Thorns leapt from Gou Hui’s skin, and his eyebrows and previous hair were all a twisted bundle of vines. His previous facial features were morphed further as roots snaked in and out of his skin like an otherworldly disease. To call Gou Hui hideous was an understatement; he was downright disgusting.

“I will eliminate you from this world.” Even Gou Hui’s voice dropped to a grotesque level. With a violent flail of his arm, roots grew from his fingertips, writhing towards me with surprising speed.

Ack!

I used the Mountain Sealing Sword to block the blow as best I could, but the force behind the blow was stronger than before. The roots clattered aside the blade and reached me, tearing a gash across my twisting torso. Then, they divided and spread out, attacking me from all sides as I hurried to evade. I weaved through the roots as best I could, but the minor scratches and near misses were turning into chunks of flesh that were swallowed up by the carnivorous roots.

Meanwhile, Gou Hui let out a low, hoarse laugh that would keep biker men hiding under their beds.

“I will kill you and everyone you’ve ever cared for! The Matron will relish turning them into the beasts you despise and kill. She will skin them alive and—”

Gou Hui winced as he gripped his head. With a berserk scream, the roots attacking me intensified in their reckless attacks as they threatened to consume me. Like a tide sweeping me under a current, the roots made a grand crashing attack against me that I was forced to try and block.

I let loose a spray of blood as I used the tides’ attack to launch myself backwards. I couldn’t stay near the cobblestone walkway if I wanted to defeat Gou Hui.

Thankfully, Gou Hui seemed a bit out of his mind.

“MATRON!!!” Gou Hui cried as blood dripped from his fingertips, staining the roots a deeper shade of crimson. The roots sprung from the cobblestone as they faced me in the air, where I was launched. The Mountain Sealing Sword arced around and vibrated with the full strength I could unleash.

The oncoming roots split apart into two as the vibrations trailed into them, shaking their insides into loose bands of defenceless fibre mush. However, there was always more.

The resulting attacks propelled me further from the platform, and with a tuck and roll, which was more of a tuck and prayerful tumble, I landed back on the dirt side of The Pit. Which apparently, Gou Hui didn’t enjoy.

“Crawl back here, you filth!” Gou Hui shouted as the roots coiling around him propelled him into the air. With a graceful bridge of roots lifting him over, Gou Hui followed me over the sunken land around the cobblestone monuments.

“I think I’m going to hold off on that one,” I yelled as my feet dashed away. It was time for a tactical retreat—

“Like I’d let you do that!” Gou Hui yelled as the roots drilling from his fingertips multiplied in length and dug into the ground. With incomparably fast speeds, the roots drilled into the ground and popped up in the space where I hoped to escape to.

I sidestepped the initial root upwelling but faltered as the ground beneath me quivered with another of the rising attacks.

“…unleash…”

My foot stomped on the ground, ripping apart the burrowing root with shards of vibrating earth. But more roots shot from nearby. I twisted and evaded the best I could, dodging some by a margin that was less than narrow by taking some nonlethal wounds.

Cuts began adding up on my body as the blood oozing from them got tackled by the sparse amounts of violet mist still in the area. If it weren’t for the roots releasing a slew of red particles, I might have been able to heal more, but as it was now, I was barely recovering enough to keep fighting.

“…the…”

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My muscles flexed as the Mountain Sealing Sword slowly scraped against the ground. With increasing momentum, I unleashed what I had seen in many video games, called a “whirlwind slash” or “tornado strike.” With a circular movement of the sword, any roots that came nearby were slashed apart as I spun around, changing the level of my sword to prevent any roots from sneaking through to me. As I spun, the ground beneath me shifted alongside and like a rocky whirlpool, the ground broke off in circular sections as vibrations travelled through them.

When I released the attack, I was heaving with exertion but noticed none of the roots in my vicinity. Instead, they were curled outside my range, waiting to lunge again once I was weak from spinning.

The roots attacked.

“…sword…” Gou Jing’s voice finished as the roots swept the ground underneath me, knocking me into the air. With battering movements, the roots curled around me, trapping me in a twisting dome that shrouded me in a darkness much worse than the usual dim setting of The Pit.

I swung the Mountain Sealing Sword at the roots, trying to cleave a way through the shrinking area, but more roots replaced the ones I cut off, trapping me even further. With growing panic, I shouted out my frustrations.

“If I could do it, then I would!” The urgency in my tone was supplemented by the razor-sharp vines that sprouted from the roots and sliced at my skin.

Suddenly, a pair of glowing red eyes sprouted from the roots. A twisted mouth was undoubtedly underneath those eyes because a mocking voice scraped against my ears.

“I always told you were worthless—”

My blade slashed at Gou Hui’s face, but roots enveloped and defended him before the tip of the Mountain Sealing Sword even reached him. At another point of the root dome, Gou Hui’s face reappeared with a sneer.

“Not even your last struggles before death can—”

Like a moth to a flame, my sword attempted to inflict some sort of wound on Gou Hui, but he was as slippery as an eel as he travelled around the dome. Inflicting blows that weren’t physical but of his hideous, mental torturing type.

“The Matron will savour the taste of your friends’ blood. She will—”

“Enough! I won’t ever let that happen.” I yelled out into the space but got more viny lacerations in return for the break in concentration.

“How will you do anything? You are doomed to die here as a slave for the—”

I slashed again, not letting Gou Hui finish the dreaded name of the person who started this all. If she was the leader of the Gou brothers, then she was someone I now hated with a burning vengeance. I wouldn’t rest even in death until I could kill—

“…idiot…”

“The Matron.”

“QUIT CALLING ME THAT!” I yelled with a vibration-filled voice, earning a quiet moment from Gou Hui and Gou Jing.

Sigh.

“You think you deserve a name, a title, such as The Matron? No. You’re nothing.”

Gou Hui let out a hiccup of laughter, quickly becoming a hysteric fit of low-pitched laughter.

"You don't deserve anything but a crushing death!"

After a long moment, Gou Hui's laughter faltered into nothing as his eyes closed and darkness returned to the space. He left behind only one word for me.

“Die.”

Panic seeped into my veins as the roots around me began to writhe, shrinking the dome around me into a smaller space with each passing second. In a few more seconds, I wouldn’t have the freedom to swing the sword, and after that, my body would be constricted into nothing but meat paste.

A fitting end for Gou Hui’s sadistic methods.

“…sword…commands…”

I attempted to unleash another of the whirlwind slashes with my sword but was cut short when a sudden ache overwhelmed my body and shot pains through my Qi veins. I heaved as the Mountain Sealing Sword planted inside the roots, and the vibrations rocking its blade slowed into stillness.

I was out of Qi.

I felt the red particles sprouting from the roots clouding the air and the inside of my body. The tiny red particles devoured any traces of the violet mist that usually replenished me. I realized all this too late, and an unexperienced feeling of weakness overwhelmed me; a sensation that made me understand what running out of Qi felt like. It reminded me of when I was bedridden with sickness, my body using everything it could to fight off the illness wreaking havoc within me.

“…the…”

My fists impacted against the roots, briefly causing them to recoil before bouncing back, utterly unharmed by my useless strikes. But I didn’t stop. My fists continued to pound away as the skin on my knuckles wore away.

“AH!” I shouted a guttural yell as the frustrations deep within me welled up.

Thud, thud, thud.

Eventually, the roots got so close that I couldn’t swing back my arm enough to build momentum, making me stop my strikes. With a heaving breath, I shifted my form and sat cross-legged. If I could just build up a small amount of Qi, I’d be able to use my vibrations for one last strikeout of here. I would have to stake it all on one strike.

I had no choice.

My shaken mind tried to rotate my cultivation base and take in Qi, but the shrinking area around me was littered with red particles that devoured any of the Qi around me. They prevented me from gathering anything.

I opened my eyes as the panic flooding my system caused veins to sprout from my eyes. I watched the darkness loom towards me and felt the roots twist against my body. My hand curled around the Mountain Sealing Sword in the last moments with a death grip.

My demise loomed around the corner as a voice finished whispering to me.

“…violet…mist…”