Undercurrents

"Again!"

Chu Ning snatched up a second broken saber. The blade was engraved with the opening stance of Mountain Severing Style. Before the saber light even arrived, he had already seen through the trajectory of the move, and the Rusty Saber swept upward at an angle.

Pfft!

The instant the blade pierced the phantom's heart, a vast sea of cultivation memories flooded into his mind: the tedium of swinging a saber a hundred thousand times in the pouring rain, the peril of trading blows with a Ranked Martial Artist, and the agonizing pain of Thunderous Force tearing apart his meridians.

"So that's how it is."

The thunder patterns in Chu Ning's eyes surged. The Rusty Saber flicked out like a venomous snake darting its tongue, instantly shattering the third broken saber.

Saber light swept across the wasteland like a raging tide.

When the seven-thousandth broken saber shattered, Chu Ning's saber momentum already carried a thunderstorm. Every stance had been tempered ten million times, and every inch of muscle remembered how to break an attack at the smallest possible cost.

The final broken saber transformed into a red-faced martial artist, the Start of Winter Blade in his hand whole and flawless. Chu Ning was drenched in blood, the bones of his right arm exposed, yet he grinned. "I've finally waited for the real deal."

The instant the two sabers collided, the wasteland collapsed.

"The flaw is here!"

He suddenly spun and shifted his footing, stabbing the Rusty Saber into the red-faced martial artist's armpit at an inconceivable angle—three inches beneath it, precisely where the vital weakness had once been corroded by poisonous powder.

Boom—

The instant his consciousness returned to the Medicine Pool, Chu Ning suddenly opened his eyes in the real world.

Only three breaths had passed outside, but he had already spent three years painstakingly cultivating in the Blade Tomb!

Chu Yun's hands trembled in the morning light as she held the medicine bowl, the brown decoction reflecting the panic in her eyes.

"Brother Ning..." She stared at the fresh scorch mark on her younger brother's back, blood still seeping from it. "This scar..."

"I brushed against something while tempering my body." Chu Ning pulled over his coarse-cloth shirt.

A crisp copper bell suddenly rang outside the window as an old man selling baked cakes pushed his cart past. A smile rose on Chu Yun's pale face. "He's as punctual as the cooking smoke at noon in the village."

Chu Ning paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

Half a month earlier, he had finally brought his sister to the county seat and settled her in a warm little courtyard. Though the yard was crude, with only a main room and a tiny kitchen, it was already countless times better than the dilapidated thatched hut in the village.

After settling his sister in, Chu Ning plunged headfirst into cultivation.

Every morning, he went to Thunderclap Martial Hall to practice the Thunderclap Saber Art. In the afternoon, he trained his archery and footwork alone in the mountains and forests outside the city. At night, he sat in meditation to temper his qi and blood, consolidating what he had learned during the day. Day after day, his cultivation never ceased.

After half a month of grueling cultivation, Chu Ning had not only gained a deeper understanding of the Thunderclap Saber Art; his archery had also reached the pinnacle. Now, he could shoot a leaf a hundred paces away with unerring precision while sprinting, and his footwork was as light as a ghost's. He could even pass silently through forests carpeted with dead leaves.

But just when he thought everything was developing in a better direction, a horrifying matter entered his field of vision.

In the southeastern corner of the county seat, starving beggars huddled against the walls, while ragged children chased stray dogs through the muddy streets.

Chu Ning had originally come only to buy some coarse-cloth clothing, but he happened to overhear some disturbing rumors.

"Have you heard? Several more children have gone missing recently."

"Yeah. Two disappeared last month, and another three this month. The authorities don't care either. They can't even find a trace."

"Bah! How could those dog officials possibly care whether poor people live or die?"

Several shabby-clothed old men sat in a circle, discussing the matter in hushed voices.

Chu Ning's brows drew together slightly, and a trace of unease stirred faintly in his heart.

He recalled the rumors he had heard a few days earlier: someone was secretly abducting children, and the fate awaiting those children was to have their limbs crippled before being abandoned in the streets as beggars.

"Life Harvesting and Mutilation..."

Chu Ning clenched his teeth, killing intent surging in his eyes.

These people actually dared to commit such utterly inhumane acts. He absolutely could not stand by and do nothing!

He would find out what force was behind them, then wipe them out completely!

"Candied hawthorn skewers—"

A child's delighted cry suddenly warped into a different tone. Chu Ning's pupils contracted sharply as three filthy little beggars tumbled out of the alley. The smallest one's right leg had folded backward at an eerie angle, maggots crawling through the festering wound.

"Please, sir, spare me a bite to eat." The older boy raised a chipped pottery bowl, revealing old wounds crisscrossed with whip marks beneath his sleeve.

The copper coins left damp, cold sweat in his palm, and Chu Ning's bending motion abruptly froze.

The mole behind the boy's ear was a glaring red. Yesterday, when passing the county office, he had seen the grain merchant's young son's portrait on a reward notice, fluttering in the wind.

"Mister..." The boy's Adam's apple bobbed beneath the grime, and his chipped pottery bowl struck the bluestone with a crisp clang.

The sound overlapped with a scene from his memory. Before his father's coffin, the debt collectors had kicked over a pottery jar, which had shattered into crescent-shaped shards just like this, driving into his numb knees as he knelt.

The Rusty Saber trembled faintly in its sheath, and Chu Ning's knuckles whitened from the force of his grip.

He clearly saw fresh wounds layered over old ones beneath the boy's torn clothes. The pattern of the whip marks was astonishingly similar to the path of the short whip that the scar-faced man had used when he kicked down the door years ago.

"Hot baked cakes—"

The old cake seller's cry came wrapped in sparks. From the corner of his eye, Chu Ning glimpsed the scorch marks left by iron tongs on the bluestone.

The boy suddenly began to tremble violently, pus and blood seeping from his twisted leg.

Chu Ning's hand, extended to give him money, abruptly turned palm-down. Three copper coins shot toward the baked-cake stall as streaks of light.

"How about I take you for some plain noodles?" He smiled as he handed over the money.

Hope burst into the boy's eyes, but a cough from behind startled him into shaking. Chu Ning followed his gaze. The old cake seller was turning the coals with iron tongs, sparks splashing onto the bluestone and scorching the character for "king."

"It's going to rain." The old man suddenly looked up. His murky right eye gleamed with an eerie gray-white light. "Esteemed sir, you'd best avoid getting involved with bad luck."

He pretended to turn around, but a hidden force from his sleeve shattered the wine flask at his waist. The instant the strong liquor splashed out, thunder patterns shot from his palm into the cracks in the ground, rushing straight along the patterns of the blue bricks toward the old man's feet!

Sizzle—

The coals exploded three zhang into the air. As the old man sprang backward, the iron tongs he flung transformed into a venomous snake. Chu Ning spun and cleaved, but before the snake's head could fall, it burst into poisonous mist, and the surrounding civilians collapsed stiffly like puppets.

"What a fine Thunderstrike Probe!" The old man tore off his human-skin mask, revealing half a ghostly face scorched by fire. "Too bad you can't save these people."

His voice abruptly cut off.

Chu Ning's saber tip was already pressed against his throat. "Life Harvesting and Mutilation. It's utterly devoid of humanity."

"Humanity?" The ghost-faced man suddenly bared his teeth, the corners of his mouth splitting to his ears. "Steward Chu, are you trying to play the saint?"

A hoarse laugh rolled from the throat beneath the saber tip. "When Steward Chu broke people's fingers in the martial hall, did you ever think about the word 'humanity'?"

"You want to be a saint? Then I'll make you the King of Hell!" Mad gray light burst from the ghost-faced man's one eye. Three puppet threads covered in pus and blood suddenly shot from his sleeve, winding around the little beggars' necks like venomous snakes and yanking them backward.

By the time Chu Ning's Rusty Saber cleaved through the puppet threads, the ghost-faced man had already darted ten zhang away.

The three children hung from his waist like rag dolls, while the injured girl's broken leg carved a dark-red furrow through the dirt.

The closer they drew to the City God Temple, the thicker the stench of rot became, mingling with the metallic tang of rust and the reek of pus and blood.

Several figures had gathered inside the temple. One of them held an account book and was recording something.

"This haul is pretty good. Five more healthy children. We're just about at the number the master ordered."

"Hmph. No one looks after these paupers' children anyway. Cripple them and dump them in the street, and we can make another profit."

"Things are tense in the city lately. We need to be careful."

Chu Ning watched everything in the temple coldly, his palm slowly tightening around the saber hilt at his waist.

"Please... don't cut out my tongue."

The girl's whimper was cut short by the sound of something slicing through the air.

Chu Ning flashed against the temple wall. The Rusty Saber reflected the scene inside: more than twenty pairs of eyeballs were piled on the altar table, gleaming like pearls in gold-painted porcelain bowls.

"The Matriarch loves listening to blind men sing the Lotus-Fall ballad." The scar-faced steward pried open the girl's lower jaw with a hooked saber, the blade gliding over the root of her tongue. "Leave half the tongue intact. That way, the sobbing will sound miserable enough."