My owner’s heart steadies. It was like steel before, but now it is more like a glacier. There is neither fear nor sorrow in her heart, only determination.

She watched Wu Yulan’s battle — if it could be called that — and was equally as stunned as she was curious. Helping Wu Yulan crossed her mind, but in her heart, she felt that it was inappropriate. It is because she had never seen a technique as powerful as Sword Moment: Six-Fold Symmetry Seal. In Lan Xiaohui’s eyes, it was the pinnacle of swordsmanship. She had seen Lady Yue’s techniques, and though Wu Yulan’s could not compare in power, she still thought that her companion’s sword was mysterious and profound. In that sense, it was not Lan Xiaohui’s place to interrupt her companion or interfere.

When she sensed Wu Yulan’s talent wither to execute the technique, a pang of pain shook my owner’s heart. But seeing that wound on the finger of their nemesis made Lan Xiaohui happy. Talent? That was too small a price to pay for the outcome.

She only hoped that she could also have a good outcome like that.

Survival is not possible. Victory is a possibility even more distant than survival. One cut — one tiny and insignificant wound — is already the source of more hope than they dared to harbor.

The figure, meanwhile, scoffs. “Even your dreams are small,” she says, her tone ever the same. “When this princess was your age, she killed her father, the king. He was so powerful, compared to me, that if he were to stand before you now instead of this princess, you wouldn’t dare to blink without his permission.”

Lan Xiaohui frowns — that steadiness in her heart crumbling slightly. The figure effortlessly attacks the core of their dignity. To not even dare to dream of killing her? Not even dare to dream of obtaining victory?

“Something like this is enough to make you happy?” the figure asks, pointing out the cut on her finger once more, which had already healed. “This princess will tell you: if she had put more effort into defending herself, you would be dead now. What victory? What satisfaction? You can still speak such nonsense?”

“Perhaps it is a… hollow victory to you…” Wu Yulan hissed through her teeth, trying as hard as she could to climb back to her feet, but unable to do so. “But at least… we can choose to die… with dignity.”

Lan Xiaohui extends her arm directly up, raising my point toward heaven. A trail of black energy remains in the wake of my vessel as my owner begins drawing a full circle. She closes off her heart, intent on ignoring the words of the figure.

It no longer mattered what the princess had to say. In her words, there is no avenue of resolution other than death. Lan Xiaohui and Wu Yulan both hated bullies, but this princess did not trigger that hate. Even they understood that in this world, only the truly strong can decide who lives and who dies. In their mind, this figure had that right. Not a bully — an oppressor.

“It is no longer your right to choose when to die,” the figure says, narrowing her eyes. “Only this princess can now decide that!”

When Lan Xiaohui hears this, even with her heart closed off, she stops drawing the circle.

Like a bolt of lightning, a flash of anger pulses through her heart.

“No,” my owner says, lifting her face to look at the figure. “It is not your right to decide that either.”

The figure looks at Lan Xiaohui, with the same cold expression.

“My life belongs to Yaoyue,” Lan Xiaohui says. “Only Yaoyue can decide when or where I will die, not you!”

Suddenly alarmed, Wu Yulan stares at Lan Xiaohui. “Xuelian… don’t…”

“You are right that my dreams are shallow,” Lan Xiaohui whispers, her eyelids becoming redder. “Unlike yours, my dignity and pride are fragile things. I can’t win against you. I doubt I can even hurt you.”

It is not just that her sword aura and killing intent recede; everything disappears from within my owner’s heart. In a brief moment, it becomes an emptiness.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“But this one thing, not a million of you can take away,” Lan Xiaohui says. “I, and my life, belong to Yaoyue!”

With those words, she lifts my vessel into the air, reverses her grip, and runs my tip through her chest.

As the blood explodes through her back, spraying on the walls behind her, each blood droplet turns into a small black and red lily flower. Then the flowers wilt.

“Dead Flowers, Everlasting Moon,” Lan Xiaohui whispers as a dark, black moon comes into existence behind her. Not an empty circle like previously, but completely pitch black. The laws of nature fall apart in that region and I sense nothing from it.

“Xuelian…” Wu Yulan whimpers, all the determination and resolve in her heart crumbling to dust in an instant. “Why…? Why do you have to die… before me?”

The figure does not speak. For once, her expression changes. It is no longer that cold and distant sneer. She straightens up and even leans backward slightly. I get an impression of deep wariness from her. What can this figure sense that I cannot?

What is this Dead Flowers, Everlasting Moon technique? Is this the sword you wanted to show me, Lan Xiaohui? The eternal moon of finality watching over dead flowers?

When Lan Xiaohui rips my vessel free from her chest, I become aware of the damage inflicted. Her spiritual veins, her blood, her heart, they have all been sacrificed. Nevermind her talent, her life is over.

With blood pouring from her chest, turning into flowers around her feet that wilt almost immediately, my perception of the world skews. It is like there is a mirror placed across the room, tilted at an odd angle. The colors drain from the world, but on one side, the contrast is flipped; darker in brightness, brighter in darkness.

I don’t sense any energy from my vessel, but I do sense something. What is this law? What is this sword intent?

Suddenly, I feel an acceleration, but for a brief moment, we remain motionless. Then, Lan Xiaohui appears before the figure. Her feet make no sound as they strike the floor. Acceleration without motion, and motion without force.

Liminality Steps?

“You…” the figure growls, narrowing her eyes as Lan Xiaohui appears before her, mangled and bloody sword raised high.

When Lan Xiaohui swings her sword, a trail of pitch-black nothingness is left in the wake of my vessel. It is like a crack in space, fracturing around the fault lines of my passage. From the blackness, red and black flowers bloom across the surface, as Lan Xiaohui’s life force burns in the mysterious energies whose origin I cannot determine.

This arc of annihilation — like a crescent moon — blooming with the flowers of her sacrifice is such a mysterious thing. Like those stars I watched flinging around black holes in the vast cosmos, and the light they produced once devoured. This relationship of existence around non-existence is something that Lan Xiaohui captured in her sword through her own relationship with me and the concept of liminality.

Lan Xiaohui truly is a transient thing in this world, but I never thought that those stars, like my Lan Xiaohui, swing around the centers of their own demise out of adoration; as if having found their place of death.

My vessel crashes into an invisible barrier and a pulse of stillness emits upon impact. That perception of the skewed world I have tilts even further, and the strange, wrong contrast amplifies in wrongness.

On the other side of the room, Wu Yulan is pressed into the ground by an invisible force — gravity? — and groans, helplessly. Even if she had the strength to resist, she wouldn’t. There is no more resistance left in her heart when she has to watch the final moment of her friend.

The invisible barrier crumbles — crashing like shattered glass — and my vessel strikes into the figure’s neck who emits a broken grunt, pupils shrinking to tiny black points.

The figure remains on her feet and slowly, with great difficulty, begins raising her hands toward my vessel. Her fingers tremble — or perhaps it is the air that is trembling — but little by little, she reaches toward my vessel. Slow; she is so slow. Whatever influence my vessel has on her is tremendously effective.

I slip further into the figure’s skin, parting flesh beneath my ruinous blade, advancing towards beheading this figure.

The figure’s fingers finally reach my vessel and press into my blade. My entire vessel shudders, then crumbles and ablates away, as if pressed into by an incredible force and also blasted away by heat.

Then my damaged blade snaps in half and the ruinous energies shrouding my sword lose their focus and cohesion, blasting outward amidst the rumble of invisible chains and cracking stone.

[ Blood Destruction (Late Dao Vessel) complete. ]

As the energies dissipate, it reveals the figure standing over my owner, hand pressed against the deep cut on her neck. My hilt, the only thing that remains of my vessel, rests before my owner's eyes, who likewise has not a shred of resistance left, and only a meager, evaporating thread of life.

She smiles. “You watched… me closely… right?”

“I did,” I tell her, but I don’t have the strength to do more than whisper into her mind. “It was a beautiful sword.”

Her eyes close, but her smile remains. “I am glad,” she whispers. “Thank you, Yaoyue… for giving me… a life worth living. I wish I... could have... followed you... for a bit... long...”

Either her life fades away, or my consciousness does, before I can hear the rest of her words, but I already know what they are. We are connected, and this regret is one that we share.