Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Yes, Jun-Jun.” The door slammed shut, and Junjie took a small breath of relief. The three members of his clan in the house were as safe as they could be. All of his attention was now on the evil monster in front of him.
“All alone. No one to save you this time,” Jiang Chong crooned. His long black hair fanned out behind him as he slipped out of reach of Junjie’s sword. “If you weren’t such a coward, though, you could have used your gift and seen my arrival long before it occurred. The rest of your clan could have been here to help you fight me.”
The demented monster’s words had a way of cutting deeper than any sword blade. Pain slashed across his heart, and Junjie retreated when he should have pressed on.
“Whether I use my gift or not, we both know what I see cannot be changed.” Junjie’s jaw ached as he clenched his teeth. “If I am meant to destroy you today, that is what shall happen.”
Jiang Chong’s answering cackle was like ice picks piercing his ears. “Destroy me? You’ve never beaten me on your own. Always the weak student relying on his brother to carry him. I should have culled you with the others that first night.”
“Culled?” he repeated as the heat of rage burned away the icy bite of fear that had nearly incapacitated him at the appearance of his creator. “Don’t you mean murdered? You think you should have murdered me the same way you killed Cao Zimo? Or how you murdered Ming Tao? And Ruo Xuan? And Hongyi?”
“There’s no point in listing their names. I never bothered to learn any of them. A single glance was all it took to see they were worthless.”
“I don’t say their names for your benefit,” Junjie snarled. He tightened his grip on his sword and his knuckles throbbed, cracking softly. “I say them because they deserve to be remembered by someone. The same way they deserved to live a long life.”
Jiang Chong glided away from the sharp slice of Junjie’s blade, laughing as he moved behind a tree. That horrific sound echoed through the garden and wove between the trees, tainting everything it touched like an insidious poison.
“Sadly, a nobody is the only one who remembers them.”
“I’m not a nobody. I’m the son of Zhang Yuxi, grandson of Zhang Jiawei—one of the great masters of the Sword of the Heavenly Garden sect.”
“You’re a bastard at best, and the Zhang clan has just the word of that whore to go by,” Jiang Chong mocked. “Only the gods know who your true father was.”
Junjie roared, slashing at his old master as the monster preyed on his darkest fears. He didn’t ask how the man had come by his secrets. He’d once been the head of the emperor’s intelligence department. It made sense that the vampire knew things he shouldn’t.
Jiang Chong continued to dodge and block his slashes. The one good thing was that his laughing had stopped as he focused on deflecting and evading.
Blocking out all other worries and thoughts, Junjie turned his full attention on all the skills he’d honed for two thousand years. His silver blade became a blur as it moved through the air, catching and reflecting the moonlight for a heartbeat before slipping into the swirling blackness.
Jiang Chong struggled to keep up. He clenched his teeth into a feral snarl. Sweat dampened his hair at the temples and slid down the sides of his face.
“Bastard,” he growled, but the word meant nothing to Junjie as he pursued his maker through the garden.
Just as Junjie got inside his guard and was going to land a crippling blow, Jiang Chong opened a doorway to the dead realm and slipped away.
“No!” he howled while jumping out of reach so he couldn’t be pulled into the dead realm. “Coward! Don’t run! Face me!”
The doorway remained open and Jiang Chong’s taunting voice drifted out to haunt him.
“If you wish to kill me, you’ll have to come after me.”
“I’m no fool.” There was no escape from the dead realm. In those first years after Jiang Chong had taken over the clan, he’d watched too many of his clan mates disappear into the dead realm, never to return.
“But you’ll come in to stop me from killing your brothers and sisters one by one. Shall I start with Xiao Dan and Chen Bo Cheng? They were the doting gege who always shielded and coddled you. How about that useless fledgling Chen has made? So eager to help you. So eager…to die.”
Junjie gritted his teeth and held back a scream of rage. He couldn’t go in, no matter what Jiang Chong said. It was suicide. He’d never be able to protect his family by falling for Jiang Chong’s tricks.
His creator must have figured that out as well, because the doorway closed and true fear gripped Junjie’s heart, almost stopping it dead. Now he had no way of tracking where Jiang Chong went. The bastard could move soundlessly around him, invisible until the doorway opened, and he struck.