Meat and sinew and delicate organs slid down my throat, and every bite made me stronger. This was a different strength to filling my muscles with blood, and felt more akin to water freezing. My body became harder as I devoured the five assassins, and my baseline physical ability grew. It wasn’t a precise measurement, but after eating all of the assassins, I would guess that my body was at the peak of the Qi Condensing Realm in terms of strength.

  Four of the women were easy enough to eat with my extended fangs, but their leader had tough flesh that I had to cut apart with her own sword. Only once it was in tiny scraps could I shove it down my gullet.

  I ate quickly. That was the lesson I learned from Jiang Jian. I never knew when someone might stumble upon me. It was a mark of shame that I hadn’t made any preparations for people finding this ritual.

  I would have to do better in the future.

  But at least the ritual was concluding.

  Cabbajoe rocked in place as Cabbagy’s soul settled into the younger body.

  “How are you feeling, master?”

  “What’s happened? What have you done to me?”

  I picked him up frantically.

  “Cabbagy? What’s wrong?”

  “Who’s Cabbagy? By the heavens, is that my skeleton on the ground! What have you done to me, you monster?!”

  My heart sank.

  No.

  I’d been so careful, but the soul of the assassin had ended up inside Cabbagy. I set him down and hurriedly looked at the sigils. There must be a way to reverse this.

  “Don’t worry, Cabbagy,” I murmured. “I’ll fix this, I know I can…”

  “Ba ha ha!”

  I stiffened.

  “You prick.”

  “I fucking got you, kid!”

  I whirled on my smug-looking master.

  “Do you know what I went through to achieve this?”

  “I appreciate it,” he said with a shit-eating grin.

  “Whatever,” I said as I picked him up and inspected him. “How do you feel?”

  “Better than ever! Cabbajoe might have been an annoying asshole, but he had a nice body. How are you, kid? I see you had time for a snack…”

  We both glanced at the skeletons on the floor.

  “Assassins.”

  “Oh?”

  I flickered petals of shadow along my body to demonstrate my point.

  “Impressive,” Cabbagy said with a serious note. “Is it just that technique, or can you manipulate the qi how you want?”

  “I had the same question, but no real time to experiment. At the moment, I can conjure the technique easily. It was the same with Jiang Jian’s qi; trying to do anything more than flaming arms was difficult.”

  “Hmph, good to know you still face some challenges, kid.”

  That was just blatantly unfair, but I didn’t want to spoil the mood by complaining.

  “I mastered the Mustard Oil Bomb,” I said with a grin.

  “Congratulations, kid,” he said with a matching smile. “Now, get us out of here before more assassins show up.”

  “You think there will be more?”

  He looked at me as though to say…

  “I’m an idiot,” I muttered to myself. “There’s probably more on the way right now, isn’t there?”

  “How would I know, kid? I’m just a cabbage.”

  The warehouse door crumbled into sand, and a heavily armored guard stepped forward. Her eyes burned with blue fire.

  “Damn,” Cabbagy whispered. “She finally found us.”

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “She’s been following us, but I didn’t think anything would come of it. I guess I was wrong. Kid, you need to deal with this, but don’t underestimate her. She’s strong, and there’s something wrong with her eyes.”

  Cabbagy’s tone was deadly serious, and so, instead of joking, I drew on my recently gained power. My body was stronger, and I possessed a reservoir brimming with stolen shadow blossom qi. There was one more weapon I knew I could lean on.

  Fear.

  Bloody tendrils flowed from my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I said with as much intimidation as I could muster. “I can’t let you leave after what you’ve seen.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said the guard. “Not until I know everything about what you are.”

  With a gesture, she sealed the door behind her. Such control over earth qi meant she must be powerful, and her words weren’t the response I expected. Her calm delivery sent a worried chill down my spine. It sounded like she already knew something about me, and she didn’t sound worried at all.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I doubled down on the intimidation.

  “You won’t know anything after I eat you.”

  “So you eat people? Interesting. That narrows down what you might be.”

  “Who are you?”

  A smile twitched across her face as she stepped into the room.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

  The blood sigils remained on the floor, though they were drained of qi. I only needed to paint a few more symbols and pump it with qi to reactivate the ritual. No matter who they were, once I activated the soul transfer ritual, they would be nothing but meat.

  I couldn’t help salivating at the thought.

  No matter what they might know, it was more important for me to eliminate them as a threat than it was to leave them alive in the hopes of getting answers.

  That’s right, just take one more step…

  The guard’s armored boot hovered above the first line of sigils. The blue fire in her eyes glinted.

  “This looks like the first generation of soul transfer rituals, no wonder it spilled so much demonic qi…” she trailed off as she glanced up, and though shadows hid the ceiling, I know she saw the pattern painted there. “Very interesting modification. How do you know how to do this?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “If you come quietly,” the guard said as she brought her foot back. “I can give you all sorts of answers. I’ll even feed you. What do you say?”

  “It’s a lie, kid.”

  “No shit,” I whispered.

  But I felt a chill, because it didn’t seem to be a lie, simply a promise of my greatest fear: a return to the facility.

  “You’re a demonic cultivator.”

  “No,” said the guard. “I’m a Mountain Root City guard investigating a case of demonic cultivation. You are the monster here.”

  Her words made me hesitate. What exactly was happening? And in that moment of indecision, she flicked her fingers, and the ground heaved.

  Cracks shot through the floor as it buckled and bulged. The cracks raced up the walls, causing them to shatter and spill dust. The candle doused, and the only light was the bright blue flames in the guard’s eyes.

  “Can you fight without the ritual?”

  The ceiling groaned above me, and my heart pounded blood through my veins. Adrenalin seized my mind with icy terror. I refused to be buried alive again.

  My only hope was the cracks in the walls. By destabilizing them, she created an opening in the door that she’d sealed.

  The only way out was through, and so I tucked Cabbagy into my robe and charged. Shadows doused my body as I leaped off a bulge in the ground and shot toward the entrance. The doorway was tall, and there was plenty of room above the guard. With my stolen assassin technique, I was undiscoverable.

  I tucked my body tight as I sailed through the air and twisted through the opening in the cracked door.

  The mountain chamber collapsed behind me. Dust and rubble blasted out from the broken doorway and filled the warehouse. Moonlight slanted through high windows, illuminating the dust and causing the shadows of the silos to become deep pools where I might swim unseen.

  The guard stalked away from the collapsed entrance, so completely caked in dust that it was as though she were just dug up from the ground. It didn’t seem to bother her at all. With a twitch of her fingers, the dust dispersed.

  “Kid,” Cabbagy whispered from within my robes. “You need to run.”

  “I need to kill her.”

  I placed Cabbagy atop a silo and crawled along the ceiling until I clung directly above the guard. Her blue flame eyes swept the seemingly abandoned warehouse.

  “You should have run,” she spoke in a voice resounding with qi. “Is it uncontrollable hunger that keeps you here? Or are you also curious? Memory loss was a problem with the first generation rituals, perhaps you crave answers more than flesh…”

  As she continued taunting me, I let go of the ceiling and silently dropped.

  “I have so many questions about —”

  Her voice cut off as my full weight landed on her neck. She staggered forward under the blow. The shadowy qi cloaking me vanished with a smell of plum blossoms as blood burst from my hands into terrible gauntlets. I closed my grip around her neck and pulled.

  My plan worked perfectly.

  So did hers.

  Her stone wood armor flowed in tendrils and wrapped around my body. In a moment, I was bound on the floor and gazing up at the guard who stood there in her undergarments. I’d hoped to break her neck, but her body was strong enough to survive such a blow. Just from clawing at her neck — which remained unscratched — I could tell she was stronger even than the assassin leader.

  I should have listened to Cabbagy and run.

  Blood pumped through my muscles. My willpower strained to move my bones, flesh, and blood as one. I bent all my strength against the stone that wrapped around me like vines.

  The restraints trembled, and slight cracks formed, but with a gesture, the guard reformed them completely.

  She crouched beside me with eyes of blue fire.

  “Manipulation of the flesh in line with the experiments from the Shining Mountain Facility,” she noted to herself as though I were a specimen in a jar. “Theft of the Plum Blossoms qi techniques? Fascinating.”

  “Who are —”

  My snarls were cut off as a stone gag slithered across my mouth.

  “I really don’t need you to speak for me to get my answers.”

  The fire in her eyes guttered briefly, and she sighed.

  “Not much time left.”

  She produced a knife from her belt and slit open my torso as though I were a fish. My guts spilled out, but she only watched my face.

  “No pain response,” she said before stabbing her blade in and out of my eye. “No fear of physical damage. Tissues heal rapidly. Very interesting.”

  She pulled out my heart, the arteries pulsing as the living organ continued beating.

  “Is this redundant?” she wondered aloud.

  The lack of cruelty in her voice and actions was perhaps the most terrifying thing of all, because I knew that no matter what she did, it would only escalate, and, in the end, she would dispose of me just as dispassionately.

  I needed to escape.

  She thrust the knife into my heart, and I triggered a Mustard Oil Bomb. The muscles in my heart squirted acid straight into her eyes. At the last second, she turned her face, and the acid splashed across her cheek. Smoke curdled up from her pitted flesh, but even as I watched, it healed.

  “Correction,” she said to herself, speaking as though someone were writing down her very word. “Advanced manipulation of the flesh. Quite an ingenious technique, but currently unsuitable for fighting above the Qi Condensing Realm.”

  My heart sank.

  I’d really hoped that would work.

  “Heart is a redundant organ,” she murmured as her eyes guttered again. “Checking the brain.”

  She thrust the knife into my eye again, and this time it sank through my skull. My body went limp, and a smile twitched across her face.

  “Brain injury results in death…” she murmured to herself.

  This was my chance: the classic fake my own death plan!

  When she pulled out the knife, she left a finger on my temple, and after a moment…

  “Once the brain is restored, motor functions are restored. Very interesting. Absolute destruction required for termination? Hmm, no more time…”

  She produced a blank piece of paper from a pouch on her belt and dipped her finger in the blood pooling from my slit stomach. With quick gestures, she wrote characters on the paper. I recognised some of them from the ritual, but I was still gagged and unable to ask questions.

  As she finished drawing the last character, the slip of paper glowed and rose up from her hand. It folded over and over on itself until forming a paper bird, which flapped its wings and took off towards the open warehouse door.

  She saw the look in my eyes and crouched down until her gaze burned before mine.

  “I want you to know something,” she said with a smile. “Even if you break out of these restraints. Even if you escape. Even if you kill this body. I will find you.”

  Her words filled me with terror, because I knew that they were true. No matter that her gaze was blue fire, it was the same one behind the masks of the demonic cultivators. When she looked at me, I was back in the facility, and my entire being cried out with terror.

  The blue fire in her eyes guttered and snuffed out. She fell back, panting and pale-faced, as she looked about with confusion. When her gaze settled on me, she scampered backwards as though I might explode.

  I hesitated, sensing something deeply wrong.

  “Please, stay back!” she cried out, sounding like a completely different person. “I don’t want to die!”

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