I saw an odd dream.

I was standing in a little shack, with Canyue on one side of me and Xiaolong on the other.

I— no, it was not me. It was someone else, and I was only looking through their eyes. How could I tell? The length of their arms, the proportions of their body were slightly larger than my own. And though I could not identify the colors of this dream-world, I could see that their robes were far more vibrant than any I had ever worn.

I could feel hatred running through my— their— body. A great amount of hatred, as great as the hatred I felt for Jing Ke, or perhaps even greater. It was a hatred so great that it ossified into a black void under my— their— feet, a void that like a black hole inexorably pulled everything towards it, down, down, down into hell. Streaks of pure blackness reached up, flailing, from the void. Like tentacles of the ancient sea-gods, whenever they found purchase on things of this world they pulled them down into the void. The shack collapsed, its walls and its roof crashing against the ground for less than a moment before being dragged under.

Xiaolong could not stand under the weight of his own body. With a stifled cry he crumpled into the ground. He stretched an arm out towards Canyue, but an arm of the abyss reached up and tore it from his body. Limb by limb, what remained of him was crushed into a paste of blood and flesh that drained towards my— not mine!— feet, where it vanished into the darkness rippling forth therefrom.

The figure stepped towards Canyue, who had fallen to her knees but could not raise herself. With great force she attempted to speak:

"You are—"

The hands of the abyss reached up from below her feet and latched onto her limbs, onto her skull. Their talons anchored deep in her flesh before pulling her down, through the shimmering darkness, into the void. A malformed gurgling scream began to leak from her throat, but as soon as its first tone reached my ears, I— no, no, it was not my ears. As soon as it reached that figure's ears, they placed a hand, a hand trembling with fury, upon Canyue's head, and crushed the right half of her skull in that hand. The rest of that scream could only remain in her throat, unable to escape into the world, as she was dragged below the surface, into the darkness, out of this realm.

Canyue and Xiaolong were both dead. But it was not me who had killed them, and this was merely a dream, so I felt no guilt. I felt only vindication. Vindication for the pain they had inflicted on me. Vindication for the recognition they had never given me. Vindication for my hatred.

And then I— the figure— was in the courtyard of the Bai manor in Kangtian.

The figure spoke.

"Everyone of the Bai family, step out into the courtyard so I may kill you. Everyone else, leave immediately if you wish to preserve your lives."

Whose voice? It was not my voice, but it was a voice I knew well. But I could not put my finger on whose voice it was. That is the nature of a dream. Its most important contents remain hidden as it is experienced, and lie forgotten as it is recalled.

Fearing bloodshed dozens of servants fled through side doors, and of course dozens of family members emerged from the manor, for the family would lose a great amount of face if they did not immediately kill the one responsible for issuing such a challenge. Leading them all was not the patriarch Bai Qiu, but rather Bai Fei, who, as long as he was present, was the highest-ranking member of the family.

Jing Ke was not there. I could feel it in the fluctuations of my hatred.

"Who dares?" roared Bai Fei, with force so great that even the sun's glare shuddered in fear of him. "Not even the Emperor has the right to be so disrespectful to the Bai family! Who do you think you are to spit on our face so?! Even if you kowtow and beg for forgiveness, I will cut your body into ten thousand pieces and scatter them to the wind, so that you may not even have peace in death!"

The figure said: "Where there are demons, I slay them. Where there are saints, I slay them. I am the Law of Might, tenka-fubu. All the world shall be subdued by force, and I alone shall remain standing. I am the truth that celebrated man's birth, and I am the truth that will mourn man's demise."

The figure pointed their hand, splayed wide, to the sky, and the world fell into darkness. Not shadow, but darkness. Shadows exist only in the presence of the sun, so when there is no longer a sun in the sky, it is only darkness that remains.

"One devours the sun, yielding two to blacken the sky, four to rend the earth, and eight to seal the heavens."

Where the sun had been, there was now a great golden three-legged crow, that as it descended from the heavens was dyed black as if it had become one with the darkness. As it descended it split, at first one, then eight, then sixty-four, then five hundred twelve, splitting and splitting, until finally there were two billion one hundred forty-seven million four hundred eighty-three thousand six hundred forty-seven crows. I knew this even though they could not be seen in the darkness, because it was a dream. I also knew that, as long as I was in this dream, there could be no more crows than this, because this was the largest number that could possibly exist.

The crows screeched and cawed endlessly, incessantly, like the roars of ten thousand simultaneous thunderstorms, as they dove down into the courtyard. In a moment, they would crush the entire Bai family by force of their weight alone.

"Activate the Eight Trigrams Hypersphere Array!" Bai Fei ordered, and even in the impenetrable darkness, the family managed to split off into groups and activate the keystones scattered around the manor. A ghastly flower blossomed tall from the fountain in the center of the courtyard. From its highest petals burst forth a softly glowing dome, linking to the divine cypress trees lining the courtyard and dimly lightning the manor with an aura of absolute safety. Yes. Such a defensive measure might have protected them from a few thousand crows, but the difference between a thousand and a billion is unfathomable to humans. It is, after all, the difference between a lifetime and an eternity, the difference between the earth and the heavens, the difference between a human and a god.

A wave of crows crashed against the array with the force of a tsunami and the pelting sound of hailstones. Once, they were repelled, though they plucked away some of the flower's nectar. Twice, they were repelled, though they cut some of its petals. Thrice too, though they pecked holes in its stem—

but on the hundred-and-eighth wave, the wave that completed the mala, the flower's stem cracked through, shattering the array and casting the world back into darkness.

The Bai family cultivators raised their weapons and began firing spells at the descending surge of crows— but will the stormclouds flee if you throw spears at the rain?! No! You cannot hide from the rain or the thunder! One by one the cultivators were slain, as the crows burrowed through their ribs or stabbed through their skulls. Their bodies, warm and not necessarily lifeless, were a feast for the screeched crows, who devoured everything with screeching joy— flesh and clothes, pills and weapons, silver and spirit-stones— and only when nothing else remained, crushed their victims' colorless souls between their three legs so they could peck out the soft flesh within. How picky they were, to not eat them whole!

I stepped forward.

Bai Fei raised his hand, so his arm was parallel to the ground, and reality itself seemed to split before me.

With its point at the edge of his fingers, a great wedge-shaped gap in reality began to open up before me. I found that my feet were no longer placed upon the ground, but rather upon an abyss sinking under my weight, and the sky directly overhead was no longer blackened with the down of crows but rather filled with only a colorless emptiness.

The gap widened. Only moments later the walls of the courtyard to my left and right seemed to have moved several miles away, retreating with accelerating speed, leaving only nothingness behind. The cries of cultivators and the stench of wet iron, too, began to dwindle away under the overpowering presence of their absence.

"I shall banish your very soul from this plane," declared Bai Fei, who, too, was shifting away from me, farther than my eyes could follow, so far that I could see nothing but the echoes of his voice. "Begone."

Begone.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

BEGONE.

Begone from this State of Wei! Begone from this land of Xili! Begone from this Continent!—

His very words felt as though they were crushing my brain against the side of my skull, as though they were crushing my body against the air around me. That word— begone!— seemed as though it was rattling against my very soul, pressing its flesh against a sieve to squeeze out its life-force. It felt as though the voice of the Jade Emperor himself were casting me down to the greatest of hells, and it looked as though piece by piece my body was scattering into the void that only grew ever wider around me. I reached forward, but for every inch my hand shifted forth, the world receded another meter. It was all leaving me behind, in the dead space of its fourth dimension.

BEGONE FROM THIS STAR! BEGONE FROM THIS PLANE!

As I watched the world shatter into millions of invisible fragments, as I felt my very perception dissolve away, I understood only even less what was happening. Techniques that affected the soul, after all, were so obscure that only the greatest of cultivators could even guess at how they even worked. I knew nothing of such techniques, no, and even if I did, I would not be able to see past the deafening silence to reach into my memory. If this were real life, my soul would no doubt wither and crumble under the weight of this technique.

BEGONE FROM THIS DREAM!

If this were real life.

But this was merely a dream. In real life, certainly, I would have no choice but to be killed by Bai Fei. In a dream, though, why should I let him kill me? Why should I not— kill him instead?

This was my dream, and therefore, I held supreme power.

I shook my head, clearing my mind, then cast out an innumerable number of deep blue spider-like threads from my dissolving hand. They flew faster than the world could flee, then each latched onto a fragment of reality that had scattered at Bai Fei's command. I held the threads in my hand as they went taut, and for a moment, I pondered their weight. One thread holds up an insect. Thus, to hold up the world as do the elephants of the eight winds, you would need somewhere in the vicinity of nine quintillion and two hundred twenty three quadrillion threads, though at the moment the exact number escaped me.

I held the threads in my hand, then snapped them down, yanking the fragments of reality back together. With a thundering crash they slammed back into place, though I left the smallest of errors in the puzzle, a jagged gap running right through Bai Fei's neck. Reality reconformed to the image I had painted of it, shearing right through his jugulars. Yet, in that unmoving moment, in that span of zero time, Bai Fei spun to the side with an infinite speed, preventing the divergence from severing his spine. Blood leaked from his broken throat, immediately attracting the attention of crows who had until that moment feared his qi too much too approach. Under the weight of ten thousand crows crawling over his bleeding flesh and piercing holes through his qi barrier, Bai Fei fell to one knee, coughing up even more blood for them.

How many centuries had it been since he had faced someone who could match his power? But this opportunity did not bring him joy, nor did it even bring him anger. No. It only brought him—

serenity.

"The weight of the name of Bai rests on my shoulders," he whispered.

Bai Fei sat, his expression calming, his qi bubbling forth from his body with such force that the crows beset upon him burned to ash when they grazed against the brilliant light emanating from his body. Bringing his feet up in a lotus pose, he began performing hand-signs with such speed that he completed in the span of a breath what a normal cultivator could not do in the span of a lifetime, finishing with—

"Zhaoqing Heavenly Palm Technique."

— the bhumisparsha mudra, his right hand ever so slightly touching the ground, and his hand in his lap, palm facing up. It was the very mudra that the Shakyamuni Buddha had himself held when attaining supreme enlightenment.

The skies split open, and there was once again light in the world— not from the sun, but from the great descending Buddha's palm, tens of thousands of meters in diameter, streaking through the empty sky like a falling star. Such techniques were generally the most powerful techniques held by cultivation clans. This one was powerful enough to destroy all of Kangtian and many neighboring cities, certainly. Did he care? How could he? For someone as powerful as him, life and death meant far less than pride. It hardly mattered if anyone behind him was alive. It hardly mattered if everyone in Kangtian would die. The only thing he wished to do was kill, to kill both me and himself, to prove— if nothing else— the grandeur of his pride. After all, when cultivators eventually perish, it is only their pride that remains on this earth, like the lingering fragrance of a flower that has long since scattered away.

> Of hope that once bloomed so bright,

>

> now only memories remain...

I brought my palms together, right over left, some four inches apart, and in the space between summoned a sphere of impenetrable blackness surrounded by a thin spinning layer of brilliantly glowing teal qi.

"Watch, so you understand in your last moments just whom you have offended."

With blue and gold qi crackling around my hands, I cast the sphere upwards. The sea of crows opened to let it pass, creating a momentary gap through which I and Bai Fei could see the little sphere, and the great palm, and the infinite sky.

The furiously spinning sphere entered the palm, and like the enraged death that gives birth to a whirlpool, it began to make the palm spin piece by piece— first the flesh by the sphere, then the rest of the palm, then the fingers, spinning at decreasing speeds in that order, so as the palm too spun furiously in the air it became a streaking circular mass of light, that was within a few more moments entirely absorbed into and annihilated by the little sphere which, having devoured divine flesh, shimmered white and grew ever-so-slightly larger.

And then, to the sound of one hand clapping, the sphere vanished.

"No... no, no..." Bai Fei looked up with utter disbelief. "How could you have dispelled our family's ultimate Heavenly P—"

I thrust my leg through Bai Fei's torso, crushing his heart where it lay and snapping his spine as my foot exited through his back. He, of course, had not done something as sacrilegious as severing his own death, so this was sufficient to kill him.

> Though I hold its fragments in my hands,

>

> its form shall never return before my eyes...

"You would destroy a city to kill one person? To wield such indiscriminate weapons is permitted only to gods. However, Bai Fei, as long as you wish to defend your family, you are not permitted to be more than human."

Only half of a final gasp escaped his mouth, and he was dead.

I did not need to free my leg from the flesh of his torso. The crows flocked to his corpse, as now it was no more threatening than any other, and within a few moments there was no longer a single drop of blood from his body left in this world.

The fog of crows lifted, leaving only impenetrable darkness behind— and within it, nobody but me, not even a corpse.

And then I was in a different courtyard. I looked around. Where was this? It seemed familiar. Oh, yes, I recognized this place. It was the ancestral Bai home in Zhaoqing. I had been here once. Only once. It was not a good memory.

> If only I could cross those farthest mountains

>

> and leave this fleeting world behind...

"Everyone of the Bai family, step out into the courtyard so I may kill you. Everyone else, leave immediately if you wish to preserve your lives."

I issued the same challenge. Again, cultivators emerged. Once more, I killed them all.

And then I was in the Imperial Capital. I knew because I could recognize in the distance the form of the Imperial Palace, the image of which I had seen only in paintings. I was at the Bai family manor, which I could tell by the great cypress sign over the gates. I pushed the gates of obsidian jade open and entered the courtyard.

I issued the same challenge. Again, cultivators emerged. Once more, I killed them all.

But no— it was not me. It was this mysterious figure, this figure whose shadow eclipsed the very sun, whose stature stood taller than the highest heavens, whose power shook the earth itself. It was this figure who could not possibly be me. And so I felt no guilt. As if a divine wind had swept my enemies into the yellow springs of hell, I felt nothing but an odd sense of joy, a sense of vindication for my hatred.

Some time later they were all dead. Dead. Except for two, everyone of the family was dead. I looked down at my hands, and they were bloodless.

Hatred without guilt! How sweet it is! And yet it was not enough. Hatred thrives not on completion, but on striving. Now that they were all dead, now that my hatred had nothing left to seek, I had to find something else to drive me.

That task I would leave to—

> No more would I dream of gentle lies,

>

> nor would I permit delusion to my mind!