1. Threshold
Lee Haneul stood before the veil—a paper-thin shimmer in reality, fluttering like breath between two worlds.
Behind him? Cheers still echoed from the coliseum, fading fast.
In front of him?
The Realm of Life.
No ceremony. No ritual. Just him. And silence.
He stepped through.
And the world changed.
2. The Realm Reacts
It wasn't like entering a secret realm.
This wasn't just space—it was sentience.
Every step Haneul took, the realm watched him.
The sky rippled above him like ink dropped in water. Rivers of light curved toward his body as if drawn to his Life Dantian.
Mountains shifted in the distance—no, they bowed.
And beneath his feet, flowers bloomed where none had grown in centuries. They glowed a soft crimson, then turned silver as he passed.
"It's… welcoming me?" Haneul whispered.
But even as the Realm responded to his presence, something was off.
The Qi… was corrupted.
The Life energy tasted metallic. Strained. Infected.
Something else was here.
3. A Trail of Ash
Haneul moved fast now, light-stepping across floating rocks and cracked terrain.
Then he saw it.
A black tree, pulsing like a tumor.
Roots stretched unnaturally across the divine soil. Leaves that bled smoke. Its fruit? Nothingness—little voids of silence where sound and spirit disappeared completely.
"Godless Banner," he muttered.
But it was too late.
The trap activated.
Dozens of invisible glyphs lit up in a perfect circle beneath his feet.
A sphere of inverted energy snapped closed.
Life Core Suppression Array: designed to shatter the third Dantian permanently.
The air twisted.
His skin cracked.
His Life flame flickered.
Then died.
4. The Quiet Crown Wakes
From high above, the Proxy stood motionless, watching from a floating cliff of bone.
"He is weakening," it said.
The tattooed man smiled.
"Detonate it."
A massive surge of corrupted Everwake energy began to swell beneath the realm. The bomb they'd created—the Flesh Forge—began unraveling.
It would erupt in moments.
But down below, Lee Haneul exhaled.
His eyes opened.
Not with panic.
With presence.
"You made one mistake," he said quietly.
"You assumed this Dantian was mine alone."
The Mind lotus lit first.Then the Spirit core flared like a star.And then—
⟡
No, not the CODE. Not yet.
But the presence of something ancient rippled beneath his skin. Not from Haeun. Not yet awakened. Just enough to remind the Realm who he was.
And the Life Dantian re-ignited.
Not gold.Not red.But silver-white, wrapped in stillness.
The suppression array cracked.The sky screamed.The tree withered into dust.And the bomb?
Never went off.
Because the energy feeding it had been swallowed.
By him.
5. The First Clash with the Proxy
Far above, the Proxy's featureless face tilted.
Then vanished.
It appeared behind Haneul midair, swinging an arm of condensed void-matter.
No aura. No spiritual pressure. Just pure deletion.
Haneul ducked. A mountain in the distance got erased.
He spun, palm out.
"Third Stance of the Nameless Hand…"
The lotus behind his back bloomed.
"…Silence Rewritten."
His strike didn't hit the Proxy's body.
It rewrote the space around it.
Suddenly, the Proxy was falling. Not physically. Ontologically—its purpose breaking.
For the first time, it reacted.
Not with anger.
With hesitation.
6. Round One Ends
The Proxy teleported back to its cliff, body glitching.
The tattooed man cursed.
"He shouldn't be able to counter deletion. That's god-killer tech."
"He's syncing faster than expected."
"Too fast."
The eyeless woman whispered:
"Then we'll lure the twin."