The dead don't scream.
Not anymore.
Not once you've thrown hundreds into the pit with your own hands.
I was thirteen when I started stacking corpses. Seventeen now. Still here. Still alive. Still crawling in the same graveyard the world calls a sect battlefield.
And today, something in the pit called out to me.
The rain had stopped, but the mud was thick—like the earth itself was tired of swallowing blood. I dragged the latest body by the wrist. He was heavy. Too heavy for a disciple. Maybe an elder. Torn open at the gut. Half his face melted by some weird cultivation technique.
Good. One less of them to fear.
He wore the robes of the Red Fang Sect. Same bastards who executed my mother for stealing a rice cake when I was five. They made me watch. Laughed when she bled.
"Your kind were born to rot," they said.
They were wrong.
Because something just woke up inside me.
[System Activation Detected.]
I stopped cold. My fingers went numb.
[Searching for Compatible Host…]
[Soul Grade: D-]
[No Spirit Root. No Cultivation Veins. No Affinity.]
[Override Confirmed.]
Pain. Like knives behind my eyes. A flash of symbols burned across my vision—red rings, bleeding triangles, screams written in geometry.
[Welcome, Ja Yun.]
[You have been chosen by the Heaven-Slaying Demon System.]
I collapsed beside the corpse, panting. I've never had a System. Slum trash like me doesn't awaken. Even kids with dogshit roots still get "Farmer" or "Wood Cutter." I was less than nothing.
And now… this?
"…Heaven-Slaying?" I whispered.
[Correct.]
[I am not here to help you level up. I am here to unmake the Path.]
[Goal: Devour all Systems. Kill the gods that built them.]
I blinked. "…That's insane."
[And yet here you are, talking to a corpse-eating demon code.]
A second voice—raspy, deeper—broke through the system's robotic calm. Like two minds were trapped inside it. One logical. One monstrous.
[New Feature Unlocked: Corpse Assimilation Protocol.]
Consume martial corpses to extract bloodline fragments, techniques, and memories.
[Warning: Each assimilation reduces your humanity.]
That last line hit me.
It should've scared me.
But it didn't.
I looked at the corpse in front of me—the Red Fang scum who would've spat in my face if he were alive.
"Each assimilation reduces your humanity…"
I placed my hand on his chest.
"Good," I whispered. "I'm done pretending I was ever human to them."
The body broke apart beneath my hand—not into dust, but into raw data. Memories surged through me: sword strikes, breathing patterns, a half-learned technique called Blood Echo Step. I saw glimpses of sect rituals, torture rooms, forbidden martial arts.
I saw Elder Tian—the one who personally cut down my mother—sitting in his throne made of bones, sipping spirit wine.
[Corpse Assimilation Complete.]
[Blood Echo Step: Acquired (35%).]
[Strength +2]
[Ki Nodes: 3/108 forcibly opened.]
I gasped. My body burned. My heart raced. My skin pulsed with something I'd never felt before:
Power.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't sacred.
It was filthy, stolen, forced.
And it felt perfect.
[New Quest Generated.]
Objective: Slaughter the Red Fang Initiation Squad.
Reward: Demon Technique – Vein Reversal.]
Accept? [Y/N]
I clenched my fist.
For the first time, the sky didn't look so far above me. The sect towers didn't feel so untouchable.
And Elder Tian…?
He just became my stepping stone.
"Y," I said.
The System answered with laughter.
Not code. Not mechanical.
A real, guttural laugh.
[Let's see how long you last, little monster.]
I stood.
My name is Ja Yun.
I was born with nothing.
Now I have a demon in my blood… and a god to kill.