With the man's sword buried hilt-deep in her stomach, Xiao Fan's bared teeth slowly formed themselves into a grin. He simply stood there, crying hysterically as unavoidable death stared him in the face. Surely he'd die horribly, he must've been thinking. Surely she would do to him what she had done to his comrade, and he would experience great pain before finally succumbing to blood loss. Most assuredly, right?
Right you are, sir. However, Xiao Fan's desire for cruelty inspired creativity: she felt powerful for the first time in her life, powerful enough to defend that which she loved, and more importantly, powerful enough to exact revenge. Powerful enough to grab her own fate by the throat and decide for herself. She had loved her life in Er Xin, but now that she was left without? The only thing she could focus on or consider seemed to be vengeance. And so she let go once more, letting her body decide, artistry inspired by her hunger for violence.
Three strikes, not so quickly as the motions Zhichao Tingfeng had taught her, but certainly fast enough and forceful enough that the man before her had little time to react. The heel of her left palm arced high, landing like the swing of a sledge upon her target's jaw. Her other hand followed suit, but from the opposite side - both connective joints damaged to the point of release. The final strike came from both hands at the same time - less than graceful, but still with such ferocity and speed as to inspire fear and awe. She wound back her arms wide and slammed them back together, inches below where they had been.
The heel of either palm crashed into the now-dislocated jawbone, hitting both sides simultaneously. The crunch was cacophonous, drowned out only by the scream of pain that echoed from the man as his jaw collapsed in on itself. Teeth were dislodged and spit free in a burst of red; skin was broken by snapped bones, freeing further life essence. He dropped his sword now, mind too frenzied with pain to focus on combat in the slightest. Xiao Fan wound back one final time, satisfied with her work, and put her knuckle to the man's throat just as she had the first.
She turned then to the last man, who was cowering beneath the table. He stammered out pleas and prayers, begging for mercy, and if not mercy, a quick death. He groveled for forgiveness, or at least a chance at redemption. He croaked out apologies for his indiscretion, and for dishonoring his ancestors. Xiao Fan took his plate of fried rice from where it lay atop the table, leaning back her head and pouring it into her open mouth. Her rage had begun to drain away as quickly as it had come, the food in her mouth helping to ground her, centering her mind within the tempest.
Rice grains and pieces of pork and veg cascaded down, spilling out of her mouth from lack of room, but she didn't care. There'd be more for her later, right? Right. Of course there'd be more for her later. Surely, the people of Xinmeijin would be more than happy to reward her for her spectacular work... For saving them. She was saving their lives, livelihoods, their village, their culture...
Their food? She poured the other plate into her mouth after the first one had already gone, mixed foodstuffs disappearing without even a hint of chewing. It was good, but it was a drop in the bucket of what would satiate her. She could eat more later, though - once she was done. There was still a third bandit to deal with, one who whimpered and sobbed beneath the table, hoping he had been forgotten. He quickly learned that he had been anything but.
Xiao Fan knelt down, swiping a plum from the table as she did; she chewed on a bite of it as she regarded the man at her feet. He was young, younger than the other two - barely a man at all, in truth. That... struck some sympathy into her, actually. The ice had yet to re-form around her heart, and while her emotions were still fresh and hot but her rage was cooling, she had no defense against his silent appeal. He hadn't done anything, surely - he hadn't even swung at her, and had only drawn his blade after great struggle. He wasn't a killer at heart. He was harmless.
Xiao Fan's expression softened. She wanted to reach out a hand, to help him out from where he had secreted himself. Only a second of thought on that convinced her it wouldn't help in the slightest, though. Instead, she simply stared down at him, beginning to speak when she was sure plum wouldn't fall out. "Oi. You don't seem like such a brute. Just a kid caught up in something he doesn't really believe in, right?" The boy's eyes went broad, but shuttered to a close as he nodded fervently.
Xiao Fan nodded, taking another bite of plum before continuing on. "Good, then. Tell me. How many more are there? Five? Ten? Forty? One hundred?" The cowering crook waved his hands frantically to stop her, shaking his head all the while. "N-No! No, no, only about ten! Ten others! Some camped in the treeline, some are in the town! They're hidden until the rest of us show up, so they can attack! Please! I surrender, please let me leave! Keep my sword!" Further apology and desperation spilled from his mouth.
Xiao Fan wasn't listening anymore. She stood, leaving the boy to his devices, and strode out of the hut and into the sunshine. The blood on her tangzhuang had begun to cool at this point... Her own blood, too, had returned to a chilled state. Her flesh had calmed, too, and while she wasn't exactly tired, she had lost the energy she had felt earlier. Was it the food that had calmed her? Was it the killing? Speaking of the killing, she had a second here to properly reflect.
She had been... Different. Like a completely different person. Like she was trapped behind her own eyes, watching someone else pull the strings. Why had she felt that way? She hadn't been a cruel or violent person in life. What inspired the sadism she showed in that hut? It put a tinge of fear in her - a single long fracture within the glass of her psyche, threatening to worsen if pressure was applied. She searched herself for any potential culprit, but she didn't like what she found.
What if she had been this way forever? What if she had always been the sort of person who loves to kill; who loves to hurt others? She tried to focus on something else, fixating on the clucking of a distant chicken, but to no avail. Her eyes and gaze drooped down to her own hands - to her own torso. She was covered in blood, her own and someone else's. She had a sword in her stomach. She had just killed two men so violently that they were staining her tangzhuang red.
It was a horrible thing to ponder. She had wanted to kill, that was true... To kill Tang Shun, especially, and she had proven to herself she had the power to. She had the potential to slay him in pitched combat. She could imagine it even now: his sword would flash, and bury itself in her spine. She would simply break his wrist, and then rupture his throat. It would be a simple matter to do, unable to feel pain as she was. But then... What would she do then?
Would she cease to exist? Would her soul depart? She'd like to stay, if she could... but she'd like to ensure Zhang Daiyu's safety even more. Killing Tang Shun and liberating her may cause Xiao Fan to ascend to heaven, and if it did, then it was worth it. She was dragged from her introspective haze by the distant sound of screaming. It didn't come from the treeline, though, where she could barely see the blue of Zhichao Tingfeng's Taoist garb flickering in and out of the light. The screaming came from Xinmeijin itself.
The crowd had dispersed, and were fleeing in every direction, trying to get away as best they could. Their aggressors seemed to be a small cluster of bandits, more hardened than the ones Xiao Fan had fought, five in total. They wielded a motley assortment of weapons: a blade, a spear, a mace, an axe, and a bow. They were attacking anyone they could get their hands on; the village governor was still up at his podium, but had been bound and gagged, left to lay upon the hard planks.
Xiao Fan thought of the plan: Zhichao Tingfeng had told her to meet at the house in the plum copse, right? But that wasn't as necessary as saving the citizens. It was nowhere near as important, in any sense of the word. She stopped for only a second to pull the blade from her stomach and throw it into the ditch. Then? It was off towards Xinmeijin, to let those bastards know who they were dealing with.
She strode up the beaten-dirt path, parting the wave of escaping villagers as a stone parts a stream. Laughter from the outlaws trickled into her ears beneath the roar of the crowd, but it did exactly what she needed it to: it got her angry. Furiously angry. Like in the hut, only worse - more violent, more fanatic. These scum were killing innocent people and laughing about it? As if it didn't matter? As if their lives were already forfeit, and the ruffians were simply helping them along?
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She could feel the blood splatter down her legs and onto her boots as her blood began to flow again. The warmth once again burned hot and incandescent within her, her bones seeming to nearly singe the dead flesh and cartilage which surrounded them. She felt like the only way to douse herself, to quench the fire in her body, was through violence. Once again, her mind was only partially her own - the inclinations towards violence had assured her control was reduced, down to only a modicum of what it once was.
Finally, the flood of bodies broke, and she was left standing free and clear of the crowd of villagers. The quintet of villains stood before her, laughing as they prodded at fresh corpses with their weapons, or inspected nearby buildings, judging from a glance alone if they'd be worth the effort to ransack. It only took a moment for the man with the sword, tall and lean and tanned from an outdoor life, to notice her. "Look here! She's dressed so nicely... I thought we were going to take the rich ones as hostages? Now she's dying, you idiots! Well, maybe we can ransom her corpse..."
A wicked idea came to Xiao Fan's mind, past the rage - delayed gratification was all the sweeter, after all. She began to stagger towards them, clutching at her wound as if she was truly injured. Blood poured from between her fingers. She'd be dead in moments. The man with the sword gestured towards Xiao Fan, instructing the man with the bow and arrow to go finish her off. The quicker she died and the prettier her corpse, the more valuable for her family to buy her back.
The bowman, brown of hair and with skin the gentle off-white of pale custard, approached her with dagger drawn. He got only about two feet from Xiao Fan before she broke her act, having already thought - and agreed with herself - as to what she'd do to him. He put his right foot out to take a step, not moving particularly quickly, but it brought him close enough for her to strike. She suddenly raised her left foot and extended it, snapping her whole leg forth like it was spring loaded.
The sole of her foot inverted his knee.
He howled in pain, dropping his dagger as his body fell in turn. Down to prop himself up on the other knee, using a hand to help stabilize himself... He was a sitting, or kneeling, duck. Xiao Fan stooped to deftly snatch his bow, snapping it in twain over her knee. Then, with one half of it in either hand, she quickly wrapped the bowstring about his neck.
To credit the bowyer, the string was sturdy, and held beautifully taut as she strangled the crippled bandit. The rest of the outlaws were too shocked to move - they could only watch for a few moments as she constricted their compatriot's airway with his own bowstring. Finally, one of them began to move - rushing her, his spear lowered to stab at her, right through her heart. She pulled on the bowstring, raising the choking man up, using him as a meat shield to take the blow.
The now-dying man would have squealed in agony, if any sound could escape his windpipe. The tip of a spear poked out of his torso where his right lung should presumably be; he was a goner already, and so Xiao Fan allowed the remnants of the bow to drop. The man wielding the spear staggered back a few paces in shock, looking back to his friends. Only at their frantic prompting to turn his gaze back to Xiao Fan did he realize she was approaching.
With some difficulty, he pulled his spear free. The shaft was drawn back and thrust forth once again, this time headed straight for Xiao Fan's sternum - she didn't even try to avoid it. A length of wood tipped with sharpened iron broke through bone and ravaged flesh as it went, but she felt none of it. Instead, she took the spear in both hands, now pulling it in deeper - and taking him with it. The steps between them were negligibly few, now, and he raised his hands in surrender and cowardice.
No mercy would be shown, however. Xiao Fan used her grip on the shaft to snap it off, now a half-length baton with a sharp, splintery end. She reached forth and took the man by the wrist; he was too gripped with fear to fight against it. Her right hand, wielding the half-shaft baton, gave it a twirl in her fingers. Then it was brought to the man's temple.
He dropped like a sack of wet mud. She didn't see a reason to continue to brutalize him; instead, she took the half-spear in her chest just below the tip and drew it from her back. She didn't need weapons; she had seen what her own body was capable of at this point, if she really focused, if she really tried. Her hands and feet alone were more than enough to put these bastards in their place. Next to charge was the man with the mace - frantic and desperate from watching his friend die, he swung at her head like it was a nail, bringing the weapon down overhead. This one was a strike she was less willing to simply take.
Sure, she was her soul, and the qi which surrounded and flowed within it, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something bad would happen if her head was damaged. She wasn't agile enough to really sidestep it, at least not without complication... And so she stepped forth and dropped low in a single motion, once again bringing the ancestral teachings of the Tian Lei sect to bear. A single knuckle touched the man's pelvis, right where his lower dantian should be.
The result was spectacular. Below the swiftly-bruising skin, organs were crumpled in on themselves: bladder, bowel, prostate... and the resulting pain of having them violently compressed, and then ruptured? The man made a sound like a dying goat, hands releasing mid-swing, the mace flying through the air and away from the two of them. His pants were a mess, every substance a body could produce staining his tunic and cloth breeches. He tried to stagger away, but with this new opening, Xiao Fan was far from finished.
From her lowered position she rose, left hand rising with her, balled into a tight fist. Her senseless skin pressed to the man's own with the force of an erupting geyser, striking him in the soft of his under-jaw, right below the tongue. She was satisfied to feel something within him shut down, disconnect from itself - his eyes rolled back in his head as he dropped, almost immediately coughing out choking sounds. The other bandits took a few steps back; the two of them who remained seemed an ill match for her.
One-on-one, anyways. The man with the sword nodded to his comrade and nodded, gesturing towards Xiao Fan, who had ceased her advance to simply watch and wait. The axman hefted his weapon and charged, followed close behind by the sword-wielder. They closed the gap in only a few moments, but that brief interlude was more than enough for Xiao Fan to prepare. The axman swung first, heavy blade drawn at a diagonal down at her left collarbone; the swordsman went low, blade dragged through the air, aiming for her right thigh.
She decided to try something new, then, confidence bursting at the seams with how easily she had dispatched the first three. One hand went up to catch the axe by the shaft, halting its descent. Her other hand dropped to meet the sword's edge, attempting to smack it away. The axe's weight and force still made her arm buckle; the edge of the blade lopped her hand in two, but its momentum was stopped enough that it merely left a surface wound on her leg. To hell with it, she thought: she still had her legs, right? That would be more than enough to finish off this lot. She leapt as the axman drew back his weapon, the momentum of his returning armament used to assist her into the air. As she rose, she swung out with her right leg, arcing it around to connect with the swordsman's face.
Force was anything but in short supply. Without any need to hold back, and bolstered by the bloodlust and hatred she felt towards these delinquents, she put her whole body into the kick. Her foot didn't connect - instead, it was her shin that made splashdown, kissing her target's temple with a loud thud. He dropped his blade and stumbled to his ass, blinking madly in an attempt to shoo the stars that now plagued his vision. Xiao Fan released the shaft of the axe, turning her gaze to the other man. She put her weight upon the same leg she had used to strike out, now spearing forth the other.
Just a bit lower than the lower dantian, but with the force of a hurricane's wind, the heel of her boot found her opponent's manhood. There was a dull, wet sound as her foot pushed in further than it should have been able to; the man with the axe began to vomit almost immediately, falling to his back even as sick poured from his lips. That was that, then - the outlaws in the town were defeated, either dead or disabled. She could calm herself. Or could she?
In the still of the aftermath, with only the sounds of groaning and agonized sobs to comfort her, she still felt that black rage. Her core still burned; her flesh still craved the violence she had been inflicting. She could barely hold herself back from just slaughtering the surviving hoodlums like lambs to the slaughter. In her conscious mind, the realization of how difficult it was to hold back sent a chill into the deepest part of her heart.
Why did she still feel this need to kill? This insatiable hunger for blood and death? How could she calm down? She feared that she would need to give in to these dark urges; there seemed to be no other option...