Pan Cai

  There was an old saying; ‘Send a bird to pluck a mango, send a frog to catch a fish, and send a man to do both.’

  The saying supposedly alluded to human ingenuity, but for Pan Cai, it had always been a reminder in picking the right person for a task, and sometimes, in the privacy of her head, the woman wondered if she was the only person who understood the importance of that.

  Her Lady, Head of the Cn, Xian Qi, had sent her to Silver Springs with the command, “Make your presence known to no one. Observe and report to me in a month.”

  A simple command on paper, easily accomplished for a Qi Realm cultivator with the right skill. But therein id the issue, Pan Cai did not possess anything remotely like the appropriate skill to manage sneaking around.

  She’d been to Silver Springs before, of course, she was the one tasked with keeping an eye on the whiny shit, and she’d had to make the trip twice, first when she’d learned that a mortal peasant girl was working her way into the idiot scion’s life, and the second time when she’d learned that the mortal peasant girl had worked her way into the idiot scion’s life.

  Both times she’d been there, it had not been subtle.

  Barring the Magistrate, who was a beast rank so far past his prime that he likely couldn’t even remember it anymore, Pan Cai was likely the only Qi Realm cultivator that anybody in that backwater town had ever id eyes on and it showed.

  Pan Cai didn’t think she’d been treated with more reverence in her life outside of that pce. So much so in fact, that were it not for why she was there, as well as the abysmal qi levels in the area that made it a backwater pce to begin with, she might have looked forward to her second visit.

  But, as, that was the case, and now her Lady had given her an impossible mission that also took away the one thing about that fucking town she actually tolerated.

  If Pan Cai didn’t know any better, she would think that Matriarch Xian was punishing her for some wrongdoing.

  Since she had neither the skills to be subtle nor sneaky, especially in a pce like Silver Springs, Pan Cai decided to use the resources avaible to her.

  A Suppression Ring hid her cultivation, and a False Face made her a different, older looking woman, and like that, she walked into Silver Springs as a visitor.

  Luckily, she had no need to do any spying herself, as she already had someone for that, a local cultivator by the name of Xue Tai who fancied herself some sort of spymaster.

  The weeks that followed were of little importance to her, and the reports never seemed to differ; Qigang was different. He acted calmer, nicer, and the not-so-mortal-anymore peasant girl seemed to wrap him tighter around her finger every day.

  Pan Cai hadn’t cared about Xian Qigang before, and she cared even less about him now.

  Some of the things that happened around him were noteworthy, like the forced cultivation of two separate cultivators, and butting heads with some nobody from… Verdant Pins, was it? But even those barely mattered to her.

  All Pan Cai wanted was for the month to be over, so she could take off the itchy face and the Suppression Ring which made her feel like her whole body was a foot squeezed into a boot much too small for it.

  And then, on a day like any other, the town criers began to run around town announcing that, on Xian Qigang’s authority, no one was to leave their homes without company, because, apparently, several people had gone missing, and they suspected that it was a qi beast of some sort.

  Pan Cai had contacted her informant, only to find the woman as clueless as she was, at least until several hours ter, when some Doctor barely worth the name was found who had actual information on what was going on, and Pan Cai wished she’d acted much sooner.

  —?—

  Meng Yi

  Even with the healing Qigang had given her, everything hurt.

  Her shinbone, which had snapped clean in two (much like Qigang’s own thighbone had snapped) still hurt fiercely, but Meng Yi was used to pain. She could handle it.

  Besides, with how distracted she was right now, she hardly even had the time for pain.

  Xiuying dodged the lunge of yet another monstrous, dog-like creature and Meng Yi sent out a web to wrap around its neck, snapping it with the force of the creature’s own motion.

  Xiuying had told her to use her webs that way.

  All of… the Old Xian’s (or, as she preferred to think of him, her Young Master’s evil doppelganger’s) corrupted creatures were coming after her and Xiuying exclusively, leaving the two much higher ranked cultivators to their fight.

  Meng Yi wasn’t blind to the obvious reason why. Old Xian wanted a hostage.

  From the little Meng Yi had seen of their fight, things weren’t going too well for him.

  Maybe if they’d had this battle a few minutes ago, before Qigang ate the Ginde Pepper, it would have been a different story, but they weren’t, and now, things did not look good for the corrupted abomination calling itself Xian Qigang.

  He was getting in some good hits certainly, but he was losing, and losing badly. It was only a matter of time now, and that was why it was more important than ever for Xiuying and her (especially) to stay out of the clutches of his creatures.

  If he caught them, Qigang would surrender, and if he surrendered, they would all die.

  Meng Yi was not dying here. Not like this, and not to that thing.

  One of the monstrous frogs caught her with its obscenely long tongue, snatching her away from her perch on Xiuying’s back (which Meng Yi knew the other woman would never let her forget when they left this pce).

  Meng Yi gasped in shock, inexperienced enough in combat to not react in any of the many ways that she could.

  Consequently, Xiuying did it for her.

  Surefooted Steps of The Keen Tiger

  The world went mad in that way that it did when Xiuying used her sage rank technique, and, faster than Meng Yi could see or even think, the frog was dead and she was in Xiuying’s arms, far away and (temporarily) safe from the rest of the corrupted creatures.

  Immediately though, she could sense what it had cost the woman to use the technique.

  This was the third time she’d used it since she arrived in the hidden realm, and Meng Yi didn’t know if the woman could handle a fourth.

  Her qi reserves were at less than half, but it was more than that. It was the way her body shook, like her muscles were pushed to their breaking point and past it.

  The sage rank technique simply demanded too much of her friend’s peasant rank body.

  Glory of The Sun

  The weight of the technique shook the world in ways that Xiuying’s never could, and both women, and the monsters coming for them stumbled as Qigang nded a mighty blow on his opponent.

  Almost half of the dozen creatures colpsed into dust, and the rest staggered around for a moment as though drunk.

  Meng Yi blinked, confused by their reaction.

  “You haven’t noticed?” Xiuying asked. “The weaker he gets, the weaker the monsters get. We’re almost done. Just a little bit more.” That st part seemed aimed more at herself than Meng Yi.

  “Just a little bit more,” Meng Yi agreed.

  A shrill, unearthly scream shook the world right then, and it was almost like it called the staggering creatures to heel.

  They snapped to their feet, suddenly alert and rushing at the women once more.

  Xiuying moved Meng Yi to her back, and she clung to the older woman like a baby monkey.

  “Final p,” Xiuying said. “Watch my back.”

  And before Meng Yi could reply, the enemy was upon them once again.

  Despite Old Xian’s attempt to reinvigorate his creatures, they were slower now. Weaker. Even their coordination, which hadn’t been too good to begin with, was poorer.

  As poor as they were compared to their previous performance however, Xiuying and Meng Yi weren’t exactly fresh either, and the drop in their enemies’ performance barely left them able to do more than keep a hair’s width away from their deaths.

  A hair’s width away proved to be enough in the end, because even before Qigang conquered his own foe, Xiuying and Meng Yi, slowly, steadily, and with extreme prejudice, managed to cut down their enemies one corrupted abomination at a time.

  By the end, Xiuying had had to use her sage rank technique once more, which left her so weak, she needed Meng Yi to support her.

  They stood alert for a few moments, watching for new enemies that wouldn’t come, until finally, they turned to watch Qigang quite literally beat the vestige of his past into the ground.

  Over the fight, as it strained and took damage, its form had twisted from the visage of Xian Qigang it wore into something more fitting for what it was.

  It was tall and emaciated, skeletal. With pale skin thinner than paper. Burns covered much of its form, and through the wounds leaked blood a sickly yellow colour. It smelled like a wound gone bad.

  She and Xiuying hobbled over to Qigang as he stood over its prone form.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as they reached him, worried eyes searching for new injuries.

  Meng Yi took a moment to simply memorise that expression on his face, and luxuriate in the reminder that this man was what she had now, not the vile thing struggling for air on the ground.

  “I’m fine,” she said, taking one of his hands in hers.

  It felt warm. It felt nice.

  All Qigang noticed was the missing finger on her hand.

  His fire had healed the wound shut, but the finger was gone, and there was apparently nothing he could do about that.

  His thumb ghosted over the sealed wound with feather light touches, and Meng Yi brought her other hand up to his cheek.

  His eyes came up to hers.

  “I’m okay,” she said, and though it took him a moment, he nodded, accepting.

  “I’m fine too, by the way,” Xiuying said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “What? I did ask,” Qigang said, and Xiuying turned up her nose at him.

  “Sure you did,” she said.

  The gross thing spoke then.

  “You think you’re better than me,” it said in a weak, raspy voice. “Because you ugh and make stupid jokes with people beneath you, you think that makes you better.”

  Qigang looked down at the thing with contempt so deep, it shocked Meng Yi to find him capable of it.

  “I don’t think I’m better than you,” he said. “I know I am. Though, to be fair, that’s not really saying much, because you’ve set the bar so low at this point that it’s practically a line on the ground. I could stumble over the fucking thing.”

  The thing on the ground snarled, lipless mouth making her almost miss it.

  “You are me, Qigang,” it said. “You can’t escape it. I am your destiny.”

  “No,” Meng Yi said. “You are his history.”

  The thing’s eyes turned to her then, gaze almost desperate. “You, you know what he is,” it said. “I told you. He is nothing. A patchwork born of a discarded piece of my soul. He is nothing! A body snatcher!”

  Meng Yi felt Qigang still beside her at its words, and she almost rolled her eyes.

  She squeezed his hand still in hers, and, after a moment, she felt him squeeze back.

  “You did tell me what he is,” she said. “And it says everything about you that you thought it would change anything. You are the abomination. He is Xian Qigang. And he is a thousand times the man you will never be.”

  That was too much for the creature, and it tried to lunge at her.

  Weight of The Emperor’s Will

  The pressure of Qigang’s technique crushed it back to the ground.

  “You are a stain,” Meng Yi continued, doing everything to still her pounding heart. “And you shall be cleansed from the world.”

  She didn’t need to say what she needed. Qigang knew. And he obliged.

  Glory of The Sun

  The fire burned a brilliant gold and orange, and the creature died screaming as it burned.

  “Oh, Heaven, that smells worse than a beggar’s loincloth,” Xiuying said gagging, and Meng Yi had to admit that the woman wasn’t entirely wrong.

  Crude, but not wrong.

  “Let’s leave this pce,” Qigang said.

  With old Xian dead the gateway had returned, and they walked to it now, both women leaning on the solid Qigang, a weight off all their shoulders.

  Meng Yi was imagining how long a bath she would take after this ordeal when the world changed.

  Qigang saved them.

  With an explosion of fire, he threw all three of them out through the gateway right before the world of the hidden realm shattered.

  They nded roughly in a heap on the rocky ground outside the hidden realm, and Meng Yi could feel the Wild Qi pouring out from the gateway behind them.

  They turned to find something impossible, a tear, hanging in the air where the gateway had been, glowing a sickly, sickening green.

  What in Heaven’s name was this?

  Far behind them, a qi presence arose, like a serpent the size of The Bloody Fang Mountains themselves.

  It was well beyond the range of Meng Yi’s qi sense, but she sensed it nonetheless. As though the serpent cared so little for her limitations that it wouldn’t even let it restrict her from sensing its power.

  From the reactions of the others, they sensed it too, and all three stilled when the serpent’s gaze turned in their direction.

  The world shifted then, and suddenly, the serpent wasn’t half a mountain away. It was right before them, and it was a small woman with the appearance of middle age who Meng Yi recognized.

  Qigang stepped forward, alert but with an expression of recognition.

  “I know you,” he said.

  The Qi Realm cultivator bowed. “Young Master Xian, this one is Pan Cai, servant of your family, and we must leave this pce. Now.”

  Jackpot-kun