Heaven and earth burned.
The world screamed beneath the weight of divine power. Mountains crumbled into dust, oceans boiled, and the sky fractured into a mosaic of collapsing stars.
In the heart of this dying land floated a lone figure dressed in tattered black robes, his black eyes calm beneath the storm. Fang Yuan, Demon Immortal of a fallen era, stood amidst destruction as if he were merely watching the weather change.
Around him, a crowd of immortals hovered in formation — the so-called righteous. Their Gu worms flared like miniature suns, bathing them in holy radiance. Their eyes shone with hatred and fear.
"Fang Yuan! The heavens themselves reject you!" one shouted.
"You've slaughtered millions for your selfish pursuit. Die, fiend!" cried another.
Their voices blended with thunder, forming a chorus of judgment.
Fang Yuan smiled faintly, his expression neither proud nor mocking. His gaze drifted over the endless sea of enemies, all trembling with the fervor of righteousness.
"Righteousness," he murmured, his voice barely audible in the storm, "is merely selfishness with better publicity."
He looked down at his right hand. In his palm rested a cicada of gold and jade, its wings cracked, its light fading — the Spring Autumn Cicada, the foundation of countless rebirths.
His body was failing; the veins of his arm had turned black from the backlash of too many Gu activations. His soul trembled, a candle in a hurricane. But the familiar calm never left him.
Even now, facing annihilation, Fang Yuan remained Fang Yuan — unbowed, cold, unyielding.
The immortals raised their hands ready to finish the demon off.
'So,' he thought, 'this is how the world repays defiance.'
He closed his eyes.
'Spring Autumn Cicada… take me back.'
The cicada sang and answered with flaps of its wings.
The battlefield shattered into fragments of time. The light of annihilation swallowed everything — but Fang Yuan's figure dissolved into a stream of gold before it could reach him.
He was gone, cast into the river of time once more.
The world became water and light.
Countless currents of existence flowed in all directions, each glimmering with scenes from forgotten eras — children laughing, cities rising, worlds perishing. The River of Time stretched beyond eternity, its depths filled with the destinies of all beings.
Fang Yuan's soul floated within it, stripped of body and form. The Spring Autumn Cicada clung to him like a dying flame, its glow pulsing faintly.
He looked around, feeling the weight of endless years pressing down on his consciousness.
'Again,' he thought. 'Back to the past…I will begin anew…'
But then the current shifted.
A sound like tearing silk echoed through the cosmos. Ahead, the river twisted into a vast whirlpool — black, endless, hungry. Its pull was irresistible, a wound in reality itself.
"What is this?"
For the first time in centuries, unease touched his heart.
The whirlpool roared. It was not part of the natural flow; it was karma — a convergence of hatred, destiny, and the universe's rejection of a soul that refused to die.
The Spring Autumn Cicada trembled violently. Cracks spread across its shell, and a golden light burst forth.
"Protect….Soul…"
That was its last coherent thought before the world inverted. The cicada shattered, its fragments forming a cocoon of light that wrapped around his essence. Pain beyond comprehension ripped through him — not of body, but of existence. His memories splintered like glass.
The River swallowed him whole.
Then — nothing.
…
Warmth.
Softness pressed around him, rhythmic and muffled, like the beating of distant drums. Voices murmured beyond the veil. He could not move. He could not see. He floated in darkness, adrift in heat and heartbeat.
Time passed. Days or years — impossible to tell. Then the warmth turned to pressure. Light. Pain. Cold air struck his face.
A cry escaped his lips.
"A boy," someone gasped. "White as snow…and his eyes—!"
The midwife froze. The newborn's eyes were open — impossibly open — gleaming with crimson light. Tiny pupils like drops of blood stared up, unblinking…cold.
The mother, pale and exhausted, smiled faintly. "Onimaru," she whispered. "He will be my little demon… born from the moon's shadow."
The name sank into the boy's fading consciousness.
He tried to form thoughts, but they slipped away. The will that had once shattered heavens was trapped within a helpless infant body. His mind was fragmented, his memories scattered like dust in a storm.
And yet — somewhere deep inside — ambition remained. A single ember of will, buried beneath layers of confusion, whispered:
I Will Return…
…
Seasons came and went.
Onimaru grew beneath the leaf-green canopy of a peaceful village. Birds sang in the mornings, children chased each other through dusty streets, and the smell of rain lingered after every storm.
He watched it all with quiet detachment.
At four years old, he spoke rarely. His pitch-black hair fell straight over pale skin, his red eyes reflecting everything yet revealing nothing.
The villagers called him "the moon child," sometimes in awe, sometimes in fear. When he walked by, conversations hushed.
Only one person treated him without hesitation — a boy a few years older, with golden eyes and a soft, serpentlike smile. Orochimaru, his brother.
"Onimaru," Orochimaru said one afternoon, holding out a small lizard he had caught.
"Look. When you press here, the tail comes off, but it grows back later. Isn't that fascinating?"
The younger boy studied it with calm curiosity. "Regeneration through cellular memory," he murmured, his tone eerily adult. "Interesting."
Orochimaru laughed softly. "You always talk like an old man. Sometimes I wonder if you were born already tired of the world."
Onimaru tilted his head. "And you, brother?"
Orochimaru's smile widened, but his eyes glimmered with something darker. "I want to understand everything inside it."
For a moment, the two stood in silence — two prodigies, mirror reflections of the same abyss, one gold, one crimson.
Life in the village flowed like gentle water.
Onimaru helped with chores, fetched water, and listened to elders speak of shinobi legends. He learned to smile politely when others spoke, to bow when addressed. Yet his eyes gave him away — they were too calm, too knowing.
People said he looked through them rather than at them. Children his age avoided him. Some whispered that he brought bad luck. Others dared each other to touch his pale skin and run.
He never minded. Their fear was data — another proof of human frailty. But sometimes, in the late afternoons, he would watch them play from a distance. Their laughter echoed through the fields, and something faint stirred in his chest — not envy, but curiosity.
One day, a little girl approached him with a shy smile. She offered him a dandelion. "Here. It's pretty."
Onimaru stared at the fragile yellow flower.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because you look lonely," she said.
He accepted it silently. The petals brushed his cold fingers. For a heartbeat, the world seemed… quieter.
But later that night, as he lay under the moonlight, he watched the flower wilt beside his bed.
"All things bloom only to decay," he whispered. "Even kindness."
The next morning, he buried the dead dandelion beneath a rock. When the girl asked about it later, he simply said, "It was an experiment."
She never spoke to him again.
…
When Onimaru turned six, he entered the ninja academy.
The classrooms smelled of ink and chalk dust. Children chattered, threw paper balls, laughed. Onimaru sat at the edge, silent, absorbing everything — the structure of lessons, the cadence of speech, the rhythm of chakra exercises.
He did not play. He observed.
During the first chakra extraction lesson, the instructor told them to close their eyes and feel the energy within. Most children fidgeted, unable to sense anything. Onimaru remained still as stone.
Inside his mind, darkness unfolded — and within that darkness, he saw light. Threads of blue and white energy coiled through his body like rivers beneath his skin. They pulsed, alive and vibrant.
He inhaled.
The energy stirred.
'So this is chakra…'
It was crude compared to primeval essence, but it possessed a strange duality — spiritual and material, mind and flesh intertwined. The more he observed, the more he understood its potential.
That night, he practiced in secret beneath the pale moon. He drew chakra to his fingertips, compressing it, molding it according to instinct. It flickered, unstable, trying to disperse. He refined it, bit by bit, his mind remembering an art he no longer fully grasped.
And then — success.
A small, translucent form hovered above his hand. It looked like an insect woven of light and breath, pulsing faintly with life.
His red eyes reflected its glow. "A Gu?" he whispered. "No… a shadow of one."
The pseudo-creature trembled, then faded, scattering into motes of chakra that drifted away like dust.
Onimaru stared at his empty palm, expression unreadable. "So even this world's essence can be shaped. Law is universal, only its symbols differ."
He looked up at the moon. Its cold light painted his features in silver and crimson.
'Once, I walked among immortals,' he thought. 'Now I crawl among children. Yet the path remains the same."
He sat there for a long time, the night wind tugging at his hair. Beneath the noise of the forest, he could almost hear an echo — the faint hum of a broken cicada, the ghost of a will that refused to vanish.
"Whether I am Fang Yuan or Onimaru," he whispered. "It changes nothing. My pursuit remains—eternal, immortal"
And as the moon rose higher, the red glow in his eyes deepened, like twin embers burning in the dark.