The venom-stained sleeves of the lead figure shifted. His black, stone-like eyes focused on Qingyan, then flicked to Jiuyou. “Execute him.”
Qingyan’s gaze remained flat, unreadable. Her hand went to the hilt of her twin blades, the Moonlight Shredders, their polished steel glinting even in the dim light. The surrounding cloaked figures watched in silence, their corrupted aura pressing down like damp earth. Jiuyou, swaying, coughed again, the sound ragged. He was spent, his senses struggling against the lingering aftershocks of the Citadel’s fall.
Her primary hilt rasped against scabbard horn. The steel caught the ambient gloom, painting a thin line of false silver across Jiuyou’s chest. His blind eyes, usually veiled by indifference, twitched, a momentary flicker of something akin to hurt. Or was it just exhaustion?
Qingyan’s arm snapped forward. The blade plunged. Not into skin, not into bone, but into the shimmering air inches from Jiuyou’s heart. A sharp hiss rippled through the cordon. The lead man chuckled, turning slightly to address his subordinates. “A quick end for the Maestro,” he rasped. “Perhaps too quick. But loyalty is loyalty, no matter how brutal—”
His words choked off. The dark stones in his sockets jerked. A sudden, sharp gasp tore through the air, but it wasn't from Jiuyou. A faint *shling* echoed, too soft to be the first blade, too close to be ignored. His hands flew to his own throat, clawing at empty air. Dark crimson seeped across his collar, soaking the fabric.
Then, with a wet crunch, the tip of Qingyan’s second dagger broke through his throat from behind. Blood splattered against the startled faces of the nearest cultists. His fingers spasmed, dropped, and his knees folded onto the pulverized stone.
Silence. Thick. Horrific.
The surviving flank stood motionless. They had watched the first blow dive into empty air, and now their captain slumped against the dirt.
Qingyan moved, a blur of motion. Her off-hand blade retracted into its forearm sheath, slick with red, while her right hand swept out in a low, level cut. She spun, a whirlwind of steel and cold intent. One man’s throat parted under the arc. Another tried to summon a protective ward, but cold steel slid beneath his guard, splitting his ribcage.
Her movements were economical, brutal. No wasted effort. Just swift, deadly precision. The illusion array, woven into the dust and fallen petal residue, had held long enough for the kill. The cordon had registered neither the refracted light nor the split second of altered depth. They saw what they expected to see: a double agent proving her allegiance.
Within seconds, four more cloaked bodies hit the ground, staining the crushed reeds. The air, still heavy with the scent of pulverized earth and floral decay, now reeked of fresh death. Qingyan stood amidst the carnage, her breathing even, her eyes fixed on the remaining two disciples who now scrambled backward, terror etched on their faces.
“Run,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion, “and tell Xue Zang what you saw. Tell him the ‘Maestro of the Savage Garden’ has a double agent as a bodyguard.”
The two survivors didn’t need a second invitation. They vanished into the gloom, leaving only the dead behind.
Qingyan locked her blade back into its sheath, then turned to Jiuyou. He stood where he had been, swaying, skin gray and taut. “That was… an illusion,” he rasped, stating the obvious, his voice still hoarse.
“Of course,” Qingyan replied, already moving towards him. She caught him as his legs finally gave out, his weight heavy and dead against her. “Did you think I was actually going to stab you?”
“I wouldn’t have put it past you,” he muttered, his head drooping toward her shoulder. “You have a talent for ruthlessness.”
“It’s a necessary skill in my line of work.” She half-carried, half-dragged him away from the scene, picking her way through the debris. His skin felt clammy under her touch, his internal meridians hollowed out and burning. They needed to find shelter, and quickly.
She found it in a hidden crevice beneath a massive, overturned lotus pad, a space that had miraculously escaped the worst of the impact. The air inside was cool, damp, and smelled of undisturbed earth and faint, sweet rot. She lowered Jiuyou onto a patch of dry moss, his sanxian still clutched in his hand. His chest rose and fell shallowly, his face pale.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, noting the blue contusion over his ribs where wreckage had caught him. “And your forearm is torn open.”
“I’m fine,” he said, pushing her hand away with a weak, defiant gesture. “Just tired.”
“You are not fine. Your channels are guttering and you can barely hold your instrument.” Qingyan ignored his protest, retrieving a small pouch of healing salves and clean cloths from her travel pack. “Stop being so stubborn. Your ‘prickliness’ will kill you one day.”
“It’s kept me alive this long.” He winced as she gently lifted his arm, revealing a deep gash from a jagged piece of crystalized qi. His refusal was pure instinct, a learned defense mechanism, but even he couldn’t deny the sharp pain.
She worked with practiced speed, clearing grime, smoothing a pungent paste over torn flesh, and binding the linen tight. Jiuyou stayed mute, breathing through flared nostrils. When she was done, she sat back, watching him. His blind eyes were closed, his face slack with fatigue.
“I took more than daggers off their captain,” Qingyan said, breaking the silence as she pulled a heavy manuscript from her travel sack. The volume was bound in flaking, dark hide. “Tucked in his inner lining. Xue Zang’s log on the corrupted Heavenly Veins.”
Jiuyou’s eyes snapped open. He reached out, fingertips finding the book. His calloused pads traced the raised occult characters pressed into the hide. The grooves pulsed beneath his skin, vibrating into tactile patterns only his trained touch could parse. His expression grew taut, the lines around his mouth deepening as he began to ‘read’.
The silence stretched, punctuated only by the drip of water from the cavern ceiling. Qingyan watched him, the flickering flame of a small spirit-lamp casting dancing shadows on his face. His brows furrowed deeper with each passing moment, his breathing growing shallow. A tremor ran through his body, not from cold, but from something deeper, more profound.
Then, he stopped. His fingers froze on a particular page, pressing down hard, as if to physically engrave the words into his mind. His face, already pale, seemed to drain of all color, leaving it stark, almost gaunt. His blind gaze was fixed on nothing, yet it held a terrible, desolate understanding.
“The World-Tree Lotus,” he whispered, his voice cracked, “does not run on pure qi.” He tilted his unseeing face toward the cave roof. “It rejects the clean currents of the common Dao. That is why the shoot never broke ground.”
He squeezed the leather binding until his knuckles blanched. “It needs… the corrupted qi. It needs mortal sorrow. It needs the despair that Xue Zang has cultivated in this dying world.” He looked down at his sanxian, his fingers brushing against the dormant seed within its core. A profound anguish settled over him, heavier than any physical wound.
“It feeds on it,” he continued, his voice barely audible, a raw edge to his tone that Qingyan had never heard before. “It thrives on the very thing I was trying to prevent.” He closed his eyes, a single tear tracing a path through the dust on his cheek. He opened them again, and in their blind depths, a spark, cold and fierce, ignited.
He gripped the dormant seed, a silent vow passing between him and the ancient power coiled within. “If heaven demands sorrow,” Qian Jiuyou whispered, his voice gaining a chilling strength, “then I will feed it a god’s despair.”