Constantine, his face paler than ever, stood silently before the wooden doors of the school, the image of the dead boy vivid in his mind. A flash of lightning split the sky, illuminating the metallic knocker. He hesitated as cold rain drenched his clothes.
Fear and paranoia stirred in his mind. 'What if this is a trap? What if the old man wants to use me?' He had met enough bad people to know that kindness often hid ulterior motives.
Initially, he was so enthusiastic about the offer, nearly losing his composure upon hearing it. Yet now, after the bloody experience, standing at the entrance, he started to have doubts.
'Why would he lie?' Constantine shook his head, trying to dispel them. 'He is a scholar of good standing. What would he gain by tricking me?' A scholar with a school and a villa had no reason to care about the few pennies he might assume Constantine had inherited.
'I can't return now anyway. There is no turning back.' Constantine reached for the knocker. The cold metal felt heavy in his hand, and its thuds echoed through the rain.
As his clothes clung to his skin, the doors creaked open. A weary boy in an expensive robe appeared, his eyes narrowing at Constantine. "Sir, what is your business here?"
Clearing his throat, Constantine replied, "I am the new app—"
The boy's polite expression twisted into a smug grin. "Ah, you are the new appr—," he paused midword, correcting himself, "servant. Come in; there's plenty of dirty work to do."
A week later:
Constantine swept the broom across the floor amidst the towering bookshelves, each one fully stacked with various tomes. The small library was almost spotless, but he continued his task without complaint, his face pale from sleepless nights—the nightmares of the murder scenes haunting him.
Killing an adult might have been easier to justify, but killing someone so young made him feel like the lowest scum.
As he moved the broom, his mind replayed the scene. The shock on the bully's face, the audible crunch as the brick connected, the way his body crumpled. Constantine's stomach churned.
He had always prided himself on his intellect, but at that moment, panic had taken over, and he had acted on pure instinct. His life wasn't in danger, only his property, yet his reaction had been to kill. He remembered the fear in the other boys' eyes and their frozen expressions as they watched their leader fall.
'Why did I aim for the side of his head?' Guilt washed over him. 'I could have—' No, he knew that logically, his instinctual move to attack the leader quickly and efficiently was the correct one. Yet, it was just a teen.
Constantine, still shaky, placed the broom against the shelf and reached for the small rag hanging from his belt. His hand glided across the nearest bookshelf, wiping away the nonexistent dust.
What truly terrified him was the thought constantly circling his mind, growing stronger each time it returned, like a cat returning from a hunt: 'They were trash, and I will accomplish great things with the book those morons would have wasted.'
His dusting speed increased, his head shaking as he tried to distract himself from the darkening thoughts. He didn't want to become a monster, yet his mind kept rationalizing the murder in a way that made him shudder.
A bell rang, drawing him back to the real world. He immediately paled, realizing his thoughts had become too unhinged. It was a troubling trend that had been growing since the day he killed the boy. 'What is happening to me...'
He put down his rag and hurriedly walked out, moving down the narrow pathway around a small decorative garden.
'The class will begin soon.'
Evening:
In a small square room so cramped it almost felt like a prison cell, Constantine sat cross-legged on his narrow bed. Despite the tight quarters and the plain brick walls with only a tiny window for light to enter, everything was clean and offered some semblance of privacy compared to the orphanage.
With glee in his eyes, he stared at the worn-out, leather-bound book resting in his lap. He had finally learned enough characters to start reading it. This book was his only hope, a distraction from his actions and the boy he murdered.
Impatiently, he flipped it open, his gaze landing on a random line on the second page. His heart raced as he read slowly, character by character, like a child in the early grades of school: 'In the serene flow of Qi, one finds the balance of all things; harness its gentle currents to unlock the boundless potential within.'
He paused, then reread it, ensuring it was really written there. Stricken that it was, he continued reading, his excitement fading away a bit: 'Let your breath become a river, steady and unwavering, guiding the Qi through the canyons of life within yourself. Trust in the ancient rhythm, for the dance of Qi is the symphony of life itself, precise, uphold the rhythm because it is unbreakable.'
As he absorbed the words, his excitement gave way to frustration. He closed the book with an audible clap, his left eyelid twitching in irritation. 'How? How is this a way to write a manual? What is this poetic gibberish?' The manual went against everything he was taught about how to write scientific papers; it wasn't exact, it wasn't to the point, and it used too many inaccurate metaphors.
Biting his lower lip in displeasure, he opened it again—no matter how poorly written, he had to swallow it and make sense of it. His eyes scanned the lines, his reading speed increasing with each word, his impatience bubbling.
It was like reading an instruction manual filled with vague, overly poetic, and cryptic advice. There was no real explanation of the subject beyond the flowery nonsense. Amidst the entire page, he extracted only a tiny bit of worthwhile information: 'The rhythm of breathing is important. One has to breathe in a specific rhythm until they feel warmth, then they have to cycle Qi, that warmth, through the pathways drawn on the diagram on the first page.'
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
To his immense disappointment, there was no explanation as to why that pattern or that rhythm. It was like reading an instruction manual written by a liberal arts student on drugs. He loathed the very idea.
'This is such a foolish way to record information,' he thought bitterly, 'Instead of recording their knowledge in a simple, straightforward, and exact way, they fill it with flowery nonsense. This way, even if the ancient cultivators who discovered this understood the topic, it would get lost over many rewrites and generations.'
If every master, elder, and cultivator subjectively interpreted the metaphors and fluff in their own way, then passed it down by adding more fluff, the information would inevitably be diluted and replaced by meaningless poetry.
'It is like a game of telephone, but one where everyone turns what they hear into poetry.' He mused, disgusted at the malpractice he had just witnessed.
His grip tightened on the book, his knuckles turning white. 'I will enlighten this world. I will fully analyze this mystical energy everyone cultivates and write down all the laws of this world into standardized equations and straightforward, exact definitions.'
He snickered silently at the grandiosity of his goal, feeling it was too great, too big, and too far-fetched to be realistic.
'What is a man without a dream? Maybe this is the reason fate sent me here. Maybe this way I can repay the debt of the murder by improving this world.' He thought, his eyes gleaming with determination and disdain.
Clearing his mind, he clasped the book shut and firmly closed his eyes. Before he could dream, he first needed to grasp the basics—the breathing technique. In the darkness of his eyelids, he took a deep breath, counting in his mind and then releasing it.
The next morning:
Heavy mist drifted across a seemingly endless darkness. Constantine, staring at his blood-covered hands, leaned above the dead body of the boy he had killed, his blue eyes staring straight into his own.
He wanted to avert his gaze, move his legs, or cover his eyes. Yet he couldn't, an invisible force tightly binding him like a thick rope.
"Look at yourself, still weak and pathetic like you always were." The corpse grinned at him, the voice garbled and eerie, before rapidly rotting right before his eyes. Flesh peeled away in wet chunks, revealing glistening, decaying muscle and bone. Worms burst out of its mouth and nose, writhing and squirming, just a moment before its eyes exploded with pus and rotten blood, emitting a stomach-churning stench.
The corpse's grin widened unnaturally, stretching the decaying skin until it tore. "You're—"
The city clock bell rang, jolting Constantine awake. Sweat drenched his face, and his trembling hands gripped the bed's edges. Slowly, his ragged breath calmed as he surveyed the small, familiar dorm.
'This dream again—' Hearing the bells, he knew he had no time to contemplate his nightmare. It was time for his daily routine.
Getting off his bed, he splashed cold water from the bucket he had prepared the previous evening on his face. The chilling sensation brought color back to his cheeks, calming his ragged mind.
He slipped on the robe neatly folded beside his bed and ran his fingers through his messy hair, forcing it into place. The robe's rough fabric scraped against his skin, reminding him of its poor quality.
The bell resounded one last time, leaving only deep silence behind. Constantine, with speedy steps, walked out of his dorm into the narrow stone corridor, turning to head toward the lecture room.
"Who do we have here? Apprentice Constanse, was it? Sorry, I have a bad memory for the names of the poor peasants." A voice filled with ridicule jolted him from behind.
Facing two boys his age, their robes pristine and of noticeably higher quality than his own, Constantine felt the urge to curse. The brown-haired apprentice who initially welcomed him grinned at Constantine together with his friend.
'Those two again—why do they have to act like this?'
The brown-haired boy grabbed a small bottle from his belt, a smug grin spreading across his face as he raised it toward Constantine.
Constantine clenched his jaw, his hands balling into fists at his sides, the heat of anger rising in his chest, already knowing what the dumb, bullying, spoiled brat before him planned to do.
"Oh no!" The boy said in a mock-concerned tone as he flipped the bottle over, spilling red, alcohol-smelling liquid onto the floor. It splashed around Constantine's feet, the strong scent permeating the air.
"I am so sorry, cleaning boy, but please clean this up before someone better than you slips on it." The boy sneered, turning on his heel and leaving with swift steps. The second boy snickered and followed, giggling along the way.
'Morons!' Constantine's stomach churned at their behavior, feeling the disappointment that even the place he thought of as a sanctuary of learning and knowledge was infested with brutes and idiots.
Yet, he couldn't do anything to defend himself. Their parents were rich and influential, paying for their sons' education, while he was there due to his intellect, working hard to keep his spot.
Constantine understood that was the way the world worked—money was more important than knowledge, contribution toward society, talent, character, and foremost intellect.
Even in his past life, most of the engineers and scientists who propelled society forward were often less paid than some managers who gained their spots through nepotism and favoritism.
It wasn't the fault of the trio that harassed him in the orphanage, nor was it his fault for killing Qin; he saw it now.
'They were doing what they needed to survive and improve their lives, the same as me,' Dangerously squinting his eyes, Constantine frowned at the duo's laughter still resounding through the hallway 'But you, you are tormenting me just for your amusement.'
It was the fault of the society around him, forcing children and teens into situations like that. The fault was with those at the top of the societal pyramid.
With that thought, Constantine bent down and began cleaning up the mess, his resolve hardening with each swipe of the cloth. The cool stone floor against his knees and the rough texture of the cloth in his hand anchored him in the present moment, steeling his determination.
Four days later:
In a dimly lit classroom, Constantine focused on the lecturer at the front of the room, the seven apprentices seated around him all listening in silence. The old scholar, Asmodeo, with a long white beard and deep-set eyes, spoke passionately about how one could multiply large numbers.
'The rhythm of breathing... warmth... cycle Qi.' Constantine repeated to himself, not paying attention to the lecture's content, which was too basic and uninteresting. His eyes darted around the room, observing his fellow students. Some were engrossed in the lecture, while others, like the rich, brown-haired joke of a student, stared blankly ahead.
'Focus,' Constantine told himself, 'I need to focus on what truly matters.'
Taking a deep breath, inhaling it like mentioned in the instructions, he counted, releasing his breath. He repeated it over and over, his frustration quickly growing—there was no trace of the promised warmth.
'What if I am talentless?' The thought plagued him constantly. To get the manual, he had to get blood on his hands. To at least do some justice to the teen he had killed, he had to use it. Otherwise, it would be like spitting on the boy's dead body.
Just as his thoughts turned dark again, a warm, slightly tickling sensation pulsed within his abdomen for a single moment before vanishing again. Just a brief spark.
His mouth curled up in a genuine smile for the first time since the murder, brought on by a mixture of relief and excitement. 'I am not talentless.' Even the manual mentioned that not everyone could harness the mysterious energy—no, the manual gloated about the superiority of cultivators over the talentless.
Overwhelmed, he tried to feel it again as he breathed out once more. But there was nothing, not even a single trace of warmth left. His smile didn't falter; at least he confirmed that his effort wasn't for nothing and he didn't murder a boy for nothing.