Song San was left crippled, defeated, and bleeding to death.

His once-terrifying presence was now a broken heap on the cracked earth, surrounded by the stench of blood and poison. His arms twitched uselessly, mangled beyond repair, and his breath came in shallow, ragged gasps. The glow of Qi that had once wrapped around him like armor now flickered and dimmed like a dying ember.

His robes were soaked in his own blood, the vibrant hues lost in the deep reds and blacks of his wounds. The venomous Qi that had once surged so confidently from his core now leaked uncontrollably, eating away at the very flesh it once protected.

Eyes wide, staring up at the sky, he looked less like a feared prodigy and more like a boy who’d just realized the world would go on without him.

“Alright, I give up,” he said.

“This isn’t some tournament that you can just surrender to your opponent,” Song Song said, swinging again, and this time, two of his arms rolled to the ground.

Now, there was a trace of panic in Song San's eyes as his sister raised her weapon again, this time aiming for his neck.

Song Song smiled, clearly enjoying the fear blooming across her brother’s face.

“Okay, wait, listen!” he blurted out. “I have a poison sack inside my body. If it explodes, you’ll be covered too and die with me!”

“I already found a way to deal with your poison,” Song Song’s smile widened, enjoying his desperate pleas.

Honestly, seeing someone so scared, scarred, and reduced to a torso… was a sorry sight.

“But this poison is much stronger! You won’t survive it. It’ll act too fast!”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I'm not that worried,” Song Song said, entirely unfazed.

Actually… I was a little worried about his threats.

“Okay, this is going to make me look really bad,” Song San continued, clearly still in panic mode. “But I also planted poison sacs all around the Sect. If my life energy drains out, they’ll explode, flooding the Sect with a poison mist that’ll last a thousand years and kill everything!”

“Meh,” Song Song shrugged. “Kind of lame.”

Meh? That was her reaction to that? She didn’t seem disturbed at all. It was like she was keeping him alive just to enjoy watching him squirm.

Song San’s eyes widened, and they turned to me.

What did he expect me to do?

“Wait! I also spared Liu Feng. That has to count for something, right?” he said.

“Of course, but you were trying to mind control him. Which is kind of the reason why I came here to kill you?” Song Song replied.

“Wait, really?” he said. “You wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t done all that.”

“Oh, no. I definitely would have. Just not immediately. After all, you’re kind of annoying, and I always wanted to kill you,” she explained matter-of-factly.

Damn. This was turning into one hell of a weird conversation. Even Cai Hu beside me was listening intently. Though he was also weaving hand seals, likely preparing an array to locate the poison sacs Song San claimed he’d scattered across the Sect.

“But I could have killed him still, and I didn’t,” Song San tried again.

But before he could spread more of his mental parasitism, I cut in.

“I’m pretty sure you only spared me in case Song Song showed up. Initially, you wanted to use me as a bargaining chip, hence the mind control poison,” I said. He looked like he wanted to interrupt, but I kept going. “Also, you kept me alive after failing to poison me because you knew Song Song probably wouldn’t care if you threatened to kill thousands of innocent people… but I would. So you figured I could talk her out of killing you.”

“My guy, whose team are you on?” Song San said, frowning. Even through his scarred face, he looked offended.

“Obviously not yours,” I responded.

“What do you mean, not mine? She’s trying to destroy the Sect and I’m trying to save it!”

Since when did he become the one with the moral high ground?

“Save it from who? Yourself?”

“That is beside the point! Think of all the kids and innocent people that will die–”

As soon as he said that, Song Song stabbed the tip of a blood sword into his stomach, slowly twisting it as she pushed it deeper.

“Stop talking. Your voice is like bone scraping on bone,” she said, blade twisting slowly in his gut. “You lost. That makes you a loser, and you should be grateful to die for me. Now that I think about it, how about it, how about becoming my slave?”

Song San grinned, blood in his teeth. “Always happy to help my baby sister.”

“Hah,” she said sweetly. “Just kidding. I only gave you hope so I could watch it die first.”

“Okay, this is enough,” I said.

Cai Hu immediately canceled the array binding me, letting me move freely again. He had a deep frown on his face, and it looked like he hadn’t found the poison sacs yet.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Song San was a scumbag. A trash-tier person. He was like a cockroach that just wouldn’t die. But he also knew how to wield his poison element in battle and outside it. He knew how to leverage power.

And this wasn’t just about the Sect anymore, which was already a lot. All the innocent people, and more pragmatically, our support system would vanish.

But the most important part? Speedy, Wu Yan, and Fu Yating would all be caught in the poison blast too.

“Also, think of how useful someone smart and genius like me would be!” Song San added with a hopeless grin.

Well, at least he knew how to be humble…

“Yeah, look how smart and useful the guy who ended up as an ugly torso with a head is going to be,” Song Song mocked, mimicking her brother’s voice with exaggerated derision.

She was clearly enjoying this way too much.

But right now, there were more important things to worry about.

“Did you put any poison sacs close to my home?” I asked him.

He looked me straight in the eye and boldly asked, “Would admitting that ruin my chances of survival?”

“Yes.”

“Then I never planted anything near your home out of deep respect for your noble character,” he said

Yeah. He absolutely did.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t predict the revered elder Cai Hu joining us. As the only Level 7 Array Conjurer around, you’re…” Song San paused, his gaze turning misty.

He was getting tired. His voice had grown lower and weaker, but we were cultivators. Despite the distance, we could still hear him clearly.

“Damn, all this planning went to shit for something completely out of my control. It’s the same all over again… just like with that hag.”

Maybe the blood loss was getting to him. He wasn’t hiding his emotions so well anymore. A part of me felt for the guy. He had probably put everything into this plan and now no matter how hard he tried, there was no way out for him.

“By the way, the deal about you becoming my apprentice still stands,” Cai Hu said. “Since I didn’t really help, you can keep the Level 7 Arrays.”

That was a generous offer. It showed Cai Hu wasn’t trying to take advantage of me or maybe he was just building goodwill so I’d be a more willing student.

Either way, I didn’t mind. Now that Song Song was safe, things were finally looking up.

Although the deal had been struck hastily, Cai Hu was now aligned with our cause, which was a substantial asset. Additionally, Zun Gon would likely support my words as well.

We had a lot of cards on our side, and if it weren’t for the unstable variable that was the Song Clan Leader, I might’ve even felt confident that we had this in the bag.

“Do any of you have any ideas on how to deal with him… without triggering the poison traps?” I asked.

“We could always torture him,” Song Song suggested. “I know it sounds far-fetched since he’s a vindictive, trashy bastard with an insane pain tolerance. But give me a couple years, and I bet I could break him and make him spill where the poison sacs are.”

I looked at her as she said that. It seemed like her bloodlust had grown in the time we’d been apart.

Then again, I’d become more ruthless too.

Without Song Song’s power to fall back on, I’d been forced to make choices that clashed with my ideals. Only the powerful could afford kindness on a whim. Otherwise, reality would eventually slap them in the face. That was just the kind of world this was.

“I feel like you don’t approve of my suggestion,” Song Song said, reading my silence like an open book.

I did think her decision was clouded by bloodlust. But that didn’t mean I was going to contradict her, especially not in front of people like Cai Hu.

If there was ever even a hint of disagreement between us, outsiders didn’t need to know.

“No, nothing like that,” I said.

“I have another idea,” Cai Hu spoke up. “How about I freeze him in an array? It’ll stop his consciousness and prevent his wounds from getting worse. But they won’t be healing either.”

The way he mentioned freezing Song San’s consciousness made things clear. There was a real chance Song San could manually trigger the poison sacs, but hadn’t because that was the last bargaining chip he had left.

Freezing him would remove that risk. No consciousness meant no sudden self-destruct schemes if we ever got distracted.

“This should buy us time to figure out a better way to deal with the traps,” I said, agreeing with the idea.

Realizing he had no way out, Song San turned toward me, his deep green eyes hardening.

Cai Hu immediately began casting the array, and whatever remained of Song San’s body lifted into the air, slowly being covered in a sheen of silver.

Before it was completely sealed, Song San got his last words out.

“Liu Feng,” he called calmly. “Imagine how useful I could be. My sister is strong, but my wide-range attacks can poison armies. I can eliminate threats from far away and can make a delayed poison that spreads even through beasts returning to their pack.”

I just stared at him, offering no reaction.

Seeing that, he changed his tone.

He sighed. “With this, we’ll forget all our grievances, right? I’ll forgive your schemes ending with me being chopped into pieces, and you’ll forgive me for trying to poison you. We’ll forget it all when I’m out, right?”

I smiled. “Next time, make sure your poison sacs explode if you don’t give a certain signal every so often. That way, they’ll detonate automatically, no matter what happens.”

There was a good chance he already had a countermeasure like that. This was my way of warning him: if anything poison-related happened, we’d hold him accountable.

Song San smiled as he was locked into a square, silvery coffin. His last words were:

“That is a good idea.”

Then, he was simply… there. Hovering inside a translucent silver cube suspended in the air held by Cai Hu’s control.

But this was a silent agreement, for now.

The best choice was still to kill Song San. But since we couldn’t, there was no point keeping the hostility alive for the next time. He didn’t want to deal with our animosity, and we didn’t want to deal with him.

I turned toward Song Song. Her pale face had regained a bit of color as she walked toward us, eyes never leaving the floating silver cube that held her brother. She looked like a cat staring at a fish tank.

“You did good,” I told her, bringing her mind back from wherever it had wandered.

“I know you’re curious already,” Song Song shrugged. “When our Core Techniques clashed, and I slashed him across the chest, I left some of the blood the axe was made of inside his body. Then I later caused it to implode at an opportune moment. Even when inside someone else’s body, my blood element is undetectable, despite having my own Qi imbued in it.”

Undetectable? That was… impressive.

Usually, someone’s Qi reacted instinctively when foreign Qi entered their body.

Just like her brother knew how to wield the poison element with mastery, she knew how to use her blood element just as well.

I nodded, acknowledging her strategy, then turned toward Cai Hu.

Now it was time to talk about the deal.

Sure, it had been made hastily, but it was still real. And it tied Cai Hu to our cause.

Maybe he hadn’t fully thought it through when he accepted…

But then again, it’s only natural for a teacher to help their student.