062 A Path Forsaken

062 A Path Forsaken

I stood there in silence, watching as my armor crumbled into dust, fading away like a dream that had lasted just a little too long. In its place, I felt the familiar texture of my Lofty Jade Proposition robe, wrapping around me comfortably. The battle was over. The so-called Heavenly Demon was nothing but a memory now.

Gu Jie, too, changed. Her younger, unburdened appearance now carried more nuance. Her clothes and features shifted, aligning with the version of her I had come to know. It was a subtle transformation—one that reflected not just her physical self but the weight of her past, lightened just a little.

My Holy Spirit, Dave, had already vanished the moment the battle ended. He had no place in this world, after all.

I turned to Gu Jie and offered her a hand. She hesitated for a moment before taking it, her fingers cold but steady. As always, she addressed me with quiet reverence.

"Master."

I sighed. "You can just call me David, you know."

She blinked at me, as if the thought had never occurred to her. Then she shook her head. "Master."

Yeah, figures.

I exhaled and folded my arms. "So, are you finally ready to tell me the rest of your story?"

Gu Jie turned to me, her expression unreadable for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled. It wasn't the kind of smile you gave when you were happy—it was the kind that came when you accepted something painful.

The world around us shifted.

The shattered battlefield faded, replaced by another time, another place. The sky darkened. The wind howled.

And then, I saw her.

A younger Gu Jie stood alone beneath the weight of the heavens, clutching a book that pulsed with ominous energy.

The Legacy Advancement Book.

She had taken the first step onto the Repentant Path of the Warlock.

The world around us had shifted into something else entirely. The battlefield had vanished, replaced by a darkened sky and a barren wasteland. The wind howled, dry and relentless, carrying the scent of dust and something acrid—like burned offerings.

And there she was.

A younger Gu Jie stood in the middle of it all, a small figure against the overwhelming chaos.

She clutched at her robes, trembling, her gaze darting between two opposing forces. On one side, cultivators in flowing robes, the righteous warriors of the greatest sects in the world. Their blades shone with holy light, their auras steady and unwavering.

On the other side—Him.

The Heavenly Demon loomed above them all, his presence a stain upon the world. And before him, kneeling, was a girl.

Gu Jie’s voice cut through the silence.

“I was… confused,” she admitted, her tone quiet, almost distant. “I didn’t know who to root for.”

I didn’t interrupt her. I just watched as the scene played out before us, her past unraveling like a threadbare tapestry.

The girl kneeling before the Heavenly Demon was younger than Gu Jie, but not by much. There was something in her eyes—something resolute.

“She was the only friend I ever made,” Gu Jie continued. “She… she chose to sacrifice herself to him.”

The words were heavy, and I felt the weight behind them.

“She said it was the only way,” Gu Jie whispered. “That if she didn’t, he would take someone else. Maybe me. She thought she could change something… that she could control her own fate, even in the face of that monster.”

The scene shifted.

The moment of sacrifice came and went, but I didn’t need to see the details. The way Gu Jie turned her head away was enough.

Then, the righteous cultivators arrived.

Blades unsheathed. Techniques erupted. The sky turned into a canvas of destruction, streaked with the light of a hundred different arts.

Gu Jie flinched.

“I ran,” she admitted. “I wasn’t brave enough to fight. I wasn’t strong enough to change anything.”

Through the storm of battle, I watched as her younger self darted through the chaos, dodging stray attacks with the uncanny instinct that was her Sixth Sense Misfortune. The battlefield itself seemed to twist around her, bending fate to keep her just out of reach of destruction.

And then—

A book.

It lay discarded among the rubble, untouched by the battle around it. A simple thing, bound in black leather, its surface marred by age. It pulsed faintly, as if alive.

She hesitated, staring at it.

And then, without thinking, she reached for it.

The moment her fingers brushed against the cover, light engulfed her.

“I watched him die,” she said. “Over and over again.”

The memory replayed in front of us, an echo of the past made tangible. The Heavenly Demon, a being of unfathomable strength, cut down by the righteous cultivators. Blood spilled, staining the battlefield. And yet, before his body could even cool, his wounds would knit back together, his broken bones reforming as if time itself refused to let him die.

And then he would rise again.

Gu Jie stood there, watching it all unfold, a spectator to an endless cycle.

“I didn’t know what to feel,” she admitted. “Every time he fell, I thought—maybe this time, it would be real. Maybe this time, he wouldn’t stand back up.”

She clenched her fists.

“But he always did. And every time, something in me wavered.”

The Heavenly Demon was her captor, the one who had twisted her fate. And yet, watching him fall, only to rise again, stirred something in her.

“Did I hate him?” she murmured. “Did I… pity him?”

Her younger self flinched as another blade pierced through the demon’s chest.

“I didn’t know,” Gu Jie said. “But I did know that I didn’t want to be there anymore.”

The memory shifted, the scene flickering like an old lantern about to die.

The book.

The Repentant Path of the Warlock Legacy.

It pulsed with power, its very presence an anomaly in the chaos of the battlefield.

“When I absorbed the Legacy,” Gu Jie said, “my mind cleared.”

She turned to me, something like disbelief in her eyes, as if even now, she couldn’t quite believe it.

“For the first time since I was taken, I could think.”

The fog that had shrouded her thoughts, the whispers of loyalty, the instinct to obey—it all vanished in an instant.

“And then,” she continued, “I felt it. An impulse. An overwhelming, undeniable need to run.”

The younger Gu Jie bolted.

She didn’t stop to think, didn’t stop to question. Her legs moved before her mind could catch up, her body driven by something deeper than fear.

I hummed in thought. “I think I know why.”

She looked at me curiously.

“Warlocks have a passive,” I said. “A resistance against temptations from Beyond. Technically, they have a passive skill that makes them sane.”

Gu Jie blinked. Then, she laughed. It was a short, dry sound. “So that’s what it was?”

I nodded. “Seems like it.”

For a moment, she just stood there, considering it.

Then, the memory moved forward once more.

Her escape had taken her far. She had been strong, even back then—strong enough to forge her own place in the wider world. If the world had been fair.

But life wasn’t fair.

“It didn’t take long before I was hunted,” she said.

The scene shifted. Gone was the battlefield of righteous cultivators and demons. Instead, we saw a different kind of conflict—one far more personal.

Gu Jie, alone, backed into a corner by a group of sneering young cultivators.

“They wanted to make a name for themselves,” she said. “And I was an easy target.”

She had strength. She had potential.

But she didn’t have combat experience.

“I survived,” she continued, “but only just.”

The memory played out before us. Blades slicing through the air, techniques slamming into the ground around her. The younger Gu Jie dodged, barely, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

Meanwhile, elsewhere—

The Heavenly Demon was losing.

But he still fought. He still endured.

Gu Jie exhaled slowly. “Even as he fell, I was still here, barely holding on.”

I didn’t miss the irony.

He was supposed to be the villain. She was supposed to be free.

And yet, their struggles had mirrored each other.

Gu Jie’s voice grew quieter, as if she were speaking more to herself than to me.

“I don’t remember when I lost them,” she admitted. “One moment, I was running. The next… they were gone.”

The scene shifted around us. The dark forest where she had been chased flickered and blurred. Her pursuers were no longer in sight. The echoes of their techniques, the cutting winds of their sword slashes, all of it had vanished into eerie silence.

She was alone.

I watched as her younger self collapsed against a tree, her chest rising and falling in heavy breaths. She wasn’t unscathed—cuts ran along her arms, bruises formed where she had barely dodged death. But she was alive.

And she was… stronger.

Gu Jie turned her palm over, as if remembering the moment vividly.

“My curses had changed,” she said. “They had become stronger.”

A flick of her fingers. The air in the memory distorted, an ominous energy curling from her hand.

“And it became easier—bestowing misfortune upon others.”

I recognized it immediately. A curse that didn't merely strike, but clung. A hex that burrowed deep, waiting for the right moment to unleash its havoc.

The younger Gu Jie stared at her hands, her expression unreadable.

“But it didn’t matter,” she whispered. “Because that was when he found me.”

A shadow loomed behind her past self. A familiar figure, clad in dark robes, his eyes glinting with something far worse than cruelty—hunger.

One of the Heavenly Demon’s clones.

I tensed as I watched the memory unfold, even though I already knew it had happened. Even though I knew Gu Jie was standing right beside me, recounting it like an old story.

I still felt a chill run down my spine.

“I couldn’t fight back,” Gu Jie continued. “Not against him. He drained my cultivation. My soul… almost devoured.”

The younger Gu Jie writhed, her body spasming as her very essence was siphoned from her. The clone of the Heavenly Demon stood over her, watching her fade away with cold detachment.

“At that moment,” she murmured, “I wished I was just dead.”

I exhaled sharply. “And yet, you weren’t.”

Gu Jie let out a breathless laugh. “No. I wasn’t.”

Because the next moment—

She died.

Her body went still. Her breath ceased. Her pulse vanished.

Even I was fooled.

My eyes flickered with realization.

“Oh,” I muttered, watching her corpse on the ground. “That skill.”

Gu Jie turned to me, her lips curling ever so slightly.

“It was Fake Death, wasn’t it?” I said, finally placing the pieces together.

A classic trick. A skill that cloth-type classes loved to abuse. The ability to simulate death so perfectly that even the most experienced enemies wouldn’t see through it.

The Heavenly Demon’s clone certainly didn’t.

The memory played on, showing how the clone, satisfied with his supposed feeding, had left her behind.

Gu Jie sighed. “I woke up much later. In a razed mountain. My cultivation was… meager.”

The image of her past self stirred, eyes fluttering open amidst the ruins. The remnants of battle still surrounded her—cracked earth, shattered trees, charred remains of what had once been a great mountain.

She was alone. Weaker than she had ever been.

And yet—

She had survived.

The scene shifted once more.

Gu Jie stood at the edge of a crumbling cliffside, wind howling past her as storm clouds rolled over a restless sea. Her younger self was gaunt, barely more than skin and bone, her once-pristine robes tattered from days—weeks—of endless hardship.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

“I barely survived each day,” she admitted. “With my cultivation at the First Realm, I had nothing to rely on but my meager abilities and… well, my strange talents.”

Lightning cracked in the sky, illuminating the treacherous landscape of the archipelago. A wild, untamed place where only the strong thrived. The islands here were riddled with dangerous beasts, cutthroat outlaws, and remnants of forgotten sects that had long since lost their way.

The perfect place for someone like her to be swallowed whole.

Gu Jie’s expression was unreadable as she continued.

“If it weren’t for my Sixth Sense Misfortune,” she murmured, “I would’ve died a dozen times over. And even that might have been an underestimation of how cruel the world could be…”

I watched as her past self barely dodged a hidden pitfall, stepping away just as the ground caved in behind her. A moment later, a massive centipede-like beast burst forth from the shadows, clicking its mandibles in frustration.

Another time, she slipped through a skirmish between rogue cultivators, their spells missing her by sheer coincidence—if coincidence was what it could be called.

Fate seemed intent on keeping her alive.

“But survival wasn’t enough,” she said bitterly. “Without any backing, I was nothing.”

She resorted to the lowest of deeds—thievery, deception, even banditry when desperation sank its claws into her.

“Sometimes, I stole from passing merchants,” she admitted. “Other times, I looted the bodies of fallen cultivators before their allies could return.”

I kept my face impassive, but I didn’t judge her for it. She had done what she had to.

Eventually, though, she found herself under the care of the Adventurer’s Guild.

The memory shifted again. The dark, storm-ridden cliffs of the archipelago gave way to the wooden halls of an adventurer’s outpost. The smell of salt and damp parchment filled the air, mingling with the scent of worn leather and old ink.

“I thought I could use my talents for something more… respectable,” she said, a wry smile tugging at her lips.

She took jobs charting new lands, using her keen instincts to avoid natural disasters, deadly monsters, and hostile tribes. Her ability to predict calamity made her invaluable, and for a time, it seemed she had found her place.

But it didn’t last.

The image of her past self flickered, her expression turning strained, her movements sluggish.

“My cultivation was too low,” she admitted. “And worse, my life force was deteriorating.”

The accumulated misfortune, the forceful use of Delayed Destiny of the Demonic Path—they had all taken their toll. Even if she rested, even if she tried to heal, it was never enough.

“The more I tried to change my fate,” she said softly, “the more it consumed me.”

Eventually, she realized the truth.

“There was no place for me in the archipelago.”

The final shift came. The stormy coasts disappeared, replaced by the vast, foreign lands of the Riverfall Continent.

“I left,” she said simply. “Because if I stayed… I would’ve withered away.”

And so, her journey continued.