25 Debt of Gratitude (1/2)
She quivered; blinding pain bursting through her skull. Yun Da Xia's mouth was tainted with the taste of her own blood; the crimson beginning to stain her skin sticky. Iron dominated her sense of smell. Although she had opened her eyes, she could see nothing but pulsating black and white spots.
Her throat protested in pain as she struggled to bring breath into her lungs. Her chest felt like it was about to burst–something was definitely wrong in there. She tried to move her arms and legs, only to have them bound together somehow. Well, at least she still had all her limbs.
Growls and howls began to seep into her mind; her ears finally being able to recognize the sounds around her. She couldn't understand any of it, but she was thankful that it wasn't like before, where the wolf's voice violated her mind. Although deafening, she could handle that better over anything else.
Blurry shapes and colors began to overtake her dotted vision. A figure neared; its dark mass coming towards her appeared like the night suddenly consuming day. Her already shuddering body started to spasm, and her heart wracked against her rib cage. She struggled against her hold, rushing qi throughout her body.
Time and time again, it failed her.
She could see the silver eyes glaring into hers. The canines gleaming with an ethereal light. A scream left her pained lungs; a sharpness digging into the flesh of her arm and dragging down. It said nothing; just watching as she thrashed in pain. She felt like an ant; unworthy of even being told of why her life was being taken–merely a tool to be used for someone else.
She hated it.
Tears streamed down her face; everything finally hitting her at once. The dam insider had been incinerated by the regret and anger she felt in her heart. When her master had died, she withheld her screams and had endured her nightmares in silence.
How many times had she been rendered hopeless? She couldn't save her master when they had been attacked, she wouldn't have been able to save herself if she had not had the identity of Yun Yong's sister, and now she was trapped. It was sickening–and all her fault. She wasn't strong enough because she had held herself back.
Back then, it was her fighting ability that could not hold up. Now, it was both that and her cultivation. Yes, rationally, she understood what she needed to do. She understood that she was vulnerable in this world; that the poor man having a jade was a crime, and that a tall tree took the brunt of harsh winds.
But she wasn't rational right now. She just wanted to burn the world and everything in it. What had her master and her father said? That she must never lower her head?
Her yielding shows that she sometimes forgets.
She made an oath in her heart. There would come a day when the words they spoke would be burned in her heart and bones.