The impact sent tremors through the earth, but Flint barely registered the pain as she crashed into the ground. Her body had always processed pain differently—a quirk that had served her well until now. But as she attempted to move, the disconnect between intent and action became jarringly clear: her legs wouldn't respond.

  Crimson droplets pooled beneath her, seeping into the soil of the valley floor. The mountain winds whispered through the peaks of Soaring Heaven, carrying a faint scent of Flint's blood. And with each gust, the smell drew him closer.

  The cultivator approached with uneven steps, his body wreathed in an unnatural reddish-brown light that seemed to devour the shadows around him. His cultivation robes, once pristine, now hung in tatters, darkened with stains that Flint didn't want to contemplate.

  But it was his eyes that held her attention—vacant yet somehow hungry, as if whatever remained of his consciousness had been hollowed out and replaced with raw, insatiable need.

  "Fresh... soul..." The words slithered from his lips, barely coherent. "Such... fresh... soul..."

  The wind picked up, and his hair writhed like living shadows around his face, giving him the appearance of some ancient, terrible spirit that had clawed its way up from the depths of legend. His sword, still gleaming despite everything, caught the light as he raised it.

  Flint tried to shift away, but her useless legs betrayed her. The cultivator's blade plunged down, tearing through flesh and muscle with mechanical precision.

  The deep red liquid sprayed and splattered across the ground, seeping into the earth like a macabre painting. Droplets sparkled in the sunlight, a morbid contrast against the green grass and brown dirt.

  The madman's sword dripped with her blood as he raised it again, his movements jerky and inhuman. The reddish-brown light around him pulsed like a diseased heart, and his lips moved in patterns that might have once been incantations but now were nothing more than the mutterings of a mind lost to whatever dark art had consumed him.

  The reddish-brown light reached toward Flint's mind, only to meet an invisible barrier—a thin layer wrapped protectively around her consciousness. Though the tortured souls' anguish pressed against this shield with crushing force, not a single crack appeared. Instead, their emotions translated into a subtle pressure, like the weight of storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

  Through this protective veil, Flint sensed rather than experienced their memories. The young hunter's pride in teaching his son, the old tracker's wisdom, the brothers' shared laughter—all these impressions reached her as gentle echoes rather than overwhelming floods. Yet even these muted sensations stirred something deep within her.

  The cultivator continued his ritual, unaware that his victims' desperate emotions weren't breaking through Flint's defenses as they had with previous targets. Instead, these feelings brushed against her mental barrier like waves against a cliff face, creating a strange resonance that seemed to awaken the intangible force within her.

  With each new emotion that pressed against her shield—love, fear, hope, despair—the intangible force grew stronger, pulsing like a second heartbeat within her core.

  Through her barrier, she felt them not as invasive memories but as gentle whispers: a mother's last thoughts of her child's smile, a young apprentice's unfulfilled dreams of mastery, an elderly craftsman's regret for the teachings he would never pass on. Each story was a thread in a tapestry of interrupted lives, futures snapped like delicate silk strings.

  A merchant's memories cut like glass—his daughter's first successful negotiation at the morning market. Pride swelled in his chest as she haggled the price down with the same shrewd wit he'd taught her. The coins in his pouch jingled as he planned to buy her favorite sweets to celebrate. The coins scattered across blood-stained ground as shadows consumed him, his final scream not of pain but of rage at leaving her alone.

  An elderly couple's memories pierced through next—sixty years of shared breaths and gentle touches. They faced the darkness together, hands clasped tight as they had done through famines and floods. Their fear wasn't for themselves but for their grandchildren who would have to weather future storms without their guidance. Their last moment was a shared glance, a lifetime of love compressed into a single look before both lights went out.

  A young farmer's hopes crashed against Flint's barrier—he had just planted a new strain of spirit herbs, carefully calculating how the harvest would finally let him afford to court the magistrate's daughter. The seeds would sprout without him, his carefully maintained fields left to wither. His final thoughts were of spring flowers he would never give her.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Each memory slammed into her shield with increasing violence—a mother's lullaby cut short, a scholar's unfinished research, a blacksmith's half-forged masterpiece. Lives ended mid-sentence, dreams shattered mid-flight, promises broken not by choice but by the insatiable hunger of twisted cultivation.

  The intangible force within Flint surged with each impact, not from the raw anguish of their deaths but from her own mounting fury at the perversion of their endings. These weren't just memories; they were fragments of futures stolen, hopes corrupted, destinies derailed. Through her barrier, she felt their weight not as crushing despair but as a clarion call—a demand for justice that resonated with something ancient and powerful within her core.

  The madman moved with mechanical precision, his sword tip dragging through the dirt around her prone form. As he completed his ritual circle, Flint felt a surge of pure compassion rise within her. Though her mental barrier remained intact, her heart ached for these lost souls. This genuine emotion, born from her own empathy rather than forced upon her through spiritual invasion, caused the intangible force to react with unexpected intensity.

  Their stories didn't break her shield, but they broke something else instead—the comfortable distance between observer and observed. Though protected from their pain, she found herself a witness to hundreds of unfinished stories, each one cutting deeper than any physical wound. The intangible force within her roared in response, not to their suffering, but to her own rising tide of compassion and rage at the fundamental wrongness of their fate.

  Tears streaked down Flint's face, cutting clear paths through the blood and dirt. Not tears of fear or pain, but of raw empathy for the lives she had witnessed—lives that should have continued, should have bloomed, should have mattered. With strength born of righteous fury, she reached up and seized the cultivator's wrist, her grip unwavering despite her damaged legs.

  "Why? Why did you kill them ?!" Her voice cracked with emotion. She desperately grabbed the arms of the mad cultivator, who was wildly hacking at her back, inflicting new wounds.

  Suddenly, brilliant white light erupted from her body, catching the deranged cultivator off guard. "Too much! Too much!... Too much natural aura!" he screamed, his ritual forgotten as the light intensified.

  Through the white haze, an image of Sage South Rain appeared - dressed in tattered clothes, her usual elegance replaced by signs of hardship. Without the assault of foreign memories breaking her mental barrier, Flint experienced this vision with perfect clarity. The words "Let's go" fell from her lips naturally, followed by another vision—a man holding her close, his features remarkably similar to Spark's, before a sword struck him from behind.

  Then everything vanished.

  The deranged cultivator exploded before her, his form unable to contain the sudden surge of natural aura. As the reddish-brown light dissipated, Flint's mental barrier remained steady, though she could still feel the echo of all those lost souls—not as invasive memories, but as a profound understanding of the tragedy that had occurred here.

  Her hands moved through the river of blood as she dragged herself toward the sword. Even through the crimson coating its surface, she could make out the Celestial Sword Sect's emblem—a distinctive cloud pattern etched into the blade. This physical evidence of the cultivator's identity struck her more deeply than any of the emotions that had tested her mental barrier.

  As she lifted her gaze, a movement caught her eye. In the shadows, a slender dog watched her intently. Before she could focus on its features, the creature turned and bounded away. In that fleeting moment of its retreat, she glimpsed something unordinary - three tails streaming behind it like banners in the wind.

  Then, from behind her, came a voice that made her heart skip: Spark.

  With tremendous effort, Flint twisted her body around.

  "Flint!" In an instant, Spark was on his knees beside her, pulling her into an embrace. As his face turned, the angle caught the light in a way that overlapped perfectly with the man from her vision, making her breath catch. Her head came to rest naturally on his shoulder, and she had an overwhelming urge to run her fingers through his hair - but the sight of her blood-soaked hands stopped her.

  "Spark," she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper, "I'm covered in blood."

  She could hear the tremor in his voice as he struggled to speak, his usual composure cracking. "Seedling said... she said you might have fallen to your death..."

  A group of disciples led by Seedling rushed onto the scene, many wearing the distinctive robes of inner sect Adepts. Seedling's fox ears twitched as she immediately jumped to her own defense: "I never said Flint was dead! I only said she fell from a height! And there was this terrifying crazy cultivator chasing us!"

  When Seedling spotted Flint in Spark's protective embrace, her eyes lit up with relief and joy. "Flint! You're alive!"

  Having already convinced herself that Flint must be an Inferno Wolf like Spark - and quite possibly the wolf prince's girlfriend - Seedling held back, giving the pair their moment.

  "Did you actually hope I was dead?" Flint quipped weakly.

  Seedling chuckled, her eyes scanning the area. "Where's the crazy cultivator?"

  Flint hesitated before answering, "He... sort of... exploded?"

  Seedling's eyes widened to saucers. "Exploded?" Around them, the Adept-level disciples exchanged looks of disbelief.

  Gently pushing against Spark's tight embrace, Flint gestured toward the blood-stained sword on the ground. "That sword - it's Celestial Sword Sect craftsmanship. The cultivator might have been one of us."

  She paused, aware of the doubtful and shocked expressions surrounding her, then continued: "He was... absorbing souls. I felt them - all their painful memories."

  "Soul absorption? That's a major crime against the Immortal Alliance! We must report this to Sage Mortius Crane immediately!" one Adept-level disciple called out dramatically, his voice cracking with excitement. The others bobbed their heads in enthusiastic agreement, creating a chorus of "Yes, yes!"

  The group made their way back to the Celestial Sword Sect, with Spark carrying Flint in his arms. His black cultivation robes were now thoroughly stained with blood, but he seemed completely unbothered by it. His golden eyes, though, still bore telltale signs of recent tears - slightly red and glistening in the light.

  "Were you crying?" Flint teased, a small smile playing at her lips.

  "No," Spark replied with stubborn dignity, his chin lifting slightly even as he held her closer. But the slight quiver in his voice betrayed him.

  The sight of the usually composed wolf prince carrying a blood-soaked Flint while adamantly denying his obvious tears drew subtle smiles from their companions. Even Seedling had to hide her grin behind her hand, her fox tail swishing with barely contained amusement at the pair's interaction.

  "Say," Flint mused, her voice taking on a playful lilt despite her exhaustion, "do you think we might have met in a past life?"

  "What are you talking about?" Spark's brows furrowed in that characteristic way of his, though his arms never loosened their protective hold. "In my twenty years, I've never met anyone... as strange as you."

  Flint just smiled mysteriously and let it go with a soft "Never mind." But there was something in her eyes - a knowing look that made Spark's frown deepen even further, though not entirely in annoyance.

  Behind them, Seedling's fox ears perked up with interest at this exchange. She opened her mouth as if to comment, then thought better of it, settling instead for an amused tail swish. After all, who was she to interrupt what was clearly a moment between the wolf prince and his definitely-not-just-a-friend?

  The blood-soaked Flint being carried princess-style by an obviously-been-crying-but-won't-admit-it Spark made quite the picture as they made their way back to the sect. Some of the Adept disciples tried very hard not to stare - and failed spectacularly.