Blood dripped from Daniel Maxim’s lips and stained the marble floor beneath him.

  It was warm at first.

  Then it burned.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, staring at the dark red smear as his chest rose and fell unevenly. Each breath felt heavier than the last, as if something inside his body was refusing to settle—refusing to obey.

  “So that’s the price…” Daniel muttered hoarsely.

  The mana refining pill had worked too well.

  He could still feel it—violent, thick force energy surging through his dantian like a caged beast. It was nothing like the refined, obedient force he remembered cultivating in his previous life. This energy was savage. Twisted. Hungry.

  Demonic.

  His back pressed against the cold bedframe as another wave of pain rippled through his meridians. His vision blurred for a moment, and instinctively, his hand clenched into the sheets.

  If he continued like this, his body would collapse again.

  “No…” Daniel exhaled slowly, forcing his breathing to steady. “This isn’t poisoning. This is rejection.”

  In the Crimson House, force was cultivated through the heart—refined, circulated, controlled. But what flowed inside him now refused to pass through the heart at all. Each time it neared, sharp pain flared, like needles tearing through flesh.

  The poison had destroyed that path long ago.

  And now, this demonic mana was punishing him for trying to follow it.

  For a brief moment, doubt crept in.

  Had he made a mistake swallowing the pill?

  The answer came not from fear—but from memory.

  A shattered altar.

  A mountain of corpses.

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  The final roar of a demon whose cultivation had eclipsed the heavens.

  Daniel’s eyes sharpened.

  He remembered that day clearly.

  In his past life as Tao Han, he had hunted the Demon Head across three regions. The man’s cultivation technique was forbidden even among demonic sects—too violent, too unstable.

  After killing him, Tao Han had burned everything… except one thing.

  The cultivation manual carved into a slab of black stone.

  Asura Cultivation Technique. A technique that did not harmonize with the body. It conquered it.

  Tao Han had never practiced it.

  Not because he couldn’t.

  But because he refused to walk a path that demanded domination over one’s own humanity.

  Daniel let out a slow breath.

  “That restraint doesn’t belong to me anymore,” he whispered.

  He was no longer the Murim Alliance Leader.

  He was Daniel Maxim of the Crimson House.

  A boy with a shattered heart meridian.

  A demonic bloodline.

  And two months to survive.

  Carefully, Daniel shifted into a lotus position. Pain flared again as the demonic mana reacted, but he did not suppress it this time. Instead, he guided it downward—away from the heart, deeper into the dantian.

  Then he recalled the first line of the Asura technique.

  Force is not persuaded.       It is seized.

  The moment he altered his circulation method, everything changed.

  The demonic mana resisted violently.

  It slammed against his meridians, sending a fresh wave of agony through his body. His teeth clenched as sweat poured down his face. Veins bulged along his arms and neck.

  “This is nothing,” Daniel growled under his breath. “I’ve endured worse.”

  He forced the mana to rotate—not gently, but brutally—compressing it, folding it inward. The Asura technique did not refine force; it crushed impurities through pressure and domination.

  Each cycle felt like his insides were being scraped raw.

  Minutes stretched into eternity.

  Just when he thought his body would give out, the mana suddenly stabilized.

  Not calm.

  Obedient.

  Daniel’s breathing slowed.

  The burning sensation receded, replaced by a heavy, simmering heat settled firmly within his dantian. For the first time since swallowing the pill, the force stopped lashing out.

  A faint smile tugged at his lips.

  “So this is it…”

  The Asura Cultivation Technique wasn’t safer than Yama Arts.

  It was worse.

  But it was compatible.

  A faint sound echoed in his mind.

  Ding.

  Daniel’s eyes snapped open.

  A translucent screen hovered before him, cold and silent.

  He stared at it—not in shock this time, but with something closer to grim acceptance.

  “…So you really exist,” he murmured.

  The screen did not respond.

  But another line appeared.

  [Mana: 15 (Stable)

  Condition: Demonic Force Circulation Established ]

  Daniel exhaled slowly, closing his eyes once more.

  Two months.

  Against Robert Maxim.

  Against the Crimson House.

  Against a body that betrayed him and a path that demanded blood.

  “If Asura is the only road left,” he thought calmly,

  “then I’ll walk it to the end.”

  Outside his room, the Crimson House remained silent.

  But something had already changed.