The resonant boom of the War Demon Drum echoes as the ultimate test within the Monster Spirit Land. To strike it fifteen times is a legendary feat, a benchmark of near-impossible power and spiritual resonance that shakes the very heavens. In the world of Renegade Immortal (仙逆), only two figures are recorded to have achieved this: the mighty Tian Shuai (天帅), a pinnacle commander of the monster race, and the human outsider, Wang Lin (王林). Their accomplishments are inscribed in history, yet they represent two diametrically opposed paths of cultivation. One performance was a symphony of flawless control; the other was a cacophony of shattered limits. The question lingers not in the count of strikes, but in the nature of the strength behind them.
The Flaw in Perfection
Tian Shuai embodied the ideal of his kind. His fifteen strikes were a masterful demonstration of harmony with the natural laws of his homeland. His monstrous power was vast, his understanding of its rules complete and intuitive. Each impact against the drum was measured, powerful, and controlled, a step-by-step conquest through sheer, refined force. He withstood the drum's fierce recoil not by breaking it, but by meeting it with greater, more perfect strength. This was the pinnacle of operating within a system.
Yet, this perfection revealed its cost in his subsequent choices. To achieve a breakthrough, Tian Shuai severed his emotions, embracing the "Path of Compliance with Heaven." It was a clean, logical sacrifice for power, allowing him to ascend smoothly to the peak of his realm. However, this very act of cutting away his core passions created an invisible barrier. For centuries after, he remained stranded at that peak, unable to perceive, let alone step into, the higher realm of Yin Deficiency. His fifteen strikes were not a beginning, but a magnificent finale.
His path was one of optimization within a fixed boundary. He mastered the rules so completely that he became a prisoner of their logic. The drum's echo for him was a celebration of a finished product, a testament to what the established monster cultivation framework could produce at its very best. There was no chaos in his performance, no surprise—only the inevitable sound of supreme, yet ultimately bounded, power.
The Power of Defiance
Wang Lin's journey to the fifteenth strike was nothing short of a rebellion against reality itself. As a human, he faced the drum's physical backlash compounded by the land's inherent rejection of his foreign essence. By the ninth strike, his defenses were shattered, his body forced back. He faced treachery and attack at his most vulnerable moment. His path was not one of control, but of relentless, desperate adaptation.
At the critical juncture of the final strike, he faced the same cosmic choice as Tian Shuai: sever his earthly bonds and comply with the heavenly way for an easy breakthrough, or cling to his profound attachment for Li Muwan (李慕婉). Wang Lin defied the offered path. He channeled seven centuries of longing and sorrow into his palm, using that very "attachment" as a weapon to pierce through the heavenly decree. The final strike did not just sound; it evoked a phenomenon of Heavenly Sorrow, a celestial resonance with his grief.
Each strike for him was a metamorphosis. He used the recoil to temper his marrow, deciphered messages within the drum's sound, and rebuilt his flesh under extreme pressure. In a stunning act of turnabout, he even used the body of his attacker, Jin Wuxu (金乌旭), as a living drumstick for the final blow. His was a strength forged in the crucible of chaos, a power that grew precisely because it was challenged and nearly broken.
Redefining the Possible
The aftermath of the drum contest paints the clearest picture. While Tian Shuai remained stationary at his peak, Wang Lin's fifteen strikes became a mere prologue. He broke through to the Yin Deficiency and Yang Substantial realms, eventually stepping toward the heavens themselves. His cultivation journey was a continuous act of rewriting his own limits, proving that his true talent lay not in fitting into a mold, but in shattering it and building anew from the pieces.
Tian Shuai represents the supreme wisdom of understanding and mastering a system. His achievement commands immense respect and showcases a flawless, almost artistic, execution. However, it is the wisdom of the master artisan who can create anything within the tradition, but not conceive of a new tradition altogether. His power had a ceiling defined by the very rules he excelled in.
Wang Lin embodies the terrifying, transformative courage of the renegade. His path is messier, more painful, and fraught with uncertainty. He does not seek to perfectly play the game presented to him; he seeks to change the fundamental rules of the game. The War Demon Drum was not a test of his fitness within the Monster Spirit Land's order, but an anvil upon which he hammered out the first shape of his own, new order. In the end, the legend of the fifteen strikes teaches that the highest form of strength is not the power to reach a predefined limit, but the will to redraw the map entirely.
