The Heavenless Sword Emperor

CHAPTER 2

"Do not struggle," Elder Wei whispered, appearing suddenly behind him. A hand like a vice gripped Xiaochen's shoulder, and a surge of Qi flooded into his pressure points, paralysing his limbs. "It is unseemly. Accept your role with what little honour you have left."

"I hate you," Xiaochen hissed, tears of rage finally spilling down his cheeks. "My father died for you! He saved your lives in the Great War, and this is how you pay him? By murdering his son?"

"Your father was a tool," the Sect Leader said, his voice coming from a great distance as the world began to blur. "Tools are used until they break. Then they are discarded. Take him to the edge."

Xiaochen couldn't move. He was carried like a sack of grain by two disciples—one of whom was Zhao Huai, who couldn't hide the gleeful grin on his face. They trekked higher and higher, past the lush forests and into the jagged, frozen crags where the wind howled like a wounded beast.

Finally, they reached the Maw. The Tianyin Abyss was a literal tear in the world, a vertical drop into a grey, swirling mist that seemed to swallow light itself. No bird flew over it. No sound came from it. It was the end of all things.

Zhao and the other disciple dropped Xiaochen at the very edge. The paralyse was fading, but his muscles felt like lead. He crawled back an inch, his fingers catching on the sharp, frozen dirt.

"Any last words, waste?" Zhao asked, standing over him. He looked out over the mist with a sigh of contentment. "Honestly, I should thank you. My path to the inner sanctum just got a lot smoother with you out of the way. No more 'mercy' quotas to fill."

Xiaochen looked up at him, his face contorted with a hatred so pure it seemed to darken the air. "If there is an afterlife, Zhao... if there is a hell beneath this mist... I will find a way back. I will tear your heart out and feed it to the dogs."

Zhao's grin flickered for a second, a shadow of unease crossing his eyes, before he masked it with a sneer. "Big talk for a man about to become a puddle. Go on then. Meet your destiny."

Zhao stepped forward and delivered one final, casual kick to Xiaochen’s chest.

The world vanished.

Xiaochen felt the sickening lurch of weightlessness. The wind roared in his ears, a deafening, chaotic scream that tore the breath from his lungs. He saw the jagged edge of the cliff receding into the grey clouds above. He saw the cold, indifferent faces of the Qingyun disciples looking down, smaller and smaller, until they were nothing but specks of blue against the white snow.

Then, there was only the mist.

It was freezing. The air in the Abyss was thick with a strange, stagnant pressure that felt like being submerged in oil. Xiaochen tumbled through the air, his limbs flailing uselessly. He tried to scream, but the pressure forced the sound back into his throat.

Is this it? he thought, his mind fracturing under the terror. Dying for nothing? Being 'recycled' like rubbish?

The darkness began to rise from below, a vast, consuming ocean of black that made the grey mist look bright. He closed his eyes, waiting for the impact, waiting for the crunch of bone on stone that would end his miserable existence.

But as he plummeted deeper into the bowels of the earth, a sound began to cut through the roar of the wind.

It wasn't a scream. It wasn't the wind.

It was a hum. Low, resonant, and ancient. It vibrated in the marrow of his bones, a dark melody that felt strangely familiar, like a song he had heard in a dream before he was born.

Closer, the wind seemed to whisper.

Deep... so deep...

Xiaochen’s heart, which had been racing in terror, suddenly skipped a beat. A strange heat began to blossom in his chest—not the golden, holy heat of the Qi he had seen the disciples use, but a cold, flickering flame.

The darkness below opened up like a giant mouth.

"I won't die," Xiaochen gasped, the words lost in the void. "I won't die!"

He hit the first layer of the lower clouds, and the world turned pitch black. He was falling into the heart of the Tianyin Abyss, into the place where the world's secrets were buried and forgotten.

And in the silence of his falling soul, something answered.

A pulse of pure, unadulterated malice radiated from the depths, locking onto his falling form. It wasn't a rescue. It was an invitation.

Xiaochen felt the air grow impossibly heavy, his consciousness flickering like a dying candle. Just before the darkness claimed him entirely, he saw a single, faint spark of crimson light far, far below.

It looked like an eye, opening in the dark.

And then, there was only the cold.

***

"I am... alive?"

The words were a ragged scrape against the back of a throat filled with the metallic tang of dried blood and the bitter dust of ages. Ling Xiaochen didn't open his eyes. He couldn't. His eyelids felt as though they had been fused shut by a layer of grime and congealed fluid. Every breath was a slow, deliberate victory over a chest that felt like a shattered crate.

"I'm alive," he repeated, his voice cracking, a pathetic sound that was swallowed instantly by the oppressive silence of the Abyss. "I'm bloody alive. How? How in the name of the Heavens am I still breathing?"

He tried to move his right hand. A white-hot spike of agony lanced through his shoulder, so sharp and sudden that he let out a strangled cry.

"Bloody hell!" he hissed, his teeth grinding together until they felt like they might shatter. "Don't scream. Don't you dare scream. If you scream, you're dead. If you scream, they win."

He forced his eyes open. At first, there was only the grey, suffocating soup of the mist he had fallen through. But as his vision cleared—or perhaps as the darkness simply accepted him—the world began to take shape. It was a landscape of nightmares.

He wasn't lying on soil. He wasn't lying on stone. He was perched atop a precarious mound of ivory and yellowed calcium. He shifted slightly, and the sound of dry bone grinding against dry bone echoed like a gunshot.

"Bones," he whispered, staring at a hollow-eyed skull that rested inches from his nose. "Thousands of them. Millions. This isn't a grave. It's a waste bin. We're just... we're just rubbish to them."

He looked up, or tried to. His neck protested with a series of sickening clicks. Far, far above, a tiny, needle-thin crack of pale blue light offered the only proof that a world of clouds and sunlight still existed. It looked like a scar on the skin of the universe.

"You did this, Zhao Huai," Xiaochen growled, the hatred bubbling up in his gut, providing a flicker of warmth against the soul-chilling dampness of the pit. "You and that bastard Sect Leader. You threw me away like a bit of spoiled meat. Can you see me now? Are you laughing over your tea while I'm down here rotting?"

He tried to push himself up. His left arm held, though it trembled with a violent, palsy-like rhythm. His right arm, however, was a lost cause. It hung at a sickening angle, the bone of the forearm clearly snapped.

"Right. Okay. Broke the arm. Probably a few ribs. Legs?" He gingerly wiggled his toes. A dull, throbbing ache responded, but not the sharp, paralyzing fire of a spinal break. "Legs are still there. Thank the stars for small mercies. Now, get up. Get up, you pathetic heap of nothing!"

He heaved. The pile of bones shifted beneath him. A cascade of femurs and ribs slid down the slope, clattering into the darkness below. Xiaochen rolled onto his side, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

"Don't fall. Don't fall again. One drop was enough for a lifetime," he muttered to himself, his fingers clawing into the gaps between the bones. "Why is it so cold? It shouldn't be this cold. It's like the air itself is trying to freeze the blood in my veins."