Ming family's suffering—twisted into a lesson, a warning, a lie told so often it had become truth.
He breathed in.
The air around him trembled.
Qi flickered along his body, leaking through his skin like heat through fractured stone. The ground beneath his feet groaned softly, unable to bear the pressure.
Wrath felt it and froze.
The villager was still talking.
That was when Ming moved.
There was no shout.
No warning.
The sword flashed once.
The man's words were cut short—along with his life. His head slid from his shoulders, eyes still wide in mid-sentence, before his body collapsed into the dust. Blood poured across the earth, dark and steaming.
Silence followed.
Ming stood there, sword lowered, his chest rising and falling.
The roar he had been holding back finally escaped—not from his throat, but from his qi—rolling outward like a suppressed storm that had finally broken.
Jinhai's eyes widened in shock.
In a single instant, Ming had killed a man.
To Jinhai—who had believed Ming to be a restrained, almost chivalrous warrior—the sight shattered something inside him. This was not the calm cultivator who ignored praise and insult alike. This was someone who had crossed a line without hesitation.
Wrath stood frozen as well, her pupils trembling. She had seen Ming execute enemies before—but this was different.
This man had been unarmed.
A villager.
Powerless.
Ming turned slowly and looked at them.
His gaze was cold. Empty.
Both Jinhai and Wrath lowered their heads instinctively, a gesture of submission carved into them by pure pressure alone. Neither dared to meet his eyes.
Inside Ming's mind, a single thought echoed again and again:
Kill them.
All of them.
Every villager who spoke ill of his family.
Every mouth that twisted truth into filth.
As that thought formed, people on the street finally reacted.
Someone screamed.
"They killed a civilian!"
"A martial artist has gone mad—run!"
Panic exploded.
Villagers scattered in all directions, overturning baskets, trampling each other as they fled. Fear spread faster than fire, and soon dozens of eyes were locked onto Ming—not with hatred, but terror.
Ming didn't care.
If they all died here, so be it.
Wrath sensed it.
Her body tensed as she stepped forward, ready to stop him—ready to risk herself if she had to.
Then—
A child ran into the street.
The boy froze when he saw the body.
For a heartbeat, he didn't understand.
Then he screamed.
"Father—!"
The cry tore through the chaos like a blade.
The boy rushed forward and collapsed beside the corpse, clutching it with shaking arms. His voice broke as he sobbed again and again, pressing his face against blood-soaked clothes.
"Father… wake up… please…"
He was young.
Fourteen.
Younger than Ming had been.
Ming stopped.
The rage burning through him hesitated—for the first time.
That voice…
He had cried like that once.
Powerless.
Helpless.
Unable to do anything but scream.
The sword in Ming's hand trembled.
The villagers had insulted his family—but in this moment, his anger twisted into something else.
Fear.
Fear of becoming the very thing he hated.
The boy suddenly looked up.
His eyes locked onto Ming's bloodstained blade.
Understanding dawned.
"You…" the boy screamed, tears streaming down his face. "You killed my father!"
He grabbed stones from the ground and hurled them with all his strength.
"Murderer!"
"Bastard!"
The stones bounced harmlessly off Ming's body, but each word struck deeper than steel.
Ming stood there—confused, shaken, frozen.
He didn't know what to do.
So he ran.
Without a word, Ming turned and fled from the village at full speed.
Jinhai and Wrath followed instantly.
Behind them, the boy chased after Ming until his legs gave out, screaming into the distance—
"Come back! Fight me! Why are you running, coward?!"
Ming never looked back.
But the boy's face—
That hatred.
That grief.
It was the same face Ming had once worn—
the day his family was executed.
He ran until there was no human presence left behind him.
No voices.
No footsteps.
No witnesses.
Only trees… and silence.
Ming finally stopped.
His body trembled violently, as if the strength had been torn out of his bones. His breathing became erratic, shallow—each breath scraping painfully through his chest.
I did the same thing…
The realization crushed down on him.
He had done what the Emperor had done to his family.
The fear surged instantly—raw, overwhelming.
The fear of becoming the very monster he hated.
His vision swayed. The world tilted. Ming staggered and grabbed his head, fingers digging into his hair as if he could rip the thoughts out.
"I… can't…" he gasped.
Wrath and Jinhai arrived moments later.
They saw it at once.
The toll carved into Ming's face was unmistakable.
When Ming looked up at them, his eyes were unfocused—haunted.
"I want to be alone," he said quietly.
Wrath stiffened.
"As you wish," she replied after a pause.
But in her heart, she didn't want to leave him—not like this.
Jinhai felt the same.
He wanted to speak. To say something.
But no words came.
So he said nothing.
They turned and walked away.
Ming remained where he was.
Alone.
His hands clenched around his head as he stood there, unmoving—
a man terrified not of death…
…but of what he might become.