I'll Kill You!

James' front door was open... It was wide open...

He bolted inside and immediately saw a whole in the wall, with blood on the cracked drywall. James instantly crouched, a fog seemingly covering his body, he snuck through the Kitchen, grabbed a large knife, and turned to sneak towards the family room. He reached the wide open doorway and turned his head to scan the room, but instantly froze.

What he saw was a man in daoist robes shivering and giggling to himself as he stood over two mangled messes of blood and flesh, which were clearly once alive, as he repeatedly stabbed his sword into their guts. The dragon was the first to react, "This- this is a high ranking general in my army that I thought very highly of, but... This is not the same general I knew, he was brutal but he wasn't some maniac. If anyone would have given these people a chance to live or escape it would have been him! Somethings not right..." Something clicked in his mind but before he could say anything more, James' consciousness, which he was currently residing in, started to crumble at the edges. James' mind shattered layer by layer as the dragon quickly fled to the center.

The decay quickly closed in on the center of his consciousness but immediately halted once it came within a certain distance of the center, leaving the dragon just enough room to pace back and forth a few steps in his little bubble of space. James muttered with shaky breath as his eyes trembled back and forth, "I was too late..."

The voice caused the other cultivators head to snap 180 degrees like an owl to show his creepy smile and creepy, peering eyes to James, before his body slowly turned to face his new prey as well. A creepy, broken voice sounded out, "Ooh... More toyys for me to playyyy withhhh..." The speech pattern was completely broken, but James didn't know that because the man wasn't speaking english! This didn't really matter though, because even if he was, James didn't give two fucks about what he had to say!

"I'll kill you!" James screamed as his fury erupted further upon affirming that the two bodies on the floor were in fact his mom and brother. The previously exhausted streaks of lightning qi were instantly revived with much more vigor than before, crackling ferociously and teeming with killing intent.

James instinctually invested two thunder streaks in each of his leg, before putting one in his mind, and five in his right arm. He dashed towards his opponent, breaking the floorboards on which he once stood. He got ready to slash the mans neck only to realize that he had dropped his knife in shock earlier. His hand formed a fist instead and went straight into his opponents nose. The former general was clearly caught by surprise, not expecting anything but mortals to stand in his way. Despite getting punched in his face, he found the time to monologue to himself, 'this kid clearly has no battle experience, what kind of dumbass would hit someones face as opposed to crushing their throat? I would be embarrassed if I were him, hehe... Haha... HahahahHAHA!...' His mind was calm for almost two whole seconds before he quickly descended into a whole new level of fucked up in the head.

It was only after his internal monologue that he realized he was flying through the air and crashed through a wall before landing in the grass outside. He was instantly infuriated and stood up upon realizing just how strong this kid was. "You bastard! I'll kill you!"

"Hey... Don't steal my line." James replied in a voice so cold and devoid of empathy that it sent shivers down on his opponents spine. He lay sprawled on the floor after he punched his adversary, with his arm bone was cracked and severe internal bruising from his attack just now. Not only did it contain two-too-many thunder streaks, but each one was more than twice as powerful as they would have been merely five minutes earlier. he got up and once again launched himself at his opponent. He dragged all the remaining lightning energy out of his body and into his palm as he lifted his arm to grab his opponents face. He screamed in pain the whole time as fiery, stinging jolts of pain from his arm drowned him in agony. His opponent caught James' wrist when it was a mere two inches from his face and laughed.

"Kid, did you really think you could beat a true cult-" The psycho in daoist robes was laughing maniacally before our hero cut him off.

James smiled through the pain as he stood himself up, his hand still caught in the daoists grasp, "What are you, some sort of chinese Joker rip-off?" he started laughing at his own remark as arcs of electricity sparked in between his fingers and across his palm.

"Uh.... Kid? I don't think this is the time for crappy one-liners," The dragon spoke in a serious tone, but his voice was immediately drowned out by the sound of an explosion.

James had used the remaining thunder qi in his body to use the explosion technique that he had used earlier to manipulate in the air, but it clearly served far better as a surprise attack.

The psycho daoists head leaned back from the blast, and was severely burnt, but he immediately sent a fist flying towards James' chest, expecting to puncture his body. To his unpleasant surprise, though, his hand hit what felt like solid steel covered by a shirt and his fist stung as it launched the kids whole body through the whole that he was originally blasted out of. James flew through the room before crashing into the wall on the other side, leaving a large dent in the dry-wall.

James gasped for air, trying to grasp back onto the wind that had been knocked out of him. The psycho daoist regained a normal posture as he spoke to James once more, "I'm tired of this, you were all just supposed to die so easily!" As he spoke, he lifted two fingers to point towards James' forehead. "My cultivation base has already depleted so much, it's so unfair, I can't even beat a mere child with brute force! But come to think of it, an assassination technique should be able to take care of you just fine, hehehe..." As soon as his words trailed off, a pale blue light surrounded his fingers, with traces of darkness mixed in.

"James, you have to move your head! Once he fires that, you'll be dead for sure if you can't dodge it." The storm dragon shouted his warnings as James tried desperately to get in a more viable position and catch his breath.

The crazy man in daoist robes, now with a charred black face, didn't seem intent on charging this attack to its fullest capacity. Despite going crazy, he was still aware of how much power he possessed by comparison to this kid; even if this kid had attained the first or second stage of bone fusion, he couldn't survive this attack unless his cultivation base had advanced to the late stage qi gathering realm. The kid was clearly manipulating essence energy, but he had no sign of a true cultivation base, meaning that this kid wasn't even a real cultivator yet.

The beam of pale blue light shot from his hand, glowing with darkness, as if the ray of energy was sucking the light out from it's surroundings. This was the power of two different types of essence energy, wind and shadow energies, perfectly integrated. One excelled in speed while the other was perfect for attacking weak points, a perfect combination meant for assassinations.

James knew that he couldn't avoid this attack, so he immediately tried to raise his hand in front of his head to at least try and block it. But before James' hand could even reach up, the space around his head warped and a projection of a grey dragon shot out, tiny sparks of purple lightning flashing around the creatures figure. The dragon swiftly swiped a paw to intercept the psycho daoists attack, and an explosion occurred on contact. The ray of light shattered, but the dragon projection was almost completely obliterated by the impact. What remained of the grayish purple dragon seeped back into James' head through his glabella and disappeared as if it was never there.

The psycho daoist froze, and there was a small voice in his head that spoke rather loudly now, 'This is seniors power! I have no control over what this damn corrupted soul is choosing to do, but with this last part of my sanity, the best I can do for my former commander, and what I can only assume is his new host, is to leave and try to protect this last pure part of my soul. If master chose to reside in that kid, he clearly is a good person, I can't believe I let myself just murder his family like that... If I can't take back my soul, I'm better off just killing myself...' The small voice then made a strained grunt and his body's posture changed minutely.

He spoke once more, this time in a quiet tone but with a normal speech pattern, "I'm so sorry, I will do my best to leave and let you grow," The man then seemed as if he was fighting against some invisible force as he turned around and bolted out to the streets and jumped into the sky.

Once the man had left, James just sat there, seemingly unconscious. The overall scene of the room was overwhelmingly tragic, to the point of almost bringing the author to tears. Two mutilated bodies lay on the floor, mangled from the neck down, guts trailed about and blood flowing everywhere, but it was soon to dry. A young man slouched down under a hole in the wall in pitiful defeat, blood flowing from the corner of his mouth, one eye crying tears, and the other crying blood. Even in his unconscious state, the emotions of loss, agony, anger, helplessness, and genuine misery that filled his heart were clear to see on his face, even to a blind man.

Inside of James' consciousness, the two of them were in no better state than James was on the outside. Thankfully though, his realm of consciousness was slowly growing back to its former state, giving the two enough room to stand. James looked more or less alright, despite being shaken and crying, but the dragon was a bloody, gory mess. one of his arms was obliterated all the way up to his shoulders, his physical form had started dissipating into fog and clouds, and his voice was shaky as he once spoke to his new found friend and disciple in a serious tone.

"James, to be completely frank with you, my original plan was to just stick with you until my consciousness recovered and leave to handle things on my own, but it's different now. What's left of my soul is basically destroyed, but I trust you to do this on your own... Actually, you won't be on your own, because it requires two minds to operate the full, 'Storm Dragon Split Cultivation Technique'. You've only seen me, and not my other half, because he was destroyed along with my body in the war."

James seemed to be following along with what the dragon said. Clearly the 'Storm Dragons Split Cultivation Technique' was referring to the cultivation technique that was being imparted to him piece by piece with the storm dragon guiding him. This all made perfect sense to James... But if the dragon was about to pass away, how would he have a second half?

The storm dragon, very clearly reading James' thoughts and emotions, continued, "I will use almost all of the power I have left in me to split your consciousness and separate your body from your mind. You didn't think that a storm could only be formed by lightning, right? Your mind will form into a cloud persona, and they will essentially operate as you. They will seperate all your mental traits and make them more exaggerated: your courage, your decisiveness, your emotional intelligence, your responsibility. Whether it's good or bad, it will be further shown to you by this mirror half of yourself!"

The dragon formed a seal and muttered a mantra under his breath, and James saw his body slowly disperse from the feet upwards, swirling off to the side before condensing a muscular figure that James recognized all too well, it was him!

The dragons body finally fully evaporated, and when his skull disappeared, a small black jade dropped out of the air, in the shape of a dragon head.

The kid rushed over and managed to dive and grab the jade before it fell to the floor. It really didn't matter, as this was James' consciousness, but he felt that it was rude to disrespect the last gift of the deceased.

He looked up to stare into the smokey eyes of the mirror image of himself, his own eyes flashing with purple light in response.

The two stared each other down for almost a minute before opening their mouths in unison and speaking at the same time, "uh, hey..."