"In this world, there are only three kinds of men: those who die young, those who go mad, and those who die old having lost everything. Me? I thought I belonged to the third category. Until that cursed day when I crossed paths with that man."
---
The mud beneath my feet had that peculiar brownish tint it only takes on after being mixed with blood for several days. The acrid stench of death hung in the damp air, and the crows above croaked in satisfaction.
Another battle, another massacre.
My name is Zhang Wei.
Thirty-two years old, veteran of more wars than I can count, fourth-stage cultivator of the Internal Cultivation Realm—just enough not to die with the first sword strike, not enough to matter. In this rotten world, surviving this long is already a miracle.
The Battle of the Bloody Plain was drawing to its end.
The Kingdom of Yan against the Kingdom of Qin, another meaningless territorial dispute over lands both kings had probably never even seen.
We, the mercenaries of the Black Iron Regiment, couldn't care less. Our pay was the same whether Yan or Qin won.
At least, that's what we thought until this morning.
"Wei! Damn it, where are you?" Captain Hu's rough voice rang through the morning fog.
I spat out the metallic taste of blood still lingering in my mouth—a Qin soldier's punch had split my lip two hours earlier—and made my way toward him, stepping over corpses.
"Here, Captain." My voice was tired. Twenty years in this business, and I was sick of it.
Hu was a stocky man with gray hair, a sixth-stage cultivator. A professional, the kind of man unburdened by morality or sentiment. Exactly the kind needed to lead mercenaries.
"We've got a problem." He pointed east. "Scouts report a Qin army heading this way. Five thousand men, led by General Mo Xie himself."
I frowned. Mo Xie was a living legend, a Martial Master Realm cultivator. The kind of man who could split a mountain with his sword.
"So what? We do as usual. Pull back and wait for things to calm down."
"Impossible." Hu shook his head grimly. "Our Yan employers cut off our retreat. They're using us as cannon fodder to slow Mo Xie's advance. We're trapped."
A freezing silence fell between us.
"How many of us are left?"
"Three hundred. Maybe less after this morning's battle."
Three hundred against five thousand, with a Martial Master leading them. It was suicide. My hand clenched unconsciously around my sword hilt. After all these years, I was going to die on this rotten plain, for kings who didn't give a damn whether we lived or not.
"Do the men know?"
"Not yet. But they'll figure it out fast once they see that horde coming."
That was when we heard it. A laugh. Clear, crystalline, almost melodic. Utterly out of place in this charnel field.
We turned as one. About fifty meters away, standing atop a small mound of corpses, was a man I had never seen before.
Tall, slender, dressed in a simple black robe that remained clean despite the surrounding carnage. His black hair fell freely over his shoulders, and even from that distance, I could see the strange gleam in his eyes.
"Who the hell is that lunatic?" Hu muttered.
The stranger descended from his macabre perch. He didn't seem hurried, strolling as if through a garden instead of a battlefield littered with the dead. Once close enough, I got a better look at his face.
He was young, probably no more than twenty-five. Handsome, with refined features that could have belonged to a noble or a disciple of some prestigious sect. But his eyes…
"Greetings, gentlemen," he said in a soft, almost musical voice. "Allow me to introduce myself. Liang Feng, humble wanderer."
Hu and I exchanged a look.
Humble? This man radiated an aura that chilled me to the bone. My survival instincts, honed by decades of violence, screamed that this man was dangerous. Extremely dangerous.
"What do you want?" Hu asked, hand on his sword.
Liang Feng's smile widened. "Oh, I want nothing. I merely observe. This battle is… entertaining. Though I must admit I'm disappointed by the general level of the fighters."
His arrogance made my teeth grind.
"Listen, little master," I spat, "if you're trying to impress us with your lofty airs, it's not working. We've got better things to do."
His gaze turned to me, and a chill ran down my spine.
"Zhang Wei, isn't it?"
I jolted. How the hell did he know my name?
"Thirty-two years old, veteran of the Black Iron Regiment. A diligent cultivator, but without ambition. A man who gave up on his dreams just to survive another day."
Who was this guy?
"You lost your family during the siege of Ping'an, twelve years ago. Your wife and daughter. Since then, you've fought for money, secretly wishing an enemy's blade would release you from this miserable existence."
My fists clenched. "Shut your mouth."
"But you don't have the courage to end it yourself. So you keep going, day after day, battle after battle, waiting for someone else to do it for you."
"I said shut up!" I drew my sword and lunged at him, Qi surging furiously through my meridians.
How dare he? What did he know of my life, to lay it bare and dissect it at will?
I thought I had tempered myself beyond provocation… Twenty years, and it still wasn't enough.
When my blade was inches from his throat, the world blurred.
No—he blurred.
I never even saw him move. One moment I was mid-strike, ready to take his head. The next, I was on my knees in the mud, my sword shattered into three pieces beside me, pain shooting through my right wrist.
"Interesting," he murmured, casually inspecting his nails.
Hu had drawn his sword too, but he didn't dare attack. He understood, as I did, that we were hopelessly outmatched. This man was at least a Qi Master, maybe higher.
"Who… who are you?" I gasped, clutching my wrist.
"I told you. Liang Feng." He bent and picked up a shard of my broken blade, examining it curiously. "Mediocre steel. Much like its owner, I'd say."
The insult should have enraged me, but I was too stunned to react.
"You've got a problem, don't you?" Liang Feng went on, tossing the shard aside. "That army coming. This General Mo Xie. Your employers who abandoned you."
"How do you know all this?" Hu asked tensely.
"I observe. I listen." Liang Feng turned toward the horizon, where Qin banners could now be seen flapping in the morning wind. "Five thousand men. A Martial Master. Against three hundred weary, disheartened mercenaries… an interesting challenge."
"Challenge?" Hu shook his head. "It's a massacre waiting to happen!"
Liang Feng's crystalline laugh rang again. "Massacre? Oh, my dear, you lack imagination."
He turned back to us, and this time his smile was terrifying. "What if I told you there was a way not only to survive today, but to come out of it richer and more powerful than you ever dreamed?"
"I'd say you're insane," I shot back.
"Insane?" He tilted his head. "Perhaps. But the line between madness and genius is so very thin… Sometimes, one must be mad to see what others cannot."
In the distance, a war horn blared. The Qin army was only a few kilometers away. Soon, they would be upon us.
"Well?" Liang Feng asked, eyes gleaming with that dangerous light. "Do you want to die like dogs, or do you want to learn what it truly means to live?"
I looked at Hu. He glanced at the horizon, then at Liang Feng, then back at me. In his eyes, I read the same resignation that had lived in me for years.
We were dead anyway.
"What do you propose?" I asked, my voice rougher than I'd intended.
Liang Feng's smile widened, revealing perfectly white teeth.
"We'll show them what three hundred men can do when they have nothing left to lose."
He lifted his gaze to the gray sky.
"We will carve our names into the history of this world. With blood, with sweat, and with the pure will to defy the fate imposed on us."
It was then, standing on that blood-soaked plain under a leaden sky, that I made the stupidest—and most important—decision of my life.
I chose to follow a madman.
---
"Later, much later, when bards sing our exploits in taverns and mothers use our names to scare their children, they'll ask me why. Why a sensible man like me chose to follow Liang Feng into madness. The answer is simple: because for the first time in twelve years, someone offered me more than a slow death. And sometimes, that's enough."