BLEEDING UNIVERSE (The warrior in two worlds)

The cosmic sky was a bruised, bleeding violet.

Baron Colgate stood in the center of a nightmare. Beneath his feet lay a sea of shattered stars, glowing with a faint, dying light.

For one hundred years, he had climbed his way through fields of blood, slaughter, and brutal training to reach this exact spot.

Only one final obstacle remained—the Soulbreak Illusion. Once he overcame it, he would stand at the absolute pinnacle, with nothing left in the universe capable of standing in his way.

He wasn't the weak, pathetic kid who had frozen to death on the streets of Earth anymore.

He was the Void Sovereign. Emperors trembled when he spoke. Tyrant races hid when he walked.

But right now, looking up at the sky, Baron felt completely lost.

"How... how did I get here?" he muttered.

His voice shook. Lightning flashed across his face, blinding him.

The air carried a terrifying weight that pressed down on his shoulders, freezing him in place. He tried to take a step, but his legs felt like lead. His mind went totally blank. The raw panic of a normal human was overriding his centuries of supreme power.

Above him, the heavens tore wide open. A massive, swirling vortex of purple lightning roared like a hungry beast. It held enough power to wipe out entire galaxies in a single second.

Baron clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white. Just one more step, he told himself, staring into the storm. ‘Survive this lightning, and I become a true god. No one can ever hurt me again.’

But as the lightning gathered into a thick, solid pillar of destruction, a cold shiver ripped through his soul.

The violet glare in his eyes shifted. It wasn't showing him the path to immortality anymore. Instead, the flashes of light began to show him faces. Faces of the dead.

Baron squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them slightly, squinting to see clearly through the blinding flashes.

"No," he whispered, his chest tightening. "Not now. Please, not now."

Images he had spent a whole century trying to bury came rushing back like a tidal wave.

He saw his father, thin and broken behind a thick glass wall in a prison cell.

He saw his mother’s cold, unmarked grave in the rain. He heard the echoes of his little sister, Malica, screaming at the walls of a padded asylum room. And then, he saw Juliana. His beautiful Juliana.

"Get out of my head!" Baron roared internally. He tried to breathe, tried to force his mind into perfect, icy calm.

It didn't work. The heavy weight of his oldest regrets—the agonizing pain of his first twenty-eight years on Earth—had turned into poison.

A thick, suffocating black fog erupted right out of his chest. It completely blinded his senses, throwing him into total confusion.

This wasn't just a regular lightning storm.

The tribulation had triggered his ultimate nightmare: the Soulbreak Illusion—the final trial every cultivator had to overcome before ascending to the supreme realm, and the graveyard of countless cultivators.

His heart began to race faster than a beam of light cutting through space. A terrible, sickening feeling washed over him. It felt like absolute deja vu, a horrific trap he couldn't escape.

In a single snap, the cosmic sky and the shattered stars vanished. The clean smell of space was gone, replaced instantly by the copper stench of fresh blood and the damp, freezing air of a concrete basement.

Baron gasped, falling hard onto his knees.

He looked down at himself. His grand, immortal robes were gone. He was wearing his old, torn, blood-stained clothes from his youth. He reached deep inside himself to find his power, but there was nothing.

No energy. No magic. No Qi. His hands shook like a leaf in the wind. He was completely human again.

"Baron… please… run…"

The weak, raspy voice cut through the dark room.

Baron’s head snapped up. His heart shattered into a million jagged pieces.

"Juliana?" he choked out.

Just a few feet away, lying on a cold, rough stone slab, was Juliana Smith. Her skin was a deathly, pale white.

A dark crimson bloodstain was spreading rapidly across the front of her shirt. She was fighting for every single breath, her beautiful eyes clouded with unbearable pain.

"Juliana!" Baron screamed.

He threw himself forward, dragging his weak body across the rough concrete floor. He reached the slab and desperately pressed his hands against her chest, trying to stop the bleeding.

"No, no, no! Please, no!" Baron sobbed, his voice cracking. He looked around wildly. "Where is my energy? Where is the medicine? This can't be happening again! Please, stay with me!"

Slow, mocking clapping echoed from the shadows of the room.

"Look at you. Pathetic as always, Baron Colgate."

Baron froze. He knew that voice.

From the darkness stepped Matt Windgate.

He looked exactly the same as he did all those years ago—flawless, expensive suit, perfectly styled hair, and a cruel, arrogant smirk pasted across his face.

He walked over with slow, heavy steps, looking down at Baron like he was a piece of garbage. Without warning, Matt brought the heel of his polished leather shoe right down onto Baron’s trembling hand, grinding it hard into the dirt and concrete.

Crunch.

Baron gritted his teeth, a deep, animalistic growl ripping from his throat as pain shot up his arm. "Matt… why? Why are you doing this to us?! What did we ever do to you?!"

"Why?"

Matt threw his head back and laughed. It was a loud, playful sound full of pure hatred.

"Because I can, Baron. Look at your background. You’re a nobody. A broke street rat from a garbage town. Did you honestly think a peasant like you deserved someone like Juliana? To a guy like me, she’s just a toy. A little plaything to pass the time before I get bored."

"I’ll kill you! I'll tear you apart!" Baron roared.

He tried to lunge forward to grab Matt's throat, but he didn't even make it an inch. Matt’s giant bodyguard stepped out of the shadows and slammed a heavy, steel-toed boot right into Baron’s ribs.

Thud.

Baron collapsed sideways onto the floor, coughing up a mouthful of bright red blood. The pain was terrifying. It felt too real, too sharp.

The illusion had completely locked his brain in a cage, stripping away every single memory of him being the powerful Void Sovereign.

Right now, he doesn't remember the universe. He only remembered being a broken, helpless teenager.

"Stop… please," Baron begged, rolling over on the floor. He swallowed every ounce of pride he had left, tears mixing with the dirt and blood on his face.

He looked up at Matt's boots. "Spare her, Matt. Please. Take my life instead. Do whatever you want to me. Torture me, kill me, I don't care. Just let her live."

Matt sneered, looking down at Baron like he was a bug he was about to squash.

"You want to trade lives with me?" Matt laughed, shaking his head. "You think your worthless life carries the same weight as a Windgate’s whim? Let me tell you a little secret, Baron, since you're begging so nicely."

Matt leaned down, his eyes turning cold, dark, and completely sadistic.

"Your whole family is garbage. Your father's imprisonment? My family framed him and locked him away. Your mother's sudden illness and death? We bought the hospital and cut off her treatment. We watched her die. And your sweet little sister, Malica? Her mental collapse wasn't an accident. My friends and I had quite a bit of fun breaking her mind."

Matt stood back up, adjusting his suit jacket. "You and your family have absolutely zero worth. You only exist to be trampled by people like me."

"Ahhhhh!"

A sound that didn't even sound human erupted from Baron’s chest. The truth tore through his mind like a buzzing chainsaw.

His sanity completely snapped. His eyes turned pure, bloodshot red as an overwhelming, blinding fury consumed his entire soul. He didn't care about the pain anymore. He wanted blood.

On the stone slab, Juliana used the absolute last drop of her strength to turn her head toward him. Tears streamed down her pale, cold cheeks.

"Baron… live… you must live…" she whispered, her voice barely a breath.

Matt sighed loudly, waving his hand in the air like he was bored. "Tsk. Boring. I'm tired of this drama. Finish her. Let him watch every second of it."

A bodyguard stepped forward, a long knife catching the dim light of the basement. A swift, brutal flash of cold steel cut through the air.

Juliana’s head slumped heavily to the side. Her eyes turned completely wide, vacant, and lifeless.

"NOOOOOOOO!" Baron screamed, his world turning entirely black.

A scream of pure, raw agony ripped from Baron’s chest. The sound was so loud, so heavy with heartbreak, that the dark concrete basement started to shake.

Crack.

A thin line split the air. Then another. The dark basement walls began to peel away like old paper. The cruel smirk on Matt Windgate’s face froze, and in the next second, both Matt and his bodyguards crumbled into gray dust, blown away by a wind that wasn't there.

The nightmare was over, but the real disaster was just beginning.

Baron’s mind snapped back into his true celestial body. He was back at the very top of the universe, standing on the edge of the glittering star-sea.

But his soul was completely broken. Inside his body, his energy didn't flow smoothly anymore. A thick, pitch-black smoke exploded through his veins, twisting and tearing his power to pieces.

He had lost total control. He had let the illusion trick him into believing his love was dead all over again. He had fallen into a deadly demonic deviation.

High above, the massive purple whirlpool in the sky let out a loud roar, almost like it was laughing at him.

The trial knew he was weak now. The storm didn't just fire one bolt of lightning. Instead, it dropped a massive, solid log of violet fire—over a hundred divine lightning bolts mashed together into one giant pillar. It came crashing straight down onto Baron’s head.

The entire universe turned a blinding, burning white.

As the cosmic lightning melted his immortal skin and ripped his soul out of existence, Baron didn't feel afraid.

He didn't care about the pain. He only felt a deep, burning regret that a hundred years of being a god could never erase.

‘If I could just do it again…’ his very last thought floated away into the empty dark. ‘If I could only go back… I would kill every single one of them.’