?

  ?

  “Why?” gasped Yuze through a mouthful of blood. The fact that he was still standing at all with my spear rammed through his stomach and protruding out of his upper back was a testament to the other boy’s durability.

  “I will not allow you to be the one Ding Yuan adopts, to be the one who inherits the Skypiercer.” I hissed at him as I clutched the haft of the spear sticking from my counterpart and lifted him via the weapon into the air.

  “You would have been my second, my brother.” He groaned back.

  “I have no use for a brother who has never matched me on the practice yard,” I replied flatly before slamming Yuze back to the mud and blood of the destroyed village I stood in.

  We had come here supported by a group of twenty lesser warriors under orders from the lord inspector himself, Ding Yuan. Our objective was to find and destroy the demonic cultivator that had been hiding out among the steppe barbarians. I never actually witnessed the man sacrifice anyone for power or really display demonic techniques, but he was teaching the barbarians stronger cultivation and encouraging them to raid caravans going to or from various northern settlements and even those from The City of Deer itself.

  That had been more than enough for Ding Yuan to declare that the man needed killing, and that was more than sufficient motivation for me to slaughter him and anyone who stood alongside the man.

  Of course, Yuze had been the one put in charge of the group. Despite the fact that I was always his superior as a warrior, Yuze remained the favourite among Ding Yuan's junior officers, and as of a few days ago, the one chosen by the lord inspector to be adopted and succeed him.

  ‘Not anymore.’ I thought to myself with a grin of savage triumph as the man who thought he could claim my brotherhood breathed his last.

  With Yuze slain, I would be all but guaranteed to be selected by Ding Yuan as his successor, as the one who would inherit his wealth and his armies. More importantly, the one who would inherit his halberd. The heavenly weapon that the masses dubbed Skypiercer was akin to the wrath of heaven

  trapped by the will of man and forced into the shape of a tri-bladed halberd. I had seen Ding Yuan shatter castle walls with a single swing of the blade, or slay a dozen men just as easily. Ever since the day I had first seen Skypeircer in action, I had wanted to possess it more than anything I had laid eyes on. By this point, I had seen the treasures of a man who ruled an incalculable amount of land, and included a small harem of jade beauties, so I wanted that weapon a lot.

  From the shadow of a burned-out wooden hut that had caught fire during our invasion of the village but now merely smouldered came a hacking laugh that quickly turned into a cough. Contempt blatant on my features, I turned to face the mortally wounded cultivator we had come here to kill.

  Very little of what had been inside the man at the start of the day remained so now, in particular, his blood and intestines. He wore a simple brown robe that had been covered in charms and trinkets that still rattled a little at his convulsive coughing.

  ‘Or was that laughter again?’ It was all but impossible to tell how significantly the man was wounded.

  “Something funny, dead man?” I had spat the question through an overly forced sneer.

  “It is…” He paused for a moment in a fit of what had to be coughs to be this time.

  “It is funny that you would murder three of your own people for a greater share of the glory of slaying me. It does my ego good in these final moments.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I stalked closer to the dying cultivator, with his grey hair that periodically appeared a dull orange when the light from one of the still burning huts or yurts caught it at the right angle.

  “The entire share, but don't flatter yourself.” I snapped at the dying man. The cultivator had been powerful and his followers brave; to our surprise, the entire village of nearly fifty people had raised arms to defend him. The situation had quickly escalated into a bloodbath when the villagers refused to hand over their ‘demonic’ leader. Though poorly equipped and mostly only capable of basic body enhancement techniques, the villagers had outnumbered our party of twenty-two, and had the cultivator's far more capable true followers hidden amongst them.

  They had also been supported by the grey-haired cultivator himself, sending flurries of toxic green Qi beams into the fray with frightening effectiveness. I had put a stop to that with an arrow through the man's forearm when an angle on him presented himself. The demonic cultivator whose name I had never bothered to learn hadn’t been stopped entirely, but the rate at which he hurled his beam attacks had dropped dramatically, and our advance sped up.

  I don't know how the fires got started, but I do know once they began, we were perfectly happy to spread them. These villagers were rebel supporters after all, they had chosen annihilation.

  By the time we had fought our way to and overcome the supposed demonic cultivator, only I, Yuze, and two of the warriors we led still drew breath.

  With so few survivors, I had seen an opportunity to right a wrong, yes, among the junior officers. Yuze had an excellent success rate when sent on missions for Lord Ding Yuan, and yes, he had a tendency to come back with the least casualties. That was all obviously because he was the favourite of someone who had Ding Yuan's ear. What other explanation could there be for a man who was my lesser as a warrior but still had more success on the field? It was obvious he was being given the easier objectives. Yuze had always claimed it was his superior use of strategy,but if that was true, why couldn’t he beat me one-on-one?

  I hadn’t enjoyed cutting down the other junior officer nor the soldiers who had survived the assault, but I knew it had to be done. With Yuze dead, my adoption by the inspector was a certainty. He had gathered every talented young man he could find in the entire province for his junior officer corps with the intent to create a new generation of superior generals and officers. He then made it known that it was from these that it was known that Ding Yuan would select the most promising as his heir.

  I had hoped, as I seized the opportunity to betray Yuze, that his death would help banish the frustration I had felt at being the second choice, and in a way it had. The problem was that where once I had felt offended and frustrated, I was now permeated with a dark and formless rage that far eclipsed what I had been feeling.

  With everyone else already dead, I turned my fury on the so-called demonic cultivator. It was his own fault anyway; if he had just kept his mouth shut and his mocking laughter to himself, I would have been perfectly content to let his wounds finish him before I claimed the man’s corpse.

  Instead, I leaned down over the dying cultivator and grasped his neck in both of my calloused hands. The mortally wounded man twitched and groaned, but lacked the strength to raise his arms or otherwise defend himself as I lifted him into the air by his throat and began to squeeze. I was unsure where the cultivator had come from, so I couldn't be sure if he understood the display of contempt I was showing him. A man dies to the blade or an arrow. Strangulation is a death for women and eunuchs.

  From the rage that blossomed in his fading eyes as I forcibly stopped breath from entering him, I think he understood the insult. I certainly hoped he did anyway.

  Once the life had entirely fled from my victim, I shook him around by the neck like a dog shaking a rabbit in its mouth, until I felt something snap. Then, with one last glare of contempt, I tossed his lifeless form to the ash-covered ground.

  I can hardly say I felt better about the betrayal and murder of my companions, but in some small way, blaming the now-dead cultivator eased my tension.

  If he had been weaker, there would have been too many witnesses to my deed. If he had been stronger, perhaps I could have simply been the last one standing with no treachery required, and if he had simply not done any of this at all, I probably wouldn't have ever had the opportunity.

  With a final glare of contempt down at the corpse of the man we had come to kill, I stalked off to double-check that Yuze was truly dead. It would not go well for me if the other officer managed to trick me and imbibe some life-rejuvenating pill or elixir I didn't know he held. I wasn't worried about him recovering and defeating me in my less-than-fresh state. No, I am Lu Bu. I could have defeated three full-strength Yuze's with a broken arm. The real issue is that he would return to Ding Yuan, and I would very quickly find myself in chains.

  Snatching up my spear that still extended from the boy's abdomen, and stabbed him twice more, then just to make certain, I stepped back and used the side of the spear head to hack through Yuze's neck.

  I did say he's not a good person....