The wind began to rage across the open field, transforming from gentle breeze to violent gale in moments. The grass swayed with frantic energy, bending nearly horizontal under the assault, yet Zhung's gaze remained perfectly still—icy, empty, filled with nothing but cold calculation and the faint spark of obsession that had kept him alive across three lifetimes.
His mind worked with mechanical precision, cataloging threats and angles with the detachment of someone solving a mathematical equation rather than facing potential death.
*Five bandits, fifteen meters from my position. Two are shifting left, trying to flank. Two moving right, mirroring the first pair. The leader stays center, maintaining verbal control while his men position for ambush. Standard bandit tactics—distract with negotiation while surrounding the target.*
*My advantages: The axe, superior reach with the weapon, martial knowledge from my second life, and the element of surprise—they think I'm just another traveler. My disadvantages: Five against one, they're experienced fighters who've clearly done this before, I'm Tin rank but untested in real combat, and this body is only sixteen years old.*
*Survival probability if I fight head-on: approximately thirty percent. I could take down three, maybe four at best, before the numbers overwhelmed me. That's not acceptable.*
His expression remained perfectly neutral, a blank slate that the bandits tried and failed to read. It was like staring at empty parchment and trying to divine the writer's intent—there was simply nothing there to interpret.
The scarred leader shifted his weight, his hand still resting on his sword hilt but not drawing. When he spoke, his voice carried a nervous edge he was trying desperately to hide.
"Hey, listen—no need for this to get complicated. Just hand over the girl and we'll leave you alone. Hell, we'll even pay you for the trouble. What do you say? Everyone walks away happy."
Zhung's enhanced perception—one of the few benefits of his newly formed Aperture—caught every tell. The leader's voice wavered slightly on "pay you," a clear indication of deception. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool autumn air. His eyes kept flicking to his men's positions, checking their readiness. His grip on the sword tightened incrementally with each word.
*He's lying. Obviously. The moment I release the girl, they'll attack. Probably planned to kill me regardless—can't leave witnesses who might report them to whatever authority exists out here. Standard bandit logic: dead men tell no tales.*
Behind him, the girl clutched his wolf-pelt robe with trembling hands, her breathing rapid and shallow. She was terrified, probably had been running for hours before encountering him, adrenaline beginning to fade into exhausted panic.
*She's a liability in combat. Can't fight while protecting her. Need to change the equation.*
Zhung's lips curved upward—barely noticeable, just the faintest suggestion of a smile that could have been imagination or shadow. His hand moved with sudden decisiveness, grabbing the girl's slender arm in a grip that, while not bruising, was absolutely firm.
"Wait—what? No!" The girl's eyes went wide with shock and betrayal. "Please don't, mister! Please, I'll—I'll pay you too! My father is—"
"Quiet." Zhung's voice was flat, emotionless, as he began pulling her forward.
"No! NO! Please don't!" Her voice rose to a scream, genuine terror flooding her features. Tears streamed down her face, cutting tracks through the dust and sweat. She tried to dig her heels into the ground, but her soft indoor slippers found no purchase on the grass. "Please, I'm begging you! Don't give me to them! They'll—"
Zhung ignored her pleas entirely, dragging her with mechanical efficiency around to his front, her pink silk hanfu catching and tearing slightly on his axe handle. Her cries were loud enough to carry across the field, raw desperation in every sound.
*Perfect. Sell it. Make them believe.*
The bandits' expressions transformed instantly. The nervous tension evaporated, replaced by greedy relief. Their postures relaxed incrementally—shoulders dropping, grips on weapons loosening slightly. Malicious grins spread across weathered faces. They'd won. The stranger had proven sensible after all.
The two on the left exchanged satisfied glances. The pair on the right chuckled darkly. The leader's nervous sweat was replaced by the confident bearing of someone whose gamble had paid off.
Zhung pushed the girl forward with enough force that she stumbled, her weak, shaking steps carrying her toward the bandit leader. She was sobbing openly now, her face a mask of despair and terror, her hopes for rescue shattered by pragmatic betrayal.
The bandit leader approached with leisurely confidence, his sword remaining sheathed. His smile widened into something predatory and cruel, revealing yellowed teeth. His eyes raked over the girl with unconcealed lust—she was young, pretty, and expensive-looking. Whatever they'd been hired to do with her, he clearly had other plans first.
"Smart choice, friend," the leader said, not even looking at Zhung anymore, his entire attention focused on his prize. "Real smart. Here, let me just—"
He reached out toward the girl's tear-stained face with one grimy hand, his smile widening further, his other hand moving to his belt where a purse of coins hung—probably empty, probably never intended to be opened.
Then everything happened at once.
Zhung's hand moved to the small of his back where several objects were tucked into his belt, hidden by the wolf pelt. His fingers closed around sharpened bone—fragments he'd carved from the Albino Mountain Wolf's skeleton, each one roughly the length of his hand, filed to lethal points over several days of travel.
*Now.*
His arm snapped forward in a throwing motion perfected through endless practice during his cultivation life, muscle memory surviving across reincarnations. The bone shard left his hand with a whistle of displaced air.
The bandit leader's hand was inches from the girl's face when the projectile struck.
*Thunk.*
The sharpened bone punched through his forehead with the sound of penetrating leather, driving deep into the brain cavity behind. His eyes went wide, pupils dilating, his predatory smile freezing in place as his nervous system shut down before his consciousness could even process what had happened.
He stood there for one impossible moment, a corpse that didn't know it was dead yet.
Then his knees buckled and he collapsed forward, falling past the girl who screamed as arterial spray from the entry wound painted her pink silk crimson.
The leader hit the ground face-first with a heavy, final thud. Unmoving. Dead.
The wind howled across the field as if nature itself was reacting to the sudden violence.
Time seemed to freeze for the remaining four bandits, their minds struggling to process the instantaneous reversal. One moment they'd won. The next, their leader was dead at their feet.
But Zhung was already moving.
He exploded forward with the enhanced speed of a Tin-rank cultivator, his body responding to Will-enhanced reflexes that made him faster than any normal human. He pushed the paralyzed girl aside—not gently, but not violently either, just removing her from his path—and snatched the fallen leader's sword from its sheath in one smooth motion.
The blade was cheap iron, poorly balanced, but it was sharp enough and that was all that mattered.
His left hand went to his belt again, pulling another bone shard. The bandits on the left were still processing, their reactions delayed by shock. One was staring at his fallen leader. The other was turning toward Zhung, mouth opening to shout a warning or curse.
Zhung threw.
The bone shard flew in a slight arc and struck the turning bandit in the left thigh, punching through muscle and scraping against bone. The man's warning transformed into a shriek of pain as his leg gave out beneath him, sending him tumbling to the grass.
*Two down. Three remaining. Closing distance.*
Zhung ran left, his path taking him directly toward the injured bandit and his still-shocked companion. The companion finally reacted, hands going to his own sword, beginning to draw—
Too slow.
Zhung's stolen blade swept in a horizontal arc that caught the man at neck height. The edge was dull enough that it didn't slice clean through, but sharp enough and moving fast enough that it cut deep—through skin, through muscle, through the carotid artery and jugular vein, nearly reaching the spine.
Blood erupted in a pressurized spray as the man's heart continued pumping for several more beats, not yet aware it was pointless. His hands went to his throat reflexively, trying to hold together what couldn't be held, his eyes wide with the terrible understanding that he had seconds left.
He fell sideways, body twitching, blood pooling rapidly beneath him.
The injured bandit—the one with the bone shard in his thigh—was on the ground, breathing heavily, his hands wrapped around the wound trying to staunch the bleeding. His survival instinct kicked into overdrive as he saw Zhung approaching.
"You—you bastard! You fucking—"
Zhung drove the sword down and forward in a thrust that punched through the man's sternum, the cheap blade bending slightly but penetrating deep enough to pierce the heart. The bandit's curse cut off mid-word, replaced by a wet gurgle as blood filled his lungs.
Zhung twisted the blade, felt it scrape against bone, then yanked it free. The dying man convulsed once, twice, then went still, his bloodshot eyes staring at nothing.
*Three down. Two remaining. Right flank.*
The remaining bandits had finally overcome their shock. They'd watched their leader and two companions die in perhaps ten seconds—not enough time to process, barely enough time to react, but enough to understand they were in mortal danger.
One—a younger man, maybe twenty-five, with a face that might have been handsome before scarring and hard living aged it—charged forward with a roar of rage and fear, his sword raised high in an overhead strike that telegraphed his intent from miles away.
Amateur mistake. Emotion overriding training.
Zhung didn't have his axe—he'd need that back soon—so he improvised. He let the young bandit's overhead strike come down, then stepped inside its arc, too close for the blade to have proper leverage. His stolen sword came up and across in a vicious slash that opened the young man's belly from hip to ribs.
The bandit stumbled backward, his own momentum working against him, his sword falling from nerveless fingers as his hands went to his stomach, trying to hold in intestines that were already spilling out. He looked down at his own entrails with an expression of almost comical surprise, as if his body had betrayed him.
He fell to his knees, then onto his side, still making small confused sounds.
*Four down. One remaining.*
Zhung turned, searching for the fifth bandit—
*Where?*
A shadow moved in his peripheral vision. Too close. Behind him.
*Clever. Used the chaos to circle around.*
Pain exploded in his back as steel punched through muscle and scraped against his lowest rib. The fifth bandit had moved silently while Zhung was focused on his companion, had gotten behind him, had driven a knife into the space between his shoulder blade and spine.
Zhung's mouth filled with blood—the blade must have punctured something internal, possibly his lung. He coughed reflexively, crimson droplets spraying from his lips.
The fifth bandit—an older man, perhaps forty, with the lean build and quick movements of someone who'd survived through intelligence rather than strength—yanked his knife free and stepped back, his face showing a smug, arrogant smile.
"Got you, you piece of—"
Then he saw Zhung's face.
The smile died.
Zhung had turned his head to look at the man who'd stabbed him, and his expression was exactly the same as it had been throughout the entire fight: calm, indifferent, empty. Dark eyes like void spaces, showing no pain, no anger, no fear. Nothing.
Just calculation.
*Lung punctured. Bleeding internally. Survival time: maybe ten minutes without treatment. Need to end this now.*
The older bandit took an involuntary step backward, his arrogance evaporating as he stared into those emotionless eyes. He'd just stabbed a man in the back—a potentially fatal wound—and the victim was looking at him like he'd done nothing more annoying than scuff his boots.
"What... what the fuck are you?" the bandit whispered.
Zhung didn't answer. He simply moved.
The Will that flowed through his newly formed Aperture responded to his intent, channeling through the pathways in his body that cultivation had opened. His injured back screamed in protest but he ignored it, pushing his body beyond normal human limits through sheer refusal to acknowledge pain.
He closed the distance in two rapid steps—faster than the bandit expected, faster than normal humans could move. His empty left hand shot out and grabbed the bandit's knife-hand wrist with crushing grip strength, fingers digging in hard enough to feel bones grinding together.
The bandit tried to pull away, tried to bring his other hand around to strike, but Zhung was already inside his reach. The stolen sword—still gripped in his right hand—came up at an angle, the point finding the soft spot beneath the bandit's jaw.
Zhung shoved upward with all his remaining strength.
The blade punched through the soft palate, through the roof of the mouth, into the brain cavity. The bandit's eyes rolled back. His body went rigid, then limp.
Zhung held him there for a moment, blade still embedded, watching the life leave his eyes with the same detached interest one might observe a candle burning out.
Then he released the wrist and let the body fall, the sword sliding free with a wet sucking sound.
Silence.
Just the wind and the grass and Zhung's labored breathing.
He looked down at the borrowed sword, now dripping with blood, then dropped it. Useless. He retrieved his axe from where it had embedded in the earth, yanking it free with a grunt of effort that sent fresh pain shooting through his back.
Five bodies lay scattered across the grass in various states of death. The autumn field that had been peaceful and green was now painted in arterial red and the darker crimson of venous blood, creating abstract patterns in the torn grass.
Zhung stood in the center of the carnage, one hand pressed against his back where blood was seeping through his stolen wolf pelt, his breathing wet and ragged from the punctured lung.
The girl—he'd almost forgotten her—was on her hands and knees perhaps twenty feet away, vomiting into the grass. Her pink hanfu was splattered with the bandit leader's blood, her hair disheveled, her whole body shaking.
She looked up at him with eyes that held terror and confusion in equal measure.
"You... you were going to give me to them. You dragged me forward. You—"
"Bait," Zhung said simply, his voice rough from the blood in his throat. "They relaxed when they thought they'd won. Made them easy to kill. Basic tactics."
The girl stared at him, trying to process this, trying to reconcile the man who'd terrified her with the man who'd just saved her life through brutal efficiency.
"You used me as bait. You made me think—"
"Yes." He coughed, more blood. Definitely punctured lung. "I needed them to believe I'd betrayed you. Couldn't fight five-on-one with you behind me. Changed the math. Made it five separate fights instead of one group fight."
"But you could have warned me! You didn't have to make me think you were really—"
"Your fear had to be real. They'd have seen through acting." He was breathing harder now, the adrenaline wearing off, the pain asserting itself. "Fear creates genuine responses. Genuine responses sell the deception."
He turned away from her, scanning the horizon. No reinforcements visible. Good. His hand pressed harder against his back, but the bleeding wasn't stopping. Bad.
*Punctured lung. Possibly nicked kidney. Blood loss accelerating. Need treatment soon or this becomes permanent.*
He'd survived the bandits only to potentially die from his wounds. The mathematics of violence had worked in his favor, but the mathematics of anatomy were less forgiving.
The girl struggled to her feet, her legs shaking, her silk slippers soaked with blood—not hers, but that didn't make it less horrifying. She took a tentative step toward him.
"You're hurt. You're bleeding. I can—"
"Can you what?" Zhung's voice was flat, almost dismissive. "Do you have medical training? Can you stitch internal wounds? Can you prevent infection?"
She hesitated. "No, but—"
"Then you can't help. Tell me who you are. Your value determines whether I wasted my time."
The blunt pragmatism of the question made her flinch. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly very aware that this man—this boy, really, he couldn't be older than sixteen—had just killed five grown men with the same emotional investment most people showed swatting flies.
"I'm... I'm Li Mei. My father is Li Huang, head of the Thousand Rivers Merchant Association. We were traveling to the Western Frontier when bandits attacked our caravan. I ran, and they chased me."
Zhung's eyes narrowed slightly. Thousand Rivers Merchant Association—he'd heard the name in Black Water Village. Major trading consortium, presence across multiple regions, wealth and connections that could be useful.
"How much is your father worth?"
"I—what?"
"Simple question. How much wealth does your father control? Will he reward someone who returns you alive?"
Li Mei's expression flickered between offense and understanding. She was smart enough to realize that outrage wouldn't help her situation. This boy didn't care about her feelings. He cared about value.
"Yes," she said quietly. "He would pay handsomely for my safe return. And he has connections in the Western Frontier, the Central Plains, even contacts with some of the smaller sects. He could—"
Zhung nodded once, cutting her off. The calculation was complete. She had value. Significant value. Worth the risk, worth the injury, worth keeping alive.
"Good. Then you'll—"
He swayed suddenly, his vision graying at the edges. The blood loss was catching up, his body beginning to shut down non-essential functions to preserve the vital organs.
*No. Not yet. Need to secure advantage first. Need to—*
"You're going to pass out," Li Mei said, her voice taking on an edge of authority that suggested she was used to crisis management—merchant's daughter, probably seen business deals go wrong, probably trained to stay calm under pressure. "You need to sit down before you fall down."
"Need to move. Other bandits might—"
"There's a stream maybe a hundred meters north. I passed it while running. We can clean your wound there, and I can..." She trailed off, clearly not sure what she could do but knowing something needed to be done.
Zhung's cold, calculating mind fought against his body's growing weakness. She was right. He was going to lose consciousness soon. Better to position himself advantageously first.
"Lead," he said simply.
She moved to his side, carefully avoiding the corpses, and offered her shoulder for support. He ignored it—accepting help felt like weakness—but allowed her to walk ahead, setting the pace, guiding him north.
As they walked away from the field of corpses, leaving five dead bandits for the crows and whatever scavengers roamed this region, Zhung's mind continued its relentless analysis even as his vision tunneled.
*Survived. Took injury but survived. Killed five Tin-rank equivalents using tactics, surprise, and Tin-rank enhancement. Li Mei has value—father's wealth, connections, potential future resources. The wound is serious but not immediately fatal if treated. Need to stay conscious until reaching defensible position.*
*The girl thinks I saved her. I didn't. I evaluated her potential value, determined it exceeded the risk, and acted accordingly. She calls it rescue. I call it investment.*
*They'll call me righteous. They'll say I stood against five bandits to protect an innocent girl. They'll make me into a hero in whatever story they tell.*
*Let them. The truth doesn't matter. Only results matter. Only survival matters. Only climbing matters.*
His foot caught on something and he stumbled, his hand going out to catch himself against a tree. Blood dripped from his lips, from the wound in his back, making dark trails in the dirt.
"Almost there," Li Mei said, her voice tight with worry. "Just a little further. You can make it."
Zhung said nothing, just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, his dark eyes fixed ahead, his will refusing to let his body quit.
*Who would kill a demon with a saint's reputation? Who would commit cold-blooded murder and have it called righteous?*
*I would. I did. And I'll do it again, as many times as necessary, wearing whatever mask the situation requires.*
*Saint. Demon. Hero. Villain. Righteous protector. Calculating killer.*
*I'm all of them. I'm none of them. I'm just someone climbing, using whatever tools the moment provides.*
The stream came into view—clear water flowing over smooth stones, peaceful and clean.
Zhung's legs finally gave out as they reached the bank, his body deciding that safety had been reached and it was time to shut down non-essential functions to focus on healing. He collapsed onto the grass, consciousness wavering.
The last thing he saw before darkness took him was Li Mei's face—pretty, concerned, looking at him like he was something noble rather than something broken wearing noble's clothing.
*Let her think what she wants,* his fading thoughts whispered. *Truth is just another tool to be used or discarded as needed.*
*I'm not righteous. I'm just effective.*
*That's all that matters.*
Then darkness, and the sound of running water, and nothing else.
---
**End of Chapter 12**