Homestay Village sprawled larger than its name suggested—over ten thousand souls now, swollen with refugees from the north. Yuming watched them through the restaurant's greasy window: there were hollow-eyed men hauling carts, women clutching children too thin for their ages.
"Stop staring," Yujin said, pushing a tea cup across the table. "We have work to do."
Yuming turned back. They'd changed out of their crimson robes hours ago, but the village knew what they were. He could feel it in the sideways glances and hurried bows.
"Here's what we know," Yujin began softly, "They attacked the last two nights, both attacks on the south side of town. That likely confirms their beast is stationed somewhere in the forest."
Yuming nodded and put down his cup of tea before speaking. "But more importantly, it confirms they're desperate. They can't just pack up and move, so they've increased the frequency of the attacks, knowing they're running out of time."
Yujin shifted uncomfortably. "But, it might mean they're almost done with whatever they're trying to do."
Yuming pressed his lips together, and then released them. "There's no perfect plan to catch them immediately. All they have to do is avoid us, and neither of us has cultivated advanced magical powers. The good news is, they can probably only attack here, and the two southern villages."
"Can they not target travelers on the road?"
Yuming dipped his chin into his palm, and replied, "I don't think so. Otherwise they wouldn't have attacked here, their beast lacks intelligence, it probably needs set locations.
"Really, what we need to do is find the beast and track it back to their base without being caught. I'm confident we can avoid the detection of loose cultivators, so it's all about finding the beast."
Yujin smiled, "And that's why we made it known we're here."
Yuming gave him a thumbs up, "If you go to the first village, and I go to Green Pine Village, we'll both be able to cover the entire area. Here, they have the advantage, but they don't know that—they probably overestimate us. We'll sneak out and go to the other two villages, and they'll probably attack one of them."
Before resuming his tea, Yuming gave his companion a serious look. "Remember, even though all evidence suggests they shouldn't be too strong, we can't underestimate them. At the first sign of real danger, leave."
Yuming contemplated for a second, grimaced, and then said, "If either of us ends up tracking the beast, we should leave a slight trail of spirit rice, so we can find each other, just in case… scatter it as much as possible."
….
A few hundred feet away, in a cramped room above the inn.
The young man's pacing had worn a path in the dust. Three steps to the window, and three steps back. His hands opened and closed at his sides, grasping at air.
When the door finally opened, he spun. His sister stepped inside, shutting it carefully behind her. "They're here," she said. "People in the village are gossiping about the arrival of 'Immortal Masters.'"
His heart kicked against his ribs. Sweat broke across his brow immediately. "Damn it—" His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again. "Qing'er, What do we do? Even if we could kill them, we can't. The Liu Family would hunt down without leaving a corpse."
Qing'er, his sister, raised a hand, voice steady. "They might not be important. The Liu Family loses labor cultivators outside the mountain all the time—"
"You idiot! Look at them!" He jabbed a finger toward the window, toward the square below. "They're children. Young geniuses. The kind the family watches. We touch them, we die screaming."
Qing'er flinched. Her brother saw it and his anger drained as quickly as it had come. He pressed his palms to his face, exhaled through his fingers.
"I'm sorry, Qing'er. I didn't mean to shout. I'm just—" His hands shook. "I'm nervous."
She forced a smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Don't worry, brother. Just a little more effort, and Father will have enough—"
"Is it really worth it?" The words came out before he could stop them. His sister went still. "This risk," he continued, quieter now, almost pleading. "All of this. Just for Father…"
The slap came fast and sharp. His head snapped to the side. When he looked back, Qing'er's hand was still raised, trembling. Her face had gone pale—with some mixture of anger and grief. "How dare you," she whispered. "Where's your filial piety? We rise together. We fall together." Her voice cracked on the last word.
Neither of them moved for a moment. The young man's cheek still burned, but his mind had gone cold. His sister was right. There was no turning back now—not with Father depending on them, not with everything they'd already risked.
The young man finally let out his breath and tried to come up with a plan. "Then I'll go to Spring Creek Village right away, and tonight you let Jìshòu out from the forest, then take care of Father."
Qing'er nodded, but her expression looked slightly troubled. "What if they go back to the other villages?"
The young man sighed. "If they've guessed that much about us, they'll probably try tracking Jìshòu. Since that's the case, I'll follow behind Jìshòu from the distance. If one of them is tracking, we can only ambush them, refine their Blood Qi, and hope it's enough to advance Father. Then, we leave this cursed prefecture."
Qing'er nodded resolutely, then gave her brother a hug.
….
Spring Creek Village—where Yuming and Yujin had first arrived—-was smaller and poorer than Homestay—with a number of refugees who'd arrived in the last month. As the evening approached, villagers hurriedly rushed towards their homes and deadbolted their doors.
Yujin crouched on the roof of the tallest building, a lonely storage shed. From here, he could see the village edge where the pond met the forest. He watched as the sun disappeared from the horizon.
Closing his eyes, he let his breathing settle into the pattern Instructor Qiao had drilled into him. First, he inhaled slowly through the nose, then let out a slower exhale through the mouth, dropping his heart rate. His thoughts, his nagging fear that Yuming had the better position, calmed down.
The Hollow-Reed Guard technique wasn't flashy. It didn't make him faster or stronger. It just made the world clearer, and settled his thoughts.
The village sounds separated into distinct threads. He heard the cry of a baby two houses over, the complaining of a drunk man, and most of all the chirping of crickets. He sank deeper into the technique, letting his awareness spread throughout the village.
Then—he sensed something wrong.
Something in the forest's ambient noise had shifted. In a certain direction, the crickets had stopped chirping, and the silence panged in his ear. Yujin's eyes snapped open, and while staying perfectly still, his eyes crept towards that direction.
Yujin watched as a four-legged shadow emerged from the treeline in the distance, moving with fluidity. The beast. It wasn't as large as Yujin had imagined, no bigger than a large dog, with a flat head and pale eyes.
The beast came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the pond, then gave the air a sniff. It lunged suddenly towards one of the shacks near the water. Yujin immediately reached towards the small pouch at his waist, pulling out a handful of spirit rice, each faintly luminous but nearly indistinguishable in the darkness.
The beast stopped outside the shack, where a middle-aged man lay asleep against a doorframe. Probably poisoned, Yujin thought to himself. The beast's long tongue uncurled, pecking at the air around the man, and then it struck. The tongue lashed out, wrapping around the throat, and jerked back suddenly. Yujin heard a loud snap, then a horrendous slurping noise. Yujin's stomach knotted, but the Hollow-Reed Guard kept his mind calm.
The beast began to drag the corpse back towards the forest, now moving slower with the body as an added burden. Yujin dropped from the roof, barely making a sound, and followed in pursuit, heading towards the forest.
….
The forest was thick. Branches constantly tugged at Yujin's clothes, and he nearly tripped on roots multiple times. He moved as carefully as possible, keeping the beast in sight but avoiding its radar. Of course, he also made sure to drop a few grains of spirit rice every twenty or thirty paces. If he was in Yuming's situation, he would be fine with every fifty paces, but Yuming didn't practice Hollow-Reed Guard.
The beast never looked in his direction. It single-mindedly pulled the corpse, following what Yujin assumed was a path it had taken before.
Then, he felt it. A slight tingling sensation on his back neck. There seemed to be a presence behind him, far behind. He froze mid-step, forcing himself to continue moving naturally. His hand drifted towards the talismans in his sleeve, basic life-saving mechanisms that Liu Tianjue had given him.
The person lurking behind him was quite skilled, tracking him track the beast. They matched his pace step for step, just staying on the edge of his perception. He doubted they had a perception technique as good as his, so they probably couldn't see him directly, they were just retracing the steps of the beast.
The forest grew denser, and the beast turned to follow a creekbed. Finally, Yujin spotted a break in the trees, and a glimpse of light. Firelight, flickering behind the crude wooden walls of an isolated shack.
The beast dragged its prize towards the shack, and Yujin paused, listening to the faint sound of a woman's voice giving instructions. The presence behind him had also stopped.
This is wrong, this has to be a trap.
But Yujin had come too far to turn back now. Maybe Yuming would cut his losses and retreat, but he needed to see what was inside. For curiosity, and for compensation. He took a deep inhale, a deeper exhale, and began towards the shack.
That's when the presence behind him vanished, causing Yujin's heart to jolt. Before he could settle his mind, he felt a hand clamp over his mouth from behind. "Don't move," a woman's voice whispered in his ear. "Don't breathe loudly."
The voice was calm, with no ill intent. Yujin's hand reached towards his talisman, but she was faster, her free hand catching his wristed and twisting it—sending searing pain up his arm. His fingers loosened and he dropped the talisman.
"Kid," she whispered, "You might be from a big family, and have fancy techniques, but you're still a boy who just began cultivating."
Her grip was strong—stronger than any of his sparring partners at Far Lantern Peak. She certainly hadn't unblocked any meridians, but her movements contained the desperate coherence of someone who had fought for survival many times. Plus, it seemed she had a movement technique that could avoid his gaze.
Yujin forced himself to go limp, "Good," the woman said.
Yujin heard footsteps approaching from the forest to his left, where a young man emerged from the shadows. "Qing'er," he said quietly, "is he–"
"He's alive," Qing'er reassured, her arm holding onto Yujin.
The young man motioned towards the shack, and whispered, "We need to do this quickly, before the other one finds the trail.
Yujin's heart dropped, they knew about Yuming.
Qing'er began walking him forward, her grip never loosening. The brother led the way, picking up the fallen talisman and tucking it into his robe. The two began towards the shack, where Yuming was waiting to strike.
….
Green Pine Village had been too quiet for Yuming's comfort. He had sat in the same spot for three hours watching the southern entrance where the beast would have emerged. But as the sun set and the moon rose, nothing happened. They went to Spring Creek.
He immediately set off. He moved by instinct between the villages under the dim moonlight, where he finally found the first grain of spirit rice. Then another, twenty paces ahead. Yuming's heart tightened. He's probably walking into an ambush, hopefully he can avoid detection or slip away. We just need to know the location.
Yuming's footsteps slowed as the grains led him deeper into the forest, his hand brushing against the knife hidden in his belt that he had picked up from Far Lantern Peak before the journey.
Yuming followed the trail north, where the trees grew closer together, until his eyes caught a faint orange glow in the distance.
He instantly started using his Mirror-Current Steps. It wasn't mainly for stealth, but the core principle could work. He received the rhythm of the surrounding nature, and became a continuation of the forest's motion.
He moved with the wind, timing his steps to the rustling of the leaves. The shack grew closer. Yuming pressed himself against the outer wall, besides the door, his heart hammering.
His hands stood still. Through a gap in the planks, he saw a man and woman holding Yujin, bringing him towards the shack.
Yuming's fingers tightened around the knife handle. Taking a slow breath, he centered himself and prepared for the opportunity that was about to come.
Suddenly, a voice resounded from above. "No need."
The air above the shack suddenly ignited, and small flames twisted, spiraling downwards, converging around a figure that descended at astonishing speed. He wore crimson robes that swayed gently, completely untouched by the heat.
Liu Tianjue landed between the siblings and the shack door, the fire not fading.
The brother gripped his sister's arm, his face going slack. "Qi- Qi Condensation…" he managed to gasp.
Liu Tianjue's expression didn't change. He raised his right hand and flames converged, before shooting outwards at the siblings. The siblings' bodies melted within seconds, neither able to manage a scream before dying.
"U- Uncle Tianjue!" Yujin shouted, both excited and relieved.
"You've done well," Liu Tianjue said with a warm smile. "No need to dirty your hands."
As Yuming and Yujin stood dazed, Tianjue made his way into the shack. After a few seconds, the two boys heard the sound of an old man's anguished roar, then saw the whole shack brighten, followed by silence. Tianjue walked out indifferently a moment later, brushing his hands off.
"You two both displayed great courage," he said, "and I'm sure you will be rewarded beyond what the mission originally stated."
Yujin, despite the near death experience moments before, was ecstatic, but Yuming felt secretly wary.
As Tianjue took them back, he explained the cause of the demon attacks.
Apparently, the two siblings had a father—the owner of the voice that screamed from within the shack. The father had likely damaged his meridians in his younger days, before finding a demonic technique by chance that could address his problems.
Because humans naturally have blood, Blood Qi is easier to absorb than normal spiritual qi. The father wanted to use Blood Qi to force the body to build a dantian, and then use the power of the dantian to repair his meridians. However, the technique was not without drawbacks. The father needed to stay still when forming the dantian, and so his children had to supply Blood Qi.
According to Liu Tianjue, Blood Qi had an inherent problem: it carried the resentment, fear, and karmic stain of the blood's original owner. Some demonic techniques used the resentment to advantageous results, others purified Blood Qi internally. This technique—which was of low quality—did neither. Instead, it relied on an external source to purify the Blood Qi.
The demon was that external purifier. A demon, being of a different species, had an internal structure that allowed it to consume the "taint" of Blood Qi with less backlash than humans. So, the demonic technique instructed the father to use the demon as a filter to purify Blood Qi. This required a basic array, which—along with the father's immobility—kept the family and the demon confined to a small area. After extracting the pure Blood Qi, the father would cultivate it.
"Then, why go through the trouble of putting villagers to sleep?" Yuming asked Tianjue after hearing the explanation.
"As you speculated, they probably trained the demon to attack targets that carried a certain aura, so that it didn't go wild. They already had to do something to the villagers, why not go a step further to make the process easier?"
Yuming nodded, but still had another question. "And why didn't they keep the demon locked up inside their shack? They could have taken people from the village themselves."
"Our family and other clans react more quickly to news of demonic cultivators than demonic beasts."
The usually confident Yujin quietly squeezed in a question of his own. "But tonight, with us already here, why not just keep the beast inside?"
Tianjue shrugged and chuckled. "Probably so they could ambush you if things went wrong."
The three journeyed back, and no more questions were asked. Yuming had one question he decided to keep to himself.
Why did you choose that particular moment to step in?