'Mount Tian Hua?' Shin thought as he glanced at the system panel floating in front of him. His eyes shifted back to the scene of carnage. The children's brutal deaths didn't evoke the disgust one might expect.
Instead, there was this unsettling sense of satisfaction bubbling up inside him.
He didn't quite understand it yet—why seeing such horror didn't faze him—but the warm feeling in his chest told him one thing: his heart was oddly... happy?
Before he could eve realize his own psychopathic happiness , one of the guards suddenly shouted, snapping him back to reality.
"YOUNG MASTER, STAY BACK!" Four of the guards, who had been trailing Shin and Team Gai, leaped forward, forming a protective barrier in front of him.
Their eyes were sharp, scanning the area for threats, though they still kept an eye on Team Gai. They had a job to do, after all.
But Shin wasn't stupid. He knew why they prioritized him. If it came down to saving their employer's only son or a group of strangers, they'd save him without hesitation.
It wasn't about heroics; it was about survival and who signed their paychecks.
"Tch... Charon, I told you to keep a low profile," a woman's voice cut through the tension like a blade. She appeared calm, almost bored, as she scolded the bulky boy who had just turned a bunch of kids into a bloody puddle.
The woman looked to be around 18 or 19, with sharp features and an air of control, dressed in sleek black shinobi gear with pink accents running down the sides.
Her sword, like the rest of her group, had an intricate blossom design.
The two weren't alone. Behind her stood three others, all varying in age but clearly part of the same team. The woman, however, appeared to be the leader—older, more composed.
"YOU MONSTER!" A sudden, anguished cry rang out from across the street. The owner of a nearby food stall came charging toward the bulky boy—Charon—with a knife in hand, rage etched on his face.
His child had just been slaughtered, turned into pizza sauce.
Great, Shin thought darkly. Guess that guy's about to offer a new pizza special—complete with fresh sauce. He almost snorted at his own morbid humor, but kept his expression neutral.
"Sigh... how annoying," the woman muttered, clearly unbothered by the approaching threat. With a swift motion, she unsheathed her sword.
"Heavenly Autumn Blossom: First Form,"
she announced, as if she were some kind of character from Demon Slayer.
The air around her suddenly shifted. The wind picked up so violently that it seemed as though her form was blending into the swirling leaves.
In an instant, the entire group—her, Charon, and the others—became shrouded in a storm of spinning leaves.
Their figures blurred, becoming almost invisible, and before anyone could blink, they vanished completely from sight.
It all happened in the blink of an eye, no more than two seconds. The guards from the Shonin clan, trained and disciplined, didn't even have a chance to react.
It was like watching a scene from a dream—or a nightmare.
By the time anyone even processed what had happened, the group of mysterious shinobi had already disappeared, leaving nothing but eerie silence behind.
"Young master, we need to get out of here! Quickly!" One of the guards rushed up to Shin, his voice breaking with panic.
He was on the verge of losing his composure because if anything happened to Shin, his life might as well be over—dead, as dead as Go/Jo himself.
The stakes weren't just high; they were absolute.
But Shin? He didn't flinch, didn't even acknowledge the frantic guard next to him. Instead, his mind shifted to something else entirely.
'Enter Heavenly Demon's Library,' he thought, casually ignoring the chaos around him.
The world around him responded immediately. Reality itself seemed to shatter like fragile glass, breaking into thousands of tiny pieces as all the colors drained away, leaving only stark, empty whiteness.
He knew where he was—the system space's familiar white room, with the imposing door that led to the Heavenly Demon's Library standing before him.
"System, are you sure those martial arts are from Mount Tian Hua? From the Martial World?" he asked, approaching the heavy doors and pushing them open without hesitation.
{Master, I am certain. Such techniques should not exist in this world.}
Shin clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Hmm... What a drag," he muttered, walking further inside the library.
He hadn't even began to practice the Heavenly Demonic Arts yet, and now this? Something like Mount Tian Hua martial arts showing up here in the shinobi world? That wasn't just weird—it was fucking weird.
It made no sense. How the hell did martial arts from the Martial World find their way into the Shinobi World?
"System Teleport me to the section of the library related to Mount Tian Hua."
As soon as Shin was teleported to the Mount Tian Hua section of the library.
You could say luck was on his side—after sifting through a few questionable choices, including an unexpectedly erotic novel about Mount Tian Hua (which, let's be honest, caught him off guard), he finally grabbed something more useful.
"Hmm..." Shin muttered to himself, flipping open the book he picked up. His eyes scanned the pages with mild curiosity.
[Origin: Mount Tian Hua was a sect-based organization, part of the orthodoxies along with being one of the few immortal lineages of the martial world.
It has stood on Mount Tian Hua for thousands of years, dating back to the time when becoming immortal was considered the most easier.
The sect itself was founded by an immortal whose name, gender, or race has been lost to time. Legend has it that the founder was brutally defeated by a mysterious man who appeared out of nowhere.
The immortal barely managed to ascend afterward, so grievously injured that they never fully recovered.
This event is also said to have marked the first instance of the word "demons" in the martial world, all because of that mysterious man. However, after thrashing the founder like a common dog, the man vanished as quickly as he appeared.]
"Blah, blah, blah..." Shin droned on, his voice barely above a whisper. His fingers absentmindedly flicked the pages, his eyes skimming over what he considered useless history.
So far, it felt like reading filler in a novel—endless background information that did nothing to help him.
He yawned, stretching his neck as he leaned back against the library wall, still flipping pages. It wasn't until he reached a particular section that his attention perked up.
[Before the era of demons, the entire Tian Hua Sect was massacred by the Heavenly Demon.]
"Hmm? That's it?" Shin muttered, raising an eyebrow. "That's how it ends?" He looked at the final line in confusion.
Every other book he had read from the library went into excruciating detail about everything, down to what color robes people wore, so why did this one feel like it was cutting off?
But before he could toss the book aside, the words on the page began to shift and rearrange themselves before his eyes.
His hand instinctively tightened around the book's spine, but he didn't move.
Suddenly, new text appeared, much to his shock.
[Would you like to experience it?]
{A/N: This chapter might seem like it's just filler, but trust me, it's going to be a major turning point for the MC's mindset. What happens here is what will push him toward a more demon-like attitude.
Also, what do you think about the Mount Tian Hua Sect?
Drop your thoughts in the comments, and don't forget to motivate me with your feedback!}