Jing

“Stand down, or I’ll kill your leader!” I yelled.

To my surprise, the Dao’s allies stopped. They cared about his life. “Don’t come,” Dao said to them from underneath the plants. A Glowing Pineapple sprouted on top of my hand. The plants parted, forming a staircase. I walked down to where he was trapped.

“Who is attacking my father. How many are there. What are their powers.”

The only visible part of him was his head. My plants locked away the rest of his body.

“Straight to the point, eh? There aren’t many people who can think like you, especially in the middle of battle. Even the most- urk,” he grunted as a vine tightened around him.

“Don’t waste my time.”

“What are you talking about? We have lots of time. You’ve trapped me, but you can’t leave either.”

I glared and constricted the plants again. He was right. He would escape if I left. “And if I kill you?”

The corners of his lips pulled up into a wide grin. “Your ‘father’ would despise you if you did that. But you don’t need to worry about him. Vincent’s more than enough to stop the Crimson Fire Sect.”

My head throbbed with pain. As I thought, the Crimson Fire Sect were the ones after my father.

I could leave and help father, but there was no guarantee my presence would make a difference. Maybe father was already finished with them. But maybe he wasn’t. He might need my help right now. Maybe he was about to die. Dao’s reassurances didn’t mean much to me.

But Dao would escape if I went to help father right now. Recapturing him would be impossible.

I could kill him now, but he was father’s classmate. Father told me to make peace with him. I already failed at that. There was no doubt father would hate it if I killed Dao. Even if I did it with the best intentions, father couldn’t be happy with a dead classmate.

I glared at Dao and he looked back at me with his calm smile. I clenched my jaw.

I felt like I was being crushed. Each everything that happened grinded at my mental physique, wearing me down. Despite my decision to stay, a hole of doubt remained in my heart. I knew how powerful my father could be on his own ground, but there was still that chance he would lose. The could be careless, make a mistake, or...

I was so focused I didn’t notice somebody sneaking up from behind me.

A warm hand wrapped around my shoulder. A gentle touch pulled me back, making me lose my balance. My body tilted back. My head fell into a pair of soft breasts.

Without knowing who this was, I should’ve fought back. But the touch made me feel at peace. The arms wrapped around me from the back. Hui Ming embraced me, filling me with warmth. A single touch felt like a one hour massage.

She whispered into my ear, “You’re not being yourself. You know what to do.”

I tilted my head back and our eyes met. I could’ve stayed like that for an eternity.

I felt her legs tremble. I broke from my trance and glanced down at her hands. I gasped, “What are you doing?” I jumped out of her arms and her legs collapsed. I caught her and put her on the ground. “What were you thinking? Don’t get up until you’re healed!”

I scolded her, but that was all an act. I could imagine how much pain she endured simply to stand up. She went through all that just to comfort me.

I adjusted her bandages. I turned to Dao from my crouched position. His head would be at waist height if I stood up. He twisted his neck to watch us. I glared at him, “I’m warning you. I’ll kill you if you touch her again. I don’t care about the consequences.”

“I won’t,” he laughed, although it came out strained because of the crushing weight from the plants. “I have nothing against her, especially since I’ve been captured.”

My hands worked to replace and straighten my sister’s bandages.

Hui Ming had a special effect on me. Knowing she was beside me cleared my mind.

My mission was to rescue big sis, nothing else. True failure would be to leave her here injured. I couldn’t leave Hui Ming behind.

The tip of my fingers became a blade. I cut a part of my robe into five long strips and replaced my sister’s bandages.

“As I was saying…” Dao started.

He was captured without any way to escape. How could he stay so calm?

“Why try to kill my sister?”

“Kill? I wouldn’t kill her. I was capturing her.”

This was a lie. Hui Ming would’ve died if she didn’t sacrifice her arms to block his attacks. Dao clearly intended to kill. But I played only with his lies. “And why capture her?”

“The Crimson Fire Sect wanted her. She’s a powerful asset, you know. Every sect tries to milk all the power they can from each generation. Your ‘sister’ represents a fourth of the power Crimson can obtain from this generation. They don’t give that up easily.” He paused, I motioned for him to go on. “I don’t know much about The Will Of The World, but neither does anybody else. Crimson told me that the girl might commit suicide if Jin dies, so they told me to restrict her.”

His calm only made me angrier, but I didn’t let it show. I continued questioning, “How much of Crimson is coming at my father.”

“All of them, or all of them that can actually do anything against him. All the elders and both the ancestors. I-”

“That makes no sense,” I interrupted, “If they felt they needed to go against him with all that, they should be worried they could lose more than one elder. ”

“Which is why I suspect Crimson has other reasons to attack him.”

“It doesn’t matter either way. You’re working with them. I’m looking forward to your explanation for that.”

“Hey, it’s not as if I’m helping you either. I pretended to ally with them to send them at Vincent. It was all to weaken Crimson. I was going to take over their land afterwards.”

But he didn’t plan on being captured.

He was captured too quickly to come up with a coherent story. There was bound to be inconsistencies in his story. “If you were just going to conquer them afterwards, why would you try to capture my sister? There’s no point in appeasing the Crimson Fire Sect if you’re just going to conquer it anyway.”

“I…” Dao stopped and frowned. “I… can’t tell you this one. I can’t trust you. However, I’m perfectly willing to tell Vincent.”

He was delaying. He just needed time to make up something new. I could proudly say that I was just as trustworthy as my father. Actually… I would lie about small things, but I wouldn’t lie about anything important. Although I do like to play around, at the end of the day, I want my family to be happy. After that, I want everybody else to be happy as well.

I stopped for a second to think through what he said.

What he said was only half true. He pit the Crimson Fire Sect against my father to weaken the sect, but it was also done to weaken my father. Proof of this was that he would go after Hui Ming. Everything he said about his reasons to attack my sister didn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Dao wanted to have my father and Crimson battle it out. For him, the best case scenario would be to have my father and the Crimson Fire Sect both in shambles. And they he would swoop in and destroy them both.

But he needed to separate me and my father. The two of us working together would be far too much for Crimson to handle. Normally, separating us wouldn’t be easy, but he knew my father cared for Hui Ming. So he sent Crimson to pin my father down and attacked Hui Ming on the side. Father ordered me to rescue Hui Ming, falling right into his trap. Dao’s plan was perfect. Even if I had noticed his plan back when I was with my father, what could we have done? It’s not as if we could’ve left my sister to die.

My mouth began to feel dry after realizing the full extent of his plan. He was many times more cunning than I expected. I still know didn’t which information gathering ability he had so I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t more to his plan. Did he also plan on getting captured? I couldn’t be sure.

If his ability was powerful enough, he would’ve been able to see how my father’s strength compared to the Crimson Fire Sect. Dao couldn’t fail if he had that much access to information. My father could be on the brink of death right now. The more I thought about what Dao had shown so far, the more certain I became that I should’ve gone to help father.

It didn’t matter what I could do or what I did do. If he had already predicted all of it, there was nothing I could to stop him.

The situation was suffocating.

Dao continued to stare at me with his tranquil gray eyes. I averted my eyes down to avoid his gaze. I ended up making eye contact with the world’s most precious little gem, Hui Ming. She was lying on the ground where I had left her before.

Just from being in her presence, my gaze softened and my body relaxed. The pressure from before washed away in an instant. “Y-yes?” she stuttered.

She was clueless about the effect she had on me. She couldn’t move, so she tried to escape my stare by glancing around the makeshift room. There wasn’t much to look at but vines and crushed flowers.

“Nothing,” I knelt and slide my arms under her upper body. Careful not to open her injuries, I lifted her into a sitting position. I pressed my cheek against hers, feeling her warmth. My sister swallowed. I wasn’t sure if she had swallowed out of nervousness or being uncomfortable.

“...Hello? Jing?”

“Hm?” Hui Ming was thin and lean, her body honed to perfection by her physical training. Almost every inch of her was hard and muscular. Luckily for me, she didn’t train the muscles in her cheeks. I rubbed my face against her squishy cheeks, feeling it wiggle back and forth as I wished.

She was the sweetest person ever. She was my only true family other than my father. Father was always busy and always sent me outside the house to do other things. Big sis was the loving family I could spend time with anytime I wanted.

“J-Jing…” she stuttered again. Her eyes hardened and spoke more sternly, “Jing!”

“Hm?” I said, countiuned rubbing.

“Now’s not the time for this kind of behavior!” she said in her lecturing voice.

I pouted and set her down. I turned back to Dao. He raised his eyebrows so much they could’ve pierced the ceiling.

It was too late to be second guessing myself. If everything that had happened up to this point all part of Dao’s plan, then so be it. I’ll continue to stick to what father told me to do. I will protect my dear sister, she’s too precious for me to risk anything happening to her.

The plants carried her deep underground where nobody could hurt her. But I also sent her underground so she wouldn’t have to see what I was about to do.

Dao represented the opposite of me. He wanted to kill my sister. He wanted to get rid of my father. He was willing to sacrifice countless lives for his personal power.

“You won’t tell me the truth, will you?” I said.

“Everything I’ve told you is the truth,” he replied with the same infuriatingly calm expression.

“You’ve forced my hand,” I said. “I didn’t want to resort to torture, but it looks like you won’t talk unless I do this. I’m new to this torturing thing, but I’ll try my best.” I stepped forward, reaching towards his head.

Before I could do anything, three leaves floated up from the floor and sliced into Dao’s arms. They stopped after leaving nine horizontal cuts. The cuts weren’t deep enough for him to bleed out and die, but they were deep enough to hurt.

But it wasn’t me who had moved those leaves. It was Dao. Despite the nine cuts, his face stayed just as calm as before. “As you can see,” he said, “I’ve severed the pain related nerves entering my brain. I can fix them later when I want to, but you won’t be able to torture me.”

No wonder he was able to stay so calm. In his mind, there was nothing I could do to him. Hurting him did nothing, and I wasn’t willing to kill him.

I held my palm facing up. A seed appeared on top. “I wasn’t going to torture you with leaves.” I had already designed most of this plant back at home, now I put on the finishing touches. I poured all my focus into designing a tiny plant. At first, four short tentacles sprouted out of it. Smaller tentacles grew on top of the four tentacles. Smaller tentacles grew off the smaller tentacles. This repeated until an uncountable number of threads formed. Every tentacle was so small they were invisible.

After a few minutes, it was complete.

You’ve created a new type of plant! What would y̸o̶u̷ ̵l̵i̴k̴e̷ t̶̜̥̞̒ò̴̗̣͍̂́ ̴͉̰̈́ṋ̸̟͗̃à̴̜̖̗ṁ̶̩̑͠ê̴̳͊̑ ̸̡͕͐̊͊i̵̥͌͗̓t̵͇͂̏?̷̯̪͍͝͝

“Huh?” I said.

Terror.

Pure terror. I didn’t know what I was terrified by, or why it was so terrifying. My mind as so filled with it I didn’t make the connection between the destroyed text and the emotion.

The Qi around me rippled and then vanished. A second later, a laser shot through and incinerated the plant in my palm.

The bolt continued through my palm and into the ground, leaving a small hole of unfathomable depth. Blood poured from my hand.

The feeling of terror left. I swallowed and dropped to my knees. Dao lost his calm expression. He stared at the hole in the ground with his lips slightly parted. He switched his gaze to me. He looked just as terrified as me.