor’s endless throat, then dragged heavy steps into its darker gut.

Soon his body learned the rhythm; the energies hammered him like a forge, and he took the blows like iron.

When the power in him brimmed like a full cup, the green current faded like ebbing tide.

He walked on beneath stone ribs; the wounds from that Angel’s dying counterstrike had vanished like snow under sun.

He lifted his head; a thin smile curled like a blade, and his steps bit down like roots into bedrock.

Resistance had been stripped like bark; even death wouldn’t take him, a door nailed shut.

He walked for an age measured in heartbeats and dust; at the corridor’s end he stopped, a faint ripple breaking the still pond of his brow.

Iron bars yawned like a black jaw; an Angel stepped through and froze his limbs with a cold unseen frost.

The Angel came close; a mask, forged long ago for him, slid over his face like a lid on a coffin, and then the Angel hauled him skyward on a wind like knives.

From above, the city sprawled like a stone hive; at its heart sat a colossal coliseum, a gray ring like a dead moon.

They dropped him like a stone; he didn’t struggle, just fell straight down, thundered into the arena, and carved a crater like a wound in earth.

The Angel drifted down like winter ash and looked at him with glacier eyes. “Next, I’ll teach you to fight, mortal, not to scuttle like an ant.”

“Your word order’s off,” Luxiao said, a smile thin as a paper cut.

The Angel stayed cold; the backhand came like lightning. “Before me, no mortal speaks.”

Smack! The strike blurred like mist through the mask and landed solid as rock on his cheek; the sound cracked like thunder, and Luxiao’s body skidded like a tossed rag.

He lay among dust for a long breath, then clawed back up like a stubborn weed.

The Angel watched, face a calm blade, weighing the mortal like a butcher weighs meat.

Was this the one who’d awakened on his own and slain a divine servant, the hope from the high seats? He looked plain as dry wood.

If not for the mask’s blind shell, he might have seen the swell on her left cheek, flushed like a slapped apple, a thread of blood beading at the lip.

Luxiao let a cold smile flicker and vanish like a fish, closed his mouth, and stood before the Angel again like a nail set to be hammered.

She frowned, lines sharp as cuts. “In one month you’ll learn to kill and to keep from being killed. With the mask from the Celestial God, memory and body-craft will brand fast like hot iron. If you still fail, I’ll kill you by the cruelest way, like skinning a wolf.”

Luxiao said nothing; his nod was a stone dropping in a well.

Smack! The second slap boomed like a drum; he flew again like torn paper in a gale.

He still didn’t die; the other cheek swelled like rising bread. His fists clenched and opened like tides, tight then loose, loose then tight.

“I give orders, you answer yes. Hear that?” Her voice fell like frost.

From the Abyss his voice rose, thick with strangled fire and killing cold. “Yes.”

She nodded, a hawk satisfied. “Good. Keep that edge, and you’ll butcher prey like a butcher does swine, not trot up like a lamb for aberrants.”

The Celestial God who’d led Luxiao to the Evolution Passage dropped from the sky like a pale star, cut the teaching Angel with a glance like a razor, then sheathed it.

He unfurled yellow paper like a dry leaf and spoke to both, words heavy as stones. “Luxiao, if in one month you can’t kill every beast here, you’ll die ugly. Remember this: everything here is your enemy, every face a target you can cut.”

The teaching Angel repeated the last line with weight, pressing it down like a seal in wax.

Luxiao wasn’t dull; the hint burned like a brand. He’d killed an Angel before. That meant the one before him could bleed too.

The Celestial God left like a fading bell, and only the Angel who’d slapped him stayed, a shadow pinned to ground.

Luxiao smiled without sound, a crescent like a sickle, and his gaze cooled like winter over still water.

Then came days like the Inferno: every hour a knife-fight, every breath snarling at beasts no human tongue had named.

One month later.

Thud!

He slipped past the charge of a boar-shaped horror bristling with writhing tentacles, moving like smoke through trees.

He flashed to its back like a dart of light, then seized its tail like a black rope and held with iron hands.

Above, the Angel nodded, approval a faint sun. “Speed and strength doubled like a spring flood. Not bad. Dodge the ghost boar’s rush, grab the tail, slam him earthward, and the match is done.”

As the words fell, Luxiao yanked the tail hard as a winch, drawing back like a fisherman hauling a net.

A scream tore the air like a torn sail. The tail came free with a long spine attached, pale as a serpent ripped from mulch.

The giant beast shuddered like a felled tree and died within a breath.

The Angel’s pupils pinpricked like needles; then satisfaction warmed like a coal. “Good. Ruthless.”

He drifted down, ready to praise, wings a white curtain.

Luxiao sprang up like a coiled spring. The bone in his hand cracked across the Angel’s cheek like a whip.

“What are you doing?!” The Angel’s shock flared like a struck match.

Luxiao answered with silence, a stone in a river.

Spines he’d already digested into energy re-formed like white vipers, then flew like iron chains and coiled the Angel from sky to ankle.

“You—!” His voice snapped, and terror spread like ink. He felt his strength locked, sealed as if under stone.

A thick blood-reeked energy bled from the bones like swamp miasma and crushed his inner power flat.

He thrashed his great wings and clawed for the sky like a trapped hawk.

“Get over here!” Luxiao roared like a storm and jerked; the Angel dropped from the air like a netted bird.

More bone-chains bloomed in Luxiao’s hands like growing thorns. He leaped, wrenched the Angel’s wings like bending iron, and sank a bone bar across his throat, hauling back like a garrote.

The Angel’s flesh was a fortress, and his combat craft ran deep like old roots.

In the clinch, he held the edge; he gripped the chain like a lifeline and dragged Luxiao in, glare sharp as a blade.

Luxiao had won a thief’s start; face-to-face, once the Angel steadied, steel would beat wood.

“Die!” The Angel’s hand became a claw, slicing for Luxiao’s face like a hawk’s talon.

Luxiao’s grin twisted like a crescent moon. He let the chain go like dropping bait, slashed his own palm, and spilled blood like a red ribbon.

The crimson flow met his red energy like fire meeting oil; he drove a palm toward the Angel like a falling millstone.

At the same breath, the Angel’s palm cracked across his face like a breaking wave.

As Luxiao’s body flew like a kicked door, his blood-wet fingers carved a long red furrow down the Angel’s face like a plow.

A faint sword-shadow bloomed in the sky like a new moon, hissed like a tearing gale, and punched through the Angel’s skull.

He stared in disbelief at the falling Luxiao, eyes wide as winter lakes.

He knew that golden sword-gleam; bitterness touched his mouth like salt, and his form unraveled like smoke.

High above, the watcher Angel dipped his head, calm as stone. “He already stirred the Holy Sword shard buried in his body.”

Every subject brought here fused with a shard of the Holy Sword, pieces like stars hammered into flesh.

Mismatch meant explosion, bodies bursting like overripe fruit; match meant survival, and the poison mists would test them like acid rain.

Only those who could rouse the Holy Sword’s refiner’s fire would mold their bodies against the monthly demonic miasma like a seawall against tide.

After one survived six months like winter nights, they’d gather shards from the failed and pour them into the survivor like molten gold.

Then they’d throw the survivor into the Deadlands, to grind out more power like a millstone grinding grain.

At the end came rebirth like a phoenix, if the fire didn’t eat the bones first.

But to forge a complete Holy Sword, they’d harvest every shard from every body like miners ripping ore.

The Angel smiled, thin as a razor. “All shards have been handed out. No more experimenters. The Hero will rise soon among these humans like a dawn among hills. For now, Luxiao’s the brightest spark. But the other ground holds a mortal tough as iron too.”

“In total, three thousand passed every trial like stones that didn’t crack. Only Luxiao skips the Deadlands and walks straight onto the Road of Ascension. Maybe… heh.”

Below, Luxiao lay limp as a cut rope, breath rasping like saw-teeth.

That Angel’s dying strike had gutted him like a hook; breath came thin, leaving thicker than it entered.

The Angel above descended trailing dawnlight like a soft rain and knit his broken body like a tailor mending torn cloth.

He smiled down, warmth like a hearth. “Not bad, not bad. Really not bad.”

Luxiao chuckled, a rasp like sand. “Angel sis, can you take off the mask on my face?”

She blinked, surprise flickering like a moth. “You know I’m a woman?”

“Heh. You carry a fragrance like a flower after rain. Not like the two Angels I killed. I noticed.”

“You… really courting death.” She smiled, gentle as spring sunlight, and the edge hid like a knife in silk.