His eyes slammed shut as a fresh wave of agony, sharp and piercing, drilled into his skull.

  His hands flew to his forehead, fingers digging into his flesh as if trying to physically gouge out the source of the pain.

  A ragged breath escaped his chest.

  Slowly, his eyes peeled open again, the world a blurry smear of lavender and flame.

  Mi Shui and Ming Mei stared back, their faces etched with an expectant worry.

  "Your little brother." He bit back a groan, treating the pain as a distant, dull roar he had to shout over.

  "How severe is it?" His teeth ground together, the sound a faint, gritty rasp in the quiet hut.

  "I'm sorry for being direct." His left eyelid drooped, half-closed from the strain, while his right eye locked onto Mi Shui with a feverish intensity.

  "But is he close to dying?"

  Her fists clenched at her sides, knuckles turning white. A hostile glare, sharp as flint, shot towards Bi Kan.

  "Ahem." Ming Mei cleared her throat, a soft sound that was enough to snap Mi Shui out of her defensive fury.

  "I… no," she forced the words out, her voice tight. "It's not that severe. So far, it's not life-threatening."

  Bi Kan's breath hitched. The dull ache was no longer just in his head; it was a tide of fire coursing through his entire body.

  "I… I see. Well…" His vision began to wobble, the images of Mi Shui and Mei swimming and distorting before him.

  "Maybe I can figure something out… but, as you can see…" He gestured weakly to his own prone form.

  "Moving my body is like trenching through muddy, deep waters…"

  Mei glanced at Mi Shui before offering Bi Kan a small, reassuring nod.

  "It's okay, Bi Kan. You should recover first," she said, her voice gentle. "I don't want you to push yourself."

  A small, weary smile touched Bi Kan’s lips.

  Mi Shui let out an exasperated sigh, the sound heavy with frustration and worry. "Recover soon. My little brother really needs it."

  She walked over to the open window, her silhouette framed against the warm glow of the setting sun.

  "The poison in his system… It affects his training so much…" A faint, sad smile curved her lips.

  "He was so excited when he found out I passed the Inner Disciple Trial." She turned, her gaze meeting Bi Kan's across the room.

  "He was so energetic, filled with life, telling me that he'll reach there soon." Her arms crossed over her chest, and she bit her lip.

  "He's more talented than me. He… he deserves better than to rot in bed…"

  The words pierced through the fog of Bi Kan's pain, each one a clue, a piece of a puzzle his mind couldn't stop itself from assembling.

  The ache in his skull sharpened, but he pushed against it, analyzing, deciphering.

  Stop… don't delve too deep. Wait until you… recover…

  His eyes shut again, his teeth grinding together so hard his jaw ached.

  You finally get a chance to help Mei again, you useless idiot!

  Passed Inner Disciple Trial…?

  Her brother is an Outer Disciple, then.

  Poison strains his training, but it's not life-threatening… a chronic condition.

  Could it be a beast bite?

  No, the venom would be more aggressive.

  What if he was poisoned by fumes during alchemy… or by a rival?

  A close family friend?

  His hands began to shiver, his fingers twisting and gripping the rough-spun sheets of the bed.

  If it were a beast… which forest?

  One fitting for an Outer Disciple's mission.

  No, what if he's outgoing, talented… definitely reckless…

  His mouth opened, a scream of pure mental and physical overload building in his throat, only for a pair of soft, warm hands to encircle his own, their gentle pressure a calming anchor in the storm.

  The world swam back into focus, the blurry shapes coalescing into the clear, worried face of Ming Mei.

  "What's going on, Bi Kan?" she asked, her voice tight with concern. "You were about to start thrashing again."

  His eyes widened. My head… it hurts so bad, I didn't even realize…

  "I-I'm sorry, Mei," he managed, a nervous, pained smile cracking on his lips. "The pain in my body is intense right now."

  Mei’s expression shifted, her brows furrowing as she glared at him with a small pout, puffing her cheeks out.

  "Really? Do you think I'm still that stupid? I know when you're hiding things, Bi Kan."

  He almost choked. When did Mei get so… direct? She usually just lets it slide…

  "Sorry, I'm a bit overwhelmed…" he admitted, his gaze falling.

  Mei, despite the fire in my veins, I want to help you, your friend…

  "Thoughts are a bit… too much right now. You know me, overthinking stuff as usual."

  When I found out you had severely injured your arm fighting that monster… I wish I had been there.

  Bi Kan let out a long, deep breath, a sound that seemed to carry some of the tension from his body.

  "Alright." Mei’s grip on his hand softened, her fingers tracing the path of the veins on his wrist with a gentle, almost intimate touch.

  "I…" Bi Kan stared at the gesture, a single point of warmth in a sea of agony.

  Everything is so unbearable. I want you to stay, Mei.

  "I can create a pill… a pain reliever, to help your brother cope for now…"

  His eyes lifted, finding Mi Shui’s silhouette by the window.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Tell him to wait. I still need to…" His gaze returned to Mei. "…to recover. But I will send that pain-relieving pill soon."

  Mi Shui’s shoulders, which had been rigid with tension, visibly relaxed. The sharp, critical light in her eyes softened. "You're not bad after all."

  Mei shot a glare at Mi Shui, who simply shrugged before turning to leave.

  "I'll be outside. Seeing two people I know rot in bed isn't really my thing."

  After all… it already happened once… The thought flickered through her mind before she stepped out into the fading light.

  Bi Kan’s eye twitched at the comment, but Mei let out a soft chuckle, a sound that contrasted sharply with his reaction.

  "I'm glad she's still able to joke like this."

  Just as Bi Kan started to relax, sharp fingernails dug deep into his wrist. His head snapped towards Mei. "M-Mei?"

  Her eyes were piercing, all gentleness gone. "You shouldn't be so rude to others! You drive people away too much!"

  The stinging pain was a fresh hell layered on top of his already aching body. "M-Mei, it hurts…"

  "I bet it hurts!" Her fingers dug deep enough to draw faint beads of blood to the surface.

  "Next time you're dealing with others, be softer! Don't be so direct!" She let go abruptly, crossing her arms.

  "It's insensitive."

  Bi Kan’s eyes met hers, and he looked away, a flush of shame on his face.

  "I'm glad you're at least listening to me." She let out a sigh and pulled a small, clean cloth from her sleeve, dabbing at the red marks on his hand.

  "Sorry," she murmured, her voice soft again.

  "You just infuriate me with your negativity sometimes… especially with your blunt attitude." She gave him a sidelong glance as he continued to avoid her gaze.

  "Get better, Bi Kan." She stood up, turning but then looking back at him over her shoulder. "You promised to make that pill, but if your body's not up to it, put it off until the next day, okay?"

  She stared at him for a few moments. Seeing that he wasn't nodding, she let out an exasperated sigh. "Don't make me pinch your hand again…"

  Bi Kan finally looked up at her, a soft, weary smile forming on his face. "You know I'm reckless, Mei."

  "I know you are," she replied, her voice a mix of fondness and frustration.

  She took her leave, closing the door softly behind her and leaving him alone in the isolated hut.

  A few moments passed in the heavy silence of the hut.

  Somehow, the stinging, sharp pain in his hand, where Mei’s nails had dug in, hurt far more than the deep, grinding ache from his training.

  It was a focused agony that cut through even the fog of his mental deterioration.

  His body screamed for the sweet release of unconsciousness, but he fought it.

  He raised his trembling hand, staring at the faint, crescent-shaped marks she had left behind.

  "I'm too blunt… too direct?"

  You push people away!

  "No," he whispered to the empty room. "I'm just… trying to get to the point. I needed to… because I might pass out before I can finish."

  Don't push yourself so much. Your behavior is often self-destructive…

  His palm clenched into a fist, the knuckles white. He gritted his teeth, a look of pure disdain twisting his features.

  "How am I supposed to grow then?!" The whisper became a roar, directed at the uncaring wooden walls.

  "I need to break myself down! Try harder than anyone else! How can I protect all of you!"

  He surged upwards, fueled by a surge of desperate adrenaline, only for his body to betray him.

  A wave of nausea and pain crashed over him, and he collapsed back onto the bed with a strangled cry.

  "Agh! Why am I in so much pain?! Why do I have to go through all of this just to cross a simple threshold!"

  His mind, frayed and scorched, spiraled into insanity. His hands reached out, grasping at the air, fumbling for the non-existent pills stored within his Soul Sea.

  "Come on! I'll force it! I'll cross into the Body Tempering Realm right now!"

  His wild eyes darted around the room, searching.

  "My furnace… Not here! Where is it!" He tried to rise again, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as his vision blurred into a swirling grey vortex. "No… not yet!"

  The agony was absolute, an overwhelming tide that threatened to drown him. His soul would not admit defeat.

  His will refused to fall back into the deep, quiet abyss of unconsciousness.

  "Wa… ke… up…"

  But his internal organs were shutting down.

  His brain, starved and strained, was shutting off. His entire body, pushed far beyond any reasonable limit, simply shut off.

  He crashed down against the bed, a dead weight, unconscious once more.

  Moonlight, cool and silver, streamed through the window, painting a stripe across his face.

  His eyes darted open. The fire that had raged within him, the delirious inferno of pain and desperation, had burnt out, leaving only cold, aching embers.

  "What… happened?" He pushed himself upright, his eyes scanning the familiar shadows of the hut.

  "I'm in… a hut." His body immediately sent a screaming reminder of its agony. "My body! It hurts… so bad!"

  As he scrambled to check himself for injuries, his gaze landed on his hand. Faint, crescent-shaped marks, deep but not too deep, marred the skin of his wrist. "M-Mei…?"

  Fragments of the afternoon crashed back into his mind. Mi Shui's plea. His own blunt, pragmatic words.

  Mei's confrontation, her frustration at his self-destructive behavior.

  "Mei…" He closed his eyes, trying to dig deeper, and the memory hit him with the force of a physical blow.

  "HOW CAN I PROTECT ALL OF YOU—!"

  His eyes snapped open, cutting the memory short. "I lost control…"

  He immediately yanked his hand under the blanket, hiding the evidence of his shame as if trying to bury the moment itself.

  He then noticed the blanket was neatly tucked around him.

  Did Mei come back…? Wait, no…

  "Lin…" A soft, genuine smile touched his face.

  The thought of the small, serious girl caring for him was a pinprick of warmth in the cold expanse of his exhaustion.

  "I feel so… pathetic," he murmured, shaking his head. The movement sent a fresh spike of pain through his neck.

  "Even when Mei was just… trying to help me be better…"

  He stared up at the thatched roof. "All this training… I really hope it works."

  His weary contemplation was shattered by a flash of pink outside the window.

  A whirlwind of footsteps skidded to a stop at his doorstep before—

  BAM!

  The door flew open, slamming against the interior wall.

  "Bi Kan!"

  Her voice was a sonic boom, loud and sharp, stinging far more than Mei's marks on his hand, far more than the chronic ache in his bones.

  Ying Xia stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, clearly having run all the way here.

  "What is it this time, Xia?" he asked, his voice flat and irked.

  "I… I…" She bent over, gasping for breath. "I was supposed to be here earlier! But I got sidetracked!"

  She straightened up dramatically, clenching a fist and closing her eyes as she raised her chin to the heavens.

  Bi Kan remained thoroughly unconvinced.

  "They distracted me, Bi Kan! Those detailed Ink-Illustrations!" She waved her hand in a slow, sweeping arc.

  "All those powerful, mythical, and intriguing beasts!" She spun around, coming to a sudden, dramatic halt.

  "And as I was admiring their beautiful forms!" She put a finger up, her other hand landing firmly on her hip. "Darkness had already—"

  "Stop it, Xia. Just get to the point," Bi Kan cut in, planting his palm against his throbbing forehead.

  "Hehe… you're already this irked? Very well!" she chirped, completely unfazed.

  "After I noticed it was getting dark, I searched everywhere for you!" She crossed her arms, tapping her foot impatiently and glaring at him.

  "First, I went to our dorms, where I thought you'd be, hunched over the furnace. But nope, you weren't there!"

  She mimicked a dash from one point to another. "Then, I arrived at the Sect Library! I saw a nerd named Wei Zing, who was very annoying!"

  Bi Kan’s brow furrowed.

  "That's when it happened! A memory struck me! You were with Lin!" She then pulled a pair of simple, wire-rimmed glasses from her robes—glasses that most certainly did not belong to her.

  "I deduced that you… have been killed!" She made a grand, theatrical gasp.

  Bi Kan almost rose from the bed to smack her. She just chuckled.

  "Anyways, I just asked around. Even woke up Dai! He told me you were in this stupid hut!"

  She then flopped down on the edge of his bed, the simple frame groaning under the sudden weight.

  "So tell me, what went wrong? Did you miscalculate? Were you too arrogant and finally got put in your place?"

  "I can still reach you, you know," Bi Kan warned, his voice low. "So tread lightly."

  He explained everything—the obsidian beast, Lin's breakthrough—leaving out his own breakdown and the sharp-edged confrontation with Mei.

  "Hm, hm, I see! Lin's finally able to sense Qi!" Ying Xia clapped her hands together, a look of pure delight on her face.

  "She needs to move in with us! We'll have to expand the room, Bi Kan!" She was already lost in a fantasy of adding multiple new rooms to their tiny dorm.

  "Hit the brakes, Xia," he said, cutting through her daydream. "You're getting promoted at the end of the month, aren't you? You said you'd win the Inner Disciple Trial, remember?"

  Even though she's unbelievably annoying, he thought, it's better than wallowing in my own thoughts all alone…

  "Right, right!" She slapped her knee. "I almost forgot to tell you about my day!"

  She rambled on, a whirlwind of words and dramatic gestures.

  She told him about the pair of "eerie and creepy" twins she'd met, though from his perspective, it sounded less like they were demonic doppelgangers and more like two regular disciples who had been utterly baffled by her sheer, unfiltered audacity.

  But then, her story shifted, and Bi Kan’s attention sharpened.

  His focus zeroed in on the details of the inter-sect politics, and more specifically, the sudden, overwhelming appearance of the Grand Elder.

  "Heh, you didn't know about her, did you?" Ying Xia said, a smug, triumphant grin spreading across her face. "You're always so focused on boring things."

  A vein throbbed in Bi Kan's temple. If he weren't so completely exhausted, he was certain he would have found the strength to reach over and throttle her.

  His eyes and ears also perked up at the mention of the Silver Demon Ape and the rogue cultivator hacking disciples to pieces.

  Threats. Opportunities. He filed the information away in the back of his mind, a glimmer of calculation piercing through the fog of his fatigue.

  "That's about it!" she finally declared, her grin wide and brimming with excitement, even as her chest heaved from the effort of her epic tale.

  "Xia, you want to rest?" Bi Kan asked, patting the empty space on the mattress beside him. "It's big enough, so if you don't mind—"

  It was too late. Before the words could fully leave his mouth, she was already moving. Her body crashed down against the mattress with the subtlety of a felled tree.

  "I didn't know people could sleep that fa—"

  He was cut off as she shrugged the single blanket over to her side, snuggling in tight and taking up most of the space.

  A moment later, a loud, rhythmic snore filled the quiet hut.

  Bi Kan stared at the ceiling, the moonlight illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.

  "Great… just… great."