Part C – Kuangren's Dream of Blood
The courtyard was silent, empty now, stripped of witnesses and torches.
Kuangren had vanished into a narrow alley, weaving through the city like smoke. No sound followed him, save the faint drip of water from eaves and the distant scrape of rat claws on stone. He came to rest against a wall, blade still sheathed across his back, hands flexing and unclenching as though to test some inner rhythm.
The world around him softened. Night deepened.
And in that silence, sleep came — not forced, but invited.
He dreamed.
Not of faces. Not of buildings. Not of the crowds who had screamed his name in terror or adoration.
He dreamed of blood.
It was everywhere. Not in puddles, not in streaks, but as a tide that rose like a living thing. Deep crimson waves rolled across endless plains, lapping at mountains, climbing walls, curling around trees, enveloping everything in the scent of iron and inevitability.
He walked through it, barefoot, each step leaving not a print but a ripple. Each ripple whispered of past fights, of enemies felled, of ritual cleansings. The tide responded to him, bending and surging with his heartbeat.
All of it remembers.
A voice whispered. Not loud. Not mocking. Not human.
All of it remembers.
Kuangren tilted his head. The whisper was correct. Blood remembers. Steel remembers. Pain remembers. And he — he remembered too.
From the crimson tide, figures began to rise. Not solid. Not fully formed. Shadows stitched together by faint glimmers of red light. He knew their faces. He knew their cries. The orphaned, the betrayed, the ones who had touched the edges of his life only to vanish.
He stepped forward, and the shadows parted. He did not flinch at them, nor did he strike.
"I remember," he said softly.
The shadows responded in chorus, not words, but in memory. A laughter lost. A scream never answered. A dagger that never found its mark.
You are alone.
No. He corrected them. I am never alone.
The shadows shivered at the weight in his voice, curling back into the tide.
And then, a presence.
Different. Lithe. Quiet. Observing.
Not part of the blood, not part of the memory. Something alive, separate. Something that felt… deliberate.
He recognized her before he saw her.
Zhu Zhuqing.
She was a shadow atop the crimson tide, silent, eyes wide and sharp, observing him. A cat among the dead. He did not smile. He did not speak. He only nodded faintly, acknowledging her presence as if to say: You watch. You follow. But do not interfere.
Her form shifted closer, curious, tense, ready to strike or flee. Her claws twitched at the edges of the vision, and his own pulse responded, slow, deliberate, measured.
The predator senses the other predator.
The tide receded slightly as he moved, but the blood beneath his feet whispered of a deeper memory. He knelt, reaching into the crimson, and a blade rose from the depths. It was not the Seven Kill Sword — not yet — but a shape familiar, a shadowed echo of what would come.
Its edge gleamed with unspent violence. He ran his fingers along it.
You remember too, he murmured.
The blade vibrated under his touch, responsive. Not alive. Not yet. But watching.
From the corners of his mind, another whisper arose, faint, like a second heartbeat he had long ignored.
I am here.
He froze. The world quivered. A second presence. Not steel, not blood, not ritual. Something else entirely. Twin yet unseen. He did not understand it fully — but he felt the weight, the anticipation.
Soon, he whispered. Soon you will rise.
Zhu Zhuqing remained at the edge, unseen in the dream, yet felt in the pulse of the crimson tide. He sensed her interest, her tension, her curiosity. Not a threat. Not a rival. A witness. A test.
You are drawn to it, he realized. Not speaking, not moving, only acknowledging. The dream bent around that thought. She had come seeking answers she would not admit.
And that — that truth — excited him quietly.
The tide began to calm. Waves of red blood lowered, folding into pools. The shadows dissolved, retreating. The blade faded into the ether, leaving only a whisper of its weight.
Kuangren remained kneeling in the center, eyes closed, chest rising and falling like the ebb of war tides.
The city's real night pressed around him again. Faint sounds of life, distant laughter, the scraping of a cart on cobblestones — it all filtered back.
And yet, when he opened his eyes, he was still alone.
Not quite.
A faint echo of her presence lingered in the edges of perception, subtle, unreal, yet undeniable.
The cat is patient. The storm is patient. The collision will come.
Kuangren rose slowly, brushing the dirt and blood from his tunic. His hands were steady. His mind, a fortress. His gaze, sharp and deliberate. The tide of the dream had vanished, but its lessons remained: the blood remembers. The steel remembers. And so must he.
Tonight had been practice. Tomorrow, the world would test him.
And he would not fail.