2025-06-05 20:00:54The sun hung high, yet a strange chill settled across the training platform.
Lucien Graves moved with calm precision, blade whistling as it clashed against his sparring partner’s staff. He wasn’t trying. He didn’t need to. His strikes were measured, his footwork slow enough to teach—but sharp enough to kill.
The gathered disciples watched him with mingled awe and wariness. The boy who arrived a season ago now bested instructors with polished grace. No cultivation surges ever followed his duels. No golden aura. Just cold efficiency.
That’s when the wind stopped.
The air warped like silk folding inward. A heavy spiritual pressure slammed down like a judge’s gavel. A pulse of qi parted the clouds above the platform.
Then he landed.
A silver-robed elder stepped into the clearing with the weight of mountains behind him. His face was lean and hawkish, framed by strands of black hair silvering at the ends. His eyes were the color of polished bronze—ancient, unblinking.
Gasps whispered like reeds in the wind.
“Elder Mencius…”
Lucien lowered his blade slowly. His stance didn't change.
Mencius stepped forward, voice sharp and unnerving in its clarity.
“Lucien Graves... You shouldn’t exist.”
All movement halted.
Lucien blinked, playing at confusion. “Elder... do you mistake me for someone else?”
Mencius’s voice rang louder, deeper now, tinged with fury. “Even in ashes, your karma stinks. I remember you. Your trial... your sentence. You carry the mark of judgment. You should’ve burned.”
The System pulsed behind Lucien’s eyes.
[Target Identified: Elder Mencius]
[Karma Reading: -990]
[Charge: Soul Trade with Infernal Reapers | Concealment via Heaven-grade Artifacts]
[Verdict Level: Divine Medium]
Lucien’s inner breath hitched—but he kept his face blank. This man had been there. At the old world's trial. And worse—he was a mass soul trafficker. A hidden butcher wearing celestial robes.
Lucien straightened and sheathed his blade.
“Then perhaps, Elder,” he said, “it is time for karma to settle accounts.”
A dozen elders assembled within moments, drawn by the summoned spiritual storm. They gathered at the edge of the training courtyard, eyes flicking between Lucien and Mencius. Murmurs hissed like snakes in the grass.
“This boy bypassed the purification rites.”
“He appeared with no sect lineage.”
“Rumors said his karma thread was blank—impossible.”
Lucien stood still, eyes cast downward. “If I’ve committed crimes, then let Heaven judge me.”
Some snorted.
“Arrogance.”
“He plays at virtue now.”
But Lucien didn’t flinch.
[System Skill Activated: Heaven’s Scale]
[Cost: 3 Karma Fragments]
[Effect: Reveal karma ledger of selected target. Public Verdict will trigger if corruption threshold is exceeded.]
[Verdict Tier: Divine Medium]
[Cooldown: 48 Hours]
A soundless tremor pulsed outward.
The air thickened.
A glowing balance scale unfurled in the air above them, thirty feet across. One side bore Mencius’s name, etched in spectral gold. The other—blank.
The scale tilted violently.
Motes of light burst from Mencius’s form, forming ledger-scrolls in the sky. They unraveled in divine script, each line burning like holy fire.
“Facilitated thirty-three soul trades to Infernal Reapers in exchange for demonic enlightenment elixirs.”
“Sacrificed outer disciples under false ‘elevation rites’ to prolong life.”
“Silenced inner court investigators through memory sigils and blood-binding.”
The scrolls multiplied. By the tenth, disciples began screaming.
“No... no, I trained under him—!”
“He touched my soul core—said it was a test!”
Mencius snarled. “You think you can judge me, boy?! You think this little trick proves anything?!”
He reached into his sleeve, pulling out a glowing talisman inscribed in shifting dragon script.
Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
[Heaven-Grade Concealment Talisman Detected]
[System Override: Nullified under Divine Judgment]
[Skill Activated: Verdict Chains]
[Cooldown: 12 Hours]
Chains of blazing golden light erupted from the ground. They wrapped around Mencius’s limbs, chest, throat—binding him in place.
The elder screamed. “No! I serve the heavens! I did what was necessary! There’s balance in sacrifice!”
Lucien stepped forward and summoned the spectral blade—blackened steel forged from karma fragments, pulsing with divine resonance.
No flourish. No ceremony.
He plunged the blade into Mencius’s heart.
The elder’s body convulsed. A blinding sigil seared itself into his chest and exploded into a burst of ash and flame. His robes burned to nothing. His soul shattered mid-air—devoured by unseen law.
[Execution Complete: Elder Mencius]
+600 EP
+3 Karma Fragments
[System Alert: Sect Status – High Alert]
[Rumor Unlocked: The Hidden Judge]
That night, the Radiant Lotus Temple did not sleep.
In the scroll archives, a pair of junior scribes whispered between shelving carts.
“He summoned a divine scale. Like the ones in the old tales.”
“No one stopped him. No elders, no talismans. It was like... Heaven wanted him to.”
In the kitchens, cooks passed dried lotus root across their bowls and traded news faster than steam could rise.
“They say the elder screamed as if his soul was being peeled. No blood. Just light.”
“He’s not cultivating,” one said. “There’s no spiritual bloom around him. Yet he kills like he’s reading from the Book of Judgment.”
In the dormitories, silence fell over prayer circles. The term re-emerged.
The Hidden Judge.
A story, once myth—used to frighten disobedient disciples.
A divine executor born when the sect’s rot outweighed its virtue.
And now?
Now, he walked among them.
High above the chaos, Rein Aldric stood alone at the Observation Pavilion, eyes locked on the courtyard below.
Mencius’s death had left a burn mark in the floor that even spiritual cleansing couldn’t erase.
Rein tapped a sealed scroll on the railing. His voice was soft.
“He did it in public. That wasn’t judgment. That was a declaration of war.”
His fingers traced the glyphs forming across his private sect ledger.
Lucien Graves: Unregistered Karma Source. Immune to normal detection. Executes through divine systems.
No sect technique could create such a thing.
No known artifact could bind karma so precisely.
He was beginning to realize: Lucien wasn’t just dangerous. He was systemic.
A walking verdict. A living tribunal.
Rein set his brush to paper.
“To the Sect Master:
Graves is no rogue cultivator. He is a system unto himself.
Assimilation or elimination are our only options. Delay invites collapse.
– Rein Aldric”
Night in Lucien’s quarters was quiet—but heavy with the weight of purpose.
He sat before a simple altar of smooth stone. Three prayer stones rested in silence:
Wren.
Mencius.
He lit no incense. There was no comfort in what he did. These were not tributes to the dead. They were acknowledgments of the process. Of necessity.
[Trial Phase Complete: 3 of 3 Targets Executed]
[New Trial Slot Unlocked]
[Paranoia Index: High]
[Sect Instability: Moderate]
[New Skill Available: Karma Sight (Passive)]
[Accept Upgrade? – Y/N]
Lucien accepted.
A soft shimmer passed over his eyes, and the world sharpened.
Now, faint threads of colored light floated near every living being in his vicinity. Red for guilt. Blue for clarity. Purple for sealed crimes.
He stared at the floor for a long time.
“One rot removed. One truth revealed. How many more?”
Outside his window, the lotus pond stirred, though no wind touched the leaves. Petals floated upward as if drawn by some unseen current, orbiting the moonlit temple.
A reckoning had begun.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 16: Gathering Storms
The winds over the borderlands had changed. Once gentle and silent, they now whispered of blood and judgment, of legends born beneath burning skies and names carried by karmic thunder. And among them, none stirred more fear or reverence than Lucien Graves.From the distant ruin of the Dawnsworn Sect to the smoldering ashes of the Burning Orchid, word of the Wandering Executioner’s passage had spread like spiritual wildfire. Mid-tier sects—once complicit in hidden karmic theft—scrambled to purge their leadership. Some issued false proclamations of renewal, others burned scrolls and severed pacts in fear of divine reprisal. But it was too late. Justice had already moved, and its echo was reshaping the realm.In the mountains between the Eastern Lotus Alliance and the Jade Sky Confederacy, tension coiled tighter than a drawn bowstring. Flags rose. Camps formed. Armies amassed, cloaked in righteousness and heresy alike.Lucien stood beneath the rustling leaves of a windworn pine, overlook
Chapter 15: Mark of the Tribunal
Dawn had not yet broken, but the forest surrounding the ruined Burning Orchid Sect lay bathed in a haunting haze of residual karma. The air shimmered faintly, twisted by unseen threads of divine backlash that crackled through the soil and leaves. Where once the sect had stood proudly, now only fractured spires and collapsing towers remained, their foundations crumbling beneath the judgment of a righteous storm.Lucien stood alone at the edge of a cliff overlooking the scorched grounds. Below, where karma storms howled like grieving ghosts, the last embers of corruption were still being devoured. It should have brought him peace, but there was none. Victory had come with silence, not celebration.Behind him, deep within the forest, thirteen children slept in a sacred warding circle, tucked away in a mossy grove of spiritroot trees. Each child had once been bound by soul-branding and karmic suppression arrays. Now, they breathed freely. Safe. For now.Lucien turned to leave—when fire er
Chapter 14: Burning Orchid Sect
The forest at the base of the Burning Orchid Sect bloomed with silent lies.Petals shimmered in the breeze, each one etched with spiritual glyphs that pulsed like soft heartbeat sigils. Disciples in white and crimson robes moved through the flower-laced courtyards, their faces placid, their footsteps light. Children laughed beneath the shade of ancient spirit trees, and monks chanted beside clear pools of water.It was paradise. On the surface.Lucien moved through the outer training grounds in a humble traveler's garb, his divine presence veiled, his karmic thread compressed to near invisibility. The System’s interface blinked softly in his peripheral vision.System Observation:Sealed Karma Signatures Detected.Technique: Celestial Suppression Array — Modified Form.Host Condition: Passive Extraction Status.His eyes narrowed. The children he passed had faint smiles, but their karmic threads were unnatural—not broken, but bound, compressed deep within their spiritual cores.Not stol
Chapter 13: Oracle Sight
The cave above the ridge was little more than a hollow in the cliff, carved by wind and time and the bones of long-dead beasts. The scent of ash still lingered from the fight with the Karma Hunter. Outside, the wind clawed at the mouth of the cave, howling as if to remind Lucien that survival, for him, would never again be quiet.He sat cross-legged near a circle of cold embers, his cloak discarded, his shirt bloodied and torn where the guandao had struck. The wound ached with a deeper kind of pain—not just physical, but spiritual. The cursed relic had left a trace.Lucien exhaled slowly."Begin purification," he whispered.System Response:Minor Purification Trial: Completed.Karmic Thread Stabilized.Warmth washed through his veins, divine in origin, but fading quickly. He could not rely on purification forever. The fights ahead would only get worse.The System flickered in his vision, but something was different.Gold light. Not harsh like judgment, but ancient and solemn, like a d
Chapter 12: The Karma Hunters
The wind howled through the narrow gorge like a beast that had forgotten its name. Lucien Graves stood at its edge, the jagged peaks of the borderlands silhouetted against a blood-orange dusk. The remnants of broken shrines littered the path before him, cracked tablets whispering forgotten prayers as his boots crunched over frostbitten stone.He walked alone. He had to.Every step he took away from the ruins of Dawnsworn Sect was a step into hostile silence. He avoided major roads. Stayed off ley lines. Traveled only when the sun bled or the moon watched.And yet, he felt it.Something followed.Not in footfalls or rustling leaves, but in karma. Threads of it—twisted, stuttering, vile—brushed at the edges of his spiritual senses. It was wrong. Where true karma ran like silk, these strands were coarse, polluted, frayed at the edges like rope left to rot in blood.System Notification:Alert: Divine Residue Detected.Origin: Corrupted Relic.Approaching Hostile Source: Unknown.Lucien na
Chapter 11: The Bounty
The world did not tremble when Myra Langley died.But the winds changed.They carried whispers — not of rumor, but of reckoning.From the spirit-swept cliffs of the Northern Sky Temple to the sun-scorched outposts of the Scorched Expanse, the tale bled into the air like a karmic contagion.In the northern borderlands, disciples gathered around dwindling campfires, their voices hushed, afraid that even the flame might eavesdrop.“Did you hear? Dawnsworn’s Sect Master... dead. Executed.”A younger disciple, his robes tattered from training, leaned forward. “By whom?”No one spoke at first. Then, an older cultivator, his eyes heavy with things seen, whispered, “They call him... The Wandering Executioner.”Across the war-torn fields of the East, amidst charred banners and broken spears, a battlefield cleric unrolled a scroll, the ink still drying with blood-scented qi. He read it once and dropped it as though it burned his hands.“Impossible,” he muttered, backing away. “She was... eterna
You may also like
God of the Cultivator System
Lord MOH23.6K viewsMy Sniper System
kuhaku_sora21.6K viewsEthereal Adventure System
Dark Crafter39.4K viewsSkythunder System
Scoco20.1K viewsReincarnated Into An Imperial Prince
Night _Glow3.1K viewsThe Clan Head System.
Great48.5K viewsWORLD CONQUERING SYSTEM~REBORN TO REVENGE
Lord Comfort 2.8K viewsGod System Scientist
IsseiVeskitos 14.5K views