“A perfect execution,” Che Fang complimented with clear admiration seeping from his eyes as he carefully wrapped the poisoned needle. He paused to check the downed woman’s pulse before nodding in satisfaction.

“Distasteful,” Tai Yang asserted plainly, his expression locked in a scowl.

Despite his opinion the large man dutifully bound the unconscious cultivator, shoving her beige robes out of the way to tie her hands and haul her onto his shoulder like a sack of rice.

“Distasteful?” Bao Chi squawked.

Gaping the older man rubbed his temples as he tried to pull himself together. “More like dishonorable!” he quipped while gesticulating wildly.

“It worked,” Zhao stated bluntly. “That’s what matters.”

His words were greeted with a grunt from the bundle of muscle carrying their prisoner while the older dissenter snapped his mouth closed to bury his protests.

An aura of satisfaction surrounded them as the most skilled of the recruits, former hunters, guards, and a few with real talent, reveled in their victory.

It was no minor feat for mortals to take out cultivators, even those at the lowest level. Then again, technically most of them were no longer mortals.

Each of them emanated mist produced by utilizing the Misty Breath and Rotating Breath in tandem. Combined with the Frozen Presence Art Zhao obtained from Wu Hua and his group's insights into the demonic cultivators' mist formation, they had the perfect ambush strategy.

Zhao had decisively opened his vault of treasures and techniques to the masses, handing out spirit stones by the dozens. Such a practice was unsustainable over even a month, but it would suffice for their purposes.

Raising a powerhouse was impossible for them, so relying on a number of underpowered Qi Condensation cultivators would have to do. Already their use was readily apparent, as the effects of the Misty Breath was magnified to an impressive level by sheer numbers.

Especially after the improvements Che Fang had grafted onto the techniques, allowing them to mimic a fraction of the disorienting power exerted by the original demonic formation.

Calling out to Tai Yang and Bao Chi, Zhao indicated the village with his chin.

“Take the recruits and search the bodies,” he instructed. When they acknowledged their duty he sent them off, reminding them to make haste to return to their camp.

Despite his unaffected façade, Zhao’s stomach churned.

They had just killed a dozen people.

Bad people, maybe, but still human beings. He knew he would have to deal with his remorse later.

It would be a debt he would carry with him. A debt he was already about to add to.

Che Fang and Zhao took turns carrying their captive back to the nook their group had found deep in the forest.

Hours away from the site of their latest conflict, it hosted a spring that provided fresh water and a rocky wall that broke the occasional gale.

Their approach was met by a solitary bird call. “Not as inconspicuous as first suggested during this time of the year,” Che Fang commented.

Glancing at his companion out of the corner of his eye, Zhao shook his head while rebutting, “Just be glad the sentries on duty spotted us at all.”

Nan Xi walked out from behind a tree to greet them a moment later, watching their prize with undisguised surprise.

“Huh,” she said openly. “Honestly I’m impressed you succeeded. I guess you haven’t gone completely insane yet.”

“High praise from you,” Zhao bantered, allowing himself a thin smile at her congratulations.

“Is everything ready?” he inquired as the trio walked further into the encampment, if it could be called that.

Their tents had been augmented with chopped trees, moss, and stones to simultaneously help camouflage and stretch accommodations. Hosting such a large mortal population was one of their greatest challenges.

A shadow passed over the girl from the Spiritual Art Pavilion and she stopped in her tracks, her jaw working itself before Nan Xi managed to control herself.

“It is,” Nan Xi confirmed.

When Zhao looked back at her with a raised eyebrow, she scrunched her face.

“You should be careful,” she advised, “with what you're about to do. That boy, Gu Hong, is so young, and he really looks up to you... don’t lead him down a dark path.”

Zhao digested her words before replying, “I appreciate your concern, however I’m not sure I have much choice.”

Without waiting for the cliché ‘there’s always a choice’, he hurried forward with the ever unflappable Che Fang.

Zhao’s much larger tent was pitched in the crux of the rockface where two natural stone walls intersected, outside of which Gu Hong stood, hunched against the wall.

“Welcome back,” he greeted through a split lip while taking his turn to consider the Yellow Autumn disciple they had brought back.

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Instinctively, Zhao reached forward towards Gu Hong, towards the ugly purple bruise that swelled around the boy’s right eye, before he stopped himself. Wrapping his palm into a fist, Zhao instead lightly knocked the youth's shoulder with a nod. “Thank you.”

He pushed aside the entrance flap and stepped inside the tent to find Ming Fe staring vacantly at a needle with wet eyes.

“Is there a problem?” Zhao asked, with genuine concern in his voice. Nan Xi’s words flitted through his head, but he once again disregarded them.

“No,” the healer whispered, setting down the implement on a shaky wooden table they had confiscated from a nearby abandoned village.

She hovered her hands over the materials she had fastidiously prepared at his request.

“Everything is in order,” she added, much more confidently. Zhao couldn’t tell if it was forced or not.

He met the steady gaze of the girl whose skills he had twisted.

“Would you like to leave?” he offered, indicating the outside world.

Ming Fe seemed to consider escape for a moment before shaking her head. The unspoken answer was apparent when she looked back at Zhao with a nascent daring in her eyes.

Che Fang secured their nameless prisoner to the rickety chair in the center of the tent. He pulled a frayed line of sable fabric from a pocket and tied it over the prisoner’s face.

Zhao repeated the word thrice; she was a prisoner.

He felt dissociated from his body.

Even more, he felt like trying to dissociate the humanity of the woman before him with that single word: prisoner.

A bucket of water sat in the corner in a rusty bucket, ready for use.

“Wake the prisoner,” Zhao commanded through grit teeth.

Ming Fe held up a vial to the restrained girl’s petite nose and uncorked it delicately, wobbling it to help spread the scent.

With a nod at Che Fang, his accomplice picked up the bucket and dumped the ice cold water on the woman. She woke with a start, wrists and ankles strangled by rope while Zhao held a blade up to her neck, causing her to flinch away.

“Name?” he intoned dryly, projecting a psychopathic image as best he could.

“S-S-Shu Chiu!” the disciple stuttered as if a plea for her life.

As Shu Chiu gave her name, it all suddenly felt so real for Zhao.

No longer was torture a theoretical debate in a classroom. This wasn’t the trolly problem or the ticking time bomb, though perhaps it resembled the latter more closely than he would have liked.

He wasn’t even sure what he was willing to do to Shu Chiu for information, nor did he want to find out.

So Zhao would try to be honest with her, give her a chance before forsaking the morals drilled into him so thoroughly in his previous life.

“I sit here conflicted,” he began, withdrawing the knife from her damp skin to scrutinize it as if it held the answer he sought.

Instead he only saw himself reflected in the metal’s depths. Zhao didn’t really recognize the face that watched him.

Zhao broke away from the blade to look at Shu Chiu.

“I need information you have,” he rasped, willing his desperation into the word. “You have committed atrocities. I believe, morally, you deserve punishment.”

The implication beckoned.

“But the things I’m contemplating doing to you…” Zhao trailed off before picking back up, “I don’t know if anyone deserves them.”

A rattling echoed in the crowded space as the three Misty Cradle disciples loomed over their prisoner. He realized that it was Shu Chiu’s teeth as she shivered horribly in the biting chill.

“I made my healer grind a paralytic, mix various excruciating poisons, and boil disinfectant for the wounds I may inflict upon you.” As Zhao said so, Ming Fe closed her eyes in acknowledgement.

“But you know,” Zhao scoffed, doing his best to sound affronted, “Everyone is familiar with the common and, frankly, unimaginative approach. I promise you I know more than that."

"I have no doubt I could break you down into nothing,” he added as an afterthought accompanied by the wriggling of Qi in his brain.

His voice became sharp. The stress was getting to Zhao.

It wasn’t just the torture, but the guerilla warfare, the constant threat of death, and the incessant torment of the Myriad Voices art. Qi cycled through its motions out of habit, seeking relief. None came.

“Don’t make me do this to you,” Zhao begged.

The entrance flap of the tent shifted, and he caught sight of Gu Hong staring into the darkness through a slit of light. Zhao saw his face, mangled from one of their many brawls with the invading cultivators, and wondered how much longer the youth’s luck would last in the face of the real world.

It was so much easier to believe the world was like a novel, merely a story he found himself in. But for Zhao, it was bleak reality.

If it became just as real for Gu Hong, if his divine favor wore off, how long would it take before he was just another one of the boys that fell face first into the snow, never to stand back up.

Zhao licked his lips, contemplating his charge.

He cupped the prisoner’s chin with white knuckles, leaning into her covered face as if the proximity could convey his distress. “This is not who I am. Loyalty may be everything in this world, but we all know it can be misplaced.”

He was practically raving by the end of the sentence, fervor having slipped into Zhao’s words. “Your sect is terrorizing mortals under my protection. Killing my people. Make a choice: the side of good or evil.”

Shu Chiu was bawling silently under the cloth hiding her. Full lips trembled, opening and closing a number of times.

Zhao reached forward and wrapped his hand behind Shu Chui’s head forcefully, jerking her forward and leaning in close enough that he could feel the prisoner’s breath against his neck. All in the hopes of hearing anything.

A whisper. A murmur.

Yet no utterance was made.

Capitulating to the futility of it all, Zhao reached past his prisoner to pluck a needle from the array of prepared implements.

He was about to direct Gu Hong to fetch more water from outside when he heard it. A susurrate only audible to those searching for it.

Two words: You’re right.

Zhao stilled, setting the implement of pain back upon its tray delicately. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

He wanted to thank Shu Chiu, tell her that she’d made the right decision.

The truth was that her confession, though early enough to save her, hadn’t spared Zhao from making a choice he would forever regret.

With a flick of his chin, Zhao had Che Fang take control of the conversation. He was in no mood to perform an interrogation after coming so close to carrying out the practice's perverse cousin.

A trembling hand placed itself against Zhao’s chest as he tried to leave the tent, Ming Fe regarding him from her place near the entrance. For a second it appeared she would share words of comfort, until they withered in her throat.

Not giving Ming Fe a chance to gather herself, he pushed out into the twilight.

Gu Hong was gone.

If nothing else, he had an answer to the question he had refused to ask himself. Ultimately, Zhao was no different from those he stood against.