I felt more powerful than at any other point in my life thus far. This wasn’t like anger, where my blood pooled under my skin until it was dark as night; this power was joyous. Though Cabbagy remained a hostage, I felt a thrill as flames leaped up my arms. The qi was stolen, but for a moment, I was a cultivator in truth.

  The bastards from the Celebration Flame Sect wouldn’t be distracted for long, and so I charged forward. Blood surged through my muscles, launching me with every step. The interplay of blood and fire in my veins was a curious sensation, and the speed that came made me grin. Jiang Jian hadn’t just gifted me these flames, but his qi-soaked flesh had made my own body stronger.

  Faster.

  Better.

  Three groups of cultivators had stepped forward to stop me. Mist flew out from the drab group, and snow flurries emerged from the sleeves of the female cultivators, but my companions raced forward to intercept them. There was a clash of qi and weapons, and I shot through the opening like an arrow.

  The distance between me and the kidnappers vanished as I cocked my fist, ready to punch the Dai Heng right in his smug, rich prick face. I doubted his face would survive contact, but I really couldn’t care less. I swore to myself that I would give his little red hat to Cabbagy.

  Thunder clapped.

  A yellow-robed man appeared between me and Dai Heng. His hair stood out on end in a massive puff ball, and he wore a grin as feral as a street cat. My fist crunched into an ash white spear so hard my knuckles broke.

  He slid back a few dozen paces before twirling his spear with a laugh. Lightning flared from both ends of the spear as he met my gaze.

  “Finally, my trip is getting interesting.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  My blood surged, and my knuckles clicked back into place.

  “You’ll die.”

  “Marvelous,” he said as his eyes burned with lightning. “This life was too boring anyway.”

  Thunder clapped.

  He appeared beside me as though the distance wasn’t there, his spear stabbing straight for my ear. I sidestepped, not risking him damaging my brain and putting me out of commission.

  “You’re fast!” he shouted as he stabbed at me again and again. “But are you faster than me?”

  Lightning danced down his spear as he twirled and thrust. I stepped again and again, dodging with the barest distance. I wanted to strike back, but his speed kept me on the defensive. When I lashed out with my flaming fists, he avoided them with ease.

  He had clearly been learning the spear longer than I had been learning the cabbage. After twenty exchanges, his spear thrust toward my chest.

  The blade sank into my flesh.

  If I hadn’t already faced the Flawless Blade’s heavenly blade techniques, I might have done worse, but as it was, I allowed the lightning to stun me as the puffy-haired bastard pushed his spear deeper and pierced my heart.

  “Boring,” he said with a sigh.

  Blood burst out of the wound and wrapped around his spear. I twisted at my hips, wrenching the spear from his surprised grasp and flinging it away into the park.

  “Huh. I didn’t expect that.”

  I delivered a savage uppercut to his jaw. The impact scorched his skin, and I tried to drain the blood from his face, but his qi was too strong for me. He stumbled, and I threw another punch at his face, but he barely dodged back as lightning crackled across his skin.

  “That’s more like it!”

  Blood pumped through my muscles, and I struck faster.

  Cabbagy Style: Spicy Sauce Variation.

  Blood dripped from my fire-coated fingers, and each drop burned. With every strike, fire flicked at my opponent. I singed his clothes and his hair, but he remained undamaged and undaunted. The fervor in his eyes only grew.

  “A thousand silver?” he said with a laugh as my punch narrowly missed his nose. “I would pay a thousand silver to fight someone like you!”

  ###

  The cultivator formerly known as the Flawless Blade was not at his prime. His master needed his aid, and so he would lay down his life if needed, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed weakness. He had stored enough qi over the course of the day for one significant burst of sword intent. When the money grubbing cultivators stepped forward to interfere with his master, he had no choice but to use up his stored qi. The power of a 5th Stage Qi Condensing cultivator was released in a wide sweeping slash toward their opponents.

  The more powerful members dodged his attack, but he was pleased to see some of the drab, body-condensing cultivators fall. He even struck one of the Winter’s Heart cultivators in the hip and put her out of the fight.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Alas, his power was now drained, and he was barely a 6th Stage Body Tempering Cultivator. The drab cultivators, well, the five who survived, leaped on his apparent weakness. Though they were individually only low stage cultivators, they were adept at working in a team. They quickly wove a mist between them that surrounded the cultivator formerly known as the flawless blade.

  His senses and his spiritual detection were dampened.

  The jian in his grip was a cheap piece of steel that could hardly be called sharpened. That Chen Ai had carried this around for so long spoke volumes about her priorities, but she had been kind enough to gift it to him after taking his perfect blade for herself.

  Still…

  A terrible blade, in terrible conditions, with terrible qi… he couldn’t help but smile. This was heaven-sent proof that following his master would lead to growth.

  “You killed two of us,” whispered a directionless voice.

  “We will bleed you,” whispered another.

  “We will poison you.”

  “Two deaths will not be enough for your agony.”

  Despite the threats and his blindness, he held his blade in a relaxed stance.

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  “Yes!” hissed five voices in the mist.

  “I have a hard time believing you.”

  “Then you shall die!”

  He might be blinded and stifled by the mist, but there was no way he wouldn’t know a blade when it was near him. He smiled as five blades were drawn in the mist.

  “Thank you for revealing yourselves,” he said with a short bow. “Let us begin.”

  With his blade at the ready, he stalked through the mists like a predator. Within seconds, blood flowed.

  ###

  The lightning cultivator challenged her senior brother, and the drab cultivators of the Mu Clan raced toward his disciple, which left Chen Ai completely fucked. Four of the sister martial artists from the Winter’s Heart Sect surrounded her. Their robes were pale white and blue, and their faces were heart-shaped jade. Each one of them was a peerless beauty, but none more so than their leader. Even their cruel smiles were as bright as the sun on ice as they sent blizzards to blind and icicles to pierce.

  Chen Ai did her best to dodge, but she was not her senior brother. His style was one of openings and tightly controlled space. Her footwork had never been that elegant. Snow chilled her skin, and ice pierced her flesh. Only the strength of her bloodline kept her on her feet.

  She gripped the perfect jian in her hands, but she still hadn’t drawn the blade. The tightness from the scar on her chest… no matter how much she gripped the jian… There was a weight to unsheathing the weapon in combat, unlike anything she’d ever felt, and no matter the strength of the Ox Bloodline coursing through her blood, she didn’t know if she could surmount the challenge.

  “It’s a shame,” said the leader of the icy cultivators. “You would be quite pretty if it weren’t for your large muscles and horns.”

  Icicles flew like daggers. She rolled to the side, and the frozen blades punched deep into the soft grass. One sliced across her thigh, drawing blood in a stinging cut.

  The women giggled, and Chen Ai realized that despite their power, they were all younger than her. Such were the resources of a powerful sect. The choices of her life pressed upon her, but she leaped to her feet before an icicle could pin her to the ground.

  “What’s wrong with your sword?” asked the leader. “Is it just for decoration? You can draw it, if you like, we promise not to get offended by how poorly you swing it at us.”

  Once more, the women laughed, and Chen Ai gritted her teeth.

  She knew she should draw the blade.

  She should fight as the swordswoman she claimed to be.

  But…

  Snow whipped around her, obscuring her vision, and she barely moved out of the way of an icicle that would have stabbed her in the gut.

  Why was she hesitating?

  She owed her senior brother a life debt, and if she died here and now… what good was she?

  Somehow, that depressing thought put a smile on her face.

  An icicle shot toward her face, and Chen Ai swung. Her sheathed jian struck the ice and the projectile shattered into glittering flakes.

  The leader tittered.

  “Oh, what’s this?” the leader said. “I thought you might have been a pacifist. They say that oxen only get angry when their calves are in danger, and even you don’t look old enough to have --”

  “Shut up!”

  Chen Ai darted forward, swinging her sheathed blade like a club. The Winter Heart’s leader raised her arms in defense, and ice rapidly sheathed her limbs. Behind that glittering defense, a smirk painted her beautiful face as though to say, ‘Oh, are you such a brute?’

  But Chen Ai was such a brute, and the bloodline of the Ox was not to be taken lightly.

  Her sheathed jian struck the qi-armored arm. Ice and bone shattered under the force of the blow, and the leader cried out in pained alarm. Snow burst from her feet as she darted back, clutching her broken arm.

  “You thug!”

  “Whatever,” Chen Ai said as she rolled her shoulders. “Who’s next?”

  “Sisters!” cried the leader. “Playtime is over!”

  The three women in white and blue leaped forward, daggers of ice forming in their hands. Chen Ai gripped her sheathed jian in one hand and clenched her other into a fist. It was time to show the world how strong she really was.

  ###

  Shen Wanjun sat in a drinking house with a foaming cup of beer and looked out over the city she loved. It was truly a wondrous place in the world, for how many cities could truly be called alive? Literally alive, she meant, not just the way those snobs from Golden Egg City talked about their nightlife and culture. She drank more of the beer and felt it rush to her head. It was pleasant, getting drunk in the middle of the day when she should be working, and she was proud that no matter how much she cultivated, nor how much she drank, she seemed to develop absolutely no tolerance at all.

  Still, this wasn’t just an idle drink in the middle of the day, no, this was the stress of her work driving her to the bar with its view overlooking the city and the vista beyond the mountain. She still had the bones of that dead cultivator in her storage ring, and there was something deeply disturbing about that. So deeply disturbing that she needed a drink.

  But, alas, her beer was empty.

  She ordered another, and, while she waited, she pulled a bone out of the storage ring. Dried blood and scraps of flesh still marked the pale length, and she turned it over and over in her hands. She ignored the foul looks shot her way, for nobody in this establishment would dare speak up against the heavy stone wood armor she wore. What kind of technique would do this to a human body? She’d never heard of one before; it almost matched the Exploding Fist Style from the south, but the bone was intact except for a few scratches.

  Yes, there was something wrong with the bone, but she couldn’t figure out what…

  “Is that for your dog?” asked the lovely young waiter as he placed her fresh beer before her.

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “Oh,” he said with a smile that would earn him a tip and maybe more if he was lucky. “It looks like a dog bone. All chewed up, you know?”

  She nodded slowly, as understanding dawned. The reports from the Shining Mountain Sect came to mind. All chewed up…

  Suddenly, the beer before her was much less important.

  “Thank you,” she said as she spilled too much silver onto the counter.

  “No, thank you!” said the server eagerly.

  Shen Wanjun ignored the cute young man as she stashed the bone in her storage ring and the beer in her stomach. With her mind full of rumors and reports, she left the bar and returned to work. She needed to deliver the bones, and then she would reach out to her contact at the Shining Mountain Sect.

  Hopefully, her hunch was wrong, but if not… trouble had found its way to Mountain Root City.

  I've been thinking about it (every day!) but I ended up getting another job with a commute and have been busy writing I Eat Cultivators and yada yada yada...

  I missed the first day of writathon, and the first deadline, but I'm still determined to give it a go!

  This will be a more horror focused one shot story. Updates will be a little sporadic since I need to squeeze extra writing time out of my schedule. There's some pretty obvious influences, with Absolute Regression, Solo Levelling, and Jujutsu Kaisen being among them. I hope you give it a go :)

  first chapter here.