I ran.

I ran through what seemed to be a dense forest, tripping over roots that I should have been able to detect through the vibrations of the earth, crashing into trees that I should have been able to see in the utter blackness.

I should have...!

After all, those who carried the surname Bai were all preeminent cultivators of the Great Plains. Bai, representing the cypress— the largest tree in the world! And because the family was as a forest, a forest of towering redwoods, even the jealous wind could not tear away at them!

I broke through the brush, and came upon a cliff. It was the kind of cliff that even the most novice of cultivators could easily jump down. I should have been able to step down this cliff with the ease of descending a staircase!

But I...

I was powerless.

I could progress no further.

I did not deserve my surname, the surname of—

—"Bai Chunxue. Why are you even here?"

Wang Wujiu, and some of her followers trailing behind her, emerged from the shadows of the trees behind me. They, of course, were not beaten and wounded by the brush, because they— they had power! Even the trees kneeled before them, not daring to stand in their way!

"You have nothing," she sneered. "No power, no influence, no future. Instead of bringing shame to our Phantom Orchid Sect with your presence, you ought to go lie down in a ditch somewhere and die. If you won't do it yourself— let me help you with it."

I turned to them, but I could not step away.

Wujiu stopped some ten feet away, then gave a signal with a flick of her wrist. One of her followers took four steps forward before thrusting a sword into my collarbone, only far enough from my heart that it would not kill me immediately. I staggered back half a step, and it was all I could do to cough out the blood that began welling up my throat. I tried to glare at them, but I could not control the contortions of my face; I tried to speak, but my voice could not make its way through my hacking cough. And the wound— it felt like the muscle and bone around the wound was drying up, desiccating as if roasted over flame, sending a sense of petrification crawled out from the wound, toward my arm, toward my neck.

Wujiu watched me for a few seconds, her eyes filling with some kind of emotion I could not possibly understand.

"Lianying, you said this poison was six hours, right?"

"Two," came a voice from behind her.

Wujiu winced. "We don't have much time, then. Let's wrap up here and head back."

Two hours? I had two hours to live? By some furious instinct, I grabbed the sword by its cross-guard and yanked it from my chest, too much blood spurting from the wound.

As those around her snickered, Wujiu raised her eyebrows. "Bai, Chunxue, you would prefer exsanguination to poison? Do you not even care for the appearance of your corpse? And here I thought I was doing you a favor with the poison. But— even in your last moments, you refuse to act like a proper noble! This is why the Bai family abandoned you here."

"Ha!" came out the hacking cough from my throat. "You'd— you'd do the same, I bet. Nobody would... want to watch themselves die of poison. At the end of the day, we're all—"

Wujiu took four lunging steps forward, up to right in front of me. She swept her boot into my shin, and I collapsed to my knees, unable to stand. Driving her heel into my knee, she leaned over me and whispered, "Bai Chunxue, if someone even dared point a sword at me, I would kill them and their entire family. I can do that, because at the end of the day, I have power, and you do not. That is why you will die— if not at my hands today, then at some other bastard's tomorrow."

She stepped back, then rammed her boot into my sternum, and I went staggering back off the ridge on which we stood, into the air, into freefall.

It was not a particularly steep fall. Anyone with any understanding of cultivation could easily take such a fall and land on two feet. But I had no cultivation. I had no power. I had nothing. So after a few seconds I crashed into the rocky ground, my right arm snapping like a twig under me, and I was that much closer to death.

For some moments I felt something like rancor bubbling within my veins. After all, the only reason I was here was because the Bai family, my very own family, had abandoned me. They had disregarded my scholarly talents and treated me like a slave, and here, here where they had finally sent me to be rid of me, here deep in the jianghu where strength was the only metric of meaning— here I had no strength. I, who had nothing more than the frail disposition of a scholar, could here be nothing more than a toy for those who did have power, and when they, too, had tired of me, I would be disposed of. That fate was set in motion by their choice and their choice alone.

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And yet at the same time, I felt a longing sort of regret. Regret for the fact that, at the end of it all, I had not been able to make the Bai family recognize my worth. But I had worth! I did not have the right body to become a cultivator, but I had the right mind to become a scholar! And under the skies of Wei, ruled by an emperor not even qualified to call himself a cultivator, who could possibly say that scholars were undeserving of respect?

—But none of that mattered. It would not be long before I would exhale the last of my life-force. The only thing that really mattered at this point... was to determine how to spend my last few waking moments. The suffering preceding death— that was all that I had left to me!

Through the dimming depths of my mind, I recalled a Buddhist text explaining the enlightenment of death:

> The one who has overcome the fear of death gives bloom to the most beautiful and aromatic white lotus in their soul: a trust unassailable, immovable, unconditional— for what could disturb one thus enlightened? Need? What weight has need, when one does not fear starvation? Evil? What can do evil, beyond sending one to death? Suffering? Let suffering be unbearable!— then all one must do is cast away their body, a mere temporary shell for the eternal will of karma.

One way or another, I would end up being killed like this at some point. Why, then, should I put so much effort in prolonging the suffering preceding death?

It was enough. I had done enough. There was no reason to do any more. Here, right now, I should just make myself as comfortable as possible and die. That would be best. No, beyond best, it would be good. To die without fear of death would be good. If anything... dying without fearing death was one thing that most cultivators could never accomplish. Perhaps dying thus would, in itself, prove my worth.

Yes. This was my consolation.

I blinked a few slow blinks to clear the blood from my eyes, and after the last, I thought I saw something like a shadow hanging over me, watching me. A shadow in the form of two or maybe five interlocking rings, in the center of which smoldered a shining black flame.

"Who's... there?" I whispered.

The shadow fluttered, but there was no response. Perhaps I was only hallucinating it. That was fine, too. It made one less thing to worry about, in these last moments.

—But then the shadow spoke.

"Child of man," it addressed me in a barely audible tone halfway between a murmur and a rasp, like the voice of a corpse whispering across worlds, "I have observed and will yet observe your kind for many years, but in these years, there is one truth that I have not been able to ascertain: the meaning of your mortality. Tell me, child of man. As you watch your blood pour out from your veins, do you wish to live? Or do you wish to die? What is the state of your mind as you face your death?"

"I want... to die," I said, though the words were heavier on my tongue than they had been in my mind.

"I see. Then pray permit me to consume your death, and in accordance with the universal law of contractual exchange, I shall grant you a wish in return. What do you wish for? For the price of your death, as bittersweet as is its fragrance, there are many things I can offer you, though I know not how valuable you would find them once your soul has already crumbled away."

A wish? How fitting that I, who had not a single thing to my name for my entire life, would receive a wish in exchange for my death. But what should I wish for? It is always said that material possessions do not follow one into the next world. In that case, the only thing I could ask for would be...

"...Revenge."

The shadow was silent. Perhaps revenge was too expensive. Perhaps my life was not worth the suffering of those who had harmed me. That was reasonable enough. My life was, after all, worthless.

I closed my eyes and prepared to sleep.

"There is a logical contradiction in the contract you have proposed."

The shadow's voice forced my eyes open again.

"If I receive your death here, then go kill those who have wronged you, then that would not be revenge, but rather retribution. This language spoken east of Altyn-Tagh in the present era is yet unfamiliar to me, but is this not how you define these terms?"

My throat let out a groan, though the sound only scraped against the roof of my palate like steel screeching against steel. The shadow's words were correct. But I did not respond. Was it strange of me to not spend what little breath I had left on arguing semantics? I was, no doubt, strange. I was unlike other humans, at least unlike those who populated the jianghu. That was why I was here dying, after all. But was this act of mine strange? I was not sure.

"If you wish for revenge, then you cannot give me your death. You must promise me something even more valuable, and I shall garnish it from your future."

"In that case," I wheezed through the dulling muscles of my throat, "I want to live and take revenge. And in return... I will give you my family. All of it."

"One life in exchange for many? A particularly unbalanced contract, as the children of man are wont to write. Let it be so. You shall live, and they shall die."

Unbalanced? My life for the Bai family? No, I was simply trading one worthless thing for another. But between a worthless trade and an unbalanced trade, which would you say is more human?

My consciousness faded, but not for the last time.