The Samsara Jade

Chapter 8

The hot, violent fire Qi entered his hand. But before it could burn his blood vessels, the ancient power of the Heavenly Void Devouring Art wrapped around it. 

The dark energy crushed the wild fire, making it harmless, and dragged it quickly up Li Chen's arm.

The fire traveled down his shoulder, through his chest, and directly into his dantian. There, his Primordial Chaos Root was waiting.

The Chaos Root was like a giant, starving beast that had just been woken up. It had eaten the weak, thin energy of the rain, but it was still incredibly hungry. 

Now, a rich, powerful meal of pure fire Qi was delivered straight to its mouth. The Chaos Root swallowed the fire Qi instantly.

Li Chen felt a sudden, massive explosion of heat inside his stomach. It was not painful; it was wonderful. 

The Chaos Root aggressively chewed up Deacon Lin's Fourth Level fire energy. It ripped the fire apart, cleaned out all the impurities, and turned it into pure, raw, explosive power.

The dark tattoo on Li Chen's chest burned with a bright golden light under his wet shirt.

"No! My Qi! My power!" Deacon Lin screamed. His voice was filled with absolute terror.

He could feel his cultivation base draining away. The energy he had spent ten long years building was flowing out of his body like blood from a deep cut. His strong, fat body started to shake. 

The bright red light of his Scorching Sun Palm became weak and dim. It flickered like a dying candle, and then, completely went out. His fire was gone. Eaten completely.

Deacon Lin stared at Li Chen. The boy's face was completely calm. Those deep, black eyes looked at Deacon Lin not like a human, but like a predator looking at a piece of food.

"You... you are a demon!" Deacon Lin cried out, tears of fear forming in his eyes. He raised his left hand, trying to punch Li Chen in the face to break free. But Li Chen was faster.

The huge amount of fire energy he had just devoured was boiling inside him. The Chaos Root had digested it, but Li Chen's First Level body could not hold all that extra power for long. He needed to release it, or his body would burst.

"Thank you for the meal," Li Chen said softly. His voice was cold, holding no emotion.

Li Chen pulled his left arm back. He clenched his left hand into a tight fist. He gathered all the dark Qi in his body, and mixed it with the newly stolen fire energy. 

His fist suddenly started to glow. It did not glow with a bright, sunny red light like Deacon Lin's attack. It glowed with a dark, terrifying, blood-red color. It was a perfect mixture of chaos and fire.

Deacon Lin saw the glowing fist. His heart stopped. He finally understood. This boy was not a piece of trash. He was not a cripple. He was a monster hiding in the dirt.

"Wait! Please! Stop!" Deacon Lin begged, trying desperately to pull back. "I will give you everything! I will—"

Li Chen did not listen. He had already learned his lesson in the mud. Mercy in the Azure Sword Sect was a joke. If he let this man live, Deacon Lin would run to Zhao Feng. 

He would bring the elders. They would cut Li Chen open to find his secret. To survive in this cruel world, he had to become a demon.

Li Chen stepped forward, twisting his hips, and drove his glowing, blood-red fist straight into the center of Deacon Lin's large chest.

BOOM! The sound was incredibly loud, like a large cannon firing inside the tiny room.

The dark fire energy exploded out of Li Chen's fist the moment it touched Deacon Lin's body.

CRACK! CRUNCH! The sound of shattering bone filled the air. It was a loud, wet, terrible noise.

The powerful strike completely caved in Deacon Lin's chest. His thick robes ripped to pieces. The force of the punch was so massive that it lifted the heavy, fat man completely off his feet.

Deacon Lin flew backward like a broken kite. He smashed right through the thin, rotting wooden wall of the hut. The wood shattered into hundreds of pieces as his large body burst out into the storm.

He flew through the air for ten feet before crashing heavily into the deep, wet mud of the courtyard.

Li Chen stood inside the broken hut. He slowly lowered his fist. Steam was rising from his knuckles. His breathing was heavy, but his eyes were bright. 

The burning feeling inside his body was gone. He felt incredibly strong. He felt alive. He slowly walked out through the large hole in the wall, stepping into the freezing rain.

Deacon Lin was lying on his back in the mud. He looked exactly like Li Chen had looked just an hour ago.

His chest was completely destroyed, pressed deeply inward. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, and his mouth. The rain washed over his ruined clothes. He was twitching uncontrollably.

Li Chen walked over and stood above him. He looked down, his face hidden in the shadows of the storm.

Deacon Lin opened his eyes. He coughed violently, spitting up chunks of dark red blood and pieces of his own destroyed lungs. Every breath he took made a horrible bubbling sound. He was dying fast.

He looked up at Li Chen. The fear in his eyes was completely gone now. It was replaced by an understanding of pure horror.

Deacon Lin raised a shaking, bloody finger, pointing at Li Chen.

"You... you..." Deacon Lin gasped, his voice a wet, gurgling whisper. "You hid it... so well... You are... a monster..."

Li Chen looked down at him without a single drop of pity. "You pushed my face into the mud," Li Chen said softly, his voice cutting through the sound of the rain. "You threw me to the wolves. Did you really expect a sheep to come back?"

Deacon Lin tried to speak again, but his mouth only filled with more blood. His eyes rolled back into his head. His shaking hand fell down into the muddy water with a soft splash.

Deacon Lin, an overseer of the Outer Sect, a Fourth Level cultivator, breathed his last breath and died.

Li Chen stood completely still in the pouring rain. He looked at his hands. They were covered in mud and blood.

A strange feeling washed over him. He had just killed a man. He had taken a human life. Just yesterday, he was a simple boy who chopped wood and scrubbed floors. He was a boy who cried when he was beaten. He was a boy who missed his mother.

Now, he was a killer. He waited to feel guilty. He waited to feel sick. He waited for his conscience to attack him. But nothing happened.

Instead, a cold, hard peace settled over his heart. He looked at Deacon Lin's dead body. This man had come here to put him in a pig sack and throw him to wild beasts. If Li Chen had not killed him, Li Chen would be the one dead in the dirt.

This was the truth of the cultivation world. It was a world where the strong ate the weak. It was a world where kindness was repaid with a boot to the face, and where power was the only rule that mattered.

If they wanted him to be trash, he would show them what trash could do. If they wanted him to be a demon, he would become the most terrifying demon this world had ever seen.