We ran.

We ran across small streams and over rocky terrain, we ran past giant Ironbark trees and under their low-hanging branches. We ran across streams and over boulders. My heart was beating steadily and in sync with my jumps, in a nice rhythm, half a second in between.

I felt great. A tiny bit of sweat gathered on my forehead, but the exercise made me feel alive.

Pero beside me was in a significantly worse state. He was sweating like mad, and his panting was loud and rough.

[Should we stop?] I looked at the man who was just about ready to fall over.

“Just… a few… more steps… Hah!”

I shrugged my shoulders and ran forward. We eventually came to a stop at a small clearing, and I let him catch his breath before drowning him in questions. I had so many. Why was he constantly looking behind us, for example? Who the hell were we running from? I thought the Sect was relatively safe.

[Alright, what’s going-] I turned around to look at him with hands behind my back after hearing him stop panting so deeply. The last thing I saw was his crazy face as he stabbed my neck!

The force of the blow forced me to take a step back as I was totally not expecting it.

[What the hell, man?! What’s wrong with you?!] I slapped his hand away and rubbed my neck where the tip of the knife cut me. He managed to pierce my skin and I was bleeding a bit. Just a tiny bit though. Barely more than a mosquito bite.

This was exactly why I was training in defensive Martial Arts! That shit right there!

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me…” Pero exclaimed with tears welling up in his eyes.

[What…?] I was so confused. Why would he attack me all of a sudden? Was he under some kind of spell? And going for the jugular right off the bat! Luckily he missed, but that was dangerous.

[Hey, calm down! What’s happening with y-] I didn’t even get to finish as his crying expression twisted into one of crazy bloodlust and he swung the knife at my neck again. I barely dodged by leaning back, but then he went for my stomach! I barely avoided it again, but my clothes sustained a small cut.

[Hey-!] I dodged another one of his mad swings, but he didn’t seem to be stopping. Instead, he was just getting faster and faster, and his attacks gained an even more aggressive style.

“Just die already! Stop moving and die, you useless worm!”

I looked at Pero in disbelief. This was not the meek man I came to know, he was a wild beast! I looked at him with Magic Eyes. His Aura seemed normal for a Nascent- Wait! Nascent Soul?! Impossible!

He was just a Mortal a week ago! It didn’t make any sense! I continued desperately dodging his attacks while he shouted at me, and continued observing him as best I could. I noticed a small anomaly in his Aura. It was chaotic and large as if there were two Souls in one body. It reminded me of the time when I was battling the Hydra.

[Ow!] He cut my hand! [Oh, for fuck sake!] I didn’t care anymore. I activated Elemental Avatar and stopped dodging. Almost immediately I received at least a dozen cuts all over my body, but there was no damage to my skin. There was the only sound of metal on metal as he struck me.

As he realized his attacks did nothing, he slowed down.

“What the…”

I was done being nice. I grabbed his hand holding the knife, and squeezed. His bones snapped like dried twigs under a bulldozer and he screamed as if he was getting skinned alive. To be fair, the pain was probably similar. I released his hand and gave him a slap, making him collapse to the ground.

“You-! How?! You are just an Outer Disciple!” Pero screamed as he scrambled back. Or maybe I shouldn’t call him that, since he clearly wasn’t Pero. I just sneered in response.

[I should be asking you the same thing. Nascent Soul? What is that all about?]

“Bah! Fools like you will never understand the struggle! But I’ll have that body if you don’t mind! Now die!”

I felt his Aura expand, nearing the Golden Core Realm. My eyes opened wide as I felt something slam into my Soul. A direct attack. It was strong! But not strong enough!

My muscles bulged as I slightly crouched down and shot out with all my power behind it. My fist slammed into his chest, caving it in and blasting him backward a dozen meters or so. The Soul attack immediately stopped and I shook my head to clear my mind.

[Annoying…] I rubbed my glabella and then made my way to my fallen opponent. He was laying on the ground with a small pile of dirt serving as a pillow as blood poured out of his mouth. I could see he could barely breathe.

The imprint of my fist was still visible on his chest where his bones broke and poked through the skin. I took a deep breath and refilled my cells with Qi. My reserves were still full, and I felt great! My opponent, not so much.

“How…” Blood poured out of his mouth and he began coughing. “How... can you be so… strong? You are… just… a nobody.”

[I’m not a nobody.] I leaned closer and gripped his face. [I’m Gerald Fireborn.]

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

My fingers dug into his skin and he screamed, after which I pulled. His face remained in my hand, but he had another one beneath it.

[Ho? What do we have here? A flesh mask?] I looked at Pero’s face in my hand, but it quickly decayed, turning solid like stone and completely white. I knew there was something wrong with this guy’s face after slapping him, but I didn’t expect this!

“Give… Give it back!” The guy screamed, and with the remnants of his energy, he even tried to stand up. I stepped on him and pushed him back down. He couldn’t resist. The massive Aura of a near Golden Core Cultivator was nowhere to be seen anymore. What remained was a pathetically weak remnant of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

[Wait… I know you…] I just realized I saw that face before, and it left a deep impression in my memory. [You are… Broku Orpha, from the Silver Boar village! The kid that ran away!]

“Screw… you! Give it back!” The kid cried as he clawed at my leg. I didn’t even feel it.

[Oh, man…] I sighed. [Why did you have to do that? You know I can’t let you live now. Why couldn’t you just take Pero’s place and live peacefully in-]

My words remained stuck in my throat as the white face mask suddenly came to life, and the Aura I have felt before exploded out of it. I was stunned by the sudden outburst, and before I knew it, it rose up and stuck to my face.

[What the-?!] I immediately tried pulling it off, but it was stuck there good! I couldn’t move it even a millimeter off my skin. In fact, it felt like I was tearing my own skin off!

“Resistance is futile, child. Let go of your struggles and let me take over.”

[Who-?] I looked around, but there was nobody there. We were alone. Then I realized the voice was coming from my mind. It was that damn mask!

I trapped Broku under a layer of stone and sat on top of it, entering a meditative state.

[Who are you?] I asked the voice. The face of an older man formed beside my Soul, much larger than it. I felt my Soul become hungry.

“Who I am is not important, child. What is important, is what you will now do for me.”

His words sounded grand, and the regal Aura he was exuding helped to solidify that fact. But my Soul didn’t care and pounced at the face and started hungrily tearing into it.

“Ayo! What are you doing, stop! Ow! No, stop biting me! Ah! I was just kidding, I’m trying to help you!”

[I asked… Who are you?] I repeated the question slowly. My Soul kept biting the face, gnawing at its earlobe and clawing at its cheeks. It was a tough Soul, but I had no doubt I could eat it given enough time.

“Alright, alright! I’ll talk! Just stop biting me, please! I’m already extremely weak!”

I mentally nodded and pulled my Soul away, letting it chew on a piece of skin it managed to tear off. It felt delicious.

The face then transformed into mist and took the form of a man. It became significantly smaller than it was before, but it still kept the same face.

“That was rude! You don’t just go and chew on the ear of your Elders! Not to mention that it’s dangerous! Do you even know what would happen if you tried to absorb my Soul?!”

The old dude appeared extremely offended by my actions, and if I didn’t know any better, I would say he was pouting.

[Yes, I would become stronger.] Every lunatic knew what would happen if you would try to absorb a foreign Soul. But that didn’t apply to me.

“You… Ah, forget it!”

Oh, this was going to be so much fun, I could already feel it.

The Soul of the old man placed its hands behind its back and lifted its head forward, eyes steady. “My name is Long Dong, and I am… I used to be an Elder in the Myriad Beast Sect! You will show me some respect, Junior!”

[Ha!] I burst out laughing. No way he had such a name! [Ahahahaha!] And this dude said it proudly, with a straight face! I looked at him again, and his brows were slightly furrowed. I began laughing again.

“Why are you laughing, Junior?! Do you find my name funny?!”

[Oh, no! Not at all! Your name is great! Ahahaha!] I began crying tears of laughter. It took me a while to calm down. I was sure his name meant something great, but the way he said it… Hilarious!

[Ha…] I wiped a tear from my eye. [Okay, I think I’m good. You can begin your explanation, Elder Dong.]

I burst out laughing for at least another ten minutes. The Elder seemed annoyed, but I didn’t care.

[Oh, man! I needed that. Thank you.]

“You are welcome.” The Elder ghost answered, visibly annoyed. “Can I tell my story now? You were the one who asked.”

[Sure, go ahead.] Laughing was good and all, but I was also curious.

“So, there I was, at the end of my Path...”

He began telling his end-of-life story. Apparently, he reached the limits of his talent after the age of 400 after stepping into the Spirit Realm. He then did everything in his power to resist the cruel passage of time, but eventually, nothing helped him anymore, and he came to terms with his mortality. For nearly a century he gathered wealth, but then, after the age of 500, he desperately tried to cling to life, wasting most of his savings on various elixirs and treasures that could delay the decay of his Soul.

But nothing seemed to help. In Cultivation, you had to move forward just to stay in the same place. The passage of time was a powerful river, dragging everyone towards the inevitable waterfall of death. And when you stopped moving forward, it was the beginning of the end.

His Cultivation quickly decayed, and from the Spirit Realm, he fell back to the Golden Core and then continued falling still. Faster and faster he went, and he could already see the death’s door.

That’s when he discovered a way to bind the Soul to an object. It would not save him from eventual death, but it would slow it down.

It had been more than a century since then, and he nearly fell off the Golden Core Realm. Optimistically, he had only a few decades left to live. And what a life it was! Bored out of his mind, laying in a forgotten cave where he bound his Soul to the Thousand Faces mask, his greatest possession.

That was until Broku Orpha found him and gave him a purpose. He promised to teach him in exchange for bringing him out of the cave so he could see the world one last time.

I somehow doubted he did it from the goodness of his heart, but after a century of isolation in a dark cave, I guessed just seeing the sun would be a celebration-worthy event.

[Okay… But why did you have to kill the other guys? I assume you killed them, right?]

“Yes… We killed them. We were worried we would be found out and decided to take out any witnesses. You did break into our home after all.”

[Ah, so it happened then… So Pero’s scream wasn’t because of a centipede after all.]

“No, it was us. If it wasn’t for the scream we might have spared the rest, but we couldn’t risk it.”

I smirked internally. [You are really frank, so let me be frank as well. You are fucking stupid!]

“What?” I think the Elder ghost became flabbergasted.

[You heard me! You planned to kill everyone, leaving you as the sole survivor. That would just make you more suspicious instead!]

“Oh, I didn’t think of that… It was a long time since I interacted with the world after all. And I nearly lost two entire Realms over the last two centuries, cut me some slack. I’m old!”

[Fine, fine… And now what?]

“What do you mean?”

[What are you going to do?]

“Um… Stay with you?”

[No.]

“Please! The other guy is already dead! Don’t abandon me!” The ghost pleaded. He even made his Soul smaller than mine as he begged.

I looked at Broku Orpha. It was true, he was already dead, and even his Soul had already decayed and dissipated. I didn’t even notice it since I was holding my Soul contained so it wouldn’t eat the old Elder.

[Relax! I’m not going to leave you alone. I’m just going to sell the mask and then you can be someone else's problem. Now get off my face!]