“No.”

It was a simple word, one filled with firm rebuke, but Gai Lui still couldn’t understand it.

The immortal had refused him. The immortal had refused him.

“I offer you all my wealth Honored Immortal Bill, I beseech you for aid in my time of-”

“No,” the word repeated.

Of course, this was all a conversation of qi. There wasn’t enough time to spend on actual back and forth. Gai Jin would have caught up to him already had he used actual words.

But the answer had been given and the rejection was made known.

“You would go back on your word then? You would allow violence within the area of the Great Desert Strip? So quickly you renege on your laws? It’s a wonder your dao didn’t break sooner.”

Now Gai Lui was seeking death, death at the hands of the immortal that is. A far more prideful thing than death at his own wronged student’s hands.

“This is not a haven for scum, you twisted monk.”

That was all. Those were the words but that was all it took for Gai Lui’s face to twist in horror.

He knew. How did he know?

The answer came to him along with Gai Jin’s fists.

The girl, he thought as his body sped across the sand.

He knew he should have killed her. A maggot shouldn’t be spared because it was not a fly.

Gai Lui prepared himself.

It seemed the worst had come. He would fight his disciple, and one of them would die.

What a bittersweet thing, he thought. To fight your greatest pupil to the death.

There was a type of pride there too, an ugly one.

Gai Lui prepared himself, face still calm and mind still kept.

He was ready.

“Do you not feel a single bit of pity? A single bit of regret?” Gai Jin spoke.

“To regret is to be ashamed,” Gai Lui replied. “And I am not ashamed, my dear Jin.”

The first movement of the Bloody Fist came down upon him like lightning.

Gai Jin struck and the weight of the skies was within his fists.

Gai Lui blocked, the metal ornate shield rising to defend him. There was an echo, a ding, but the Jin did not back away.

No, another echo, then another, then another. Fists bloody and dying hailed the shield like falling stars. The desert rang with death death-filled sound.

The death qi ran into Gai Jin’s veins, but Jin still struck. Lui’s eyes widened at the action. This was a fifth rank ninth step treasure, meaning it held the strength of a cultivator of the equivalent rank.

It had cost him one hundred-fifth rank stones of the highest quality, each mined from the depths of the earth. It was a treasure that had taken him a century to earn.

And it was failing.

Still, Gai Lui hadn’t realized the error in his calculations.

There was a fourth difference.

Gai Jin’s fists hammered against the shield and the shield was slowly draining off qi, forcing more death in Jin’s arms. His fists should have rotted off by now. They should have been two lifeless limbs dangling from his body.

And though they were black and scarred and rotting, they remained. Healing, pushing out, and cleansing Gai Jin’s body.

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Gai Lui growled and slammed the shield forward and attacked. A sword came from his storage ring and a robe appeared on him as well.

Two golden boots replaced his fabric shoes, and Gai Lui roared.

This was his peak. Each treasure he carried now would be a priceless treasure for any sect of the region, even the five great ones.

Cultivators rarely wore armor. That wasn’t a mere stylistic choice, it was also a financial one. Armour for a third rank would crumble beneath the force of a fourth rank, and the same could be said for weapons.

It was already a burden for a sect to procure swords and weapons for their people. Smiths would toil over metal, enchanting it, forging it, into something better, and the higher ranked the cultivator the greater the weapon needed to be.

And as the rank of the cultivator increased, the reliance on conventional material decreased. What was the difference between fabric and metal to a fifth rank? They, who could level mountains and carve out canyons?

It was negligible at best. Enchanted fabric was the same as enchanted armor to them. Thus, beauty is mixed with strength.

A long flowing dragon-patterned robe hung on Gai Lui’s shoulders. A valuable treasure. It was made of dragon skin and the tapestry alone would make it be worth twice as much as the shield.

In battle, many things mattered, but what mattered the most was ability.

What you could do, regardless of how you did it.

Gai Jin was strong, talented, and had mastered techniques that Gai Lui hadn’t even bothered to memorize. And that had all been born out of need, out of hunger and threat of death.

But there was also one more thing Gai Lui had forgotten.

Experience. Gai Lui thought he had more of it than Gai Jin but while Lui was leading his sect, Jin was suffering.

He had eaten demons. He had drunk their blood. He had invited their very natures into his body. When compared to that, what was a little bit of death qi?

Gai Jin's arms began to shed as he expanded his qi to heal them. He stood still now, not out of fear but thought.

Lui watched Jin.

Both had prepared, but neither had expected the other to be this strong.

“You call yourself a monk and yet you fight with a sword and shield?” Gai Jin asked.

“Monkhood is the path and these weapons are merely the means by which I get there.”

“What monk kills-”

Gai Lui blurred and a sword appeared at Jin’s neck.

Jin moved, raising his newly healed flesh to defend, and the sword cut to the bone.

Jin stepped back but Gai Lui struck again. He couldn’t let Gai Jin finish that sentence. He couldn't let the monk announce to the whole world what he had done.

Gai Lui didn’t think of it as a sin. He had merely killed a whore. But many would hold it against him and then it would become a sin. It would define him.

He couldn't let Gai Jin speak.

Gai Jin defended, blocking strikes with breaking hands. His skin burst open, sometimes being sliced off, other times the sword meeting his bones.

The Bloody Fist Sect was a refining technique, but even within the depths of the demonic cave, nothing like this blade had touched Gai Jin. His technique was to perpetually face stronger enemies, reforging his fists into something stronger and capable.

But Gai Jin had never faced such treasures within the demonic cave. Right now, even if the mad cultivator of old was still alive, it would be Gai Lui who was the strongest within the region.

Each treasure coursed with power, and each treasure contained its own qi, meaning it was not depleting Gai Lui’s qi as he used it. It was as if Gai Lui had five cultivators aiding him. No, it was more than that. It was as if Gai Lui fought with the strength of five cultivators, each with different arts.

A sword art, a shield art, a movement art, a body enhancing art, and of course Gai Lui’s own power.

Five into one was much worse than five separate beings. It was not only the power Gai Jin had to worry about now but also the layering effects of each artifact. A simple strike of the sword turned into something six times more deadly when aided by the speed of those boots and the enhancing effect of that robe.

Gai Jin’s mind worked, studying the auras of each artifact. They couldn’t produce qi, nothing non-living could do that and this was no legendary living weapon. But they each held power and a strike from that sword would be something like a fifth-rank ninth step’s all-out attack.

Lui moved.

He used the Monk’s Holy Steps enhanced with both the robe and boots and ran at him, blurring at the edge of Jin’s perception.

Trajectory, weapon use, experience. Gai Jin thought of all these things now, trying to predict where the strike would be before it got to him.

But it was too late.

A blade pierced his chest, cutting through his heart.

Gai Lui looked Stoic as he murdered his own disciple. He was annoyed it had come to this. These treasures had been bought recently. Another ray of hope that had arrived in the form of an immortal merchant greeting Strong Fist City. A merchant’s dao, something that led them to where they were needed the most, and to where they could earn the most.

He had been all too happy to buy them, of course. And he planned to use them to rebuild his sect after Gai Jin. Even if he had lost all his wealth to the immortal, even if the immortal suddenly took interest in the corpse, these treasures would have been his windfall.

The merchants might have overcharged him, but that was little price to pay for victory.

This was what Gai Lui might have thought and done if it wasn’t for the immediate fist that crashed against his face.

Bloody Fist Technique, Final Art, Barrage of Blood.

Gai Lui felt hell upon his face and Gai Jin struck. Even skewered on a sword Gai Jin fought back. Even on the brink of death Gai Jin fought back.

After all, he was the best disciple of the Bloody Fist Sect, and their’s was the path of pain. Fight till you're bloody, fight till you can’t, and even then, fight on.

What was this to the hell of the demonic cave? He had slain fifth-rank creatures as a mere fourth-rank down there.

What was this suffering to that?

Gai Jin roared.