Blossoming Path-257. From Soil, Wrath

WHOOSH!

The Scarred Envoy narrowed his eyes, breath stilling as a gust of wind carved a deep gouge into the earth in front of him.

Across the battlefield, barely visible through the torn haze of ash and ruptured earth, the beast that had once been their youngest Envoy buckled forward, muscles spasming, veins bulging like blackened roots beneath breaking skin. Qi tore out from his body in chaotic waves, destroying everything in its path. The seed had broken him. What remained could no longer be controlled.

And still, the blind man would not yield.

The Scarred Envoy watched with simmering fury as the cripple intercepted another blow. He moved like a drunk sword in the wind, unpredictable yet precise, stalling the beast’s advance with sheer instinct. Blood poured from open wounds along his arms and chest. His clothes hung in tatters. But still he moved.

That old man should have been dead twice over by now.

'A tiger without fangs.'

That was what he saw. Power, honed and tempered... then leashed by age, by fear, by something he couldn't name.

Wasteful. Disgusting.

'And he was the one who had broken their foothold in the province? Killed the Envoy who resided within this area?'

He clicked his tongue.

It didn’t matter. If the cripple was preventing him from killing the boy and collecting the Phoenix Tears, he’d grant him an early death.

The Scarred Envoy moved.

His steps were silent. The air bent around him. Each stride closed distance like a knife through paper. He didn’t waste time calling out. There was no need for theatrics. The cripple would fall quickly once he joined the battle.

But then—he paused.

Just for a breath.

Something crawled up his spine.

A chill.

The sensation was so out of place it stopped him mid-step. A feeling he hadn’t known since his first brush with death decades ago.

His gaze slid, unbidden, toward the collapsed greenhouse.

A low, rustling sound carried on the wind. Almost a whisper. The shattered structure groaned as something within it shifted; wooden planks lifting, soil cracking open. A dozen thick vines curled upward, swaying like serpents, then coiled downward again, lifting something from the ruin.

No—someone.

The boy.

His body was slack, barely breathing, half-buried under rubble and blood. But the vines didn’t carry him like a corpse. They presented him. Raised him like an offering. Like he belonged to them now.

And then he saw it.

A single fleshy stalk, thicker than the rest, had wrapped itself around his shoulder.

The Scarred Envoy froze.

He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Not fully.

But what he felt—that was clear.

Unease.

A feeling he hadn’t experienced since the Bishop first marked him. It crawled across his nerves, sunk into his bones, and whispered warnings he didn’t want to hear. His mouth dried. His putrid qi stirred defensively in his meridians, reacting before his thoughts could catch up.

Because for one brief second—

That broken boy, suspended by roots and blood and bloom, did not feel like prey.

The threat he radiated made the old blind cultivator seem like an afterthought.

His hand tightened around his swordbreaker, threatening to crush the handle in his grip.

There would be no hesitation.

This boy had to die.

SCENE BREAK

I don’t remember standing.

One second, I was on the ground.

The next, I was upright. Held aloft.

My vision was a blur of colors. I blinked, but it didn’t help. Something wet was draped across my face. Not sweat. Not tears.

I reached up slowly.

Felt the fibrous skin of a tendril.

Thick. Fleshy. Familiar. The... Dawnsoul Bloom?

Its roots coiled around my shoulder, embedded in my skin. It wasn’t attacking me. It wasn’t feeding off me. It was part of me now. I could feel its hunger. Its desperation. Its will.

That same gnawing ache to devour, to protect, to strike back.

I looked down at my arms. Vines of every kind all wrapped tight around my limbs. Some had burrowed under my skin. Others pulsed with qi like veins. They weren’t just holding me up.

They were moving me.

I wasn’t walking. I wasn’t even breathing on my own.

But I was alive.

I heard a roar to my right.

Ren Zhi. Still standing. Still fighting.

The beast—what remained of the black-eyed Envoy—thrashed like a rabid animal. But the old man held firm, blades dancing like they were part of his bones, intercepting strike after strike.

He was hurt. Badly. And still, he was standing between the Scarred Envoy and me.

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'Why?'

Why hadn’t he run?

He could’ve disappeared the moment things went south. Hid in the hills. Left the village to die.

But instead, he’d stepped forward. Again and again.

I felt something twist in my chest. A pang of guilt so sharp it cut through the fog in my head.

He deserved peace.

'Not this. Not to die in my place.'

Something moved inside me. Not in my dantian. Outside it.

A second reservoir. Sluggish. Foreign. But alive.

And with it, the plants reacted.

My legs shifted forward. Roots underfoot bent to support me. Bark formed a brace across my spine. I raised a hand without meaning to; tendrils tightening like cords of muscle around my arm.

The world stopped feeling so slow.

Time snapped back into focus.

I stepped forward.

My arm moved before I could command it, rearing back like I was being drawn by the weight of the world itself.

Fist clenched.

Roots twisted around my elbow and wrist, building torque like a drawn bow. Energy surged, not flame, not wind, but the raw strength of everything living, all funneling toward this one moment.

I let it fly.

CRACK—!

My punch landed square against the beast’s side.

The impact sounded like mountains shattering.

The Envoy’s body went limp mid-lunge, lifted from the ground as if launched by a divine strike. He careened through the air, through a half-collapsed hut, through a stone pillar, and disappeared into the trees beyond the village wall in a rain of splinters and blood.

Silence followed.

My hand lowered, still smoldering with qi. The Dawnsoul Bloom twitched at my back, pulsing in sync with my heartbeat.

It felt like the battlefield paused in my wake, like the crackling hush after a lightning strike.

The cultists who had once surged with bloodlust now hesitated, their gazes locked on me.

Like they were staring at something that shouldn't be standing. Something they didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand it either. But I didn’t question it. I moved.

Despite my body being at death’s door, I was brimming with power. My every breath tasted like iron and ash, but I breathed it in like nectar. The tendrils around my body thickened, growing with each heartbeat. Bark layered over bark. Bloom over root. Nature rebuilding me with every twitch, feeding off something I couldn’t see. But it was pulsing steadily, acclimating to the tempo of battle.

Like a second heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

A flicker of motion—

The Scarred Envoy.

Descending like a guillotine.

His swordbreaker carved through the air, striking down toward my neck with the weight of a mountain.

I didn’t dodge.

My right arm moved on its own, snapping up to meet the blow.

CLANG!

Pain lanced through my forearm as the force tore through the vines, through the metal gauntlets beneath, shattering several defensive layers in one brutal impact. I felt bone strain. I tasted blood.

But I didn’t fall.

The vines grew mid-strike, knitting around the weapon even as it pressed deeper.

And then the Dawnsoul Bloom moved.

It slithered from my back, past my shoulder, unfurling with wet, mucosal slickness. A stalk extended, snapping upward like a viper. The Envoy's eyes widened just a fraction too late.

SHLCK.

It latched onto his exposed forearm, burrowing past skin, past flesh, straight into the rotted qi surging through his meridians.

He snarled, jerking back.

The Dawnsoul Bloom drank.

I felt it.

A surge of twisted energy flowed into it; foul, violent, blackened. But it didn’t poison. It fed the bloom. It fed the plants. I watched them pulse thicker, stronger, deeper in color. My vision sharpened. My thoughts cleared.

The Scarred Envoy ripped free, abandoning one of his swordbreakers in the process, the bloom still clinging to its handle like a trophy.

He staggered back, left arm half-numb, ichor hissing from the wound.

And I struck again.

I didn’t wait for him to recover.

I lunged, blades of bark forming along my arms like natural bracers, my movement faster than I could track. I wasn’t fighting with the plants anymore.

We were fighting as one.

I tore through the front line of cultists, one after another. Fists. Tendrils. Blossoming whips that lashed out like blooming spears. My footfalls left roots in the soil. I was moving faster than any one of them could react.

Some screamed. Others chanted.

And then—

A shriek tore through the sky.

The woman that Tianyi had nearly rended in two; still clinging to life with fanatical zeal.

She was collapsing. But instead of falling over and dying like I'd hoped, she was chanting.

I felt the air rupture around her.

The clouds above twisted. Her blood ignited in place, turning into a thick miasma. Formations carved themselves mid-air in a crimson vortex.

A last curse.

The crimson vortex shrieked louder. Blood surged from the fallen, drawn like flies to carrion. Cultist corpses convulsed as their veins tore open, rivers of blood jetting into the air and feeding the storm. Even her own body sagged like a rag doll, arms limp, chest caved in, but still offering fuel to the growing curse.

Then it moved.

A torrent of blood. Viscous. Hungering. Writhing. It expanded, swallowing everything in its path, consuming allies and enemies alike as it surged towards me.

It clawed.

I felt talons of blood latch onto my bark and vine, ripping, scraping, tearing. Roots writhed to defend me, lashing outward, forming walls, bulwarks, domes of living plant. But the blood was alive; it seeped into cracks, found openings, learned my defenses and adapted. An entire storm of hatred focused into liquid form.

I grit my teeth, feeling it breach deeper, closer to my actual body before a howl cut across the battlefield.

A gale ripped sideways through the blood vortex, carving a hollow in its form.

"DON'T TOUCH MY STUDENT!"

A figure blurred past me, clothes flaring.

Ren Zhi.

He didn’t look my way. But I felt it. That old phantom was furious.

His qi scythed through the bloodstorm, dispersing its edges. The curse recoiled, buying me a breath, a moment to rebuild.

Before I could speak, another voice rang out.

"Push! Now!"

Xu Ziqing’s voice, clear as a bell, echoed over the chaos.

I turned just in time to see his moonlit blade arc in a clean half-circle, cutting down two cultists mid-chant. His foot landed hard, shifting his stance as he lunged forward. “Don’t let them recover!”

Behind him, Jian Feng surged forward, bloody but relentless, bellowing a war cry that barely sounded human. The surviving Verdant Lotus disciples followed, eyes wild, blades gleaming with desperation and belief.

The tide was turning.

But it wasn’t over.

The Scarred Envoy struck again his swordbreaker a flash of black steel. He pressed forward, driving me back a step, then two.

And then the world shuddered.

Roots beneath my feet convulsed. My vines screamed.

A warning. A cry.

I turned my head just in time to see a figure leaping toward me, a silhouette unraveling at the seams, skin splitting, bones jutting through muscle.

The Envoy who lost his sense of reason. The one who truly became a demon in every sense of the word.

His eyes were gone. His skin was dead. But he moved with rabid purpose, arms wide as if to tear me apart.

I had no time to dodge.

ROOTED BANYAN STANCE!

The ground cracked beneath me as my legs locked, feet digging into the earth like stone pillars. My spine straightened. Qi surged down through bark and marrow, anchoring me to the world.

The demon struck.

His claws raked across my chest—tearing, biting. The Scarred Envoy joined in, blade swinging to gut me from the side.

I held.

My arms rose like ironwood. My vines thickened again. The Dawnsoul Bloom lashed back at the frenzied one, wrapping around his face—

A sickening crunch. Pain stabbed into my mind as my connection with the Dawnsoul Bloom was forcefully severed.

The mindless Envoy bit down on it, ripping it off my shoulder in a spray of blood and bloom. But in the instant he bit down, he froze.

He stumbled back. Howling.

I stared, slack-jawed, as his own body rebelled. He clawed at his chest. His meridians burned; I could see them glowing, see the corruption unraveling.

The Dawnsoul Bloom, even as it died, had turned its final breath into purity.

He screamed. He convulsed, his spine arching, arms twitching as his meridians flared bright like burning roots—

Then, with a gasp that sounded more like a sob, he collapsed.

Dead.

The demon's death echoed like a gong of judgment across the battlefield. His body crumpled, twitching once, then lay still, ribbons of smoke curling from his ruined meridians.

But there was no time to breath. No time to marvel.

Because the Scarred Envoy was already moving.

He tore forward with a snarl, swordbreaker raised high, eyes bloodshot and wild. The loss of his brethren had pushed him past strategy. Past calculation.

I planted my feet. Roots cracked through the dirt beneath me. My arms snapped into position, every tendril in my body coiling tighter, binding vine to bone. Bark flexed like muscle. Qi surged down to my fists.

I met him head-on.

His strike came with the weight of a landslide—fast, brutal, honed by decades of killing. But I twisted my waist, ducked under his guard, and let the tendrils along my spine drive my motion. They wound around my arm, constricting before their power spiraled like dragons descending from the heavens to forge my strike.

My body became the wrath of nature itself.

I struck upward.

The blow shattered into his ribs.

A shockwave tore through the earth. Soil erupted. The Scarred Envoy’s body folded around the impact—eyes wide, a spray of crimson bursting from his lips as he was hurled backward like a leaf ripped from the world’s grasp.

He arced across the battlefield.

Straight into the ruined greenhouse.

I staggered forward, chest heaving, vines trembling, pulse like war drums in my ears. But the stillness didn’t feel like victory. It felt wrong.

My eyes sharpened.

And I saw him rising. Slowly. Painfully. But not with the frenzy of a man preparing to counterattack.

His gaze wasn’t on me.

It was inside the greenhouse.

Toward something glowing faintly amid the rubble.

A soft pulse. Like moonlight caught in a droplet.

My heart dropped in realization.

“No…”

He reached down. There, nestled beneath a slab of bark and shattered glass... was the Phoenix Tears.

He snatched the vial from the dirt like a starving man grasping a lifeline.

And I remembered I’d dropped it. Back when I’d been thrown back by the force of his blow. In all the chaos, all the bloodshed—I’d lost it. Now, he held the purpose of the entire battle. The reason we fought. The reason people died.

The Scarred Envoy raised his head, eyes burning with something far colder than triumph.

“Cover my retreat,” he said.

Just three words.

But the moment they were spoken, chaos returned.

The cultists—what few remained—didn’t hesitate. As if death was preferable to disobedience. They surged forward like puppets cut loose from reason, eyes wide with fanaticism, faces contorted in rapture.

I surged forward too.

My legs felt broken, my back screamed with pain... but the energy that coursed through my veins wasn’t mine alone. The second source. The foreign tide. It pulsed with the rhythm of living roots, flooding my limbs with unnatural vigor. Tendrils wrapped around my legs, anchoring my steps, amplifying every motion.

I raced after him.

But one cultist flung himself in my path. Young. Barely older than I was. Eyes burning with blissful insanity.

He clung to me.

I tried to shake him off. I struck him. Slammed him into the ground. But he clutched tighter.

He looked up at me—smiling.

“Praise the Heavenly Demon.”

BOOM!

A searing light. Pain like molten iron. The world exploded in white.

The force threw me back. My vision cracked. Only the reflexive bloom of roots, curling around me like armor, blunted the worst of it. Still, I felt skin split and tendons tear. I hit the ground hard, smoke pouring from my body, bark fused to burnt flesh.

I rolled, coughing blood, vision swimming.

Through the haze, I saw him. The Scarred Envoy still running.

And then, a shadow flashed ahead of me.

Ren Zhi.

His robes were soaked crimson, clinging to him like wet parchment. One arm dangled uselessly. But he didn’t stop.

He moved.

In a blur of desperate grace, the blade in his hand arced toward the Envoy’s throat.

It struck, the Envoy raising his shoulder to take the blow instead. He reached up, gripped his own wounded shoulder, and tore the arm free.

Blood jetted. But he didn’t scream. Didn’t stumble.

He just kept running.

Ren Zhi stepped forward to follow, but three cultists pounced on him from behind, bodies already alight with glowing veins.

He cut one down instantly. Another clung to his side. A third began to chant. Their qi surged unnaturally.

A second flare of red and black light.

Ren Zhi vanished in the blast.

I tried to move. But the energy, the borrowed storm that had filled me... it twisted, turned, and pulled away like a tide retreating to sea.

It left me hollow.

The plants around me withered, bark peeling away from my limbs. Tendrils loosened. Roots slumped. My knees gave out.

And I fell.

The battlefield blurred.

I heard my name called.

Once. Twice.

Distant. Warped. Muddled like sound underwater.

The last thing I saw was the Scarred Envoy’s silhouette. The Phoenix Tears glinting in his remaining hand as he vanished over the horizon.