Jiang woke to the rather unpleasant sensation of his meridians being on fire.

  He gasped, lungs spasming as he inhaled a mouthful of stone dust and stale air. The coughing fit that followed nearly blacked him out again, sending spikes of white-hot agony radiating from his chest.

  He lay still for a long time, staring up into the darkness, trying to remember how to breathe without screaming. Ironically, the fact that his outsides were just as painful as his insides right now somehow helped.

  Memory returned in jagged, disjointed flashes. Gao Leng’s expression, bloody and enraged. The feeling of the air being sucked out of the room. The world turning white.

  And the Qi.

  He remembered the corruption flooding him, a tidal wave of rot and power that he had barely managed to divert from his core. It had filled his meridians, expanding until he felt like his skin was going to split. There had been too much of it. Far too much to vent, far too much to control. He could tell that the Pact somehow interacted with the corrupted Qi, just enough that he could… direct it. Just a little.

  So when the alternative was to let the energy consume him from the inside out, Jiang had done the only thing that made sense. He had used it.

  Breaking through to the ninth stage was inevitable – he hadn’t even needed to do anything. The corrosive nature of the Qi had broken down the last of the impurities in his meridians, and the lingering energy had tipped him right over the threshold. Unfortunately, there was still a significant amount of it left – more than enough to rupture his dantian and flood his body with tainted power. He knew for a fact that if that happened, he would be dead.

  But he remembered Old Nan talking about how to break through to the second realm. Compressing the Qi in his dantain until it became a liquid, then using that drop of liquid Qi to reinforce his physical body, starting with his meridians. If breaking through required energy, he had reasoned in his desperation, then perhaps the process would consume the poison before the poison consumed him.

  He remembered the crushing pressure of condensing the gas in his dantian, forcing the swirling, chaotic mix of his own shadow Qi and the red corruption down, down, down, until it screamed in protest. He remembered the moment it snapped, condensing into a single, heavy drop of liquid.

  And then he remembered the pain.

  Using that liquid drop to refine his meridians – the first step of the Body Refining Realm – had felt less like strengthening them and more like scouring them with acid. He had pushed the energy outward, burning away the impurities of his mortal frame, but the fuel he had used was impure itself.

  The fact that he was alive was nothing short of a miracle. He focused inward, tentatively reaching for his dantian.

  Big mistake.

  The moment his awareness brushed his Qi, his entire nervous system lit up. It felt like his veins were filled with molten glass. He flinched violently, his back arching off the rubble, a ragged cry tearing from his throat.

  The burning wasn’t just a sensation of the breakthrough. It was lingering. The corruption hadn’t been entirely consumed; it had been integrated. He had a terrible, sinking feeling that he hadn’t just survived the blast – he had baked the poison into his very foundation.

  He lay panting, sweat cooling on his forehead. Alive, he told himself firmly. Start with that.

  He tested his limbs one by one. His left arm was numb, his right throbbing with a deep bruise. His legs responded, though his hip screamed in protest. He took a shallow breath, probing his ribs. Definitely cracked. Maybe broken.

  He pushed a slab of masonry off his legs, gritting his teeth against the effort, and dragged himself out of the pile of debris that had half-buried him. He slumped against the cold stone wall, dizzy and nauseous.

  He was in a corridor. Or what was left of one.

  The blast from Gao Leng detonating his core must have thrown him backward, launching him through the open doorway just before the ceiling came down. He looked back the way he must have come. The entrance to the central chamber was gone, replaced by a wall of fallen rock and timber.

  If he had been standing a little further away from Gao Leng, the force of the blast wouldn’t have pushed him to safety. If he had been standing any closer, he wouldn’t have survived the detonation.

  He frowned to himself, turning the thought over in his head. How had he survived the explosion? Gao Leng had been absorbing the corrupted Qi from hundreds of bandits, to say nothing of his own reserves. Surely that would have been more than enough to kill him, no matter where he had been in the room.

  Another thought struck, this one more urgent.

  “Zhang?” he croaked. The sound was weak, swallowed by the damp silence of the tunnel.

  No answer – not that he had really expected one. He stared at the wall of rubble. From what he could recall, Zhang had been further away from Gao Leng, on the opposite side of the room. Theoretically, he should be in better shape than Jiang himself – ignoring the wounds the disciple had already sustained.

  Unfortunately, Jiang had no way of checking. He looked down at his trembling hands, felt the fire licking at his insides, then back at the rubble.

  He could barely stand. Moving tons of rock was beyond him. If Zhang were alive, he would have to find his own way out. If he wasn’t… well, Jiang digging until he passed out wouldn’t change that.

  He gave himself ten seconds to feel like garbage about it. Then he forced himself to his feet.

  He swayed, bracing a hand against the wall to keep from falling. He needed to move. He needed to find a way back to the surface, or at least to a part of the fortress that wasn’t collapsed.

  He tried to extend his senses, to feel for airflow or the presence of others, but the moment he tried to push his Qi outward, the burning flared again, blinding and absolute. He gasped, clutching his chest, and let the connection snap.

  Great. He was in the second realm of cultivation – technically, at least, assuming fusing corruption to his meridians hadn’t broken him permanently – and he was currently less useful than a mortal.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He wiped blood from his eyes and started limping down the corridor, one hand trailing along the wall for balance. He didn’t know where the tunnel led, but it was away from the cave-in, and right now, that was the only direction that mattered.

  His world narrowed to the next step, then the next. One hand on the wall for balance, the other pressed against his ribs to brace them, he picked his way through the wreckage of the old fortress. Twice, he had to stop and wait for a wave of dizziness to pass, his vision tunnelling until the only thing anchoring him was the rough scrape of stone under his fingers.

  The corridor he was following seemed to be leading deeper into the mountain, which was a little worrying, but fortunately, it was still lit by burning torches. Jiang spared a moment to wonder if there was an enthralled bandit somewhere whose only job was to replace the torches when they burned out. At least it implied that this passageway saw enough traffic to bother keeping lit.

  He almost walked into the first body.

  The man lay crumpled against the wall, his armour half-melted into his flesh. The front of his chest was simply… gone, burned away in a way that didn’t look entirely like fire. One of Gao Leng’s thralls, most likely caught in the backwash of his master’s death. Even without the use of his Qi senses, Jiang could somehow taste the remnant corruption in the back of his throat.

  Concerningly, the sensation of it didn’t feel nearly as unnatural as it did before he’d broken through. Was it because Gao Leng was dead, and the corrupted nature of the Qi was unravelling, or was it because he was now corrupted?

  Jiang stepped around the body carefully, jaw clenched. That line of thought was not productive, not right now. Right now, the only thing he needed to do was find his way out to the front of the fortress, to meet back up with Li Xuan and Mistress Bai.

  Assuming they didn’t find him first, of course. While Jiang was very far from an expert on arrays, he had to imagine that blowing one up meant it stopped working – which meant that they should no longer be trapped by the barrier outside. They would be sweeping the ruins, looking for survivors. Looking for him.

  Jiang paused, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. He should have felt triumphant. He had killed a second-realm demonic cultivator and finally avenged the destruction of his village. He had broken through not just once but twice, clawing his way into the second realm on the back of poison and desperation.

  Instead, he mostly felt tired.

  Still, the path ahead seemed clear, at least in broad strokes. They had done it. Gao Leng was dead, along with his allies – but most importantly, the final obstacle between him and Biragawa was gone. He had upheld his end of the deal, and now with the weight of the Azure Sky Sect and Mistress Bai’s influence, retrieving his mother and sister would likely be a matter of a few conversations and a handful of gold. Simple. Efficient.

  And then… then he would return to the Sect, but this time it would be for good.

  Even now, exhausted and half-broken in the bowels of a ruined fortress, he could see the shape of that future. There was no way the Sect would risk letting him roam the provinces freely, not when any Elder with a bit of ambition might decide that stealing a rival’s Pact-bearer was worth a small war. They’d keep him close, tucked away behind Sect wards and mountain peaks, a prized asset pulled out for… whatever Pact-bearers were usually used for. Helping cultivators break through bottlenecks, presumably?

  But then he would be tucked back away, hidden and protected.

  Is that really so bad? a small, treacherous voice asked. Safe walls. Steady resources. Your family protected under their umbrella.

  He could live with it. He could even see himself growing used to it, in time. Training, missions, sect politics. A life defined by orders and obligations instead of hunger and fear. It was a cage, certainly, but not the worst sort.

  He would be safe, but more importantly, they would be safe.

  It was a fair trade. A worthy sacrifice.

  He pushed himself off the wall, taking another step. And then he stopped. Because, suddenly, he realised that there was another option.

  Right now, in this dark, silent tunnel… he was dead.

  Even if Zhang had still been conscious when Gao Leng detonated – which Jiang very much doubted – all he would have seen was a wave of light and then a ceiling falling on his head. Li Xuan and Mistress Bai had been outside, trapped by the barrier. They would have felt the explosion, certainly, but not the details of what happened in the chamber.

  They may search for him, but sifting through the rubble could be dangerous, considering the weight of the mountain above them. The wrong move could bring the whole thing crashing down.

  Which meant, theoretically… he could just leave.

  The thought was as terrifying as it was alluring.

  He was injured – badly. His Qi was currently a source of active torture rather than strength. He had no supplies, no money beyond what was in his pouch, and winter was closing its jaws around the province. The journey to Biragawa would take weeks on foot, even for a healthy man. For him, in this state? It was a gamble with odds that would make a desperate gambler weep.

  And he would be throwing away the help he had worked so hard to secure. Li Xuan and Mistress Bai were powerful pieces on the board. Discarding them now, right before the endgame, felt like madness.

  But… their help came with strings. Heavy, unbreakable strings woven from duty and debt.

  If he left now, he would be free. No Sects. No expectations. No one looking over his shoulder, measuring his worth, deciding his path.

  He stared into the gloom of the tunnel, weighing his life in his hands.

  There were risks, massive ones. Biragawa might be more than he could handle alone. The slaver might be protected by forces he couldn’t overcome without the Sect’s authority. If he failed, he failed alone, and his family would pay the price.

  And then there was the corruption.

  He pressed a hand to his chest, wincing as the movement pulled at his cracked ribs. The fire in his meridians hadn’t faded. If anything, it felt like it was settling, fusing with his own energy. What if he had broken himself? What if he were permanently crippled, his cultivation halted or, worse, slowly killing him?

  If he went back to the Sect, maybe they could fix him. They had alchemists, healers, Elders with centuries of knowledge. They might have a cure.

  Or… they might take one look at his tainted meridians, see the corruption of a demonic cultivator woven into his foundation, and decide he was a liability. A failed experiment. A danger.

  They might kill him themselves.

  It wasn’t an impossible scenario. The Sects hated the unorthodox. If he walked back into their arms carrying the very taint they were sworn to destroy, would they see a victim, or a vector?

  If he were alone, he could figure it out. He could test his limits, find a way to balance the energies, or simply live with the pain. But he would be alive.

  He thought of Zhang. The disciple had been… surprisingly decent, in the end. Rigid, yes, and arrogant, but he had stood his ground. He had fought. Jiang felt a pang of regret at the idea of letting Zhang think he was dead. And Li Xuan… well, the man was a bit of a bastard, certainly, but he had some redeemable traits. It was entirely possible he would regret leaving like this.

  But regret wasn’t a reason to put on a collar.

  Time was slipping away. Every minute he spent debating was a minute closer to Li Xuan or Mistress Bai clearing the rubble and finding… well, finding nothing. If they searched long enough, they might find this tunnel. They might find his tracks.

  He had to choose.

  Safety, resources, and servitude?

  Or danger, pain, and freedom?

  It wasn’t really a choice. Not for him. He was a hunter. He had lived his life in the wilds, relying on his own eyes, his own hands. The idea of safety had always been an illusion anyway.

  He could still use the Sect if he absolutely had to. He was a Pact-bearer. That card wouldn’t expire. If he got to Biragawa and found himself walled out, he could always walk into the nearest Sect branch and reveal himself then. It would be a desperate, final play, but it would be there.

  But he couldn’t un-play it. Once he went back, the door closed forever.

  “Sorry, Zhang,” he whispered to the empty darkness.

  He took a step. The pain flared, white and hot, but he gritted his teeth and took another. And another.

  He was Jiang Tian. He had tracked the bandits that razed his village across the province, becoming a cultivator in the process. He had fought spirit beasts and mercenaries, gangsters and cultivators. He had gained the attention of being far above him and survived the fallout. He had killed a demonic cultivator in the core formation realm.

  He did it all without chaining himself down, and he’d be damned if that was going to change now.

  He limped forward into the dark, leaving the ruins, the Sect, and his own death behind him.

  presumably already read book 1, but if you desperately want to re-read the first book's worth, now's the time!