2: 2

2.

They dragged me back to my quarters, half invited, half in chains.

Joanna clutched her chest with one hand and directed the disciples through the search with the other, her orders coming fast.

In the space of a blink, everything was picked clean: the night-luminescent pearl on my bed, the imperial-grade green tea set on the white jade table, the thousand-year ginseng from the herb field, the Marrow-Cleansing Pill in the alchemy chamber.

If it could be found, it was carried off.

The disciples withdrew, cradling their treasures, well satisfied. Joanna, though, was so frantic she could have coughed blood.

"Is there really no escaping death for me today?"

"Senior Sister, my life hangs by a thread, and all you can think of is hiding the treasure so you can ascend alone."

"Senior Sister, how can you be so heartless!"

The things in my quarters were precious, true, but not one of them was any ascension treasure.

They stood there staring at the room turned inside out,

and even they had to admit that maybe I really had no such secret treasure. But no one dared say so for certain.

"Or maybe... she just hid it too well?"

"Evelyn Mercer has always acted meek and easy to bully, but who's to say it isn't all an act? She could have planned ahead and moved the treasure somewhere else."

"Exactly. The senior brother of the Sword Sect told me himself. She's a hypocrite through and through!"

The whispers reached me, and all I felt was how wronged I was.

I'm soft-hearted. I've saved my share of ungrateful curs and loved a few faithless men.

That senior brother of the Sword Sect, the one who'd fainted from hunger by the roadside, was one of them. At first I didn't realize who he was and took him for a beggar.

Who knew he was the kind of dog that bites the hand that feeds it? In the end my spirit beast, the Qilin, frightened him off.

Listening to all this, the senior brother's temper flared.

He drove his heel into my knee and forced me down until I knelt.

Then he seized my jaw and demanded, "Speak! Where is the treasure the Immortal Sovereign left behind?"

My eyes filled with tears from the pain.

He gripped so hard I couldn't get a word out. All I could do was shake my head.

And in the very moment his heart softened and his hand loosened,

the Master gave a slight flick of his fingers. A current of spiritual power shot into my body and coursed backward against my meridians.

"Evelyn, I spoiled you too much. That's what made you so blind to your own place."

"A life is at stake. This is no time for your tantrums!"

"If you still won't speak, this spiritual power will tear apart your meridians and let you taste what Joanna suffers!"

My constitution is unusual. Others' spiritual power can wound me, but in the end I absorb it and turn it to my own use.

Still, I'm weak, I fear pain, and by now I was drenched in cold sweat. "Except for my parents' portraits, everything in my quarters has already been hauled away."

"There's nothing, because there's nothing."

"I'm afraid to die, afraid of pain. I don't lie."

The words had barely left me when Joanna's eyes went cold. "So it's the hard way, then."

"Senior Sister Mercer, you think you've hidden it so well? The Immortal Sovereign and the Poison Physician never even liked you. In this whole room there's nothing of theirs but that one portrait. That's why you're so weak, so afraid to die!"

"The Immortal Sovereign must be bitterly disappointed in you. Even if we killed you, nothing would come of it."

She said it with such certainty that the others kept nodding along.

Only I let out a bitter laugh.

It isn't death I fear. It's that they would die.

Dragons breed dragons, phoenixes breed phoenixes.

My father and mother were the finest of their kind, and they bred a monster.

At my birth I devoured my mother's inborn sword-bones, and she had no choice but to turn to poison cultivation instead.

When I practiced the sword I once devoured the sword's spirit by accident, so my father was forced to give up teaching me the blade,

and even the destined swords he gave me were swapped out day after day, always cheap ones.

So most of what my parents sent me came with its aura wiped away, to keep me from swallowing it.

Joanna caught the change on my face, and a smug smile pulled at her lips. "What? Did I hit the mark?"

She lifted her chin. "If the Immortal Sovereign truly cared about you, he'd have come to save you long ago!"

"What if the Immortal Sovereign is watching right now?"

Someone had barely ventured the words, weak and hesitant, before the senior brother shot them a savage glare.

"Joanna is clever. She's never once been wrong."

Joanna glanced around the room and thought for a moment.

Her gaze settled on the two portraits on the wall.

"Is the treasure hidden inside the portraits?"

With that she strode forward, not a trace of the dying girl about her.

A tearing shriek of sound, and the portraits were ripped to shreds.

My fists clenched all at once, and rage roared straight up to the crown of my head.

"The treasure's inside the portraits, isn't it!"

Joanna grabbed a fistful of my collar, a mad flush creeping into the corners of her eyes.

"Once I have the treasure the Immortal Sovereign left, I can ascend!"

"Senior Sister! Hand over the treasure or die. You choose."

I looked at her and knew she wouldn't let this go.

I let out a slow breath and reached back to draw the long sword at her waist.

Better to die quickly and be reborn than live on under their questioning. If it makes all of you happy, so be it.

I had just brought my head down to the blade when a clamor broke out beyond the door.

Someone screamed, "Something's coming!"

3: 3

3.

"Roar!"

A beast's cry tore across the sky, shaking heaven and earth.

I let go at once and looked toward it, my heart leaping.

It was my spirit beast, the Qilin! He had come to save me!

Everyone shrank back in terror. I alone rushed toward him in joy.

"I'm in here!"

Joanna's face changed, and she turned to the senior brother, wearing a wounded look.

"I was only asking Senior Sister for a treasure to save my life... surely that brute doesn't mean to kill me?"

"Don't be afraid, Joanna."

The senior brother rose, sword in hand, his face cold and hard.

"I'll kill it for you."

The Master raised his hand as well, ordering all the disciples out to help.

"Beat that cursed animal to death. Avenge Joanna!"

He paused, and his eyes settled on me, dark and heavy. "And let Evelyn Mercer see for herself. Without those precious parents of hers, she is nothing."

The sounds of slaughter began outside.

The Qilin's deep roar grew weaker and weaker, until at last it faded into a whimper.

The hope that had just flared in me collapsed into a bottomless despair.

"No! Qilin! Run! Get away!"

"Don't worry about me!"

I fought like something gone mad to reach him, but at the door I stopped, frozen stiff.

The Qilin's blood, still glowing gold, seeped in under the door,

and soaked through my thin embroidered shoes.

He had gone with me to pick out these shoes.

I was soft-natured and dull, always yielding, and I had no real friends.

The Qilin was a spirit beast, but he was also my only friend, worth far more to me than my own life.

And now he was dead.

I used to think there was nothing in this world worth refusing to bend over.

But today, his death was the one thing I would never bend on.

Joanna came up behind me and drove her foot into my back.

Caught off guard, I pitched forward into the pool of blood, my head and face wet with what I could no longer tell was blood or tears.

She only stood over me and gave a soft laugh.

"Senior Sister Mercer, you're so pitiful. So ridiculous."

"It was just a dog. How could you value it more than your own life?"

As she spoke, the mockery in her eyes turned to grief.

"Senior Sister, you'd even save a dog. So why won't you save me!"

"Tell me, aren't you stupid? Hand over the treasure and that dog never had to die."

She pointed at the lifeless Qilin on the ground and laughed softly.

"This is all your fault!"

"The dog's dead now. Crying won't do you any good!"

I stared at her, hard, and with the back of my hand wiped the blood and tears from my face.

All my life I'd had no friends, but I'd never really suffered either,

and so I had grown into someone soft, someone who scattered spirit stones around and wasted her kindness on anyone.

My parents had tried raising me hard once, and failed, and in the end they gave up and simply let me live happily.

I had played the meek one because I didn't mind having my goodwill thrown back at me,

because I didn't care how others mocked or sneered,

because I never begrudged sharing my wealth or my joy.

But that did not mean I had no limit!

In that moment hatred rose up over the instinct to appease.

"Joanna Henson..."

When I finally spoke, I realized I had screamed my voice raw.

"I'll remember what happened today. Every one of you is going to the grave with him."

Joanna arched a brow, gave a little cry, and fell back into the senior brother's arms, weeping her fake tears.

"I'm so frightened... you'll protect me, won't you?"

The senior brother patted her, all comfort.

The Master planted himself in front of the two of them and looked at me, the outsider, with cool detachment.

"The Immortal Sovereign and the Poison Physician aren't here. No one can help you."

"Once Joanna ascends, we'll tell the Immortal Sovereign you ran away from home. Not a soul will doubt it."

With that he curled his hand into a claw and seized the Qilin's soul, which had drifted up toward the sky, reaching for rescue.

One hard clench, and the Qilin's soul scattered into nothing.

But what they didn't know was that the Qilin only looked like a big dog.

His true body was a cub of the ancient divine beast, the Qilin itself!

A divine beast had died, and the very winds and clouds of heaven and earth shifted with it. My parents in the immortal realm would surely see.

The next moment, a familiar figure appeared at the edge of the sky.

I lifted my head and flew toward it, like a swallow rushing home to the woods.

4: 4

4.

"Grand Patriarch Ruochen!"

"My parents entrusted me to your care before they ascended. I beg you, save the Qilin!"

"Grandfather!"

My cry for help overlapped with Joanna's voice.

She threw me one scornful glance, then arranged her face into a look of someone at death's door and rushed to meet him.

"Grandfather... my granddaughter's meridians are all shattered. Unless I ascend, I cannot escape death..."

"Senior Sister clearly has the ascension treasure the Immortal Sovereign left behind, yet she refuses to lend it to me... Perhaps today Joanna and Grandfather will be parted by death itself!"

The Grand Patriarch turned and murmured to her a while, soothing her, before he had time to look at me.

His face changed sharply.

"I don't have any ascension treasure."

"If this ends here and the Qilin is revived, I can pretend none of it ever happened."

I offered him a way out. He answered with silence.

A moment later he lifted his eyes and looked at me with an air of aggrieved sorrow.

"Evelyn! Your father left behind a treasure. Why can you not bring it out and share it with the sect?"

"True, the Immortal Sovereign did not ask me to look after you before he ascended. But as your elder, I will give you one last chance."

"Hand over the ascension treasure, and I can spare your life."

There was no evasion in those eyes. Only greed, and no attempt to hide it.

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

"If my father had such a treasure, why did he never bring it out to share with the sect before?"

"Adrian Mercer is a vicious man."

A cold light flashed in the Grand Patriarch's eyes. He would say no more.

He settled into the high-backed chair and waited, calm and unhurried, for me to break.

"Adrian Mercer and Rose Cooley haven't contacted you once since they ascended. It seems they abandoned you long ago."

"Rather than put up this hopeless resistance, better to hand it over now and spare yourself the torture."

Then he gave a soft laugh.

"And if you truly refuse to speak, no matter. It makes no difference."

"As the child of Adrian Mercer and Rose Cooley, you've been raised since birth on divine pills and elixirs. Even your blood is of the finest grade."

"Put to good use, it will surely be enough to let Joanna ascend."

At those words, the senior brother's face twisted.

The Master did not so much as blink. He raised a hand, and a hundred blades of wind sliced open my flesh.

Precise, every one of them.

Blood poured down.

Joanna's eyes went wide. She stopped clutching her chest, stopped gasping for breath.

She even pointed at several disciples and ordered them to carve up the Qilin's corpse.

"A divine hound this large—once its blood and flesh are refined, it'll make a superb spirit artifact."

The disciples set their blades to work.

I lay on the ground, desperate to stand and stop them.

But I had lost too much blood. It left me utterly weak, without even the strength to push my upper body upright.

Joanna hauled me up by the hair, dragged me aside, and swung a slap across my face.

"Look how wretched I am, and you still won't save me!"

"Evelyn Mercer, everyone says you're kind. I say it's all a lie! You're a hypocrite!"

"You aren't hurt at all."

I bowed my head and spat out a mouthful of bloody foam.

My voice was calm, yet my eyes had turned a startling crimson.

Joanna didn't see it. She was still nodding and laughing.

"That's right."

"Do you think no one can see through you?"

"If you'd just brought out the treasure and saved me, none of this would have happened, would it?"

Slap.

Another loud blow landed on my face.

The corners of her lips split wider and wider. "Senior Sister Mercer, this is just how the world works."

"Your temper's too good, and you're too weak. You deserve to be a stepping-stone. If you'd been a little more obedient, the way you act out there in front of everyone, you'd have suffered less."

"But you're too disobedient... You can meet the demands of so many people. Why refuse me?"

"If I had it, I wouldn't hoard it for myself."

I said it word by word.

"Hypocrite!"

"Evelyn Mercer, no matter how convincing your act, I'll never believe you."

The senior brother sighed and, feigning tenderness, stroked my face. "If you have some real ability, you could bring it out too, couldn't you?"

"All right. I'll grant your wish."

I nodded, and suddenly I smiled. "Then don't blame me."

The next instant, every person who had laid a hand on me froze mid-motion.

Out of nowhere, as if a great hand had seized their hearts and was wrenching them outward with all its force.

At the sound of my laugh, every one of them went wide-eyed and spat out a mouthful of foul blood.

"You! You... what did you do!"