Chapter 861: The Old King
The sheer scale of the Spiritual Calamity tearing through the physical world far outstripped all preliminary projections.
Even as sighted Gillians across various sectors were sequentially brought down by arriving top-tier Reincarnators, scout relays reported that an even denser wave of Gillians had begun to breach the atmosphere. Sighting reports even confirmed the manifestation of Adjuchas across several coordinates in the Western Hemisphere.
Civilian mortality rates began to spike exponentially. Sovereign governments desperately redacted the casualty figures, yet unchecked hysteria rippled across the continents regardless.
The reality of invisible horrors slaughtering humanity by the tens of thousands could no longer be swept under bureaucratic rugs.
Across digital networks, rumors and frantic leaks spread like wildfire: some claimed the world was undergoing an authentic paranormal awakening, while others insisted rogue ability users were weaponizing invisible entities to stage mass executions.
As civil order buckled under existential panic, the foundational pillars of society began to fracture.
Inside an apartment in Yingtian, a young girl clutching a worn plush bear stared at the television broadcast with rising dread.
"Brother... the news says everyone has to stay locked inside... Are there... really ghosts out there...?"
Dongdong looked up with wide, anxious eyes. Her brother had been slipping out frequently of late; if he crossed paths with those invisible nightmares, what would become of him?
Dongdong knew how deeply her brother cherished her. Ever since their parents passed away, she had been the undisputed center of his world. She had understood from a tender age that whenever she put on a pouting, helpless face, her brother would surrender every stubborn principle just to keep her safe.
Seeing his sister's distress, Dongjin dropped to one knee, cupping her cheeks in his hands, whispering gentle reassurances to soothe her trembling shoulders.
Leaning against the foyer wall clad in a tailored black overcoat and an elegant black fedora, Ruoxue clicked her tongue in silent exasperation. As she grew increasingly acclimated to exotic combat systems, her newly refined Observation Haki allowed her to track the girl's theatrical micro-expressions with clinical clarity.
Women truly know how to manipulate soft-hearted fools, regardless of age, she mused. Not that she held romantic designs on Dongjin; rather, watching a fellow operative who advanced at terrifying velocity within mission worlds get utterly domesticated by a little sister in reality was simply baffling.
By all tactical logic, they should be out scouring the streets for spiritual entities right now. With sufficient luck, they might bag a Cursed Spirit wielding an anomalous technique, or banish a vengeful ghost bound by localized urban-legend rules.
So long as the encounters yielded drops, the more monsters that surfaced, the better!
Ruoxue had adapted to the crucible of the Reincarnators far more naturally than she had initially anticipated.
This perilous, razor-sharp reality felt infinitely more vibrant than mundane society. Consequently, she could never fathom why Dongjin—a figure held in such profound regard by the King of Destiny—remained so thoroughly allergic to the sovereign path.
Had he never been chosen by the Space, the outbreak of this catastrophic Spiritual Calamity would have left him just like the millions of ignorant mortals cowering in their living rooms:
Surrendering his mortality to blind providence, or begging for the passing grace of an altruistic Reincarnator.
Ruoxue despised such helplessness. With every passing hour, she felt vindicated in having accepted the boons of destiny.
As for the eventual toll? To hell with it.
By the time Dongjin finally pacified his sister and stepped out into the corridor, Ruoxue had parsed an extensive ledger of intelligence from her smartphone.
Now that the Paradise had sanctioned Reincarnator syndicates to operate openly across the physical world, tactical brokers had shifted their primary hubs from the public sectors back to the mortal plane.
After all, few operatives could sustain the spatial costs of lingering in the public plazas indefinitely; conducting tedious intelligence trades in reality was far more economical.
"Hey, Dongjin. Word on the wire says an anomaly suspected of being a Special Grade Cursed Spirit has manifested in the neighboring Wan province. Want to take a shot at it?"
Her Devil Fruit authority was extraordinarily lethal, and her Haki cultivation had progressed smoothly; Ruoxue maintained an exceptionally confident appraisal of their unit's collective output.
Furthermore, flawed as Dongjin was, the King of Destiny had made no miscalculation regarding one undeniable truth:
The man was an innate savant tailored for the Infinite Dimensional Space. Upon clearing merely his rookie deployment, he had vaulted straight into the Parallel Step, displaying peerless mastery over combat arts.
His passive fortune was horrifying: his very first material smelting had yielded a peerless, game-changing trait.
That brand of karmic blessing was palpable even to an operative lacking destiny-side perception.
And that was without factoring in his proprietary Chosen One innate gifts.
Dongjin exhaled a weary sigh. He realized he was becoming hopelessly entangled. His initial plan had been to appease that shadowy figure, stepping into that bizarre Space simply to gain abilities while coasting through assignments, keeping his mundane domestic life strictly compartmentalized and untouched.
Yet the world had unraveled at terrifying speed. This global Spiritual Calamity had thoroughly obliterated his blueprint for a tranquil, mediocre existence.
He had deliberately attempted to suppress his growth velocity. Though freshly initiated with barely two deployments under his belt, he had deduced the cold algorithm governing the Space: the faster an operative climbed, the more lethal the mission worlds assigned to them became.
Theoretically, rationing one's progression was the golden rule of longevity.
Yet the advent of this global calamity had thrust the fragility of the physical world directly into his face. If these cataclysms were permitted to detonate unchecked, a threshold would arrive where events spiraled beyond his power to intervene.
If a Menos Grande locked its hollow eyes onto his sister tomorrow, what could a frail, mediocre brother do to shield her?
So... there is no retreat. I have to scale my strength at maximum velocity to crush those psychopaths...
I have to force the operational framework of this world toward colder reason... force reality... to heed my voice!
The lingering hesitation and fog clouding Dongjin's eyes burned away. His mind accelerated into high gear, coldly mapping out long-term strategic contingencies for the planetary landscape.
Drawing his phone, he scanned through verified data streams he had previously chosen to ignore—not classified intelligence, but monumental global headlines circulating across open channels:
The King of the East, Mercenary Tao... The Queen of the West, Yoko...
And the former arbiter of terrestrial order, the King of Miracles, Ryo.
Name after name, sovereign faction after sovereign faction crystallized within Dongjin's calculations. His respiration quickened, then settled into a rhythm of absolute, icy calm.
Ruoxue's eyes widened in genuine astonishment. In the span of a dozen breaths, the man before her seemed to have shed his skin entirely.
An intangible, suffocating momentum began coiling around his presence—an aura born of absolute, razor-sharp focus projecting sovereign gravity outward.
Though she remained the stronger combatant on paper, Dongjin suddenly radiated an essence that defied conventional metrics.
Is this the so-called mandate of heaven?!
Ruoxue finally caught the deeper design behind the King of Destiny pairing her with Dongjin. This man was fundamentally anomalous!
Could he be an authentic "protagonist" tailored by the cosmos?!
Was that Monster King Mercenary Tao—currently ruling the Infinite Dimensional Space like a living calamity—merely an overarching antagonist scripted to serve as Dongjin's ultimate stepping stone?!
Blessed by the reality-bending authorities of the Uta Uta no Mi, Ruoxue's hyperactive imagination spun wildly out of control.
Suddenly, Dongjin snapped his head toward the end of the hall.
"Who's there?!"
At the far terminus of the residential corridor, the fabric of reality tore open into an abyssal black void. The next fraction of a second, the world lost all color, reducing the hallway to monochromatic static.
The telltale neurological symptom of visual pathways failing as consciousness crossed the threshold of collapse.
Dongjin's lungs seized; his heart felt clamped in an iron fist, struggling to execute a single beat.
"Spiritual pressure... suffocating... spiritual pressure..."
Dongjin choked out the warning through clenched teeth, attempting to alert his partner, only to find Ruoxue already driven to one knee, clutching her ribs with an ashen face.
Singing or deploying Devil Fruit authorities was out of the question; she could scarcely draw enough breath to form a syllable.
The intruder's energetic mass stood so high above their echelon that they were no longer competing within the same dimensional bracket.
Damn it all... Is Dongjin actually the protagonist of this world?! Ambushed by a final boss right out of the gate?! Shouldn't the script send mid-tier fodder for us to farm first...?!
Deprived of cerebral oxygen, Ruoxue's thoughts unraveled into chaotic panic.
Stepping out from the mouth of the Garganta was a blond man radiating detached, placid composure. He wore white boots resembling long greaves, each step he took sending ripples of concentrated Reishi rolling across the floorboards.
"As expected... you still chose this path."
The man advanced, his index finger brushing against the wallpaper. The concrete and plaster instantly rotted, crumbling into decaying ash. He moved with the unhurried gait of an executioner arriving to collect a debt. Dongjin tasted the icy certainty of death, yet his muscles refused to answer.
The ambient spiritual pressure radiating from this creature was sufficient to snuff out their souls. This was a pinnacle Reincarnator!
Suddenly, a realization struck Dongjin like a thunderbolt. He turned toward his apartment door. If an operative like him was suffocating beneath this pressure, what was happening to his sister inside?!
Dongdong...!
The realization that his frail, ordinary sister was likely being crushed into a lifeless husk beneath this spiritual gravity turned his vision crimson. A core nerve deep within his brain threatened to snap from pure rage.
Schwing!
A piercing blade-resonance shattered the hallway. A wet tearing sound followed in its wake.
Sunlight poured through the fractured walls.
RUMBLE!
Before Dongjin and Ruoxue's disbelieving eyes, the outer perimeter of the thirty-story apartment complex was cleanly sheared open at a diagonal tilt.
A streak of crimson sword light completely severed the creeping, decaying spiritual pressure in a single stroke.
Black hair trailing to her heels, her eyes as calm and unreadable as an ancient subterranean lake, a girl resembling an exquisite porcelain doll hovered serenely in the open air beyond the sheared structure. She watched half of the multi-story complex buckle and crash toward the street below without displaying a shred of concern.
She held zero regard for collateral mortal lives. Moreover, she was not operating alone today; someone else had been assigned to manage the debris.
"The Quietude of Mortality... Lady Qiqi?!"
The blond man emerging from the Garganta froze, his brow knitting slightly. He had anticipated an intervention, but why had a Sovereign Monarch arrived in place of the upper three seats of Destiny?!
Qiqi offered no correction regarding her crown; the title of Quietude of Mortality belonged to an obsolete era.
"Good grief~ What an inconsiderate little lady! Just because you know I'm running support, you go around lopping off skyscrapers without a second thought~"
A breezy, melodic cadence echoed through the corridor. Sporting snow-white hair, cerulean eyes, and an immaculate white haori, Satoru Gojo materialized in the stairwell through instantaneous displacement, casually handing the unconscious Dongdong back into her brother's arms.
Qiqi gave a slight nod; she had executed the structural cut specifically because she knew Gojo held the spatial mobility to secure the girl.
"Designated No. 1 Operative of the Throne of Virtual Reality. Withdraw. Your objective is nullified."
Qiqi's tone remained flat. Though she had been the first Sovereign Monarch to swear fealty beneath Mercenary Tao's banner, she rarely circulated through the public administrative sectors of the Paradise.
When this planetary Spiritual Calamity erupted, leadership had scrambled in panic, petitioning her intervention.
As the de facto second-in-command of the Paradise, stepping onto the field was her obligation.
Yet before she could embark on purging the spiritual incursions, the authentic Monster King had returned, handing down an entirely different operational mandate.
Gojo rested both hands behind his head, his posture crackling with eager friction. According to his host's directives, the catalyst required to push his foundation to the next evolutionary tier lay within the high-tier Menos Grande standing before them.
He felt the pervasive, inescapable pressure exerted upon his astral body—a crushing gravitational drag born of an insurmountable disparity in soul mass, unlike anything he had encountered before.
This was a realm standing above the Jujutsu power system: not negative emotional feedback, not cursed energy, but the unvarnished mass of the Soul!
While select masters within his native world could perceive and manipulate the soul to execute surgical techniques, the foundational mass of their souls remained largely uniform.
Yet this operative codenamed [The Tyrant] radiated a soul density so dense that his mere passive presence would dissolve the vast majority of Cursed Spirits in his home realm.
The soul mass operated on an entirely different scale.
Only an overwhelmingly dense soul commands the foundation to bear overwhelming power!
Gojo glimpsed the path forward. Simultaneously, he hungered to measure the exact distance separating his current self from this adversary.
Having been erased by the casual fist of that monster named Son Goku, Gojo had soaked within the waters of the Underworld for an age.
And he had borne witness to his host—an entity whose terrifying might already defied his comprehension—being pulverized by a single punch from Saitama.
His long-held conviction that he alone was the honored one throughout heaven and earth had shattered into dust. He had begun the slow, agonizing process of forging himself anew.
Though his raw cursed energy reserves had dipped considerably within this white-robed vessel, Gojo felt his fingers grazing the rungs of a far higher stairway.
The Tyrant, designated No. 1 of the Silver Vanguard of the Throne of Virtual Reality, stared down the Sovereign Monarch blocking his path. He recognized that Lord Aizen's grand design had encountered an unforeseen variable.
Or was this the esoteric maneuvering of that King of Destiny?
Drawing Mercenary Tao directly into the karmic thread of the Old King of Men...
Beyond the outskirts of Yingtian, the Second Seat of Destiny, Damon, furrowed his brow beneath the shadow of a bamboo grove.
Blocking his path was a man wearing a wide woven straw hat, framed by the slowly reconstituting silhouette of an Impure World Reincarnation: Madara Uchiha.
"Lord Mercenary Tao intends to intervene in this affair?"
Under the arrangements mapped by the King of Destiny, Dongjin was scheduled to encounter an unmanageable crisis today, prompting the faction to dispatch Damon for the rescue, initiating an open clash against the vanguard of the Throne of Virtual Reality.
Yet Damon had been intercepted here by Shigure and Madara Uchiha.
Which meant that back at the apartment, the operative from the Throne of Virtual Reality had undoubtedly been intercepted by assets deployed by Mercenary Tao...
The Monster King of the East... is deliberately inserting himself into this board? Damon realized he could no longer parse the strategic calculus of that bloodthirsty savage.
"Through this maneuver, you have secured your seat at that chessboard, my Lord."
Amatsu inclined her head submissively before Kaito Shirogane, whose aura had grown palpably more terrifying. She had observed thousands of divergent timelines, yet even she could not verify whether this branch represented the optimal trajectory.
She knew only one thing: she was prepared to gamble.