The Samsara Jade

Chapter 2

Li Chen watched through half-closed eyes. He wanted to scream. He wanted to reach out and take it back, but his body would not obey. He could only watch as Zhao Feng held the dark green jade up to the dim light of the stormy sky.

Zhao Feng wiped the rain off the jade with his thumb. He closed his eyes for a second, sending his spiritual sense into the stone, hoping to find a hidden treasure, a secret weapon, or a stash of energy.

A few seconds later, Zhao Feng opened his eyes. He looked deeply disappointed and deeply angry.

"Nothing," Zhao Feng spat. "There is not a single drop of spiritual energy in this thing. It is a completely normal, useless piece of rock. You fought me over a piece of garbage?"

"Give it... back..." Li Chen whispered. His voice was so quiet it was almost lost in the wind. Blood bubbled at his lips. "It is... my mother's..."

"Your mother's?" Zhao Feng laughed cruelly. "Your mother was probably just as useless as you are. A family of trash. No wonder they were wiped out."

Zhao Feng looked at the jade, then looked at the stone pillar. "Trash belongs with trash," Zhao Feng said.

He pulled his arm back and threw the jade pendant as hard as he could against the stone pillar.

Smash. The sound broke Li Chen’s heart into a million pieces. The beautiful, dark green jade, the only connection he had left to his past, shattered into a dozen broken fragments. The sharp pieces fell into the mud, lifeless and ruined.

"No..." Li Chen gasped. Tears mixed with the rain on his face.

Zhao Feng did not care. He turned his back on Li Chen. He looked at his bleeding hand and frowned. "Wang, Sun, let us leave. I need to put some healing medicine on this bite. I might catch a disease from this dirty dog."

"Should we finish him off, Senior Brother?" Wang asked, looking at Li Chen’s broken body.

Zhao Feng looked over his shoulder. He saw the blood pouring from Li Chen’s chest and mouth. He saw the unnatural angle of Li Chen’s chest. "Why waste our energy? His ribs are shattered. His lungs are pierced. The cold rain will finish him in an hour. Let him die slowly in the mud. It is a fitting end for a Broken Root."

The three of them walked away, their clean robes swaying in the wind. They left Li Chen alone in the dark courtyard, bleeding out in the freezing storm.

The rain continued to fall. It was so cold. So incredibly cold.

Li Chen lay there. He could feel his life slowly leaking away. Every breath was a terrible struggle. It felt like swallowing broken glass. His vision was getting darker. 

The blackness was creeping in from the corners of his eyes, whispering to him to close his eyes and sleep. It told him that if he just stopped fighting, the pain would go away.

“Sleep,” the darkness seemed to say. “You are just a Broken Root. You have nothing. No family, no power, no future. Just let go.”

Li Chen closed his eyes.

Suddenly, an image flashed in his mind. He saw his mother's smiling face. He saw his father teaching him how to read. Then, the memory changed. He saw the fire. He heard the screams. 

He saw the men in black masks standing over his parents' dead bodies. He saw the arrogant face of Zhao Feng throwing his mother's memory against the wall.

Li Chen’s eyes snapped open.

No. He would not die here. He would not die as a joke. He would not let the people who killed his family get away with it. He would not let Zhao Feng live a long, happy life after taking his last treasure. He refused to die.

Hatred, hot and burning, exploded in his chest. It was a fire that pushed away the cold. It pushed away the darkness.

“I need... my jade…” Li Chen forced his right arm to move. The pain was so bad his vision flashed white. But he pushed his hand into the mud and dragged his body forward.

One inch. He dragged his broken legs behind him. He coughed, spitting more blood onto the ground. The distance to the broken pieces of jade was only five feet, but right now, it looked like a hundred miles.

He pulled himself forward again. Two inches. His fingernails broke against the hard rocks hidden in the mud. 

His fingers bled, but he did not stop. He was like a wounded worm, crawling through the dirt, driven by pure anger and sorrow.

Three feet.

Four feet.

He was breathing heavily now. A terrible whistling sound came from his chest. He was running out of time. His heart was slowing down.

Finally, his bleeding hand touched something hard and sharp.

He looked down. Through his blurry vision, he saw the fragments of the dark green jade resting in a puddle of water. They were broken, just like him.

Li Chen slowly lowered his head. He was too weak to pick the pieces up. He just rested his face near the broken stones.

"I am sorry, Mother," he whispered. A single tear rolled down his dirty cheek. "I failed you. I am too weak."

As he spoke, a drop of bright red blood fell from his chin. It dropped straight down and landed directly on the largest piece of the shattered jade.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the world changed.

The drop of blood did not wash away in the rain. Instead, the green stone suddenly soaked it up like a sponge. 

The moment the blood vanished into the rock, a strange, terrifying sound echoed in the air. Thump. It sounded like a massive heartbeat.

Li Chen blinked. He thought he was dying and his mind was playing tricks on him. But then he noticed something impossible.

The rain had stopped hitting him. He forced his heavy eyes to look up. The raindrops were no longer falling. 

Thousands of drops of water were hanging perfectly still in the air. They were frozen in space, glowing slightly in the dark. 

The wind had completely stopped. The loud noise of the storm vanished. There was total, heavy silence.

Thump. There was the heartbeat again. This time, Li Chen realized it was not coming from his chest. It was coming from the broken jade.

The fragments of the stone began to vibrate. They shook violently, splashing the muddy water around them. 

A deep, dark light started to shine from the cracks of the stone. It was not a bright light; it was a light that seemed to eat the colors around it. It was a pure, empty blackness.

Suddenly, an ancient, terrifying force exploded from the broken stones. It was a gravitational pull so strong it felt like the center of the world. But it did not pull his physical body. It pulled his mind.