—It begins with a question:

How can a young disciple kill an elder? No matter how much force they summon, they will not even be able to lay a scratch on the qi barrier of someone who has cultivated for hundreds of years. It is impossible. And yet I had no choice but to kill him. I had one strike, one strike from point-blank range he would yield to me as a formality, and with that one strike, I had to kill him.

How could I kill Jing Ke?

—and it ends with a proof:

In dynamic mechanics, damage is done not by force, but by pressure— the ratio of force over area. Even if I could not summon the brute force to kill an elder, if I could simply compress the force sufficiently, then the pressure could break through any barrier. The lesser the area the greater the pressure— and the limit? Infinity.

"Heaven and Earth, Returned to the Void."

A finite force compressed into a infinitesimal space, producing an infinite pressure, a pressure so great that it can destroy the world itself. That was the power of this performance. It was not a performance that could be reproduced by anyone else. If you were to try to infinitely compress your own qi, then the pressure gradient would make it backflow the wrong way up your meridians and cripple you. But this was not my qi. It did not flow through my meridians, but through my will! And thus, if I truly wished from the bottom of my heart to create an infinite pressure from a finite force, nothing could stop me.

By the rakshasa's grace.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

—Thus is a ma'ken.

I struck his torso with this sword of zero area and infinite pressure, annihilating his heart and killing him instantaneously.

A conical explosion erupted from the point of contact as the infinite pressure expanded in space. The explosion bore a great hole in his chest, then expanded in diameter and utterly annihilated everything behind him.

Wujiu, barely two meters behind him, was entirely annihilated.

As if a meteor had struck, several hundred meters of the Public Area behind him was annihilated.

I did not know how much damage had been done. Perhaps some spectators had been caught in the explosion. But I did not care. Jing Ke, the architect of my suffering, or at least the one whom I had the right to blame more than anyone else, the one whom I had the right to hate more than anyone else, was dead. That was all that mattered.

His decapitated head crashed against the ground, and what was left of his body— by some rigor mortis or another— remained upright.

I sighed and sheathed my sword. It was over. Now, I could leave the sect. Now, there was nothing left for me to do but live as long as my life would last.

I reached down and began healing my stomach and my legs, which had been heavily wounded and were yet leaking blood. I did not know if I would survive, but for Natsuki's sake, I would at least try.

"Natsuki," I whispered, "are you there?"

"Chunxue..." Her voice was racked with an uncharacteristic anxiety. "I don't like this. Something isn't right."

I frowned. "What do you mean? What's wrong?"

"That Jing Ke... his soul... it's not here."

"It's not in his body?" I pitched my head down and thought about these words. "I think... I've heard of soul separation techniques. But nobody uses them, since you'll die if either your body or your soul is destroyed. If you separate them, you have two mortalities instead of one, so there's no point."

So why would Jing Ke have separated his soul from his body? Was it merely the eccentricity of an elder? An old bet gone wrong? I could not reason out a convincing explanation.

—Suddenly, a voice rang out over the arena.

"The era in which I began cultivating was not a peaceful one for the jianghu..."

I shot up, straightening my posture and looking around. Who had spoken? I recognized the voice. Whose voice was it? It was— it was—

it was Jing Ke's voice!

I turned back to him. His skull was there, on the ground, bleeding! He was dead! He was dead! He was clearly dead! How could it be his voice?!

"Generations upon generations of cultivators of every level were massacred en masse. Even Core Formation cultivators were not safe. And I— above all, I did not wish to die."

The eyes on his decapitated head turned to meet mine, and his mouth moved, forming words with full clarity. I stepped back, but I was too frozen with fear to even trip over my own feet. I had killed him. I had annihilated his heart, his lungs, and half of his spine. So why was he speaking? Why was he blinking? Why was he breathing? Why was he still alive?!

"That is why, not long after I entered Core Formation, I performed my first and only Spirit Severing, during the night that only occurs once every ten-thousand years on which the heavens do not surveil the earth. From my soul I severed—"

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I reached for my sword. All I had to do was reduce his skull too to ashes, to burn it in the black and purple flames of Natsuki's power. If I did that—

"—my own death."

—My shaking fingers could not hold onto the hilt. It clattered to the ground, its blade silent.

Jing Ke reached down and picked up his skull in both hands. He held his skull over the gaping hole in his torso, which— in only a moment— was filled, was pulled from the void back into reality, as if I had never killed him in the first place.

"The heavens, drunk on wine that night, were too late to kill me. Instead, for my crime they imprisoned me under a mountain for over six hundred years, but how little it matters! I have been cut off from the powers of the heavens, but how little it matters! I cannot be killed, Bai Chunxue. Not by you, not by Bai Fei, not even by the Amitabha Buddha. As a grand elder I am not supposed to fight, but now that you have attacked me first, don't blame me for being ruthless."

He placed his skull back on his neck, then extended his arm out in front of him, pointing straight at my forehead, and I, struck by a sharp foresense of imminent doom, jumped to the side and crashed to the ground.

A silent explosion passed by me, and I suddenly felt a burning sensation on the side of my face. I grit my teeth— no, I tried, but I could not! I could not sense half my masseter! I reached up to touch my face— only to feel that my cheek and my ear were gone, annihilated.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that of the few spectators who had not fled, not a single one was looking at me. They were all looking far into the distance, behind me. Afraid of what I might see, I turned my head, and saw a gaping hole opened all the way through a distant mountain, a hole so wide I could see entire clouds in it!

Even the Heavenly Tribulation I had redirected had not had such power, and I had merely made use of the power of the heavens! This was— this was his own power! The power of many centuries of cultivation, accumulated grain by grain, year by year!

This was far beyond my strength. I could not kill someone who had severed death. I did not know a ma'ken with the power to bestow death upon the deathless.

So I pulled a talisman from my robes and tore it in two.

I stood, but my left leg immediately crumpled under me. I had overexerted it with my last usage of golden qi. At this point, in order to survive, the only thing I could do was—

"Jing Ke," I growled, though my heart seemed like it would faint at any moment!, "before you kill me you must at least provide me an explanation, otherwise I will haunt you after I die. Tell me, why did you and the family not permit me to become a scholar?"

He shook his head and lowered his hand. "It is not yet permissible for me to kill you, but even so, I suppose it would be bad for the Bai family's face if I were to beat you unconscious without even answering your questions. Then let me tell you. It is because you are a talentless bastard. A civilian. We are a cultivation family. We have no use for someone without any talent in cultivation. If you had been like that Sima Rui, if you had been a cultivator who wished to become a scholar, we would have complained but we would have let you do as you wished. But you had nothing. No talent, no power. That was why the family would not permit you to debase the name of Bai by going out into the world. If we could have killed you when you were born, we would have. But the new imperial regulations prohibit cultivators from harming civilians, even those of their own families."

"And yet— now I do have cultivation talent."

He snorted derisively. "You do, but it is too late now. Your role was decided when you were born. You should have shown us your talent then. Your only purpose now is to serve as a sacrifice. Are you less likely to eat shrimp just because it can dance? Know your place. You are nothing."

Upon hearing his words, I could not help but laugh. I could not suppress it. First a snicker, then a chuckle, finally a full-throated bellow; I could not stop myself from laughing!

"Bastard, what are you laughing about?!" Jing Ke shouted.

"I wasn't wrong!" I cried out. "I wasn't wrong!"

"What?!" His face contorted with confusion. "What do you mean, you weren't wrong?!"

"I wasn't wrong to seek revenge. I wasn't wrong! The world was wrong. I have always been... on the right side. And even if the world is against me— she* is with me. And that is all I need."

I rose to my feet, only the force of my anger holding my bones together.

"Bullshit." He shook his head and sighed, as if he had expected some other words from me. Perhaps he had expected me to bow down and beg for mercy, but I would not grant that, not to him of all people. "If you have nothing more to say, then I will end this. First I will take one of your lungs, and then I will rip out your meridians so you do not pull any more tricks."

Jing Ke raised his hand, pointing it at my—

A bubbly birdsong broke from beyond the breeze.

Jing Ke looked up, his mouth half open in surprise. There from the sky descended a yellow-headed cerulean warbler, his wingspan wide enough and his body plump enough to momentarily blot out the sun.

Xiaolan.

He descended sharply but softly, and landed right by my side.

Jing Ke's expression twisted with anger. "What kind of foolishness is—"

"You cannot attack me, Jing Ke!" I shouted.

He froze. He could hear the truth in my voice.

"This bird is an employee of the Alchemist's Tower! If your attack even singes a single feather on this bird, then you will create a conflict between the Tower and the Bai family, a conflict that the Bai family would lose! Precisely because you are an experienced advisor, you would not dare do that!"

"You— you damned trickster—!" Overcome with anger, he clutched his chest and coughed up blood. He had lost his chance to capture me!

With only the force of my arms and my anger I pulled myself onto Xiaolan's back,

"I will get my revenge, Jing Ke! I will descend to the court of the Yama and write your name into to the Register of Life and Death if I must! I promise you, you alone will certainly die! I will kill you, and I will reclaim my name!"

and flew away.