Frenzied Pursuit, Reckless Danger

Sand filled his mouth. Chen Wuya spat out a mouthful of mud streaked with blood. He knelt before the crevice in the rock, dust from the bottom of the bronze mirror still clinging to his fingertips. The mirror had shattered, cracks spreading from its center like a spiderweb veiling Bai Zhi's closed eyes.

He did not move or speak. He merely stared at that crack. Wind blew in from behind him, snapping his coarse cloth outfit, while the poisoned wound on his shoulder began to burn, his entire arm feeling as though it had been scorched by fire.

The system suddenly trembled.

[Extreme conviction detected: 'If she dies, I become a demon.' Determined to be a high-intensity cognitive distortion—rationalization activated.]

A faint warm current rose from his dantian, coursing once through his tangled meridians before finally flowing into his legs. He braced himself against the ground and slowly rose to his feet, his knees creaking.

"You say she is fate?" he murmured to the empty rock wall, his voice dry. "Then I'll trade one life for another."

He turned and walked out of the hollow, staggering but refusing to stop. Three sandy ridges lay connected ahead, the wind growing fiercer as yellow sand swept across the sky. He knew that man was up ahead, waiting for him to give chase—and waiting for him to collapse.

The first ravine lay hidden beneath a slope, its surface covered in a crust of hardened sand. One misstep sent him plunging down. His right leg instantly sank into the quicksand, its suction tugging straight at his bones. Gritting his teeth, he drew the broken blade from his waist and drove it sideways into a rocky ridge along the pit wall. He wrapped a cloth strip around the hilt and, borrowing Misaligned Force,