The seventh fist, driven by a disciple with a face like a squashed persimmon, slammed into Tu Mingyu’s gut. He buckled, spraying a mouthful of metallic-tasting rain onto the mud-slicked cobblestones of Serpentskin Alley. His ribs screamed, a chorus of fresh agony joining the old, but his grip on the small, cloth-wrapped vial remained unyielding. It contained the only known antidote for the Whispering Blight, and his friend, Jinxi, lay shivering in a hovel, her breath thin as spider silk. “Give it up, street rat!” snarled a hulking brute named Jiao Han, whose gold-trimmed Crane Sect robes, usually pristine, were now splashed with Tu Mingyu’s blood. “That elixir is meant for proper cultivation, not for a dying gutter snipe. Lord Hujin demands it!” Tu Mingyu coughed, a wet, rattling sound, and then, impossibly, he laughed. It wasn't a sound of mirth, but a raw, grating cackle, fueled by a furnace of pure, unadulterated fury. His eyes, burning with an almost feral light, fixed on Jiao Han. “Lord Hujin can choke on his own silk slippers before I let go of this,” he spat, wiping blood from his chin with the back of a mud-caked hand. “Come on, pretty boys. Is that all the Gilded Crane trains you for? Pounding on a half-starved mongrel?” His taunt, though weak, hit its mark. Jiao Han’s face flushed an ugly shade of puce. “You dare?!” He reared back, his foot arcing in a vicious kick aimed straight at Tu Mingyu’s head. It connected with a sickening crunch. Tu Mingyu’s vision exploded into a kaleidoscope of pain. A stray drop of his blood, flung from his split temple, landed squarely on the dull obsidian bead that hung by a worn leather thong around his neck. Time ceased to exist. The world—the rain, the shouting, Jiao Han’s foot still mid-recoil—froze into a petrified tableau. Tu Mingyu felt a violent, inward tug, a dizzying sensation of being unmoored from reality. His consciousness spiraled through a kaleidoscopic void, then abruptly settled in a space of shimmering, silver light that stretched into infinity. Before him, coalescing from the starlight, stood a figure of impossible grandeur. He was tall and regal, clad in robes of midnight velvet that seemed to absorb the light around them. His heavy, sorrowful gaze held the weariness of forgotten eras. A sigh, dry like parchment, escaped his lips. “Ah, young one,” the figure intoned, his voice a melodic resonance that seemed to echo through Tu Mingyu’s very soul. “The blood-seal broken, the Anchor of Ages stirred. I am Lord Cangyan, a whisper of a dying epoch, bound by primeval oath to this relic. Your fury, your righteous defiance, has awakened me at last. Destiny has chosen you, boy, to wield the legendary arts of the Astral Blade, to exact vengeance upon those who wronged me, to—” “Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Tu Mingyu interrupted, holding up a phantom hand. “You’re Lord… Cyan-who-now? And I’m supposed to do what, exactly? Look, Jinxi needs this medicine. Can we speed this up? What’s the fastest way out of here?” Lord Cangyan blinked, stiffening as his brow furrowed. He had been mid-poetic monologue about the cosmic scales of justice and the inevitable return of his ancestral vengeance. The ethereal realm seemed to dim slightly in response to his shock. “Speed… this up? Boy, do you comprehend the gravitas of this moment? You stand within the Maelstrom of Chronos, where one breath outside is an age within! My wisdom, my techniques, forged over millennia, I offer them freely! I shall impart the First Form of the Nine Heavens Constellation Sword Art, a peerless technique that can sunder mountains and—” “Yeah, yeah, sunder mountains,” Tu Mingyu waved dismissively, his phantom form restless. “Listen, can you just show me one really good move? Something that hits hard and fast. I don’t need nine heavens, I just need to get these glorified thugs off my back so I can save my friend. What’s the simplest, most devastating thing I can learn *right now*?” Lord Cangyan stared, his regal composure visibly fraying. “One… move?” he whispered, as if the concept itself was heresy. “Boy, the celestial arts are a symphony, not a lone note! To master even the rudimentary motions requires years, decades, entire lifetimes of dedicated… fine! You wish for blunt force? You wish for raw, unrefined devastation? Very well!” A surge of silver light condensed into a translucent, shimmering stick in Tu Mingyu’s hand. “This is the Apex Cleave,” Cangyan grumbled, his poetic cadence utterly abandoned. “A focused downward strike. Focus every fiber of your being, every ounce of your spite, into this one motion. Repeat it until it is ingrained into your very soul. Until it is a part of the wind, the rain, the very fabric of existence.” And so, Tu Mingyu did. He ignored the profound wisdom, the tragic backstory, the promises of legendary power. For what felt like an eternity, but which Cangyan later informed him, with a sigh of profound weariness, had been a little over ten years within the Maelstrom, Tu Mingyu practiced the Apex Cleave. Again. And again. The phantom stick became an extension of his will. The subtle shift of weight, the precise angle of the wrist, the explosive release of energy—he honed it, stripping away every superfluous movement, every wasted breath, until it was nothing but pure, unadulterated destructive intent. Lord Cangyan, who had started with grand, philosophical pronouncements, had long since devolved into exasperated mutters, then resigned silence, then finally, just a constant, low, mournful hum. “He’s going to use a legendary sword art with a literal stick,” he’d lamented to himself more than once. “The shame. The utter, unmitigated shame.” Then, with a sudden crackle of returning sensation, Tu Mingyu was back. The rain still streaked down, Jiao Han’s foot still hung in the air, a fraction of an inch from his face. Time, which had stretched for a decade, had barely skipped a beat. “You… you dare?!” Jiao Han’s voice was mid-snarl. But Tu Mingyu didn’t hear it. His eyes, now sharper than tempered steel, scanned the muddy ground. There. A gnarled, dead branch, half-buried in the muck, discarded from some forgotten tree. He snatched it up, the rough bark feeling strangely comfortable in his hand. Jiao Han’s foot descended. Tu Mingyu moved. It wasn’t a block. It wasn’t a parry. It was the Apex Cleave. The dead branch, now glowing with a faint, silver light that only Tu Mingyu could perceive, arced downward, not at Jiao Han’s foot, but at the empty air beside it. There was no sound of impact, no clang of wood on bone. Instead, a silent, invisible ripple of force exploded outwards. The air itself seemed to scream. Jiao Han, mid-kick, suddenly slammed backward, as if struck by an invisible hammer. He flew over his own lackeys, tumbling end over end, before splashing into a refuse pile with a pathetic whimper. The other two thugs, who had been charging, skidded to a halt, jaws slack and knees shaking. The ground around Tu Mingyu cracked, spiderwebbing outwards from where the twig had passed. He stood there, still gripping the branch, the blood on his face, the rain plastering his hair, a faint, dangerous smile playing on his lips. “Anyone else want a taste of our elite Crane Sect training?” he asked, his voice low, but carrying an unmistakable edge of menace. The lackeys didn’t need to be told twice. Fear, raw and primal, contorted their faces. They turned and fled, tripping over each other in their haste, disappearing into the winding alleyways with terrified shouts. As the last one scrambled away, something small and metallic glinted in the mud where he’d fallen. Tu Mingyu, his earlier agony now a distant memory, casually nudged it with his foot. It was a Zenith Tournament token, intricately carved with the symbol of the Gilded Crane. He picked it up, a thoughtful expression on his face. The annual tournament. The ultimate prize: the Golden Spirit Dew, rumored to cure any ailment. Jinxi would live. And he would finally make every single one of these arrogant cultivators pay. From a shadowed perch atop a nearby roof, Elder Moqiu, his usually benevolent face obscured by the cowl of his dark cloak, watched the scene unfold. A slow, unsettling smile spread across his lips, revealing teeth that seemed a shade too sharp. “A time-dilated core, indeed,” he murmured, a greedy glint in his eyes. “And such raw, untamed power. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

The Time-Dilated Twig