"Jie Han!"
Another shout. After one hundred and twenty years of this, they all sounded the same.
"It ends here, demon!"
I stayed standing. Barely. My legs had given up hours ago, and the wounds across my chest had gone numb. Probably bad. I couldn't remember why it mattered.
The courtyard was covered in mist, quiet now. My servants and those pests, they all lay in the same piles of corpses. You all talked about righteousness. What difference do you feel now? Isn't it the same?
"I don't understand."The hunters had circled me. None of them moved, just stood there with their weapons, watching.
"I only did what I wanted." My voice came out thin.
Wrong.
"They bothered me, so I killed them. I didn't like them. Why should I let them live?"
No answer.
"Isn't that normal?" I looked at their faces. Anger, hatred, I was looking for something I could work with. But there was nothing. Just that look I couldn't name. "You want something, you take it. Someone annoys you, you remove them. I had the power. Why shouldn't I use it?"
Still nothing.
One of them stepped forward. Shen Wei. We had fought several times over the century. He never won. None of them did, not alone. It took all of them, everything they had, one hundred and twenty years of hunting.
And now he walked toward me like it was already finished.
"Wait." The word came out desperate. I hated how it sounded. "Tell me what I did wrong."
He drew his blade.
"I need to know." My knees hit stone. When did I fall? "Please. I don't understand."
He stood over me. Not a glimpse of happiness. No hatred. Just something heavy in his eyes.
If one were to look at him, they would felt he lost something really precious.
"In your next life," he said, "maybe, just maybe... you will consider everything before you move your blade."
The blade fell.
Cold. Just cold, spreading through my chest. The sky tilted, I was on my back now, stone warm beneath me, but I couldn't feel anything else.
"I hope you live a better life." His voice, distant. "And rise to the top."
Next life? I'm dying. What next life?
The faces above me blurred. Shapes losing edges. Sound going quiet.
Then, soft:
"Rest well, Yan Qiu."
Wrong name. That wasn't my name.
Who...
My lips moved.
...Yan?
White.
Then nothing.
...