Evil isn’t created through thoughts but through actions. It is when we no longer curb those thoughts that we’ve sacrificed our morals and righteousness. Redemption then becomes a lost cause.

~Dagda, the All-Father, Chief of the Gods

Out of body experiences were unnerving. Crow could feel his body some distance away, but he stood like an apparition in a place he’d never seen before. It divided his focus, and events already transpired when he caught on to what was happening.

Although seeing Gideon’s birth wasn’t something he cared to see, the rest of his young life sped by in a blur. The parts Crow could follow, Gideon didn’t live an extraordinary life until he discovered he could cultivate.

The power of a Hag Stone was unbelievable, but Crow soon found out it tethered him to his grandfather. No matter where Gideon went, it forced Crow to follow and to stay within a certain distance. Crow had an advantage that most may not, and that was that he could memorize even the memories where time was sped up. Sage’s Mind could slow it back down for him. It’d take him time to process, so for now, he ignored that information.

***

Gideon had just turned twenty-four, and his sect provided him with all the resources he’d ever need. As a once-in-a-century genius, he’d become used to luxury. At his age, he’d already reached the thirty-seventh floor. To put that achievement in perspective, every new cultivator was around seventeen when they entered the first floor—Crow included. The starting point was almost universally the same, but some freaks started earlier. In theory, Crow could have had he let people know he opened his Source early.

Crow begrudgingly admired his grandfather’s achievement but also secretly sneered. Song Lin’s climb was nothing short of miraculous. But Crow refocused on what was happening because now wasn’t the time to get distracted.

Gideon joined a group of mercenaries because of the Maw. Most of this floor was a volcano, and there was an infamous chokepoint halfway through. It got its name because the tunnel supposedly devoured those who crossed it. The mercenaries took on an escort mission to bring a caravan of merchants through the Maw, and each guard received a hefty sack of Mana Crystals.

Watching Gideon strut and showing off his age and Ruby Shield with six glowing stars, Crow only felt disdain. Still, he had to remember Gideon was young and naïve, something Crow never had the chance to be. Watching the man he hated living so carefree spurred Crow to punch his face, but as an apparition, his fist went right through.

It took them almost three weeks to reach the Maw, and almost as soon as they thought they’d cleared it, three men appeared. One stood in front of the wagons, one behind, and one perched on a ledge above. Crow could see the one on the ridge above had a bow ready to shoot anyone that moved.

“Dammit,” Pyle, leader of the mercenaries, whispered before taking a knee and dropping his weapon. All the other mercenaries followed their leader. Crow wasn’t sure what was happening.

“Sir?” Gideon asked in a low voice. “What are you doing?”

“We can offend anyone on this floor, but not those three, and not their sect. You may have heard of the Blood Saint Trio—that’s them. The three are brothers, and whatever whore birthed them deserves to die in a fire. Whatever you do, keep your head down—don’t look them in the eyes.”

Gideon did the exact opposite, and Crow could read the man without listening to his grandfather’s surface thoughts. Arrogant and spoiled were a deadly combination of stupidity. Arrogance. It astounded him that Gideon made it this far without running into any real trouble.

Screams, sobs, and gallons of blood filled the Maw with a horrifying scene that Crow had only read about but never saw. Those three men were so powerful that, even mounted, no one escaped. If someone had told him that slaughtering people was an art, Crow wouldn’t have believed them until this moment.

All the while, Gideon stood there staring like a fool. Even Pyle tried to warn him a few times, but the arrogant jerk froze. Everyone could see that fear had paralyzed him, so the other mercenaries scooted back away from him. No one wanted to be associated with the man defying the Blood Saint Trio.

Those three brothers weren’t even human. Even after killing everyone, they played some seriously perverse games with the corpses. Pyle and his men moved further and further away from Gideon.

The man on the ledge above finally noticed Gideon, and Crow flinched, seeing the punch that his grandfather did not. The meaty slap of a fist against a face wasn’t loud, but Gideon collapsed to the ground like a pile of milk curds.

Time shifted again, but only a few days passed this time. They slapped Gideon awake, and he came to on his knees with an arm wrenched behind his back. Two of the Blood Saint brothers stood before him, while one was behind him. The man behind him was the smallest of the three, and based on their conversation, he now knew the man’s name was Biter.

Biter kept torturing Gideon by pushing his arm to the bring of dislocating. Ignoring what was happening, Crow felt a strange connection to the wall behind the two Blood Saints. On it were thousands and thousands of red teardrop gems, but just looking at it made Crow feel uneasy.

“Do you know what those are behind me?” Larro asked. He was the biggest of the trio and sat on the throne in front of everyone. Crow called him big, but really it was a mix of muscle and fat. Still, Crow was sure the man had at least an Iron Shield embedded in his chest.

Gideon looked at the gemstones and felt his knees shaking. His lips pressed together so tightly they turned white, and he could only shake his head no. Crow could feel his grandfather’s terror and wondered who had sired a coward like him.

Biter, the brother behind Gideon, laughed upon feeling his captive shaking like a leaf. “Those were people that opposed us—the one’s strong enough that we considered them worthy. We have a smart guy we captured, not unlike yourself, and he figured out how to make those. You see, he takes the blood of his victims, then burns their bodies to ash. Using those two ingredients, he creates a sort of mana crystal that we call a Blood Ember. Do you know the best part? Do ya? Want me to tell ya? I’ll tell ya?” Biter giggled non-stop, and Crow felt the man had something wrong with his head. “Because that crystal is made of their blood, a simple binding spell captures their soul. Our enemies can’t escape and will never enter the cycle of rebirth. Instead, they get to watch us recruit people like you.”

“R-r-recruit?” Gideon felt his bowels weakening.

“Knock it off,” Jeram said. He was the last of the trio to speak, and his voice was pleasant and calm. Out of the trio, this quiet one scared Gideon the least. Crow could hear those thoughts and snorted because he had a different opinion. He was pretty sure this scholarly-looking man was the one that developed the Blood Embers. More than that, Crow could see the cruelty hidden deep in the man’s eyes. No, this Blood Saint was the unspoken leader.

“Fine. You never let me tease the recruits,” Biter sighed bitterly and used his free hand to grab Gideon’s hair and wrench his head back, so they were looking at each other. “Join us or die, how about it?”

“I-I-I’ll join,” Gideon said, feeling the anger simmering inside of him. He hated the feeling of not being in control of his own fate. Hated being forced onto a path that he did not choose. Hated that he was weak. Hated being a coward, and had he known what would happen next, he’d have preferred to die.

Crow witnessed it all. They branded Gideon with a slave mark, but the only thing it did was to prevent him from committing suicide. It literally had no other purpose, and seeing the relieved look on his grandfather’s face, Crow signed. This man was really a hopeless idiot, but even idiots hard heard phrases like a fate worse than death.

It wasn’t hard to figure out the Blood Sant Trio’s real purpose. They wanted a death squad, men that listened to orders without care whether they lived or died. They either wanted soldiers that did not fear death or those that charged headlong into battle, hoping a blade would strike them down and end it all.

Crow skimmed past most of the brutal torture. Gideon had every bone in his body broken, but then they’d send in a healer to make sure he lived before attempting it all over again. If Crow hadn’t had a time-skip, he might have lost the contents of his stomach. Despite being incorporeal, he still felt his body, so he was sure that his body would react violently if he had to witness every gory detail.

Tenacity was the word that Gideon represented. With all he’d gone through for months on end, he hadn’t lost his will to fight. The Blood Ember Sect had locations across many floors, and the three brothers delivered Gideon to the one on the thirty-fifth floor. The elder running the place took sadistic pleasure in mutilation, torture, and worse.

Gideon’s temper flared. In a rare moment of inattention, the elder was tackled to the ground. Pinning the old man down, Gideon punched the bastard in his fat jowls. He knew he couldn’t kill this elder before the guards brought him down, but just beating him was satisfactory.

Crow knew things would get a lot worse when they dragged Gideon by his hair toward an open courtyard. In the center of it was a pillory with a small platform attached to it. Gideon was bent over the platform while they locked his head and hands down inside the pillory. They then belted his legs down to the sides of the platform, and the man could no longer move as the sun burned hot overhead.

The elder’s jowls were already turning purple from their mistreatment when he sat on his throne-like chair. A crowd filed in shortly after. Seeing Gideon locked up, many men regretted getting called because they knew what came next. Crow suddenly felt very uneasy.

“Do it. If any of you refuse to participate, you’ll be next.”

One of the older veterans ran up to Gideon and ripped his clothes off. Gideon’s naked body was exposed to everyone, and he futilely struggled to get free from the modified pillory.

Crow could tell this type of punishment was well-practiced and felt his gut clench in horror. That veteran pulled out his cock and shook it a few times to get himself hard before shoving it into Gideon’s dry asshole. It only took a few minutes before the man grunted and finished.

After the man raped Gideon, he stepped aside for the next one.

Gideon’s screams faded to hoarse gasps after the third man entered him, and there was only silence after the fifth man. Blood, semen, and sweat ran down the man’s buttocks and legs, but something more profound was happening. Crow felt his grandfather’s karma changing course. It wasn’t a subtle change but an earth-shattering one that should never have happened.

It wasn’t until every man in the courtyard satisfied themselves that it ended, and Crow couldn’t leave the entire time. All he could do was turn away, but the sweaty slapping of flesh left him sick to his stomach. Knowing evil existed in this world and seeing it were two different things. Seeing it tainted the person watching, and it was something he couldn’t unsee. With his Sage’s Mind, it’d remain with him as a constant reminder—forever branded in his mind as a cautionary tale.

***

Another two years passed in a flash.

Gideon was different now, and Crow kept looking over at the man because this was the man he remembered. It was the man that took his mother away from him. He was now wearing a crimson robe, a sign that he was not part of the inner sect and someone that could no longer be touched. Still, his grandfather looked more like a skeleton with a skin suit at this moment. His eyes were cold and without compassion. It was like staring at a monster because there was nothing human in him anymore.

“Besnik, are we ready?” Gideon asked, and Crow looked over, recognizing the previously nameless man. A man whose face Crow would never forget as long as he lived. Besnik was the man that cursed him, and Crow felt a burning rage inside him. Before he could vent his anger, time jumped forward.

Gideon led Besnik and four others into the Blood Ember Sect, but it differed from the headquarters. Crow felt the sky was greener and less chaotic, but beyond that, he couldn’t say why he thought it wasn’t the same. It was nighttime too, but it didn’t appear this floor had a night cycle.

Once they reached an opulent bedroom, they killed everyone present, which was primarily naked women. Gideon’s emotions and mind didn’t spike or change at all. In fact, the man was so cold in his actions that Crow couldn’t read him at all.

Crow recognized the elder. The man had aged, but his jowls only got fatter. He kneeled on the bed with his small cock still fully erect. The men behind Gideon chuckled at the site, but none of them expected Gideon’s out-of-character action. He grabbed that man’s cock and gave it a sudden wrench, twisting and activating his mana to increase the torque as he tore it away from the fat ass’s body. The squeals from the obese elder weren’t human and sounded like a dying pig. He reversed the cock and shoved it back into the man’s new vagina.

While the elder stared at his savaged genitalia, Gideon’s men were stoking the fire. Once the preparations were made, Gideon slapped the fat man’s face, bringing him out of his state of shock. There was an attempt to put his hands over the hole to stop the bleeding, but the elder went white as he accidentally shoved his cock further inside him.

“Pay attention!” Gideon barked. “Do you know what this is?” He held up a paper talisman, and on it were complex symbols painted in a rusted brown color. Crow did not know what language that was but knew it was nothing good. “No? It’s something I looted from a Daemon, an Abhartach—evil thing. Before it died, it told me if I used this on someone, it’d bind their soul to their flesh. You can’t die, isn’t that a good thing?”

Gideon activated the talisman and slapped against the elder’s chubby breast with a laugh. However, the elder didn’t freak out as he expected, and the panic in the fat man’s eyes had vanished.

“Fool,” the elder admonished. “You’ve made me immortal.”

“Oh, I didn’t finish what that Daemon said,” Gideon finally smiled, but there was no warmth in it. Instead, his eyes turned toward the fireplace before looking back. “You see, if we eat the soul-bound flesh, we consume the soul. It’ll grant us your power. Isn’t that neat?”

Crow gagged. It was like watching an endless parade of horror, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t watch as his grandfather cut the man up and roasted his flesh over the flames. Tried to drown the sound of those monsters laughing, drinking, and feasting. They were like a rabid pack of jackals.

The next day, Gideon was in charge of this branch of the sect. Turns out, to gain power, all they needed to do was kill the person above them. It was a sect that weeded out the weak. Those that couldn’t keep up with the group were killed. Only those with the best potential and highest cultivation talent would get the resources allotted by the Blood Ember Sect, and now Gideon had control of that supply.

Some tried to rebel, but they all failed. After a few months, no one even tried to usurp Gideon’s power. With the entire division under his heel, he could focus on devouring sects and stealing their goods. With Gideon’s genius talent, he required little in the way of resources. So the loot had a simple division—he took ten percent of all spoils. His five generals each got five percent, and they divided the remaining loot evenly among his people.

If the Blood Saint Trio knew how cheaply Gideon had bought the sect member’s loyalty, they’d spit blood. The sect always culled everyone but the most sinister and fiercest warriors—people without a bottom line. He wasn’t disillusioned and knew that the people at his back would kill and eat their own grandmothers if it meant surviving one more hour.

Gideon already had plans to march his men toward the Blood Ember Sect’s main headquarters. It was their viciousness that he was counting on.