Bi Kan made his way towards the Mission Hall, the echoes of the crowd's stunned silence still ringing in his ears.

  The duel had been a satisfying test, a perfect measure of his month of brutal training.

  But the victory felt hollow, overshadowed by a more pressing, gnawing concern.

  He approached the familiar counter, offering a respectful bow to the Junior Elder on duty.

  "Martial Nephew greets Martial Uncle."

  The Elder let out a great, jaw-cracking yawn, stretching his neck until it popped. His weary eyes landed on Bi Kan, a flicker of recognition in their lazy depths.

  "You again," he grumbled, his voice thick with the boredom of his post.

  "After a month, you've finally steeled yourself to take another mission from the sect?"

  Bi Kan rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish look on his face.

  "N-not quite, Martial Uncle. Unless," he added, his expression turning serious, "it's a mission that's still ongoing. That's the one I'm here to ask about."

  The Junior Elder’s eyebrow arched in mild curiosity. He leaned forward slightly, clearing his throat.

  "What does this nephew mean?"

  Bi Kan let out a sigh, the weary weight of his worry showing on his face.

  "It's been more than a month since I've last seen Sister Ming Mei. I'm here to ask if she had taken on a mission that would require her to be away for so long."

  A look of profound hesitation crossed the Elder's face.

  He scratched his head, his gaze darting to the towering stacks of documents beside him as if they were a mountain he had to climb.

  "Ugh, such a chore…" he muttered under his breath.

  With the slow, reluctant movements of a man forced into labor, he reached for a specific ledger, flipping through the delicate parchment pages.

  "Here it is," he finally grunted, his finger tracing a line of elegant script.

  "Ming Mei. Yes, along with three other Outer Disciples, she has taken on a mission to deal with a bandit camp of Individual Cultivators."

  Bi Kan's eyes widened, a jolt of cold dread shooting through him.

  Individual Cultivators? Not mere mortals, but rogue practitioners, desperate and unbound by sect law.

  What kind of mission was that for a girl he last knew as a novice? "H-how could that be?" he stammered, his voice tight with alarm.

  "Sister Ming Mei is merely a Stage 3 Qi Sensing Realm cultivator surely that must be an error."

  The Junior Elder raised his eyebrow once more, this time with a look of genuine disbelief.

  He shook his head slowly. "Are you messing with me, nephew? The records are clear. Ming Mei is a Stage 8 Qi Sensing Realm Disciple."

  Bi Kan took a staggered step back, his hand flying to the counter to steady himself as the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

  "S-stage… 8?" he whispered, his mind reeling.

  The shock was a physical blow, leaving him dizzy and breathless. Then, through the haze of disbelief, a slow, brilliant smile of pure pride spread across his face.

  He placed a hand on his head, a soft laugh escaping him.

  "Ming Mei… has reached that level, huh? She really is a great talent."

  He looked back at the Elder, his eyes shining. "When did she leave?"

  The Elder mentioned the date.

  t was the day before Bi Kan had returned from his own Viper Quest.

  "I-I see," Bi Kan murmured, the pieces clicking into place with astonishing clarity.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "So in fourteen days… she gained that kind of cultivation stage…"

  The potency of his pills, combined with her innate genius, had created a true prodigy.

  Deep within a darkened forest, a fire crackled, its flames casting dancing shadows on the faces of four weary bandits.

  They were all Qi Sensing Realm, Stage 4, rough men who had abandoned the structured path for a life of plunder.

  As one of them leaned back against a log, a silent shadow shot from the trees. A flash of steel, and a dagger was buried to the hilt in his neck.

  "K-kuhk!" he choked, slumping forward into the fire.

  The other bandits leaped to their feet, their brief moment of rest shattered by sudden death.

  Seeing their brethren fall, their first instinct was not to fight, but to flee.

  Two of them turned and bolted into the darkness, but their escape was cut short. A blur of motion, faster than anything they could comprehend, intercepted them.

  A girl, her aura pulsing with the undeniable power of a Stage 8 expert, struck the first fleeing bandit with a single, open-palmed blow. "Hah!"

  He was sent flying, his body crashing into a thick tree with a sickening crunch.

  The second bandit, seeing his escape route cut off, unsheathed his own dagger and lunged at the girl in a desperate, final attack.

  "Too slow," she said, her voice calm.

  A smile touched her lips as she moved with an effortless grace, her hand smacking his chin with a force that made his teeth rattle and sent his dagger clattering to the ground.

  He crumpled, dazed and disarmed.

  "Surrender now," Ming Mei said, her voice firm, "and we'll spare your li—"

  Shunk.

  Her fellow Outer Disciple, a grim-faced youth, drove his own dagger into the subdued bandit's neck.

  "H-hey!" Mei cried out, taking a step back in shock. "You didn't have to kill him! I already subdued—"

  "Ming Mei! How many times do I have to tell you?!" another disciple, a stern-faced girl, snapped, her patience clearly worn thin.

  "We won't let any of these bastards live! Do you know how many villages they pillaged? The women that they rap—"

  "Shui," the first boy said, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder to calm her.

  "Don't be so harsh on Sister Ming Mei. She's merely inexperienced in the art of killing. Who cares? She basically paralyzed the guy anyway."

  But Mei wasn't listening.

  Her eyes were fixed on the dead men, on the dark, spreading pools of blood that soaked into the forest floor.

  Her stomach churned, and she covered her mouth, fighting back a wave of nausea.

  "Don't feel so sorry for them, Sister. They are deserving of their deaths," the boy said, his voice softening slightly.

  "We'll give you time to rest. Hunting these bandits has proved to be a lengthy task… but we're almost done.

  As the last vestiges of daylight bled from the sky, the forest grew teeth.

  The air, thick with the scent of damp earth and pine, carried a biting chill that seeped into their bones.

  Ran Ji, a stocky youth with a perpetually grumpy expression, dropped a bundle of firewood to the ground with a heavy thud.

  "Hey, Ran Ji, set up the flames! It’s freezing out here!"

  Mi Shui, a girl whose fiery temper matched the talisman she held, tossed the small paper slip towards him.

  Ran Ji scoffed, catching the talisman with a practiced flick of his wrist.

  "You could have done it yourself," he grumbled, activating it with a pulse of his Qi. A clean, bright flame erupted from the kindling with a soft fwoom.

  "You've got hands and a talisman pouch. What am I, your personal servant?"

  A vein throbbed on Mi Shui’s temple.

  She stomped over, butting her forehead against his with a sharp rap.

  "Anh? What did you say, you useless lump?! You wanna have a go, you turd?!"

  Ming Mei, who had been leaning against a tree a short distance away, let out a soft, weary sigh. A month.

  A full, bloody month she had spent with this group, and their dynamic was as predictable as the rising sun.

  "Re Jui," she called out, her voice quiet but carrying, "they're fighting again."

  Re Jui, the unofficial peacemaker of their small quartet, smoothly inserted himself between the two squabbling disciples, placing a hand on each of their chests and pushing them apart.

  "Honestly, even setting up a simple fire ignites a fight between you two," he mused, a smirk forming on his face.

  "Surely you two just need to kiss and get it over with at this point."

  His smirk was answered by the blur of Mi Shui’s leg.

  "Kuh!" He grunted, the sharp impact of her kick sending him stumbling back onto the cold, hard-packed earth.

  "Don't you dare spout such bullshit again, Re Jui!" she shrieked, her face flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

  Ming Mei watched the familiar scene unfold, but the boisterous energy of her comrades felt a world away.

  She hugged her arms to her chest, shivering, but the cold she felt was not something the fire could touch.

  It was a deep, internal tremor, born from the things she had seen, the things she had done. How many dead bodies had it been now? Ten? Twenty? The number was a blur of faces frozen in their final moments of terror.

  They had been ruthlessly efficient, hunting down the scattered remnants of the bandit clan for weeks.

  This next camp, their final target, was supposed to be a relief, an end to the bloodshed. But Mei found no comfort in the thought.

  Is it really justified? The question was a constant, agonizing whisper in her soul.

  She pressed her forehead against the rough bark of the tree, the pressure a small, grounding pain.

  Just because… some of them were monsters, does that mean all of them were? She remembered the look in the eyes of the last man she had subdued, the one her comrade had executed without a moment's hesitation.

  It wasn't malice she had seen there. It was fear. Pure, desperate fear.

  Tears, hot and silent, began to streak down her face, tracing paths through the grime on her cheeks.

  She knew the bandits would have killed her without a second thought, that hesitation was death in this line of work.

  But a part of her, the girl who had sold rice with her father, couldn't shake the feeling that she was becoming the very thing she was fighting.

  She missed the simple days. She missed the quiet strength of the boy who had protected her, who had shown her a path of kindness and cunning, not just brute force and slaughter.

  Brother Kan… she thought, her heart aching with a profound loneliness.

  What would you do?