Chapter 10: 10,000 Cuts

  The silence that followed the shattering of General Liu’s broadsword was not peaceful. It was heavy, pressurized, like the air in a valley moments before a thunderstorm breaks.

  General Liu Feihu stared at his weapon. The edge of the heavy steel blade—forged by the master smiths of the Capital and tempered in the blood of wolves—was curled back like a withered leaf.

  He looked at the neck he had struck.

  Smooth, pale skin. Not a red mark. Not a scratch. It was as if he had swung his sword against the pillar of the sky itself.

  "Monster..." the General breathed, backing away, his boots scraping loudly on the gravel.

  King Cheng’an sat atop his black stallion, his face a mask of frozen disbelief. But beneath the shock, a more dangerous emotion was curdling: humiliation. He was the Sovereign of Gege. He had burned cities for refusing to pay tribute. He had beheaded ministers for looking at him the wrong way.

  And now, a hermit in rags was sitting on a rock, looking at him with the indifference of a god watching an ant.

  That look.

  That damnable, pitying look.

  It stripped the King of his crown. It made him feel small. And King Cheng’an would burn the world to ash before he allowed himself to feel small.

  "Armor," the King spat.

  The court turned to him.

  "It is a trick," the King announced, his voice regaining its boom, though it cracked slightly at the edges. "He wears a shirt of transparent silk-steel beneath his robes. Or perhaps he has applied a hardening gum to his skin. It is a parlor trick! A carnival illusion!"

  The fear in the soldiers’ eyes began to recede, replaced by the comfort of a rational explanation. Yes, of course. A trick. No man is harder than steel.

  "General Zheng!" the King barked.

  Zheng Zheng, the second general, stepped forward. He was a wiry man with eyes like a hawk, holding a recurve bow taller than himself.

  "Sire," Zheng bowed.

  "This monk thinks his skin is tough," the King sneered, gripping his riding crop until the leather creaked. "Let us see if his eyes are as tough. Shoot him."

  Changsheng sat back down on the slate rock. He adjusted the hem of his robe. He did not look at the archer. He looked at the clouds drifting lazily past the peak.

  "Ignorance is not a sin," Changsheng murmured to the wind. "But persistence in ignorance is a death wish."

  Twang.

  The sound of the bowstring was sharp and high.

  The arrow was a blur. General Zheng was famous for being able to shoot a fly off a mule’s ear at a hundred paces. He didn't aim for the chest; he aimed directly for Changsheng’s left pupil.

  The arrow flew true.

  But as it crossed the threshold of the stone circle, the air seemed to thicken.

  Snap.

  The arrow didn't hit. It stopped.

  Two inches from Changsheng’s eye, the shaft splintered as if it had hit an invisible wall. The arrowhead crumpled and fell harmlessly into the Daoist's lap.

  Changsheng picked up the arrowhead. He rolled the twisted metal between his thumb and forefinger.

  "Metal from the Southern Mines," he noted, his voice calm. "Too much sulfur in the smelting process. Brittle."

  He flicked the metal away.

  The King’s face went from purple to a ghostly white, then flushed a deep, violent crimson. The veins on his neck stood out like cords of rope.

  "Kill him!" the King screamed, his voice shredding his throat. "All of you! Cut him to pieces! I want him minced! I want him reduced to paste!"

  The order broke the dam.

  Logic fled. Mob mentality took over.

  "Kill the demon!"

  "For the King!"

  Fifty soldiers drew their weapons. Swords, spears, axes. They surged forward like a tide of steel, scrambling over the rocks, shouting to drown out their own terror.

  Changsheng sighed. A long, weary exhalation that emptied his lungs of the sweet mountain air.

  The Red Dust is truly deafening.

  He did not rise. He did not assume a fighting stance.

  He closed his eyes.

  The first blade hit his shoulder. Clang.

  A spear thrust at his throat. Ping.

  An axe swung at his skull. Thud.

  It was a frenzy. The soldiers hacked at him with the desperation of men fighting a nightmare. They struck him again and again.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Sparks flew in showers, illuminating the dim forest clearing like fireworks. The sound was deafening—the continuous, rhythmic ringing of metal striking metal.

  Clang. Clang. Clang.

  Weapons chipped. Hilt wrappings tore. Wrists shattered from the recoil.

  Yet, amidst the storm of steel, the figure in the center remained immovable. He was a reef in a hurricane.

  Changsheng felt the impacts. They registered as dull thuds, distant and muted. His body, refined by the Pine and Spring, was dense with compressed Qi. His skin was a lattice of high-energy bonds that mortal iron could not hope to sever.

  Inside his mind, he was miles away.

  The breath of the Turtle is heavy, he reflected, analyzing his own cultivation state. My defense is absolute, but my offense is still lacking. I have become a stone. A stone can endure, but a stone cannot rule.

  "Why won't he bleed?!" a soldier screamed, dropping his shattered sword. "Why won't he die?!"

  King Cheng’an watched from his horse, his mouth dry, his heart hammering against his ribs. This wasn't a trick.

  He had seen men die. He had seen bodies torn apart. Flesh was soft. Bones were brittle.

  This... this was something else.

  "Harder!" the King shrieked, hysteria creeping into his tone. "Don't stop! Hack him until there is nothing left!"

  Changsheng opened his eyes.

  The golden light in his irises swirled, rotating like the nebulae of the 33rd Heaven.

  "Enough," he said.

  He didn't shout. He simply spoke the word, injecting a pulse of Imperial Intent into the syllable.

  The soundwave hit the soldiers like a physical blow. They stumbled back, clutching their chests, gasping for air as the pressure in the clearing suddenly dropped.

  Changsheng slowly stood up amidst the circle of panting, terrified men. His robes were tattered where the blades had sliced the fabric, revealing the pristine, glowing skin beneath.

  "You seek to cut the wind," Changsheng said, his voice echoing as if coming from everywhere at once. "You seek to drown the ocean. You are children playing with fire."

  He raised his right hand. His palm faced the sky.

  Deep within his memories, a scroll unraveled.

  [Daoist Art: The Great Cloud-Walking Mist.]

  It was a technique he had created in his past life to shroud the Heavenly Palaces from the prying eyes of demons. A simple manipulation of moisture and Yang energy.

  "You wish for a hunt?" Changsheng asked, looking at the King. "Then let us change the hunting ground."

  He exhaled.

  This time, the breath didn't shoot out like an arrow. It rolled out of his mouth like a slow, heavy avalanche of white fog.

  It touched the ground and expanded instantly.

  Whoosh.

  In the blink of an eye, the world turned white.

  The sun vanished. The trees vanished. The soldiers vanished.

  The mist was thick, milky, and cold. It swallowed sound. One moment, the clearing was filled with the clamor of fifty men; the next, there was absolute, suffocating silence.

  "Where is he?!" King Cheng’an shouted. He couldn't see his own horse’s head. "General Liu! Zheng! Answer me!"

  "I... I am here, Sire!" General Liu’s voice came from somewhere to the left, but it sounded muffled, miles away.

  "Stay close!" the King ordered, spinning his horse in circles. "It’s a smokescreen! Use your swords! Swing at anything that moves!"

  Panic set in.

  The soldiers were blind. They swung their weapons wildly into the gray void.

  Clang!

  "Argh! You idiot! You cut my leg!"

  "Stay back! Who is that?!"

  "Demon! He's behind me! I can feel him!"

  Changsheng walked through the chaos.

  He moved silently, his bare feet hovering an inch above the grass. The mist parted for him, swirling around his body like a loyal pet.

  He walked past a soldier who was sobbing, swinging a broken axe at empty air.

  He walked past General Zheng, who was firing arrows blindly into the sky.

  He approached the King.

  King Cheng’an was hyperventilating. His fine silk clothes were damp with the supernatural fog. He swung his jeweled sword frantically.

  "Show yourself!" the King screamed at the white emptiness. "I am the King! I command you to appear!"

  "A King commands men," a voice whispered right beside his ear.

  The King froze. He spun around, slashing his sword.

  It cut nothing but mist.

  "A Sovereign commands the Heavens," the voice whispered from his other side.

  The King spun again. Nothing.

  "And you..."

  The mist in front of the King’s horse swirled and condensed.

  Slowly, terrifyingly, a figure emerged from the white wall.

  Changsheng floated in the air, level with the King’s face. His hair was loose, floating around him as if he were underwater. His skin glowed with a terrifying, holy luminescence.

  "...you are just dust."

  Changsheng extended one finger and tapped the tip of the King’s sword.

  Ping.

  The jeweled blade—the symbol of the Gege Royal Family for three hundred years—shattered. It didn't just break; it disintegrated into metal dust that rained down onto the King’s saddle.

  King Cheng’an looked at the hilt in his hand.

  He looked at the floating deity before him.

  The reality finally crashed through the walls of his arrogance.

  The 10,000 cuts hadn't failed because the blades were dull. They failed because he was trying to kill a mountain with a spoon.

  The King’s knees gave way. He slid off his horse, landing heavily in the wet grass.

  He didn't care about the mud. He didn't care about his royal dignity.

  He dropped the useless hilt. He pressed his forehead into the dirt.

  "I have eyes but could not see Mount Tai," the King wept, his voice trembling with genuine terror. "I have offended a Golden Immortal. Please... spare my soul. Do not condemn me to the Eighteen Hells."

  Around them, the mist began to recede.

  It flowed backward, sucked into the pores of the earth, revealing the scene.

  Fifty soldiers lay on the ground, exhausted, bleeding from friendly fire, or curled up in fetal positions.

  And in the center, the King of Gege was kowtowing to a young man in tattered hemp robes.

  Changsheng lowered himself to the ground. The glow on his skin faded, returning to the warm luster of jade.

  He looked down at the shivering monarch.

  He felt no anger. Anger was for equals. He felt only a distant, karmic obligation.

  "Stand up," Changsheng said.

  The King scrambled to his knees, not daring to stand fully. "I... I dare not."

  "You came to hunt beasts," Changsheng said, gesturing to the hut where the animals were still hidden. "But in your violence, you found your own beastly nature."

  The King nodded furiously. "Yes! Yes! I was a beast! I was blind!"

  "Renounce the throne," Changsheng said. It wasn't a suggestion.

  The King froze. "Renounce...?"

  "The Red Dust has poisoned you," Changsheng said, turning his back on the King and walking toward his hut. "But the fact that you can see me now means there is a sliver of affinity left in your bones. You were not always a tyrant. Once, long ago... you too walked the path of the Immortals."

  The King’s eyes widened. A memory, faint and dreamlike, tugged at the back of his mind. A sense of displacement he had felt his entire life—that the throne, the wars, the gold, none of it was where he belonged.

  He scrambled up and ran after the Patriarch, throwing himself at Changsheng’s heels.

  "Teacher!" the King cried out, shedding the title of Monarch like a heavy coat. "Take me! I will abandon the kingdom! I will abandon the harem! I will eat pine and drink spring water! Just teach me the Way!"

  Changsheng stopped. He looked over his shoulder.

  He saw the desperate sincerity in the man’s eyes.

  The Wheel turns, Changsheng thought. He tried to kill me, and now he begs to serve me. This is the absurdity of the Mortal Realm.

  "If you wish to stay," Changsheng said, pushing open the door to his hut, "you must first learn to be silent."

  Author's Notes: The Dao of Techniques

  1. The "Mist" (Cloud-Walking Art)

  What Changsheng used wasn't a weather spell in the Harry Potter sense. In Daoist Cultivation, "Mist" is often a manifestation of a cultivator's Qi field. By releasing his highly compressed internal energy into the atmosphere, he lowered the air pressure and condensed the moisture instantly. He essentially created a localized cloud by exhaling.

  2. Imperial Intent (The Voice)

  When Changsheng said "Enough," and the soldiers staggered back, he was using a sliver of his soul's authority. In Xianxia, high-level beings possess "Intent" (Willpower) that has mass. His voice carried the weight of the Jade Emperor's soul, physically impacting the weaker souls of the mortals.

  3. The Significance of the Sword Breaking

  The King's sword shattering into dust is a symbolic moment. In Chinese culture, the Sword is often the symbol of the Gentleman or the Ruler. By destroying the sword with a single tap, Changsheng didn't just disarm him; he destroyed the King's "Mandate of Heaven" to rule by force.