But the blade never touched his skin.

The world held still and the sun itself seemed to stop in the sky. Cai, the assassin, Xaio Wang held. It wasn’t that they were afraid of moving, merely that they couldn’t.

“Alright, where are their heads?” A voice asked.

Over the attacker’s shoulder was a familiar figure dragging two headless corpses. The immortal walked along, pulling the fourth-rank bodies as if they were bags of rice on sale at the market.

Cai would smile if he could move his face.

Thank the Dao. Thank the Dao it worked.

His little flare of qi had seemed to be a thing of insanity to the assassin, but that was the point. To one side of them lay the Great Dessert Strip, home of the immortal, and to another was the Flowering Sword Sect’s land.

It was a gamble as the men had already lost their heads but it was the only thing Cai could do. That little threat of qi had pushed those horses toward the Desert Strip purposely. And though they were miles away from the strip, the horses could cover that within a matter of seconds if not minutes.

The immortal looked into the distance and blurred. His grey robes rippled and then he came back into focus, carrying two heads with him this time, along with a sleeping Peng Li.

“Chin, look after the girl will you,” the immortal spoke.

A confused farmer suddenly appeared by the immortal’s side. He carried a scythe and wore a rice hat and dirty brown clothes stained with black dirt.

“What-” the farmer yelped. Then he looked around and glared at the immortal. Then he grumbled.

What was his name?

Chin, Cai recalled.

“Why am I here?” The old man asked.

“We have a lesson today, a special one.”

The old man frowned even more.

“First, a lesson on death. You see Chin, cultivators are more than normal people. Dying for them isn’t the same as dying for mortals.”

The immortal lifted the dead heads of the fourth-rank immortals and compared them to one another like a man comparing apples at a market. Then he chose one, put down the other, and… screwed the head back onto the corpse.

“What exactly do we cultivate Chin?”

“The body?”

“No,” the immortal replied as he picked up the other head and began screwing that onto the other body.

“That’s where we start. The lower dantian which is responsible for your body and health, but we don’t just stay there now, do we?” He asked the farmer.

“Then the soul?” The farmer replied.

The immortal finished screwing their heads back on.

“Close but no cigar,” he replied.

“What’s a cigar?” The farmer asked.

“Focus Chin, focus.”

“The self,” Cai replied. “We cultivate the self.”

He was surprised to feel his lips move and hear his voice speak. But time seemed to loosen. The air was coming back into his lungs and he found he could move again.

“Correct!” The immortal replied.

“We do indeed cultivate the self. We start at the body then the spirit then the soul. The first rank is the body, the second rank is the spirit, and the third is the soul. Then we repeat the cycle to reach immortality and beyond. That’s all to say that those past the third rank are different. Dying takes time for them, the soul sticks around longer, and the heart will refuse to stop beating, even without a head. Which means if you fix the body and push a bit of qi into the nearly dead-”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Both guards awoke their eyes wide open and each taking a large gasp of air.

“And voila, they live. Or more like they never truly died to begin with.”

The two men then immediately slumped over and slept.

“They just need to sleep off the resurrection for a bit,” the immortal said with a shrug.

Cai moved and Xaio Wang gasped for air but the assassin held still.

Xaio Wang and Cai immediately kneeled.

“Honored Master, this Cai Xuin-”

“None of that now Captain Hook,” the immortal said to him. “You and your arm really don’t get along now, do you?”

Cai kept his head down. He could feel Xaio Wang’s aura tremble in fear but he wasn’t afraid. This man was more honest than any he’d ever met before. If he wanted to kill them, they’d be dead.

“Let’s fix that real quick,” the immortal said.

Cai hesitated.

“Oh?” The honored master replied. “You don’t want to fix your arm?”

Cai was silent for a moment deep in thought.

That idea went against everything he had ever learned. To be strong was right and to be weak was wrong. The weak could only blame themselves for their suffering and the strong do as they please.

That thought had governed his world and the people in it for as long as he could remember. His mother was awful, his grandfather was awful and his cousins were awful. They hated him for something he couldn’t control. They had hurt him for it.

And it was all because he was weak. The moment he gained strength, political or otherwise, everyone had changed. Even his grandfather, who had talked to him less than ten times in his whole life, had started treating him differently. His mother wanted him, his cousins feared him, elders who had never spared him a glance sought to be his mentor and villains he couldn’t touch sought to kill him.

It was all so… empty. They just wanted to take and to keep. Humanity, kindness, and empathy were all secondary to power.

Rather, they sought the praise of righteousness without being righteous. Good was a farce, evil was a farce, and the strong decided which was which.

But then there was this immortal standing beside an old mortal farmer, a dichotomy of power and weakness.

A god next to an ant. It didn’t make sense, but it felt all the more right.

“I don’t think I’m better than him. The man toils tirelessly to feed his village and keep his people afloat. I mean, sure, if he died they could find someone to replace him. And I’m certain I’ve saved more lives than he ever has, but… it takes a certain type of lifelong dedication to do what he does. One that most people, even us cultivators lack. It’s the same with those crabs. They die to make sure their kids live. I think there’s a certain nobility there.”

Those words had stuck with him.

Power was a possibility. Power could make anything happen.

“Then… then what would you call good if not strength?” Cai had asked him.

“Me? I’d like to think that weakness isn’t a sin and that strength isn’t a virtue. Mortals or immortals, elders or bastards, people are people. What makes a person good or virtuous, isn’t their strength, but rather their actions. The choices they make and the way they live their lives. Basic stuff really.”

But it didn’t do anything, did it? Strength for strength’s sake was nothing more than instinct. That was what animals did. That was how insects fought.

And that was not the way Cai wanted to live. His strength would get him nothing but pain. He had faced death twice, and both times there had been some relief. He had been ready to die, eager to in the moment. Was a life like that worth living?

He might fight one day. He might become strong enough to rule his sect, but he would become strong once he found a reason. He would not waste away his life running from threats in search of vengeance or security.

He could regret this choice. No. He would regret this choice. But it would bring him peace, at least. It would give him freedom.

That mortal man had been right. Cai was stronger than the farmer, but his soul was empty, he had no purpose. And what was power for power’s sake? What was a blade that only served to take and cut?

An empty thing.

It would be a wasteful effort, a prideful walk to his own demise. Was the idea of vengeance worth a lifetime of suffering? Was his arm worth the price he’d pay to keep it?

“As long as I wield a blade, I am a threat, honored master.”

“So you’d rather lose your power than fight for it?” The immortal asked him.

“Excuse my shamelessness, honored master!”

Cai’s head touched the ground in his apology. It had been a month since he’s had power. A mere month and he already had fifth-ranked enemies. It had been worse when he was weak but at least they were honest then. He knew where he stood back then and he knew his enemies.

“Nothing shameful about it kid,” the immortal replied.

Then he produced a pill in front of him.

“Here take this. It’ll close your wounds and heal you up, but it will prevent your arm from regrowing as well.”

Cai studied the pill, then gulped it down without a second thought.

Instantly he felt old flesh drip from his mangled arm. Soft thumps hit the floor and his arm sizzled as the wound closed in on itself. A stump appeared right where Cai’s wrist would have been. He still had his elbow and half of his forearm, but his wrist was gone and with it his hand.

Cai felt the stump. His stump.

It felt strange but… it felt right.

“Weakness is not a sin and strength is not a virtue,” he spoke.

He saw now his sister, Xaio Wang glare in silence at his actions. Where there had once been fear, now was outrage.

A cultivator's body was everything to them, particularly in the lower stages. You built your meridians and strengthened them with lesser dantians. The path your qi would take throughout your body was traced and reinforced over and over again, making an attack from your trained limb much stronger than an attack from your untrained one.

It was years worth of work, thrown away in a moment's choice.

Cai could only smile.

He regretted it already, but that was fine.

He would be weak for now, and he when had a reason, he would be strong.