Chapter 646 - Storm of the Abyss (XIX) (Patreon)

Shufen felt like she should have glued her jaw shut the moment she joined the man's group. Her bones hurt, and she couldn't even discern what was real and what wasn't any longer.

There was an old story that an old woman whose name she'd long since forgotten used to tell her when she was studying the history of the world. Even the story's contents were largely forgotten, but the lessons that came at the end stuck: there were many martial artists worth fearing, the old woman used to say, but two ilk in particular you should care for the most.

Those two were the oldest and the youngest, Shufen recalled. Children and the weathered.

And before her now stood a child worthy of that fear.

... no, worthy of the deepest fear imaginable.

Most things she could make sense of, and most thing she could intuit. It was her strength in a cruel world where her talents fell well short of her siblings'. And her instinct never betrayed her--whenever she would look at someone, she felt the depth of fear she ought to feel towards them. Be that Divine Blade, or other Emperors, or any of the other children around her, she could sense.

There were three exceptions that she met in her life: her elusive Master whose depths she couldn't even begin to fathom; there was the strange, cloaked figure she saw during the Battle of the Nuan Throne, a realm-spanning tournament meant to propel younger generations into spotlight. She saw the man sit at the far back of the stands, appearing no different than the surrounding crowd.

But when she laid her eyes on him, there was simply void.

And now... there was a third.

A young girl. One she found rather adorable and wanted to deeply dote on. One that always either stayed silent or threw in a quip or two. Clever, adorable, pretty, cute, a quintessential child. Though Shufen knew she can't have been simple as none of the kids under that man were, her intuition told her that the girl was merely 'talented'.

But it was wrong.

That... thing wasn't a talent. It was a horror. Horror beyond horrors.

She flashed forward from their group and appeared next to the man that caused all hairs on the back of her neck to stand up when she laid her eyes upon him. He was dangerous, and would have required all their collective strength to push through. And yet that little girl stepped up in front of him fearlessly, and even as she and a number of others began to squawk and shout at her to get back, she stood firm. Even as that horrid man started reaching out towards her, she remained standing in place.

Shufen's eyes wandered to the side at Lu Qi who also appeared a bit worried, but nowhere to the extent she was. She had just been about to ask what was wrong with him when it began. The kind of death she wouldn't even wish upon her greatest enemy.

Slow, painful, agonizing, all-consuming.

She winced and cringed and shuddered as the man began to practically disintegrate, his skin melting like wax, body sizzling with visible agony. By the end, it was difficult to discern that he ever was a man--those who stumbled upon this place would just assume that it was some sort of a pond of sludge.

Light's footsteps echoed out as she walked back toward Lu Qi, expectantly looking up at him with a pair of eyes so innocent Shufen was tempted to accept she'd just imagined the whole thing.

"Good job," Lu Qi said, crouching down and gently patting her head. "But that was very dangerous. What if something had happened to you? Master would have died of grief, you know?" the little girl smiled, her eyes closed, enjoying the hand on her head.

"Hm."

"You can't just rush ahead like that, okay?"

"Hm."

"You need to be careful."

"Hm."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Hm."

"Haah," it was almost like a comedy routine, Shufen mused. But she couldn't laugh.

And she wasn't alone.

While none of the kids seemed particularly disturbed by what Light had done, with even Divine Blade appearing disinterested, the newcomers who'd been following them shared her own terror. She could see them in the back, nestled together, trying to make themselves appear as small as possible.

It was something that, if she shared with those who didn't witness it, she'd never be believed. The kind of a story that ends up in those ancient books where everyone assume it was merely a myth.

There once was a ten-year-old girl, her face a porcelain cast of innocence. And the little girl walked up to a big, bad man and told him to die, and the man died...

A fable meant to inspire children. A lie meant to humble the arrogant.

And yet, she witnessed it. She would have to live her life knowing that little girl could probably kill her with a thought.

There was still that one question that she didn't dare ask, neither to herself nor out loud. No normal child, of course, could do that. Which naturally lent itself to a question she would not ask. Knowing, she feared, would only make it more harrowing.

**

Jin Hua sighed inwardly, her innards churning.

Yun Qi had vastly underestimated this little group, it turned out. The hunt that the two of them had embarked upon to avenge his sect and her Dao Companion... could these people not have done it all in a day? That man who that child just killed was, at the very least, thrice as strong as the strongest Elder they'd faced--and she killed him with such ease that Jin Hua suspected that the man was a sheep in wolf's clothing. One of those who bolstered a strong realm on the outside, yet was decidedly weak within.

And looking at her behaving cutely under the palm of that man... she shuddered. He was chaos personified, even if he himself was neither the cause nor the source. There was something to be said for how unknown they all were in the broader world; a group like this was a storm that swept the heavens under their wake, and yet...

A random painting or two, a few rumors, some few stories--a culmination of their entire weight could barely be qualified as 'knowing'. Some wandering bards were more known than they were.

Perhaps it was a blessing, as otherwise Jin Hua had no doubt in her mind that the collective might of all Holy Lands would have descended upon them. It would be in an attempt to recruit them at first, but she knew well enough none of these children would be tempted. Even if they were promised the whole Sect itself, they would say no.

"Alright, let's go," Lu Qi called out. "We're getting close, I feel. Everyone, best be on guard from here on out. Who knows what's waiting for us at the center?"

She joined them, her feet tapping away at the stone underneath. They passed the sludge that was a living person not a minute ago--black soot, yet oozing. Horrid. A stench that she would never forget. A lesson imprinted so deep in her she would die never having shared it.

Perhaps, she mused, latching herself onto this group, using Yun Qi as an excuse... couldn't she, too, make something greater of herself in the future? Only time would tell, she supposed.