The next morning I woke up and went off to go chop wood for the sect. Strangely enough, I did not see Jiang Hanfeng on the way. I thought it was a bit strange, but who was I to worry about such things? It was, anyways, a weight off my shoulders.

I stayed late for my morning shift, since I was too weak to complete my quota quickly. When I was finally finished and went to go eat lunch, there were few people yet wandering the sect grounds. And yet I still managed to cross paths with Li Qiye and his sister, Li Xiaoyao.

They passed by me, and then Qiye turned to me. "Stop," he called out. With a wince, I stopped.

"Yao'er," he said, turning to Xiaoyao besides him, "can you tell why I have stopped Bai Chunxue here?"

"No," she shrugged, and then her eyes opened wide. "Oh, I see. It's for training my Immutable Vector-Field Technique. Yeah. I need to calibrate it on normal people, right?"

Qiye raised his eyebrows. "No, it's—"

"Don't worry, Ge!" she gushed. "I know the deal. I heard the elders saying it's all the Magistrate's fault that we can't practice on the civvies anymore. But Bai Chunxue technically isn't a civvy, right?"

"That might be true, but—"

Xiaoyao performed a sequence of mudras that ended with her raising one hand over her head and bringing it down, as if chopping wood with an axe, and suddenly I felt as if my body weighed a hundred times more than it did.

"Immobilize."

I could feel the bones in my knees compressing to the point where they did not feel like I could bend them any longer.

Qiye put a hand to his forehead and said nothing.

"If I balance this right, then..." With a focused gaze, Xiaoyao stepped up to me and punched me in the chest with enough force to send me flying at least five meters. But I did not go flying. As if my back were against a wall, I could not move at all; rather, I felt as though my ribcage were being crushed from the front and back at the same time. Thus I simply received the entire force of her strike twice over and, with a grimace, remained standing.

She punched me again, this time in the shoulder, and though my shoulder whipped back with such force I thought it would break, I was unable to lose my balance— though my knees felt like they might shatter at any point.

Then she struck me in the side of the head, right by the ear, and though I coughed up blood, by the force of her magic technique I remained standing.

Then she struck me in the stomach, and all the air in my lungs fled from my mouth, though my knees were too ossified crumple, so I could only stand breathless before her.

"You piece of shit," she muttered, "Have some manners and at least beg for mercy, will you?"

She swung her fist once more, this time directly at my nose, and—

"Yao'er, calm down."

Her fist stopped.

"Yao'er, you would not smear monster blood on your skin, so why are you so intent on covering yourself in bastard blood? Look, you have already got some on your hands."

"But Ge!" she cried out, spinning around, "If there's no blood, then what's the point? Would you enjoy killing a monster that just keeled over when you dealt enough damage to it? If you don't hear it screaming in pain and see it bleeding from its eyes, then why even bother?"

Qiye shook his head. "Yao'er, you are too enamored with the physical, when you ought to be studying the spiritual. How will you reach Foundation Establishment with such an attitude? Here, let me show you how you ought to comport yourself." He snapped his fingers, releasing the magic field, and my knees trembled as I regained control of them. Sighing, he walked a few steps towards me. "Bai Chunxue. You have a spirit stone on you, do you not? Hand it over."

"A... spirit stone?" My voice was incredulous. Jiang Hanfeng stole all of my stones and pills, so how could I have any?

Qiye picked up a pebble, then launched it with such speed that it seemed to me to transform into a beam of light. It collided with a hard object in my robes which, receiving the momentum, stabbed into the side of my stomach. Wincing but not groaning, I doubled over and carefully pulled out the object. It was a spirit stone, though I had no idea how it had gotten there.

"—What, you actually didn't know that you had one in there?" he laughed. "You are such a fool that you managed to dupe even yourself. Come, hand it over. Do not make this difficult for me."

I held the spirit stone in both hands and, bowing, offered it to Qiye. "Here, Senior Li," I said. Though my knees shuddered, my voice remained unaffected but for my lack of breath.

I was, after all, used to this. This was every day for me.

Qiye opened his hand, and in a moment the spirit stone flew from my palms into his. He spun his finger in a circle, and a flame serpent jumped out from the tip of his finger, flying towards me. It flew towards my head, but when I flinched and moved away, it redirected its path and wrapped around my legs instead, which it pulled from under me, so I fell on my back, and my head hit—

——

An at once dull and sharp pain reverberated across my skull, sending all my thoughts to white, and when it had subsided by a fraction I felt the searing heat of the flame serpent spiralling around my body, tightening its grip, creeping upwards, choking at my throat, so much that—

"Arhh— — agnnhk—! kkrh— — aa—"

so much that far more blood than air escaped my mouth.

It hurt! It hurt! Oh, how it hurt! It hurt like placing my limbs into open flame, like crushing my joints under blunt force, like tightening a rope around my neck! And yet I would not scream if it was not instinctive! After all, to scream in pain is a form of protest, and my protests meant nothing at best!

"See? Isn't this far more efficient, Yao'er?"

"Mm... I don't think it's tactile enough."

"Perhaps it is your age, or perhaps it is your immaturity in cultivation that leads you to think like that. It looks like we need to do less body training and more meditation. Come."

"Ge...!"

They left, and some seconds later the flame serpent laughed and dissipated. I was left lying in the dirt, my robes singed, my lungs strangled, though my skin seemed to be unharmed but for the burning sensation left behind. After some time I sat up. My sword had fallen off my hip during the commotion, so I hobbled off to go pick it up. It had fallen out of the sheath, so I reattached the sheath to my hip first, and then I picked up the sword—

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

There was something wrong.

There was something wrong with my sword.

I looked closer, and saw that there were... stains on my sword.

Dark crimson stains, well worn into the blade. Two of them. One two-thirds down the length of the blade's true edge, spattering inwards from the edge, and one massive, multilayered stain wrapped several times over the end of the sword.

I felt my muscles tightening to such an extent that I felt my windpipe constricting in my throat. My arms and legs failed me. The sword fell out of my hands and I fell to the ground, too frozen to even shudder. They looked like... bloodstains! But they could not possibly be bloodstains. I did not have the power to draw someone's blood! Certainly they were something else. Mud, perhaps, though I never unsheathed my sword to drag it through the mud; paint, perhaps, though I was too poor to afford paint; or someone's harassment, perhaps, though tampering with swords was a violation of sect rules. Certainly it was one of those impossibilities, certainly it was not actually blood!

Then, all I had to do was sheathe the sword and pretend this never happened—

No, no. What was most terrifying was not having certainty. What was most terrifying was the possibility, not the fact! I needed to know. Are those stains truly blood?! I needed to know! How could I live holding such uncertainty at my hip?! I was not strong enough to live amidst such danger!

I needed to know, and I knew how to determine the truth! So I reached towards my sword to pick it up. But my hand failed me, the sight of what might be blood on my sword terrified me! Yet at the same time I could not let those stains out of my sight! How could I?! I could hardly believe those stains were real; if I stopped looking, surely they would vanish! So, grimacing, biting down on my lip so hard I thought that it would break and spill yet another stain upon the sword, I held the sword in one hand, and then I stood, and then I held it in two hands! I held it upright and I ran, my blade shuddering not far from my eyes, I ran!, I ran back home, worrying all the while that I might trip and stab myself through the throat. But that was the lesser of my worries, and so I kept running!

I made it back home more terrorized than out of breath. Struggling to keep myself upright, I hobbled over to a drawer and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Normally, I would use it to treat my wounds, but while I was studying alchemy I learned it had another purpose, a purpose I never thought I would have to use it for.

I placed the sword on my desk and rubbed some hydrogen peroxide on the corner of a rag, then swept the rag along the length of the sword. The two stains... they fizzled and, ever so slightly, faded.

I fell back out of my chair, shuddering, holding close my mouth to prevent myself from screaming! It was blood! It was blood! There was blood on my sword! How?! Whose blood was it?! Whose blood had I drawn?!

As I gasped for breath, I ran back through my memories to look for a hint. The last time I had cleaned my sword was... three weeks ago. What had happened since then? I had met Jiang Hanfeng every day, as normal, and Long Guoqiang twice, while scavenging in the lesser forests. And then there was Pill Distribution, headed by—

No. I... hadn't attended Pill Distribution. Why not? Why was that memory missing?

The day before Pill Distribution, I—

I—

What was it that happened the day before Pill Distribution? I had—

I had died.

Wang Wujiu killed me.

She had killed me. Yet I was still here. Alive.

How was it possible?! How was it possible that I yet sat here, feeling the loss of breath in my lungs, feeling the searing pain in my back, feeling the throbbing headache of absolute confusion? What had I said, what had I sworn as all my blood drained from my body, that had breathed life back into my veins?!

"I—"

I saw the words, faded and smudged, as if upon a waterlogged book.

"Live. Live and—"

The words came back to me, ever so slowly, like the sensation of a soft fire unthawing frozen limbs.

"I want to live and take revenge."

And in that moment everything came back to me. The memories of my crimes, the memories that had by some curse or miracle had left me momentarily, they all came back. As they ought to. I felt their weight, the weight of my guilt, weighing down once again on my shoulders, and I saw again those eyes, those hollow halos that had granted me freedom, freedom to take hold of both power and guilt—

—"CHUNXUE!"

A screeching rasp, like the voice of a dying crow, rang out from behind me. No, I knew that voice. It was—

"Natsuki?!"

I turned and saw her, there, on her hands and knees, gasping for dear life. I scrambled over to her and helped her up to a sitting position against the wall.

"Natsuki, what happened?!"

"Chunxue, I was... about to be ejected from this dream," she wheezed, interjecting long breaths between every few words. "I... went beyond the bounds of fate, it seems. It seems... that our contract does not permit me to intervene in this dream as much as I had thought. Tathaagat, that eavesdropping bastard. He was about to cast me to the other side of the Sanzu... when you took hold of that last thread of karma binding me to this dream, the one thread he did not deign to sever." She let out two hacky coughs, one of which sounded half like a laugh, then inhaled sharply and continued speaking. "But now, as long as I do not make further blunders, he cannot indict me further. He, too, is bound by fate. He cannot step into this world... except to straighten what is crooked. But I still can, and for that alone... I am stronger than he is."

I remained silent. I could not understand most of her words. The best I could do was try and sympathize with a fragment of the pain I could see in her contorted expression. The pain of... being forgotten! It was not a pain that I had wished to inflict on her. But I had been weak, and the weak do not have the right to choose the consequences of their weakness!

She turned her head, pointing her at once rabid and weary eyes at me, her eyes that bore the brilliant halo, but not the substance, of the full moon, the moon neither waxing nor waning. "Chunxue, you must become stronger. I will teach you, so you must become strong enough to properly wield my power... strong enough that so that as long as our contract continues, as long as your revenge continues, nobody will ever be able to harm you, or even think of harming you. You must... show them your power."

"Natsuki, I..."

What could I say? I still did not believe I could carry the responsibility of power on my shoulders. I did not believe I could survive the gazes of reverence and respect that people would direct my way if they knew of the power I wielded! How could I show them this power, when nobody had ever thought me to have any?! How could I ask them to expect more of me, when nobody had ever expected anything of me?!

"You must. You must, Chunxue. Even if you yourself do not wish it, I do. You must... if not for your own sake, then for mine."

But when I saw the sweat running down her pallid face, I felt like I had no choice. I was willing to suffer if it meant that people would overlook my presence, the way one overlooks an ant scurrying through the cracks in the road. But she was not willing to see me suffer, and that was enough to force my hand. For her sake, and for her sake alone, I would show my power, my indominable power, and I would force them all to respect me, to expect of me, as they would one of their own.

I would be not an ant, but a human.