Chapter 7
Chapter 7: I’m Not Dead Yet
The world tore open.
Within twenty zhang, more than a hundred thick strands of fire-red sword energy wove together into a net. Then the net burst outward—sixty zhang in an instant.
The battlefield became a crimson cage.
Heavy-armored riders died where they surged forward, torn apart in ways worse than being ripped by five horses—wounds splitting from crown to heel as if an invisible hand had unmade them. Foot soldiers with shields slammed into the sword energy like crashing into molten iron, their bodies sizzling, smoking, collapsing before they could even scream.
“Retreat!” the commander shrieked, voice trembling. Terror shook him to the bone. Everywhere he looked, everything within sight was red sword energy.
Tuo Ba Wei Yang nearly fainted. She wrenched at her reins, frantic, but her horse stood rooted, trembling, unable to move.
In the final heartbeat of her life, she saw Gu Chang An leaning against the wall. She saw the towering, battered Kucha City. She saw the dense heap of bodies.
A thin strand of sword energy swept toward her.
Red veins bulged across her pale face like writhing worms. Her proud legs were severed in an instant. Her heart was shredded into dust.
What she had thought a sure victory became her burial ground.
With a thunderous crack, the bronze sword broke into six pieces.
It was as if the technique wrung out one last burst. Blood-red sword energy expanded another thirty zhang, and invaders who tried to flee fell in clusters.
At the center of the battlefield, a fresh abyss split open. Yellow sand could not approach it. Residual sword energy clung to its depths like a curse.
“The most domineering sword…” The commander stood on his horse like a statue, eyes hollow. He gave a bitter smile toward his own chest—flesh burned and torn—then toppled to the ground without a sound.
The crimson haze gradually thinned. When the last of the sword force ebbed, a few hundred survivors staggered away, wounded, alive only because luck had chosen them.
Outside the city, silence swallowed everything.
Banners of barbarian glory soaked in blood-sand. Corpses lay tangled everywhere, piled like small hills. The desert was too quiet—quiet enough that Gu Chang An felt as if he had fallen into the Underworld itself.
At last, he could lie down.
He collapsed beside the wall, surrounded by severed limbs and broken bodies.
He was so tired.
He needed a long sleep—a sleep no one would disturb.
Time passed. Crows circled. Wolves came to feast. Black eagles dove in flocks, tearing into flesh with greedy cries.
One black eagle fixed on Gu Chang An and landed beside him, talons reaching for his throat.
“I’m not dead yet.” Gu Chang An opened exhausted eyes and flicked the talons aside.
The eagle hissed, sensing the thick, murderous aura clinging to him, and hopped away to find easier meat.
Gu Chang An dragged himself upright and leaned back against the wall. The bloody hole in his chest had vanished. In its place remained a scar no bigger than a fingernail—shaped exactly like a Fireseed.
“Still alive with one breath left.” He tore off ruined armor that hung in strips. His white robe was dyed red, like a ritual garment steeped in blood. “I don’t know if that’s luck… or tragedy.”
He understood the reason, at least in part.
Killing made him stronger. After he had personally wiped out the barbarian army, life surged back into him.
And inside him, a new Fireseed had formed—this time not in his chest, but near his shoulder bone.
Maybe one day it would drift down to his wrist. Maybe one day it would be born directly in the sword itself, and he wouldn’t have to drive steel into his own body again.
He looked down at the six broken pieces scattered in the sand. “What a pity about this sword.”
A faint reluctance passed through his eyes.
Somewhere behind him, soft footsteps gathered.
The old and the weak. The women and children. They stood at the gate with faces wet from tears, staring at the twenty-year-old who had just turned a battlefield into a graveyard.
The air stank of blood. Corpses were stacked like mountains. Blood ran in thin streams through the sand. And there, yawning in the ground, was that terrifying fire-red abyss.
Gu Chang An stood steady, unshaking, with more than two thousand bodies behind him.
He was like starlight in a long night—thin, distant, yet enough to guide the Lone City through darkness.
“It was easy,” he said, as if the words cost him nothing.
An elderly man with a missing arm stared up at the sky, tears trembling in his eyes. “There was never any heaven blessing Hua Xia,” he murmured, voice breaking. “There was never any promise of eternal fortune. It’s only that someone keeps holding on…”
He looked at the bodies, and grief crushed him. “Holding on… holding on… Shen Zhou, Central Plains—you all owe Gu Chang An.”
To cut down at least two thousand barbarians alone—what world-shaking merit. Chang An should have been praised by Tian Xia. Chang An should have stood in the Golden Throne Hall to receive an edict. Chang An should have walked the Vermilion Steps to be ennobled and raised as a general.
But now he only leaned against the wall, quiet, blood-soaked, with no red carpets, no ribbons, no drums, no firecrackers.
The old man’s voice trembled into the wind. “Shang Liu—no matter how you crawl, you must make it to Chang An’s name. You must tell the world there is a Lone City here… and in that city there is a twenty-year-old named Gu Chang An.”
Gu Chang An lifted his gaze toward the crowd. “Grandpa Qin,” he called, looking at the thin, limping, white-haired elder—the only carpenter in Kucha City. “Carve me a wooden sword. Your craft is superb.”
A bronze sword and a wooden sword were the same in one way: the power lay not in the blade, but in the hand and the will behind it.
“Good. Good, good…” The old carpenter nodded three times, lips trembling. Then his voice turned hoarse with sorrow. “Chang An… when will days like this end? You’re too tired. Leave the Western Regions.”
Gu Chang An rose and paced, robe dragging through sand that had turned dark with blood. Yet his steps remained calm, almost elegant.
“How could I be tired?” he said softly. “Killing invaders is like your carpentry. Once you’re used to it, it’s easy.”
He paused, as if speaking to the crowd—and to the tired part of himself.
“Maybe one day I’ll lose courage, and the Lone City will fall into barbarian hands—but not today. Maybe one day Shen Zhou will collapse, and Hua Xia civilization will be destroyed—but not today. At least today, I will fight to the death and protect a faith that is fragile and yet unbreakable. Born in Kucha, die in Kucha—that is my mission.”
Then, as always, he turned toward the watchtower.
For him, there was no end. After killing one wave of invaders, he simply waited for the next.
“Oh, right.” As he climbed the stone steps, he didn’t forget to remind the elders. “Before you burn the bodies, drain the blood into the abyss.”
Blood that fed a wooden sword might make it stronger.
And as he watched the invaders before they died, he had seen it in their movements—the way they swung their weapons. They weren’t ordinary soldiers. They carried martial skill.
That did not match the history in his memories.
History had been overturned, but Gu Chang An would still go on in his own way.
“Brother Gu!” A little girl with horn-shaped braids ran up, pattering across the sand. She spread her small palm like she was offering treasure. More than a dozen milk candies lay there.
“I found them on the bodies,” she said, lifting her dirty face with a grin so wide her eyes became slits. “Try one!”
The blood stains had been wiped off. A faint sweet scent lingered. They were probably snacks carried by that commandery princess.
Gu Chang An put one in his mouth. Sweetness spread across his tongue, oddly bright amid the blood and ruin.
He copied the girl and licked at it, making a face like he was doing something ridiculous. The girl stared at him for half a beat—and then they both burst into laughter.