Sword Sovereign Against The Heaven

Dark clouds rolled across the sky, flashing with lightning. For a brief moment, the alley was bathed in a stark white glow, revealing a bloodied lone figure, battered, and barely standing.

Rain pelted down in relentless sheets, soaking through the torn remnants of his robes, washing his blood into the streets like ink dissolving in water.

He gasped for air, his trembling fingers digging into the slick stone wall for support.

Boots pounded against the rain-drenched ground. They were closing in.

"There's no way out, Han Zhen!"

The voice was sharp, filled with malice. It belonged to the scar-faced captain leading the hunt.

"Surrender now," the captain called, his sneer audible even through the downpour. "And we'll make it quick."

Surrender? To what?

His mind was a haze of shattered memories. The taste of cheap wine still clung to his tongue, the remnants of a night lost to drunken stupor.

Then, darkness. When he woke, he was on the floor of a bloodstained home, surrounded by the lifeless bodies of a family of four. His hands were wet, crimson.

The guards had found him there, blades drawn, eyes burning with righteous fury.

No trial. No questions. Just a sword at his throat.

His hands curled into fists. Something deep inside him, long buried, flickered to life. An ember beneath the ashes, stirring, smoldering.

"AHH!"

A blinding, searing agony exploded in his skull. Han Zhen staggered, his vision blurring, a splitting headache tearing through him.

"Not now…" he gasped, pressing a shaking hand to his temple.

That voice. The one he had heard all his life. A whisper threading through his nightmares, lurking in the recesses of his mind.

{Who are you?}

Han Zhen's breath came in ragged bursts. His knees buckled.

'Who… am I?'

The answer eluded him. It always had.

Then, like a storm breaking over the sea, the voice returned, no longer a whisper but a command.

{Awaken, Sovereign of the Sword. The heavens have wronged you once… will you allow them to wrong you again?}

Thunder split the sky. Han Zhen's vision twisted, the world around him dissolving into an endless void. He stood amidst fragments of memory, floating like shattered glass.

He saw himself on a battlefield drenched in the blood of gods. A celestial palace, grand and imperious, crumbling beneath the swing of his sword. His own blood staining the heavens, a desperate voice crying out to him.

"Master! Don't leave me!"

Pain surged through him, sharper than before, as if something inside him had cracked open.

He gasped, his body trembling violently. Yet, through the agony, something else rose, a rush of energy unfamiliar yet intimately known. His wounds no longer burned as fiercely. His senses sharpened. His thoughts cleared.

"Surround him!"

The soldiers lunged forward, their weapons gleaming in the storm.

Han Zhen's body tensed. He couldn't stay here. He couldn't die here.

Instinct took over. His body moved before his mind could catch up.

A spear thrust forward, he twisted, narrowly evading the strike. His movements were clumsy, unrefined. His cultivation was gone. But his body remembered. Something older than memory guided him.

His hand found a fallen iron rod. He spun just as a soldier swung his blade, the clash of steel on iron ringing through the rain. The impact sent a jolt up his arm, but he held firm.

A flicker of exhilaration ignited in his chest. His body was weak, but his spirit was waking up.

The scar-faced captain studied him, eyes narrowing.

"Not bad for a cripple," he sneered. "But tricks won't save you, Han Zhen."

The soldiers closed in, cutting off every escape. Han Zhen's grip on the iron rod tightened. He could already feel his strength waning. He couldn't hold off much longer. He needed to end this.

Just then, a flash of silver sliced through the rain.

A soldier cried out, his sword arm severed at the elbow. Blood sprayed across the wet stone.

"What?!" Another soldier stumbled back, eyes wide with horror.

The downpour parted, and a lone figure stepped forward. A woman in flowing white robes, her long, raven-black hair clinging to her back like silk threads.

"Enough," The woman commanded. "He is innocent. Anyone who dares touch him will answer to me."

The soldiers hesitated. They knew her, Jin Shuiyue, the city's pride, a cultivation prodigy courted by the great sects. Even the Mayor himself tread carefully around her.

And most of all, she was Han Zhen's fiancée.

The scar-faced captain wiped rain from his face, sneering. "You're defending him, Lady Jin? He butchered a family in cold blood. Are you saying the Mayor's Mansion judged wrongly?"

Jin Shuiyue's fingers tightened around her sword. "I'm saying the investigation was hasty. If he is guilty, then prove it with real evidence. Otherwise, I will bring this matter before the Azure Sky Sect myself."

A ripple of unease passed through the soldiers. The Azure Sky Sect, one of the great powers. Everyone who walked path of cultivation heard of this sect..

The captain gritted.

"Fine. You have three days." His gaze darkened as he turned to Han Zhen. "Enjoy your borrowed time. If you can't prove your innocence, you'll be thrown into the Demon-Sealing Burial Grounds."

With a sharp command, the soldiers withdrew, their boots sloshing through the rain as they disappeared into the night.

Jin Shuiyue stepped closer, her gaze softening as it fell upon Han Zhen's battered form. He looked up at her, dazed, breathless… but something in his eyes had changed.

She no longer saw a broken man. She saw something else. Something different.

Han Zhen opened his mouth, his voice barely above audible in the rain. "I… didn't kill anyone."

His strength failed him. His vision blurred. His body collapsed.

Jin Shuiyue caught him before he hit the ground.

"Let's get you home," she murmured.

…

[A/N: You don't see many such fiancée in Xianxia.]