NABC 224. Isn’t This a Bit Too Cliché?
224. Isn’t This a Bit Too Cliché?
“Jin Shu, could I ask you a… personal question?” Nano asked suddenly.“Dude, you’re literally my blood now,” Jin Shu said. “I don’t think it gets more personal than that.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yeah. Ask away.”
“Well… I was wondering…” Nano hesitated. “This isn’t very scientific, but—”
Jin Shu’s brow furrowed. He stopped walking as he picked up on the unusual uncertainty in Nano’s voice. Nano normally had zero filter. Hearing him hesitate like this was unsettling.
“It’s about those rings your mother had crafted,” Nano continued, words tumbling out faster. “I don’t believe your body can handle that level of exertion, and that would affect me as well. So I’m simply concerned for our overall health. Anyway—are you sure you can handle that many wives?”
Jin Shu opened his mouth to respond—
Then burst out laughing.
It took several moments for him to calm down, and even then, a few stray chuckles still slipped through.
“Nano… buddy,” he said weakly, wiping his eyes. “You’ve got it all wrong. First of all, even if I married a thousand wives, I wouldn’t… take them all on the same day.”
“That is… reassuring.”
“Second,” Jin Shu continued, still smiling, “the rings don’t actually represent the number of women I need to marry. They mean something else entirely. I think. You can never be one hundred percent sure with my mom.”
“What meaning do they hold, then?”
“Well, this is just speculation,” Jin Shu said, rubbing his chin, “but I’m fairly confident in reading her intentions. What she was really saying is that I have an infinite number of choices.”
“I do not understand.”
“Yeah, fair,” Jin Shu muttered. “How do I explain this better…?”
He thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers.
“Okay. Say I only have one ring—but there are three women I care about. I’d get stuck trying to decide who should receive it. Then a fourth woman appears, and suddenly I’m second-guessing everything. Is this right? Should I really tie them down? What if I don’t actually love them and just covet their beauty? Stuff like that.”
Nano listened silently.
“That kind of thinking overloads me,” Jin Shu continued. “But if I had thousands of rings to give, would I still feel trapped by the decision?”
“Choice paralysis?” Nano asked.
“Yes!” Jin Shu nodded enthusiastically. “That’s exactly it.”
“Hmm,” Nano said. “Would it not make more sense to remove the option of choice entirely? Fewer choices generally reduce cognitive overload.”
“Sure,” Jin Shu admitted, “but if she did that, I’d probably rebel even harder.”
“…Emotions are complicated.”
Jin Shu laughed. “You’re telling me.”
“Yes. I am.”
“No, that’s—never mind,” Jin Shu said, shaking his head. “Figure of speech.”
“Oh. My apologies.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Jin Shu said, exhaling. “Honestly, I feel a lot better after talking this through with you.”
He waved a hand dismissively, letting out a relieved sigh. Saying it all out loud lifted a weight from his chest, leaving him feeling lighter—like he could finally breathe again.
Pulling out his mother’s map, Jin Shu checked that he was still on the correct route, a thought crossing his mind.
Maybe she’s removing my options while giving me the illusion of choice…?
He shook his head and resumed walking.
Doesn’t matter. I’ll follow along while still making my own decisions.
Jin Shu froze, staring in stunned silence at the scene before him.
He had been following his mother’s map without much thought when he stumbled across it. Given where he was—and what he’d already experienced in the southern region—he’d expected something out of the ordinary to happen.
Still… not this.
Bandits.
But not the usual kind. These ones had solid cultivation bases—and even uglier faces. Worse, they weren’t targeting him. They were surrounding a stunningly beautiful woman and her child.
Jin Shu’s eye twitched. “Isn’t this that cliché? ‘The hero saves the beauty from bandits, and she gives her body in return?’”
“You haven’t even saved her yet,” Shuang sighed. “Why are you assigning her roles already? And she has a child—she’s probably married. Stop daydreaming and go help.”
“I’m not sure I need to,” Jin Shu replied. “That kid’s pretty fierce.”
They watched as several Core Realm bandits were overwhelmed by a Qi Realm boy.
The kid couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years old, but his fists carried real power. He swept the legs out from under a man twice his size—and at least three times his weight—then leapt on top of him, pummeling his face until it was black and blue.
“Die, ugly bastards!” the boy shouted, his high-pitched voice cracking with exertion.
“You think you can mess with my mom?! Not while I’m here!”
Despite one of their own getting beaten senseless, the other bandits looked more amused than concerned. They jeered instead, hurling insults at both the boy and his mother.
“Old Fifth, you really gonna let some welp still suckin’ his mama’s milk knock you on your ass?” sneered a bandit with crooked yellow teeth.
“I heard blind people feel things better than normal folk,” said another with a missing ear and crooked nose, his gaze lingering on the woman. “Something about heightened senses. I’ve got just the thing for this blind beauty.” He grabbed his crotch.
Jin Shu stiffened. He hadn’t noticed before, but the mother was blind.
“Ha!” laughed a third bandit with a head far too large for his body. “With your tiny thing, I bet she wouldn’t feel it even if her senses were a thousand times stronger!”
“Forget the woman,” a fourth bandit—short, squat, and especially ugly—licked his lips. “I want a taste of that feisty little boy. The harder they fight, the better they taste.”
The other two took an instinctive step away from him.
“Your tastes are the heaviest among us, Old Fourth,” Crooked Teeth muttered with visible disgust.
“Enough fooling around,” said the fifth bandit, who had been watching calmly from the back. “Finish this.”
“You heard Big Bro,” Big Head said. “Quit messing around and take the kid down, Old Fifth.”
“I’m not messing around!” Old Fifth snapped, struggling to his feet, face swollen and bruised. “He’s actually hard to deal with!”
The other three shook their heads and stepped forward.
“You shameless bandits!” the boy shouted as he backed away. “Fight me one-on-one like men!”
“Sorry, kid,” Old Fifth said, drawing a blade. “Boss is waiting. We don’t have time to play.”
For the first time, the bandits stopped toying with him and drew their weapons.
The boy’s face went pale as he retreated to his mother’s side.
“Mom, you need to run,” he whispered urgently. “I’m gonna use my ultimate, but I can’t do it with you here.”
She smiled gently.
“Don’t worry, Jiao’er. Just wait a little longer.”
Jiao’er looked at her in confusion. He clearly didn’t understand how his ordinary, mortal mother could be so calm.
She turned toward the forest, cupped her fist, and bowed.
“If sir has seen enough,” she said softly, “would you please help this poor woman and her son?”
Jin Shu raised an eyebrow.
She was bowing directly toward him.
Even if she weren’t blind, she shouldn’t have been able to see him. He was testing his illusion rune—anyone looking his way should have seen nothing but a tree.
Judging by the bandits’ reactions, they still did.
“Has this woman gone mad from fear?” one bandit laughed. “She’s talking to trees!”
Even Jiao’er looked worried.
“Mom… there’s no one there…”
“She must be detecting you by sound,” Shuang said. “Or smell. Illusions don’t hide everything.”
Jin Shu nodded. That made sense.
He dispelled the illusion and stepped out from the trees.
“I was planning a flashy entrance,” he said lightly, “but I guess I got exposed early.”
The bandits recoiled instantly, gripping their weapons. Even the calm leader in the back took an involuntary step away.
“What the f—?!” Jiao’er blurted.
And immediately stopped when his mother pinched his hand.
“No swearing,” she said, chiding him softly.
Jiao’er shot her a look that clearly said, Seriously? Even now I can’t curse?
Jin Shu chuckled at the mother-and-son exchange, then stepped forward, placing himself between them and the bandits.
“I’m not a fan of killing… normally,” he said calmly. “But I can imagine the ending you had planned for this mother and her child. So unfortunately for you five—death is your only option.”
“Humph!” Old Fifth snorted. “Don’t think just because you have a fancy hiding technique that we’ll be scared of you, boy!”
“That’s right!” Big Head chimed in, pointing at the man standing in the back. “The four of us are in the Core Realm, and our Big Bro is in the Spirit Realm! And our boss is even more unfathomable!”
Jin Shu shook his head.
Some people didn’t understand fear until you showed them despair.
He activated the runes carved into his body, layered Ripple Walk on top of them—
—and vanished.
The bandits spun in place, weapons raised.
“Don’t run now!” one of them sneered.
“AAARGH—!”
A scream rang out from behind them.
By the time they turned, their Big Bro was gone. Only a dark bloodstain soaked into the dirt where he had been standing.
“Don’t look back there,” Jin Shu said casually. “I’m here.”
He stood exactly where he’d been before—dragging a body behind him.
They turned, and their faces drained of color.
“Bastard! Give Big Bro back!” Shorty screamed.
“Sure.”
Jin Shu tossed the limp corpse at them.
Instead of catching it, the remaining four exchanged quick glances—
Then scattered in four different directions.
Jin Shu blinked.
That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. In his head, they were meant to freeze in fear, maybe struggle uselessly, shout something about their boss.
Still, he knew better than to let them escape.
He vanished again.
Big Head never saw it coming.
Jin Shu appeared behind him and drove a rune-enhanced punch into the back of his skull. Blood erupted from all seven orifices as the man crumpled, dead before he hit the ground.
Jin Shu was already gone.
He appeared behind Shorty next, tapping his back with a flame-coated palm. Fire engulfed the man in an instant, roasting him alive before he could even scream.
Crooked Teeth tried to run—
—but an acceleration-enhanced kick slammed into his back. His spine snapped, his head smashed into a tree, and his broken teeth shot down his throat. He choked to death in seconds.
Missing Ear barely had time to turn.
Wind blades shredded him apart, taking his remaining ear—and his life—with them.
Old Fifth made it the farthest, nearly reaching the treeline.
Nearly.
A knife blade punched through his back, piercing straight into his heart. He was already dead when his body collapsed face-first into the dirt.
Jiao’er had been hurriedly describing everything to his mother.
By the time the final bandit fell, he was still only halfway through his narration.
His mother patted his shoulder, signaling him to halt his excited narration, then lifted her face toward Jin Shu with her pure white, unseeing eyes.
“Young hero,” she said gently, “you should check the last man’s corpse. I believe I heard him crushing something as you killed his brothers.”
Jin Shu’s brow furrowed, but he followed her advice, flipping Old Fifth’s body over. Sure enough, a shattered jade token lay clenched in the dead man’s hand, stained with blood. Jin Shu vaguely recognized the runes carved into its surface—formation markings. If he wasn’t mistaken, it had been an emergency beacon, likely meant to summon their so-called Boss.
“You two should probably leave,” he said. “Looks like their boss is already on the way.”
“Too late!”
A growling voice echoed from the treeline. “None of you are leaving.”
A tall, bony man stepped out from between the trees. He was old, with a head of gray hair and a beard that reached his waist. His hooked nose gave him a predatory look, and combined with his single blood-red eye, he resembled something closer to a ghoul than a man.
The robes he wore bore the word Demon, painted across the chest in dried blood—more than enough to reveal his identity as a demon worshiper.
For an instant, Jin Shu’s thoughts flashed back to the forest incident, and his heart tightened as he imagined this man being on par with Chou Hundan. But when the old man released his aura—a cultivator at the fifth stage of the Spirit Realm—Jin Shu let out a quiet sigh of relief.
“You almost scared me there,” Jin Shu said, patting his chest.
“You’ll learn fear soon enough,” the old demon worshiper snarled. “I’ll tear your son and wife apart and drink their blood while you watch helplessly. Then you’ll understand true despair.”
Jin Shu glanced back at the mother and son and scratched his neck awkwardly.
“Uh… they’re not my wife and son.”
The demon worshiper’s eye twitched.
Jiao’er clutched his mother’s hand. “Mom! It’s him—the one who sacrificed the villagers!”
“Oh?” The old man stroked his beard slowly. “So it was you two rats who escaped. How fortunate.” His grin widened. “Those mortals were tasteless, but a Qi Realm boy and a young Spirit Realm man? That should satisfy my hunger.”
He laughed—a shrill, grating sound that stabbed at the ears.
“You vile bastard! I’ll kill you!” the boy shouted, his eye turning crimson as rage spilled out of him. He tried to charge forward.
His mother caught his arm, holding him firmly in place.
The sight only made the demon worshiper laugh harder.
Jin Shu fell silent, weighing his options. He could kill the man outright—clean, efficient, mercifully fast. Or he could drag it out.
From the sound of things, there was deep hatred between the boy and this man. If Jin Shu ended it too quickly, that hatred might fester, unfulfilled. A shadow could be left behind in the boy’s heart. But if he crippled the demon worshiper and let the boy deliver the final blow himself…
There was a phenomenon cultivators feared above most others: a heart demon—a lingering obsession born from regret, rage, or helplessness. Jin Shu couldn’t help but worry the boy stood at the perfect crossroads to form one.
And Jin Shu refused to let that happen.