Wu Hao woke, stumbling in the middle of digging a latrine for the camp the day before. It had been a while since he'd been in a yesterday, he thought, blinking as the sun caught his eyes. He let the shovel in his hands drop, instead guarding his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Yesterday wasn't enough, but it did prove to him that he was on the right track.

  Whenever he died, he went back in time. A full day's worth no matter the circumstances or the cause of death. If he died and died again two times in succession, then he'd go back two days. It was as simple as that.

  For a while now he'd wondered at that. Whatever powered the blessing - curse? - that brought him back, alive and well after dying, it seemed not to be exhaustible, and neither did it seem limited by his understanding. His memories came back, exactly the way that he had been before dying. Whether that was his soul or his mind or anything else, he didn't know. He didn't understand it, but he could use it, and that would suffice for what he had planned.

  "Get back to work!" 726 called, nearby. He was watching the rest of them work, standing by and directing which parts of the latrine were too shallow and needed extra digging. 726 hated idle hands, although maybe that was just Father speaking through him.

  Wu Hao ignored the other boy, instead letting the sweat bead on his back and drip from his head while he thought.

  This was his escape, then. The future was blocked from him, an impassable wall that he wasn't able to carve through, but the past was open to him still. If he had the power to reach for it, at least.

  Wu Hao looked to the shovel, inspecting it carefully, and then shook his head. It wouldn't do. It didn't carry an edge, for one.

  So he slammed it down, head-first, into the ground. It quivered, once, and then stood still.

  "What are you doing?" 726 asked, walking over slowly.

  Again, though, Wu Hao ignored him. He sat down instead next to the shovel, ignoring the way that the dust stained his entire body with brown and white, ignoring the exhaustion in his muscles from the heavy labor, ignoring his thirst and hunger. All of it wouldn't matter a minute from now. He crossed his legs, the position feeling somewhat unnatural, and put his back to the shovel. Slightly better.

  The others stared at him, but Wu Hao ignored them, too, and closed his eyes.

  He focused on his qi, diving into his core. Then he took a strand, spooling it from the general mass of his qi, and pushing it upwards. He brought it up, further and further, gliding up through the meridians in his throat, coaxed it higher until it was in his head.

  Wu Hao took a deep breath, heard 726 shout something as if from a distance, and the sound of footsteps. He grimaced slightly, knowing that what was about to come was unpleasant, but it had to be done.

  For a final time he told himself that he had no other options. It didn't help much: he lost his grip on the strand of qi as it was sinking slowly back down to rejoin the rest of his core, then managed to grab it again and pulled it up.

  This wasn't like when he'd tried to break the mental block - that was inside his mind, this was near his actual brain. The knowledge of anatomy that he'd picked up somewhere was coming in surprisingly useful once again.

  The footsteps neared him, now, but before they could do whatever they were nearing him for, Wu Hao detonated the strand of qi inside his head.

  There was a single stab of pain, a short fuzzy moment where there was nothing, and then he was standing again. This time they weren't digging, but foraging instead, lower down. Not near the base of the mountain, but more near the middle. He was back at the camp, finding himself not just in a yesterday but the day before that.

  Three days ago. Already it felt like he'd gone far, though he hadn't moved a quarter of an inch compared to how much he'd have to die.

  To distract himself just a little bit, he looked at the screen that had popped up in his vision, the same as always.

  More talent. That was good, he supposed. Nothing but gains from this mad dash for escape, he told himself, but found even that thought a bitter lie to swallow.

  Instead, moving back into the brush and the forests, he sat down again and dove into his core.

  It was a simple application of qi, one that he'd discovered by accident when he'd been experimenting with splitting his strands of qi for the Hound's Ripping Jaws technique. He couldn't rip one strand into two and have both parts survive, but he could turn the qi against itself if he put some effort into it. If he did it near the skin, it would result in hefty bruises that hurt.

  He hadn't tried that again after discovering it, and with increases in talent he figured that he'd be able to reproduce it.

  Just now - 24 hours into the future - he'd proven that he could, and that it would kill him instantly. It wasn't as vital a pillar as going back in time was, but it was good to have.

  He really hadn't been looking forward to having to find a tool to kill himself with, again and again.

  Wu Hao banished the thought and dove in again, letting everything else drift by, and brought up another strand of qi up to his head. It was the work of another moment to detonate it, but this time it took slightly longer. A stab of pain, a feeling of falling into something deep, and then darkness.

  Darkness was then replaced with light again as he stood once more. Another camp, another day back.

  Another day to force his way past. Again, he sat.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  The messages soon blurred together, an indecipherable mess as he died before he could even dismiss them. Talent helped him by making it far easier to die. Presumably it had other advantages.

  On days where he was lashed by rain, Wu Hao died.

  On days where the sun beat him down, Wu Hao died.

  On days where clouds covered the sky, Wu Hao died.

  On days that had nothing noteworthy about them, Wu Hao died.

  He descended down the mountain by ascending in reverse, skipping through his life. It became entirely rote to die, again and again. He was thrown from one moment to another, thrust into days that all seemed the same.

  Again, again, again. The mountains disappeared from his sight, replaced by long stretches of forest. The entire expedition to even come near the battlefield must have taken more than a month. Then the forests were gone too as the weather warmed slightly, as leaves returned to their trees, as his time ran like a river in reverse, flowing relentlessly upstream.

  Plains, now, and Wu Hao's mind was turning to mush. All that existed for him now was sitting down, drawing up his qi, twisting it just so, and then a stab of pain. He'd made progress: he no longer had to fear not dying instantly.

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  Then he was back in the dark and the cold of the caves where they'd had their initial training and winnowing.

  He hadn't yet arrived there, though. He could tell because he was clothed in the rags they'd given him afterwards, and the filter and the mental block were still clamped around his heart. Those had been "gifted" to every survivor, after they'd been allowed to cultivate just enough to be on the cusp of becoming a third-rate martial artist using the techniques they'd been provided with.

  Those who had managed better went into either the Honor Guard or were made Brothers. Wu Hao hadn't.

  The string of deaths paused there. His chest hurt, like he'd been punched in the heart, but there was no physical pain. Breaths came harder to him, and even though he pushed qi around it didn't dissipate. He shook his head. Another thing to ignore. It'd go, and if it didn't that was a worry for later.

  He almost dove back into his core, but instead he staggered to his feet, looking around once. He was standing at the cave-mouth where they were all waiting, ready to be sent out on their first-ever mission.

  And their last.

  The others were coming out of their own caves as well, gathered into groups of deathsworn. There were an immense amount of boys there, all with the same hardened stare, all with the same flat affect. They didn't speak, didn't huddle, didn't look around to see who else was there.

  Wu Hao stood near the edges of one such group, consisting of them all. Not just him, 720, 723, 726, 729 and Ye Qingfeng, but the others, as well. 722, 724, all the survivors who had made it through the trials and had been bestowed with a number.

  He hadn't seen them for a while, looked at them for a while out of curiosity, and moved on by sinking down to the ground and crossing his feet.

  Before anyone had any idea to stop him, he pulled another strand of qi upwards.

  Moments later, Wu Hao returned to life. This time he was encased in the dark, in the cave where he had spent years. How many he didn't know. Three, four? His every waking moment had been spent on simply trying to survive. The only ways he'd had to differentiate time was that once a day food was shoved through the tunnel, more or less the same slop that they'd been given in the camps. Thrice a week - he thought - bells were rung and he was made to come crawling out, to be instructed in combat or to receive a portion of Father's teachings.

  They'd only ever been given a single candle, and Wu Hao had been so ravenously hungry that he'd eaten it. The animal fat had been disgusting and he'd vomited up more of it than he'd kept down.

  That was probably intentional. Another lesson from Father, he presumed.

  There was barely enough space in the cave for an adult man to stand. The Uncles had dug these out of the bare rock using their qi, forming little cells where the deathsworn-to-be were made to live. They had no beds, no personal possessions at all.

  Perhaps if they had, Wu Hao might have felt nostalgic, but all this place inspired in him was utter misery.

  Wu Hao sat down again, crossed his legs, and killed himself again.

  Again, again, again.

  Slowly, little by little, his body began to feel more and more unfamiliar to him. He'd never been that tall nor that strong, but his limbs began to feel shorter, his hands losing some of their strength. The ground came up quicker, too. It was fortunate that he'd already mostly been trying to cultivate back when he was going through time normally, because otherwise he'd have repeatedly fallen.

  More importantly, his qi was diminishing. He used it almost like a clock, judging time only by how much of his core was left to fill.

  One time he awoke outside the cave. Not because he'd tried to escape, but because of the winnowing. He saw other boys there, boys that he hadn't thought about in years, all sitting together and watching a badly-lit circle that had been carved into the rock.

  There the future deathsworn killed each other for the privilege of survival. He had been there, as well - his hands were, now that he looked down, both disorientingly small and splattered with blood.

  Wu Hao looked up again, saw a childlike version of 726 beat down his opponent with a rush of blows, and then finally grabbing a rock from the ground and smashing his opponent to death with it when it was clear his hands wouldn't suffice.

  Then he was gone again. This time the filter didn't weigh on him anymore, which restored another portion of his qi to him. He spent a few moments experimenting with it, running it through his channels, which were mercifully free of anything to stop them, ran a few cycles just to feel it again.

  Maybe an hour, maybe a day - he spent some time on it. All the time he was wasting, though, would be another death that he'd have to run through, so he set about killing himself again.

  It all blurred together, an endless torrent of death in the dark, until finally it didn't.

  His qi had kept diminishing as he turned back the days that he'd used to build it up, and now none of it was left. He'd been halfway at third-grade at the best of times, what had to be years in the future, and now he was a mere mortal. The loss of strength was just another thing to disorient him, but he couldn't stop now.

  Not if he was still trapped in the cave.

  His reserve of inner qi might have been gone and the motes of qi around him were too hard to draw in considering how depleted they were, but they weren't the only reserves he had. There was still his inner qi, the energy that kept him breathing and living, that supported his organs and his brain.

  He drew upon that now, feeling the pain seep even into his deadened mind, and killed himself again before he had to feel his body shutting down.

  Sometimes he woke in the middle of a 'lesson', but most often he still woke up in the cave. His dull eyes stared at the notification.

  More deaths. Sometimes he wondered if he hadn't been born inside the cave. The rest of the world was distant - both future and present. Even the now felt like a memory he was struggling to retain. All that was clear to him now were the bruises on his skin, the cold, the endless darkness, and the mantra that was still drilling into his head: to keep going.

  Again, again, again, again, he died.

  Wu Hao awoke again, rasping for breath, and tasted the wind blowing on his skin, felt something wooden rattle around him in ways that he hadn't felt in ages. Something was different, but a tight strip of cloth had been bound around his eyes and he saw nothing. Around him he felt the heat of someone else's skin to his, and he wondered how long it had been since he'd felt anything like that.

  But despite being blind, he could still see the screen. It hung in the cloth, as steady as ever.

  They were being carted to the caves, he was sure. Almost there, he thought. These were memories so old that he'd forgotten them altogether. He was so close.

  More deaths. He counted each one, this time, knowing how close he was now. One death, two deaths. A few more scenes of crying children in the distance, blindness, he choked on the thick scent of something burning down -

  And then he opened his eyes to a bright sky, sitting in a field full of flowers. In the distance, between the treetops, he could see a village full of people. He'd utterly forgotten its name, and it looked so small and remote that he wasn't sure if it'd ever even had a name at all. If he had a family, they would live there, he presumed.

  Until tomorrow, at least.

  He stood on unsteady feet. Small. Weak, compared to even the weakling that he'd have become.

  But free, and ready to fight to keep it that way.