~~~

Mud collapses with his back to the wall. His breathing echoes loudly in the empty corridors, but no one comes to investigate.

The Storm Dragon has done him a favor, it seems.

Had he and Bright Sword not been separated when the spatial realm shifted, he’d have probably died. Even now, blood, his blood, seeps into his robes and pools around him, tainting the floors with deep crimson.

“Movement that cannot be proved,” Mud muses with a touch of bitterness in his voice.

To be able to adapt his Dao to his to provide such an outlandish answer is not the sort of thing anyone can do. Calling Bright Sword a genius does not even begin to cover the magnitude of the feat.

“How unfair.”

Mud tries to laugh but ends up coughing blood instead. It is just as well. This is no time to laugh. General Nie Dan must be informed of this at once.

Mud grits his teeth and tries to stand up.

He fails.

It is not a matter of willpower. His tendons are severed in just the right way to render them useless, and his soul is too weak to heal the damage. Not even his battle against the Fleshcrafter back in the Dead Plains hurt him this badly.

Despite that, Mud knows that Bright Sword held back. That man’s power must be well beyond the Heaven Realm. To think someone like that has gone unnoticed for so long. What is he doing at Murong Bang’s side? What are his true intentions?

…

Ah, it’s no use.

Mud sighs and hangs his head. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot force himself to feel any urgency. Bright Sword’s true allegiances and goals are not where his heart is.

Right now, all Mud can feel is incredible envy.

Mud is well aware that his master has elevated him above several others. However, what does that matter if he’s always surrounded by such brilliant flowers? His master told him something might be born from himself, yet after hundreds of years, Mud suddenly finds himself an impatient man.

“Truly… really… unfair…”

He is so far away.

~~~

Qing Guo groans weakly as he tries to pick himself up from the floor with limited success. The spatial quake, for lack of a better term, has knocked both cousins off their feet. Even the snake construct Liu Jin had holding Qing Guo has faded from the shock. It takes a while before Liu Jin stands up, and Qing Guo rolls himself face up.

They gasp.

“What in the world is that?” Qing Guo asks with eyes as wide as dinner plates.

The ceiling is no longer a ceiling. Instead, Liu Jin and Qing Guo see a myriad of overlapping corridors above their heads. They twist and intertwine with each other hundreds of times over in a spectacle that should not be physically possible. Even the corridor they are in does not seem to be independent of this phenomenon. As the seconds pass, Liu Jin realizes they are moving as well.

“I think it is safe to say the spatial realm shifted,” Liu Jin replies. He flinches and averts his gaze. Just looking at the shifting dimensions hurts his eyes. His dog presses against him, offering his weight as support.

“I can see that!” Qing Guo snaps. “But... how can this be possible?”

“The Storm Dragon created this spatial realm. It is not a surprise that he can manipulate it at will.” Liu Jin frowns. “The only question is why he would do it now. If he wanted the realm to be this twisted, why not do it from the start?”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Qing Guo asks him. “Our Ancestor never mentioned anything about this. Unless…No, it couldn’t be.”

“What?” Liu Jin asks sharply. The intensity of his gaze locks Qing Guo in place. “You clearly thought of something just now.”

“Only that…” Qing Guo suddenly frowns. “Wait, why would I tell you anything? If the realm has become more complex, that only means your invasion is more likely to fail!”

“If something has really gone wrong, there is a chance we might end up stuck in this spatial realm forever,” Liu Jin says, reaching down to grab his cousin by the scruff of his robes. “Do you really want to risk that?”

“There is no way that could ever…. happen…” Qing Guo trails off. His face pales as he realizes the possibility is not as outlandish as he’d like.

The whims of the ancients are never to be underestimated.

“There is a place,” he begins hesitantly. “General He Bin took me there. It was in the forbidden wing of the palace.”

“Forbidden wing?” Liu Jin asks.

“It’s an area of the palace no one goes to,” Qing Guo says rapidly. “I used to think it was because that palace does not have as many people as it used to, but that’s not it. There’s a room there. I think it’s important to the Storm Dragon. It was beating. It was beating in the same way the spatial realm did before everything shifted.”

“A beating room.” Liu Jin blinks. “What does that mean?”

“You two do not even know that much? How worthless.”

Liu Jin and Qing Guo pale.

“My talents should not be used to hunt down such small, insignificant prey.”

His body lacks any sort of muscle definition. He looks soft, almost like a newborn baby. His skin has a weird colorless quality and shines as though covered in slime. Odd squelching noises accompany his every step.

His head is bald and round. His features are odd in a way Liu Jin cannot fully grasp. It is as if he is looking at a face drawn by someone who received a detailed explanation of what a face looked like but has never seen one.

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His clothes are made of flesh.

It is not that he is wearing pelts or leather. Rather, his own flesh is fashioned in the shape of clothes. At a glance, it almost looks like he is wearing a normal yellow robe. It is only once a second passes that Liu Jin realizes the man’s robes are actually growing from him, no different from hair or nails.

This man is the Fleshcrafter, Liu Jin decides. He has to be.

“Does my appearance upset you?” The Fleshcrafter asks as he slowly walks towards them. “I cannot say I am all that fond of it either. To have so little flesh on me… is a tad unsettling. However, I can only wear so much in such tight spaces.”

Liu Jin cannot move.

The Fleshcrafter’s Qi fills the corridor. It falls on them like a black curtain and evokes images of death inside their heads. A myriad of conflictive survival instincts war inside them, rendering them immobile.

Were this the imperial palace, Liu Jin might feel some hope, but the words of the Storm Dragon haunt him. This is not the imperial palace but a spatial realm that overlaps with it. There is no guarantee that the same protection will apply here.

“It is hard to believe people like you have been blessed by an Inheritance.” The Fleshcrafter’s facial muscles twitch oddly. It takes Liu Jin a while to realize that is simply how his expressions look. “How could such insignificant organisms be judged worthy of such a gift? Do not even get me started on the miserable wretch the people of this country call emperor. Of course, since there are so many of you, we don’t really need all of you alive, do we?”

When a true predator is about to strike, time seems to stop. The universe holds its breath, wishing it could avert its eyes from the carnage about to ensue.

Of course, that is nothing but an illusion. Time does not stop. The universe does not feel. The prey’s simple brain is just desperately trying to seek an answer that does not exist.

Time resumes.

Liu Jin moves.

Qing Guo does not have time to yell as Liu Jin creates a snake construct that swallows him and the dog whole. There is no time to open one of the doors, so Liu Jin breaks it by ramming his construct into it, sending the two right through. It doesn’t matter how strong or fast the Fleshcrafter is. The doors here keep changing where they lead to. Once they are on the other side, he will not be able to follow. Qi is already in Liu Jin’s legs, pushing him forward. Mere steps separate him from freedom.

A wall of flesh stops him.

“Should I compliment your gallantry? Maybe call you stupid for prioritizing the life of your enemy?” Flesh and bone extend from the Fleshcrafter’s finger. They grow into the grotesque wall that blocks Liu Jin’s way. “You realize I let them go, right?”

“I know.”

The Fleshcrafter had made his hatred of him clear enough. Why bother securing Qing Guo now when he could enjoy himself by killing Liu Jin and capture Qing Guo later?

Liu Jin had gambled on the Fleshcrafter thinking like that.

“Good,” the Fleshcrafter says. “It wouldn’t do for you to think that you actually accomplished anything.”

He points at Liu Jin, and two of his fingers grow into long spears of bone. There is no time to dodge. Liu Jin can only gasp in pain as one of the bones pierces his left lung. The other one goes right through his shoulder, pinning him to the wall.

Dimly, Liu Jin realizes the Storm Dragon had not been bluffing.

There is no protection for him here.

“Do you see how simple it is?” The Fleshcrafter asks him. “How insignificant you are compared to me? Perhaps you had been harboring delusions of competence after what happened in the Dead Plains, but that was a fluke and nothing more. Allow me to demonstrate.”

The bones piercing him bubble as though they were boiling water. Liu Jin screams as he feels bones boiling and changing shape inside him, tearing apart his insides as they spread.

“You dared to change my creations. Let’s see how you like it when someone does the same to you. Shall we start with your limbs? Perhaps the face? I have never been all that fond of eyes. Do not worry. I am not so uncouth as to make you ugly on purpose. You shall be as beautiful as any of my creations.”

Liu Jin can barely hear him. His nerves are being pulled out one by one. His skin boils. His bones break, and it hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!

Stop!

A single word breaks through the agony. A single word becomes his sole purpose.

Stop feeling.

Stop sensing.

Stop existing.

Not as flesh. The body and soul are one, but he needs to be nothing but soul right now. His body is no longer his body. It is merely something he inhabits. Something that is under attack. Something that is being taken from him.

He needs it back.

Liu Jin’s soul breathes.

He sees his body as if from miles away. He can feel the Fleshcrafter twisting it into one of his monstrosities, but there is no longer any pain distracting him. His body is no different from a patient at his father’s clinic. Nothing more.

He needs to heal it.

The Fleshcrafter is not overwhelming him with pure power. His pride will not allow that. Instead, he is impressing upon Liu Jin the difference in skill. This is simply a contest of biological manipulation in which he’s had a late start. Nothing more.

That is the only reason why he has a chance.

Liu Jin spreads his Qi throughout every part of his body. His bloodstream. His nervous system. Every single cell. The Fleshcrafter’s influence reaches far and wide, but that is not entirely a bad thing. The Fleshcrafter has left his body weak and ugly, but it has also left it malleable. Liu Jin can work with malleable.

He starts with a cell. Just one. He needs to remind it that it is his cell and not the Fleshcrafter’s. Then he needs to get it to remind the others.

One cell. Two cells. Three cells.

Ten cells. Fifty cells. One hundred cells.

How many cells were in a human body again?

No, he cannot think like that. It doesn’t matter how much there’s left to do. He needs to keep going. The more cells he controls, the easier it becomes. Everything else will follow naturally.

He can feel the Fleshcrafter’s anger. It’s burning and violent. His manipulation grows more vicious because of it, but the feeling is too distant for Liu Jin to be bothered by it. A country away. An ocean away. How can Liu Jin pay it any mind when he’s busy reminding his hair that it is hair, and his nails that they are nails?

His body has ten fingers and ten toes. It cannot have more or less. A mouth. He needs a mouth as well. His lungs also need to go back to where they were. And the liver. The liver is not supposed to go there. Neither is the bladder.

Why is that there?

No, he does not want to know. It does not matter. He needs to keep going. His flesh is his to shape.

“ENOUGH!”

Liu Jin gasps. The shock of Fleshcrafter’s influence withdrawing from his body brings his awareness back to the physical plane. His body is wounded but not horribly misshapen. His chest rises and falls heavily. His lungs are still not quite where they should be.

“How?” The Fleshcrafter asks, looking at him with seething fury. “How could someone like you know how to craft flesh so perfectly?”

The Fleshcrafter kicks him into the wall. Liu Jin’s ribs crack.

“We’re trained by the greatest masters,” the Fleshcrafter says. His flesh wraps around Liu Jin’s neck and chokes him. “We are raised among corpses so that we might know death. We bleed for our art. We hone it for generations. Someone like you, a mere child from this backwater country, is no more relevant than a speck of dust, so how?! What training have you received? What secrets have you learned?”

“I…” Liu Jin struggles to get the words out. The only reason his neck is not broken is that the Fleshcrafter wants to see him in pain. “When I was… a child… I was taught how to be a doctor.”

Something breaks behind the Fleshcrafter’s eyes, perhaps his patience.

“I speak to you of the beauty of death, and you answer with life? I do not deal in life,” the Fleshcrafter says, his voice cold. “I deal in death.”

And with those words, he drives his fist through Liu Jin’s heart.

“Die and became nothing but a bad dream. One that I shall hopefully forget about someday.”

Liu Jin’s corpse falls to the floor. The Fleshcrafter stares at it for several seconds before piercing all its vital organs for good measure. For a moment, he considers doing what he claimed he’d do. Add this body to his collection.

He decides against it. The words he spoke earlier were not lies.

This joke. This humiliation.

He wants nothing that will remind him of it.

~~~