The Guest (3)

There is a star that passes through a human life exactly twice. At birth it bestows a killing nature, and when that person dies it comes again to take the nature back. Once in every span of a full cycle and fifteen years besides, it gathers up the killing natures of the age and bestows them anew on those just being born. People called this heaven-sent killing nature the Heavenly Kill.

To the star, the bestowing was nothing but a game. It would reclaim, at the very last, the killing nature from a life spent as a blood-soaked madman, watch him scream at the business of living, and pass on laughing.

Sometimes, crossing the sky, it shed the malice innate to it. That malice became a meteor, fell, and seeped into the earth—and upon that earth, in time, someone was born who had inherited it. People called such ones the Earth Kill.

And of the two, the Heavenly Kill was here.

Short, as if she had not finished growing. A face that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠still looked young. Crimson pupils that could not quite hide the killing nature she had been born with.

She had come into these mountains because of a rumor. A man-eating fiend was said to live here. Corpses lay horribly murdered along the roads, and in the deepest reaches, so the story went, a fiend hunted people and ate them—not merely hunted and ate, but kept them alive and ate their organs one by one, and only when the insides had rotted too far to be worth eating did it throw the remains out.

She had assumed, of course, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that the rumor was exaggerated. Village gossip was never much to trust. Sometimes it swelled into empty boasting; sometimes it was only a parent's tall tale, meant to keep a child from wandering off alone; and then someone else believed it and spread it for truth. That happened all the time. What was certain, though, was that the rumor was not old. Two years at most—three, if one stretched it. Nor had the news traveled far. And the bandits who had seethed through these hills until only a few years ago had, people said, gone suddenly quiet.

She put little faith in talk of poison-men and man-eating monsters. Far more likely that a new band had appeared and wiped the old one out. They had fought until skulls split; now they were only catching their breath. The girl judged that those bandits would do nicely for putting her killing nature to sleep for a while.

Nothing suppressed the killing nature so well as letting it burst. Medicine and training could hold it down only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so far. It was not a person's will but a star's, looking down from on high, and the efforts of mere insects could not stop it. Medicine, training, sorcery—none of them had managed to stopper, for certain, the killing nature forcing its way out of her.

"You must still endure."

So said the people who had raised her.

"It is not yet time."

"Your going out into the world should wait a little longer."

"When our great cause has ripened. When the enemy's strength has waned."

"Only then will we annihilate that enemy, and the whole world will rest, intact, in our hands—"

The star's will, of course, did not spare a glance for the great cause of insects.

When the girl came back to herself, all she felt was the smell of blood. She was not particularly sorry for the dead. They had taken her in at birth and raised her, but she had not grown up on a parent's affection. What she felt, instead, was only that fragrant blood-scent. And really—how different could blood be, when it came from cutting a person open? Only a lavish red, and a fragrance that made the head swim.

And so, knife in hand, she broke the shell wrapped around her and came out.

Coming out, as far as it went, had been fine. The problem was that the world was not nearly so obliging.

Yes. The adults had told the truth when they said it was not yet time. A person must not be killed carelessly.

An individual was sometimes so weak that the slightest cut sent them bleeding out and dead—but the things attached to that individual could be far too many. Siblings, parents, children, a spouse, friends, and then their siblings, parents, children, spouses, friends. Unlike the proud lone star that had drifted past and bestowed the killing nature on her, and unlike the girl herself, raised by the adults around her to believe with vicious thoroughness that she was alone, those bonds were viciously uncomfortable, and viciously tiresome.

Kill one thing, and something else tried to kill her.

To the girl, the killing nature was only something to be relieved, no different from a meal or a trip to the privy. Relieve it, though, and other insect-things came running. Most were truly no different from insects, and died in heaps at a single pass of the blade. But now and then, tucked between them, there were things that were not—and those were often strong enough that she had to run.

So?

Leaving the killing nature as it was would have been far too irritating. The girl was not stupid. So she thought of the next move.

Aha! Then I only have to kill someone everybody hates!

Not someone skilled enough that she would have to flee—no. Someone with little to do with the masters of the martial world, and hated completely by everyone else. Kill a person like that, and surely no one would come after her.

So she sought them out and killed them. This time, they chased her with guns.

As it turned out, they had been hated for eating well and living well. And people who ate well and lived well without any tie to the martial world were, as a rule, tied to the authorities. Only after she had barely, barely escaped the ones who threw up a firing net and blazed away did the girl, for the first time, worry about her own life.

Uh. If this is how it is, what am I supposed to do?

Inside the egg she had eaten spirit elixirs, trained to still her mind, and learned martial arts. Those adults' sorcery had, in fact, worked rather well; it had held the killing nature down for years. Fail to hold it down even that much, and a day would come when she lost herself—the moment the killing nature devoured her completely and she ran wild.

That frightened her. Not the prospect of going mad, rampaging, and dying. The prospect of being eaten whole by the killing nature and losing herself. That was why she had broken the egg and come out. The adults had wanted her, someday, to be eaten by it and burn the Central Plains to ash. Heaven's will, they had called it.

In any case, she hid in the mountains for a while after that and killed a few of those who came charging. By then she had already half given up on everything, and hardly cared what became of her.

"Aigo, hero! We owe you our lives!"

"You don't know how those bastards tormented us!"

"Thank you for finding our mother!"

And would you look at that. The villagers who had come down half-starved were saying exactly that to her.

The girl was bewildered.

What? I thought I wasn't supposed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just kill anyone.

Yes. It was true that she wasn't supposed to just kill anyone. It was only, as she had thought, that she needed someone with no particular tie to the martial world who was also hated by everyone. The bandits had simply lived deep in the mountains, and so had not been immediately visible to her eyes.

Aha. Then from now on I only have to go around cutting bandits down!

That was the day the girl's eyes opened.

So she wandered every last backcountry hamlet and cut bandits down. They had lived by fleecing commoners to begin with; none of them was a better fighter than she was. When she had killed them all and went down into a village covered in blood, people called her a wandering hero, a great master, and lifted her up, and her shoulders rose and rose.

That was why she had climbed the mountain this time, too, on word of bandits. And the first thing she saw, going into the deep mountains where people kept vanishing, was this.

A warning, to that effect. And the view that opened beyond it was a single path, very thin and very crooked.

The reason her eyes registered a path at all was simple. Traps covered every other place—in the ground, up in the trees, even inside the trees. Laid with extraordinary care, and yet subtly, so that anyone who truly had the skill to read them could, in fact, read them. Near the mouth they were dug in plain sight, almost like a warning. Farther in, they grew exacting and sly: avoid the traps that showed themselves, and you were certain to spring others more lethal than those.

As if someone had tipped their chin up and said it with perfect shamelessness.

The girl had never heard the words Heaven-and-Earth Net, and so she did not know. Had an orthodox or unorthodox martial artist been passing and seen it, they would have clicked their tongue and reached for exactly that name.

She sniffed.

A blood-scent grazed the tip of her nose, sharp enough to sting. It had been forced down and cleared away—and yet over the years, again and again, it had layered and soaked in, a ripe blood-scent of a kind she had never smelled in her life. The killing nature of all under heaven had caught that smell. What else was there to do?

As if drunk. As if spellbound. She could only set her feet meekly to that thin, winding path.