The dark figure stumbled through the narrow mountain pass, his breathing ragged with panic and exhaustion. Behind him, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed off the stone walls.

  "I'm sorry!" Cao Mingshan called out over his shoulder, his voice cracking with desperation. "It wasn't my fault! You have to understand!"

  No response came from his pursuer. Only those steady, inevitable footsteps.

  Mingshan pressed himself against the rocky wall and peered back the way he'd come. The pass curved sharply here, hiding his hunter from view, but he could sense the spiritual pressure growing stronger with each passing second.

  Heaven-Breaking Realm power.

  How had it come to this? Three weeks ago, he'd been living quietly in the Crimson Fist Clan's outer territories, keeping his head down and avoiding attention. His cultivation had stagnated at Half-Step Heaven-Breaking for years, the price of his blood techniques finally catching up with him. But he'd been safe, hidden, forgotten by those who might seek retribution for his past actions.

  Then the reports had started coming in. A Heaven-Breaking cultivator was tearing through the western provinces, systematically hunting down anyone connected to the Crimson Fist Clan. Former members were being dragged from hiding places and interrogated. Some were released after questioning. Others simply disappeared.

  Mingshan had known immediately what this meant. His past had finally caught up with him.

  He pushed off from the wall and continued running, his injured leg sending spikes of agony through his entire body with each step. The martial technique that had wounded him three days ago was still eating away at his meridians, slowly but steadily weakening his cultivation base.

  "Please!" he shouted again. "I can explain everything! We're brothers! Surely that has to count for something!"

  A sound reached his ears that made his blood turn to ice. Laughter. Soft, sad, utterly without humor.

  "Brothers," a familiar voice echoed from behind him. "Is that what you think we are?"

  Mingshan stumbled and nearly fell. That voice. He'd heard it in nightmares for ten years, always young and terrified, calling out for parents who would never answer. But this voice was older now, deeper, carrying the weight of a man who'd seen too much suffering.

  "Jinghui?" Mingshan whispered.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Mingshan turned around slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. At the mouth of the pass stood a figure that was barely recognizable as his younger brother. Gone was the scrawny, frightened child who'd hidden under blankets during their parents' arguments. This man was tall, broad-shouldered, radiating the kind of aura that made the air itself feel heavy.

  But the eyes were the same. Dark, intelligent, and filled with a pain that ten years hadn't been able to heal.

  "Hello, brother," Jinghui said quietly.

  Mingshan's legs gave out. He slumped against the stone wall, staring at the man his little brother had become. "You're so big," he said stupidly. "When did you get so big?"

  "Heaven-Breaking Realm tends to change your physique," Jinghui replied, taking a single step forward. The stone beneath his foot cracked. "Though I imagine you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Still stuck at Half-Step after all these years?"

  Mingshan flinched. It was true. His cultivation had ground to a halt years ago, the blood techniques that had once accelerated his growth now acting as a poison in his system. Every attempt to break through to true Heaven-Breaking had resulted in qi deviation and internal injuries.

  "I tried," Mingshan said weakly. "I tried so hard to get stronger. For the family. For our parents' memory."

  "For our parents' memory?" Jinghui's voice carried a note of incredulous rage. "You killed them, Mingshan. With your own hands. How is that honoring their memory?"

  "It was an accident!" Mingshan protested, struggling to get back to his feet. "I lost control during an argument! I never meant for it to happen!"

  Jinghui nodded slowly. "I know. I've spent ten years telling myself the same thing. My brother isn't evil, just tragic. He made a mistake, and he's been suffering for it ever since. If I could just find him, just talk to him, maybe we could find some way to heal this wound in our family."

  Hope flared in Mingshan's chest. "Yes! Exactly! We can fix this, little brother. We can be a family again. I've learned from my mistakes. I'm different now."

  "Are you?" Jinghui asked. He reached into his robes and pulled out a scroll. "Let me read you something interesting. Three years ago, a Blood Qi practitioner killed seven people in Sunset Village while attempting to steal their cultivation manual. The survivors described a man with our family's distinctive facial features."

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Mingshan's heart sank. "That wasn't... I can explain..."

  "Two years ago," Jinghui continued, "a bandit group led by a Half-Step Heaven-Breaking blood cultivator raided the Peaceful Mountain Monastery. Twelve monks died. The leader was described as having a long scar across his left cheek." Jinghui's eyes focused on the exact scar he was describing. "Just like yours."

  "Those monks were hiding cultivation resources that rightfully belonged to..." Mingshan started, then stopped. There was no point in lying anymore.

  "Eighteen months ago," Jinghui continued remorselessly, "a merchant caravan was attacked by a blood cultivator seeking spiritual herbs. An entire family died. Parents and their two young children." His voice dropped to a whisper. "The children were eight and five years old, Mingshan."

  The scroll fell from Jinghui's hands, unrolling completely to reveal page after page of documented crimes. Names, dates, locations. A decade of violence and theft laid out in meticulous detail.

  "I spent a full month tracking down these reports," Jinghui said. "A month hoping I was wrong, hoping it was coincidence or mistaken identity. But the descriptions were always the same. The techniques were always blood-based. And there were always survivors who remembered the killer's face."

  Mingshan stared at the scroll in horror. He'd thought he'd been careful, thought he'd covered his tracks. But someone had been watching, recording, building a case against him one victim at a time.

  "I'm not the same person who killed our parents," Mingshan said desperately. "That was a young man who didn't understand the consequences of his power. These other things... I was desperate. I needed resources to advance my cultivation. If I could just reach Heaven-Breaking Realm, I could return home and make amends for what I did."

  "By killing innocents?" Jinghui asked.

  "They weren't all innocent!" Mingshan snapped, his composure finally cracking. "That monastery was hoarding techniques that could have helped hundreds of martial artists! Those merchants were overcharging desperate people for basic cultivation resources! I was serving a greater good!"

  "And the children?"

  Mingshan's mouth opened and closed. There was no justification for that one. The merchant's children had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  "Collateral damage," he said finally.

  The temperature in the pass seemed to drop by ten degrees. Jinghui's spiritual pressure, which had been carefully controlled, suddenly exploded outward with crushing force. Mingshan gasped and fell to his knees as the weight of Heaven-Breaking cultivation pressed down on him like a physical burden.

  "Collateral damage," Jinghui repeated. "Is that what our parents were too? Collateral damage in your pursuit of power?"

  "No! That was different! That was..."

  "An accident," Jinghui finished. "Yes, you keep saying that. But here's what I've realized over the past ten years of thinking about this. Accidents don't happen in isolation. They happen when someone repeatedly makes choices that put them in positions where accidents become inevitable."

  Mingshan tried to stand but found his legs wouldn't support him under the crushing Martial Aura. "I can change," he gasped. "Give me another chance. I'm still your brother."

  "You stopped being my brother the night you chose power over family," Jinghui said. He began walking forward. "But even then, I might have forgiven you. Grief makes people do terrible things. But you didn't stop there, did you? You kept killing. Kept choosing the easy path over the right one."

  Mingshan's survival instincts finally overcame his shock. He'd lived for ten years on the run by being prepared for situations exactly like this. As Jinghui approached, apparently focused on his words rather than his actions, Mingshan gathered what remained of his spiritual energy into his right hand.

  Blood Qi techniques were particularly effective as surprise attacks. The energy was naturally corrosive, eating through other forms of cultivation like acid through metal. If he could catch Jinghui off guard, land a solid strike to his meridian network, he might be able to cripple his little brother long enough to escape.

  "I know I've made mistakes," Mingshan said, letting his voice carry false remorse while his hidden hand charged with lethal energy. "But we're family. Surely that has to mean something?"

  He waited until Jinghui was within arm's reach, close enough for a guaranteed hit. Then he struck, his blood-infused palm shooting toward his brother's chest with all the speed and power he could muster.

  Jinghui caught his wrist without even looking down.

  The casual ease of it was terrifying. Mingshan's attack had been fast enough to surprise most Sect Mastery cultivators, but Jinghui had reacted as if he'd been expecting it all along.

  "Did you really think I wouldn't see that coming?" Jinghui asked. "I've been hunting blood cultivators for weeks. I know all your tricks."

  He squeezed.

  The sound of breaking bones echoed through the pass like snapping tree branches. Mingshan screamed as his wrist shattered, the blood Qi in his hand dissipating harmlessly as his meridians were severed.

  "That was your mistake, brother," Jinghui said, releasing the ruined hand and watching Mingshan crumple to the ground. "You still think this is about family. About forgiveness and second chances and making amends."

  He knelt down so they were at eye level. "This isn't about revenge anymore. This is about putting down a rabid dog before it bites anyone else."

  "Wait," Mingshan gasped, cradling his destroyed hand against his chest. "Please. I'll disappear. I'll never hurt anyone again. I'll become a monk, dedicate my life to helping people. Just don't..."

  Jinghui's hand moved faster than thought. One moment Mingshan was pleading for his life. The next, there was only silence.

  The man who had once been Cao Mingshan, eldest son of the Cao family, slumped forward and was still. The blood Qi that had sustained him for so many years finally dissipated, leaving behind only an empty shell.

  Jinghui stood up slowly, looking down at his brother's body. There was no satisfaction in the moment, no sense of triumph or closure. Just a deep, weary sadness that seemed to settle into his bones.

  "It's done," he whispered to the night sky. "Mother, father, I finally did it. He can't hurt anyone else. You can rest now."

  For a moment, the words seemed to hang in the air like a prayer. Then Jinghui looked down at his hands and stopped breathing.

  Blood. His hands were covered in blood.

  When had that happened? He couldn't remember his hands getting bloody. The strike had been clean, precise, designed to sever spiritual connections rather than cause physical trauma. There shouldn't have been any blood at all.

  But his hands were red to the wrists, sticky with it, the metallic smell filling his nostrils and making his stomach turn.

  He stared at them in fascination. Red hands. When? Why? Had he... what had he done exactly?

  The memory felt fuzzy. Distant. Like something that had happened to someone else.

  Red hands.

  Clean strike.

  No blood.

  But red hands.

  The world spun around him, and Jinghui fell to his knees beside his brother's body. The rational part of his mind tried to tell him that this was shock, that killing family was traumatic even when necessary, that his perception was distorted by stress and adrenaline.

  But the rest of his mind couldn't stop staring at the blood on his hands.

  It’s the new year!

  Treat yourself and read ahead!

  Join for 2 chapters daily M-F, we're 160+ chapters ahead!

  ￡4 for 50 chapters ahead!

  ￡8 for 160 chapters ahead!

  DISCORD