Shao Lei wasn’t in the Dragon Flight Pavilion. No, she wouldn’t be caught dead in that hub of losers. She wasn’t resting up in a hotel, either. She was outside the walls of the cities, on the outskirts, taking her anger out on the local flora.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She repeated the mantra as her hands cleaved through the trunks of the trees like a hot knife through butter. In her mind, every tree in the vicinity was Wu Shan.

“Stupid! How dare you!” She downed a particularly thick tree, but she wasn’t satisfied there. Saddling the tree, she began to punch it repeatedly, crushing it into mere splinters.

“I had him! I had him!” Her fists dug straight through the trunk, and it softened to the point where it didn’t produce a satisfying thunk when punched. She moved on.

“How did he do that?!” She released her Cloud Dragon construct and deforested a whole swathe of the forest. Feeling drained, she fell on her knees and let the tears run down her cheeks.

“Hypocrite, incompetent, rag!” She yelled at the top of her voice. “Rag! Rag, rag, rag! Filthy, semen-logged rag!”

Victory was hers! She grasped it in her hands! Wu Shan’s meridians weren’t just clogged, they were contaminated. Her cloud Qi should have made sure that it would take days before he could purify his meridians.

Even the first tentative strike was just there to test his tolerance so she didn’t actually kill him. He shook it off with ease, but that was expected. He was struck in three different vital areas! The dantian, the chest and the forehead! All of his meridians should have been contaminated. It would have to take him weeks before he would get in fighting condition!

And he cleared himself in ten. Goddamn. Seconds.

The bastard who thought himself the charming prince that night, who thought she was just a damsel in distress. How-how dare he?!

“Are you alright? Did they do something to you?”

“Who do you think you are?!” Shao Lei wished she said that to him. She wished she could break out of her cage of fear, and just kill all those damn bandits. Nobody would miss them, anyway. She would be lauded as a hero.

“Bipolar princess”

That’s what they called her now. A brand new nickname. An epithet to wear with pride. Wu Shan the ‘Storm Fist’, Zhang He the ‘Blood Dragon’, and Shao Lei the batshit crazy ‘Bipolar Princess’.

She had her demons, yes. Everyone did. Labelling her like that… whose idea was that, even? One of those bastards she beat up? Did they spread that nickname to the point where the MC caught wind of it? Shao Lei didn’t care to investigate at any rate. She lost her second round, which meant that she would receive no reward, even if that reward happened to be a shitty little pill dirtier than a street hooker.

She underestimated Wu Shan. Moreover, she underestimated him badly. The agonized screams should have stopped him from continuing to purify his meridians, yet he didn’t stop. His Qi purity must have been exceedingly high to have done what he did… higher than hers, for sure.

But he was incapacitated, and all she did was watch. Those precious ten seconds could have decided the outcome of the match ten times over, and she just stood there and gloated.

The energy in her body began to leave her and she slumped down on the floor, her soul filled with emptiness.

Closing her eyes, she began to introspect. She had eight Dao Pillars, an unprecedented amount for someone her age, and, as her and her master’s enemies would like to say, for a female.

Her pillars were arranged in a circular formation, and in the centre flew a frolicking cloud dragon within a cage, separating it from the rest of the Dao Pillars. Despite the power it allowed her to wield, it was the only reason why she couldn’t create a ninth pillar. Every time she tried, the excess Qi would be gobbled up by that horror. The Qi inside her dantian would be sucked into that gluttonous bastard’s vacuum-like maw.

Yet her master, who was on the brink of Dao Seeking, had lived with that disgusting cloud dragon all her life. They were the same, Shao Lei and her master, both born with monsters, only Shao Lei was inferior in so many ways.

The Dragon couldn’t be reasoned with. Give it Qi enough to create a hundred Dao Pillars (and she had) and it would burp like it was nothing. Gobble up a hundred consummate Qi Bomb Pills whole (a dangerous thing to do for anyone under the stage of Core Formation) in quick succession, and it wouldn’t bat an eye. Her strength would not increase any further, and it was all she could do to stop the creature from eating her eight existing Dao Pillars.

She had been at this bottleneck for five years without even a single step forward, in an age where bottlenecks last for only a few months. There was no way forward for her anyways. She was destined to become a stepping stone for the likes of Wu Shan. Just a filthy, filthy rag.

“Hey rag, ya miss me?”

Even now she could smell the rancid breaths of those bastards. Even years later when she had outstripped them in power vastly, the memories of their words haunted her.

“Hold still, rag, this’ll only last a few minutes.”

“Shhh, rag, I’ll make you feel good tonight.”

“Take it, rag-“

“Little rag”

“rag-“

“You’ll never be free, rag!”

“-never!”

“Just stop-“

“Pretending,” Shao Lei whispered.

“To hell with all of this!”

The cage surrounding the Dragon no longer received energy from her, shattering it. She couldn’t care less anymore. The cloud dragon looked around, puzzled by its freedom.

“Go ahead,” Shao Lei whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “Cripple me!”

The cloud dragon never heeded her calls, but this time, it seemed like it did. Opening its deceptively large maw like a snake, it bit a hole in one Dao Pillar, and when the Qi inside gushed out, it rushed into the dragon’s mouth willingly.

Once the pillar was empty, the dragon ate that too, and repeated the process eight times. Eight damn times.

“Congratulations, dragon. You’ve got a hundred and eight Dao Pillars worth of Qi in your body. What are you gonna do? Eat me, too?”

Shao Lei felt numb. She didn’t know if it was because of her losing all of the Qi she had cultivated to that point or if it was her depressive phase, but Shao Lei didn’t want to move an inch.

The dragon swam around her body, uncaring of what terror it had wreaked, and Shao Lei couldn’t seem to care. Her master would disown her for her weakness and she would be just one sheep in a world of tigers. She had no place in this world.

The dragon inside her roared. Whether it was in agreement, she didn’t know, nor did she care.

And without preamble, the dragon coiled up and fell asleep.

--

Shao Lei’s body was definitely mortal, that much she knew now. The long walk from the forest to the city gates took a toll on her, but she needed to maintain a strong façade, lest someone accost her. She shouldn’t worry about anyone at this point. She proved herself worthy of battling toe-to-toe with Wu Shan, the monster who was equal to Zhang He in strength.

That just meant that she was only slightly inferior to that womanizing piece of shit. And nobody in the city would pick on someone with that much power. Unless they were in core formation, of course.

Because security was definitely a concern, she took no chances and headed straight towards the Inner District, forcing her gait to be leisurely, though it was exceedingly hard. No matter how much she tried to take control of her body, she would always start a little from every loud noise or shout.

The Inner District gate couldn’t have come any later, and after paying the toll to enter, she steered clear of the Dragon Flight Pavilion. Unless she admitted to crippling herself, they might actually kill her in revenge. Like hell they could, those snivelling, misogynistic-

Shao Lei cleared her mind, focusing instead on heading towards somewhere safe. For the first time in a long time, she wished that her master was here to protect her, but she knew she was no longer her master’s disciple.

Finally, after finding and renting a room at an inn, she sat on her bed and formulated her plan.

“Buy a horse, hire a bodyguard and head home. That’s it,” she resolved.

“The end of my story.”