The world reeled around the Flawless Blade.

  The drinking house was too loud. There were too many people. The glowing crystals were too bright. The aroma of the drinks was too sweet and cloying. Everyone was looking at him, pointing, jeering, laughing because he lost a duel, because he lost his sword, because he lost his honor, because he lost his path, because he lost his purpose in life, because he lost… everything.

  It was all too much!

  His whole body felt uncomfortable, as though something tapped his shoulder again and again. He steeled himself and ignored the discomfort, because he was here for a reason, but…

  There was too much!

  The world bled in through the cracks in his core, and he wanted to scream, but he would remain calm, and collected, and… the Flawless Blade would not let them laugh!

  “Stop looking at me,” he said as he drew on the qi leaking from his cracked core. “Stop laughing!”

  Energy flared, and the stone building trembled. Drinking glasses burst. Crystal grapes cracked and fell like ripe fruit. Any murmurs of conversation went deadly quiet.

  He felt a pinch on his shoulder, but he adjusted his robes and stomped forward until the blonde cultivator with the horns backed away from him. She held his jian, but she hadn’t drawn it. Nobody had drawn a weapon on him, for all that they were staring and laughing behind their smiles. He was still a Core Formation cultivator, even if he was damaged, and his power was far more than anyone here could handle!

  “Tell me where he is!” he demanded of the blonde cultivator. “I cut you once, and I’ll cut you again if you don’t tell me.

  The cracks in his core bled energy in erratic pulses. It was so much power that he could barely contain it, and he decided that he wouldn’t even try. With a gesture, he ripped his jian back from the blonde cultivator’s grasp.

  It felt so good to have it back in his hands.

  “Finally,” he said with a sneer. “The thief has returned my blade, now if she could only point me in the direction of…”

  Someone tapped his shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” said the voice that haunted his mind. “You lost the duel, so it’s not your sword anymore.”

  The Flawless Blade’s eyebrow twitched.

  “What?”

  “Also, I think you’re looking for —”

  The Flawless Blade whirled, drawing the jian, and, for a moment, all was right with the world.

  But the second he faced the cultivator who dared to defy him, everything went wrong.

  The Flawless Blade towered over the plain-faced fool, but the man simply looked up at him with the blank expression of a dirt farmer. Where was the colossal figure of his nightmares?

  Was this truly the man who undid his life’s work? Who broke his cultivation? Power flared, and pain shot through his meridians, but he clenched his teeth and held on tight to the handle as his powerful sword intent warped the air around his jian with a thousand invisible blades.

  “You dared to defy me,” he hissed out. “You didn’t even grant me an honorable death, but carried me around like a sack of manure!”

  The plain cultivator shrugged.

  “I don’t think you deserve to die because you lost a duel.”

  “I didn’t lose!” the Flawless Blade screamed. “You cheated!”

  The plain cultivator looked around.

  “Hey, buddy, you’re being really loud, and I think you’re disturbing everyone. Why don’t we calm down? You want a drink?”

  “I don’t want a drink! I want your life!”

  And with that, the Flawless Blade thrust his jian into the plain cultivator’s chest.

  ###

  The sword pierced straight between the gaps in my ribs and into my beating heart with the accuracy of a master surgeon. I looked down at the cold steel as people panicked and screamed around me. Well, some people panicked and screamed. It didn’t escape my notice that quite a few of the patrons were simply leaning forward at their tables, as though they were watching a play that had just gotten to the good part.

  Chen Ai looked at me with wide eyes.

  She’d grabbed her spare jian and drawn it, but her hands were trembling so much the sword couldn’t even hold steady. Either drunk or nerves, but I felt terrible that she was under such stress.

  Some blue-uniformed guards approached, their hands on their own weapons, but from the way they acted, I supposed they were more interested in keeping collateral damage to a minimum rather than interfering with the fight. That, or they knew they were outmatched by the deranged cultivator at the center of the chaos.

  The Flawless Cultivator glared at me like a man possessed.

  His fingers curled, and his chest heaved with every breath. His hair was stuck to his face with feverish sweat, and his skin was deathly pale. Traces of his handsomeness remained, but it was twisted and sallow.

  He really didn’t look like he was doing good.

  His sword remained inside me.

  Which, when I think about it, is probably what everyone was actually looking at.

  I used my blood control to stop from making a mess, and though his sword pierced my heart, I just sort of left it there. Once I stopped the organ from beating, it didn’t really cause much damage. Super sharp swords for the win.

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  To be honest, I was having a little internal dilemma: did I pull out the sword? Or leave it in? Which one was the least suspicious?

  I looked around, but remembered that I’d left Cabbagy back at the inn. I could really use some sound, or not-so-sound, advice right about now.

  “Do whatever’s funny!” the table called out.

  “Don’t spill anything,” said one of the glasses that fell from a table and broke. “It’s no fun, trust me on that!”

  “You do you, man,” said one of the booth curtains as a curious patron peeked out from behind.

  I sighed.

  Sometimes, a man has to make up his own mind.

  “Hey, you,” I said to the Flawless Blade.

  ###

  Chen Ai watched with horror as her senior brother stood there with a razor-sharp jian thrust through his chest and out the other side. She knew the blade was thrust between his ribs and through his heart.

  For a Qi Condensing cultivator, that was a lethal blow. Even one in the 9th Stage, though she wasn’t sure what stage her senior brother was at… no, she was getting distracted, her mind wandering because…

  Her senior brother wasn’t dead.

  He didn’t even look put out.

  Of course, he wouldn’t be. She’d witnessed the duel at the pass, but she’d assumed that required some kind of preparation. Could he really handle surprise attacks like this?

  It must be his bloodline… the one he’d been so secretive about… but she couldn’t even imagine what kind of bloodline could make someone so powerful!

  “What’s all this about?” her senior brother said as he pointed at the sword. “I put you up at an inn, and this is how you repay me?”

  She blinked.

  What?

  He was rebuking the Flawless Blade? What kind of cultivator would respond to such blatant violence so calmly?

  “No!” said the Flawless Blade. “You humiliated me!”

  Her senior brother looked around before stepping closer to the Flawless Blade, so close that the Flawless Blade could pull out his jian if he wished. She could tell that the powerful cultivator wished to do so; his fingers kept twitching, but he resisted.

  And she understood why when she looked at her senior brother’s eyes…

  ###

  The Flawless Blade wanted to grab his sword and rip it out of the plain cultivator’s chest. He wished to do away with grace and tear the blade out through bone and meat and organs. If he could, he would forgo his swordsman’s pride — his shattered pride! — and embrace the role of a crude woodsman, hacking away until the tree fell…

  The jian’s handle was within his grasp. Even if it wasn’t, he still had the power of a 1st Stage Blessed Core Formation cultivator, and he could pull the sword toward him with a flicker of his will. He could level the man with his intent alone!

  But he didn’t.

  Because those eyes…

  The Flawless Blade was staring at those two drab, brown eyes. Two plain eyes in the plain face of a man so dull that the Flawless Blade hadn’t even noticed him when he came into the drinking house.

  Hadn’t noticed the object of his hate, even though it was standing right there.

  Those eyes. Brown flames like autumn leaves stuck at the bottom of a bucket. They looked at him with such pity. Where was the hatred? Why didn’t those eyes care about the blade, or the cut, or the duel?

  He laughed softly to himself.

  How could those eyes care about something so much weaker than them?

  His core trembled, and a crack widened, deepened, and spread across the surface with an aching release of power that twisted the air until it groaned. People cried out, but the plain-faced man… those eyes… didn’t even notice.

  A terrible wail of pain escaped the Flawless Blade’s lips before the flaring power of his core collapsed, and he fell to his knees, momentarily as weak as a mortal.

  He looked up at the plain-faced cultivator, at the blade stuck into his chest, and he reached out. What was he reaching for? The sword? Those eyes? Did he dare try and pluck out either from the man who seemed intent on ignoring him?

  His hands found the dark blue robes, and he gripped them tight, holding himself up against the plain-faced cultivator.

  “Why?” the Flawless Blade heard himself hiss. “My cultivation, my life… why have you done this to me?”

  “Buddy, I think you’re doing this to yourself.”

  Those casual words hit the Flawless Blade like a hammer, and his hands fell limp. There was care in those words, but there was also dismissal. Never had anyone spoken to the Flawless Blade like that.

  Who was this man?

  The Flawless Blade looked up, mind blank, jaw slack, as the plain-faced cultivator drew the sword from inside his chest without even a drop of blood upon the blade to show that an injury had even been delivered.

  Truly, the Flawless Blade had been defeated again, and he could hear the whispers and the mockery from the bystanders who had watched this whole outrageous farce, but he didn’t care. He did this to himself, after all…

  He watched as the plain cultivator returned the sword to the blonde cultivator. There was a light in those drab brown eyes now, and the Flawless Blade couldn’t even imagine what mysteries lay inside that cultivator’s mind.

  ###

  Bastard cut my new clothes!

  No.

  That wasn’t what was important.

  What was important was making sure that none of my blood spilled out and got all over my new clothes. Damn, I was really going through robes lately. I remembered when I was a street rat and a farmer, I would have had one set of clothes for years. There was even Old Brown Han, who never even changed the robes he wore as a kid; he just added new material as he grew taller, but it hurt when I tried to remember who exactly remembered him, so I let that memory slide…

  Chen Ai took her sword back, and we both looked down at the Flawless Blade, who remained kneeling. Attendants were rushing around, clearing up the mess, and while most of the patrons continued to watch us, many had returned to drinking. I’d always heard that cultivators liked to fight in inns, and it was true; as a mortal, I would clear out if I saw two cultivators giving each other ugly looks — or, really, any looks — but this was my first time being on this side of the experience.

  “Senior brother?”

  “Yes, Chen Ai?”

  “I think you should kill him.”

  The Flawless Blade didn’t even flinch at the words; he just looked up at me like a puppy trying to understand the world.

  “I know why you think that,” I told Chen Ai. “And I can’t argue, but it doesn’t feel right to me.”

  She nodded with an understanding look that told me she didn’t understand but was chalking it up to a ‘cultivator thing’. The complex inner culture of cultivators was something I was quickly becoming grateful for.

  “Do you want me to?” she offered.

  “No…” I said quietly as I tried to understand my impulses. “I went looking for that fight at the pass, and I defeated him, but I don’t think it’s right that he should die just because he lost a duel.”

  “He attacked you in public. This was no duel. The consequences are on him.”

  “I know,” I said as I touched the slit on my nice, new robe. “But still… look at him.”

  “I only see a monster,” Chen Ai said coldly.

  I don’t know if her using that word is what locked my decision into place or not, but I know it was at that point that I decided I wouldn’t kill the Flawless Blade unless I was forced to do so. None of my past lives were violent — despite my misadventures as a street rat, I never chose pain or bloodshed — and though I’d fought spirit beasts, I had no desire to become someone who spilled human blood without remorse. I remembered the pain in Ghost Fang’s memories, and how a human was made into a monster, and as I looked down at the Flawless Blade, I could only wonder what my actions had made of him, and what my actions might make of me…

  The way he held his body, he was weak, and I could feel that weakness radiating from him. If I wanted to, I could reach out and take his life.

  But…

  Did I want that?

  He blamed me for destroying his life and shattering his soul. Did I want to take the life of a man whom I ruined?

  ###

  The Flawless Blade felt as weak as a child. Even after close calls with spirit beasts or fighting off a bandit horde while stricken with illness, he never felt the weight of his body so profusely. His every breath was a labor, but he forced himself to look up at the man towering above him.

  And in those drab brown eyes, the Flawless Blade saw a familiar question: to kill, or not to kill?

  This plain-faced man held the Flawless Blade’s life in his hand, and no argument could be made to spare him. After all, he had just done his best to kill him in a room full of witnesses. Nobody would spare the Flawless Blade after that. Nobody… but the Flawless Blade was not yet dead.

  So, he gazed up at those eyes one last time, like staring into the sun, and he bowed his head to the floor in utter subservience.

  As gasp came at the utter shameless act, but he ignored the onlookers. For him, there were only two people in the whole world.

  He didn’t know where the words came from, but as he spoke them, he knew it was the truest moment of his life since he first picked up the jian as a child.

  “Please,” he said as his voice broke and tears leaked from his eyes to land on the floor. “Please, will you be my master?”

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