Chains Of Eternity: Defiling Heaven

The Man Beneath the Red Sky

"Help! Someone, help me!"

The cry came again and again, ragged and frantic, scraping at the edges of the dark. Then a shriek tore across the air, so shrill it split the silence in two, and Xiao Meng's eyes snapped open.

Leaves, orange leaves, dry and brittle, buried him to the chest. He thrashed upward through them, and they spilled from his shoulders like dying embers as he dragged himself to his knees, gasping.

The sky was red, a deep, bruised crimson stretched from horizon to horizon. Beneath it lay broken walls, rusted halberds leaning in the dust, and the vast ribs of some colossal beast arching overhead like the ruin of a temple.

Where am I?

He pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat was slow and steady. His fingers were long, callused, and unfamiliar. His body felt like borrowed clothing, tailored for a stranger.

Who am I?

"Please! Somebody!"

The voice came from beyond a ridge of shattered stone. Xiao Meng rose, swayed, and found his balance. He walked toward it without knowing why.

He reached the crest and stopped.

Below, in a dry hollow, a young woman stood with her back against a fallen pillar. Her blue robes were torn at the sleeve, a thin line of blood ran down her cheek, and she gripped a slender sword in both hands, its tip trembling. Six men circled her in tattered brown clothes patched with scavenged leather. Rusted sabers, a bone-tipped spear, a chain flail clinking softly.

"Put it down, little miss," drawled the leader, a man with a scarred jaw, twirling his saber. "You're from the Su Clan caravan, aren't you? Your father will pay handsomely. Alive is worth more than dead, so don't make us damage the goods."

"Stay back!" Her voice cracked. "My guards will..."

"Your guards are chasing the decoy we sent into the canyon." He grinned, showing yellow teeth. "No one is coming."

Xiao Meng watched.

Something in him should have stirred, whether pity, anger, or fear. There was nothing, he felt like a pond of still water. She was a stranger, and he owed her nothing.

He exhaled slowly, turned, and took one step away.

Protect those who cry for help.

The voice detonated inside his skull. It was old and iron-hard, the voice of someone who seemed familiar. He staggered, light flashed behind his eyes: floating ruins in a stormy sky, a blade drawn across the heavens, a hand raised before ten thousand kneeling figures. Unfamiliar, yet his fingers curled as though they had done this a thousand times.

Below, the scarred man's smile twisted. "Enough games. Take her!"

The spearman lunged, the girl parried desperately, but the flail's chain whipped around her blade and wrenched it from her grip. The sword spun away, and she slid down the pillar, white-faced.

"Sorry, girl," the leader said, and raised his saber high.

Xiao Meng's body moved, he did not decide. One moment the ridge was beneath his feet, and the next it was gone. Cold gathered in his right palm, frost crackling across his knuckles, and a sword condensed out of the empty air: a blade pale as moonlit ice, rimed with hoarfrost.

One step.

The wind folded around him. The spearman's thrust passed through the place where he had been. The pale blade slid across the man's throat so smoothly that the man had time to look surprised before the red bloomed.

Two steps.

He dropped beneath the flail's swing and rose beside the wielder. One slash parted the chain, the wrists, and the man's scream together. A reverse cut opened his chest, and frost crept along the wound before the blood could fall.

The scarred leader's saber was already descending toward the girl's skull. Xiao Meng's blade rose beneath it, kissed the steel, and turned it aside like water around a stone. The man's own momentum carried him forward, stumbling, right onto the point of the sword.

"Kill him!"

Two sabers came from the left and right, screaming in a scissor cut. Xiao Meng turned, and the sword turned with him, a slow and elegant circle that moved faster than the eye could follow. Frost flowered along the arc. Both sabers snapped at the hilt. Both men stared at the stumps in their hands, and then the second circle opened their throats.

The last man dropped his weapon and ran.

He made four paces. Xiao Meng flicked his wrist, stepped, and the blade passed through the space between heartbeats. The man took one more step before he understood, and then he fell facedown in the dust, rimed white from shoulder to heel.

Silence returned.

The whole fight had lasted ten breaths. There was blood on the sword, blood on the stone, and not a drop on Xiao Meng's sleeve. He felt no triumph and no horror, only the faint sense of brushing away insects.

Why does my body know how to do this?

Su Qingyue could not breathe.

Those six men were cultivators at the middle stage of Qi Refining, yet this stranger had cut them down as though they were mortal farmers, without so much as a gasp.

He turned to face her, her heart hammered. His eyes were brown, and they were cold and hollow, like an empty well. The blade in his hand dripped slowly.

Is he foe or ally? She wondered and swallowed hard. She could not run. Not from someone who moved like that. Her teeth clenched, and her knees shook.

"Sir," she said, forcing her voice steady. "My father is wealthy, he will reward you generously. But... I need to be alive to ask him."

Xiao Meng followed her gaze to the sword in his hand. Without any effort, it dissolved into a drift of cold mist. Qingyue's eyes widened. Materializing a blade from nothing. He must be in the Foundation Establishment realm, at least. What was a monster like this doing in the wastelands?

"Who... who are you?"

"Who am I?" Xiao Meng tilted his head, puzzled, as though she had asked him to explain the color of the sky.

"Your name," she said carefully.

"Name."

He looked older than her, yet he spoke like a child learning words. She rose slowly and brushed the dust from her robe.

“My name is Su Qingyue. Su, that’s my family surname, Qing, for clarity and purity. Yue, for the moon.”

She smiled faintly.

“Qingyue… a clear moon.” She tilted her head, studying him. “And you? What is your name?”

"Name... my name is..."

The pain struck.

It came like a hammer through the temples, crushing and white-hot. Faces flickered through his mind. Xiao Meng dropped to his knees, clutching his head, a ragged groan tearing from his throat.

"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"

"My name... is Xiao..."

The world tilted. He fell forward into the dust, then darkness. Qingyue stood frozen. She waited, then crept closer and nudged his shoulder with the toe of her boot. He did not move.

"Mister! Mister," she muttered. "Passed out, that’s just so great."

Hooves thundered over the ridge. A group of armed riders swept into the hollow, led by a broad-shouldered man in battered armor.

"Young lady!" Mu Jian, her personal guard, leapt from his horse. His face went pale at the sight of the corpses. "Are you hurt? What happened here? Who is this man?"

"Mu Jian, thank the heavens you're here." She exhaled and pointed. "Help me carry him."

"Carry him? Young lady, what..."

"I would like to know that, too." Qingyue gave a small, helpless laugh. "I am also at a loss."