Chương 149: A Stranger in His Own Skin

Han Renyi watched the city pass by through eyes he no longer controlled. It was a strange and unsettling experience that still hadn't settled into feeling real even though it had been happening for a while now. The streets were familiar to him because he had walked them countless times before in his life but seeing them as a passenger in his own body made everything feel wrong in a description that was hard to put into words.

His father walked beside them and kept casting worried glances their way every few minutes but was mercifully staying quiet for now. Renyi could feel the questions building up in the man, but watching his son dismantle a sect elder's private chambers had bought them at least a temporary reprieve from having to explain anything.

"How did it come to this?" Renyi thought as his mind drifted back through everything that had led to him standing here in this situation. It had started with pain, the kind of searing all-consuming pain that came from mercenary blades finding their marks. He remembered the taste of copper, the cold stone of the alley against his cheek, the certainty that he was going to die right there in that alley, and nobody would know what had happened to him until it was too late. And then there had been that voice.

It had offered him help and the ability to take revenge. In that moment of desperation, he had agreed without any hesitation at all. What choice did he have? His father was walking into Zhou's trap, his sister's future was hanging by the thinnest possible thread, and he was bleeding out in an alley.

If a mysterious entity was offering to save his life and give him the power to protect his family, then dealing with unknown consequences later was infinitely better than the certain death that was the only other option. But he had not expected this. The first sign that something was different from what he imagined came when he tried to move his own body and found that he couldn't. It was like being wrapped in thick cotton where he could feel everything happening, but control was beyond his reach.

"What are you?" he had asked in panic. The answer he got back, that Ling Zhuo was the reason he wasn't still bleeding out in that alley, hadn't been an answer at all, but then few of the things Ling Zhuo said were ever truly straightforward answers to anything.

When he felt that first surge of power flowing through him, he had wondered if Ling Zhuo was some kind of messenger from the Celestial Sovereign or possibly even a reincarnation of them, because what else could explain the blue energy that had pulled his life threatening wounds closed and knit his body back together from the inside. But the blue energy had been the beginning. After that, Ling Zhuo had started drawing those strange patterns across his body.

Runes, he had called them, though he hadn't bothered to elaborate much on what that meant in any practical sense. But Renyi had felt the red power burning through those patterns and had sensed how they changed and enhanced his body in ways that should not have been possible according to everything he knew about how cultivation worked and how the world operated.

The most disturbing part was how Ling Zhuo could somehow hide this red energy from detection, masking its presence so that even when Renyi knew it was there, he could barely sense it himself even when it was being used inside his own body. It was at that point that Renyi had become convinced he had been possessed by a demon and one that did not want to be known about, which wasn't an unreasonable conclusion to reach.

The stories were full of ancient evil spirits taking over the bodies of Rouqin and doing this kind of thing. But Ling Zhuo didn't feel evil in the way those stories described, pragmatic and capable of tremendous violence when he decided it was necessary, but not evil in the traditional sense of the word. There was a clear purpose and a careful calculation behind every move that felt more like someone pursuing an agenda than someone who wanted to cause chaos. A merchant's cart rattled loudly past them on the street.

The sound pulled Renyi back out of his thoughts and he noticed that people on the street seemed to be unconsciously stepping aside as they approached without seeming to know why they were doing it. It was as if they were sensing something that their conscious minds couldn't quite identify or name. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He wondered if they were somehow picking up on the foreign presence that now lived inside his body or if they were responding to the way Ling Zhuo carried himself through the world which was not like a person moved through a street, there was something about it that didn't commit to looking harmless. A group of city guards came past. Renyi felt Ling Zhuo quietly adjust their path to avoid drawing any attention from them.

It wasn't out of any kind of fear because Renyi had seen with his own eyes how easily Ling Zhuo had dealt with Zhou's considerably more powerful guards, it seemed more like a deep habitual caution that was part of how Ling Zhuo operated in any environment. Whoever or whatever he was, he clearly preferred not to be noticed when he could avoid it. Those guards pulled Renyi's thoughts back to the battle in Zhou's compound, if battle was the right word for what it had been.

Han Renyi had considered himself a decent fighter because you didn't survive as the heir to a merchant family without learning at minimum the basics of defending yourself, but watching Ling Zhuo move their body through that fight had been something else and humbling wasn't even close to the right word for what it felt like, earthshattering was closer. The guards had all been experienced Tier 1 Rouqin and each of them was capable of holding their own against multiple ordinary fighters.

Han Renyi had sparred against their type before and had ended up beaten for the experience. The speed of it all had been dizzying. One moment they were facing a guard, the next they were behind him, and then across the courtyard dealing with a different threat. Renyi had given up on trying to track individual movements and had instead tried to follow the overall flow of it, the way Ling Zhuo moved through opponents like they were part of a pattern he had already solved before entering the room.

And the techniques, Renyi had never seen anything remotely like them before, leaves that cut like steel, vines that moved with purpose, and seeds that detonated on command. But it had been the duel with Zhang Ruiyang that had forced Renyi to understand how vast the gap was between cultivation and whatever Ling Zhuo was. Zhang Ruiyang had been legendary and his name still commanded respect even in semi-retirement.

Renyi had grown up hearing stories about his mastery over fire rouqi and the title of Crimson Duelist he had earned in his prime. Watching him fight had been like watching those old stories come to life in front of him. The precision of his techniques and the depth of skill built across decades of real combat experience. It had been beautiful in how deadly and efficient it was, and for a while, it had looked like even Ling Zhuo might have met his match for the first time.

Then Ling Zhuo had adapted and their vision had changed. Renyi could see the flow of combat in supernatural detail, and every minute tension in Zhang Ruiyang's muscles that told you exactly what he was about to do before he did it laid out clearly. It was like someone had handed him a book that explained everything that was happening in real time, but even that hadn't been enough to end the fight on its own, and then had come that moment when everything changed.

A surge of energy so foreign and so powerful that it had made Renyi's own consciousness recoil in shock. It wasn't rouqi, it wasn't either of the other two energy types, it was something else. It felt older than anything he had ever encountered before. The expression on Zhang Ruiyang's face in that last moment had told the story. The master duelist had died smiling like someone who had seen the answer to a question they had been carrying their entire life.

That image was going to stay with Renyi for a very long time, the moment when one of the most powerful Rouqin he had ever known had faced something beyond his understanding and had welcomed it anyway. And then there had been Zhou Shentong himself. Renyi had grown up hearing that name said in lowered voices and had watched it make his father's face go tight with anxiety every single time it came up. The sect elder had always seemed like an unmovable threat that would one day destroy their lives.

Ling Zhuo had barely seemed impressed by his reputation and had faced down one of the most powerful and feared men in the region with a confidence that made sense only after you saw what happened next. The way he had turned Zhou's own techniques against him was something Renyi still didn't have the right words for, because it was like watching someone find a fundamental error in the foundation of reality itself and just point at it.

All of Zhou's power had crumbled in the face of whatever Ling Zhuo was working with. The rain started coming down hard as they drew close to the Han compound. Fat drops soaked through their clothes and Renyi's father pulled his torn robes tighter around himself, but Ling Zhuo seemed unbothered by it. Through their shared senses, Renyi could feel him enjoying the sensation of the rain on their skin, taking pleasure in it like someone experiencing it for the first time.

That was another strange thing about his mysterious passenger that Renyi had noticed. The way he seemed to find something new in the most ordinary things, the texture of fabric, the taste of air, the feeling of sunlight on skin, it was like watching someone rediscover existence from the beginning which, Renyi thought, might not be that far from the truth of whatever situation Ling Zhuo was in.

The Han compound came into view through the rain and its walls looked somehow smaller to Renyi than he remembered them being, or maybe his perspective had shifted after watching the display of power back at Zhou Shentong's estate. Even the guards at the gate, who had been impressive figures in his childhood, now looked ordinary in comparison to everything he had witnessed today.

As they walked toward the familiar gates, Renyi's thoughts kept turning toward the future and what he had agreed to when he accepted Ling Zhuo's help. The threat of Zhou was gone now, that was true, but at what cost? He was sharing his body with an entity of unknown origin and agenda, who wielded power that had no business existing in their world at all. And more importantly, what did Ling Zhuo want from all of this?

Beings with that level of capability didn't help young masters out of kindness, so, there had to be some larger purpose behind why he had chosen this moment to get involved. The guards at the gate recognized them despite the rain and opened it to let their young master and the family patriarch through. And as he passed through, Han Renyi found himself reaching toward a feeling that he had thought was cut off from him forever with the disappearance of the Celestial Sovereign – hope.

The powers Ling Zhuo used, the strange energy that wasn't rouqi, and the casual way he seemed to operate outside the fundamental rules of their world, they all pointed toward one conclusion that Renyi's mind kept circling back to no matter how many times he tried to approach it from a different angle. And that conclusion was…