The Dry Tears of Heaven and the Challenger’s Blade

"Every hell weeps dry blood when you realize you're not the executioner...

but the first victim of your own shadow."

— From the Memoirs of a Broken Lord

• • •

The rains of dry blood continued to fall over the Mirror Realm, coating hills of bone in a sticky crimson layer. The scent wasn't that of blood. It was the stench of a forgotten memory rotting in the corners of the mind. Amid this sacred chaos stood Mo Tianyin, before a deep mirror of black glass, staring into his shattered reflection.

He didn't see a face—he saw fractures:

One shard showed him as a trembling child beneath the whip of the slaughterhouse overseer.

Another showed him pressing a pillow over his dying mother's face.

A third showed Jin Lian gazing at him with heartbreak.

Around him, the screams of the tormented in their "heavens" turned into strange chants:

"Heal us! Let us forget! Give us a hell we can understand!"

Ling Bo shouted as he tried to flee from the skulls of his son:

"Mirror Lord! Let me forget what I did! Let me be a beast without memory!"

Mo Tianyin turned toward him. For the first time since awakening his power, he felt a weight in his left hand—the spot where he once held the black flint stone before it broke.

"Ignorance... is not a paradise."

His voice echoed across the glass sky, bypassing Ling Bo, reaching all within his world.

"It is part of your torment.

Today... you will understand why you scream."

He raised his cold hand. The rain of dry blood stopped. From the dim sky of glass, threads of searing white light descended, touching the heads of the tormented.

Suddenly, Ling Bo saw everything:

His young son begging him not to be sold to a cruel master.

Himself striking the boy silent, then handing him over to the trader for a higher price.

The feverish scent of oil filled his nose once more.

Two screams merged into one: the cry of the child on the day of his death, and the cry of the father today.

"This is true mercy,"

whispered the Mirror Lord.

"To see yourself... as your victim saw you."

• • •

In the Lower City of Yulong, Jin Lian broke through the tightened imperial blockade, arriving at a place she hadn't visited in a long time: the Cracked Hut. It wasn't in ruins. It was flooded with white lights emerging from within, seeping through the cracks of the walls like ghostly arms.

Inside, she found herself before an unexpected scene:

The small mirror on the table wasn't broken. It was a still sea of white mist, on which images from the Mirror Realm played:

Ling Bo screaming as he saw his betrayal of his son.

A commander staring at his hands as they drove a dagger into a child's chest.

A merchant woman watching an enslaved man torn apart by a lion—laughing.

Mo Tianyin's voice emerged from the mist:

"Do you accept justice today, Jin Lian?

They now see themselves... as you once saw them."

Jin Lian stepped closer. She wasn't shocked. She was sorrowful.

"This isn't justice, Mo Tianyin. This is the repetition of pain. You haven't purified them. You've trapped them in a spiral of guilt."

The white surface trembled. The images of the tormented tore apart. His voice returned, weaker:

"What's the difference between purification... and eternal punishment?"

"Purification offers a chance for change." She touched the mirror. The white mist curled around her fingers. "But you... you became their prison. And locked yourself in with them."

At that moment, passages opened in the mist. A child appeared, wearing ragged clothes. Jin Lian didn't recognize him. It was Mo Tianyin, before his mother's illness. Before he knew cruelty.

The child looked at her and nodded. Then pointed to his heart... then to the mirror.

Jin Lian understood:

"It's not too late. Lift the veil from them... and from yourself."

• • •

In Liang Jiuyong's palace, the "Lord of Heaven" was testing the limits of his new power. In a sealed chamber, before a large mirror, he drew more symbols in blood. This time, he wasn't calling the Mirror Lord. He was trying to open a gate.

"Listen to me!" His palm slapped the glass. "I am Liang Jiuyong! Lord of Heaven in this world! I want soldiers for my hell! I want to steal a fire from his hell!"

The mirror shivered. From its depths, arms of bone and red mist emerged—like the ones that had taken Ling Bo. But Liang didn't flee. He drew a special dagger made from the bone of an ancient priest, and struck the arms.

CRACK!

A sound like a world breaking. The arms recoiled. From the mirror slid out a small shard of black glass, glimmering with an infernal inner light.

Liang picked it up. His smile was one of triumph.

"This... is the seed of my hell."

That night, Liang entered a secret prison under his control. Inside were dozens of minor "traitors": soldiers who disobeyed, servants who stole food, poor men who protested hunger. Before them, he raised the black glass shard.

"This is your gift," he said, his voice dripping with cruel irony. "Your own private paradise."

The shard ignited. A rip opened in reality. Not a full gate—a small rift, leading to the edge of the Mirror Realm. Fifteen prisoners vanished in an instant, taking the black glass shard with them.

In the Mirror Realm, the fifteen men appeared on a hill of bones. They were stunned. Then saw the human-faced beasts crawling toward them.

"Fight!" one of them shouted. "This is his hell—let's make it our heaven!"

They tore bones from the hill. Turned them into weapons. And for the first time in that hell's history, a true battle began.

• • •

Mo Tianyin sensed the disruption before he saw it. The ground beneath his feet trembled. The screams of the tormented mixed with the cries of combat. In a flash, he appeared at the source of the chaos.

The scene was bizarre:

A group of humans, dressed in rags, were fighting the beasts of his realm with bones and stones.

One of them held the black glass shard sent by Liang, which radiated a strange energy empowering the soldiers.

"Who are you?"

The Mirror Lord's voice cracked like thunder.

"And who sent you to my dominion?"

The young leader of the group turned. His eyes held fear—but also readiness for death.

"The Lord of Heaven sent us! To steal your fire! To forge his own hell!"

Mo Tianyin understood. Liang wasn't fleeing—he was trying to hijack the power.

He raised his hand. The red mist swirled around the intruders. But the black shard flared with a deep crimson glow and cut through his power.

"No!"

This time, his voice carried an unfamiliar tone: panic.

The shard exploded. A wave of darkness spread, swallowing the group and the shard. They didn't disappear. They transformed into new hills of bone, whiter, glowing with black specks.

But atop the largest hill, there remained a small shard of red glass.

As if a part of Liang Jiuyong's power...

had taken root in the Mirror Realm.

• • •

In the Cracked Hut, the small mirror shattered before Jin Lian. The white mist vanished. The only remaining image was that of the child—young Mo Tianyin—pointing toward the red glass shard in the Mirror Realm.

Jin Lian turned toward the upper city. Liang Jiuyong's palace blazed with unnatural red lights.

"He's opened the hell…" she whispered.

"And no one can close it now."

The dry blood rains returned to fall upon the Mirror Realm.

And its only Lord…

stood before the new hill of bones,

gazing at the red shard of glass,

knowing:

The greatest tormentor has been born.

And it was not by his hand.