The Divine Sword Betrayed Me, So I Fed It to the Fire
The last match of the Grand Tournament.
I stood on the platform with my life-bound sword, Shuanghan, in my hand. It should have been facing the enemy with me.
Instead it went through my back and out through my Dantian.
Spiritual energy poured out of the hole like a burst dam. I staggered one step and went down on one knee.
The platform and the stands went dead silent. Then the noise broke, disbelief in every voice.
Across from me, my little junior sister Lin Qingyue smiled prettily, sleeves drifting:
“Eldest Senior Sister. Thank you for going easy.”
Something like triumph crossed her eyes, and I knew exactly what it meant.
The blade spun in the air. Ice-blue light gathered and took shape.
A man in white landed slowly, cold-eyed, cold-browed.
The sword soul has taken human form.
I coughed up blood and forced my head up to look at him:
“Why?”
Shuanghan did not look at me.
He walked straight to Lin Qingyue and put a hand out to steady our junior sister, who looked as though she had been frightened.
“Qingyue. Are you all right?”
His voice was gentle. I had never heard that tone from him.
Lin Qingyue leaned into his arms, her eyes red at the rims:
“Brother Shuanghan! Is Senior Sister going to be angry with me?!”
Only then did Shuanghan turn his head to me. His eyes were flat.
“You are cruel by nature. You fight for the joy of it.”
“This one strike is to make you understand that the path of cultivation is not about winning.”
“Qingyue’s talent far exceeds yours, and yet she knows how to overcome hardness with softness. You should learn from her.”
I almost laughed. What came out was more blood.
Cruel?
Fond of fighting?
I joined the Tianyan Sect at five. For a hundred years I went into death for that sect and came back out. One hundred and seventy-three A-rank missions. Twenty-one old wounds on my body, every one of them taken protecting my fellow disciples.
And now my own life-bound sword says I love to fight?
Below the platform, the crowd had already erupted:
“The little junior sister won!”
“The Eldest Senior Sister got bitten by her own sword. The Heavenly Dao is not blind!”
“Senior Sister Qingyue is the one Destiny really chose!”
“Even the Shuanghan sword soul chose Senior Sister Qingyue. What does that tell you? Her virtue does not match her station!”
Cheers and congratulations rolled over me like a tide.
The junior brothers and sisters I had sheltered and taught crowded around Lin Qingyue to cheer for her.
Several elders nodded, smiling.
Meanwhile the hole in my Dantian was eating my cultivation base and my life, one thread at a time.
Before the last of my awareness went out, I fixed my eyes on Shuanghan:
“You will regret this.”
I woke in my own room.
A room, if you could call it that. It was a plain stone cell on the back mountain.
A stone bed, a wooden table, one straw mat. Nothing else.
If no one told you, you would never guess this was the room of the Tianyan Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister.
I struggled upright. The pain in my Dantian went off like a white flash behind my eyes.
A life-bound sword turning on its master is one of the worst wounds a cultivator can take.
The sword is tied to its master by heart’s blood. When the sword soul betrays you, the damage is close to having your Dao Foundation smashed.
My hands shook as I untied the Qiankun Pouch at my waist and emptied it.
Three Mid-Grade Spirit Stones. Middle grade, every one of them. Twelve Low-Grade Spirit Stones, a few spare sect robes, one sword manual.
I turned the pouch inside out.
In the innermost pocket my fingers found one round medicinal pill.
The lowest grade there is. A Blood-Stanching Pill.
Not even ranked. A pill from the Mortal World, the kind of thing sellswords in the Martial World use.
I stared at it for a long time. Then I put it in my mouth and let the bitterness spread across my tongue.
Cross-legged. Breath in, breath out.
The dual ice-fire spiritual energy crawled through my damaged meridians. Every circuit tore something. I clenched my teeth and let cold sweat soak through my robes.
I closed my eyes, and the past came in like a tide.
The year I was five, a demonic cultivator passed through our village and killed all one hundred and seventy-three people in it.
I blacked out.
When I woke, my Honored Master had already carried me back to the Tianyan Sect.
He said to me:
“From now on, this is your home.”
I had an Ice-Fire Dual Spirit Root.
Ice and fire cancel each other.
That made cultivation ten times harder than a Single Spirit Root. A hundred times.
I did not care. I worked harder than anyone.
Others cultivated four shichen a day. I did eight.
Others learned one cultivation technique. I learned three.
While they rested, I practiced the sword.
While they talked, I read.
Because I knew I had no way back.
The sect took me in. My Honored Master gave me a second life. The only way I could repay that was to become strong.
In a hundred years I went from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment to Core Formation.
I brute-forced the weakness of a dual spirit root with nothing but hard work.
In a thousand years, I was the first cultivator to reach Golden Core with an ice-fire dual spirit root.
The Tianyan Sect became famous because of me.
I became the Eldest Senior Sister. I taught the junior sisters and junior brothers, handled sect business, went out to train and hunt for treasures.
Whatever fortune I found, I handed to the sect first: spirit herbs, ore veins, cultivation techniques, leads on secret realms.
Because I kept my Honored Master’s words in my head:
“Qinglan. Only a strong sect can protect more people.”
Then Lin Qingyue arrived.
A princess of Great Xia. A Heavenly Spirit Root. The kind of child heaven actually favors.
The day she joined the sect, the whole mountain hung with lanterns and silk. My Honored Master came out of seclusion himself to meet her.
I was glad.
A Heavenly Spirit Root, one in a hundred years. For the sect to gain someone like that was a stroke of enormous luck.
I wrote out everything I had learned about cultivation, bound it into a book, and gave it to her. I gave her a bottle of Marrow Cleansing Pills I had been saving for years.
She took them and smiled sweetly:
“Thank you, Eldest Senior Sister.”
But there was something in her eyes I could not read. Hostility.
At first it was small things.
When I taught sword forms, she would appear and demonstrate something flashier, cleverer, and the disciples would gasp.
I told her it was showy and would cost her in a real fight. Her eyes went red:
“Does Senior Sister think I teach badly?”
The junior sisters and junior brothers swarmed to comfort her and looked at me as if I had done something wrong.
Then it was resources.
Every month, when the sect handed out spirit stones and medicinal pills, she was first in line and took the best.
I said the rules allocated by contribution. She looked wounded:
“Senior Sister, I never lacked any of this in the mortal world. I am only curious. Why must you be so petty about it?”
My Honored Master stepped in:
“Qinglan. Yue’er is young. Give her room.”
The juniors grew more and more casual about my lessons.
When I told them to work harder, they said:
“Eldest Senior Sister, not everyone is as badly gifted as you and has to suffer for it.”
“Senior Sister Qingyue has a Heavenly Spirit Root. Her cultivation base grows while she sleeps.”
They forgot that they themselves had three spirit roots, four at best.
Lin Qingyue’s ease rested on a river of resources flowing out of Great Xia.
So I stopped advising anyone.
I cultivated alone. I took missions alone.
I found Shuanghan in a secret realm.
The blade was scaled with rust, split by cracks, its spiritual qi almost gone.
When I brought it back, everyone laughed at me for picking up trash.
I ignored them. I fed it spiritual energy. I watered it with heart’s blood.
The day the sword soul woke, Shuanghan stepped out in human form. Only a shadow of a body, and the whole sect was shaken.
He was proud. He was cold to me.
I thought that was simply what a divine sword was like. He was an ancient blade; I was only a Golden Core cultivator.
Until he put a sword through me for Lin Qingyue.
Shuanghan pushed the door open, white as snow.
He set a jade bottle on the table. His voice was flat:
“Qingyue is kind. She saw you were hurt and brought out pills she had been saving.”
I looked at the bottle of medicinal pills.
Then at my bare stone cell. The whole thing turned absurd.
My voice came out rough:
“I don’t need it.”
“Ye Qinglan. Qingyue means well. Do not throw kindness back in her face.”
His voice went cold.
Kindness?
I laughed, and blood ran from the corner of my mouth:
“My life-bound sword stabs me in the back at the sect’s Grand Tournament, then tells me it was for my own good.”
“Shuanghan. Is this your idea of kindness?”
His eyes stayed flat.
“You are too rigid. You know what happens to things that cannot bend.”
“Qingyue is gentle and good. You should learn from her.”
“Consider today a lesson.”
I stared at him:
“All these years you drank my blood and ate my spiritual energy. And now you stab me in the back and lecture me from on high!”
“What gives you the right?”
“Because you are a sword-man? Say it out loud. In our tongue it sounds exactly like cheap wretch.”
“A traitor to its master, and you dare howl at me?!”
I raised my hand.
Ice Flame spread from my palm and wrapped the blade in a heartbeat.
“Aagh!”
Shuanghan screamed, and the human form he wore began to twist and go transparent.
Burning a soul is slow slicing, and it goes straight to the soul.
He howled:
“Ye Qinglan! You wouldn’t dare!”
I smiled without any warmth:
“You are my sword. Your contract is still burned into my soul.”
“I am master, you are servant. When the servant betrays the master, I clean my own house. That is the order of things.”
The Ice Flame climbed higher. His screams filled the stone cell.
The door burst open.
Lin Qingyue shouted, horrified:
“How can you do this to Brother Shuanghan!”
A crowd of junior brothers and sisters poured in.
“Eldest Senior Sister! What are you doing!”
“Stop! That is the divine sword Shuanghan!”
“Have you lost your mind!”
Lin Qingyue threw herself into the arms of the disciple in front, crying like pear blossoms in the rain:
“Senior Brother, please save Brother Shuanghan.”
“Senior Sister is going to kill him just because he chose me.”
Every eye in the room turned furious.
I pulled the Ice Flame back. Shuanghan’s shadow dropped to the floor, barely breathing.
“This sword betrayed its master.”
“By the rules, it must be destroyed.”
A junior brother stepped forward:
“Rules are dead. People are alive!”
“Eldest Senior Sister, if the Shuanghan sword soul will not bind to you as master, why force it?”
“Give the divine sword to our little junior sister and let it be a good story.”
“Yes!”
“Shuanghan likes the little junior sister. You cannot blame anyone else, Eldest Senior Sister.”
I laughed:
“A good story?”
“Fine. Since you are so generous, why not give your life-bound treasure to our little junior sister too?”
“Your Qingfeng sword is a High-Grade spirit artifact, a magic treasure in all but name. It would suit her nicely.”
The junior brother’s face changed.
Then I looked around the room:
“And the rest of you. Since you all love giving things away, why not hand everything to her? How about it?”
Their faces went green and white by turns. Nobody answered.
I said, mocking:
“Look at that. When it is your own, suddenly you cannot bear to part with it.”
“Other people’s things cost you nothing to give away. Isn’t that right?”
“Enough.”
An old voice. The Law Enforcement Elder walked in.
He looked at Shuanghan on the floor. Then at me.
“Qinglan. This has gone far enough.”
“The Shuanghan sword soul has chosen its master. Keeping it by force helps no one.”
“Here is my offer. Yield the divine sword to Qingyue, and the sect will compensate you with a High-Grade spirit artifact. Well?”
Someone agreed at once:
“The Elder is right!”
“Eldest Senior Sister, just let the little junior sister have it!”
“In your hands the divine sword is a pearl left to gather dust. Only with her can it show its true power!”
“Eldest Senior Sister, you cannot be this selfish!”
One sentence after another, each of them a knife across my chest.
I looked at the Law Enforcement Elder. I had once searched a mountain for the life-extending spirit herb that kept him alive. I had thought of him as family.
Now he was standing here forcing me.
“Elder. If it were your life-bound sword that betrayed you today, would you let it go this lightly?”
His face stiffened.
I answered my own question:
“You would not.”
“Because the iron law of the cultivation world is this: when a magic treasure betrays its master, the master has the right to dispose of it.”
“So why does the rule change the moment it is my turn?”
I took one deep breath. The Ice Flame caught again.
“I will say this once, in front of everyone.”
“This sword has fed on its master. That makes it a cursed blade. It must be broken, melted, destroyed.”
“Whoever blocks me stands with that curse. And I, Ye Qinglan, will kill them.”
The Ice Flame shot up. The temperature in the cell dropped, and frost thickened across the walls.
Everyone froze.
“Stop!”
At that moment a voice crashed through the room like thunder.
Every thread of spiritual energy went still. Something far stronger pressed my Ice Flame out.
My Honored Master had come out of seclusion.
White robes, whiter than snow. The bearing of an immortal.
A hundred years, and my Honored Master looked exactly as he had when he pulled me out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. The same pity between his brows.
My eyes burned. I almost cried.
“Honored Master…”
Before I could get another word out, Lin Qingyue flung herself into his arms, sobbing:
“Honored Master!”
“You are finally out. Qingyue almost never got to see you again.”
He patted her back gently:
“There, Yue’er. Tell your Honored Master what happened.”
She hiccuped out the words:
“Just because Brother Shuanghan chose to protect me at the Grand Tournament, Senior Sister started to hate me.”
“She wants to burn the divine sword with her Ice Flame.”
“And she humiliated me.”
Her talent for turning black into white was polished to a fine art.
My Honored Master turned to me. His eyes were complicated:
“Qinglan. Is what Qingyue says true?”
I pointed at the wound still seeping through my robes:
“Shuanghan ran me through the Dantian from behind during my match…”
I did not get to finish. Lin Qingyue cut in:
“Senior Sister is lying!”
“She is the one who cannot control the divine sword.”
“Honored Master, you always teach us to follow the Heavenly Dao. Brother Shuanghan chose me. Is that not the Heavenly Dao showing its will?”
The anger went through me and brought up another mouthful of blood.
His brow creased:
“Your Master already knows of this.”
“The Shuanghan sword soul has chosen its master. Keeping it by force helps no one.”
“Do this. Yield the divine sword to Qingyue, and your Master will personally find you a better magic treasure.”
In all of it, he never asked once about my wound.
I stared at him, unable to believe it:
“Honored Master, Shuanghan is my life-bound sword. I fed it my heart’s blood for years before its soul ever woke.”
“Now it betrays me and wounds me, and instead of upholding justice, you want me to hand it to Lin Qingyue?”
Being contradicted did not please him:
“Qinglan. Are you questioning me?!”
“The cultivation world is the strong eating the weak. Where would absolute justice come from?”
“The sword soul does not acknowledge you. That means your fate with it is finished. Forcing it only hurts everyone.”
He was looking at me with the eyes of a man doing this for my own good.
The same eyes he had every time he took her side.
And then, all at once, I understood everything.
The bond between master and disciple, the debt I owed the sect. In that moment it broke, clean through, and nothing was left.
I wiped the blood from my mouth:
“If that is how it is, this disciple has nothing left to say.”
“The sword. I can give it up.”
Lin Qingyue’s eyes lit. The room breathed out.
“On one condition.”
“From this day on, I, Ye Qinglan, cut all ties with the Tianyan Sect. Every kindness, every debt, ends here.”
“I will walk the wide road. You can keep your single-plank bridge.”
The stone cell went silent.
Everyone stared at me.
My Honored Master’s face went iron-grey. For a long moment he could not speak.
Then Lin Qingyue cut in:
“Senior Sister, that is a fine, lofty speech. But the cultivation techniques you practice, the resources you use, the sword forms you learned. Which one of them did the sect not give you?”
“You want to leave? Then give it all back!”
The room agreed with her at once:
“Right! Eldest Senior Sister, if you are leaving the sect, leave behind everything the sect gave you!”
“And your cultivation base! You built it in the Tianyan Sect. Destroy it before you go!”
“Exactly!”
I looked at the ones talking. Every face was someone I had once risked my life to save.
Did it chill me?
Not anymore.
I smiled without it reaching my eyes:
“If we are settling accounts, let us settle them properly.”
I flicked my hand. A Jade Slip flew out, unfolded in the air, and became a screen of light.
Every contribution I had made to the Tianyan Sect in a hundred years was listed there, line after line.
Time, place, item, value. All of it exact.
“If you want to destroy my cultivation base, first return what you owe me.”
The immortal-grade medicinal pills the elders had already swallowed.
The cultivation methods that had benefited every disciple in the hall.
Even the spirit veins already buried under the sect’s foundations.
…
My Honored Master looked at me, and I could not read his eyes.
I saw shock in them. Fury. And one thin thread of something else. Killing intent.
He wanted to kill me.
I stepped back slowly and put my hand on Shuanghan’s hilt.
From outside the door came a burst of exclamations:
“Sect Master, the other sects have come to visit.”
His brow tightened:
“What do they want now?”
“They heard our little junior sister has obtained the divine sword.”
“Elders from every sect have come to offer congratulations.”
Lin Qingyue lit up with joy. My Honored Master’s pupils contracted.
I let go of Shuanghan’s hilt.
Something in my chest loosened too.
Good. Over the years of traveling, I had saved people my own age from other sects.
We had always gotten along.
From the moment I woke and they started pressing me to give Shuanghan to Lin Qingyue, I had been sending them voice transmissions.
Good.
They made it in time.
I looked at my Honored Master, calm:
“The other sects are here now.”
“If I died suddenly, or the divine sword suddenly vanished, what do you think they would make of it?”
And finally he was angry:
“Ye Qinglan!”
“You dare threaten your Master!”
I said coldly:
“This disciple is only staying alive.”
The standoff lasted a long time.
The air in the stone cell turned solid. Nobody breathed.
At last he drew a long breath and closed his eyes:
“Fine.”
So, with every sect watching, I announced that I would leave the Master, and the bond between master and disciple was dissolved.
From then on I had nothing to do with the Tianyan Sect.
Some of the elders looked at me with something like regret.
In the cultivation world, being cast out of a sect means standing against it.
No sect would take you in unless it wanted a feud.
The sects in attendance could hardly invite me either.
But the ones my own age who had come for me were now the prized talents of their sects.
Every one of them told me to come to them if I ever needed anything.
For the first time in years, I smiled and meant it.
So there were people like this. People I had never lived beside day after day, friends of the proper, distant kind.
And still they knew how to repay a kindness.
So not everyone in the cultivation world was like the Tianyan Sect, biting the hand that fed them.
The Tianyan Sect’s plaque shone in the sun. I had carried that meteorite iron out of a secret realm myself.
For three hundred years I had called this place home.
Now I was leaving.
“Senior Sister!”
A shout came from behind me.
I turned. A few junior sisters and junior brothers who had always been decent had run after me, eyes red.
“Senior Sister, I’m sorry…”
“Senior Sister, take care…”
I looked at them, said nothing, and turned to keep walking.
“Ye Qinglan!”
Another voice. Shuanghan.
He stepped out in human form. Pale, but his eyes were as proud as ever.
“It is not too late to regret this.”
“Apologize to Qingyue. Admit your fault to our Honored Master. You can still be the Eldest Senior Sister of the Tianyan Sect.”
“Otherwise you walk out of here and you are nothing.”
I stopped and looked back at him.
Sunlight fell on his white robes, on his handsome face, on the easy superiority in his eyes.
I asked quietly:
“Shuanghan.”
“In three hundred years, did I ever treat you badly?”
He blinked.
“I treated you like my own hands and feet. I thought of you as an ally.”
“I made your name famous in my hand.”
“And you put a sword through my back, then told me I was cruel and quarrelsome and needed a lesson.”
I walked up to him. Close, very close, close enough to see myself in his eyes, a wreck.
I said it one word at a time:
“Remember this!”
“You, Shuanghan, are not worthy of me.”
The Ice Flame rose again. Not to burn this time. To cut the contract, clean through.
And to pull back every thread of spiritual energy I had ever fed into that blade.
Shuanghan screamed. The backlash of a broken contract shook the blade, and its light dimmed.
I threw him down. The blade hit stone with a clean, ringing sound.
To Lin Qingyue, running up, I showed nothing but disgust:
“The sword is yours.”
“The contract is severed. You can bind to a master now.”
“May you two blades make a perfect pair, a matched set of cheap wretches!”
Lin Qingyue threw herself down and gathered Shuanghan up.
He took human form, weak, leaning into her arms:
“Brother Shuanghan, are you all right?”
He shook his head and looked at me. His eyes were complicated:
“Ye Qinglan. Take care of yourself.”
I laughed:
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
I turned and walked away, and I did not look back.
Behind me Lin Qingyue’s voice came, pleased with herself:
“Don’t worry, Senior Sister. I will take good care of Brother Shuanghan.”
“And step by step, I will take your place in the Tianyan Sect. Then your place in the cultivation world…”
I stopped. I looked back at her and snorted:
“Take my place?”
“With that much energy, you would do better to cultivate and reach Ascension early.”
Her face stiffened.
I shook my head. It really was ridiculous, and I laughed out loud.
Still laughing, I rose on the wind and flew toward the horizon.
The Mountain Gate fell away behind me. The sect shrank in my sight until it was only a blur.
Just like that, my home was gone.
I did not cry.
When the heart is dead, the tears do not come.
After I left the Tianyan Sect, they came for me seven times.
The first time it was three Golden Core cultivators, announcing that they acted for heaven, that I had betrayed my sect and deserved death.
I destroyed their cultivation base and let them live.
I sent them back to carry word: tell whoever came next that Ye Qinglan was not someone to corner.
The second time, five. The third, seven.
By the seventh, an Early-Stage Nascent Soul came. A guest elder of the Tianyan Sect.
He hung in the air above me, arrogant:
“Ye Qinglan. The Sect Lord remembers old ties. Come back and admit your fault, and everything is forgiven.”
I stood on a barren hill, my sleeves snapping in the wind:
“There are no ties left between me and the Tianyan Sect.”
“Then you are a fool.”
The elder shook his head and threw a killing strike at me.
I had no sword. Shuanghan was with Lin Qingyue.
But I had my hands, and three hundred years of instincts hammered out in fights where one of us died.
The dual ice-fire spiritual energy surged. Half of it hardened into an ice shield; the other half became a fire dragon and went straight at him.
I moved like a ghost through the rain of spells, and every strike I threw went for a vital point.
Three hundred exchanges later, the elder fell back, coughing blood.
He stared at me, frightened:
“Your… your cultivation base is only peak Golden Core. How?”
“Because every scrap of my cultivation base was earned on the edge of death.”
“Not like yours, stacked up out of medicinal pills and resources.”
He fled, in a shambles.
I let the act drop, staggered, and went down on one knee.
Fighting a Nascent Soul a whole realm above me had cost me.
Worse, the wound Shuanghan left in my Dantian had never fully closed. Every time I used spiritual energy it tore open again.
At last, at the edge of the Abyss, I ran out. The world went dark and I fell.
Wind screamed past my ears. My whole body turned weightless.
I thought I would die. Strangely, I was calm.
Halfway down, a hot current of air caught me.
Half-conscious, I felt something wrap around me and lower me to the bottom of the Abyss.
When I woke again, I was lying on red rock.
I sat up. The damage was better than I expected.
Something gentle had settled the wound. It still hurt, but at least it had stopped getting worse.
Then I saw the ancient sword.
It stood beside me, driven into the rock. Black-red from end to end, and its shape defied description.
It was hideous. It looked like an apprentice’s first failed attempt at a forge.
A child’s voice spoke up out of nowhere:
“What are you staring at?”
“Never seen a handsome man before?”
I jumped and looked around. Nobody.
The voice got impatient:
“Down here! Down here!”
I looked down at the ugly sword:
“You can talk?”
“Obviously!”
The sword quivered:
“Your Daddy is the finest divine sword under heaven. So what if I talk? I sing, too. Want to hear?”
I had no words.
The sword seemed hurt:
“I save your life and this is the thanks I get?”
I stopped short.
This ugly thing had saved me?
“Thank you. For saving me.”
Its tone eased:
“I am Chixiao. Chi, as in crimson. Xiao, as in the highest sky.”
“Remember it. Drop my name out there and nobody will dare touch you.”
Chixiao. A name with weight to it.
It simply did not fit the cute little voice, or the ugly body.
He was quick:
“Let me tell you something. This is me returned to the true form!”
“All those pretty, flashy swords are for show. Your Daddy is solid goods!”
“I have existed since Pangu split heaven from earth. I grew my own sword spirit. There is one of me in the world!”
He was off boasting again, but I caught the important part.
“You have existed since Pangu split heaven from earth?”
He said, smug:
“Your Daddy is the first sword under heaven. When the world was split open, Lord Pangu used me to cut the chaos apart!”
“After that, Nüwa patching the sky, Yu taming the floods. Which great deed happened without me?”
“Then I took a bit of damage and slept for a few years.”
A few years?
Looking at the wear on it, more like a few tens of thousands.
Small wonder it was this ugly.
The first sword under heaven.
It certainly had the look of a thing returned to its true form.
I laughed. This time I meant it.
The blade rocked:
“Do you want to form a contract with me?”
I blinked:
“A contract?”
As if it were obvious:
“Of course!”
“I slept here for tens of thousands of years, and you drop in and wake me up.”
“And I saved your life. Is that not the biggest fate in the world?!”
For some reason it gave me the feeling of a huckster at a country fair, hawking miracle pills.
I was quiet for a long time:
“After we are bound, will you betray me?”
He exploded:
“Who do you take me for?!”
“Even animals do not betray their own.”
Before he finished, he flew up and drew his tip across my finger.
A drop of blood fell on the blade and vanished into it.
Light shot up from the contract. Something ancient and strong tied me to Chixiao.
I felt his anger, his pride, the loneliness of tens of thousands of years, and his complete, unguarded acceptance of me.
His child’s voice sounded in my Sea of Consciousness:
“From now on, we are never apart.”
I did not know whether to laugh or cry, but warmth spread through my chest.
A hundred years. It was the first time anyone had chosen me that firmly.
I said softly:
“Chixiao. I will be in your care.”
Cute voice aside, Chixiao was a fine teacher.
Under his direction I began to heal.
Spiritual energy was thin at the bottom of the Abyss, but Chixiao pulled earth-core fire from somewhere and condensed frost out of his sword qi, and built me the perfect place to cultivate an ice-fire dual spirit root.
The wound closed slowly. My cultivation base came back, steady.
What surprised me more: after the contract with Chixiao, my understanding of the sword Dao leapt.
He was the first sword under heaven for a reason. A few careless pointers and the fog in my head lifted.
My cultivation made its breakthrough to Early-Stage Nascent Soul.
Three years went by like a snap of the fingers.
The day I came out, I gripped Chixiao and cut.
Twin dragons of ice and fire shot up, and the rock wall of the Abyss parted cleanly.
He hummed in my hand, thrilled:
“Yes! Now that is more like it!”
I rose on sword flight and flew out of the Abyss.
The world outside had moved on without me.
I asked around. In those three years the Tianyan Sect had grown louder and larger. With Shuanghan’s help Lin Qingyue’s cultivation base had shot up; she had formed her Golden Core and was being called the greatest talent in a thousand years.
And I had become a sect traitor.
I did not care.
I began to wander.
Until, in the Southern Frontier, I caught a demonic cultivator refining a Myriad Soul Banner.
On its surface I saw faces I knew.
My father. My mother. The uncles and aunts who had watched me grow up.
All of them were in that banner, their souls locked in, never to be reborn.
Had my Honored Master not told me they were laid to rest?
I put my foot on the demonic cultivator’s chest:
“Talk. Where did the souls in this banner come from?”
He wept and sniveled:
“Spare me!”
“I collected them over the years. Some from villages I wiped out. Some I bought from other demonic cultivators.”
I pointed at my family’s souls in the banner:
“This village.”
“When. Where.”
He looked. His face went whiter:
“That is the oldest batch. About a hundred years ago, a small mountain village in the Northern Frontier.”
“I had just formed my Golden Core then. I passed through wanting souls for my banner, and I was a step late.”
“By the time I got there, the village had already been wiped out.”
He shook as he spoke:
“It was not me. It was a sword cultivator. White robes, long sword, at least Nascent Soul.”
“I waited until he left, then came out and took what souls were left.”
I stopped breathing:
“Did you see his face?”
“No. He wore a mask. But the robes, the bearing. A Daoist sword cultivator, no question.”
“And when he left, he carried out an unconscious little girl. Five or six, maybe…”
Something went off in my skull.
Something in my head blew apart.
A sword cultivator in white.
A little girl of five.
Every thread pulled into one line, pointing at a truth I could not make myself believe.
My voice came out a rasp:
“You are lying!”
He said, fast:
“I am not! I swear to heaven!”
“If I speak one false word, may my soul scatter.”
I put away the Myriad Soul Banner and drew the souls out carefully. I cleansed them with the Soul-Cleansing Mantra and sent them on.
I watched them rise as flecks of gold light, and finally I cried.
A hundred years, and only now did I learn they had never rested.
I wiped my face:
“I am going back to the Tianyan Sect.”
Chixiao’s child’s voice was furious:
“Your Daddy is coming with you. We butcher every last one of those animals.”
I shook my head:
“No. I want proof. I want the whole world to know what they are.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
Great Xia. The imperial capital.
I dressed as an ordinary rogue cultivator, pulled on a bamboo hat, and walked in with the crowd.
Lin Qingyue was practicing in a courtyard. Shuanghan turned to streaks of cold light in her hands. Flashy sword work, all surface.
My Honored Master’s voice came:
“Qingyue. Focus.”
She sheathed the blade and threw herself into his arms, wheedling:
“Daddy!”
“This sword form is so hard. I don’t want to practice anymore.”
He patted her head, doting:
“You have formed your Golden Core. You should be consolidating your cultivation base.”
“Otherwise how will you run the Tianyan Sect one day?”
She pouted:
“With Daddy here, what is there to be afraid of?”
“Besides, my Heavenly Spirit Root is the best spirit root under heaven. Even if I don’t cultivate, my cultivation base grows on its own.”
He smiled and said nothing.
But I noticed a shadow of worry in his eyes.
Then Lin Qingyue lowered her voice:
“Is that Ye Qinglan really dead? Three years and not a word. It does not sit right with me.”
He said, flat:
“Her Dantian is ruined and the sect is hunting her. She will not last long.”
“And even alive, what waves can a cripple make?”
She laughed, pleased:
“So what if she had a Peak-Grade Heavenly Spirit Root?!”
“Her Heavenly Spirit Root is in me now, and it serves me very well.”
“Daddy was so clever, finding out early that she carried a Peak-Grade Heavenly Spirit Root.”
“Wiping out her whole village and moving her spirit root into me.”
“So I never have to work, and my cultivation base just climbs.”
He was pleased with himself:
“Naturally. You are the daughter of Lin Wuya. Of course you stand above everyone.”
“Every other person is only a stepping stone on your road.”
I listened. My hand closed inside my sleeve, nails biting into my palm.
Then I slipped away.
A month later, a secret realm opened.
The great sects gathered in Great Xia.
The emperor of Great Xia held a banquet for the Daoist sects.
The hall could not have been livelier.
Three rounds in, when the room was warm, I kicked a demonic cultivator through the doors of the great hall:
“Lin Wuya. To hunt me down, you really will use anything.”
“Even demonic cultivators take your orders.”
“You are a capable man.”
Dead silence.
Every face turned to me.
Lin Qingyue knocked over her cup.
Lin Wuya came to his feet and forced his face calm:
“Qinglan. You have left the sect. Why are you here today?”
“If you want to come back, your Master can…”
“Come back?”
I laughed:
“Back where? Back to the place that slaughtered my family, took my spirit root, and raised me as a slave?”
The hall erupted.
Uproar from every table.
Lin Wuya barked:
“Ye Qinglan! What nonsense is this!”
“Your Master saved your life, raised you, taught you to cultivate, and this is how you slander me!”
Someone could not hold back:
“Little Friend, your Honored Master saved your life and raised you. Why are you pressing him so hard?”
“No wonder she was expelled from the sect. An ungrateful wolf, this one.”
…
With the room behind him, Lin Wuya drew himself up, contempt in his eyes:
“You are as full of lies as ever…”
The next second a Memory Stone cut him off.
On the image, the conversation between Lin Qingyue and Lin Wuya played back through the hall, word for word.
Every sentence landed like thunder.
The faces of every delegation changed.
A white-haired elder asked, heavy:
“Sect Lord Lin.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
Lin Wuya’s face went iron:
“Forged! All of it forged!”
“Ye Qinglan, to take revenge on your Master you would sink to this!”
“Is that so?”
I brought out the other thing. The Myriad Soul Banner.
I opened it. The residue of souls still clung to the cloth.
I pushed spiritual energy into it, and a fragment of a hundred years ago rose out of the banner.
A sword cultivator in white, cutting down a village. Pulling the spirit root out of a little girl. Then carrying the unconscious child away.
The face was not clear. But the build, the sword work, the feel of him…
“That is Sect Lord Lin!”
“That little girl… is that Ye Qinglan?”
“And the spirit root that was taken… then…”
Every eye in the hall went to Lin Qingyue.
Her face was white as paper. She was shaking:
“It wasn’t me… I didn’t… Daddy, save me…”
Lin Wuya shoved her behind him, his eyes black:
“Ye Qinglan. You think this is enough to pull me down?”
“You think they will believe a traitor over the Sect Lord of the Tianyan Sect?”
He was not wrong.
More than a few faces at the tables turned uncertain.
After all, Lin Wuya was a pillar of the cultivation world, and I was a traitor in quotes.
Then a voice spoke:
“I believe her.”
It was a woman in blue-green. Su Wanqing, Sect Lord of the Qingyun Sect.
She had fought shoulder to shoulder with me more than once. One of the few fellow Daoists I trusted.
“I will vouch for Ye Qinglan’s character.”
“Her contributions to the cultivation world over the years are plain to everyone here.”
“Sect Lord Lin. Three years ago you forced Ye Qinglan to give up her life-bound sword. That was hardly invented out of air, was it?”
Another voice, the young lord of the Xuantian Gate:
“Count me in.”
“Senior Sister Ye saved my life. I know exactly what kind of person she is.”
…
“I believe Senior Sister Ye too.”
“Add me.”
One voice after another.
Friends I had made out in the world. People who owed me a kindness.
Lin Wuya’s face got uglier by the second:
“All of you mean to make an enemy of the Tianyan Sect?”
Su Wanqing said, calm:
“Not an enemy of the Tianyan Sect.”
“An enemy of injustice. An enemy of evil.”
“Sect Lord Lin, if your conscience is clear, why not explain it here and now?”
Lin Wuya went quiet.
Then he laughed, and the sound was cold.
“Explain? Fine. I will explain it to you.”
He looked at me, and his eyes were poison:
“That is right. I wiped out your village. I pulled your Heavenly Spirit Root out and put it in my daughter.”
“Because you did not deserve it. A farmer’s daughter, what right did you have to a Heavenly Spirit Root?”
“My daughter is a princess. A holy maiden. She is the one who deserves the best root there is!”
The hall went dead.
Nobody had expected him to admit it.
He sneered:
“I meant to kill you outright. I did not reckon that after the root was cut out of you, an ice-fire dual spirit root would grow in its place.”
“A pity. You were too clever. Too sharp.”
“If you had been a little duller, a little more obedient, I might have let you live.”
“But now you have to die.”
He struck. The pressure of a Spirit Severing cultivator rolled through the hall.
No wonder he had admitted it in front of everyone.
His cultivation base was among the highest in the entire cultivation world.
Everyone was driven back. I stayed where I was.
I did not buckle under the realm suppression as he wanted.
Chixiao came out of the sheath.
Black-red sword light shot up, and that ancient, overbearing sword qi blew his pressure apart.
Chixiao revealed himself. The blade hummed, and the whole palace shook.
“The divine sword Chixiao?!”
“The first sword under heaven, from the legends?!”
“It has bound to Ye Qinglan as its master!”
Through the uproar, Lin Wuya’s face finally changed.
“Chixiao. How is that possible?!”
I raised the blade. Dual ice-fire spiritual energy braided along it:
“Nothing is impossible.”
“Lin Wuya. A hundred years of debt. Today it gets settled.”
The fight broke.
Spirit Severing against Nascent Soul should have been a flattening.
But I had Chixiao, three years of bitter training in the Abyss, and hate enough to fill my chest.
Ice-fire sword qi became twin dragons and crashed against Lin Wuya’s Shuanghan.
Every clash turned the sky and shook the palace down.
Three hundred exchanges. No winner.
Five hundred, and I began to lose ground. The gap in realm could not be closed forever.
He said, cold:
“Qinglan. Give it up.”
“Kneel and admit fault, and I may leave your body whole.”
I laughed, wild and free.
“Chixiao!”
“Lend me your strength.”
Red light flooded the blade. Ancient power poured into me.
My cultivation base surged. Middle-Stage Nascent Soul. Late Stage. Peak.
Half a step into Spirit Severing!
“Impossible!”
Lin Wuya fell back, terrified.
I said, one word at a time:
“Because justice is always stronger than evil!”
The last strike.
Ice and fire fused into one light, the light of undivided chaos.
That strike was the splitting of heaven from earth. It held the first principle of the universe.
Lin Wuya’s sword shattered.
Its sword soul screamed and came apart.
The strike went through Lin Wuya’s throat.
His eyes went wide. He looked at me without believing it, then folded down, his soul gone out.
It was over.
A hundred years of revenge, finally paid.
I put up the blade and turned to Lin Qingyue.
She was on the floor, shaking, tears and snot running:
“Don’t, don’t kill me, Senior Sister. I was wrong. I really was wrong.”
“Daddy made me. I didn’t want to.”
I walked over and crouched in front of her:
“My spirit root. Time to give it back.”
“No!”
She screamed.
Shuanghan came out of the sheath to help her.
Chixiao pressed him down until he could not move.
“A fake divine sword, and you show off your axe before your Daddy?”
The voice was still that cute child’s voice. It still crushed Shuanghan flat.
I gave her no chance to resist.
My hand went to her Dantian, spiritual energy poured in, and I pulled the root out by force.
The instant the Heavenly Spirit Root left her body, Lin Qingyue screamed, her cultivation base collapsed, and she went limp as wet clay.
I held the root in my palm. Pure. Powerful. Mine to begin with.
Then I looked at one person among the guests.
A woman in white, in a wheelchair. Su Ruoxue, former Holy Maiden of the Qingyun Sect.
Ten years ago she had gone to her death against a demonic cultivator to protect ordinary people, blown her own spirit root apart, and been a cripple ever since.
I owed her a debt. She had saved my life once.
I went to her:
“Senior Su. This spirit root. It is yours.”
The hall was stunned.
Su Ruoxue stared at me:
“Qinglan. You…”
“You gave yourself for the people of this world, Senior. This root should go to you.”
I cleansed the root with the Soul-Cleansing Mantra and eased it into her.
Light blazed.
Life came back into Su Ruoxue. Her cultivation base returned, her face filled out.
A moment later she stood, eyes wet:
“Qinglan. Thank you…”
I shook my head:
“This Junior should be thanking you, Senior.”
Then I looked at Lin Qingyue on the floor.
She had broken. Laughing and crying at once:
“My spirit root. My name. All gone.”
“Ye Qinglan, may you die badly…”
Then she turned on Shuanghan:
“I thought you were something. You are a counterfeit.”
“Useless. Coward!”
He answered in kind:
“I liked you because of your Heavenly Spirit Root. You are the thief. You are the shameless wretch.”
I stopped paying attention and let the two dogs tear at each other.
I cut Shuanghan off, and destroyed the sword soul.
Before I could speak, someone was already indignant on my behalf:
“That sword betrayed its master. It had to be a cursed blade. This is what it deserved!”
“Exactly!”
The cultivation world has always honored the strong.
And now I was the strong.
As for Lin Qingyue, I did not kill her.
A cripple lives in more pain than a corpse.
I turned to the delegations.
“What happened today ends here.”
“The Tianyan Sect… you deal with it among yourselves.”
I put Chixiao away, rose on the wind, and left the palace.
Behind me: the noise of the sects taking the Tianyan Sect apart, Lin Qingyue’s mad screaming, the beginning of something new.
I did not care about any of it.
The debt of hate was paid. The debt of kindness was repaid.
Time to go.
A hundred years later.
A nameless mountain, deep in a cave residence.
I opened my eyes. Immortal qi curled around me.
A hundred years in seclusion, and my cultivation base had reached the peak of this world.
Thunder rolled overhead. The Ascension Tribulation.
I walked out and gripped Chixiao:
“The last stretch.”
He said, excited:
“Been ready!”
“Your Daddy has been waiting to go home for tens of thousands of years!”
The Heavenly Lightning came down.
I raised the blade to the sky. Twin dragons of ice and fire shot up and met it.
Nine-fold Lightning Tribulation, each wave worse than the last.
I was not afraid.
Because I knew I was not alone.
Chixiao was with me.
The Dao in my heart was with me.
A hundred years of suffering and stubbornness were with me.
When the last bolt fell, I cut with the strongest strike of my life.
The light of it broke the thunderclouds, broke the sky, broke the wall of this world.
Immortal light poured down. A stairway to heaven appeared.
I set my foot on the first step and looked back at the world.
Green hills, running water, the smoke of human lives.
I had hated here. Loved here. Bled here. And let go here.
Now it was time for a new heaven and earth.
“Let’s go, Chixiao.”
“On our way!”
Immortal light closed over me. My body thinned and faded, and I ascended.