The room seemed to shrink. Hao remembered. Axe, he called himself, so Hao called him the same. The man claimed to be a bandit, acted like one, and died like one. A strange person to remind him of, considering Axe was his roommate alongside the man on the floor in front of them.

  Hao could remember his words, “Every woman on the Islands…”

  Then Axe’s body folded.

  Hao palmed him in the face. The back of his enormous head bounced off the ground twice; Axe never spoke again after the first.

  His first kill. And the second, the same day, Axe’s friend. Hao called him Rabbit because of how fast he turned to run. That ugly thing knelt and begged with those bulging eyes and giant pupils after joining Axe in jokes of having their way with Hao's family.

  His throat was cut quickly.

  That was the first time Hao saw his reflection in a puddle of human blood. Every death he had witnessed before was drowning or starvation. Long, hope-filled struggles, pulling yourself above water, clawing your way above thickening mud, only to sink further.

  Starvation was nothing but languishing agony: He’d seen neighbors ready to eat each other. A father kicking his son in the head for the last bowl of fish-bone soup.

  Being murdered in a single stroke was almost peaceful. No hope with a hole in your neck, and by the time the incense lit, your name faded with the color of your eyes.

  Meiqi moved, taking her hand off his chest and walking around to sit on Zhengqi’s bed.

  It roused Hao from memories. “I remember.” He told her, walking up beside Zhengqi, but she didn’t need reassurance.

  Zhengqi turned aside, sitting on one of her heels to give the two of them a view. She lifted his arm. There was no tension at all.

  The man wasn’t a puppet. Yet he certainly wouldn’t look out of place in a room full of them, too realistic, but the way his limbs either hung stiff or drooped distracted all of them.

  “... Did you know this man?” Meiqi asked, no longer leaning forward on her elbows, leaning back instead.

  Hao nodded; both women saw it, so he continued, “To an extent, he was already a little out of his mind when I met him, deranged and shy. He hid under his blankets most of the time.”

  He reached up and touched his chest. “I heard him speak once, crazed demands in broken words as he tried to kill me.”

  Zhengqi jumped back, letting go of his arm, which hit the ground with a thud. She stood on one leg. The other came up to shield her, as both her hands went up and pushed out.

  The reaction surprised him.

  Yet Meiqi was wider-eyed than he. “Kill?” she whispered while looking between him and her daughter.

  Bad choice of words, Hao wondered if there was another way he could have said that. He was sure Zhengqi had some experience with zealous disciples. She did live and work on a mountain where the average person walked around in blue robes and killed monsters just to buy millet and pickled ginger. Violent tendencies were more common than coins, even while being patched up in the medicine hall.

  “He doesn’t seem dangerous—isn’t dangerous…” she said, putting her foot back on the ground. “But, you never know when someone could act unpredictably,” she locked her eyes on the emaciated man as she leaned in, as if she was waiting to see him twitch.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Hao walked over beside him. He honestly thought Zhengqi could handle him if she had to; he was a slap away from turning to dust. But he wouldn’t force that on her. She likes to save people. That’s what she studied, wanted to be an expert in and lived.

  He was the one to kill and mangle if such a thing had to happen. It was a bit early in the day for it.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he reassured her, sitting down next to the man, “you can continue. I’m quite a bit faster than he is.”

  The joke flew over Zhengqi’s head. She let out a relieved sigh, crouched back down, and slowly inched closer. But it got her mom. Meiqi smirked in the background, hiding it with her sleeve as she looked at her lap.

  Hao hoped it wasn’t a joke he would come to regret. If his body was being puppeteered, then pain wouldn’t stop him from shattering bones to reach his goal.

  Zhengqi leaned in, leaving space for the two of them to see again. She did a rather strange test. Her hand flung through the air, slow to Hao, but it certainly looked like a hearty slap.

  His eyelid snapped shut.

  Her hand stopped short, floating at the tip of his nose. “I don’t know…”

  Hao blinked. Mortal injury or ailment was not all one ran into on this mountain, and it seemed hard to get anything by Zhengqi. She could practically smell his injuries, yet she genuinely paused.

  Her hands became bold again, as if she had never felt a twinge of fear, lifting his eyelid like it was a lid on top of the millet jar.

  She waved her other hand. Both of his eyes popped open, still glassy marbles, still just as unaware.

  Her head bobbed with fulfilled expectation. She did three more things: snapped in his ear, placed salt on his tongue, and held the split berry her mom threw at her under his nose.

  He reacted to them all. Then she pinched him hard, but not enough to draw blood, and instantly his eyes moved to her hand.

  Not the way eyes wander a market, but the way fish glance when avoiding the pond’s walls.

  Hao felt fear and bloodlust to his left; the whole body twitched with the eye. Blood rushed through his neck and turned his head into an overflowing fountain; he saw red. His arms unfolded, his shoulder popping. The room suddenly got cold, colder than the winter draft coming through the windows.

  Pop.

  His hand became a whip, an open palm that only had one purpose in that breath, to destroy the threat. He knew Zhengqi would deflate watching the man die. Better an unseen scar added to the collection on her heart than a neck full of tears and scratches on the only person who could heal them.

  He created a draft. Cloths, sheets, and spare clothes flew to the walls as the fire flickered. It would be painless—an egg under a hammer.

  It closed in. A streak of color from his pale skin and sleeve—white with a tail of black and blue. But he saw the glassy eyes split, a pupil flickering. They faced each other, eye to eye. No recognition, just two dead men desperate to survive.

  His shoulder pushed Zhengqi aside when a blaring voice struck his ear.

  “Wait!”

  But he had already stopped before she spoke. No shame to Zhengqi for being slow; The wind he created still flowed, the steam swirled, and the door quivered, window frames and glass panes shivered.

  The tension didn’t die, but grew.

  Could he see my hand? A broken mortal man… Hao was more curious than fearful, with a stone in his throat that didn’t budge when he swallowed; how could a shell of a man who couldn’t tell hot from cold see his hand when he struggled to follow it?

  “He seemed lively. What was that? Did he wake up?” Hao didn’t put that palm down; he stayed close and moved his feet under his thigh to be more ready if that happened again.

  Zhengqi came quickly to his side again. “Lively? He is alive. His heart beats. He can feel. He can even see. Everything.” She paused, took a breath, and forced out a stuttering sigh.

  “It's more like there's no longer a person inside.”

  Hao looked up at her for further explanation. There was silence, interrupted by the shouts of disciples as they moved around the servants outside.

  Meiqi stood, rubbed her daughter's back, and went back to the firepit. The scent of the boar bacon being stirred into millet calmed everyone down.

  Even Hao. His hand lowered down.

  Zhengqi scratched her chin, shook the tension out of her hands, and nodded. It seemed she finally found words.

  “I told Young Master before, a long time ago, I don’t know much about these kinds of things. Just like that man you took out of the bag, this is a matter of the soul. It has little to do with Mortal Medicine.”

  “The difference between that time and now is the precision. Axe, I think his name was: with those injuries he would have died, whether his soul was damaged or not, young master… destroyed his neck and a lot of his head.”

  She came back down, leaning against Hao’s shoulder. Her slender hand with its broken nails pointed out at the emaciated man’s forehead.

  “This was precise, accurate. An arrow that dodged his physical form and got just his soul, imprisoned it or destroyed it, I can’t say which. That is why he looked so alive… but also seems dead.”

  As Zhengqi pushed against his shoulder to stand up again, she shuddered something like a cold chill. Her bed creaked as she fell into it.

  Hao thought he understood most of what she said. He had a better guess at the cause than the end effect that was slouched in front of him. No proof, just pieces of a big puzzle.

  The food pills given to servants, that grotesque bell that Pao Taoyi had on his table. The Fourth Elder had a deal with Taoyi; at the same time, the Elder had an intimate connection with the First Elder. Being more of a servant than an Elder himself.

  I still have some food pills in the Cultivation Cave. If I can get them to the Second Elder, that will help me gain trust.

  Hao didn’t know if that would be enough. The first thing was to stop his immediate plans; luckily, that aligned with his own goals. To get to the Upper Peaks and get rid of Mo Bangcai. The Fourth Elder’s illegitimate son, and the First Elder’s pawn.