In that instant, the world narrowed to a single purpose.
Zhì Yuǎn moved.
It was not like his training runs through the bamboo grove, where Qi propelled his steps and he still needed to calculate distances, adjust angles, correct his trajectory. It was not like the leaps between stalks, where his body learned to fly. It was something simpler, more primal. It was as if the space between him and the man holding Yù Qíng ceased to exist.
The pores in his skin, all open, all pulsing with the Qi of the world, functioned as a single valve. The air around him was sucked in, compressed, expelled. His muscles, tempered to the limit of the mortal body, responded like bowstrings loosed by an invisible hand.
The bamboo grove around him blurred into a smear of green and gold. The sound of the stream became a distant, shrill buzz. Time—that slow flow that measured the lives of mortals—seemed to stretch, distort, surrender.
He did not see his own movement. He felt it.
He felt the resistance of the air against his skin, the moisture of the afternoon parting around him, the vibration of the ground beneath his feet when they ceased to touch it. He felt the Qi in his meridians cry out with pleasure, not effort, as if this was what he had always been destined to do.
And then he felt his hand.
It was before him. He did not need to aim. Did not need to calculate. The man's body—the one that seconds before had trembled before his eyes—was merely a point in space that his fist should occupy.
The flesh gave way first.
There was no resistance. The skin tore like wet paper, the muscles parted like dry leaves under the wind. The bone—the jaw already broken, the skull still whole—offered a moment of hesitation, a crack that echoed in his own bones, and then it shattered.
Zhì Yuǎn's fist went in.
The sensation was strange. It was not like piercing earth, or wood, or any solid matter he had ever touched. It was softer. Warmer. A paste of flesh and blood and bone fragments that opened before his fingers like wet clay.
And then, the brain.
The gray matter enveloped his hand, warm, moist, and for an instant—a single instant—Zhì Yuǎn felt something that might have been that man's consciousness. An unfinished thought. A fear that had no time to form into words.
The instant passed.
The man's body went rigid. His eyes, which a second before had been full of fear, widened further, fixed on something they no longer saw. His hand, the one gripping Yù Qíng's wrist, opened. The fingers fell away like loose twigs.
Zhì Yuǎn pulled his fist back.
The sound was wet, dirty, a squelch that echoed in the silence like a sob. The man's body swayed for a moment, still standing, as if it had not understood what had happened. And then it fell. First the knees, buckling like straw under the wind. Then the torso, leaning forward, slowly, like a tree that gives up resisting. Finally the face—what remained of it—met the packed earth with a low, almost intimate thud.
The blood began to spread. It flowed from the shattered skull like a slow river, staining the earth dark red, forming pools that reflected the setting sun.
Zhì Yuǎn looked at his hand.
It was red to the wrist. Fragments of bone glinted between his fingers like porcelain shards. Gray matter dripped from his knuckles, warm, sticky.
He felt no disgust. No remorse. He felt nothing but an absolute calm, the calm that comes after a truth has been spoken and cannot be unsaid.
Mine, he thought again. And no one touches her.
The silence lasted a second. Perhaps two.
And then the other man—the thin one, the one who had laughed—opened his mouth.
The sound that came out was not a scream. It was a squeal, high-pitched, strangled, like an animal that sees the trap closing and knows there is no escape. He tried to retreat, but his legs would not obey. His feet slipped on the dry leaves, and he fell sitting on the ground with a thump that made his spine crack.
"No…" the word came out in a whisper, more air than voice. "Not possible… this is not… this doesn't make sense…"
His eyes were fixed on what remained of the elder brother. On the shattered skull. On the spreading blood. On Zhì Yuǎn's red hand, still dripping onto the ground.
"Fourteen years," he stammered, his tongue stumbling over syllables, his eyes glazed. "Fourteen years of cultivation… Refined Body… he was going to… he was going to break through the barrier… and you… you…"
The voice died in his throat. His hands, which had faced opponents in combat, now clawed at the ground as if they could cling to life.
"You are not human," he whispered, and there was something of awe in the horror, something of fascination in the fear. "What are you? What…"
He did not finish the sentence.
Zhì Yuǎn was already before him.
He did not see the movement. There was no time to see. One instant, the man was meters away, fallen, babbling. The next, Zhì Yuǎn was over him, and his hand—the hand still red, still warm—was no longer stained with another's blood.
The fist pierced the abdomen like a spear through silk.
This time, there was resistance. The flesh was thicker there, the muscles denser, and the man was still alive, still conscious, still feeling. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, and the sound that came out was a long, liquid moan, full of blood bubbles.
Zhì Yuǎn felt his hand penetrate, felt the skin tear, the muscles part, the stomach wall give way. And then his fingers found something softer, warmer. Something that pulsed.
The man's eyes met his. There was no more horror in them. There was nothing left but a belated understanding, an acceptance that came too late.
"Why…" the man tried to say, and blood ran from his lips, down his chin, down the man's neck, "why would you…"
Zhì Yuǎn's hand tightened.
The pulsing stopped.
The man's eyes went dark. His body went limp, his shoulders sagged, his head lolled to the side as if his neck had ceased to exist. Zhì Yuǎn pulled his hand back, and the body collapsed gracelessly, like a poorly tied sack of grain.
The blood flowed faster now. It flowed from the open abdomen, from the half‑open mouth, onto the ground, mingling with the blood of the other, forming a red sheet that spread slowly, slowly, as if it had all eternity.
Zhì Yuǎn looked at his hands. Both were red. Both were warm. Both were empty.
And he felt, for the first time since he had moved, breath return to his lungs.
---
Yù Qíng had not moved.
Throughout it all—the movement, the impact, the blood, the second body—she had remained where she was, on the veranda, her bare feet on the bamboo wood. Her face had not changed expression. Her eyes had not widened. Her hands had not trembled.
She had merely watched.
As if watching something inevitable. As if she had known, from the moment the men appeared, how it would end.
When Zhì Yuǎn finally turned to her, she did not retreat. Her eyes traced his face, his neck, his red hands, his blood‑spattered clothes, and there was nothing in them but what had always been there.
She stepped forward.
"Zhì Yuǎn," she said, her voice calm, as calm as when she had asked him to release her wrist. "You are dirty."
He did not answer. He did not need to. She raised her hands and touched his face, her fingertips tracing his jaw, his lips, his temples. The blood on his cheeks was still warm. She did not mind.
"You came," she said.
"I will always come."
She smiled. It was the smile he had known since childhood, the smile she kept only for him, the smile that said the whole world could crumble around them and she would still be there, whole, waiting.
"I know," she answered.
She looked down at his hands, still red, still dripping.
"This will dirty the house."
"We'll clean it later."
"Later?"
He pulled her to him. The blood on his clothes stained the faded blue of her tunic, and she did not pull away. Her body against his, her heart beating in the same rhythm as his, her breath synchronizing with his.
"Later," he repeated.
---
She helped carry the bodies.
There were no questions. No hesitation. While Zhì Yuǎn took one man by the wrists and dragged him across the packed earth, she took the other, her fingers wrapped around the ankle, and pulled him behind her.
The path to the clearing in the bamboo grove was the same one he had traveled hours before, when Qi was still merely a discovery, when the world was still merely the world. Now, the trail was marked by two red lines, furrows carved into the earth where the bodies left their trace.
"Here," he said when they reached the place where the bamboo was densest, where the ground was softest, where no one would ever find them.
She dropped the body she was carrying and fetched the shovels, which were leaning against the back wall beside the washing stone. When she returned, Zhì Yuǎn had already begun to dig.
The earth yielded easily. The bamboo grew on rich, deep soil that swallowed the shovel like water. He dug in silence, and she dug beside him, and the sound of the blades cutting the earth was the only sound besides their breathing.
When the hole was the depth of a body, he looked up.
"Do they deserve to be buried together?"
"No," she answered. "But the earth does not care."
He tossed the first body in. The sound was muffled, dull. She tossed the second. The sound was the same.
The earth covered them both, and the bamboo grove swayed in the wind, indifferent, as it had always been.
---
On the way back to the house, he stopped at the stream that ran beside the veranda.
The water was cold, as it always was, and he plunged his hands into it, watching the blood dissolve into red threads that the stream carried south, toward the mountain, toward oblivion. Yù Qíng knelt beside him, wet a cloth, and began to clean his face.
"Are you tired?" she asked.
"No."
"Not even a little?"
He thought. His body was light, his muscles relaxed, his Qi flowing as it always did, nourished by his open pores, replenished by the world.
"I am as I always am," he answered. "Ready."
She finished cleaning his face, washed the cloth in the running water, and her eyes met his.
"Then let's go inside."
He took her hand. The hand that moments before had been covered in blood was now clean, cold, damp. Her hand was warm, dry, firm.
They walked into the house, and the bamboo door closed behind them.
---
That night was different.
Not because desire was greater—it was always great, always intense. Not because intimacy was deeper—it had always been, from the first days, from the first kiss at Setting Sun Peak.
It was different because there was nothing left beyond the two of them.
The world outside—the war, the village, the men buried in the bamboo grove—all of it had become shadow. What remained was only the hut, the bamboo bed, the bodies that met like two halves of a whole finally recognizing each other.
When he touched her, the Qi did not merely flow. It exploded.
The pores in his skin, open since the afternoon, now seemed to open wider, not to absorb, but to give. The Yang inside him, that Yang he had cultivated from the sun, from the days, from the hours of training, now found its way into her like a river finally reaching the sea.
And her Yin, that Yin he had learned to transform, to nourish, to love, returned to him like a tide that knew no limits. Their bodies moved in the rhythm they had created—the dual rhythm, the rhythm of two, the rhythm that was theirs and no one else's—and each cycle, each pulse, each meeting was more intense than the last.
Yù Qíng arched her back, her fingers digging into his back, her face buried in his neck, and he felt her Qi merge with his, transform, complete.
"Zhì Yuǎn," she whispered, her voice trembling, her lips against his skin, "never again."
"Never again."
She did not need to finish the sentence. He knew. Never again would anyone touch her. Never again would he allow anyone even to look at her with those eyes. Never again.
When they finished, bodies spent, sweat and blood and earth washed away by intimacy, he pulled her to him and felt their hearts beat in the same rhythm, as they always had, as they always would.
"Tomorrow," she said, her voice drowsy, her fingers tracing circles on his chest, "we will cultivate like we did today."
"Like today?"
"Like that." She lifted her face, eyes shining in the dark. "Not apart. Not in the morning, on the veranda, sitting like statues. Together. Like now."
He kissed her, and the kiss was a promise.
"Together," he repeated. "Always together."
---
From that day on, their cultivation changed.
They did not abandon the veranda at dawn. They did not abandon the rising sun or the setting moon. But now, when they sat facing each other, hands joined, Qi circulating between them, there was something different in the exchange. Something deeper. Something that existed only after intimacy had touched them.
The dual rhythm, once a technique, became a state of being.
And when pleasure enveloped them, when their bodies moved in the rhythm that was only theirs, the Qi did not merely circulate—it sang. Every cell, every meridian, every open pore absorbed the world, returned to the world, completed the cycle.
They lasted longer, now. The refined body, the open pores, the Qi that never ran out. The nights stretched, the days began later, and the world around them—the village, the neighbors, the whispers—all of it grew less important.
On the veranda, at dawn, they still sat. But now the hands that joined were the same hands that had pierced skulls, that had dug earth, that had found each other in the dark.
And the Qi that circulated between them was no longer merely the Yang of the sun and the Yin of the moon. It was the Qi of two who had killed together. Who had buried together. Who had chosen, on that day, each other above all the world could offer.
And they did not regret it.
Never.
---
End of Chapter 15