I focused qi around the blade of my sword. Meanwhile, Mantian kneeled down, pressing her left hand into the pool of her own blood at her feet, and then dangling her right arm down with what control she could manage over it, so both hands touched the blood. She began reciting magical incantations, her voice no louder than a whisper:

"Circuit, Li: Transmutation. Circuit, Zhen: Acceleration. Circuit, Dui: Assimilation. Circuit, Kun: Annihilation."

I swung my sword, projecting a blade of qi towards her!

She inhaled sharply, then offered the final invocation to her technique:

"Circuit, Khan: Allineation."

The pool of blood erupted, swirling into a vortex around her, cutting through the air and my blade of qi alike. A wall of crackling blood solidified around her, steaming as it spun and wove like a ravenous sky-serpent. This was the power of cultivators who studied the old Law of Eight Trigrams, the power to bend matter to their will, to make nature itself their servant! And to make matters worse, she had used her magic on her own blood, a target over which she had complete and utter control— a target that I could not sever from her magic.

"Qiulong. Devour."

She pointed her left arm forward, at me, her fingers splayed out, and the wall of blood spiralled around her arm before bursting into the form of a great curling dragon, a crimson ghost, mouth agape, roaring silently, flying towards me with only the intent to consume me whole.

I knew what I had to do. I swung my blade, projecting my qi outwards along its path and slicing the blood dragon in two. Two splashes of blood, momentarily floating in the air— before they congealed back together and once again took the form of the dragon!

I held my sword up in a defensive stance, and the dragon struck it with full force. The steel of my sword creaked— if it gave way, I would surely be consumed by the blood dragon.

"No matter how much qi you pull from the aether, you do not have the techniques to fight against us of the inner sect!" Mantian hissed. "Now that you have locked blades with my magic, I have checkmate in two. This match is over, Bai Chunxue!"

Coughing up blood, I held tight to my sword, but every second that my boots dug further and further back into the earth, so did the edge of my sword bend further and further back, yielding further and further to the dragon's bloody jaw! As it pressed closer and closer to me I could see deeper and deeper into its maw, until I could make out the outline of something like a human skull at the back of its throat. If I didn't do something, I would die, just as that previous prey had! I could not see a way out. I could not beat the dragon in a match of force, and yet I also could not escape its grasp. What could I do?

"Natsuki," I whispered, "what should I do?"

—Explode.

With a flash of enlightenment I understood! If I could neither fend off nor escape the dragon, then I should instead just do both at the same time! I drew more qi, this time not into my sword but into my hands— and then I let it explode, annihilating the dragon's head and sending me tumbling across the dirt!

Coughing, I stood up. It had been the best solution, but I had not gotten off easy. I had, after all, let off an explosion within my hands. My legs shook without balance, my wrists yet trembled under the shock, and my arms burned with— burned with splotches of Mantian's blood, that had scattered from the dragon, burned through my robes, and landed upon my flesh! I tried to shake it off, but it held tight to my skin— or rather, it seemed as if it was sinking into my skin with every passing moment!

"Normally I would let you go if you kowtowed and cut off one of your own limbs. But you have killed my people, and for that, I have no choice but to kill you. You have brought this upon yourself, Bai Chunxue."

Mantian's killing intent spread across the field, weighing down on my shoulders so heavily that I felt like my ribs would crumple and shatter through my lungs. She extended her arm and pointed it at me again, this time with her fist closed but for one straightened finger, tilted ever so slightly downwards.

"Maggots. Burrow."

The blood burning on my skin tunneled into my flesh, into my own blood, and began crawling up the inside of my arms towards my heart, draining the energy from my limbs like the sensation of frostbite creeping up my veins! I knew instinctively that in less than a minute, it would reach my heart, and I would— die.

Was there anything I could do...?

"Natsuki..." I whispered.

—Kill her. One moment. One strike.

That's right. All I had to do was kill her first.

I sheathed my sword, keeping one hand on the hilt and one hand on the sheath. I focused my qi at the tip of the sword and at the end of the sheath, in two different polarities, so that they would push each other away like magnets as soon as I released the restraint. I closed my eyes, feeling the tremors of the earth, aligning the qi in my feet with the fields of energy flowing through the dirt.

I had only ever read of this technique in my favorite book, my treasured book. Of course I could not possibly have the confidence to replicate it on my own, but I had Natsuki by my side. With her power, nothing was impossible.

"Have you given up, Bai Chunxue? Fine. Stand there until you die, and I will at least permit you a whole corps—"

I opened my eyes.

"Railgun: Magacu."

I pushed my feet off the ground, sending the sound of crackling lightning resounding through the field, and in half a moment I was right in front of Chen Mantian. Her eyes widened in— fear, perhaps— but she did not have time to defend herself. I let my sword fly forth from its sheath, faster than a diving peregrine, cutting up through her outstretched left arm, slicing straight through her neck!

Like a log of timber Mantian's left arm fell to the ground, and she collapsed—

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No.

She staggered back, then dropped to one knee. With her half-lame right arm, which she could not even move at the shoulder due to the hole in her chest, she clamped her head back onto her neck, her eyes so bloodshot that her pupils were no longer visible, her mouth not even coughing up but simply drooling blood, her severed neck leaking blood like a sieve!

I had separated her head from her body, and yet she was still alive! How could that be possible?!

—No, wait! I had cut through her flesh, but I had not cut through her spine! This had been enough to kill Hanfeng, but it would not kill a Foundation Establishment cultivator like Mantian!

I raised my sword, then swung down, aiming for her cervical vertebrae, the one remaining connection between her brain and her heart—

Suddenly, my arms froze.

Her blood, her maggots, had reached all the way to my shoulders, and with that my arms had ceased to function.

My sword clattered against the ground, and as I coughed up blood, the sensation of impending doom fell over me. I was going to die. I was going to die before I could complete my revenge, before I could even kill Long Guoqiang, my mortal enemy!

Chen Mantian turned her bloody gaze to me and sneered, and that hateful expression, oh, that hateful expression, that expression so confident in its own superiority, that expression so sure of my failure, it ignited such a rage in me that I could think of nothing else but how to erase it from existence! Even if I had to rip the skin off her face with my teeth, I would not die facing that expression! I would not die facing the expression that had tortured so much of my life!

—I stepped forward, then slammed the heel of my boot into her smirking face!

I heard a sharp crack, and then her head went flying off her body, landing some twenty feet behind her. Her body, too, collapsed backwards onto the earth. I watched her carefully, to see what other tricks she would pull, and only when her maggots stopped squirming in my chest did I realize that she was dead.

As sensations began to gradually return to my arms, starting with only the very edges of my fingertips, I looked around at the carnage left on the field. Among the corpses only I was left standing.

—"Do you feel guilt, Chunxue?"

I turned, and saw Natsuki standing there, examining me with those black eyes of hers, those eyes as lifeless as the night sky and as silent as the abyss.

I had committed eight murders. Eight crimes. Eight violations, not only of the Buddha's law, but also of the rules of the Phantom Orchid Sect.

"Only a little bit," I replied after a moment's deliberation. "They brought this on themselves. I never asked for this."

"What about these?" She pointed to the bodies of the lackeys whose names I did not know. "These may have only followed Long Guoqiang's orders out of pressure. And yet you killed them."

I snorted. "And Guoqiang only ordered this attack because of the pressure he's receiving over the Long family's inheritance battle. Sure, everyone has their circumstances. And yet the indisputable fact is that they had all wronged me unjustly."

She shrugged. "If that is how you choose to think, then I have no objections. If their lives mean nothing to you, then they can mean nothing more to me."

Natsuki kneeled by the lackeys' corpses and began examining them.

"Mm. These other ones are a bit weak. There is little of your emotions imbued in them, since you did not know them personally. Some of hatred and justice on your part, and mostly cowardice on theirs." Natsuki made her way over to Mantian's corpse, and let out a little gasp. "Oh, this one is good. Hatred, fear, and pride. A very nice combination. I shall preserve this one for a special occasion."

"No grief?" I asked carefully.

"No grief," she confirmed. "It does not seem to me that the targets of your revenge are the types of people to feel grief."

Wujiu's face flashed through my mind. Would she feel grief? Did she feel sorrow over the current state of the western provinces?

"—Wang Wujiu said... she wants to hire you."

"I know," Natsuki toned as she severed Mantian's soul, dyed an iridescent mix of crimson and vermilion and violet, from her body. When the soul was severed, the body crumbled to dust. "But you are planning to kill her, so I can hardly make a contract with her."

"I'm not sure..." I muttered. "She's been acting strangely... affable. I'm not sure I can still kill her."

"Is revenge not something predicated on past wrongs? It does not seem to me that her current attitude should affect your revenge."

That's right. Wujiu might have given up her hatred for me, but how could I give up my—

crCaccRcrCACCKakRArRcakCAckKCK

I jumped at the sound, but it was nothing more than Natsuki chewing through one of the minion's souls with the ferality of a rakshasa. She devoured the rest of it, and the body dissipated away.

"Chunxue," she said with a hint of reprobation as she made her way to the next corpse, "You do not need to allow them to break your bones before you kill them. There is no such limit on my power, nor your usage thereof."

"I know. I won't do it again."

"If you had used my power from the start, you would not have had reason to kill these seven minions."

crcCRacAkrCaKck CCcRRACArKCacKk

I did not think I would feel guilt upon hearing that sound again, but those words, those words, struck in me the slightest tinge of doubt.

I had had proper justification for killing them. And yet it had been within my power to prevent such justification from arising. Perhaps, then, it could be said that I killed Mantian's lackeys not for revenge, but out of choice.

I shuddered, and pushed the thought out of mind.