I looked down at Hanfeng.

The gash on his chest had cut partway through his ribs. I looked to his arms and saw that the gash from his chest was present on his arms too, where it had severed part of his biceps. His right arm lay crushed under my foot.

Such wounds could be healed. Hanfeng had not yet broken into the Foundation Establishment realm, but pills that heal such wounds run quite cheap within cultivator sects, cheap enough that even I could afford them. He would heal quickly.

—If only he were not dead.

His neck was only half-attached to his body, because I had sliced it open.

I had killed him. He was dead.

I stepped back from Hanfeng.

Hanfeng's corpse.

I had killed him. He was dead.

With these hands, I had choked out his life. I had choked out the spark of divinity in him that weighed far more than his sins possibly could. I had destroyed that one thing more valuable than anything else in this world— human life. Wealth, power, even hatred; all such things come and go with time. But human life? Once it is destroyed, it will never come back.

And I had snuffed out his life. I had committed the most irreversible of crimes, the one crime that can never receive just return.

I collapsed to the ground, my sword, that odious instrument of death, clattering off to the side. How could I have done such a thing? What was the meaning of studying the Buddha if I could not even respect the first of his precepts? What was the meaning of studying Confucius if the moment I grasped power and its concomitant responsibility, I used it to commit murder? Murder! Cold-blooded murder! Even the bloodsoaked tigers of the forest only kill to feed themselves, and I had killed him for— for a grudge?! How could anything be more unjust than killing over a grudge?! How could I even call myself human if I killed him for something so... meaningless?! Less than a human, less than even a beast, I was— I was—

"Chunxue," Natsuki called out to me, as she kneeled down by Hanfeng's corpse. "Your grief is excessive. You have flavored his soul too sour, like tanghulu made of unripe hawthorn. When you kill, you must keep your hatred and your guilt in balanced measure. Otherwise, I cannot pleasure in partaking of the death."

"Sour?" I raised my head, but I could hardly understand what she was saying. "Are you going to... eat him?"

Stolen novel; please report.

She turned her gaze to me, her eyes narrowed with confusion.

"Is that not obvious? What else can one do with carrion? All the deaths you offer me, either I will devour them as does a vulture, or I will turn my nose up and say that you have not seasoned them well enough. This one... I have not eaten a child of man in some time, so I shall partake, though it is otherwise too sour for my tastes."

The fingers of her hand extended into claws, which she thrust into Hanfeng's chest. No blood came out— only a thick, black liquid closer to tar than any substance in the human body. From his chest she drew out a pulsing black mass, yet attached to his body by long drooping tubes that you might think to be arteries if their contents did not force their walls to bulge outwards as they travelled up and down, despite his death, into the black mass. It was not his heart, nor was it his dantian, as a dantian was not bound to the body by tubes.

"Look, Chunxue. His soul is so sour that it has turned completely black. It is not supposed to be this black. A deep crimson, mediated between the red of hatred and the black of guilt, is the best color for these kinds of deaths. But your guilt has outweighed everything. It has overridden your hatred, what remains but as an fleeting aroma, and further his fear as well, which I can now hardly even detect, like the lost rosen middle of overcooked veal."

—His soul? She would consume his soul, the very foundation of his humanity, the one thing that made him more than a mere animal? How odious this demon was, to force me to kill him and then devour his soul!

—No! I had killed him of my own will. How did it matter what happened to his corpse? All the demon had done was offer me power. My hatred had killed him. How could I place the blame on anyone but myself? She said it herself. She was a vulture. If a vulture had swooped down and disfigured his corpse, how would that make my crime any less heavy? The only difference it made was that I could see the full horror of what I had done with my own hands. I had murdered a human being. With my hands, I had snuffed out a human life. And in doing so, I had given up the right to call myself human.

The demon bit into the frothing black bulb. As she chewed, I could hear a crackling sound bubbling out from her gullet, a sharp and crisp snapping, like the sound of popcorn— no, no, not popcorn. I knew that sound. It was the sound that human bones make when crushed, a sound that could be subtly differentiated from the sound of pig or cow or horse bones by its timbre. That sound, that sound that no human should ever have to know, echoed across the field.

"But it is not as bad..." she mumbled through a mouth full of tar, "not as bad as the victims of those who delude themselves into believing they are avatars of... justice, that most distasteful of flavors, most uninspiring of ideals."

Oh, how I wished I could lie to myself so! If only I had the audacity, I would name myself a hero, just to free myself of the guilt of heroism!

She swallowed a glob of dark ichor, and upon a slow exhale, said,

"I appreciate your... naïveté. It is beautiful, in its proper right."

When she finished consuming his soul, the corpse broke apart into dust and scattered away on the wind. No evidence remained, but for the black tar dripping from her mouth. She exhaled, then stood up and walked towards me.

"You said you have someplace to be, no? Will you be late like this? I can take you there."

Her hand reached for my skull, and I, struck by a sudden pang of fear, jumped back.

"No, no need. I'll walk."

I ran.