Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 65

Chapter 65: A Trace of Resentment

Kagashi pressed himself flush against Jingliu’s back. His right hand enveloped her smaller one, locking her grip around the sword hilt, while his left hand settled firmly against her waist to force her stance into alignment.

“Grip the ground with both feet. Draw power from your heels, and ensure your torso doesn’t tilt too far forward.”

As he spoke, Jingliu felt the broad palm on her waist exert a steady pressure, guiding her center of gravity. A surge of kinetic force traveled up from the earth, climbing her spine and settling into her shoulders.

“Just like that. Stay steady.”

With his hand completely caging hers, Kagashi guided the longsword upward in a swift, fluid arc. They were close—so close that Jingliu could feel the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her Master’s chest against her shoulder blades. She caught the faint, clean scent of his breath. An unmatched sense of security washed over her, instantly quieting the anxious franticness that had plagued her after a dozen consecutive mistakes.

Her Master’s hand was incredibly warm, a stark contrast to the perpetual frost of his expression.

“Focus on that line,” Kagashi instructed, his voice a low rumble near her ear. “Remember this exact feeling of power. Remember the posture. Eyes, heart, and sword must be one. The battlefield shifts in a fraction of a second. You must train your body to move before your brain even issues the command. That is how your blade catches the enemy off guard, leaving them no room to defend or evade. Now—strike!”

This time, Jingliu abandoned brute force. Following the trajectory Kagashi had carved out for her, she pulled her abdomen in slightly and held her breath. The scattered strength within her muscles linked together step by step, finally surging into her palms. In that fleeting second, the heavy steel felt like a natural extension of her own arm.

Swish.

The longsword cleaved the air. There was no turbulent rush of wind, only the pure, terrifying silence of absolute speed. The blade sliced flawlessly through the black target line painted across the Borisin phantom’s neck.

A crisp chime echoed from the Jade Abacus nearby, signaling a perfect lethal strike.

“Remember this feeling,” Kagashi said. He released her hand and took a deliberate step back.

That grounding, reassuring warmth vanished in an instant. Jingliu felt a sudden, hollow sense of loss, though it was quickly swallowed by sheer awe. The sensation of that guided strike had been intoxicating. There had been zero resistance, not a single ounce of wasted energy—as if the steel itself had hungered to sever that exact point in space.

She turned to look at Kagashi. The pure reverence in her eyes had softened, giving way to a quiet, lingering emotion she couldn’t quite name. “Thank you for your guidance, Master.”

Kagashi met her sparkling gaze. Internally, a quiet satisfaction settled in his chest, though his face remained an unreadable mask of ice. During their close contact, he had felt the rigid stiffness and faint tremors racking the young girl’s arm muscles. It was the unavoidable toll of high-intensity conditioning. He refused to let her develop a dependency on his physical guidance, so he hardened his features and spoke with a chilling detachment.

“Strike while the iron is hot. If you can manage to swing ten times in three seconds tonight, hitting different vital points four times in a row, I will grant you a full day of rest tomorrow.”

Jingliu’s eyes widened with bright determination. She immediately straightened her aching back. Drawing a deep breath, she sank back into her stance. Her mind obsessively replayed the perfect trajectory Kagashi had just shown her, chasing the ghost of that flawless kinetic flow.

She swung again. Though it lacked the terrifying perfection of the guided strike and moved a fraction slower, the edge pressed steadily against the black line. The trembling instability was gone. Undeterred by the burning in her muscles, she launched into a relentless flurry of attacks, each one growing sharper and more precise.

Kagashi stood in silence, watching the petite figure swing her blade again and again at the phantom. She adjusted her posture with every failure. Deep within his calm eyes, a deep sense of gratification flickered.

Innate deficiencies can always be compensated by the blood and sweat of relentless effort.

In this cruel era, if one wished to survive—if one wished to possess the strength to slaughter the Abominations of Abundance without mercy—there were no shortcuts. A warrior had to treat their own body as a blade, throwing themselves into the forge a thousand times over. Only the persistent survived.

By the time the setting sun bled orange across the western horizon, Jingliu finally shattered the threshold Kagashi had set. Miraculously, she remained on her feet.

“Ma… Master…” The breathing rhythm she had carefully maintained for hours finally collapsed. She leaned heavily on her sword, gripping the hilt with both hands as she gasped for air. “I… I did it!”

“Mm,” Kagashi replied, his tone perfectly flat. “Starting the day after tomorrow, the minimum speed for your morning run must not drop below eighty li per hour. Everything else remains the same.”

Jingliu’s small, sweat-drenched face froze.

A bitter seed of resentment sprouted in her exhausted mind. No wonder Master was so willing to give me a day off. A completely new hell is waiting for me on the other side.

Her current running pace was barely forty li per hour, and now he was doubling it. The mere thought of the agonizing, lung-burning torture awaiting her made her battered body scream in silent protest. Her emotional whiplash collided with her ragged breathing. Pushed far beyond the absolute limits of her physical and mental endurance, the compounding stress finally broke her.

Jingliu’s eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.

The very last image burned into her fading consciousness was Kagashi’s stoic face, looking every bit like an unyielding, iron-faced Yama. She hit the dirt hard, but her fingers never let go of the sword.

The cycle of day and night turned.

Jingliu’s biological clock woke her at the break of dawn, as it always did. The routine remained unbroken: she changed her clothes, washed her face, forced down a quick breakfast, and marched toward the Martial Arts Field.

It wasn’t until she caught sight of that familiar, towering figure that her groggy mind finally supplied the memory of yesterday’s collapse.

Master said I could rest today.

Before a greeting could even form on her lips, Jingliu froze dead in her tracks.

Kagashi had stripped off his upper garments, standing bare-chested in the center of the grounds. Flanking him were two massive Aurumaton Gatekeepers. Without warning, the towering machines swung their colossal iron fists, slamming them brutally into his back and chest.

Jingliu’s mind blanked in sheer panic. Is the Xianzhou experiencing another Aurumaton rebellion?!

But as the dust settled, she saw Kagashi’s upper body merely tremble. His deep horse stance remained entirely unbroken. This wasn’t a crisis. This was his training.

The Aurumatons rained down iron fists as dense and relentless as a torrential storm, battering Kagashi’s flesh without an ounce of mercy. Even when a particularly devastating blow connected, he merely furrowed his brow, not even blinking against the impact.

Jingliu focused her senses, analyzing the displaced air and the sheer kinetic force behind the machines’ punches. Her lips parted in silent horror as she calculated the raw power. Just one of those punches… it would shatter my skull into powder.

A terrifying thought surfaced. She recalled a brief text she had skimmed during a past pilgrimage regarding ancient physical tempering arts. She swallowed hard, her throat painfully dry.

Could it be… that in the near future, I’ll have to endure the iron fists of an Aurumaton too?

She viciously shook her head, snuffing out the nightmare before it could take root, and forced her eyes back to Kagashi.

She stood there, paralyzed by a mix of awe and terror, for half an hour. The Aurumatons never paused. Instead, their assault accelerated at specific intervals, turning into a blur of crushing metal. Kagashi’s torso and limbs were a canvas of horrific bruises and swelling tissue, having absorbed thousands of lethal strikes. Every so often, the sickening, sharp crack of breaking bones echoed across the field. Jingliu clamped both hands over her mouth to stifle a gasp.

It wasn’t until the Aurumatons finally powered down and ceased their assault that she snapped out of her daze, hurriedly wiping the moisture from the corners of her eyes.

She had always known her Master’s hellish regimen wasn’t born of malice, but she had never imagined the sheer, suicidal extremity of his own training. It defied all logic.

Kagashi slowly withdrew from his stance. His brow was drawn tight in silent agony, but he uttered no sound. Jingliu’s eyes tracked the eerie, jagged protrusions jutting against his skin—the unmistakable shapes of fractured bones threatening to pierce muscle. When he turned slightly, the unnatural, twisted curvature of his spine looked entirely deformed.

“Master…” her voice trembled, small and fragile. “Are you alright…?”

The second the words left her mouth, she realized how utterly foolish the question was. How could anyone possibly be alright after that?