Chapter 1

  The Boy They Knew.

  Once, Quin-Quin was everything sunlight should be.

  At five, he filled the halls of the brothel with laughter. His gray eyes burned bright as he darted between courtesans and servants, trailing mischief that made the servants chuckle and his mother’s friends adore him.

  Fearless, as though the world would bow for him if he pushed hard enough. He ran where he shouldn’t, touched what was forbidden, and tested limits that weren’t meant to bend. Ever full of questions no one wanted to answer:

  “Why do you dress so pretty? Why do the men leave so fast? Why do you cry when no one’s looking?”

  For a boy born into such a grim world, he was startlingly alive.

  It was easy to love him.

  But time, like the brothel, has its way of breaking things.

  And sunlight can't linger in shadows.

  The laughter disappeared first. Followed by the warmth in his eyes. By the time he turned twelve, Quin-Quin no longer looked like a boy at all.

  He was too reserved, too still, with an unsettling composure that made him seem older than his years.

  At first, the courtesans thought he’d simply grown out of his mischief. But as the years passed, he became something else entirely.

  Perfection that betrayed its own emptiness, a beauty that denied life. It was his stillness. The way he sat too straight, spoke too precisely, and watched everything without letting himself be seen.

  “Like a doll,” one of the younger courtesans whispered once. “Beautiful, but empty.”

  No one liked to admit it, but it was true. Quin-Quin had become a doll. A perfect, untouchable thing.

  He wore his mother’s likeness like a shroud. Too pale. Too perfect. Too much like her. Porcelain skin, blackened silk hair, a face that drew attention wherever he went. But where her warmth had softened her beauty, his expression, year by year, grew ever more frigid, chiseled from a substance that refused to bend or soften.

  Unyielding.

  Unreachable.

  A lofty existence like the moon above.

  In a brothel, where beauty was both worshiped and devoured, his perfection wasn’t a blessing. It was a tragedy. For in places like this, predators always circle closest to what they cannot touch.

  As he grew older, the whispers began.

  “Is that the boy?” they would murmur, their voices low but sharp. “The one who looks like her?”

  And then the requests started. Awful, lingering requests. A leering glance here, a bold question there.

  Quin-Quin knew. Of course he did. Their eyes said what their lips didn’t, the hunger written in every stolen look. Patrons, servants, even guards and courtesans who should’ve known better wanted him. Untouched. Untainted. As if marking him would make them special—the first to tread on pristine snow, to leave prints where none should be.

  Madam Li never faltered. Her smile was sharp, her rehearsed words immaculate. “He’s not available,” she’d say, her voice a shield that deflected as much as it concealed.

  And for a time, it would end.

  But behind closed doors, no one could say what promises were whispered, or what boundaries were quietly erased.

  The courtesans saw a quiet, reserved boy. They never questioned the tremble in his hands or the way he avoided Madam Li’s gaze.

  Had they known, their fury would have consumed the brothel in flames.

  But Madam Li was careful. And Quin-Quin...

  Quin-Quin stayed silent.

  Silence, however, wasn’t submission. He had a way of standing up to injustice. Not with fiery passion, but with a quiet, bitter resolve, as if he were trying to make up for something no one else could see.

  At fourteen, that bitterness spilled over. A drunken patron raised his hand against a courtesan, and Quin-Quin stepped in without hesitation.

  The bottle shattered against his temple, blood dripping into his eyes, but he didn’t falter. He dragged the man out into the main hall and dumped him there before crumpling to the ground himself.

  After that night, the boy was never quite the same.

  He wasn’t a doll, nor was he the sunlight that once filled the brothel’s halls. Quinming moved like a shadow. Quick. Cutting. Impossible to grasp. His tongue, sharp as a blade, struck with unrelenting precision. And his words? Each one landed like a perfectly aimed sword thrust—clean, cutting, and impossible to block.

  “Why are you like this?” a courtesan asked one day, her voice tinged with a mixture of frustration and awe.

  Quinming didn’t answer right away. He tilted his head, his gaze distant, as if the question was so complex it required deep philosophical thought.

  Finally, he spoke. “Like what?”

  Her lips tightened, but she forged on, braver than most. “Cruel,” she said, though her voice faltered halfway, as if afraid to give the word life.

  “Cruel?” Quinming blinked, his tone dripping with disbelief. He glanced around the room theatrically, as if searching for someone else to blame. “How am I the cruel one? I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking but doesn’t have the spine to say out loud.”

  She frowned. “That doesn’t make it any less—”

  “Ah!” He held up a hand, cutting her off with the sharpness of a sword drawn mid-strike. “Truth isn’t cruelty. It just feels that way because we’re all so terrible at accepting it.”

  The room fell silent.

  He let his words hang in the air, like the aftermath of a particularly vicious storm. His calm, half-lidded gaze swept across the room, daring anyone to argue. No one could. His truths left no room for lies, no space for comforting delusions.

  And that was what made it so infuriating.

  Yet, for all his bitterness, there was something else beneath it.

  A flicker of something raw. Unpolished. Loudly, alive.

  It wasn’t the gentle warmth of sunlight or the steady glow of a lantern. No, what burned in Quinming’s dark gray eyes was sharper. Harsher. Like embers stubbornly clinging to life in a heap of ash the world had tried and failed to snuff out.

  The fire wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t controlled. It spat sparks and bit at everything around it, stubbornly refusing to die.

  It said, loud and clear: Try harder. I’m still standing.

  The brothel buzzed with stories about him. Some spoken in awe, others with derision, but all with caution.

  “He’s like a sword that grew legs,” one servant muttered.

  “A sword someone left to rust more like,” another added with a snicker.

  No one dared speak too loudly, though. Quinming had a talent for . And worse, he had a talent for —the kind of answers that left you regretting all your life's choices.

  For all his sharpness, Quinming had a way of standing in places no one else dared. Not because he wanted to. But because, somehow, he always ended up there.

  And now, here he is. Alone. Again.

  A weak lantern flickers against the dark, its light trembling as if it, too, is unsure how long it can hold on. In his hands, Quinming grips a broken broomstick. Beyond the fragile glow, shadows writhe. Hungry. Waiting.

  Behind him, chaos reigns in the side kitchen.

  “Rats!” a cook screams, her rolling pin swinging wildly, scattering small, scuttling forms. “Why are there so many of them?!”

  A young guard—Qian Zhao—swings a dented frying pan, the loud clang of metal reverberating as he sends a rat careening into the wall. “Focus!” he barks, voice sharp with frustration.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Focus? Hard to focus when the rats look like this.

  These aren’t ordinary pests.

  They’re grotesque things. Twisted. Patchy fur clings desperately to skin stretched too tight over brittle, bony frames. Their claws glint like jagged glass, serrated and hooked. And their eyes. Glowing yellow, faint but menacing. Those damn yellow eyes track every movement with a malicious patience that shouldn’t belong to vermin.

  And the .

  Heavy and suffocating. It presses in like a living thing. Rotting meat, damp fur, and something else. Something metallic and sharp. An undercut that buzzes faintly in the back of his mind, like the crackling charge before a lightning strike.

  One of the largest rats creeps into the light, its bloated, cat-sized body casting a shadow. Its glowing eyes narrowing as if weighing its options. Calculating. Malicious. Watching him with a predator’s patience.

  Its head tilts, and for a moment, Quinming swears it’s at him.

  His jaw tightens. “Alright,” he mutters. “You’re not a normal rat, and I’m not in the mood. So let’s just—”

  The rat lunges.

  Its claws flash, slicing through the air. Quinming’s body reacts before his mind catches up, the broomstick sweeping upward in a sharp, decisive arc. The crack echoes loud in the stillness, and the rat disappears into the shadows with a chilling shriek.

  He doesn’t relax. That sound doesn’t fade. It spreads.

  The shriek ripples through the swarm, a stone cast into still waters, disturbing everything it touches. The shadows hiss, their rage swelling like a rising tide.

  Behind him, someone yells, “Why do they smell like this?!”

  “I don’t know!” another voice cries. “They’re just rats!”

  “ rats?” Quinming mutters, low and biting, more to himself than to them. “Like hell they are.”

  Once, this would’ve been laughable. A flick of Qi, and these ugly, oversized things would’ve been nothing but ash. But that was before. Before the Qi, before the strength, before everything was taken.

  Now? All he has is himself.

  And a broomstick.

  That’s not nothing, he reminds himself. His mastery of the sword had never depended on brute strength. It had been about speed and trickery. Precision. Technique honed until perfection was the only outcome. Those traits earned him the title of Sword Saint, even if he had not yet crossed the threshold of Saint.

  Skills don’t fade. Not completely.

  Quinming sighs, rolling his shoulders as he shifted his weight. The broomstick creaks ominously in his grip, threatening betrayal. What would go first? The broom or his patience?

  “They say glory dies in strange places,” he mutters, his gaze fixed on the endless shadows. “But dying in a rat pile feels... excessive.”

  He is so, so tired of rats.

  But the rats don’t care.

  “Damn this,” he mutters, eyes flicking to the side as claws scrape closer. “A life of near-death battles, reduced to fighting oversized vermin in a forgotten storeroom. Poetic.”

  A smaller rat darts from the gloom, teeth glinting in the lantern glow. Quinming sidesteps, the broomstick sweeping down with a sharp **. The creature crumples, twitching once before going still.

  “Burning the whole place down feels faster,” he grumbles, nudging the corpse aside with his foot. “Cleaner, too.”

  Behind him, someone yells, “Get the door! Don’t let them—” Their voice breaks off into a panicked scream, followed by the crash of pots hitting stone.

  Quinming barely has time to glance back before the swarms' behavior changes. Moving as one, like a single breathing entity, their glowing eyes narrow in eerie unison. A low, guttural growl rumbles from the shadows, thick with menace. The smaller rats freeze, their silence absolute.

  And then emerges.

  Towering over the others, its scarred, matted fur clinging to a gaunt, skeletal frame. Its claws, jagged and cracked, scrape against the stone with deliberate weight. One eye burns with bright yellow light, cold and unrelenting. The other is a hollow void, a wound left long unhealed.

  The one-eyed rat.

  Quinming exhales sharply, dragging a hand through his damp hair. “Of course, it’s you,” he mutters, his tone laced with exasperation. His grip on the broomstick tightens as he glares at the monstrous creature. “Just what did you eat to get this damn big?”

  The rat growls again, low and throaty, its hunched shoulders rising like spiky peaks.

  “No... Now it makes sense.” Quinming’s eyes narrow, his lips curling into a feral smirk. “I thought it was strange you didn’t just swarm me.”

  He tilts his head, mockery dripping from his tone. “Toying with me the whole time, were you?”

  The rat’s single eye gleams, its clawed foot scraping the floor as it edges closer.

  “So, revenge for the eye, is it?” Quinming taps just beneath his own, his grin sharp. “Go on then. Try.”

  The rat doesn’t charge. It doesn’t need to. It stands there, its mangled body dominating the light’s edge. Confidence rolls off it in waves, bordering on disdain. Its glowing yellow eye remains fixed on him, unblinking. Calculating.

  Behind him, someone shouts his name, faint and distant through the rising chorus of hisses and growls. He doesn’t turn. He knows better than to take his eyes off a predator.

  “Yelling isn’t going to help,” he mutters under his breath. “I’m a little busy here.”

  Still, the rat doesn’t move. It stands there, a pillar of grotesque certainty. There’s no urgency in its stance, no hint of hesitation. It waits, radiating the kind of calm that speaks to absolute control.

  “Arrogant bastard,” Quinming huffs, tapping the broomstick against the ground. “Bet you think you’re king of the rats or something. Too good to attack me yourself?”

  The rat remains still. Its glowing eye bores into him, as if studying every weakness and finding him… lacking.

  Quinming’s shoulders tense. And then he remembers.

  It’s always like this, isn’t it?

  Since the moment he woke in this body, the world has had a way of spiraling out of control whenever he gets involved. He became a child, a brothel became his prison, and now he’s here—armed with a broomstick, staring down the embodiment of bad decisions.

  Even that day, the first time he saw this rat, everything had been teetering on the edge.

  Back then, it had been nothing special. Just another filthy scavenger sniffing around the kitchen.

  And now? Now it’s this: a hulking monstrosity glaring at him with a personal grudge, like it had clawed its way out of his worst regrets.

  Which, to be fair, it probably had. He’d taken its eye and let it get away, after all.

  Nothing in his life is ever simple. Not anymore. And if he’s honest with himself, it never was.

  Somehow, this feels fitting. Especially with all the trouble he’d stirred up as the Dark Blossoming Sovereign. Now he couldn’t even clean up after himself.

  He sighs, rolling his shoulders as he shifts his weight, his grip firm on the broomstick. “Why wouldn’t this happen? Maybe this is why the sect didn’t let me handle politics.”

  But even as he speaks, the memory rises unbidden, dragging him back to those first, desperate days.

  Three days after he woke up weak, helpless, and trapped, this rat had skittered into his life.

  At the time, it had seemed like the least of his problems.

  Looking back, he really should have known better.

  ---

  Sleep isn’t rest. Not for Quinming. Not for years.

  Not after watching the world burn for a decade. Rivers of blood carving scars into the earth, while the heavens remained indifferent.

  The war demanded everything.

  Endless battles against the Demonic Cultists had ground him into something unrecognizable. A man shaped by fatigue and survival. He could stay awake for days, running on fumes of Qi and sheer spite, but sleep? True rest? That had become a stranger to him.

  As commander of the special unit, he had lived at the edges of ruin. He wasn’t sent to fight battles. His duty was to go where others wouldn’t, to hold the line when it was already crumbling. To salvage what couldn't normally be saved.

  Even for a Taoist, whose Qi could mend flesh and steel will alike, the war drained him to his marrow. His reserves had gone to his men, to the battlefield, to the endless chaos.

  For himself, there was nothing left.

  Toward the end, it had shown. Instinct overtaking thought. Desperation eclipsing discipline. There were moments, feral and hazy, where he wasn’t entirely sure who or what he had been. Had he truly bitten into a Cultist’s neck like a starving beast? The memory was distant, warped by fatigue. But the coppery taste of blood lingered all the same.

  Quinming wasn’t a monster.

  But to survive, he’d become something close.

  And these last three days, that survival felt like a cosmic joke.

  Not even a week ago, he’d stood amidst chaos. Sword cutting through flesh. His body drenched in blood—most of it not his own. The screams of the dying still rang in his ears, distant but persistent, like echoes trapped between his ribs.

  The acrid sting of the Empire’s explosives still clung to his nose, sharp and bitter, refusing to fade.

  It was all fresh. Too fresh.

  He had no words to silence it. No warmth to ground himself in this fragile, alien reality. The dissonance clawed at him, relentless. Each night, it dragged him back to a battlefield that felt closer than the walls around him.

  Even when his body rested, his mind stayed sharp, braced for an attack that would never come.

  The heavens, ever cold and unmoving, offered no solace. Not then. Not now.

  Sleep had become its own battlefield.

  Three nights of torment left him cursing his own body’s need for rest. He tried to avoid it, tried to push through the haze of exhaustion, but Courtesan Qian always came with her draught.

  Every night without fail.

  Her soft, firm insistence left no room for argument.

  She had become his shield. Her presence stood between him and the questions that waited beyond his door. The curiosity. The whispers. Even the brothel owner, Madam Li's, ever watchful gaze.

  Courtesan Qian deflected it all with a grace that felt practiced.

  With her, things were... easier.

  Simpler in ways that grated against him.

  He didn’t trust it. He didn’t trust her.

  And yet, when she pressed the bowl to his lips and murmured, “Drink,” his hands rose to obey before he could think to refuse.

  He didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand her. Or himself.

  But every time she entered the room, the heaviness in his chest lifted—just enough to let him breathe again.

  Quinming wasn’t used to this. The quiet. The warmth. He’d survived on battlefields, in the shadow of swords and death. Even back before the war, while peaceful it had never been... this. This was .

  He wasn’t sure if it was soothing or suffocating.

  She didn’t say much. She didn’t need to. Her care was quiet, deliberate. Fussing over his blanket. Smoothing his hair with hands that sometimes trembled. When she murmured, “Rest now,” her voice dipped low, soft as a lullaby.

  And every time, Quinming would nod before he could think to refuse.

  He hated it. He hated how easily his body betrayed him. How he leaned into her touch without thinking, like a stray dog mistaking scraps for love.

  But he didn’t stop her.

  Her presence unsettled him. Warm. Too warm. Like standing too close to a fire on a cold night. You knew you’d get burned, but stepping back wasn’t an option either. Unless you liked freezing to death.

  Quinming stirred restlessly in his sleep, the nightmares finding him as they always did. Not the sharp, bloody clarity of the battlefield. Those dreams had faded long ago. No, these were different.

  Blurry faces. Voices whispering his name. Fire. Petals. Crimson and spinning.

  Always, they ended the same: silence.

  Whenever he woke, gasping, Qian was already there. Her touch brushed his hairline, grounding him.

  Once, he’d shaken off injuries that would’ve killed lesser men. Now, the gentle weight of her hand kept him tethered to the present.

  He wanted to laugh. Rest? That had been stolen from him long ago.

  But the laugh didn’t come. Instead, he sank back into the thin futon, tension bleeding from his shoulders as she hummed faintly under her breath.

  Why does this feel so familiar?

  He didn’t bother answering. He was too tired to care.

  Sometimes, her hands trembled when she touched him, though she was careful to hide it. Once, he heard her murmur, “You’re just like her,” the words heavy with grief and something softer.

  When he stirred, her hand was already on his forehead, her smile firmly in place. “Drink this,” she said, lifting the bowl of medicine to his lips.

  He didn’t ask who she meant.

  He tried not to think about it. He tried not to notice the way her gaze softened when she thought he wasn’t looking. The way she hesitated at the door, as if wanting to say something but choosing not to.

  Sometimes, he wondered if she was holding back the same question he couldn’t answer.

  He told himself it didn’t matter. But her presence brought a warmth he couldn’t place, like the scent of plum blossoms in spring. Familiar, but distant.

  ---

  And so he wakes, unrested, the bitter taste of Qian’s medicine lingering on his tongue. The dreams were worse this time. Shadows whispering secrets he isn’t ready to hear.

  In the silence that follows, one thought rises unbidden:

  The answer waits, just beyond his reach. Just as it always does.