The slaughter yard was waking up wrong.

  Mo Chen stood in the thinning mist, the new qi in his veins humming like a swarm of angry hornets trapped under his skin. Qi Awakening Realm—first stage. It should have felt like victory. Instead it felt like swallowing live coals. Every pulse of power through his newly formed qi sea sent jagged spikes of pain lancing from his spine to the base of his skull. The system’s warning about unstable foundation wasn’t some polite suggestion. It was a warning. One wrong move and his meridians would tear themselves apart bringing him back to square one.

  He wiped the blood off his hands on the dead inner disciple’s robe. The man’s chest was still warm. Three corpses now littered the yard like broken dolls.

  “Three in one morning,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “And I’m still barely breathing. Pathetic.”

  He couldn’t stay. The sun was climbing, and the first butcher crews would be arriving soon. He needed somewhere quiet, somewhere to force the qi to settle before it cooked him from the inside. But first he had to move the bodies.

  He grabbed the nearest corpse by the ankles and started dragging it toward the drainage ditch at the far end of the pens. The man’s head bounced over the uneven ground, leaving a wet red smear. Mo Chen’s new strength made it easier than it should have been, but the effort still pulled at the fresh qi channels in his arms and sent fresh nausea rolling through his gut.

  That was when the voices reached him.

  “—found the tracks. It looks fresh. Someone dragged something heavy this way.”

  “Senior Brother Li said three outer disciples never came back from night training. If it’s that ghost from the Pavilion rumors…”

  “Shut up and spread out. Weapons ready. If it’s the same bastard who hit the alley last night, he’s not getting away this time.”

  Mo Chen froze.

  Four sets of footsteps. Heavy. Purposeful. One set noticeably heavier than the others, someone with real weight behind their stride. Someone stronger.

  He dropped the corpse and melted behind a stack of rusted iron barrels. His heart slammed against his ribs. Not fear but reality. He was 1st stage of Qi Awakening Realm. Freshly broken through with unstable foundation. These men were Clear Stream Sect search party, and one of them felt… wrong. Too heavy. Too steady.

  He risked a glance.

  Four blue-robed figures. Two at 1st stage Qi Awakening—like him, but steadier. One at 2nd stage. And the leader… tall, scar across his left cheek, qi rolling off him in visible waves. Maybe peak 3rd stage. The kind of gap that turned fights into self made executions.

  Mo Chen’s mind raced. He couldn’t fight four at once. Leave four, he can barely fight the two 1st staged disciples head one head... But running blindly would leave a trail. He needed a plan. Something dirty. Something that used the yard itself.

  "I don't give a fuck about fighting fair and square, maybe my tactics are dirty and not worthy of a cultivator but it IS viable..." Mo Chen thought with a vicious smile.

  His eyes flicked to the hanging meat hooks swaying from the overhead beams of the long shed. Dozens of them. Rusty, heavy, sharp enough to gut a bull. The ground was slick with old blood and morning dew. The drainage ditch full of black water and floating offal.

  He smiled, small and vicious.

  Time to become the ghost they were already whispering about.

  He moved low and fast, keeping barrels between himself and the search party. First, the two weakest. He’d peel them off, make noise, draw the others in piecemeal.

  He reached the shed’s side entrance. Grabbed a loose hook from the beam—cold iron, still crusted with dried gore. Then he waited.

  The first outer disciple stepped into the shed alone, sword drawn, eyes scanning the shadows.

  Mo Chen didn’t hesitate.

  *Swish!*

  He swung the hook in a vicious arc from the darkness.

  The curved point punched straight through the man’s left shoulder with a wet *crunch*. Bone splintered.

  "G-UHH!!"

  The disciple screamed—high, shocked, as Mo Chen yanked hard, dragging him off his feet and slamming him into a hanging side of rotting pork. Blood sprayed in a hot arc, splattering Mo Chen’s face.

  The man thrashed, sword swinging wildly. The blade caught Mo Chen across the ribs, shallow but burning. Fabric tore. Skin split. Fresh blood soaked his gray robe instantly.

  Mo Chen snarled and drove his knee into the disciple’s face. Cartilage crunched. Teeth shattered. The man’s scream turned into a wet gurgle.

  But the second disciple was already charging in.

  “Enemy here! Senior Brother—!”

  Mo Chen ripped the hook free with a spray of arterial blood. The first disciple collapsed, clutching the ruin of his shoulder, blood pumping between his fingers in thick pulses.

  The second disciple, 2nd stage, came in fast. Sword raised for a killing overhead chop with a burst of qi.

  Mo Chen threw one of Mei-Lan’s knives. It spun through the air and buried itself in the man’s thigh. The disciple staggered, but didn’t fall. He ripped the knife out with a grunt and kept coming.

  Their blades clashed. Sparks flew. Mo Chen was faster, but the man was stronger. Each block sent jolts up Mo Chen’s arms. His fresh qi sea roiled dangerously. Pain flared behind his eyes.

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  The disciple feinted left, then slashed right. Mo Chen twisted too late. Steel bit deep across his chest, diagonal from collarbone to lower ribs.

  "Die you fucker!!" The disciple screamed.

  Blood welled instantly. The cut was bad. Muscle parted. Mo Chen felt the cold air kiss exposed flesh.

  He roared and headbutted the man straight in the nose.

  "AGHH!"

  Bone gave way. The disciple reeled.

  Mo Chen dropped his sword, grabbed the man’s head with both hands, and drove his thumbs into the eye sockets. Soft tissue popped.

  *Squish!*

  The disciple howled like an animal as Mo Chen dug deeper, twisting, feeling warm jelly squirt under his nails.

  The man’s sword fell. His hands clawed at Mo Chen’s wrists, tearing skin, drawing more blood.

  Mo Chen didn’t stop. He slammed the blinded disciple’s head against the nearest meat hook. Once. Twice. On the third impact the hook punched through the back of the skull and out the mouth with a sickening-

  *shunk*.

  The body twitched once and hung there, dripping.

  Mo Chen staggered back, breathing like a bellows. Blood poured down his chest and face. His vision blurred at the edges. The qi backlash hit him then—white-hot needles in every meridian. He vomited a mouthful of blood onto the dirt.

  No time to act pitiful.

  The leader’s voice thundered from outside.

  “Found them! That pavilion ghost is here!”

  Heavy footsteps pounded closer.

  Mo Chen snatched up the fallen sword and ran deeper into the shed. He couldn’t win a straight fight against 3rd stage. Not bleeding like this. Not with his foundation shaking apart just after a few swings.

  He needed the environment.

  He kicked over a stack of barrels as he passed, oil and old blood sloshed across the floor. Then he yanked a support rope. A whole row of hanging hooks swung free and crashed down behind him like iron rain.

  The 3rd stage disciple, Senior Brother Li, burst through the mess. Eyes cold with murderous qi. His qi flared, thick and oppressive. The air itself seemed to press down.

  “You,” Li growled. “The Pavilion trash. I’ll mount your head on the sect gate.”

  Mo Chen spat blood. “Come take it then.”

  He turned and sprinted toward the far end of the yard, leading the man exactly where he wanted.

  Li pursued. Fast. Too fast.

  *Swish!*

  A qi-infused slash cut through the air behind Mo Chen. He dove sideways. The blade carved a trench through the ground where he’d been standing, sending clods of bloody mud flying.

  Mo Chen rolled, came up, and hurled his last two throwing knives. One grazed Li’s cheek, opening a shallow cut. The other bounced off the man’s qi barrier.

  Li laughed mockingly, “Pathetic.”

  He closed the distance in a blur.

  *Whoosh!*

  The next slash opened Mo Chen’s left forearm to the bone. Blood fountained instantly. The sword in Mo Chen’s right hand went numb. He dropped it.

  Li’s follow-up kick caught him in the ribs.

  *Crack!*

  Bones cracked. Mo Chen flew ten feet and slammed into a wooden pen wall. The impact drove the air from his lungs.

  *Cough, Cough!*

  Mo Chen coughed blood.

  Before he could stand, Li was on him. A brutal punch to the face split Mo Chen’s lip and loosened teeth. Another to the gut made him cough up more blood.

  “You think you can kill my juniors and walk away like that, a filthy nobody like you?” Li grabbed Mo Chen by the throat and lifted him off the ground. Fingers like iron bands. “I’m going to break every bone in your body and leave you alive for the rats.”

  Mo Chen’s vision tunneled. But his right hand, still working, had found something behind his back.

  A loose meat hook dangling from a broken beam.

  He swung it upward with everything he had left.

  The point punched straight through Li’s left eye and out the back of his skull.

  "AHHH-AHHH, YOU DIRTY BASTARD-AHHH!"

  The man screamed like an animal. His grip loosened.

  Mo Chen dropped, gasping, and drove his knee into Li’s groin. Then he grabbed the hook with both hands and twisted. Hard. Bone and brain matter made wet sounds. Blood and clear fluid ran down Li’s face in rivers.

  The disciple staggered backward, still alive, still dangerous enough. His remaining eye looked bloodshot, filled with anger and hate.

  *Whoosh!*

  Qi exploded outward in a desperate wave.

  Mo Chen moved out of the way.

  He snatched his dropped sword and before Li could even stabilize through his fury, Mo Chen drove the sword upward, under Li’s ribs, twisting and sawing through his organs. Blood gushed over his hands, hot and slippery. Li’s mouth opened in a silent scream. He clawed at Mo Chen’s face, nails raking furrows down his cheek.

  Mo Chen kept sawing. Kept twisting.

  Until the big man finally....

  *THUD!*

  went limp and crashed onto the ground with eyes filled with hatred.

  Mo Chen also collapsed to his knees beside the corpse, chest heaving, blood pouring from a dozen wounds. The world spun. His qi sea felt like it was tearing itself apart. But he was alive.

  Barely.

  He looked at the ruined face of Senior Brother Li.

  Then he did what he had to.

  Mo Chen grabbed the man’s robe and tore it open. He jammed his fingers into the wound his sword had made, widening it with brute force. Ribs cracked under his grip. Flesh tore like wet cloth. He shoved his hand deeper, past pulsing organs, until his fingers closed around the warm, throbbing core.

  It fought him, pulsing, trying to stay anchored.

  Mo Chen snarled and ripped.

  The core came free with a wet, obscene *schlurp* of meat and blood. Veins and arteries snapped. Gore coated his arm to the elbow. The smell was nauseating, iron, bile, something sweeter and wrong.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  He slammed the bloody core against his own chest.

  It melted into him like the others, but this time the pain was apocalyptic. His meridians screamed. His vision went white. He vomited again, blood and bile and collapsed sideways in the mud.

  *Ding!*

  The system voice was distant, almost drowned out by the roaring in his ears.

  *Absorption complete.*

  *Current cultivation: Qi Awakening Realm, 2nd stage.*

  *Warning: Severe injuries sustained. Unstable foundation worsening. Immediate stabilization required or risk permanent meridian damage.*

  Mo Chen laughed once wet and broken then forced himself to his feet.

  He couldn’t stay. The remaining two disciples were still out there, probably calling for reinforcements. He staggered toward the drainage ditch, slipped into the foul water up to his chest, and let the current carry him toward the city sewers.

  Every movement was agony. Blood trailed behind him in the black water. His chest wound kept opening with every breath. The broken ribs ground together like broken glass.

  "All the hellish pain that I'm going through for now, I'll make sure to pay it thousand-folds to those who brought me to this situation!" thinking that, he silenced his screams of agony and kept moving.

  ....

  ....

  Hours later, he dragged himself out of a sewer grate on the western edge of the outer district. An abandoned warehouse district. Half-collapsed roofs, weeds growing through cracked stone, no one around.

  He crawled inside the nearest empty building and collapsed against a wall.

  Only then did he allow himself to feel it all.

  The pain. The exhaustion. The knowledge that he had almost died twice, in one morning.

  He pressed a trembling hand to his chest where the new power now sat, raw and angry.

  “Two stages,” he rasped. “Two fucking stages… and I look like I lost a war.”

  A bitter smile cracked his blood-caked lips.

  Outside, distant city bells began to ring.

  And somewhere in the streets, the first whispers were already spreading.

  “Did you hear? Clear Stream lost four disciples in the slaughter yard. Torn apart. Hooks through skulls. One of them had his heart… ripped out.”

  “They’re calling him the Pavilion Ghost.”

  Mo Chen closed his eyes.

  Let them whisper.

  He would rather heal in silence and stabilize his cultivation.

  And then he would find a weak little sect to hide inside, some minor backwater group that would give him shelter, resources, and easy access to more prey.

  Because one day soon, Elder Feng of the Blazing Peak Sect was going to learn exactly what happened when you kicked a starving dog.

  And when that day came, Mo Chen would smile while he tore the man’s core out with his bare hands.

  For now, the ghost would rest in the dark.

  And wait.