The Immortal Sword Behind the Skyscraper

Chapter 2: Mending the Broken Paths

"You talk too much for a corpse, Master."

Baskoro’s boot slammed into the rotting floorboards of the dilapidated back room, sending a cloud of choking dust into the damp, suffocating air. The trusted disciple’s sneer twisted his scarred face into something grotesque under the flickering fluorescent bulb.

Kusuma remained seated cross-legged on the threadbare mattress, his eyes closed, his breathing impossibly slow. He didn't flinch at the noise or the insult.

"The brat is still breathing," a gruff voice echoed from the narrow hallway outside the cracked door, dripping with lazy amusement. "Uncle Slamet said to make sure he doesn't crawl out before the property title is signed over to us."

"Let him breathe for another minute," Baskoro laughed, spitting a glob of phlegm onto the cracked concrete floor inches from Kusuma’s bare feet. "The doctors at the clinic said his meridians are shattered beyond repair. He’s nothing more than a breathing corpse now. A useless parasite that the family wants erased without the trouble of a funeral."

Kusuma’s internal focus did not waver. Inside the vessel of this modern youth—also named Kusuma, a bizarre cosmic coincidence—the network of energy pathways resembled a spiderweb shattered by a falling boulder. Qi leaked uselessly into the flesh, causing chronic pain and total paralysis of the martial potential. To modern medicine, it was a permanent physical disability. To a grandmaster who had ruled the spirit realm for millennia, it was merely a messy canvas.

Pathetic, Kusuma’s consciousness analyzed coldly. The modern era has weakened human bodies into fragile glass, yet the core principles of universal circulation remain immutable.

"Hey, useless! Are you even listening?" Baskoro barked, stepping closer and reaching out to grab a fistful of Kusuma’s greasy hair to jerk his head upward. "Your mother spent good money on that poison, but your useless constitution couldn't even handle a standard shock therapy session. Stand up! Your uncle wants to humiliate you in front of the board members one last time before we throw you to the stray dogs!"

Before Baskoro’s thick fingers could wrap around his hair, Kusuma's eyes snapped open.

The darkness within those obsidian pupils was so absolute, so suffocatingly ancient, that Baskoro froze mid-motion. His hand hovered an inch away, his breath catching in his throat as an icy shiver violently raced down his spine. It felt as though a frozen abyss had suddenly opened beneath his feet.

"Wh-What is that look..." Baskoro stammered, stepping back involuntarily, his bravado instantly evaporating under the weight of an invisible, crushing pressure. "You... you little piece of trash..."

"Your hands are unclean," Kusuma spoke, his voice raspy from disuse, yet carrying an imperial resonance that commanded absolute obedience. "And your presence fouls the air of this room."

"Brat, have you lost your mind?!" Outside the door, the second voice shouted in alarm, heavy footsteps signaling a rushed approach down the narrow corridor. "Slap some sense into him, Baskoro! We don't have time for his delusions!"

Baskoro swallowed hard, shaking off the irrational terror that had momentarily paralyzed his limbs. Flushing with sudden rage at his own cowardice, he clenched his fist and aimed a vicious, heavy punch straight at Kusuma’s jaw. "I’ll break every single tooth in your mouth, you ungrateful bastard!"

Kusuma did not dodge. He didn't even raise a hand to block.

Instead, inside the fragile vessel, a violent surge of primordial Qi—gathered silently from the ambient smog and neon-lit concrete of the sprawling metropolis outside—rushed through the newly forged pathways with the velocity of a tidal wave. A low, resonant hum vibrated through Kusuma's bones, sounding remarkably like the distant roar of a wakened dragon.

First pathway cleared. Second pathway reinforced. Third pathway welded.

As Baskoro’s fist closed in, Kusuma’s body shifted by a microscopic fraction of an inch—just enough to let the wind of the punch graze his cheek. At the same time, two fingers of his right hand flicked outward with blinding, terrifying speed, striking a precise pressure point on the inside of Baskoro’s wrist.

Crack.

"Aargh!"

The sound of snapping cartilage echoed sharply through the cramped room. Baskoro’s eyes bulged in utter disbelief as the momentum of his own punch turned against him, his wrist folding backward at an unnatural, sickening angle.

Before he could scream out in agony, Kusuma rose to his feet. The motion was fluid, effortless, and terrifyingly graceful, completely devoid of the feeble slouch that had defined this body for the past nineteen years.

"Baskoro? What’s going on in there? Did you kill him?" The second man shoved the rotting wooden door open, his eyes widening in horror as he stepped into the room.

The heavy iron pipe he carried dropped from his nerveless fingers, clattering loudly against the floorboards.

Baskoro was already on his knees, clutching his shattered wrist while vomiting blood, his face pale as death. Standing right above him was Kusuma, whose dark eyes burned with a cold, merciless fire that belonged to a slaughtering god, not a discarded family scapegoat.

"Who... what are you..." the second man stammered, stumbling backward toward the hallway, his hands trembling violently as he reached frantically for his pocket. "You're not Kusuma... the doctors said you were crippled! You're a monster!"

"A monster?" Kusuma stepped forward, the floorboards groaning softly beneath a tread that carried the weight of a thousand fallen empires. "In my past life, your entire bloodline would have been flayed alive and salted for speaking my name in such a tone. Consider this era merciful."

"Help! Help me, Uncle Slamet! The brat has gone insane! He crippled Baskoro!" the man screamed at the top of his lungs, turning to bolt down the hallway.

Kusuma raised his right hand, channeling a razor-thin blade of condensed internal energy through his fingertips. The air warped slightly under the intense heat of compressed Qi.

"Do you truly believe," Kusuma whispered, his voice carrying effortlessly over the man's frantic footsteps, "that shouting will save you from a debt that spans centuries?"

"Wait! Don't—"

With a flick of his wrist, the invisible blade pierced the dim corridor, cutting off the scream mid-air as the man collapsed heavily against the wallpaper, sliding down into a lifeless heap.

Baskoro whimpered, pressing his back against the peeling wall, his pants dampening as the stench of fear filled the tiny room. "Mercy... please... I was just following orders from the main family... Uncle Danu said—"

Kusuma stopped dead in his tracks. The name hung in the damp air like a drop of ink in pure water, freezing the chaotic noise of the modern city outside into absolute silence.

"Danu?" Kusuma’s voice dropped an octave, the temperature in the room plunging so rapidly that frost began to form on the edges of the windowpane. "My dear, obedient younger brother... is he still playing at being a king in this pathetic concrete jungle?"

"Yes! Yes! Raden Danu Sanjaya is the chairman of the Sanjaya Group now!" Baskoro cried out hysterically, clutching his broken wrist. "He owns half the city! He has billions! If you kill me, his security forces will turn you into minced meat before you can even walk out of this district!"

Kusuma looked down at his own palms, flexing his fingers as the raw, pulsing energy of a newly mended foundation hummed under his skin. A terrifying, razor-sharp smile touched the corners of his lips, devoid of warmth, filled only with the promise of an apocalyptic reckoning.

"Billionaire? Chairman?" Kusuma’s low chuckle vibrated through the small room, chilling Baskoro’s blood to slush. "A beggar wearing a golden robe is still a beggar. Tell my dear brother that his elder brother has finally arrived to collect the debt."

Before Baskoro could comprehend the terrifying implication of those words, Kusuma's palm descended softly upon his forehead.

A muffled shockwave echoed through the room, and the second henchman collapsed into stillness, his eyes wide with a terror that would follow him into the afterlife.

Stepping over the lifeless bodies without a single glance backward, Kusuma pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out into the blinding neon lights of the sprawling metropolis. The roar of traffic and the towering glass skyscrapers washed over him, but he did not blink.

Danu, Kusuma thought, his obsidian gaze fixing on the tallest, most opulent tower piercing the night sky in the distance. You built an empire on stolen bones. Let us see how long it stands against a true master.

A sudden, sharp notification chimed from the cheap smartphone left on the counter behind him, flashing an urgent news alert across the screen: Breaking News: Sekar Arum, sole heiress of Arum Corp, targeted in a brutal corporate ambush downtown...

Kusuma paused for a fraction of a second, his eyes narrowing as he calculated the chess pieces moving on the modern board. An unexpected obstruction on his path to vengeance, or a convenient tool to accelerate his ascent?

Without a word, he turned his steps toward the direction of the downtown financial district, his silhouette dissolving smoothly into the shadows of the alleyways, leaving a trail of absolute death in his wake.