They delved into what remained of the forest, a veritable ossuary of trees, where the drought had devoured all life and foliage. Flight was the only option, a silent despair that echoed in the parched branches under their feet. It was a nearly nonexistent wood, which partly explained why the village was so poor.
The first lesson Qin Yami learned while being hunted by cultivators was how miserably useless his expectations, shaped by hundreds of webnovels, were.
In the plots he had devoured on Earth, chases were almost a strategic ballet: the protagonist used the terrain to his advantage, found a secret cave, disguised his scent in a stream... There was always time for a clever plan, a subtle twist.
And obviously many slaps in the faces of arrogant masters and disciples.
Reality, however, was a cold slap in the face. Not from masters or arrogant youths, but from himself. No genius. Just running.
"FIND THEM!" Elder Mo Zhen's voice thundered, an explosion of pure fury that seemed to shake even the dead branches. "A DIVINE SEED MUST NOT ESCAPE! MOBILIZE THE VILLAGE!"
Just thinking about losing such talent, Mo Zhen felt his pressure increase a thousandfold, what would he say to the leader of the Azure Purpura Sect. He would simply be screwed.
"Mobilize the village," Qin thought, with sarcasm bubbling in his mind as he dragged Lin Mei through wild bushes that barely concealed their presence. "How lovely. A community event! 'Hunt the Clueless Mortal and the Valuable Child.' Fun for the whole family, with torches and all." The scene was depressing: skeletal trees, dry branches cracking under their feet like brittle bones. It was like trying to hide in an open field using toothpicks as camouflage.
"They'll see us!" Lin Mei groaned, her little legs struggling to keep up with the frantic pace. "There's nowhere to hide!"
"I know," Qin confessed, his lungs already burning and his mouth as dry as the desert. Sweat streamed between his vision between breaths, blurring it. "But stopping is signing our death warrant."
And worse, his mind concluded, the image of Mo Wuba's predatory gaze materializing in his memory. Yes, there were definitely fates worse than death in that world. The Will to Survive pulsed in his arm, a "supernatural battery" keeping his exhausted body running as it always had since he woke up as Qin. The energy flowed, but he felt the price: a subtle and disturbing drain. "What will the price be this time? My sanity? My humanity? Or just the ability to make smart decisions?" Considering that he had faced three cultivators for a child he barely knew, perhaps the last one was already gone for good. His body was clearly at its limit.
"Why did you do it?" Lin Mei's question cut through the tense air, genuine and direct, without any accusation, just pure childlike yet developed curiosity after so much suffering alongside Xiao Fan
Listening while running in the short woods.
The logical answer was a silent scream in his heart: "I shouldn't have done it." He could have remained in the shadows, as a mere spectator, as he always had been in both lives. But, as he contemplated Lin Mei's dirty face, the stubborn determination in her honey-colored eyes, logic simply crumbled. It was as if the Blade's Edge had extirpated his own indifference, making him vulnerable to an emotion he thought he had buried. Despite the logic not making sense.
The thoughts modifying a little, after such analysis. "The Blade didn't remove my piece of being, did it return what it took? It doesn't make sense..."
"Because seeing what they did to your brother... woke up something I thought I had lost," he said, with the sincerity in his voice taking him by surprise. "It made me remember that certain things are more important than simple survival in these lawless lands"
Dona Isaura's voice echoed in his head, as clear as sunlight: "Surviving is just the first step, my boy. Even a cockroach survives a nuclear bomb. But living... living demands choice."
"But you don't even know me," Lin Mei insisted, with insecurity still present. "You're going to die because of me."
"Maybe," Qin pondered, with a bitter smile on his lips. "But I'd rather die trying to do the right thing than live as the coward I am"
"Oh, really?" his conscience mocked. "The man who lived in mediocrity now playing the hero? The irony is delicious. And dangerous." A cracking of branches behind them made them freeze. Between the trees, torches danced like will-o'-the-wisps, revealing not only the cultivators, but also the villagers, transformed into an enraged mob, their faces distorted by anger and fear of the consequences.
"They brought an army of enraged mortals," Qin noted, with a superficial calm masking the inner panic. "Shit." A phrase he always said when...Shit happened.
"What do we do?" Lin Mei asked, her voice almost inaudible.
He swept his gaze over the desolate terrain. The dry forest stretched for a few more kilometers until... what? A desert? Mountains? A great nothing? The mental map of the original Qin Yami was completely useless there. In fact, practically everything was. He was just a servant disciple, from what little he knew, it wasn't enough even to know locations.
"We run until we can't anymore," he replied. "And then, we'll see what to do."
"Genius plan," his mind ironized. "Sun Tzu would be proud. Or would slap me in the face." They ran, with the dry dust sticking in their throats, while the sky was tinged with a sinister yellow color, signifying that soon, the dark would arrive.
"THERE!" Liu Yanran's voice rang out, sharp as a blade cutting through the air. "MOVEMENT IN THAT DIRECTION!"
"Damn it!" Qin pulled Lin Mei behind a fallen trunk, his heart pounding in his chest. "We've been seen." But, as he peered, he saw the disciple pointing to a completely different place. A rabbit, maybe? Nobody knew. They gained precious seconds. The Heroine's Luck truly touched destiny.
"This way," he whispered, guiding her in the opposite direction. Each step on the dry leaves sounded like a small explosion. Now he understood why webnovel protagonists always found lush forests for their escapes; the dead vegetation was a terrible ally for stealth.
"Look," Lin Mei whispered, pointing ahead with wide eyes.
He followed her finger and felt his stomach drop with anguish. The forest ended abruptly. Before them, only emptiness. A cliff.
"Ah, of course," he thought, with a bitter taste in his mouth. "The dramatic cliff cliché. This world doesn't miss a chance to be a hackneyed script." "No way out," he murmured.
"And... now?" Lin Mei's voice was a thread of hope that he didn't want to break.
Qin went to the edge, with the wind whipping his face. Down below, very, very far away, a silver river meandered in the landscape like a colossal snake as it was full of curves. "A river," he observed. "How convenient."
"Do you know how to swim?" he asked, with the naturalness in his voice bordering on insanity, even for himself.
Lin Mei stared at him, dumbfounded. "Are you suggesting we jump?"
"Let's say I'm evaluating the options," he corrected, his mind working a mile a minute. "At the moment, they are: being captured by psychopaths with divine powers or jumping off a cliff. Both with high chances of death or worse."
"Those are horrible options!" she exclaimed, her voice full of despair. Even more for a child.
"I don't disagree, but they're the only ones," Qin said dryly.
The voices were approaching, with the torches transforming the forest into a macabre shadow theater. The smell of smoke and sweat mixed with the dry air.
"They'll be here in seconds," Qin said, with the decision already made in his mind. "So... what's it going to be?"
Lin Mei looked at the approaching lights, then at the abyss. Fear was evident in her eyes, but, beneath it, a flame of determination ignited. It was the same flame he had seen in Xiao Fan and that, now, he felt in himself.
"Power of destiny to ascend the heavens. Protagonists and Heroines" Qin thought.
"If we're going to die anyway," she said, her voice firm despite the tremor, "I prefer it to be by our choice." She didn't seem like an 11-year-old girl at that moment.
This girl, Qin thought with a sudden surge of admiration, 'If she survives, she'll be a force of nature. A true heroine.' "Decided, then." He extended his slightly trembling hand. "Together?"
She took his hand without hesitation, her little hand warm and firm in his. "Together."
"THEY'RE HERE!" Mo Wuba's voice resounded behind them, a cry of furious hunt. "ON THE CLIFF!"
The three cultivators emerged from the trees, with Elder Mo Zhen radiating a crackling blue fury and his eyes fixed on them like those of a hungry and eager beast.
"The fun is over." He roared, his voice echoing through the gorge. "Hand over the Divine Seed, and your death might be quick." Treating Lin Mei like a product, they didn't even disguise it anymore.
"I have a counterproposal," Qin shouted back, feeling a wave of insane, almost suicidal courage surge, called adrenaline. "How about you go to hell?"
'Wow', his mind reflected. "Defying a furious cultivator before throwing yourself to your death? Brave or stupid? Probably both. Elder Mo Zhen raised his hand, with energy accumulating and the air crackling around him. "Piercing Purpura Ray Technique! I will kill you first, and then..."
"NOW!" Qin yelled, and they jumped into the void.
The world turned into silence and wind. For an instant, suspended between heaven and earth, he heard the furious cries of the cultivators who didn't expect it, felt the frantic pulse of his own heart and the Blade of Will burning in his arm. Forcing him to survive and, as it seemed... approving the situation of courage. A feeling of emptiness and power at the same time. "I will survive!" was his last coherent thought before the impact.
And then, the water swallowed them in an icy embrace, and Qin Yami learned that surviving the jump was just the beginning of his nightmares.
The current dragged them relentlessly. The shock hit him like an icy punch as he desperately clung to the dark, turbulent water. An eleven-year-old girl, alone in a raging river, all because he decided to play the cliché hero. "Typical webnovel protagonist," he thought bitterly, struggling to keep his head above the surface. "Saves the damsel and drowns in the process. At least it would be a poetically ironic death. And the most anticlimactic ending of all."
Then, a sound. A gasp, the desperate noise of someone fighting against the water. "LIN MEI!" He swam – if that frantic thrashing could be called swimming – in the direction of the sound. Each stroke was a battle against the relentless current. The Blade of Will chastised his arm, an erratic engine that kept him active far beyond his limits. And at what price? a distant voice asked in his mind. His already dubious life expectancy? Or even the ability to appreciate the taste of a meal?
He found her clinging to a log, her eyes filled with panic and spitting out filthy water.
"I... I don't know how to swim!" she cried, her voice cut short by fear. "I'm going to die, I am!"
"Hey!" Qin reached her, his voice forcibly calm, while the Blade dissipated the panic in his own mind momentarily without him really using it, it was passive, seeking ways to survive. "You're not going to die. Not while I'm here."
'Congratulations on lie number one of the day, or two?', his mind observed. 'Just learning to swim and all, that's an optimistic promise. But, for some strange reason, I want it to be true.' "How can you be so sure?" she asked, and her gaze – of pure confidence that he would save her again – hit him like a spear in the chest. "Because," he said, with the firmness in his voice surprising her, "I've lost too much in this life. I'm alone. You have Xiao Fan in your life, you're not alone, you deserve more than me"
Those words, directed at a child he had known for less than a week, sounded strangely true. She wasn't a trophy or a "Divine Seed." She was a human being and, for some reason that he refused to analyze at that silly moment as a mere Heroine, A person made in cliché stories, This world was real and Qin finally realized, he cared. A distant roar echoed over the water. Elder Mo Zhen. "FIND THEM! THE DIVINE SEED MUST NOT ESCAPE! SEARCH EVERY STONE, EVERY TREE, EVERY SHADOW!"
"They're not going to give up, are they?" Qin whispered, with the fatigue starting to weigh, even with the Blade's work. After all, after the numbness, the Weight was doubled.
"Of course not," Lin Mei replied who was leaning on Qin, with a bitterness in her voice that no child should know. "People like us don't choose their own destiny, any simple being knows that."
Her resignation awakened a strangeness in Qin. It was the same passive acceptance he had become accustomed to for years, the same that had turned him into an observer in his old life. "No," he said, with the word emerging with unexpected force. "Don't accept that. You're human, not a thing. And human beings make their own decisions."
Look at that, his conscience mocked. The master of invisibility on Earth now teaching about free will. How pathetic. "How can you say that?" she asked. "We're mortals. What can we do against them?"
It was a fair question. He looked at the tattoo on his arm, feeling the strange power that ran through his veins. "Because in all the stories I know," he said slowly, with the words forming in his mind, "the weak become strong. The common become extraordinary. The problem is that most people accept to remain weak. Maybe... it's time to stop accepting."
Lin Mei stared at him with those incredibly intelligent eyes. "You're not like the others... Grandma Zhen always said to never raise our heads to the Cultivators, they have no mercy"
"zhuhhhhh"
A blue ray cut through the air, exploding the water dangerously close. "They're shooting blindly," Qin observed. "Good, because they don't know where we are. Bad, because sooner or later their bad luck will end, and they'll hit us."
"So, what do we do?" Lin Mei asked, her voice tense.
He looked around. Going up the river was suicide. The banks, exposed. Only one direction remained. "We keep going down the river," he said. "And we pray that it takes us to a safe place."
"And if it takes us to a worse place?"
Qin smiled bitterly. "Honestly? At this point, I want to know what this world considers worse" Already imagining some things, and soon returning to the situation.
They let go of the log and let the now smoother current carry them. Floating downstream, a strange clarity invaded Qin's mind. "Can I ask you a question?" Lin Mei asked, with a sudden hesitation. "Why did you really help me? The truth."
He considered a pious lie, but her gaze demanded honesty. "Honestly?" he sighed. "I don't know for sure. Maybe it was seeing your brother break. Maybe it was the idea of seeing a child being dragged into a life she didn't choose. Or maybe... I realized that I was getting too comfortable being just an observer. And that was killing me inside in a way I didn't even understand."
She nodded, as if it all made sense. "You came from far away, didn't you? The way you talk... as if you're from another world. You seem like a nobleman from the Dahsa Empire."
"From another world, you say"
"I came from a place where I learned that the most important choices are the ones we make when we're afraid of being nobody."
"And you're afraid now?" Lin.
"Terrified," he confessed, with the Blade muffling the tremor in his voice. "But maybe that's what courage is. Doing the right thing even when terrified."
Another blue projectile ignited the water near them. "They're improving their aim," Qin observed. "We need cover."
"On that side," Lin Mei indicated now calmer. "Fallen trees."
A tangle of trunks formed a kind of natural dam, a perfect shelter. "Good eye," he praised. "You have a keen eye."
"I learned it from my brother," she said in a low voice. The mention of his name brought a heavy silence. "He's still alive" Qin reminded himself. 'Wounded, but alive. If we survive, maybe we can find him when he crawls out.' It was a dangerous promise, but he kept it to himself. The Blade of Will, he noticed, cut the illusion, but not the hope, even if considered false.
Reaching the trunks was an ordeal. His muscles screamed, but his Moonlight Cutting Will Blade pulsed, pushing him forward, dissipating the fatigue, but draining something deeper. 'This certainly has a price,' he thought, feeling something indefinable being taken from him. A slight haze in his memories of his life as Qin Yami, The servant disciple, some faces that he could no longer focus on in his fragmented memory.
They crawled into an area of calm waters under the branches, a dark and damp sanctuary. They stayed there, just breathing, with the rhythm of their hearts pounding in their ears and the smell of wet earth and moss filling their lungs. Holding on gently, so as not to be dragged by the slight current of the river.
"Are they still looking?" Lin Mei whispered.
Qin peered out. Three figures moved along the riverbank, tracking them. "Yes. But they've lost our trail. The Blade is hiding us."
"How long do we stay here?"
The sun was setting completely, tinging the water almost dark red, soon it was night. "Until night falls completely. The night is our ally. And theirs, an obstacle to finding us."
"And then?"
The question he didn't want to answer. Where would two fugitives go in a world where gods and cultivators dictated destinies? "I don't know," he admitted. "First, we try not to die at night. One problem at a time. The script doesn't have a map for this."
"Script? What's that" Lin inquired.
"Just Ignore it, I have habits of talking to myself"
Lin Mei nodded, with a painful maturity in her eyes. "When the stone shone," she said after a while, in a low voice, "I thought my life was going to improve. That I would no longer be the orphan that nobody noticed; I WOULD HELP MY BROTHER." She laughed, with a bitter and empty sound. "What an idiot."
"You weren't an idiot," Qin said firmly. "You were hopeful. There's nothing wrong with hope. The problem is when hope becomes a trap."
"Even when it only brings more pain?" Said an 11-year-old girl, it was surreal for Qin to hear such responsibility and adult vision in a child. A cruel world really shapes people faster.
"Especially then. Because without it, what's left? Just accepting that the world is cruel. And I'm tired of accepting."
"But what if it is? What if some of us were born to suffer?"
"Maybe," he pondered, "the question isn't whether we were born to suffer, but what we do with the suffering. Whether we let it destroy us or whether we use it to strengthen us. Whether we transform it into a tool of war." A lot of philosophical nonsense from those generic classics joining his vision of both lives. Really, That's how the world worked.
"Do you think that's true?"
He stared at the tattoo on his arm, feeling the warmth of the Blade. "I'm starting to believe. And, to be honest, we don't have much choice."
The silence was broken by a voice. Liu Yanran walked along the bank near the hideout in the river, her eyes shining with a supernatural blue glow. "Spiritual Vision Technique," she whispered, sweeping the surface of the river. "Where are you, rats?"
She stopped in front of their hiding place. For a terrifying instant, her eyes seemed to fix on them. Qin felt the Blade shine subtly on his arm, erasing his presence from her perception. It was as if he was editing reality, subtracting himself from her vision, Similar to when she saved him from the Shadow Hound beast. Then, the cultivator shook her head.
"There's nothing here," she shouted to the others. "Keep searching downstream. The current must have taken them further."
They waited for the silence to return, only the sound of the water and their hearts. "Why didn't she see us?" Lin Mei whispered, her voice full of confusion.
"I don't know," Qin lied, with the suspicion about the true powers of the Blade growing with each passing second. 'How many secrets do you hide? And what is the final price? The Blade of Will is more than just a golden finger, Obviously this body should come from an ancient destroyed family or was abandoned... And that... that's dangerous.' "Let's go," he whispered. "While they're searching down there at the end of the river, we escape."
They returned to the current. The river took them through another curve and the world changed. The water accelerated, with a growing roar filling the air. It wasn't a waterfall, it was a vortex not seen before. The landscape on the banks transformed into ghostly ruins enveloped in mist, as if a lost kingdom was emerging from the depths of time. Colossal structures, broken pillars, eroded statues that seemed to observe them with empty eyes.
As if allowing to be seen! Cliché, yes, but obviously it was the Scenario we wanted.
"What a life des....Wretcheddd!", Qin shouted, but the water was already pulling them down, into a liquid and dark tunnel, with the sound of the vortex muffling their screams.
He woke up coughing water, his whole body aching, lying on a cold and polished stone. They were in a colossal underground chamber, illuminated by bluish crystals that cast dancing shadows on the ruins of a submerged city. The air was heavy, with the smell of mold and something metallic and ancient.
"It looks like... a tomb," Lin Mei whispered luckily on the fall, soon standing, with wide eyes and her voice echoing in the vast space.
It was more than that. It was a lost battlefield. Skeletons in dark armor lay among the columns, frozen in combat postures. Rusty weapons, faded banners, all covered by a thin layer of millenary dust. The Blade of Will vibrated more strongly than ever, as if it recognized the place. His Tattoo seemed to reflect a metallic glow.
"What happened here was brutal," Qin whispered, feeling a tightness in his chest, this place was dangerous but...Something seemed to want him to be there. Too cliché to be true. "They died as if they were waiting for something."
"And it was a long time ago," Lin Mei continued, touching one of the skeletons with her small hesitant fingers. Where she touched, it crumbled into dust, similar to a sand that breaks.
"Centuries, maybe millennia." Qin thoughtful.
He approached one of the fallen warriors. The engravings on the armor were strange, but, to his surprise, they seemed similar to... English, and as if he was some kind of chosen one for knowing such a language that no one else would know in this xianxia world, something whispered in his mind, an information that arose from nowhere, But it seemed cloudy like a crying cloud, covered by darkness and thunder. However, it was momentary, As if the Blade inside him was cutting in half this cloudiness into pieces, Thus arising the "light after the rain," unlocking ancient memories or, perhaps, cutting the veil of ignorance that a mortal like him would have. 'Ancient dark arts. A cult. A war without equal.'
"There's no way out!" Lin Mei said, her voice trembling and fear replacing admiration after an obvious look that they were without a way out.
"How?" Qin looked around. There were no exits. They were trapped. The Blade of Will throbbed in his arm again unconsciously, apparently it was becoming part of him. The solid walls revealed themselves to be illusions, with secret passages opening in his mind, as if he was seeing the code lines of reality. And he felt one more thing: an ancestral presence, vast and powerful, dormant in the depths, an energy that made the Blade tremble in his arm.
"This way," he said, pointing to what seemed like a solid wall, but which now, for him, was a door.
"There's nothing there," Lin Mei said, confused.
"Trust me." Qin's voice was firm, unwavering. He was cutting through the illusion of the wall, discovering what was truly real.
Hesitantly, she took his hand. Together, they crossed the wall as if it were smoke, with Qin's body tingling with the sensation of breaking a conceptual barrier.
On the other side, a corridor stretched into the darkness of the shadows. Detailed murals covered the walls, telling a story that he didn't fully understand, but that resonated with his tattoo on his arm. Enormous creatures, warriors with strange armor and a symbol appeared in one of the frames, prominently on the right side of both, strangely similar to his tattoo. A Moon being cut by a Powerful Blade. The World dividing.
"How did you know?" Lin Mei asked, incredulous, looking at the wall they had just crossed, now solid again.
"Luck," he lied, but he knew it was more than that. It was the Blade. And the price, he felt, was being paid. A slight headache, a distant buzzing in his ears and the feeling that something else had been taken from his mind: a fleeting memory, a detail of his life, both, that dissipated like sand between his fingers.
As they walked in silence, with the weight of forgotten eras hanging over them, Qin wondered where the river had taken them. He had the feeling that he would discover the answers soon. And that he wouldn't like them. But, for now, they were alive. They were together. And they were far from their hunters. At that moment, small victories were all one could hope for.
Even if those victories led them to the center of an even greater nightmare. A nightmare that, he believed, was just beginning to awaken.