Immortal Paladin

056 Gu Jie’s Story

I forgot myself for a moment.

It happened again.

Just like with David_69, when I synchronized with his memory and became him, I was slipping into someone else’s life—someone else’s past.

I had told myself it wouldn’t happen again.

But what was stopping me?

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I am Gu Jie.

My name’s Gu Jie.

I was born mute in a farming village somewhere in the archipelago.

My father and mother loved me, despite my deficiency. They would always tell me how I was their greatest fortune. And for that, I loved them.

Our village was small, nestled between hills and rivers, where the wind carried the scent of wet earth after the rain. We tilled rice paddies and honored the old traditions. My mother and father worked hard, their hands calloused and strong, but always gentle when they touched me.

I never spoke, but I never needed to.

I learned to communicate with my hands, my expressions. My mother understood me better than words ever could. My father, despite his roughness, was patient when I struggled to make myself clear. They never made me feel like I was lacking.

Even when the village elders told them I was a child marked by fate, a girl born without a voice in a world where words held power, they never saw me as anything but their beloved daughter.

We were happy.

But happiness never lasts.

The storms came first. The rains were relentless, flooding the paddies, drowning the crops. The rivers swelled, swallowing homes.

Then came the sickness. A fever swept through the village, sparing no one. It stole away the elderly first, then the weak, then the children. I remember my mother crying over a neighbor’s still body, clutching my hand so tightly it hurt.

And just when we thought we had suffered enough—when we had no food, no medicine, no strength left to fight—they came.

I remember the hooves, the thundering of horses against the mud-soaked ground. I remember the flash of steel, the smell of smoke.@@novelbin@@

They weren’t bandits.

They weren’t brigands.

They were cultivators.

Men and women draped in foreign colors, bearing sigils I did not recognize. They moved like ghosts, cutting down those who resisted, binding those who did not.

They did not come for food.

They did not come for revenge.

They came for bodies.

They took my father first.

He fought. He lost.

They took my mother next.

She begged. She died.

And then they took me.

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I gasped, lurching forward as the memory shattered around me.

I was no longer Gu Jie.

I was me again.

My breaths came ragged, uneven. Sweat clung to my skin. My hands trembled. I clenched them into fists, willing them still.

It had happened again.

Just like with David_69.

I had stepped too deep into another’s past.

I had become Gu Jie.

My stomach churned, nausea creeping up my throat.

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I woke before the sun.

The sky was still dark, the stars fading as the first hints of dawn bled across the horizon. The air was cool, thick with the scent of damp earth and the distant murmur of river water.

My father was already awake. He always was.

I found him outside, sharpening his sickle with slow, deliberate strokes. The sound of metal against stone filled the silence between us. When he noticed me, he nodded once, the corners of his mouth twitching in what I knew was his way of smiling.

My mother was inside, preparing our morning meal. The scent of steaming rice and salted fish drifted from the clay stove, mixing with the faint bitterness of boiled herbs. She didn’t speak when she saw me. She didn’t have to. She handed me a wooden bowl, and I took it with both hands.

We ate together, quietly, as we always did. Words were not needed in our home.

By the time the sky turned gold, we were already in the fields.

The paddies stretched far, their waters reflecting the rising sun like a thousand fractured mirrors. Rows of young rice plants swayed gently with the wind, their green tips peeking above the shallow water. My feet sank into the mud as I stepped forward, the cool sensation familiar, grounding.

We worked in rhythm.

My father moved ahead, bent low, his hands quick and sure as he pulled out weeds that threatened to choke the rice. My mother followed, her fingers brushing against each stalk, checking for pests, for sickness. I did the same, mimicking their every movement.

The sun rose higher, and the air grew heavy with heat. Sweat clung to my skin, but I didn’t stop. This was life. This was how it had always been.

At midday, we rested under the shade of a lone acacia tree, drinking water from bamboo containers. My mother unwrapped rice cakes from banana leaves, handing one to me. They were sweet, made with palm sugar, a rare treat.

She watched me eat, her eyes soft.

My greatest fortune, she would sign to me, touching her fingertips to her lips before pressing them against my forehead.

I always smiled when she did that.

In the evenings, when the day’s work was done, we returned home. The house was small, made of bamboo and nipa palm, but it was ours. A single room, a wooden table, woven mats for sleeping. Simple. Enough.

At night, my mother would sit by the fire, weaving baskets from rattan. My father would carve wood, making tools, fixing broken handles. And I—

I would listen.

To the rustling of the trees. The chirping of crickets. The distant hoot of an owl.

To the quiet hum of my mother’s voice as she sang, low and soft.

To the steady rhythm of my father’s breathing as he worked.

To the sound of home.

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I woke with a start.

My breath hitched, my chest tight. My hands curled against rough fabric—my robes, not the woven mats of my childhood.

Not my childhood.

Gu Jie’s.

I swallowed hard, pressing a hand against my forehead. The memories clung to me, warm and distant, like the ghost of a dream that refused to fade.

For a moment, I could still smell the damp earth, still feel the cool mud between my toes.

But when I opened my eyes, the illusion was gone.

The desert stretched endlessly before me, waves of sand rolling beneath the pale moonlight. The air was dry, suffocating, as if the world itself was holding its breath.

Delirium? No.

This wasn’t some fevered dream. This was Gu Jie—desperately clinging to her happiest memories, trying to shut me out of everything that came after.

But the weight of misfortune pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating. It barred me from reaching further, from seeing the truth she refused to face.

I felt it in my soul.

Gu Jie didn’t want me to remember her life after the farm.

I had heard the story before—fragments of it, at least.

Poor Gu Jie.

Pitiful and sad Gu Jie.

Stay with me.

Dave remained by my side, alternating between casting Cure and Cleanse, his presence a steady anchor in the chaos.

"Stay with me, Gu Jie," I murmured, the words slipping past my lips like a prayer.

Another surge of pain wracked through me, and I felt warm blood spill from my mouth. My vision blurred, and the desert warped, flickering between reality and something else entirely.

I felt myself slipping—falling deeper.

The sand, the sky, the moonlight—everything dissolved.

And then—

I wasn’t me anymore.

I was Gu Jie again.

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I knelt with the others, my forehead pressed against the cold stone floor of the great hall. The air was thick with the scent of burning incense, sharp and cloying, seeping into my skin, into my bones. The flickering torchlight cast shadows that danced across the blood-red banners hanging from the pillars, each embroidered with the insignia of the Heavenly Demonic Sect—a black sun devouring the sky.

We were not disciples.

We were resources.

Hundreds of us knelt in perfect silence, waiting. Waiting for Him.

The doors groaned open. Footsteps echoed across the hall, slow and deliberate, each step measured as if the weight of the heavens themselves bowed beneath him. The Heavenly Demon did not need to speak for us to feel his presence. It was in the air, thick with a power that crushed our lungs and turned our bodies to stone.

"Rise," came his voice, low and unhurried.

We obeyed without hesitation.

He stood at the altar, his silhouette framed against the great brazier that burned behind him. The light cast his features in shadow, but I did not need to see his face. His presence alone was enough to drown me in fear.

His eyes swept over us, unreadable.

"You are fortunate," he said, his voice silk wrapped around a blade. "Fortunate to be chosen, to serve a purpose greater than yourselves. The weak scavenge. The strong take. And I—I elevate those worthy of my power."

His words were doctrine. His will was law.

A shiver passed through the gathered disciples. No one spoke. No one breathed out of turn.

Then, the trials began.

Pain. Hunger. Exhaustion.

We were stripped of our names, our pasts, our identities. We were reduced to nothing, reshaped into something new.

Training was relentless. If we faltered, we were punished. If we survived, we were given another day to prove our worth.

We fought in the pits, barehanded, blindfolded, with our ribs broken and our fingers shattered. We learned to move through pain, to kill with precision. We were taught how to strip the flesh from our enemies, how to break the human spirit, how to serve.

We were not allowed attachments. Not to our brothers, not to our sisters. They would die in the end, or worse—become something unrecognizable.

But the worst part was the devouring.

When a disciple reached the pinnacle of their training, when their bodies were at their strongest, when their minds had been sharpened to the edge of a blade—He would take them.

The Heavenly Demon would consume them.

Not with teeth, not with flesh.

With Qi.

He drained them, siphoning their strength, their essence, their very being into himself. It was called Ascension. A great honor. A glorious purpose.

A lie.

I had seen it happen with my own eyes.

They would kneel before him, trembling with reverence and fear. They would chant their oaths, their voices shaking. And then, in a single breath, they would wither—skin shriveling, bones turning brittle, eyes hollowing into pits of nothingness.

When it was over, their husks would crumble to dust.

And he would smile.

I learned to smile, too.

It was the only way to survive.

I bowed my head lower than the others. I followed every order with blind obedience. I fought when told, bled when commanded. I drowned my own thoughts beneath the doctrine until they no longer felt like my own.

But I never forgot.

Not my name. Not my parents. Not the farm.

Every night, when I lay on the cold stone floor of my cell, I held onto those memories like a lifeline, repeating them over and over again in my mind.

My name is Gu Jie.

My mother and father loved me.

I was their greatest fortune.

If I let go of that, I knew I would be lost.

I knew I would break.

Days bled into weeks, weeks into months. The stone walls of the Heavenly Demonic Sect became my world, and I no longer flinched at the sight of blood pooling at my feet. The lessons became routine. Pain became expected. Survival was just another duty.

And then, one day, the Heavenly Demon placed a hand on my throat.

It burned.

It burned like swallowing molten iron, like my very soul was being reshaped beneath his fingers. My body convulsed, my vision swam, and for the first time in my life—I screamed.

A voice.

My voice.

The moment the sound left my lips, I felt a part of me unravel.

I had been born mute. I had accepted that silence was my truth, that words were not meant for me. But the Heavenly Demon willed it otherwise. His touch had stripped me of that weakness, and in its place, he had given me something new.

Power.

At least, that was what the elders told me.

“Rejoice, Gu Jie,” one of them had said, his smile sharp as a blade. “The Heavenly Demon has seen potential in you. He has gifted you a new path.”

A gift.

Was it?

I did not know what to make of my own voice. The sound felt foreign, as if it did not belong to me. But I did what was expected. I bowed my head. I murmured my gratitude. I trained harder than ever.

And in time, I awakened my bloodline ability.

"Sixth Sense Misfortune."

That was what they called it.

A rare ability, they told me. A talent only found in one among thousands. With it, I could see misfortune—not with my eyes, but with something deeper. A whisper at the back of my mind, a pull in my soul. It was subtle at first, like catching the scent of a storm before it arrived. But the more I trained, the more I understood.

I could sense when a strike would miss, when a trap was set, when danger loomed just beyond sight. And more than that—I could store it. Hoard misfortune like a gambler hoarded debt, piling it higher and higher, delaying fate itself.

A powerful technique. A dangerous one.

And they were pleased.

The elders watched me with approval. They tested me, pushed me, and when I succeeded, they praised me.

I smiled as they did.

I smiled as the others grew jealous, as their eyes darkened with resentment. I smiled as they whispered behind my back, as they waited for the moment I would fall.

I smiled because that was what I had learned to do.

I had learned that no one wanted to see what lay beneath. That so long as I performed well, so long as I proved useful, I would be safe.

So I trained. I refined my ability. I stored misfortune upon misfortune, knowing one day I would have to release it.

But I did not let myself think of when.

Not yet.

Because if I did—if I acknowledged that truth—then I would have to face the reality that no matter how much they praised me, no matter how much they smiled back at me…

One day, my fate would be the same as all the others.

I would be consumed.

But until then…

I smiled.