Ling Qi and Gu Xiulan parted ways at the entrance to the female residences, and Ling Qi hurried along toward the center where her home lay.

  Things had changed since this morning. There were signs of battle in the streets from scorched or cracked stonework to deep gouges and craters in the earth. Ling Qi wondered who would be repairing the damage or if they would at all. Maybe the Elders only repaired infrastructure when a new class was incoming, and the disciples would just have to deal with the damage they had inflicted on the residential area themselves. That seemed like the sort of thing the Elders might do for several reasons.

  Such thoughts fled her mind as she approached the house she had been living in for the last few months. Her stomach dropped when it came into sight. Maybe it was because it had been the first real home she had had since she left Mother, but seeing it in ruins was disheartening.

  Much of the front wall had collapsed, and it had taken a chunk of the roof with it. Pieces of the wall were scattered across the street, which, along with other nearby buildings, was scarred by deep pits. It almost seemed like great chunks of earth and stone had simply melted.

  Amid the wreckage, Bai Meizhen sat silently in a meditative pose, pristine and pale, atop a flat slab of rock that looked to have previously been a part of the their roof. The image was somewhat ruined by the blood staining both the bottom of her silver robes and her shredded sleeves. It left much of her snow white arms bare, but Bai Meizhen seemed unbothered by the nearly indecent exposure.

  The other thing that broke the image of serenity was the great, poisonous green serpent coiled around the meditating girl. From the pattern on the serpent’s scales, Ling Qi could tell it was Cui, but Cui was far from the tiny, finger-thick snake she usually was. Bai Meizhen’s cousin was now currently as thick as one of her thighs and several times longer than Ling Qi was tall if her estimation was correct.

  Cui twitched at her approach, raising her head and letting out a threatening hiss as her eyes locked onto Ling Qi. Ling Qi stopped immediately, raising her hands in a carefully non-threatening manner. The serpent regarded her silently, tongue flicking in and out as she tasted the air.

  ‘
’


  Ling Qi blinked in surprise; Cui had avoided talking to her since that first time when Ling Qi had asked about repaying Bai Meizhen. Cui’s voice was no longer garbled and sounded like the voice of an arrogant girl a few years younger than her. Ling Qi frowned almost immediately when the words processed. What was with spirit beasts and not using her name?

  Bai Meizhen opened her eyes then, her expression weary and somber. “Ling Qi, I am glad you are doing well,” she greeted, studying Ling Qi as she turned her head to look at her. “I see your day has been profitable.”


  “Yeah,” Ling Qi replied, picking through the rubble field around her friend as she approached and studied the other girl in return. That was…… a lot of blood on her gown. Ling Qi felt guilty at the contrast between the two of them.

  “I got in a fight when I went to pick up my stone allowance. I didn’t get too badly hurt so I went to the market to offload my spoils.” She paused, and the awkward silence stretched between them. “Are you alright? If you’re hurt, I picked up some healing salves while I was there.”


  “Thank you, but I am afraid it would do little good,” Bai Meizhen replied, looking up from her study of Ling Qi’s gown. “Wounds dealt by that wretched girl’s blood do not heal easily. Common medicines will have little effect.”


  “.…… Oh,” Ling Qi said, feeling even worse. She fidgeted with her gown as she came to a stop a short distance from the barrier that Cui formed around Bai Meizhen. “Did you beat her? And what do you mean by her blood? I saw she had that spear, but-” Ling Qi immediately shut her mouth, horrified that she had just let slip that she had seen the fight and done nothing. What would the other girl think of her?

  Bai Meizhen furrowed her brows, and Ling Qi saw her hands clench atop her knees. The temperature around the girl dropped, and Ling Qi felt a stirring of fear in her gut.

  “It was a draw,” the serpentine girl said grudgingly, her normally even and controlled voice simmering with a hint of worrying anger. It didn’t seem directed at Ling Qi, which stung a little if she was honest. She almost wished the other girl was angry. As it was, her friend simply had no expectation that Ling Qi could have meaningfully helped her in the fight against Sun Liling.

  “The Scarlet Devil’s Raiment is a foreign technique, twisting and manipulating the user’s blood into superlative armaments. It works particularly well with that wretched girl’s potent lineage. Her family has truly gone native,” Bai Meizhen added with disgust.

  Ling Qi honestly had no idea how to respond to that. The weapon and armor she had seen Sun Liling summon were made of her blood? How in the world had she not simply bled herself dry? Why would someone from such a wealthy family not simply have talisman armor and weapons?

  “Are your legs going to be fine?” Ling Qi asked. Now that she was closer, she could see that Bai Meizhen’s legs were swathed in bloody bandages under her tattered gown.

  Bai Meizhen pursed her lips, her intense yellow gaze drifting to the side awkwardly as she tugged at the tattered portion of her gown to better cover herself. “I will heal in time. We chose to stop before either of us could harm one another permanently,” she said. “I am afraid we will require a new residence though.”


  “Nevermind that. We can look for another house later. Let me help you to the Medicine Hall,” Ling Qi said firmly. She felt a twinge of fear as she stepped over Cui’s emerald coils andoffered Bai Meizhen her hand. Ling Qi hadn’t been there for her in the fight. Maybe she couldn’t have affected it, but she could do this.

  Bai Meizhen blinked at her, nonplussed.

  “That will not be necessary. My constitution is hardly so fragile. A few wounds like these are not worth bothering the healers over. Grandfather has inflicted far worse in the course of training,” she replied coolly. Ling Qi caught the tiny bit of discomfort in her voice. “Besides, I do not wish to sully your new gown. I am aware that you cannot afford many like it.”


  It was Ling Qi’s turn to frown. “Are you really going to worry about something dumb like that?” she asked incredulously. She couldn’t say anything about what had just been revealed about her housemate’s family situation and couldn’t rightfully comment on it besides, but she was honestly thrown by the last comment.

  “It’s just a dress. I can wash it,” she said flatly. “And I’m not going to let you sit there wounded because you want to be tough. There’s no reason not to visit the Medicine Hall. Or are you really going to tell me that you can’t afford it?”


  Ling Qi was uncomfortably aware of Cui’s head hovering behind her back within easy striking distance as she finished speaking. That…… might have been presumptuous and rude now that she thought about it, but it was too late to take the words back. So instead of apologizing and backing away, she simply firmed her expression and continued to hold out her hand.

  Her housemate stared at her silently, making Ling Qi begin to sweat. Finally, she reached up and took Ling Qi’s hand. Her skin was oddly cool and felt very soft against the rough calluses that persisted on Ling Qi’s hands despite her cultivation. Bai Meizhen let out a soft and prolonged hiss of pain as she moved to stand with Ling Qi’s help and stumbled as her legs buckled beneath her.

  Ling Qi managed to catch her, slipping an arm under the other girl’s shoulders to help support her. The pale girl leaning against her chest straightened up almost immediately, her snow white cheeks pinked from the exertion. There was a faint look of embarrassment on the stoic girl’s features though so Ling Qi kept her eyes straight ahead as she supported the other girl. Bai Meizhen was obviously not used to accepting help.

  “C’mon, just take it one step at a time. Once we take care of you, we can see about picking out a nicer house,” Ling Qi said brightly, trying to break the awkward silence.

  the huge serpent sulked as she uncoiled to get out of their way and follow. Her voice still made Ling Qi twitch.

  Bai Meizhen was silent as she limped along, leaning heavily against Ling Qi’s side, expression wooden. Ling Qi worriedly snuck a glance at her now and then. She figured the other girl was concentrating on simply moving given the trembling she could detect in her steps. It was during one of those glances as they made their way down the street that Bai Meizhen looked up to meet her gaze.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly before looking back down.

  “It’s nothing. I can’t do much more than this anyway,” Ling Qi said bitterly. She still wasn’t strong enough. Not to help Meizhen, not to take care of herself.

  She needed to break through. That was the first step toward real strength.

  The trip was difficult. Despite her obvious effort, Bai Meizhen was unable to move faster than a slow walk. Ling Qi grew more tense as they moved through the residences; out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the other girls murmuring to each other and shooting unfriendly glances their way. It looked like between her stunt in the plaza earlier and Bai Meizhen’s current weakness, they were attracting even more hostility than usual.

  Ling Qi simply set her shoulders and kept walking, refusing to let herself be slowed down. Besides, Cui was still slithering at their side, and she thought the serpent made for a potent deterrent.

  For a time, she was right. They made it out of the residential area and were well on their way toward the market when they found themselves approaching a crowd in the middle of the road. Nearly a dozen people, boys and girls, blocked the path. Ling Qi recognized a handful of them from Elder Zhou’s lessons, although not enough to remember their names. She was fairly certain they were all people she had beaten after she revealed her techniques though.

  “Stop,” the boy at the front of the group called to them as they came within earshot some twenty meters away. “I apologize, Miss Bai, but my associates and I require words with your maid.” He sounded arrogant to Ling Qi, but she could detect nervousness in his tone.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Bai Meizhen asked coldly, standing up straighter as Cui let out a threatening hiss from beside Ling Qi.

  “She has insulted all of us deeply with her conduct,” the boy replied stiffly. “Elevating herself above her station, being rude to her betters, and now beating and robbing Hong Lin and the Zhu siblings? If you cannot discipline your servants, it falls to us, your peers, to do it for you.”


  “They attacked me,” Ling Qi replied flatly. “I only returned the favor. Aren’t you being a little too arrogant?” She tried to project confidence, but she really was worried. There were too many people here. Eight to be exact, five girls and three boys.

  “He is. You all are. What do you intend to do exactly, should I not stand aside and allow this farce?” Bai Meizhen said with a scowl.

  The boy scowled back. “It is the two of you who are being too arrogant. If you will not stand aside, Bai Meizhen, then you will find yourself our enemy as well. Many of us have older siblings and relatives in the Sect. Do you think you can simply bully everyone and get away with it? You are hardly in the sort of shape to contest us all.”


  Ling Qi almost wanted to cry at the sheer unfairness of that statement. In contrast, Bai Meizhen’s expression only grew darker. “Cowardly trash. Do you think I fear your petty retribution? That your pathetic families, scrabbling in the dirt, having existed for only a bare few millennia, concern me? Truly, things have fallen far that so many would forget their place so. It shows only the rot that has been allowed to set in.”


  “I don’t disagree,” Ling Qi replied quietly out of the corner of her mouth, looking for good escape routes. She saw several, but she wasn’t sure Bai Meizhen could make it up those cliffs as she was. This felt more and more like she and her ‘indiscretions’ were just an excuse to take a shot at a wounded Bai Meizhen. “But should we really be antagonizing them this much? We should retreat.”


  “The Bai clan has always been too proud.” The boy drew the straight sword that had been sheathed on his belt. “Its history is indeed mighty, but the rot you speak of lies within your own house. While the Empire grows strong, you turn on yourselves and devour your own. The days in which your clan could do whatever it wished have passed. Or has your family forgotten the execution of Bai Meilien so quickly?”


  Ling Qi could hear the tremble of fear in his voice despite his brash words.

  “Real pretty words from a guy who needs eight people to face two. You all are just oh so brave,” Ling Qi snapped, preparing herself to run. She could probably pick up Bai Meizhen and dash for it if it came down to it. It would probably be better to take the upward……

  Her thoughts cut off as she felt her skin crawl and a wave of paralyzing terror rippled out, nearly making her scream despite the fact that she could feel that it wasn’t directed at her. She looked down and found Bai Meizhen’s expression to be absolutely livid. The pale girl stood, no longer leaning on her.

  “It seems you wish for pain.” Bai Meizhen hissed. Ling Qi had never heard the girl sound so cold. Even Cui had reared up, baring fangs coated with clear venom that melted smoking pits in the dirt where it dripped.

  Ling Qi’s face fell. She wasn’t the best at reading people…… but she really didn’t think Bai Meizhen was going to run now – if she ever would have in the first place. Ling Qi could probably still scoop the other girl up and dash for it – she was good at hiding, and Sable Crescent Step only made her better – but she didn’t know if the furious girl would allow herself to be carried away.

  All of her instincts told her this was a terrible idea. Fighting against four times their number was suicidal, even if almost half of them were trembling and white-faced from the feeling of Bai Meizhen’s qi.

  A quick glance showed that four, including the asshole doing the talking, held swords. The melee fighters moved forward in a staggered line. The remaining four were more eclectic in their weapon choices. There were a couple of archers, a girl who was unarmed save for a pair of faintly glowing blue gloves, and a boy with a heavy pike who was murmuring something under his breath.

  Bai Meizhen was still badly injured and nearly immobile. Even if Bai Meizhen were stronger, could she and Cui really stand up to them all? Ling Qi felt a chill of her old fear, urging her to flee and leave this all behind.

  Threads 41 Justice 2

  For once, Ling Qi did not soar as she took off toward her destination. The expense to her qi, small as it was, was not one she was certain she could afford.

  The map that she had memorized showed that the terrain was mostly flat, and while the marshy terrain would have been an obstacle for most, for Ling Qi, it meant little. She dashed through the trees, flickered from branch to branch, and sprung from one muddy islet to another. Her feet left no impression in mud or grass, and even the thinnest branches barely swayed in her passing.

  As she ran, she planned. Cai Renxiang and the soldiers would not be too far behind her. She just had to slow or halt the bandits for long enough that they could catch up. Of course, if there was one thing Ling Qi felt confident that she could do, it was bogging down her enemies in illusions and mist. She knew that she could go all out on the offensive as well, but……

  She thought of squealing rat things down in the dark, exploding into bloody snowflakes. Could she do that to a person even if they were a criminal? Ling Qi wasn’t eager to find out. For a moment, she felt a strange stirring of excitement at the thought. The scent of blood and burning wood seemed to fill her nose, and her teeth ached as if in sympathetic memory of that time she had been caught up in a tide of vermin on the hunt. Unsettled, Ling Qi shook the feeling off, focusing on her mission. In the back of her mind, Sixiang stirred in discomfort.

  The bandits’ trail was not difficult to follow, but it was less obvious than she might expect for seventy people barging through a marsh. The Cai scouts had already marked the boundaries of the illusion traps which peppered the route, though she could mostly sense them herself if she focused. It still saved her time. Soon enough, she heard boots pounding on mud and voices cursing laggards to keep up.

  Catching her first glimpse of their rear guard, men and not a few women in eclectic and poorly repaired armor, she sprang into the air and flew. Curving left to circle around them and catch up, she kept a tight grip on her qi, fading into the shadows of the tree cover. Her eyes flickered silver, and she scanned her surroundings.

  Flitting from branch to branch, she began the first step of her plan. Raising her flute, she played the Spring Breeze Canto technique. As the notes of the song spread and echoed, so, too, did her senses. She saw each member of the bandits’ formation. The majority were red souls, as reported, but there were still nearly twenty yellow souls of varying strength in their formation. The bandits mostly carried bows but a miscellany of weapons were also represented; a few of the stronger yellow cultivators had talisman crossbows stowed on their backs.

  Of their two leaders, both were early green. One was a tall, spindly man with furtive features and long ill-kempt hair. He clutched a war fan in one hand, and his eyes never stopped moving, darting over the surroundings with a sort of nervous energy. He wore the same sort of mismatched light armor as the rest, but the dark green cloak around his neck glimmered in her qi senses.

  His counterpart was almost his opposite, a short, stoutly built woman. She carried a heavy war axe. Of the bandits, she was the only one wearing fully metal armor. More importantly, the white cloth-wrapped package and its Cai emblem on her back were just a decoy. She managed to peer beneath the illusion and see the plain wooden box and the paper talisman pinned to its side as her perception technique faded. No matter where she looked, Ling Qi neither saw nor sensed any sign of the actual package. Hidden in a storage ring perhaps?

  As the sound of her song washed over the bandits, the tall man stiffened and more than a few other heads snapped up. The bandits’ swift march began to pick up despite the first whorls in the area’s qi beginning to bloom as defensive techniques began to activate within their formation.

  Ling Qi felt Sixiang’s readiness and Zhengui and Hanyi’s excitement. She once again felt a strange thrill of excitement. There was no turning back now.

  Her qi surged as she shot through the shadows like an arrow. Color and sound exploded outward from her position, raucous phantasms erupting in a wave of mad joviality to engulf the nearest bandits. She felt a pulse of power pushing back against her technique, but in her mind, Sixiang laughed as the dispersal technique met the muse’s power and dissolved away like a fading dream.

  Cries to “fall into formation”, “keep moving”, and “find the caster” were drowned out by laughter and song, and men stumbled in confusion, swinging weapons fruitlessly at dancing and laughing phantoms. Even with that promising start, Ling Qi was swiftly reminded that these weren’t her usual opponents, badly organized teenagers with only minimal experience at working in tandem.

  The men weren’t losing cohesion; they used their closeness to each other to stay oriented amidst the chaos. The second realms raised their voices to shout over the song, and first realms formed up around them. Eyes and ears flared with qi, and light bloomed on drawn weapons and armed crossbow bolts. Qi echoed between the members of the formations, empowering flesh and spirit beyond what a single first or second realm cultivator could achieve.

  Arrows and bolts flew out, and a half dozen phantoms burst into butterflies and laughter, but more than a few sizzling bolts hissed through the air where she had been. Ling Qi slipped between revelers without a sound, flowing around a crossbow bolt. It struck the mud behind her, detonating with thunderous force.

  The spindly man at the head of the formation waved his fan, and she felt a surge of disorienting lake qi. For a bare instant, she felt strange as if her channels were in the wrong places and her mind had forgotten how to command them, but then Sixiang’s chaotic qi washed out, cleansing the taint and banishing the feeling. But men were already orienting on her at the leaders’ shout, peering through the phantoms. She couldn’t just stand and accept their fire; it was too much even for her.

  But she only needed to delay them. And she had a new technique to try.

  The Joyous Toast technique, the third technique of the Lunar Revelry art, amplified the power of other techniques. So as the melancholy sound of the Forgotten Vale Melody rang out, revelers roared in raucous joy, their stamping feet and hooves providing an accompanying drumbeat, and the world filled with mist. Bandits cried out in alarm as the mist rushed out like a tidal wave, consuming their entire formation and beyond, spreading for hundreds of meters through the swamp and rising hundreds more into the sky, reducing the afternoon sun to a pale memory.

  In the dark of the mist, red eyes bloomed, and the laughter of the revelers became cruel mockery. Hands and paws which had grasped at limbs to tug them into a dance became talons that drew crimson lines of blood. In the confusion, Ling Qi shot back into a man’s shadow and vanished from the field, uncaring for the arrows and blades carving uselessly through her phantoms.

  The bandits’ leaders shouted something to each other, and the man raised his warfan while the woman struck her fist against her breastplate, making the metal ring like a gong. Ling Qi felt twin pulses of power, stronger together than alone, push back against her mist. Around the leaders, the mist began to lighten, ever so slightly.

  Ling Qi focused, and Sixiang wove her power through the breeze, amplifying her song. The mist crashed back down darker than ever, drawing a snarl of frustration from them both.

  Ling Qi circled the bandit formation silently as the bandits regrouped themselves. To her frustration, their organization kept them together, and shared defensive techniques shielded them from the worst of her phantom attacks. Orders had rung out, distorted and warbling, to hold fire and press forward. They were near the border.

  She was more than happy to let them try. While she couldn’t easily emerge without risking being riddled by the sheer number of arrows, her mist was not such an easy thing to escape. So as the bandits bulled forward, seeking the exit from her techniques, Ling Qi remained in shadow, only briefly diverting to play an Elegy of the Lost, entrapping a straggler or two and draining their qi to restore her own.

  For a full fifteen minutes, she held them, nipping at their heels and vanishing before more than a smattering of bolts could fly her way. Slowly, painstakingly, she shifted her mist, lightening it here,thinning it there, letting the confusing qi soak deeply into their senses. And gradually, she turned them around, first until their steps took them perpendicular to their path, and then finally running them backward through the swamp. Perhaps this alone would be enough for Cai Renxiang and the soldiers to catch up.

  Naturally, as that thought flitted through her head, she noticed something wrong. She felt ripples in her mist, places where her qi was being pushed aside. In the depths of a gnarled tree’s shadow, Ling Qi scanned the mist and saw them, figures that seemed spun from glass, visible only by the distortion in the mist.

  It took a moment, but she counted six of them, their power obscured from her eyes. She saw the spindly man leading the bandits shout something to the closest figure, which replied in a hissing voice, chastising him for uselessness.

  Ling Qi felt a sudden surge of power and moved on instinct as six arrows carved through the tree and its shadow, where she had hidden. Sizzling with toxic purple qi, they pierced straight through the trunk and sank into the ground until the fletching vanished under the mud.

  But even as Ling Qi materialized among the branches, she felt a sharp sting on her cheek and a hint of wetness. Dozens of men spun to face her, and Ling Qi realized at that moment that the spindly bandit leader had made her silhouette burn with an eerie ghost light.

  Phase two then.

  In a burst of black smoke, her singing mist blade shot out, screaming through the air where the spindly bandit leader’s head had been and circled back, already seeking his shoulder blades. It was amazing, Ling Qi thought absently, that controlling her domain weapon took no more effort than flicking her fingers these days.

  She saw the interlopers now, garbed in matching and clean suits of cloth-shrouded armor, their faces and heads concealed by wrapped scarves. Each one wielded a bow of dark green wood, and already, they were shifting to follow her as she darted to a new tree, moving like a well-drilled unit as empowering arts echoed back and forth between them. They were individually peak second realms, but together, they were pushing themselves to the power of a lower third realm.

  But while they had found her, Ling Qi’s mist was not so easy to defeat. The bandits were still lost, and Ling Qi’s desperate dash carried her through the volley that flew her way, many arrows still shooting off into nothing.

  Ling Qi landed at the rear of the bandits’ formation. If she couldn’t hide, she would just have to hold. Her allies were coming, and she was not alone. Behind her, there was a heavy thud, and a massive shadow began to form in the mist, towering over her and the bandits alike.

  Yet her enemies did not break, run, or scatter. They huddled even closer together, men and women dragging wayward comrades back in line as they struggled to orient themselves and seek an escape. She felt a spreading pulse of heavy metallic qi rippling out from the stocky woman, anchoring and bolstering the spirits of the other bandits against the mist, and she felt the spindly man’s qi branching out like the flows of a river, granting his sight to key members of his group. The next volley of arrows was far more concentrated. The mist and the phantoms took most of them, but Ling Qi still found herself facing down dozens of arrows and bolts, more than a few of which were too potent to allow them to pass through her shadowy form.

  Ling Qi was swift though, and her gown was a masterwork talisman. Like a shadow, she slipped through the volley, and the impact of most of the arrows that slipped through were no more than bruises. A single black crossbow bolt brushed her flank and detonated, shoving her to one side and briefly pushing her off-balance. In the moment of her distraction, the spindly man released a spirit beast, a gigantic dragonfly two meters long. It buzzed through the air almost as swiftly as she did, and the thunderous noise of its wings slammed down on her like a hammer, flattening the earth and mud for a dozen meters around. Ling Qi grimaced as she felt her head ring and a droplet of blood fall from her nose.

  Amidst the bandits, more shapes began to emerge. Not every one of their yellow souls had a spirit, but there were still more than enough that did.

  Of course, Ling Qi’s response to that escalation was already here. The sound that Zhengui made did not resemble his still childish speaking voice. It was the natural bellow of an enraged eight-meter-long tortoise. Zhen snapped out, swift as a shadow, and snatched the dragonfly spirit that had struck her out of the air. The massive insect let out a shriek of agony as burning fangs punched through its exoskeleton. Ash poured out from Zhengui’s maw, further darkening the area around them with burning particulates, and Ling Qi felt roots spreading under the earth.

  And beneath all the thunder and noise, a soft, almost shy song began to ring out. Hanyi stood in the shadow of Zhengui’s shell, eyes dancing with delight as she reached out plaintively to the gathering bandits. The first man affected, a mid yellow archer at the edge of the formation, stumbled out of line with his fellows, his eyes glassy and dazed as he shrugged off their attempts to pull him back.

  Ling Qi kept her eyes locked on the spindly man, even as viridian light rippled across her body, the Ten Ring Defense technique hardening flesh and bone against further attack and beginning to draw a thin trickle of qi back into her depleted reserves to replace what she had spent. Her flying blade circled him like a hungry wolf, and the dull steel sword he had sent out to contest it groaned and shuddered under the cry of her singing blade, its edge already beginning to crack and flake.

  The man was the leader that was allowing the bandits to shoot so accurately. So perhaps it was time to cut him off. Even as she fell back into Zhengui’s ash, she began to play, and the spindly man’s eyes widened in alarm as the mist closed around him. He tried to slip out of the effect, but bolstered by Sixiang, there was no escape. It wouldn’t last forever, but he was out of the fight for a precious few moments.

  Attacks still came, but bolts and arrows now pelted Zhengui, although the explosives did no more than make her sturdy little brother shudder, leaving the occasional pockmark on his forelegs and head that bled white hot blood.

  But even without the man providing them vision, the bandits and masked archers were adjusting, clumps of men spreading out to surround her. The pale fire burning on her skin prevented her from slipping back into the mist, and although it flickered as Sixiang tried to wash it off, the effect of the arrow held. And those masked archers had far better aim than the bandits. Ling Qi flew upwards to avoid the arrows sizzling through the air. Where the arrows struck, plants rotted and the ground turned dark with poison.

  Yet despite their perfect coordination and their reinforcing techniques, her superior cultivation was telling. With inhuman grace she darted through the storm. Twenty four arrows flew from six bows in the blink of an eye, and all but three failed to touch. Of those three, two glanced off, burning sizzling lines into the verdant light of her defensive technique. A third pierced through and drew a deep cut across her shoulder that burned painfully before Sixiang purged the poison.

  Zhengui took the archers’ attack poorly. Spearing roots stabbed up through one trio’s formation, forcing them to scatter, and she caught a glimpse of broken wings and twitching legs disappearing down Zhen’s throat before a searing glob of liquid fire threw up a cloud of steam where it landed in the midst of the second trio’s formation, drawing the first cries of pain from them.

  Her enemies took advantage of her focus on the archers. Ling Qi’s head whipped around as she felt something powerful echo in the mist, and ahead of the formation, her mist split, not dispelled but forced apart, opening a lane for the bandits to escape through. The bandits’ formation moved with renewed vigour, pushing hard for the exit, save for the illusionist and a dozen lost stragglers unable to keep up.

  Ling Qi scowled. She was starting to feel some strain delaying the group. She didn’t know who had done that, but she couldn’t just let them run off…… Red-eyed shadows joined her laughing phantoms, clawing and snapping at the heels of the bandits. She ignored the cries of pain as men were swarmed by scores of hungry shadows and pushed on to the finale of the melody. As she poured still more qi into the Traveler’s End technique, the corridor in the mist began to close.

  There was someone else here, the suspected hidden third realm. The armored woman had not done that, and the tall man was still trapped in her elegy, fighting off her Singing Mist Blade with his own increasingly battered sword while his qi drained away. But those archers were still piercing her mist, even if their arrows were now stinging Zhengui like a swarm of hornets. One of the masked archers at least had slumped and run into Zhengui’s reach toward a song that called him, only to be snatched up by Zhen, pumped full of venom, and flung away, screaming. She couldn’t sense who or where this last opponent was, and it was beginning to worry her.

  A warhorn sounded behind her. Ling Qi felt an intense build up of qi, and then, a lance of light so dense that it seemed almost liquid cut through her mist and carved a line of devastation through the struggling bandits. To Ling Qi’s eyes, it was obvious that it had been a blind shot. It carved through too far to one side, missing the center of the bandits’ formation.

  Ling Qi felt her stomach turn as she saw the moment of impact, a pair of straggling reds at the edge of the formation that had been caught in full by the blast. They didn’t burn or explode. No, the light simply passed through, and everything from their waists up ceased to exist. The men behind them were no luckier until the light finally splashed against a hastily pulled up wall of packed mud and earth, boring through and cooking the mud into clay but weakened enough to merely burn the men on the other side.

  Ling Qi looked at the source, and she could see Cai Renxiang and the soldiers she had brought with her. Her liege was obvious at the center of the line, flying above the earth on wings of radiance, sword in hand. The men behind her were no less bright. Their armor and weapons glowed a luminous white, and together, they made an artificial dawn. With spears drawn and leveled, they advanced in an implacable line toward the edge of her mist, but they were still far away.

  Then Ling Qi’s instincts screamed danger, and she pulled up the power of her Deepwood Vitality technique just in time to meet the head of an arrow barely a centimeter from her head just as the thundercrack of its flight reached her ears. Eyes wide, Ling Qi jerked her head to the side as her defensive technique shattered. The arrow flew by, and through the perspective granted by her canto, she saw the trunk of the tree it struck disintegrate, rotting into a black slurry in a handful of seconds. A second arrow struck her in the stomach almost simultaneously, only the power of her gown deflecting it across her side instead of letting it punch through. Pain flared in her thoughts as black venom began to seep into the wound.

  Ahead of her, hundreds of meters away in the direction of the border, she saw a shape rising from the earth just outside of her mist. He stood atop the head of a titanic mud brown serpent, a dozen meters long or more. He himself was dressed much like the hidden archers in clothing of brown and green, and the warbow held in his hands was far more deadly in appearance, recurved and as long as he was tall, the arrow nocked there looking more like a small spear. On his back, she caught sight of a white package stamped with the mark of the red butterfly.

  Unlike the other archers, his head was uncovered, leaving his long hair, black and streaked with dark green, to fly free. More importantly, it left the upper half of his face bare, revealing his golden, slit-pupiled eyes.

  Ling Qi found herself all too aware of how swiftly the cultivation advantage could change. The Bai was a threshold stage cultivator, the fourth step of the third realm, and his spirit beast at the third step.

  As he began to once again draw back that monstrous bow, Ling Qi saw his sneering lips move, “Can’t expect peasants to do a Bai’s work, I suppose.”