Crown of Thorns - Chapter 56

One rule: Survive. Everything else is optional.Reika Kagetsu doesn’t want to be a hero. She just wants to feel—pain, fear, adrenaline—anything to remind her she’s still alive.Tenshiko Academy promised her that.What she got instead? Brutal training. No rest. No second chances. And monsters—inside and out.Now she’s fighting the Shikiban: creatures born from blood, madness, and buried secrets. But the deeper she goes, the more she begins to wonder...What if she’s one of them?Power always comes with a price. And Reika is about to pay it in full.

Alex was an ordinary teenager—until the day he discovered his ability to drain energy from the dead. With powers rooted in death itself, Alex hides his necromancy behind a normal life, secretly entering deadly portals to fight monsters and earn money. But beneath the surface, a darker truth lingers—his parents's death and his powers are linkedAs he harnesses his necromantic abilities, draining the fallen to grow stronger, the weight of his power begins to take its toll—and the line between the living and the dead starts to blur.With enemies closing in and betrayal around every corner, Alex must master his growing abilities before they consume him—or worse, before the forces hunting him claim everything he has left.When death becomes your greatest weapon, how long can you survive before it turns against you?---

I am the sword.

Killing a man amidst a thousand miles, no one dares take ten steps.
Killing a man amidst a thousand miles, no one can take ten steps.
Killing a man amidst a thousand miles, ten steps? Not possible!

I am the sword, the sword is me,
On the path towards heaven, each shall wield their own.

- Description from Novelupdates

The Jiuzhou Continent contains an era of chaos and fiendish demons, haunted by mysterious beings and fraught with feuding martial families, demonic sacred grounds, and endless struggles between various powers. Conflict is a constant throughout the world.Within such darkness, Gu Chen opened his eyes to this reality.At the same time, he discovered that as long as he slew these fiendish demons and ghosts, his cultivation strength could continually elevate.Killing a Panic Level Demon yields a decade's worth of cultivation.Slaying a Ghost Level Fiendish Ghost brings thirty years of cultivation....Eventually, one day, staring at the endless swarm of fiendish demons and world-renowned grandmasters in his path, Gu Chen chuckled lightly, “Are you able to withstand this fist of mine, charged with 1600 years of cultivation?”