Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 104

Chapter 104: One Who Falls for Their Master Is Called a Rebel Disciple

The next morning.

The Martial Arts Field.

“Eight Extremes Fist is like a collapsing bow in motion and a thunderclap in release. It requires tempering the shoulders, elbows, hands, hips, knees, feet, and every other joint to their absolute physical limit, allowing destructive power to flow in all eight directions.”

Kagashi stood perfectly still in the center of the sunlit field. His aura remained entirely contained, yet the sheer density of his presence felt like a dormant volcano waiting for a single trigger to erupt.

“This specific set of fist techniques has no regard for flashiness or elegance,” he explained, his voice calm and carrying easily over the morning breeze. “It is entirely about hard openings and brutal impacts. There is no blocking. There is no parrying. For those with weak constitutions, attempting these moves will not only lack lethality, but it will also shatter your own bones.”

He swept his gaze over his three disciples. “Your current physical strength far exceeds that of ordinary people. Once you master this technique, you can obliterate even the Borisin and their unnatural regenerative abilities in a single, decisive strike.”

Jingliu, Mianxue, and Qinghan stood in a neat row, their expressions solemn and attentive.

“Watch closely.”

Kagashi’s figure vanished. He crossed the intervening yards in a fraction of a second, his right shoulder dropping low before slamming upward into a specialized alloy training post.

A deafening metallic shriek tore through the training grounds.

The alloy post, a dense pillar forged by the Artisanship Commission to withstand high-speed star skiff collisions without a single scratch, buckled inward. A massive, jagged dent caved into the metal, rendering the expensive equipment entirely useless on the spot.

The displaced air exploded outward in a shockwave, whipping the three women’s hair into a chaotic mess and forcing them to brace their feet.

Even though all three of them had witnessed genuine slaughter on the battlefield, seeing raw physical force warp starship-grade alloy made them instinctively draw in cold breaths. The Artisanship Commission rarely allowed these specific alloy posts to be used for testing standard Cloud Knight weapons simply because the weapons usually shattered upon impact.

They had never expected to see one destroyed by a single human shoulder. If any of them were to take that blow, their bodies would instantly burst into a mist of blood and bone fragments.

“This move is called the Close-Body Lean,” Kagashi said, slowly withdrawing his stance and smoothing his sleeves as if he had merely brushed away a speck of dust. “Though in later generations, to emphasize the sheer momentum of the technique, it is more commonly known as the Iron Mountain Lean.”

From that day forward, the three women descended into a hellish regimen of special training.

“The lower body must be as immovable as a mountain.”

“Power cannot rely on brute force alone. It must be threaded through your entire body, connecting the earth to your striking point.”

Kagashi moved like a ghost among the three sweating girls, adjusting a posture here, correcting a hip rotation there.

Their individual talents were undeniably exceptional.

Qinghan possessed a naturally steady disposition. Her lower body was incredibly rooted, making her Collapsing Punches heavy, solid, and suffocating to face.

Mianxue harbored astonishing explosive power. Her movements carried a terrifying, almost feral ruthlessness that sought the quickest path to a kill.

Jingliu, however, possessed the highest comprehension. She absorbed the mechanics like a sponge, progressing at a frightening pace.

In just two months, the three had firmly grasped the foundational mechanics of the Eight Extremes Fist.

A sharp crack echoed across the field as Jingliu’s Heart-Piercing Elbow snapped a thick wooden training post clean in half.

It was only wood. As beginners, they were still leagues away from shattering specialized alloy with their bare flesh. But their progress was obvious.

Once their foundations were set in stone, the training shifted to actual combat sparring.

Time bled away amidst the heavy thuds of bruised flesh, the sharp exhales of exertion, and the pooling of sweat on the training grounds. In the blink of an eye, the three-month period reached its end.

“All three of you. Come at me at once,” Kagashi instructed calmly, standing relaxed in the center of the dirt ring.

The three women exchanged brief, silent glances. They scattered instantly, surrounding him in a tight, coordinated triangle formation.

Qinghan was the first to initiate. She lunged forward, driving a brutal Collapsing Punch directly toward Kagashi’s abdomen.

Simultaneously, Mianxue dropped low to the dirt, sweeping a vicious kick aimed at shattering Kagashi’s knees.

Using their simultaneous strikes as a perfect screen, Jingliu vaulted into the air. She brought a devastating palm strike crashing down toward the crown of his head, executing the ‘Ferocious Tiger Climbing the Mountain’ technique.

The three-pronged offensive covered multiple blind spots and effectively sealed off every single avenue of retreat. If it were anyone else caught in that trap, even a seasoned Cloud Knight Vanguard would be thrown into a panicked defense.

Kagashi merely offered a faint nod of approval.

His feet shifted in a strange, ghostly pattern, slipping past Mianxue’s sweeping leg by a hairsbreadth. At the exact same moment, his left hand shot out like a striking viper, precisely clamping around Qinghan’s incoming wrist. With a fluid, circular motion, he pulled her forward and redirected her momentum.

Qinghan felt an overwhelming, irresistible force hijack her center of gravity. She was sent hurtling helplessly through the air, crashing directly into the rising Mianxue.

Above them, Jingliu’s descending palm strike had finally reached Kagashi’s head.

Instead of retreating, Kagashi stepped directly into her guard. His right shoulder jerked upward in a violent, concentrated burst of kinetic energy.

A heavy, muffled thud connected through the air.

Jingliu felt an unbearable shockwave travel from her palm, traveling up her arm and rattling her very bones. The kinetic feedback sent her flying backward like a broken kite.

She tumbled twice in mid-air, gritting her teeth as she forced her body to twist. Her boots hit the dirt, skidding backward for several long yards before she finally managed to dissipate the lingering kinetic force.

She knew perfectly well that if this were a life-or-death struggle, the force behind that shoulder strike would have been magnified tenfold.

“Continue,” Kagashi beckoned, his breathing entirely even.

The brutal sparring sessions lasted until the setting sun bled orange and purple across the horizon.

The three women threw themselves at him countless times, using every trick, feint, and combination they could devise. Yet, they never once managed to break through Kagashi’s flawless defensive perimeter.

Eventually, Mianxue and Qinghan collapsed onto the dirt, their chests heaving violently. They were completely drained, lacking the strength to twitch even a single finger, their training clothes plastered to their skin with sweat.

Only Jingliu remained standing. Her legs trembled slightly, but a dark, lingering hunger burned in her crimson eyes.

‘Do you want to continue…’ Kagashi easily read the obsessive drive in his disciple’s gaze, but he chose not to indulge it.

“That is enough for today.”

“Master, the Martial Arts Examination officially begins tomorrow. I want to practice just a little bit more. Is that okay?” Jingliu pressed, taking a step forward.

“Mhm. As you wish.”

Seeing her stubbornness, Kagashi did not waste words trying to dissuade her.

Hearing his permission, the corners of Jingliu’s lips had barely begun to curl upward into a smile before she watched him turn his back to her.

Was he not going to stay and practice with her?

It was only when she saw Mianxue and Qinghan weakly supporting each other, dragging their exhausted bodies up to follow him out of the field, that Jingliu finally understood the true meaning of ‘as you wish’.

He meant she could practice by herself.

A deep, dark resentment flared in Jingliu’s eyes, pooling like spilled ink.

Given her master’s monstrous stamina, the fact that his skin wasn’t even flushed and his breathing remained perfectly steady meant he wasn’t tired in the slightest.

He just didn’t want to spend more time alone with her.

‘It is fine. It is fine…’

Watching her master and her two martial sisters disappear around the corner of the compound, Jingliu forced her breathing to steady. She turned her cold gaze toward the dented alloy post standing silently in the fading light.

Moments later, a sickening rhythm of impacts echoed across the empty Martial Arts Field. It was a wet, heavy sound, entirely different from the striking of wooden posts.

Jingliu’s crimson pupils dilated, taking on a terrifying, hollow intensity.

She threw herself at the metal, venting the suffocating tightness in her chest through pure violence. She completely ignored the tearing of her skin and the bruising of her flesh as her fists, elbows, and knees slammed into the unforgiving alloy.

Whoever ended up facing her in the Martial Arts Examination tomorrow was going to suffer a very brutal fate.

After punishing her own body for another full hour, the suffocating irritation gnawing at her heart finally dulled to a manageable ache.

She picked up her discarded outer shirt and walked back to their shared residence. As she stepped into the bathroom to wash the dried blood and sweat from her face, she paused.

Someone had used this room recently. The air was still thick with lingering humidity.

Normally, she would not have paid it any mind. But the problem was her senses. She had become hyper-fixated, agonizingly sensitive to her master’s specific scent. Even across great distances or after hours had passed, as long as he had not deliberately masked it, she could track it.

His clean, familiar scent saturated the damp air of the bathroom.

But it was tangled with two other distinct scents. Mianxue. And Qinghan.

‘Master and them… could the three of them have…’

If not for the quiet, steady flow of water running from the faucet into the porcelain basin, time itself would have seemed to freeze within the small room.

The faint highlights in Jingliu’s eyes quietly dissolved into an empty, dead crimson. Her mind, unbidden, began to conjure up vivid, graphic imagery—the kind found in restricted anatomical texts that were strictly forbidden to anyone who hadn’t passed the Xianzhou Adulthood Exam.

No. Those were not textbook diagrams.

She looked up, staring at her own reflection in the mirror. She was startled to realize that the phantom images of intertwined limbs and flushed skin were still projecting themselves over her own reflection, burning into her retinas.

She raised a bruised hand and slapped her own forehead hard.

‘Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!’

This was the Xianzhou. Wasn’t this kind of domestic arrangement entirely common? As long as no one violated the Family Planning Laws, and as long as all parties had passed their Adulthood Exams, who cared how many people shared a single bed?

Desperately clinging to this rationalization, Jingliu took a deep, shuddering breath. She turned off the faucet, wiped her face, and walked down the hall to her room to fetch her loungewear for a bath.

But as she walked past Qinghan’s closed door, she froze.

A soft, suppressed moan slipped through the cracks of the wood.

It was a sound she recognized intimately. A sound that had been burned into her memory decades ago.

‘Calm down. Calm down.’Jingliu deliberately sealed off her enhanced hearing, forcing herself to act as though the hallway were perfectly silent. She walked into her room, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped her clothes.’This is human nature,’she told herself, the thoughts spinning rapidly in her mind.’The seniors are human. Master is even more human. He is not some Mara-Struck monster who has lost his mind and only knows slaughter. He has needs.’

She was human too. It was not strange for her to feel this agonizing, chest-crushing jealousy.

Her master and her seniors were perfectly normal. There was no problem with them.

The only one with a sickening, twisted problem was her.

She was the one who had fallen desperately in love with her own master. She was the one drowning in bitter poison because his gentle hands and tender gaze never fell upon her in the dark.

What she did not fully understand, she at least knew how to research.

In the various tragic literary works and Illusory Dramas popular across the Xianzhou, a disciple who harbored such impure, obsessive lust for their teacher was branded with a specific title.

A Rebel Disciple.

In reality, the Xianzhou didn’t strictly enforce such taboos anymore; acting on it would merely invite some social gossip.

So the conclusion remained the same: she was the one who was broken.

But her master was the only thing left in her empty world.

Therefore, going to her master and begging him to fix his disciple’s broken, aching body… that was a perfectly reasonable request, wasn’t it?

‘Master… Master…’

Standing alone in the dark room, Jingliu slowly raised her hands, pressing her bruised knuckles against her feverishly flushed cheeks. Her crimson eyes stared into the shadows, her expression twisting into something entirely unreadable.