Upon deciding to throw everything I had—body, mind, and time—into this single path of dedication, something within me changed.

  The noise that had haunted me—the doubts, the grief, the aching sorrow—all of it dulled into a distant hum. My mind felt clear for the first time in my life. No longer scattered, no longer torn between hopes and fears, dreams and reality. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I had to do. And even if the path ahead was lined with failure… It was mine.

  I had no more worries beyond ascension. No more distractions. The only fear I still carried was the fear of wasting time—wasting another breath, another heartbeat—not fighting to break past the chains that fate had wrapped around me since the day I was born.

  There was no calm in my heart anymore—except in the moment my hand gripped the hilt of my sword to break down that door. There was no peace—except in the rhythm of my swings, echoing in the split-second gap between blade and door. That broken sword, my soul weapon, once and still a mark of shame and weakness, had become the only language left in which I could speak my truth.

  I did not count the days, yet time undeniably passed.

  The sun rose, the sun fell. The seasons changed. That was all.Yet through it all, I remained. I kept to my decision with the same stubbornness that had first brought me to my knees before the Golden Gate.

  Rest was no longer a luxury. It was a necessity granted only when my soul weapon, fractured and splintered from endless impact, could no longer hold itself together. Only then would I stop—to give it time to slowly knit itself back into shape, broken piece by broken piece.

  Rest was only allowed when hunger began to sap the strength from my limbs, when my body screamed for nourishment. And even then, I would not stray far. I hunted in the forests surrounding the Plain of Ascension—small game, wild roots, berries that did enough to keep me standing. I never ventured too deep. Never lost sight of the gate.

  Because every breath I took, every moment I survived, was another day to swing.

  I became a figure alone beneath the heavens—a lone soul standing before a gate that would not yield. I was the only one left after that day. No others remained to challenge their fate, to question the will of the heavens.

  All who had been rejected before me had long since turned away. They returned to their lives in the bustling cities—taking the roles granted to them, raising families within the safety of the known, chasing fleeting comforts. Some became soldiers in meaningless wars, fighting battles that changed nothing. Others became farmers, planting and harvesting crops in a cycle of survival, living one day only to repeat it the next. Their dreams were buried beneath routine, their defiance extinguished beneath responsibility.

  No one else stayed. No one else wasted days, weeks, months—and now years—waiting for something that would never change… to change.

  Then, one day, the silence I had grown so used to was broken. The isolation I had endured for so long came to a halt.

  One by one, they began to appear—new figures stepping foot onto the Plain of Ascension. Then in groups. Then in waves. In quick succession, the once-empty field became scattered with life again, marking the approach of the next opening of the Golden Ascension Gate. A decade had passed.

  The second attempt to defy my destiny was nearing.

  They came from all corners of the mortal realm—fresh-faced aspirants, their soul weapons gleaming and their eyes burning with ambition. Some walked confidently, others with nerves hidden beneath forced smiles, all of them dreaming of the same thing: ascension.

  And then they saw me.

  A lone figure, gaunt and weathered, swinging a rusted, broken sword at a gate that had never so much as flinched or scratched.

  Some laughed as soon as they saw me, sneering as if my existence were nothing more than a joke for their amusement. They mocked my weapon—its corroded edge and cracked form deemed useless. Others whispered behind me, their pity and disgust clear in the way they glanced at my torn, faded clothes, my thin frame, and hollow eyes.

  Still, I kept swinging.

  Even as their voices rose around me—teasing, questioning, ridiculing—I kept swinging. And when some step forward, trying to pull me away, mock me to my face, or block my path, I fought.

  I fought with everything I had—not to strike them down, not to win their approval, but for the right to keep swinging. Because every strike I made, no matter how small, no matter how hopeless, was a refusal—a refusal to let them, or the heavens, decide the end of my story.

  Ten long years spent beneath the sun and storm, clawing at a wall that would not budge. Ten years of broken swings, fractured steel, and bleeding hands. And yet… not even a single scratch had been left on the gate. My efforts—ten years of unwavering, relentless effort—had achieved nothing, not even a scorn or splinter.

  My attempt to break through it by force had failed.

  So be it. This time, I would try the other way.

  Then, just as the winds on the plain began to shift, a booming voice echoed across the field—a voice I hadn’t heard in ten years, but remembered as clearly as if it had just spoken yesterday.

  “Mortals who seek ascension—hear my words!”

  I looked up.

  And there he stood.

  Atop the Golden Ascension Gate, in the exact same place, in the exact same pose, stood the very same cultivator. White robe, pristine and flowing in the wind. A jade sword at his side, untarnished and elegant. His skin smooth, unmarred by time, not a wrinkle nor blemish to betray even a single passing day.

  A decade had passed for me—a decade that had thinned my frame, weathered my body, hollowed my cheeks, and carved lines of age and struggle into my face. My beard had grown in raggedly, and the black of my hair now bore a few streaks of silver. Bearing every mark of my years beneath the gate.

  And he… remained untouched.

  I stared up at him, part of me wondering if he would look back. If he remembered me—the fool who had screamed defiance at him and the heavens.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  But his gaze passed over me without hesitation.

  No recognition. No pause. Not even a flicker of memory. As if I had never existed.

  And still... at that very moment, I decided to stop listening to him and focus on my goal.

  Every word was a repetition of the same speech he had delivered a decade ago. The same warnings, the same arrogant proclamations about fate and worth and destiny—like a script recited a thousand times without meaning. It might have awed the crowd behind me, might have stirred fear or inspiration in the hearts of the new hopefuls, but to me… it was nothing but noise.

  So I ignored him.

  Without a glance in his direction, I walked toward the gate.

  And once again, I raised my broken soul weapon.

  Cling.

  The familiar sound of steel meeting divine gold rang out, clear and sharp through the open field.

  Then another strike. And another.

  I could feel the eyes behind me—thousands, maybe millions—fixated on my back. Their whispers stilled. Their chatter quieted. My presence had always been strange, but now, in the middle of the cultivator’s grand declaration, my interruption was unexpected. Not from someone like me.

  Then, without warning, a ripple passed through the air beside me. Not a sound, not a step. Just… a presence.

  The cultivator appeared at my left side, not more than inches from my face. One moment he was at the top of the gate, and the next, he was here.

  He stood unnaturally still, his head tilted slightly as he stared directly at me, his gaze like frost biting into flesh.

  I could feel his eyes watching every movement, feel the weight of his presence so close to mine.

  But I didn’t look at him. I didn’t speak.

  “Pathetic.”

  I paused mid-swing.

  My grip on the sword tightened, knuckles pale from the pressure. My breath hitched—not from fear or shame, but from the weight of déjà vu pressing down on my chest.

  “A thin, brittle-looking thing. Unadorned. Unremarkable. A blade jagged in places—worn, rusted, beaten down. A hilt wrapped in tattered cloth, frayed and uneven. A soul weapon that inspires neither fear… nor admiration.”

  Those words. I knew them. I knew them so well I could have recited them myself.

  He had said them before—exactly as he had now—ten years ago, when I first stood before this gate, when I was younger, more fragile. The memory was burned into me.

  But now, standing beside him again, hearing them spoken once more without a flicker of recognition, I realized something that made me feel lighter than I expected.

  He really didn’t remember.

  He wasn’t reminiscing. He wasn’t mocking me out of familiarity. There was no bitterness, no venom. Just indifference.

  He was simply repeating the words that matched the role he played.

  They were lines spoken not to me, but to anyone—everyone—who didn’t meet the standard etched in his eyes. The disdain he cast wasn’t personal. It never had been.

  I was just another nobody to him. I was never worth remembering. And strangely, that truth made me smile.

  Without a word, I raised my sword again, the metal trembling in my grip, and brought it crashing down on the gate once more.

  But just as my blade was about to strike the gate again—just inches from making contact—his hand moved.

  In a blur, faster than my eyes could follow, his fingers closed around the edge of my broken sword, stopping it mid-swing with no effort at all. The metal groaned under his grip, the force of my swing collapsing.

  For the first time… his expression shifted.

  A subtle twitch pulled at his brow. His calm, cold mask cracked—just slightly—and in its place came something far sharper.

  Anger.

  He looked at me—truly looked at me—his eyes no longer filled with indifference or disregard, but with a simmering intensity that seemed to press down on me.

  “Are you seeking death?” he asked.

  The words weren’t shouted. They didn’t need to be.

  They were spoken with such precise coldness that they cut cleaner than any sword. And for anyone else, that would’ve been the moment to kneel. To lower their head, to beg for forgiveness. To fall to the ground and plead before someone who clearly stood a thousand realms above them.

  But I didn’t move.

  Because over the past ten years, I had realized something that changed everything about this moment.

  Back then, during our first encounter, I had screamed defiance in his face. I had insulted his pride, spat on the so-called sanctity of heaven’s fate. I had broken every unspoken rule a mortal was supposed to follow when standing before someone of his stature.

  And yet… he hadn’t harmed me.

  It had stayed with me all these years, buried beneath the sound of my swings and the silence of my solitude—but now it returned, clear and sharp. If he could have hurt me, he would have. Whether to silence me, punish me, or prove the point of heaven’s supremacy, he would have done so. And yet, he hadn’t.

  Which could only mean one thing. He couldn’t.

  Maybe it was a law of cultivation, some divine restriction etched into the fabric of existence. Maybe it was a mandate from the heavens themselves, forbidding those of higher realms from interfering with those of lower realms. I didn’t know the truth. But I felt it.

  And so, I said nothing. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t cower. I simply held my position, eyes steady, waiting. Waiting for him to let go.

  I could tell that he understood my intentions.

  His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and the anger behind them deepened—not from my defiance, but from the realization that I had seen through him. That I knew. I knew he couldn’t harm me. That I had stood before him, swung my weapon, denied his words, and waited—not in ignorance, but in blind faith.

  And he hated it.

  He must have known exactly what I was doing. I wasn’t resisting him—I was simply waiting for him to let go of my sword, so I could continue my swing like nothing happened. It was the quiet kind of defiance that didn’t require shouting. It just was.

  So instead, as if to assert dominance in the only way left to him… he squeezed.

  There was a moment of still pressure, then the sound—sharp and sudden. My blade shattered in his grip, exploding into countless shimmering splinters, scattered like dust.

  I remained still, watching as the fragments of my soul weapon vanished into the air. There was no anger in me.This was simply another cycle, no different from the dozens that had come before it.

  I calmly let go of what remained, allowing the hilt to dematerialize from my hand, fading into nothingness. Then, wordlessly, I turned and walked back toward the crowd, weaving past the confused stares and murmured whispers. I sat down where I always did—cross-legged on the ground, hands resting in my lap—and allowed myself to rest.

  My sword had broken. So, as always, I would wait for it to be repaired. This time was no different. Just a little earlier than I was used to.

  The cultivator stayed exactly where I had stood, unmoving, his gaze still fixed on me. Not the crowd, not the gate, not the other eager mortals gathered behind him.

  Just me. As if trying to understand why I hadn’t broken under pressure.

  Then, without a word, he clapped his hands once. The sound echoed sharply across the plain. And the gate began to move.

  The Golden Ascension Gate groaned as it opened for the second time in my life. A radiant light spilled out, warm and brilliant, swirling in vortex patterns just as before.

  The cultivator spoke—not to me, but to the others. The same announcement, the same instructions: pass through the gate, and if you are accepted, you may begin your path of cultivation.

  But as he spoke to the crowd, his eyes never left me. Not even once.

  Guess you’re going to remember me this time.