Shang soared through the darkening sky, the wind whipping past as he carried the battered group toward the distant mountain that marked the boundary of the hunt. The peak loomed ahead, a jagged silhouette against the fading light.
"We've reached the end of the hunt area," Shang announced, his voice carrying over the rush of air. "That mountain marks the border. We'll get disqualified if we go past it, but we can land on it. It's a high point—we'll see anyone coming from miles away."
Kai, clinging to Shang's other side, nodded with relief. "Alright, that's great. We ca—"
"Hurry up!" Aoyan's voice cut through like a blade, sharp with desperation. "Li is in bad condition!"
She hugged Lin Shu closer to her, his weight a dead, heavy burden against her. Lin Shu's mind was a fog of pain and fading clarity. His thoughts came in fragmented bursts, each one harder to hold onto than the last.
"I've lost too much blood. I'm going to lose consciousness soon. Damn it. I don't want to be at the mercy of these fools. There's almost no reason for them to betray me, except for Shang. Who knows if someone made him a deal? But I'm sure he's smarter than to backstab Yanqi's investment."
Aoyan looked down at him, her face a mixture of guilt and desperate worry. "Li, please hold out a little longer. We're close to safety."
Her thoughts were a storm of self-recrimination. "If I hadn't frozen back there, he wouldn't have told me to leave. He would have been there to help. This is all because of me."
Lin Shu caught her expression from the corner of his failing vision, but he couldn't hold onto the thought. His awareness was slipping, the edges of his sight darkening. The last thing he registered was Aoyan's face, tight with fear, before consciousness abandoned him.
"Li!?" Aoyan's voice rose in panic as she pressed her head against his, feeling no response. "SHANG! KAI! DO SOMETHING!"
Kai didn't hesitate. He twisted in mid-air, one hand still gripping Shang, the other pointing back toward the empty sky. A concentrated burst of black gas and orange flame detonated behind them, the explosion rocketing the group forward with renewed speed. He kept doing it, each blast draining more of his qi, his face growing paler with every repetition until his reserves were completely empty.
Shang pushed himself to his limit as well, his wings beating with desperate power, fatigue carving deep lines into his face. The mountain grew closer, then closer still, until they were hovering just above a flat section of the mountainside, mere meters from solid ground.
Aoyan didn't wait for permission or assistance. She jumped, Lin Shu's weight across her back, and landed hard on the stone, her knees buckling but somehow holding. She lowered him to the ground immediately, pulling his head onto her lap. Her hands trembled as she fumbled for a pill from her ring, pressing it between his lips, then tilting a waterskin to help him swallow.
She started bandaging his wounds with frantic, unsteady movements, but she knew pills and bandages wouldn't be enough. Her hand went to her spatial ring again, and she pulled out a scroll—ancient parchment covered in intricate, flowing characters that seemed to pulse with a soft, healing light.
Shang, collapsed on the ground a few feet away, caught sight of it. His eyes widened. "Is that a healing scroll?" He sat up straighter, genuine surprise in his voice. "Those things are worth a fortune. I heard a single one is at least twenty aether shards."
Aoyan didn't respond. She was already unrolling it, preparing to activate it.
Shang, undeterred by her silence, pressed on with his characteristic lack of shame. "Can I have one? I mean, I'm that guy's brother. If you didn't know, we made a pact and everything."
Kai, who had landed beside them, looked at Shang with utter disbelief. "When the hell did we do that? We never made a pact."
"Yes, we did," Shang insisted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "With actions. When we fought that fallen Rank 2 cultivator. That makes us brothers, doesn't it?"
Kai's face contorted in exasperation. "Firstly, no it doesn't. We did that for a technique for Li. Secondly, how does any of that make us brothers?"
Shang leaned closer to Kai, lowering his voice conspiratorially while Aoyan remained focused on Lin Shu. "Well, that's not the only reason we're brothers and I can't tell you everything here. But i will tell you one thing that you shouldn't say to anyone ever. I feel like you two have hearts of freedom inside you."
Kai stared at him blankly. "What does that even mean?"
Shang refused to elaborate. "I told you, I'm not saying what it is. But I will tell you that I'm sure you two have a heart just like Yu. That's why we're all brothers."
Kai's expression darkened at the name. "Yu? That bastard tried to harm Li. He's not our brother."
Shang waved a dismissive hand. "Hey, he was just trying to win some points. He was never gonna really hurt Li. Probably would have saved him if things got bad." His tone grew more thoughtful. "Also, he doesn't know he has a heart yet. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done that, even for points. So you can't really blame him." A grin spread across his face. "And you said 'our,' so you do admit we're brothers."
Kai opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Arguing with Shang was like arguing with a brick wall—a brick wall that talked nonsense and somehow believed every word of it.
"Will you two shut up and let Li rest?" Aoyan's voice cut through their exchange like a whip. She was staring at them, her expression a mix of exhaustion and irritation.
Shang straightened up, offended. "Hey, don't talk to me like that. The only reason I'm helping you is because of my two brothers right here, so shu—"
Kai's hand clamped over Shang's mouth. "Just ignore him, Aoyan. He's a bit... special."
Aoyan turned back to Lin Shu, unrolling the healing scroll fully. The parchment glowed as she activated it, the characters lifting off the surface and swirling through the air before settling onto Lin Shu's broken body like a blanket of warm light. The effects were immediate and extraordinary—burns began to knit closed, deep gashes sealed themselves, the terrible damage from the lightning and the internal burning from the uncontrolled Infernal Force began to reverse.
If Lin Shu had been conscious to witness it, he would have been pained by not getting such wealth. Twenty aether shards—a fortune that could buy techniques, weapons, years of resources—spent on healing that would have eventually happened naturally over the course of a day with lower ranked pills. But he wasn't conscious so he had no say in the matter, and Aoyan watched the scroll's work with relief.
His breathing stabilized. The worst of his wounds closed. Color began to return to his face.
Aoyan let out a long, shaky breath. Her eyes scanned their surroundings and caught sight of a dark opening in the mountainside not too far away—a small cave that would offer shelter and concealment.
She gathered Lin Shu onto her back again, his weight familiar now, and walked toward the cave. Shang and Kai, still arguing in low voices, followed behind her.
At the cave entrance, she stopped and turned to them. "You two will stay here and watch for anyone coming. I'll tend to Li's wounds inside."
Kai nodded without hesitation. Shang shrugged as if it were no concern of his. They walked back toward the cliff's edge, Shang immediately resuming his non-stop talking while Kai argued with the weary resignation of someone who had accepted his fate.
Inside the cave, Aoyan laid Lin Shu on a small, soft mattress she pulled from her ring. She sat beside him, watching the scroll's remaining light fade as it finished its work. Hours passed. She didn't sleep. She didn't eat. She just watched, ready to tend to any need that might arise.
Then his eyes twitched.
"Li!" The name burst from her with joy as he slowly opened his eyes and pushed himself up.
Lin Shu ignored her completely. His gaze swept the cave, checking for threats. His hand went to his spatial ring, then to Su's ring still on his finger. "Good. Everything is still here."
He looked down at his body, flexing his hands. The damage was almost completely healed. His brow furrowed in suspicion. "This is strange. The damage to my body was extreme. I was burning from the inside because I couldn't release the Infernal Force without injuring myself further. Pills alone shouldn't have healed me this thoroughly." His eyes flicked to Aoyan, who was hovering nearby with food and more pills. "Did she give me something? That would make sense. Yanqi would have given her good supplies."
"You should still rest and eat, Li," Aoyan said, holding out a bowl.
Lin Shu continued to ignore her. His mind was already working. "I'm pretty sure Han Yi didn't recognize me. But I can't be certain. If she did, Lu Zhenhai will come for me, and if the Empire still has me on their wanted list, it could be even worse. But if I kill her, the only threat is Lu Zhenhai. Yanqi might protect me from one elder. He won't protect me from the Empire." The logic was cold and clear. "The safest option is to kill her. If Yanqi doesn't protect me, I'll hide in the arena until the hunt ends. Lu Zhenhai wouldn't dare attack me there. It's settled. I need to find her as soon as possible."
A spoon touched his lips.
"What—what are you doing?" He looked down to find Aoyan holding the spoon, her expression earnest.
"Well, I figured you might not be able to use your hands yet," she explained. "So I should feed you. This is a prepared meal my master gave me."
Lin Shu pushed the spoon away. "I'm not really hungry right now."
Aoyan's smile faltered, replaced by awkward uncertainty. "Oh. Alright."
"Where are Kai and Shang?"
"They're outside, guarding the place." She brightened slightly, remembering something. "Oh, right! This is the ring Kai picked up." She handed him the spatial ring.
Lin Shu took it, along with Su's ring and every other ring he'd collected during his battles. One by one, he extracted the tokens and transferred their points to his own. The numbers climbed steadily.
"16920 points. I must be in a strong position now."
A thin smile crossed his face as he tried to stand. Pain lanced through his legs, and blood began to seep from wounds that had reopened under the strain.
"Li!" Aoyan was at his side instantly, pressing cloth against the bleeding, trying to stop it. "You shouldn't move! You'll reopen everything!"
Lin Shu's expression tightened with annoyance. "I might lose my position if I don't move quickly. In fact, it's probably already been hours. I might have lost first place already, if I ever had it." He looked down at his wounded legs. "But I can't do anything like this. I'll just have to wait until I'm back to peak condition. I can always take points from others later."
He lay back down, letting Aoyan tend to the bleeding. When she finished, she sat beside him in silence. He glanced at her, and their eyes met. She smiled softly.
He looked away, then back. "When I asked you why you didn't fight her, you said you didn't want to be there. That you didn't want to relive the past." His voice was quiet, clinical. "What happened in the past for you to say that?"
Aoyan's smile faded. She looked away.
Lin Shu reached out, gently turning her face back toward him. "You said you were going to change. That you would try to face your fears and your past. So why not do it now? I'm giving you a chance."
Aoyan swallowed. "I... I will."
He waited.
She took a breath, and the words began to spill out, hesitant at first, then with a raw, painful momentum. "I never had a good relationship with any of my siblings. They either ignored me or hated me outright. One of the reasons was my mother's standing in the clan, and her background. She was just a normal woman from a village of non-cultivators. I heard my father, the Patriarch, took a liking to her, so he took her in. She agreed—not that she had much of a choice, though..."
Her voice faltered at that, but she pushed on. "She wasn't really hated at first. No one seemed to care much about her background, including the other two wives—Su's mother and Kun's mother. Even after she had me, it was fine. It wasn't until years later, when I was tested for my talent, that they started to dislike me for it. Su is a Rank 2 talent. Kun is Rank 3. I looked like a threat to them." She paused. "But they didn't do anything at first. My father still adored my mother."
Another pause, longer this time. "Then... somehow, overnight, he lost all interest in her. He stopped treating her well, stopped giving her time. They noticed. So they started trying their luck with us. At first, it was just other kids messing with me. Then it became ridiculing my mother. Then harassing her. Assigning her tasks she couldn't handle. And while all that was happening, my siblings did different things to me. It started with them messing with me, then beating me up in the mask of training."
Lin Shu listened without interrupting. "Having a good talent in a clan doesn't always mean safety," he thought. "It can also mean you're a danger to the interests of others."
"Did Su or Kun do that as well?" he asked.
Aoyan shook her head. "No. Not at first. Su always ignored me. She stayed away from everyone else, always training, always following her mother. It was the only time I saw her smiling. Kun was the same—I rarely saw him. He always followed his mother too, but he had the complete opposite expression. He never seemed happy or at ease around her. Neither did Kai or Mang."
Lin Shu remained silent, letting her continue.
"Life got really hard for us during that time. I was always alone. My mother was given so many tasks that she almost never had time to see me. My father didn't even care to look at me. I tried to avoid training and lessons to stay away from my siblings. I did that for a long time. My mother knew, but she didn't say anything—she couldn't. But I could endure it. It was hard and scary, but I could do it for her, just like she did everything for me."
She swallowed. "For a while, it worked. My mother got more time, and I got to see her more. I didn't know why at the time, but I'm sure now it's because I wasn't training. I wasn't a sword that could sway their power if I wasn't being sharpened" her eyes pained by that understanding but she quickly then said with a pained smile "but not all of it was bad i was actually pretty close to Su's mother, she even came to me, multiple times, saying she wanted me back in her cultivation classes. She told me I was one of her favorite students. Hearing that genuinely made me happy—so happy, in fact, that it nudged me toward going back. Maybe she would help me. I smiled and thanked her.
Su was standing right beside her, her eyes never leaving mine. I could tell, without a doubt, she didn't like me. Not one bit. But I thought maybe I could change that. Maybe if I tried to befriend her, things would be different.
I had no idea just how wrong I would be."
A bitter note crept into her voice. "during that time and onward, I noticed Su started showing more emotions toward me. Specifically annoyance. Anger. I didn't know why, so I decided to avoid her completely, just in case and put befriending her to the side for now."
"So I went back to training and lessons. I excelled. I became a top student in Su's mother's classes. I even tried befriending Su, but she always ignored me." Her voice dropped. "Then, as if to remind me what would happen if I actually used my talent, my mother was overwhelmed with tasks again. She kept getting injured. She had to stay in bed for weeks sometimes. It didn't feel like she was the wife of the Patriarch anymore. It felt like she was his slave."
Her hands clenched in her lap. "I tried asking Su's mother for help. She said it was out of her reach. And to top it all off, my siblings returned to harassing me. And to make it worse..." Her voice cracked. "Su joined them."
The words stopped. Her eyes watered, and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken horrors.
"Will you speak already?" Lin Shu thought impatiently. "I'm tired of these cut-off sentences. I'm not reading a book. You don't need to leave the story at critical points to keep me interested. Just get it out."
But what he did was different. He shifted closer, his hand rising to rest gently on her head. He ruffled her hair, and a soft, uncharacteristically warm smile crossed his face.
"I understand," he said quietly. "It's painful to talk about. I'll understand if you don't want to continue today. And just like I said, I'm always here. You can tell me tomorrow, or after the hunt. I'll be here. But you have to let it out eventually. You have to move on."
Aoyan's face crumpled. Her resistance broke. "N-no," she stammered, tears spilling over. "I'll tell you everything now. Like you said, I have to let it all out."
Lin Shu nodded, his expression patient, encouraging.
"When Su joined them," Aoyan continued, her voice trembling, "she made my life miserable. To stop me from cultivating. She was much, much worse than all of them. And I felt it—I felt that she had another reason. She didn't do this just because my talent was higher. She didn't seem to care about that to the degree she showed." Her tears flowed freely now. "She did things like forcing me to swallow stones. To eat living snakes and rodents. She sent me on missions to fight bandits alone. I almost died several times. She made me fight higher-ranked beasts, breaking my bones, because if I didn't, she said she'd kill my mother."
The memory surfaced, vivid and suffocating. She was in a forest, beaten and broken on the ground. A small rat lay in the dirt before her. Su stood over her, looking down with cold contempt.
"Eat it."
Her younger self, face streaked with tears, picked up the rat and bit into it. The flesh tore. Blood seeped between her lips. She cried as she chewed. Su grabbed her leg, lifted her, and kicked her in the stomach. Then she pulled her up by the hair.
"You should just know your place," Su hissed. "Stay away from anything relating to cultivation. Or I'll make sure both you and your mother end up dead in a ditch, alongside the corpses of animals. Right where you belong."
She dropped Aoyan, who fell to the ground and immediately began vomiting. Su gave her one last look of pure hatred before walking away.
Aoyan blinked, the memory fading, leaving her back in the cave with Lin Shu. She was shaking.
Lin Shu's eyebrows had risen slightly during her pause. He had expected beatings, stabbings—the usual cruelty of cultivators. But rocks. Rodents. Snakes. That was something else. "Well," he thought, "I've left people to be eaten alive by beasts. I've used others as hostages. So it's nothing new, I suppose. It's not even rare. It's common, if you think about it. Everyone here is terrible to a certain degree. We just compare who's less terrible."
Aoyan continued, her voice hollow. "They kept tormenting me for a long time. No one aided me. My mother didn't know—I didn't want them to hurt her. The elders ignored me. I even tried to tell my father, but he didn't even glance at me. It was like he didn't care. Fighting back wasn't an option either. They would have made it worse, and they might have hurt my mother. So I couldn't do anything except endure. And evade. And stop training."
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Some of them stopped eventually. But Su and anyone who listened to her continued. Even after I stopped training and attending lessons. Su didn't look like she was going to stop. She forced me to go on a mission with her where I had to fight a demonic cultivator alone while she watched. I almost died. But that wasn't enough. On the way back, she made me fight everything we encountered. And to finish the day..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "She forced me to swallow a smoldering ember. Or else she'd kill my mother, who was in a coma at the time from an injury. The clan was giving her just enough healing to stay alive, but not enough to heal."
Lin Shu's expression didn't chang.
"I didn't want my mother to die. So I forced myself to swallow it." She shuddered. "I felt like I was dying. Su kicked me in the face and left without another word. I was there, crying, trying to puke it out. I didn't notice my surroundings until I saw a man standing in front of me. He had a large bottle of something. He looked drunk. He crouched down, put his hand over my mouth—and the ember came out. He threw it away."
"Why did you eat that?" the man had asked, swaying. "You don't look retarded enough to do something like that."
Then he fell on his back.
Aoyan gasped for air. Fire enveloped his hand, and he shot it toward her. She thought she was going to die. But instead, she felt warmth. Her burns and wounds healed.
He stood up and left without another word.
"I later recognized him as an elder in the clan," Aoyan said. "He never really stayed there, so I never saw him enough to know. He was always sleeping in the middle of the road, drunk. But no one dared move him. So I thought he must be strong. I wanted that strength for myself." She laughed bitterly. "But I didn't get it. The torment continued. Yue, Jue, Su. And others like Ran and Weize, who never did anything to me but always stood on Su's side."
Her voice grew distant, drifting into memory again.
"It was night. I was coming back from training Su had forced me to attend. I was bruised and bloodied all over. I noticed a man on the ground with a jug next to him. It was the same man. The one who healed me before."
She wanted to move away—to avoid his bad side. But her body ached so much. She looked at him sleeping and thought, maybe he'll heal me again. She was in too much pain. So she sat on the bench next to him, hoping.
It didn't take long for him to wake. He looked at her, drinking from his bottle.
"You're that girl who ate that ember." Even drunk, his speech was clear. "What do you want?"
She stayed silent.
"Where did you get those wounds? Did you do something stupid again? Jump into a pool of embers this time instead of eating them?"
She tried to speak, but he cut her off.
"Why am I even asking?" He stood, looking down at her. "So what do you want?"
"It hurts," she whispered.
His expression didn't change. Flames wrapped his hand and washed over her, slowly healing her wounds. Then he threw a pill to her and left.
For weeks, the same thing happened. She kept getting wounded in missions and training because of Su. She always looked for him afterward. Sometimes she found him. Sometimes she woke up already healed.
The scene shifted in her mind. She was sleeping on a bed, dark circles under her eyes, her arms covered in bruises and cuts. A man with a bottle walked into her room. He looked at her broken body, at her pained expression even in sleep, and muttered, "Just what are you planning with your daughter, Wuqing?"
His hand wrapped in flames, gently healing her wounds. Her expression eased. He moved to the door.
"Whatever. It's none of my business anyway."
He left.
Morning came. Aoyan woke and realized with shock that she felt no pain. "Wait, how are my wounds all healed?"
She stood, feeling better physically, but the weight in her mind remained. She looked at the sun, sighed, and walked out. "I just have to..." She looked down. "I just have to hold out a little more. I'm sure all this will end soon."
She walked through the clan grounds. Disciples moved away from her like she was a plague. Who could blame them? No one wanted to be associated with someone so thoroughly marked. She sighed and kept walking, her thoughts drifting.
"Why did Father discard Mother like that? He used to always have us around. He didn't even try to listen when I wanted to tell him what they were doing to us..."
The realization hit her like a physical blow, something she had known but never admitted. "He knows. He just doesn't care about us anymore."
Her hands tightened. Her face flushed. Her breathing grew painful, her chest constricting with a grief too deep for tears.
She walked into something solid.
A man in red robes stood before her, a bottle in his hand. His red hair was long and bright, his face aged into his forties or late thirties. He looked at her with a single, uninterested glance.
Aoyan immediately looked down in fear.
He returned to his bottle, ignoring her. She got up and started to walk away slowly. Then she stopped. She turned around.
"I... I'm sorry to bother you," she stammered. "But I just wanted to thank you. For healing me the other days. I know I must have been an annoyance, but I just wanted to thank you. It's been very ha—"
He raised his hand. "That should be enough thanks. Now leave. I have better things to do."
She quickly apologized. "Yes, I'm sorry. I'll be leaving now. Thank you agai—"
He looked at her.
"Oh! I'm sorry. You said it was enough. I didn't mean to anno—"
He sighed. "Just leave." He waved her away.
She nodded frantically and hurried out of his sight.
He took a long gulp from his bottle and looked at the ceiling. "She'd be the same age as this girl by now. Probably look quite the same, too."
His expression twisted into a frown. He drank again.
"Empty?"
He dropped the bottle, pulled another from his ring, and walked away, drinking as he went.