This is not a mindless power fantasy. Read at your own risk. The protagonist suffers, terribly.
A work of pain made flesh. Readers tired of power fantasies may find it worth savoring.
The martial arts summit you imagine: glorious battles, beautiful companions, unrivaled dominion over the world.
Lin Chun’s martial arts summit: his sister dying in a hospital bed, his beloved dying in his arms, his mentor’s blood staining the martial arts school, and his brother blowing himself up to clear a path.
With every step up, someone must die.
The day he delivered food, his sister suffered a heart attack. The operation would cost five hundred thousand.
Lin Chun signed a contract staking his life and entered an underground fight club.
By the time he won his third fight, his sister had stopped breathing.
That day, covered in blood and clutching her urn, he awakened to the truth of martial arts in the rain: becoming stronger meant losing everything.
From then on, he walked a road paved with blood:
His trusted brother took a blade for him and, laughing as he was blown to pieces, said, “See the summit for me.”
The only woman he had ever loved was forced to marry someone else. At her wedding, she said, “I can’t let my whole clan die with me.”
The adopted son he had raised as his own was turned into a blood slave, and Lin Chun had to end the child’s suffering with his own hands.
Every breakthrough came at the cost of someone he loved most.
There are nine ranks of martial artists, and each one is another level of hell.
When Lin Chun finally stands atop the ninth rank, a mountain of enemy corpses lies beneath him, and no one remains at his side.
The world is in his hands, but every hand he has ever held is cold now.
Then, beyond Blue Star, the battlefields of myriad worlds quietly open.
The world that made him lose everything now needs him to protect it with the last thing he has left:
Himself.
“If reaching the summit means being alone, why should I keep getting stronger?”
“Because the people who died for you… they wanted you to live.”
