The Yama's Gaze
A Judge of the Netherworld was the sort of being who could thrash a Spirit Transformation cultivator without breaking a sweat. The truly gifted among them could even drag down those who had surpassed Spirit Transformation entirely — half-step True Immortals in all but name.
Of course, that kind of miracle was only possible because they moved according to the laws of the Netherworld itself. Through the ranks of Reaper and across countless ages, they had climbed to the office of Judge until they were less people than living embodiments of those laws.
And after tens of thousands of years on the job, any Judge worth the title could proudly claim to have seen every strange, bizarre, and downright deranged problem the cosmos had to offer.
This one, however, could just as proudly claim he had never seen anything like this.
His subordinate — a Reaper who normally handled everything just fine on his own — had screamed for help so desperately that he was willing to burn his own karma to do it. So the Judge had come down to the lower realm in person, wondering what could possibly be so bad.
It wasn't just a problem. It was a strategic nuke.
A heavenly decree, delivered straight from the sky: Your lifespan has ended. The target? A transcendent species infant barely a hundred years old, still in the late Golden Core stage — whose accumulated karma already looked Yama-class.
The more the Judge picked the decree apart, the more he wanted to tear his own hair out first. This was not a document. This was a migraine with official seals.
This… this is beyond my authority.
If only the decree hadn't come from Heaven. If only the target hadn't been a transcendent species infant. And if only that infant hadn't been, by transcendent standards, a newborn who had just barely scraped past a century of life and memory — a baby even by cultivator reckoning.
Worse, the aura clinging to her carried traces of a transcendent who had once brushed against Spirit Transformation. If a single complaint about this ever reached the higher offices, it wouldn't just be the local Netherworld branch that exploded. The entire Netherworld would go up in flames.
He would have loved to just wing it and sweep the whole mess under the rug. But every single element was a bomb, and a Judge was so thoroughly bound by the Netherworld's laws — so fused with them — that breaking those laws could drop his realm outright and exile him to some backwater corner of the lower world.
The easiest, fastest solution would have been to request a correction from Heaven. But that would require Heaven to admit it had made a mistake, which meant it was never going to happen.
In tens of thousands of years of service, Heaven had never once been wrong — or had never once allowed itself to look wrong.
And the Netherworld had to watch Heaven's face carefully.
In the end, the Judge squeezed his eyes shut and pulled out the dharma treasure used to summon his superior.
The Judge of the Netherworld withdraws.
The Yama of the Netherworld gazes upon you.
What the fuck — why does this keep upgrading?!?!
My breath was crushed flat.
No — not my breath. My soul. I was already a captive, already unable to resist, and still that merciless pressure stared straight through me.
The Status Window guzzled Slaughter Tribulation energy like a mad thing, and Captive Mode flared to life in a desperate thrash, trying to block the assault. Even so, my stamina began to drain, slow and steady.
Whether Captive Mode had hit its limit or the captive state itself had simply come undone, I felt the Slaughter Tribulation stir the instant the shackles loosened — and I forced out a single broken word in a dying voice.
"...Ero…sion…!"
My Mental World overlaid reality. A tidal wave of Slaughter Tribulation surged up around me and began to corrode outward — then the whole construct shuddered violently.
I watched my Mental World crumple in ways the eye could actually see, buying myself a scrap of time, and understood at once that it wasn't enough. I didn't even have room to swear at this goddamn triple-stacked eok-kka event before I drew my True Name Dharma Treasure.
The wheel of Slaughter Tribulation turned, and the gates of the Mental World were flung wide.
This was no longer a simple erosion. A full opening of the Mental World poured forth an ocean of Slaughter Tribulation, and even that could only stop the crumpling from getting worse. Seeing as much, I deployed Chopsticks and Spoon together.
A halo of chopsticks spun at my back, locking the wheel as the axis of the Mental World, while a tower of spoons rose from the sea of slaughter and slapped itself together in a crude, desperate rush.
"Mode Manager! Change Map Settings!!! Scale!"
There was no time to forge a proper seal for the command. I just stared at the Mental World collapsing second by second and frantically rewrote the map settings, trying to run from the eok-kka event.
The Mental World expanded, stretching the distance between me and that gaze, thrashing to get free.
The laws forced it larger, and everything inside — the Slaughter Tribulation included — scaled up with it. All I managed was to put a hair more distance between myself and those eyes.
To the gaze of the Judge's superior — the Yama — it looked like nothing more than a newborn thrashing through a clumsy roll-over.
Of course, even setting Netherworld power aside, a pure True Immortal-class Yama descending into the lower realm would shatter it outright. So he had only sent his gaze, using his subordinate Judge's dharma treasure and authority as a medium. Even that was more than enough to crush a late Golden Core cultivator to death.
This particular late Golden Core cultivator had unfolded a Mental World, true — and still the Yama kept staring, unable to believe his own eyes. That was how the whole mess had escalated.
She really was just a raw infant under two hundred years old. Not a reincarnated transcendent. Not a Spirit Transformation cultivator possessing a body. Not even a fragment of some ancient soul.
The sheer volume of karma she had piled up — enough to rival his own — was startling, but she clearly didn't even know how to handle it properly while being driven to the brink of death by his gaze. So he found himself thinking it must simply be a talent bestowed by Heaven.
And that was the problem.
The decree Heaven had sent down.
Ordinarily, a misdelivered decree would be quietly papered over by the subordinates, or simply executed as written and forgotten. But if this one were either ignored or carried out, the laws of the Netherworld wouldn't merely shave karma — lives would hang in the balance.
The Reaper was already clinging to life by a thread. The Judge stood to drop in realm, fall back to Reaper, or face exile. Which meant the bomb had finally landed on the Yama's own desk.
And of course he couldn't protest a decree from Heaven. Such was the sad fate of a subcontractor.
As a superior, the Yama had to take responsibility.
So he had intended to kill her according to the decree and then revive her with the Netherworld's power — until his gaze finally met, far in the distance, the gaze of a crimson star.
This was no ordinary upper-realm existence.
The clatter of countless gray iron chains rang out. A True Immortal sealed in golden script, body locked by silver needles, had its accumulated karma lifted as a matter of course by the Yama's gaze — and the moment he read the contents—
The Yama moved the Judge's body without hesitation, tore the heavenly decree to shreds, exerted a fraction of his own power to scoop up the Judge — who had fainted from the shock — and the Reaper barely clinging to life, and fled back to the Netherworld as if the lower realm itself were on fire.
A little lost karma was something a Yama could endure. He was no longer merely one with the Netherworld's laws — he could pass judgment on them, even revise them in part. The retreat was swift and decisive.
The Yama of the Netherworld averts his gaze.
Your cultivation realm is insufficient!
Limit Break required!
Remaining experience converted to residual stat points!
"…Ptooey!"
I tried to spit out the blood and pulverized organs the triple eok-kka event had killed inside me — then thought better of it, pulled a small glass vial from my inventory, and carefully decanted the mess into it.
A cultivator's body parts made excellent materials, after all.
The item filter flared purple. Epic-grade. I tucked the vial back into my inventory and muttered weakly,
"Event Probability Mode."
No matter how I looked at it, five hundred percent was insane, so I carefully dialed it down to three hundred. Only then could I finally move again, still reeling from the shock.
Out of habit I opened the Status Window and checked the body stats locked against the limit.
"Three thousand is the Golden Core ceiling?"
Then what the hell was that time I buffed past five thousand and cracked the map?
Just in case, I swapped gear around, tried consumables that temporarily raised stats, and toggled the Heavenly Slaughter Art and transformation skill in turn.
The hard cap really was three thousand. Equipment, consumables, and the Heavenly Slaughter Art skill couldn't push past it — but the transformation skill and Emotion Expression both overrode the limit and applied anyway.
A mode-exclusive skill like transformation, fine. But why could Emotion Expression break the cap? Seriously.
I shelved that little mystery for later. For now, the hopeful thought that I could hit the Limit Break threshold faster than expected got me moving again.
All stats permanently decreased by 1.
Of course, that hopeful little step of mine was immediately blocked by a chain of misfortune events that had clearly been waiting for exactly this moment — and my optimism went cold in an instant.