The room was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Its gilded marble walls, which had always reflected the warm golden glow of the candles, were now drowned in an intense purple radiance, as though the very air itself had transformed into a cold fire twisting between the pillars. On the floor, where silk carpets had once covered the footsteps of nobles, blood had spread like a dark lake, devouring every trace of life.
And at the heart of this horrifying scene stood a young girl whose features still carried the innocence of childhood, but her eyes told an entirely different story. Slowly, yet relentlessly, her eyes were changing from their natural color into the same purple that filled the room, as though the entire room were nothing more than a reflection of what was happening inside her.
It was Xue Mei.
Suddenly, the massive doors burst open violently, and guards poured inside in waves, their swords drawn. Their yellow uniforms bore a single insignia: one line running across the center of the chest, the symbol of the Royal Palace Guards.
"Hey! Who dares to start a fight inside the Royal Palace?!" their leader shouted, his voice trembling between anger and shock as he took a step forward, only to suddenly freeze when his eyes fell upon the entire scene.
"Hey, hey... Do you know that anyone who causes trouble inside the Royal Palace is executed immediately?" he tried to reclaim his authority through his voice, but his hands were trembling around the hilt of his sword.
What the guards saw was not merely an ordinary crime. It was not simply some strange corpse lying on the ground. The body lying there, surrounded by a pool of its own blood, belonged to the King's own brother. A chill of horror ran through the bones of everyone in the room. The guards froze where they stood, unable to take even a single step forward.
Xue Mei gave them no chance to think. In the blink of an eye, she disappeared from her position and appeared beside the nearest guard. Her hand moved like an arrow, severing his head in a single clean motion, without hesitation or mercy. Blood sprayed through the air like dark red mist, and the head struck the ground with a dry, horrifying sound.
The remaining guards finally snapped out of their shock and drew their swords in unison, shouting their martial technique:
"Sun Art!"
The blades of their swords began to glow with a scorching golden light, but before the technique could fully take shape, before it could release even the slightest trace of power, Xue Mei casually waved her hand once, without any visible effort, as though she were swatting away an annoying fly.
All of the guards' heads flew through the air at the same moment. Their bodies collapsed one after another, with no sound other than flesh striking the marble, while the purple light in Xue Mei's eyes grew brighter, as though it were feeding on every drop of blood spilled within that cursed room.
---
In a quiet classroom illuminated by natural sunlight, a young man stood before a group of children, patiently explaining to them the fundamentals of the cultivation realms, those mysterious realms that governed the fate of warriors in this world.
"Alright, alright," the young man said as he drew two imaginary circles in the air with his hand. "When you want to break through into a higher realm, you will find two openings before you. The first opening will take you to a higher realm, and the second opening... will also take you to a higher realm."
The children exchanged confused glances, and several small hands rose into the air.
"Wait a moment!" one of them shouted. "How can both openings take us to the same higher realm?! That doesn't make any sense!"
The young man sighed with a patient smile, as though he were answering this question for the thousandth time.
"When you reach the higher stage, a single opening will appear before you, taking you to a higher realm. However, if you use rare treasures or precious resources, that first opening will close, and another, higher path will open before you, a path that leads directly to the legendary stage. From there, you will enter a higher realm through the second opening, which is undoubtedly far better than the first."
The children listened to his words in fascination, as the image slowly began to become clearer within their young minds.
"And also, whoever enters a higher realm while still at the higher stage..."
The young man did not finish his sentence. He suddenly trembled, his entire body shaking uncontrollably. Before he could understand what was happening, it was already too late. His body was sent flying through the air with a single blow, light as a breeze, yet it shattered every bone in his body at once. Xue Mei shot toward him at an invisible speed, her hand crushing his spine without mercy.
The young man stopped breathing. He had died before his body even touched the ground.
The classroom erupted into the screams of the children, who scattered and ran in every direction, shouting with hoarse voices filled with pure terror.
The guards and young men present in the classroom sprang into action, drawing their swords in perfect unison.
"Sun Art!"
The temperature in the room began to rise little by little, and explosions erupted throughout the classroom, while that cursed purple color glowed in its center, shining like a black star devouring everything around it.
---
On the other side of the palace, inside Xue Mei's father's room, the guards carefully examined the area while the distant sounds of explosions echoed through the walls like faint thunder. But their priority at that moment was not the chaos raging in the great hall. It was the corpse lying before them: the corpse of the King's brother.
"They truly died in a strange way," one of the guards whispered as he stared at the bodies that were still slowly decaying, as though some hidden force continued to devour them from within even after death.
At that moment, the door opened quietly, and a man entered whose features none of those present could distinguish. He was nothing more than a moving shadow, silent and heavy, carrying the weight of an entire kingdom in his footsteps.
The man walked toward Xue Mei's father, then suddenly bent down and embraced the corpse tightly, as though he feared it would slip from his hands forever.
"My brother... you had everything," he whispered in a trembling voice. "You had money, power, and everything you could ever want. Every order you gave was carried out immediately, without hesitation. And yet, you lost only one thing..."
The man began to cry, his tears silently falling onto his brother's bloodstained clothes.
"Only one thing... and you lost your life because of it. How could that one thing be worth losing everything else?"
His crying grew louder, his shoulders trembling, before he added in a voice barely audible:
"You had everything, yet you lost it all because you followed the words of others who could neither advance nor hinder anything."
This man was the King of the Sun Kingdom.
---
The distant sounds of explosions gradually faded until a heavy silence enveloped the great hall, where blood and corpses were scattered across every corner, bearing witness to a massacre that would never be forgotten.
Amidst the ruins, Xue Mei stood alone, her small dress soaked in blood from her head to the tips of her fingers, her face showing no trace of regret.
"I didn't expect all of this to happen."
Suddenly, the door opened, and a young man entered wearing black clothes embroidered with shining golden threads. His steps were confident, and his eyes never left the young girl standing amidst the blood.
"You are the..." he began, but he did not finish his sentence.
At that moment, Xue Mei's teacher entered the hall. Without saying a single word, he moved one finger through the air with a light motion, and Xue Mei immediately collapsed unconscious, her small body falling onto the bloodstained floor stained with the blood she had spilled with her own hands.
"Genos, take her to prison."
Outside the hall, the children who had survived the massacre stood gathered together, their bodies trembling with fear. When they saw Genos carrying the unconscious Xue Mei in his arms, one of them burst into tears and screamed:
"It's her! It's her! A demon! A demon!"
Soon, the other children repeated the same words, their broken voices filled with pure terror.
---
An entire week passed, heavy and silent, before the doors of the enormous hall opened once again.
Xue Mei sat in the center of the hall, surrounded by elders who stood in rows, looking at her with a strange mixture of anticipation and hope. Before her stood the King of the Sun Kingdom with an unwavering stance.
"From this moment onward, obey my command," the King announced in a voice that filled the hall. "Xue Mei will be my daughter, and she will be the princess of the Sun Kingdom and the Crown Princess."
The impact of this announcement was far from ordinary. It did not merely shake the foundations of the Sun Kingdom; all eight kingdoms trembled from it on the very same day.
No one outside the walls of the Royal Palace knew Xue Mei. For her to suddenly be chosen as the Crown Princess was like a true earthquake striking the Sun Kingdom, with its shockwaves reaching even the neighboring kingdoms.
---
Narvik sighed quietly as he absorbed what he had just heard.
"So that's how it is... She is the King's brother's daughter."
Narvik was sitting beside Baran, who had spent the last hour telling him the entire story. Baran smiled faintly, though his smile carried a trace of hidden concern.
"Listen, Narvik," he said seriously. "I hope you won't be too harsh with her if the two of you fight."
"Alright, alright, as you wish," Narvik replied with apparent indifference, before suddenly adding in a sharper tone, "But do you really want me to kill a king?"
The moment he uttered those words, Narvik suddenly stood up and drew his sword from its sheath.
BOOOOM!
A sudden explosion echoed through the entire courtyard, and snow began falling from nowhere, even though the daytime sun was still shining brightly in the sky. The wind suddenly intensified, swirling around the area as though it were a living creature, confining the snow and storm to that courtyard alone and nowhere else.
Baran watched the scene in silence, while Narvik stood with his sword in his hand and snow dancing around him, revealing a strange man before him, the wind wrapping around his body like loyal guards.
"As expected of the son of a king," the strange man said with a calm smile as he returned his sword to its sheath.
At that very moment, the wind disappeared as though it had never existed. Narvik smiled and returned his own sword to its place, causing the falling snow around him to vanish all at once.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" Narvik asked cautiously.
The man laughed softly, a calm and confident laugh, before answering:
"My name is Remiro, and my title is 'The Wind-Cutting Swordsman.' I have come so that we can form an alliance."