Time lost meaning in that cave.
I remained silent, watching the overseer suffer.
Some might call me cruel for not ending it quickly. Others might say his tragic backstory deserved sympathy.
But I didn't stop my treatment.
Not because I enjoyed his pain but to vent my anger and helplessness I experienced when I lost Xiaomen. So not entirely wrong but I wasn't that far gone yet.
I didn't stop because he had taken a path that caused suffering to others far greater than what he'd experienced himself.
His master's betrayal was tragic. His grief was understandable. His anger was justified. I can understand.
But the innocent girls he kidnapped? The families he destroyed? The lives he consumed for his cultivation?
They had nothing to do with the sect elders who betrayed his master.
He took his revenge on the innocent instead of the ones who caused his pain.
And that... that was unforgivable.
"Your master's story is tragic," I said quietly, my voice cold. "But it doesn't excuse what you became."
His eyes flickered toward me, confusion mixing with fading consciousness.
"You had a choice," I continued. "You could have pursued others to punish the elders who wronged your master. You could have exposed their corruption. You could have honoured his memory and teachings by being better than them."
I leaned closer.
"Instead, you became worse. You preyed on the powerless. You turned innocent girls into cultivation resources. You justified your crimes with someone else's tragedy."
My hand tightened around the blade still embedded in his flesh.
"Your master's death was unjust. But the deaths you caused? Those are on you alone."
Realization dawned on him. His eyes quivered in shame mixing with deep regret and fear seeing the reddish hue in Shen yuan eyes, understanding finally breaking through the haze of pain and self-justification.
For the first time since I'd captured him, he saw himself clearly not as a tragic victim seeking justice, but as the monster he'd become.
The weight of all those innocent lives pressed down on him in that moment, and he had no more excuses left to hide behind.
"I...I...didn't know...AHH"
He tried to talk by justifying himself but I didn't give him the chance to complete the sentence.
Hours passed, though I couldn't say exactly how many. The process was methodical, controlled, precise. Every time Zhang Wuhen approached the threshold of death, I pulled him back with healing pills and vitality solutions.
The cave walls bore silent witness to justice being served.
Eventually, my anger cooled. Not disappeared, never that, but it settled into something quieter. The screaming rage that had burned in my chest for five years finally began to fade, replaced by a hollow, tired satisfaction.
Xiaomen, I thought, looking at the two broken men before me. I hope you can rest now. I hope this brings you some peace, wherever you are.
Zhang Wuhen was barely conscious, his eyes glazed and distant. The bandit leader had lost consciousness twice, but I'd revived him each time to ensure he witnessed everything.
Now they both lay on the cave floor, their bodies covered in burns, cuts, and bruises that I'd inflicted and healed repeatedly throughout the morning. Neither had the strength to even whimper anymore.
I stood and stretched, my own body aching from the exertion. Revenge was exhausting work.
Then I looked at the bandit leader.
He had passed out against the wall even with his acupoints sealed, the pain of moving against the spiritual locks apparently preferable to holding my gaze.
His eyes were pressed shut, his breathing shallow and fast, the breathing of a man who has decided that if he cannot see what is in front of him it cannot reach him.
I crouched beside him and waited until he felt the stillness of my presence and opened his eyes.
"One last question," I said looking at the bandit leader. "The girls you captured. Where are they being held?"
The bandit leader's eyes flickered slightly at the question.
"I know," I said quietly, "that you have been keeping girls hidden somewhere. Drawing their blood in portions. Keeping them alive long enough to be useful."
I looked at him without expression. I showed him the accountant's token and brought out his dead body from the inventory.
"Everything was inside this except for the location, You have been supplying this scum like this, rather than your predecessor who directly killed people . That is the only reason, why I only shattered your dantian instead of giving you what he received. That is my grace to you." I let a moment pass. "Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"Yes, senior." His voice broke apart in the middle of the words. Tears were running freely down his face, not from pain but from the specific relief of a man who has looked into the dark and found that it is not going to swallow him whole. Not today. "Thank you. Thank you."
"So." I stood. "Where are they."
"Northern side... village," he gasped. "Qinghe Village... past the settlement... hidden house... on the hillside..."
"How many girls?"
"Dozen... maybe more... I don't... I stopped counting..."
I felt my jaw clench. Even now, even broken and dying, his casual disregard for human life made my blood boil. But I forced myself to remain calm.
"Anyone else there? Guards?"
"Yes...Villagers... paid them... keep quiet... few cultivators...guarding"
He told me everything.
I sealed both their acupoints, stuffed their storage bags and the concealment array around the cave, and lastly I lifted one onto each shoulder, and ran out after
The forest moved past me in long quiet streaks of shadow and light. I had the location fixed in my mind like a point on a map and I moved toward it the way water moves toward low ground, without hesitation, without wasted motion.
Somewhere around the halfway point I heard wheels on the road ahead and came out of the treeline to find a caravan that had just finished a delivery run, three carriages light and heading back from Wujiang city and going towards Qingfeng City way.
The driver of the lead carriage saw me come out of the forest carrying two limp bodies draped across my shoulders and his face cycled through surprise, alarm, and something close to horror. He alerted the caravan people in a loud urgent voice..
Three men dropped from the carriages immediately. One of them moved to block me with a blade. Two of them were cultivators, their spiritual energy rising in the defensive posture of people who had made a quick calculation and decided their numbers were enough.
I let my spiritual pressure roll out. comparable to a foundation establishment cultivator.
It rolled outward from me like a stone dropped into still water and every cultivator in the group went to their knees in the same instant, their spiritual energy folding back under the weight of something so far beyond their stage, as most of them were in early and middle qi refining stages knelt immediately including the three at the front in late stage of qi refining, who initially showed resistance, but as I released all of my spiritual pressure they too followed the rest.
The man at the front of the group, a broad-shouldered cultivator in his middle years with a caravan leader's sash across his chest, pressed one hand to the road to keep himself upright and looked up at me with eyes that had made a very swift and very accurate reassessment of the situation.
The caravan leader quickly asked for mercy
"Senior," he said, his voice remarkably steady for a man on his knees. "We meant no disrespect. Please show mercy."
Behind him two of the late stage cultivators had pressed their foreheads fully to the ground along with the others and then some of the people on his side also started to beg me.
I released the pressure.
The group came back up slowly, like grass after a heavy wind, checking themselves and each other with the particular relief of people who have just confirmed they are still breathing.
I looked at the caravan leader, "Your name."
He stood up and cupped his fists and gave me a bow.
"Wei Changbo, senior. Operating under the Lan family, Transport line out of Qingfeng City.
"Wei Changbo," I said. "I need your carriages. I am going to a location in north, hills past Qinghe Village. You will follow me there with others. Your people will do as I direct when we arrive there. When it is all done I will reward you so don't worry."
He looked at the two unconscious men on my shoulders.
He looked at the road ahead. He looked at his twelve people, several of whom were still dusting dirt from their knees and robes.
"And if we decline, senior?"
"You will not decline."
A long pause.
Wei Changbo exhaled through his nose, the sigh of a man calculating, and turned to his group.
"You heard the senior," he said, with the flat resigned authority of someone who has accepted an outcome and intends to manage it cleanly. "Fall in. Follow his lead. Keep the pace."
A few of them looked at each other. Nobody argued. That was wisdom.
I walked to the middle carriage, opened the door, and deposited both bodies inside with rather less ceremony than luggage handlers typically use. The carriage rocked on its axle. I climbed in after them and pulled the door shut.
Wei Changbo looked at the rocking carriage for a moment from where he stood beside the lead horse.
"Move out," he said quietly.
The carriages rolled forward following my directions through forest and the open farmland and into the lower hills beyond a normal village settlement.
The road narrowed and the trees thickened and then the house appeared on the hillside above us, large and deliberately unremarkable, the kind of place built to be overlooked.
The guards at the perimeter were not expecting a carriage to come up the road at this time. They moved to block it and I stepped down from the running board before the wheels had fully stopped.
I did not draw a weapon.
The mortal guards went down first. I moved through them quickly and without anger, breaking every major joint in each limb with precise strikes and leaving them breathing on the ground. Unconscious. They would wake up in excruciating pain.
Most of them were village men, either paid enough that greed had overridden their conscience or frightened enough that they had never felt they had a choice. Neither category deserved death.
The cultivators in the group were a different calculation. Their dantians went first, then the bones. I left them in a neat row beside the path in pain.
I had my own scale while doing things. Karma accumulated from killing the mortals will become a hurdle for cultivators during breakthrough who wished to ascend further.
There were punishments worse than death and considerably more instructive.
I had already demonstrated that today.
The caravan people looked at me in silence.
Then I walked towards the house and opened the door inward and then a foul smell mixed with metallic taste of blood in air hit me before I could see anything.
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