———Reader Discretion: This Chapter have essense of Brutality and Cannibalism. Please read it at your risk. Remember it is all a work of Imagination. Do not try to imitate in reality.———
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8: Who am I? [6]
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The world was again covered in Darkness. But this time, the darkness was different. There was no Gandolah lurking at its edges, no Space-less Void swallowing sound and thought. This darkness had weight and warmth. The texture of the blanket against his body could be felt; its coarse yet soft weave pressed into his skin. The scent of incense lingered in the air, faint but steady, like something clinging to an old temple. Even through closed eyes, he could sense sunlight spilling across the room—thin and muted but there. This time, it was no Shénzhī. It was Earth.
Zu Feng opened his eyes slowly. The brightness struck first—a blade of white light cutting into his vision, forcing him to squint until shapes began to emerge. He blinked several times, eyes burning, and slowly the ceiling above him came into focus. The same ceiling he had seen before. Painted wood stretched overhead, every plank carved and lacquered with patient hands. Patterns of cranes mid-flight chased across the beams, their wings reaching out over mountains etched in miniature relief. The images felt old, older than his memories here, the kind of craft only someone with time and devotion could achieve.
But this time, two things were different.
The first was silence. The three people who had always been there when he awoke—faces hovering above him, voices whispering at his side—were gone. Their absence left a hollow in the air, like the echo of a temple bell after it has been struck. The second was pain. Not the deep, total agony that had consumed him before, but a faint, sharp ache at his left wrist. It pulsed beneath his skin like a reminder.
He moved his hand upward, slowly, still lying on the soft mattress. The movement felt stiff, deliberate. His eyes followed the motion. His left wrist was wrapped tightly in layers of bandage, the cloth stained faintly where a dark oil had soaked through. The smell was strong—bitter, herbal, pungent, something medicinal that clung to his skin and the sheets. He turned his wrist slightly in the light, watching how the bandages caught and dulled the sunlight.
He pushed himself upright, leaning on his uninjured right hand. His body trembled faintly with the effort. The pain was there, pressing into his chest and stomach, yet it was not as sharp as it should have been. Any other man would have screamed at the weight of it. Zu Feng did not. He merely sat up, the faint shift of his shoulders the only sign of strain.
His arms lay like twigs against his sides—thin, almost fragile. He stared at them and scoffed under his breath. Long black hair spilled over his back, sliding down to the mattress like spilled ink. It was clean, still lavish despite everything, a strange contrast to the ruin beneath. His eyes were hollow. His pupils washed out, his face blank and unlit, as though no thought behind them could reach the surface.
"This body… survived?" The words left him quietly, his tone low and disappointed. His lips barely moved, as if even speaking was an unnecessary expense.
He forced himself to stand. His legs wavered, knees trembling, but he dragged his frame upright with a kind of grim inevitability. The motion peeled a soft sound from the floorboards beneath his feet. He looked down. From chest to stomach, his body was swathed in bandages. Strips of white cloth layered across his ribs and abdomen like a cage. Below that, he still wore a long black garment, hanging from the waist down, plain but clean.
"This is quite disappointing. I hoped to have died." The thought flickered through his mind as he began tearing the bandages away, one by one. The cloth peeled from his skin with a dry whisper. He stripped it from his wrist as well, exposing what lay beneath.
Scars.
They laced his torso like a map drawn in blood. Scars of all shapes and depths, some as short as a finger's width, others stretching from one side of his stomach to his back. The marks were old—some pale, some darkened with time. The only parts untouched were his arms, strangely unmarked. He stared at the mess of his own flesh, a hollowed ruin wrapped around brittle bones.
His eyes fell to his wrist. The wound he had given himself had healed faster than expected, leaving only a faint, dark line.
"Hm. Does this body have its own healing powers?" he exhaled softly, the sound more like a sigh than a question. "Let's check it, should we. That God said to know…"
Zu Feng tilted his head back, eyes rising toward the ceiling, as if seeing beyond it to the sky. Standing there on Earth, he let the corner of his mouth lift just slightly—a smirk, quick and faint. And then, without hesitation, he acted.
He brought his forearm up to his mouth, teeth bared like a predator. In one sudden motion he bit down, tearing into his own flesh. The skin parted under his teeth. Blood spattered across his face, warm and metallic, streaking down his chin and neck. His teeth clenched around the chunk of skin until he ripped it free. The taste filled his mouth, sharp and coppery.
Blood poured from the wound, spilling down his arm in a steady rush. It splashed onto the wooden floor, spreading in crimson lines, staining the pale grain of the boards. The sound of it dripping filled the silence like rain. Yet Zu Feng's face remained unchanged.
"This body…" He stared at the wound, at the small fountain of blood gushing from it. His voice stayed in his mind, echoing like something spoken far away. "This body… does it not feel any pain?"
He studied the flow of blood. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to slow. The wound started to pull closed, fibers of torn flesh knitting faintly under his gaze.
He smirked a little. His teeth were still bared, his eyes rising slightly in something that was not quite amusement and not quite awe.
"This body doesn't have enhanced healing powers but it is also…" His breath caught faintly. "…Pain free!?"
He let the words echo in his skull, not moving for a long moment as the blood continued to drip onto the floor. Then, at last, he lowered his arm.
Zu Feng looked toward the orchard beyond the window. The sky there was pale and heavy, light falling through leaves. Slowly, with the air thick around him, he reached for his black robe. The fabric was cool against his scarred skin as he pulled it on, the garment hanging open across his chest to reveal the marks beneath. His hair flowed down his back, dark and unbroken.
He walked toward the orchard with slow steps, each footfall heavy on the wood. His scars shifted beneath the robe as he moved, his face calm, expressionless. He reached the porch at last, and there he stopped. The air from the orchard brushed against him, carrying scents of soil and green leaves.
And then he saw…
He stood at the threshold, taking a moment to absorb the vista. It was a sudden, vibrant explosion of natural life, a world apart from the shadowed, heavy atmosphere of the house.
A huge Orchard with various trees and Grass all over covering the land. The view was breathtakingly lush. The trees were ancient, their boughs heavy with ripening fruit he did not recognize, their leaves a thousand shades of emerald and jade.
The grass was impossibly tall, swaying gently in a non-existent breeze, creating shifting waves of green that stretched out to the unseen perimeter. The Sun was about to fall, dipping low on the horizon, bathing the entire scene in a deep, melancholic gold.
The clouds were about to cover the sky, magnificent, bruise-coloured banks of purple and rose, signaling the imminent transition into night. The air was thick with the scent of pollen and damp earth.Various animal played between the beautiful grass. Deer with coats the color of polished mahogany grazed calmly, ignoring the skittish rabbits that darted amongst the roots. Small, brightly coloured creatures he had never encountered before—part bird, part lizard—flitted among the blossoms.
They moved with an almost dreamlike lack of fear, existing in a state of fragile, communal harmony. And Many Birds sat on the trees, singing an unheared melody. It was a complex, layered sound, a chorus of chirps, calls, and trills that lacked any discernible pattern or rhythm, a chaotic music that nonetheless possessed a strange beauty.
Zu Feng stepped on the ground gracefully. The transition from the polished wood of the porch to the cool, springy earth beneath his bare feet was a tactile shock. His steps, despite the frail state of his body, were deliberate, measured, and quiet, disturbing the tall grass only minimally.
With every step he took, he was attracting numbers of animals towards him. It was a subtle, unforced magnetism. The grazing deer paused, turning their large, liquid eyes toward him. The skittish rabbits froze mid-hop. The singing birds muted their song, their tiny heads tilting as if trying to locate the source of a profound, primal gravity. They did not approach in fear, but in a state of silent, unwavering attention, drawn by the hollow energy of the man who walked among them.
Moving through the tall grass, Zu Feng continued his slow, indifferent procession, the animals parting around him like a silent stream.
It was there, amidst a particularly dense patch of ferns, that he saw an small animal, A Squirrel, its familiar, dark eyes glazed over. It was lying on the ground squeaking for help, a tiny, distressed sound that was barely audible over the remaining ambient noises of the orchard.
Its half of the body was crushed under a rock, a heavy, moss-covered stone that pinned its lower abdomen, rendering its frantic struggle futile.Its front paws scraped uselessly at the soil, its small mouth opening and closing in soundless, agonizing pleas.
This was the raw reality of the natural world, a microcosm of absolute, unavoidable suffering.But then, Zu Feng looked behind, toward the periphery of the immediate scene. He saw that the other creatures, the deer, the rabbits, the bright-winged fliers—all of them were watching the squirrel with the same dispassionate curiosity with which they watched him.
He saw, Not even a single Animal tried to help that Squirrel. The concept of altruism, of mutual aid, was utterly foreign to their existence. Even though they like in a small place, share the same meal, yet there was no attachment between them. No bond of sympathy, no imperative of cooperation, only the silent, brutal recognition of weakness and fate.
The dying animal was merely a disruption in the peaceful grazing, a temporary, soon-to-be-removed flaw in the perfect, self-serving system.
Zu Feng smiled at that feeble animal. It was not a warm smile, nor a cruel one, but a smile of profound, vindicating understanding. It confirmed everything he already knew. He then looked at the soaring Evening Sky, the clouds now turning a deeper, bruised violet, the last rays of light struggling to pierce through.
"Survival of the Fittest..." , he thought in his mind. The thought was a quiet affirmation, a nod to the cold, undeniable principle that governed every world, every life, every plane of existence he had ever been forced to inhabit. It was the eternal truth."This is what the Master told me."
The memory of the Master, the one true teacher of his first life, flickered across his mind, a fleeting image of iron discipline and merciless clarity.The squirrel continued its desperate, silent struggle beneath the heavy stone, its squeaks becoming weaker.
Zu Feng did not hesitate. He took his final, decisive step.Then Zu Feng walked over the squirrel, crushing it to death.He felt the small, sickening crunch of bone and tissue beneath his foot. It was a brief, final protest from the fragile architecture of the creature.
The crushing was clean, efficient, and delivered without malice or pity, an act of pure, philosophical necessity. He removed his foot, leaving the small, lifeless form imprinted into the soft earth, another casualty of the immutable law.
He stood over the body, his hollow eyes fixed on the empty horizon, and began to speak, his voice low but resonating with the quiet authority of cold conviction.
"In the world of Death and Birth, The one thing that matters is Survival. A Frog killed an Insect, then a snake eats the frog, then an Eagle killed the Snake and then a human, ultimately shoots the Eagle. This is what life is, no matter how big you are in this world, there is always someone, who would kill you to fulfill its heartly desires. Thats what make a being the king of a land. Even if you share , the same meal with anyone, you should not trust that same anyone for any meal. No one is of anyone and Nobody is for anybody. Even if you live in an another world, the principal for that world, too never changes. To fill yourself, you have to kill someone else. This is a dog eat dog World, and only one who have a stick can conquer it."
The words hung in the air, a final, brutal sermon delivered to the unlistening, indifferent world. The animals, still drawn by his presence, watched silently, the profound cruelty of his action registering only as another event in the grand, ceaseless cycle.
Zu Feng then stood infront of a tree, an enormous, sentinel oak that dominated the center of the orchard. It had a huge trunk, thicker than three men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, its bark a deeply furrowed, dark grey hide. Broad roots came out from the ground, twisting and winding like sleeping pythons, anchoring the giant against the ravages of time. His eyes were dead as always, fixed on the wood, searching for something more than mere organic matter; there was no light in them, no reflection of the beautiful sunset, only the deep, unyielding grey of his internal void.
He reached out, his twig-like arm extending, and touched the trunk of the tree. The texture was rough, surprisingly cold, and immensely solid, a testament to centuries of silent, slow growth. Then he said to himself, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, a private contemplation of his recurring fate.
"Last time, I have surely died. Last time, this orchard was not so—" He had been about to comment on the density of the life, the lushness of the surroundings, noticing the profound difference from the last time he had seen this place—a memory of a barren, scorched earth where this forest now stood.
He was about to process the meaning of this change, to catalog the variance in this new iteration of his return.But suddenly he turned right, a blinding flash of instinct, the decades of combat experience asserting itself over the newly discovered apathy of his body.
It was a purely defensive reaction, a recognition of a lethal shift in the ambient energy, an intrusion that was not part of the natural rhythm of the orchard. The movement was lightning-fast, an attempt to dodge, to evade, to analyze the threat he had unconsciously failed to register until the very last nanosecond.
But before he could do anything, before the thought could translate into effective action, an arrow pierced staight through his brain and struck in to the tree.The impact was immediate, horrific, and final. The projectile, tipped with dark, feathered fletching, struck with silent, shocking force.
It tore through the fragile bone of his skull, cleaved through the grey matter, and buried itself deep into the ancient wood of the oak trunk behind him, pinning his body instantly and violently to the tree.Blood gushed out of Zu Feng's head, a massive, instantaneous spray, coating the trunk and the surrounding roots in a fresh, scarlet veneer.
The body convulsed once, a brief, involuntary spasm of life being extinguished. The limbs, momentarily animated by the shock, went instantly slack.Even if he didn't felt any pain—the agony of the flesh, the neural scream of trauma—he had still felt the pain. The only pain every living can feel.
Death.
And then, silence descended upon the orchard, a stillness more profound than before. The animals scattered, the unheeded melody of the birds was permanently silenced, and the body of Zu Feng hung suspended, a macabre offering to the indifferent, setting sun.
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[A/N: Hoped that you liked it]