The demon disappeared into a shadow, and I— I slept early and prepared to work the next day, since if I did not work I would not eat. When I woke up I was a little bit happy, because when I checked the date it turned out that this day was the day that Professor Jibeidi Feixing, a senior alchemist from the Alchemist's Tower down in the city, would come to negotiate trade with the Phantom Orchid Sect. If I was lucky she might even teach me some alchemy again. I could not do any alchemy without qi, but I could understand the theory, and that was more than half the work.

I left my shack early so I could get my work done early, and head off to the Central Theatre where Jibeidi would be. Today, too, they would likely demand that I collect firewood. I could not understand why our sect had need of so much firewood and so little spirit stones, but I knew nothing of cultivation. And thus, even though I had nearly died but a few days ago, my mind wandered without fear as my feet trod down a gravel road by a field of—

Suddenly, I was struck in the shoulder by a blast of qi, and I went flying off the road into the field of root vegetables. I broke my fall with my arm, and the ground was soft enough that nothing shattered under my landing. But my elbow took a hard hit against a shovel sticking up out of the earth, and I groaned as I cradled one arm in the other.

I did not need to stand to know who it was who had attacked me. There was only one person who bothered coming out this far out to harass me.

"Jiang... Hanfeng...!" I growled, my voice bleeding out from my throat like a curse.

"Bai Chunxue, you bastard. What's with that tone? Haven't you learned that you ought to address your superiors with respect?"

I tried to stand, but I couldn't restore my sense of balance enough to get up. He approached me. As soon as he was but half a meter away from me, he slammed his heel into my stomach, forcing all the breath out of my lungs. I collapsed back to the ground, unable to breathe, my vision darkening.

He drew close again and kicked me once more, this time in the chest, so I landed on my back, my arms splayed out to the side. He ground his boot into my left forearm, and the sound of my bones fracturing resounded from the inside of my ear.

"Crumbling bone make such a pleasant sound, wouldn't you say? But you can't get this kind of timbre from cultivators who have reached the Bone Tempering stage. Luckily for me, you haven't even opened a single meridian, so I get to listen to this every day!" Laughing, he thrust the steel toe of his boot into my forearm, and by luck or perhaps by his choice, it did not shatter my bone, but only stabbed through my muscles.

He stepped away, and I, thinking that he was done for today, let out a wheezing groan.

"Hmm... normally I'd stop around here, but aren't you forgetting something, Chunxue? Yesterday was pill distribution. Don't you owe me a debt? Hand over the pill and spirit stone you received."

"I..." My voice churned sluggishly through a thick, syrupy liquid filling my throat. "I wasn't here yesterday...!"

He sighed and kneeled down over me. "Chunxue, you know what they say about refusing a toast. Hand over the pill and the spirit stone while I'm still asking nicely."

"I told you, I—"

"You don't have it? I see, I see. I was trying to give you some face, but if you're going to be like this, I'll just have to pull the pill out of your stomach. It shouldn't have dissolved yet." With a terrible sneer, he summoned a burning ball of qi in his hand. Squeezing the heel of his shoe into my sternum, he pulled open my jaw and pushed the smoldering mass of qi towards my mouth. I did not have any qi, so I could not close my jaw, held open by his. I squeezed my eyes closed, fearing what was about to happen, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. And then—

No.

There was something I could do.

I could use her power.

Natsuki's power.

"Chunxue." Her voice grated like sandpaper against the front of my brain. "Carry out your duty."

For just the slightest moment, I saw her eyes, the shape of inescapable death, shining on the inside of my eyelids. And then I felt it. I felt her power, surging through my arms. Instinctively, I thrust my arm upward, and my fist caught Hanfeng under his ribcage. I could feel my knuckles shatter right through the protective wall of qi around his body, but when my fist drove deeper towards his liver, he suddenly went flying off to the side, as if he had been struck by a rampaging bull.

I stood, and I could feel the wounds he had inflicted upon me close up instantaneously, the way that qi supposedly heals wounds. I could feel power burning in me, in my hands, in my legs, in my eyes. In my hands I could feel every drop of qi flowing through the air; in my legs I could feel every tremor resounding through the earth; in my eyes I could see the power running through my body and the qi through his in the same way that the Foundation Establishment-level skill of Qi Sight was supposed to function.

"Bai Chunxue...!" growled Hanfeng as he struggled to lift himself off the ground.

"Stop this!" I shouted at him. "I— I won't let you bully me any more! If you keep doing this, I... I'll have to defend myself!"

"Bai Chunxue, you bastard..." Scowling, he finally pushed himself to his feet. "You're using qi even though all of your meridians are still clogged? I don't know what your trick is, but now I have a good enough justification to break every bone in your body."

My words didn't reach him. I could see in his eyes a pure killing instinct, aimed directly at me, and I could see flaring forth from his skin flamelike qi, fueled by his rage. He pulled out his sword and pointed it behind him.

"Bai Chunxue, you should have yielded when I was only using my fists. Now that I have drawn my sword, your body will not leave this field in one piece."

Now that he had drawn his sword, I had no choice but to draw mine. But I could not. I was not a martial artist! I was just a normal person! I could not beat and kill like these people could! Just the thought of it, just the thought of piercing through someone's throat with an instrument of death and watching their life bleed out, was enough to make me want to vomit!

"—Arrogant bastard, you think you can survive my attacks barehanded? Fine. Let's see how you hold up. Let me show you the technique that Senior Brother Guoqiang taught me."

Hanfeng focused all his qi into his sword, and in a moment it was no longer his body but rather his sword around which red flames danced like water skipping around a hot wok.

Plop, was the sound as the flames all fell into the sword, like water falling into a puddle.

"Scatterflame Strike!"

He dashed towards me, his sword glowing blue with heat. I had to defend myself. I understood well that I had to defend myself. But how could I draw my sword on another person? Would the Amitabha Buddha ever forgive such an act?

And thus, I did not even raise a hand to stop him as he thrust his sword towards my chest— targeting not my heart, but my right lung. After all, sect rules prevented him from killing me here.

The blade struck the cloth of my robes, but went no further. A barrier of qi, the kind that surrounds your body once you have attained the Muscle Tempering stage of the Qi Condensation realm, blocked it, and though it seemed to crack under the weight and heat of his sword, it did not give way.

"Scatter!" he cried out, and suddenly all the flames that had been embedded in the sword flew out from it in tendrils shaped like a spider's legs, and they thrust themselves towards the gaps between my ribs. The only thing that prevented them from tearing open my chest was the thin layer of qi surrounding me, but it could not defend long from—

The barrier shattered.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The sword cut through my ribs and tore open my lung.

One by one, the tendrils of flame speared through my chest, burning the flesh inside along with the skin outside.

Except for my heart, it felt like every part of my chest was on fire. I tried to move my arm but I could not manifest the energy. I tried to cough out the blood welling up in my throat, but my lungs could not summon the breath.

With his spare hand, Hanfeng drove a fist into my face, crushing my nose and sending my flying back some thirty meters. My back skidded against the gravel, and it burned with a fury almost as great as the flames that were yet buried deep in my chest.

As I lay on the ground, Jiang Hanfeng stepped over me and pointed his sword down at my face. With a terrible smile, he said,

"Kowtow to me three times— no, five, and hand over the pill, and swear to be my servant, and I will let you go without cutting both your arms off. You're just a powerless civilian, not a cultivator, so you can never heal from such an injury. Make your decision. Either you live as my servant, or you live as a cripple."

—Why? Why did I have to suffer this? What sin had I committed that I had to suffer this punishment? Was my existence itself the sin? How could the world justify how it treated me?

The emptiness that flowed through my blood felt strangely familiar, and then I recalled that I had in fact felt it before, when I had died at the bottom of that cliff. How had I resolved it then? How had I overcome that sensationless feeling? I had said—

"—I will live and... take revenge."

Hanfeng's face flashed red with anger.

"I tried to give you some face, but now you've refused my kindness twice. In that case—"

I curled up my stomach and brought my knees in towards my chest, then thrust my legs up and out. The heels of my boots caught Hanfeng's ribs, and I heard two of them shatter before he staggered back, clutching his stomach.

I leapt to my feet. My decision had already been made. There was no need to question it any further. I would get my revenge. I would kill him. Even if the Buddha would not forgive my crimes, what did it matter? I was already dead.

"Bai Chunxue!" he howled in pain. He leaped back some distance and began focusing flame into his sword once again. "This time, I won't let you live!"

I quickly unsheathed my sword, though I nearly dropped it in the process. I held it in front of me. I would need to swing at the right time to block his attack.

He dashed towards me. I focused on the way his hands gripped his sword, the way his hips turned, the way his feet pointed his direction, and they all appeared to me in slow motion. I counted the seconds it would take for him to reach me. Six. Five. Four. Th—

"Die, bastard!" he suddenly shouted, and I was so surprised at these random words that I closed my eyes and swung haphazardly before he had even closed half the distance.

His thundering footsteps ceased.

I opened my eyes, and I saw him lying where he had stood before, some twenty meters away. His sword lay shattered by his side, and a long horizontal gash cracked open along his chest, bleeding profusely.

"Bai Chunxue... you...! Even inner sect disciples can't use qi projection that easily...!" He breathed in loudly and roughly, all the while glaring at me with such force that I thought I would faint.

I stood there for a few moments, and then I realized that I did not know what I ought to do. Should I just sheathe my sword and leave? Was that it? That's what he usually did to me, so...

Suddenly, I felt cold, ethereal arms wrapping around my shoulders. It was her. Natsuki. I could not tell if she stood there physically, or if it was nothing but her otherworldly presence that I felt, but it didn't matter. She, my power, was there.

"Chunxue," she rasped, "do you hate him?"

"Yes," I said. "Of course I hate him. I despise him so much that I would rather never see him again."

"Then kill him."

A chill ran down my spine.

"...What?"

"Kill him. If you truly hate him, then kill him. He has wronged you, and you despise him, so why should you not kill him?"

Why? Why should I not kill him? As someone who never had the power to kill, how could I possibly offer a reasonable answer to that question?

"It's... wrong to kill people."

"The laws of man have not once protected you from him, so why should they protect him from you?"

"I..." I looked down at my hands, which trembled so severely that the tip of my sword swung arcs in the air. "If I kill him here, the sect rules..."

"I will take care of the cleanup. All you have to do is focus all your hatred on him and slay him."

I was silent.

"Chunxue. Will you not take your revenge?"

—My revenge. That's right. I said I would take revenge. I would take revenge on the people who had wronged me first, and wrong them in return. It was nothing more than the cycle of karma. Not justice, not evil, but simply a reflection of their own deeds unto themselves. That was all I would serve as. The Buddha's mirror, the guarantor of the law of the universe. Nothing more, nothing less.

I would kill him.

My hands stopped trembling. My vision cleared, and my breath steadied. I knew what I had to do.

I stepped towards him. Hanfeng tried to push himself up, but collapsed onto his back. He lay there, struggling to move, like a corpse. A dead body. That's what he was. He was dead. He was dead, by my hand.

"Bai Chunxue, you fool!" the corpse cried out. "Don't you know that Elder Jiang is my great-uncle?! You think you can get away with attacking me?! If you dare take another step forward, he'll rip you limb from limb in the middle of the Central Theatre—"

"Natsuki," I toned dully, "a corpse— a corpse is talking..."

"Then you must silence it," she churred, and I could feel her arms aligned with mine, cold, dark, pointing the way forward, guiding the path of my revenge.

I placed my foot upon the corpse's arm, instantly shattering the bone and pinning its body in place. The corpse's mouth opened, but I could no longer hear any sound other than that of Natsuki's breath. I brought the point of the sword down over the corpse's neck, so its very tip drew out the slightest dribble of stagnant blood from the skin.

I prepared to push the sword down into the corpse's throat, when I realized that Natsuki's hands were no longer by mine.

"Natsuki..." I whispered. "Where are you...?"

"This is not my revenge, Chunxue," I heard her say from behind me. "Kill or kill not. You must make the decision."

I turned my gaze from the corpse's neck to its face. That face. That face! Oh, how I hated that face, how I despised it! How many times had I nursed my broken bones, thinking how if I only had the power I would cut this face into a thousand pieces and feed it to the dogs! How many times had this face been the source of my pain and my suffering! And here, here I had the chance to end it all. If I pushed this sword down, this face would never again bring me harm. With this face gone, I could be happy, in the slightest measure more than I was now.

I thrust the sword down, into the corpse's neck, then pulled the sword out. Blood spurted from the wound, and then, after some seconds, when qi stopped flowing through the corpse's body, the blood, too, stopped.