Merin steps out of the trial field, the light of the collapsing maze fading behind him.

A week remains before the trial’s end, yet he no longer walks its paths. His figure is steady, but his eyes hold the weight of defeat.

He did not leave because he claimed the inheritance. He was forced out.

The memory still burns—his clash with one of the Star Spirit race.

Their Law of Stars shone with the brilliance of the Saint Realm, vast and crushing like the sky itself.

Against it, Merin’s Illusion Space Dao faltered.

It was never meant for direct battle.

His strength in the Laws of the Five Elements, honed to the Tao King Realm, and his mastery of the Law of Space at the Great Tao Lord Realm, could not bridge the gulf.

The starry force consumed him, pressing until he had no choice but to surrender.

Around the floating temple, cultivators gather in silence, every gaze fixed on its closed gates.

They wait for the final victor to emerge, ready to rob or die in the attempt. Greed and anticipation thickens the air like smoke.

Merin does not linger. His purpose lies beyond these contests of chance and plunder.

Without a glance back, wings of space ripple behind him, and his body blurs into the horizon.

He streaks toward Jinji City, carrying with him both the sting of loss and the fire of resolve.

The city’s towering walls rise into view, their lines humming faintly with hidden power.

Once inside, Merin books a quiet room in a modest inn, retreating behind shuttered windows.

He sits cross-legged, senses spreading outward, sinking into the pulse of the city itself.

Beneath the stone streets and crowded markets, he begins to trace the web of formations woven into Jinji’s foundation.

Days pass.

While he maps the hidden patterns, murmurs drift into his ears from the world outside.

The trial has ended.

The inheritance has been claimed.

The victor is not the Star Spirit cultivator who crushed him, but another from the same race. Their name ripples across every conversation, sharpening envy and fear alike.

Merin does not chase after their shadow.

Instead, he turns back to the city’s heart.

Piece by piece, he comprehends the vast network of arrays, until at last he finds the flaws, the places where his own hand can leave a mark.

Quietly, he begins to shift them. Lines bend to his will, nodes reshape, energy currents take on new flows.

While his work deepens, the world beyond Jinji stirs.

New trial fields emerge one after another.

Rumours roar of hidden treasures, supreme inheritances, and endless bloodshed.

The battlefield realm grows feverish, its competition climbing toward a red-hot peak.

The appointed time for outsiders to enter draws near, the sky itself seeming to tremble with anticipation.

Merin, unhurried, lays the final stroke upon the city’s formation.

The last array hums into harmony with his changes.

A subtle shift runs through Jinji City, invisible to those who walk its streets, but to him, the whole city now breathes in rhythm with his will.

Merin begins the formation.

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Silent lines of power ignite beneath the ground, pulsing through streets, alleys, and courtyards.

Above the city, a barrier blossoms into existence—vast, translucent, enclosing every tower and wall in its grip.

People look up in shock, astonishment turning quickly to fear.

Voices cry out across the markets, confusion rising like a tide.

Many rush to the city walls, climbing for a better view, expecting an enemy army or beasts at their gates.

But beyond the barrier, the world lies calm.

No invaders.

No siege.

Only silence.

And then, the puppets stir.

From hidden corners, from empty streets and shadowed doorways, they emerge—cold, lifeless constructs now driven by the arrays.

Without hesitation, they fall upon the people. Screams shatter the air.

Steel and claw rend flesh.

Panic turns to despair as the massacre unfolds, and every dying breath feeds the array’s hunger.

Each soul, torn free, streams into Merin’s illusion space.

There, their memories are copied, stripped bare, and the remnants stuffed into characters within the ninja world, swelling its false life with stolen essence.

The slaughter runs its course. By the time silence falls again, Jinji City lies painted in blood.

But what follows is not what Merin intended.

The aura of destruction, death, and despair rises in a black tide, drawn as if by instinct, and crashes into him.

He had not given permission. He had not prepared.

His body shudders as the surge forces its way through his veins, burrowing into his core.

His inner devil roars awake, its power swelling beyond what he can suppress.

Merin reels, forcing himself into the air, streaking above the ruined city, trying to cast the energy out, to scatter it.

But the devil energy coils tight, unresponsive, feeding on his every heartbeat.

The shadow within him grows stronger, heavier, pressing on his consciousness, threatening to drown him whole.

His breath quickens.

The edges of his mind blur.

He feels his will slipping, his self unravelling. If he does nothing, the devil will claim him.

And Merin will fall.

His grip on himself shatters.

Energy bursts from his body in a violent wave, no longer shaped by his will but driven by the hunger of his inner devil.

His form twists—scales warping, claws lengthening, eyes burning with abyssal light—until the image of a devil stands where Merin once hovered.

The devil energy collides with the lingering aura of destruction, death, and despair that still clings to Jinji City.

Their union bellows outward, shattering the barrier in an instant.

The sky tears with cracks of black lightning, and from that chaos, energy coils and condenses, writhing, shaping itself into something vast.

Merin’s vision dims.

His body no longer answers him. His thoughts, his will, his sense of self—slipping.

In the storm of gathering energy, a giant black dragon forms, scales like molten night, eyes like pits of despair.

It throws its head back and roars.

The sound shakes the heavens.

All around, life recoils.

Beasts and cultivators alike stagger as their energy begins to twist, to corrode, turning against them. Some flee, scrambling from the reach of that sound.

Others collapse where they stand, their bodies splitting as devil essence consumes them, twisting them into monsters—or snuffing them out entirely.

Merin’s heart hammers.

He sees it. He feels it. The moment he lets go, he will be no different from the rest.

At the last flicker of his fading consciousness, instinct saves him. He forces the devil spiritual body exercise into motion.

His body warps once more, reshaped into a towering black figure clad in seamless armour, runes crawling like living brands across its surface.

Bat-like wings flare wide, trembling under the strain of barely-contained power.

The runes burn and sink into him, anchoring his existence for one final breath.

With the last spark of will, Merin calls on his movement technique.

His body blurs, rips through the poisoned air, vanishing from the broken city.

He reappears miles away, then again, farther still, each step tearing distance in desperate escape.

Behind him, the shadow of Jinji burns in black fire, the dragon’s roar still echoing, and ahead—Merin flees, his inner devil gnawing deeper, threatening to consume him with every heartbeat.

Merin flees, but the shadow of the devil clings to him, despair dripping from every wisp of black aura as he wrestles against his own madness.

His strength falters, and he spirals down from the sky, crashing into the endless desert, sand erupting in waves before swallowing his battered figure.

His consciousness slips inward, plunging into the illusion space, where he instantly takes control of the array, pressing its force down upon the raging inner devil to suppress it.

But a dilemma gnaws at him—if he releases control of the array, the inner devil will surge back and devour him, yet if he stays within, his body outside lies abandoned, untethered, vulnerable.

The only path out of this trap is to raise his Dao, but here, trapped inside his illusion space, he cannot advance by the ordinary methods.

He gazes downward at the Ninja world unfolding within, shinobi weaving ninjutsu and clashing in endless battle, and a thought sparks—if he harmonises the many Laws in his Dao, weaving them together until their divisions vanish and they act as one, then even if his Dao does not grow higher, its strength will deepen beyond its current form.

So he begins, fine-tuning, pulling threads of Laws closer, making them overlap and blend, each movement tightening the weave until the whole illusion space breathes with unity.

Between his practice, he turns his attention to another flaw—the absence of true souls within his world.

He experiments cautiously, dissecting and reshaping fragments of the souls gathered from the massacre, probing their nature, their essence, their spark.

The thought pounds in his mind—if he succeeds in birthing souls of his own, then the illusion space will no longer need to feed on slaughter, but generate life by itself, crossing the threshold toward a true world.

The news of Jinji City’s annihilation spreads like wildfire, racing across the realm, whispered first in disbelief, then shouted in fear.

Cultivators rush to the ruined site, drawn by curiosity and dread, only to find blackened rubble steeped in a devilish aura, with devil beasts prowling the outskirts where once stood homes and markets.

The discovery sparks chaos—rumours bloom unchecked, sects argue in panic, and soon the words “devil” and “invasion” ripple through the entire realm, shaking hearts and shaking faith.