Li Yi Nuo had spent the last few weeks trying to speak and be noticed as little as humanly possible. The fox woman seemed to have dismissed her from mind entirely, which was a relief after the humiliation of being captured by the woman. Yet, it was the other two that made her shiver in fear. The elder fox radiated a kind of power that made it hard for her to breathe whenever he focused on her for more than a moment or two. She didn’t even think it was intentional. If anything, she thought he was making a genuine effort to keep it repressed, which just made it even more frightening. Yet, her fear of the elder fox paled into nothingness when compared with the naked terror Lu Sen inspired in her. The way he just ignored that pressure from the elder fox alone was chilling. It was like he didn’t even notice.

Every time she’d imagined that she understood him, she discovered she was horribly wrong. It was like any time things got more dangerous, the man revealed an entirely new layer of frightening abilities, strength, and will. However, she’d thought that she had witnessed the true culmination of that process during his fight with the horde. Li Yi Nuo still couldn’t believe she’d witnessed such a thing with her own eyes. She couldn’t shake the image of him punching that rock-covered spirit beast so hard that she had heard the stone break from close to half a mile away. To say nothing of the spear duel with the devil. Not that she’d seen the end of it, but he’d been run through. Even cultivators couldn’t ignore wounds like that. Yet, Lu Sen seemed to take it as a personal challenge and summoned something that looked frighteningly close to tribulation lightning along with a storm that had killed who knew how many devilish beasts and spirits.

Yet, even that paled in comparison to that elixir and what had followed. She had been certain, absolutely certain that no living thing could drink that elixir and survive it. But he had. It had been four nightmarish days of him screaming like someone was trying to rip out his soul and qi explosions that almost brought down that strange stone building he’d made, but he had lived. Li Yi Nuo didn’t understand what kind of new monster that old monster, Feng Ming, had made. She only knew that she needed to make sure that her sect never, ever came into direct conflict with Lu Sen. Because, every time she thought about it, she could only see one outcome. Everyone in her sect left dead, and Lu Sen and that incredibly creepy spider person casually walking away from the smoking ruins of her sect and discussing what to have for dinner.

To make matters worse, the vision in her head felt all too possible. While Laughing River seemed truly not to care about her, she and her sect had directly challenged Lu Sen. She had been sent to capture him. What an absurd notion, she thought. He’s not invincible, but I doubt he’d ever let himself be taken alive. Worse, it would cost an ocean of blood to do it. More to the point, it had been to return him to the sect to face execution. A fact that he knew. A fact that might make him just decide that the world didn’t need the Vermilion Blade Sect and strike first. The closer they got to the sect, the more likely it was that they would run across another disciple. She needed to leave before then. She just didn’t know if they would let her. She didn’t want to ask because they would pay attention to her then, but she didn’t see another way. Gathering her courage, she spoke.

“We’re close enough to the sect. I think we can part ways now if that’s alright.”

She braced herself for anger. What she got was Lu Sen blinking at her owlishly. It was as if he didn’t really know what she was talking about. She watched as the confusion cleared from his eyes. Here it comes, she thought.

“Oh, yeah. That’s fine. I expect you can make it safely from here,” said Lu Sen absently.

As he turned back to continue his conversation with the elder fox, she could almost see it in his eyes as she simply ceased to exist for him. Part of her wanted to be angry about that. Was I truly so trivial? Sanity swiftly reasserted itself as pure relief flooded her heart. She could only be grateful that he’d found her so unimportant. With any luck, that same disregard would apply to her sect. Assuming that she could convince her master to leave Lu Sen alone. As she watched the rest of the group grow steadily more distant, she got a crawling sensation on the back of her neck. She made herself turn around. The spider thing was there. It took all of her self-control not to flinch away from it. The spider wasn’t doing anything. It just stood there, looking at her with its unreadable eyes and face. The dread certainty that the thing was about to attack her took hold. She started to cycle her qi in preparation.

The spider tilted its head a bit to one side and asked, “What’s a sect?”

The incongruity of that question, when she’d been expecting violence, was enough to make her lose her cycling pattern. She tried to realign her thinking.

“It’s a—” she tried out a couple of explanations in her head. “It’s a place where cultivators gather and train.”

“I see. It’s a cultivator cluster. Thank you.”

Without so much as a backward glance, the spider became a dark blur that raced toward the others. The idea of a spider, a human-shaped spider, moving that fast made her skin crawl, but at least it was gone. Maybe without its constant presence, she’d stop having bad dreams about the horrible thing killing and eating her. Not that she expected the bad dreams would go away anytime soon. She’d accumulated more than enough material to fuel those for the next few decades. Shivering one last time, she turned toward the sect and headed for it cross country. Before, she wouldn’t have dared to leave the road for fear of entering the wilds. Now, she knew what was and was not the true wilds. Nothing she found in the largely pacified forests around the roads was going to be a problem for her. They never really would have been. She just hadn’t understood how inconsequential the threats were when compared to the deep wilds.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The guards at the sect gates looked shocked and a little bit awed when she emerged from the forest rather than coming down the road. How foolish, she thought. It's not like I did anything. She greeted them with a bow, showed her sect token, and was ushered in immediately. It was a comfort to be behind the sect walls again. Everything there was familiar, like a comfortable blanket that she’d owned for years. However, it was also alien in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Some of it was simply the way that people stopped and stared at her as she walked toward her home. She looked down at herself. Her robes were clean. Even she was clean save for whatever she’d picked up traveling that day. Lu Sen had included a kind of bathhouse in his strange stone constructions. Not that it had been for her benefit. He’d done it for himself, but he didn’t care if other people used it.

Still, she supposed she should clean up before she reported to her master. He took that decision out of her hands by arriving at her home at the same time she did. That blazing fury she’d seen in his eyes in the days before she left had settled down into something less wild. It was the heat rising off of hot coals instead of an inferno, although she imagined it wouldn’t take much to reignite that inferno. She offered him a deep bow. Simply seeing him again made her feel safe. Yet, when she rose, there was a strange look on the man’s face. She pushed open the door to her home and invited the man inside. She bid him sit while she started a fire, and set about the all-important task of making tea. Then, since the fire was already lit, she emptied some things out of her storage ring and started to make some food.

It wasn’t going to be as good as that stuff that Lu Sen had made, but she’d watched him cooking often enough to pick up a few things. Throughout all of it, she felt her master observing her and weighing what he was seeing. When the food was done, the two ate a meal. As much as she wanted it to go away, she couldn’t shake the feeling that things at the sect were alien. It was only as she went to clear away the dishes that it finally hit her. It’s too safe, she realized. I’ve been in one kind of danger or another for months. Anything else feels wrong. Frowning to herself, she sat back down across from her master.

“So,” said Bahn Huizhong, “you didn’t find him?”

There was a second where wild, hysteria-filled laughter threatened to burst out of Li Yi Nuo like water from a weak dam. She clamped down hard on that feeling, but a bit of it must have slipped into her expression because her master looked genuinely concerned.

“I found him,” said Li Yi Nuo, before lifting a hand to stop the next question. “This will be easier if you let me tell you what happened.”

Her master’s brow furrowed, but he gestured for her to proceed. So, she told him everything. She told him about her pitiful defeat at the hands of Lu Sen. She did nothing to hide or downplay her shameful capture at the hands of the fox woman. She told him about the elder fox who frightened her so much, the ruins, and how Lu Sen, the fox woman, and a giant spider had gone inside, only to emerge a day later. Then, she told him about the battle and the things she had seen that made her soul tremble. Finally, she told him about that terrible elixir and the impossible survival of Lu Sen after he drank it. As a bit of evidence to support her claims, she produced the elixirs that Lu Sen had given her. Her master’s eyes had gone wide when he picked one up and examined it.

“He just gave these to you?”

“He did.”

Her master leaned back in his chair and gazed down at the vial in his hand for a very long time. It was during that long silence that she remembered one last thing that had been pushed to the back of her mind by everything else. She produced the letter of introduction to Kho Jaw-Long. She held that precious bit of parchment in her hands before offering it to her master. He set down the elixir and took the parchment from her.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a letter of introduction for me to the man who taught Lu Sen the spear.”

Her master lifted an eyebrow but dutifully read the letter. Much as she had, he puzzled over one bit of it.

“Uncle Kho?”

“Kho Jaw-Long.”

“His master is Kho Jaw-Long?”

“No. Kho Jaw-Long simply taught him the spear. His master is Feng Ming.”

At first, her master looked like he didn’t believe her. But his eyes moved from the letter to the elixir and his eyes went wide again.

“Ma Caihong,” he breathed in utter reverence.

“Master?” asked Li Yi Nuo.

“Kho Jaw-Long has a wife. Not quite as famous as him but only because she’s more restrained. She is a master of alchemy. The kind of alchemy that might produce something like this,” he said picking up the elixir in his off hand. “I cannot decide if you have been blessed with great fortune or terrible karma. In your opinion, what will be the result if we pursue this matter against Judgment’s Gale?”

Li Yi Nuo didn’t even need to think about it. “He will rain death on us until nothing remains of this sect but memories and salted earth.”

She watched as her master seemed to weigh the letter and the elixir before he turned his eyes back to her. He took in her expression and nodded. He lifted the objects in his hands a little.

“Then, we will accept his peace offerings.”

Li Yi Nuo let out a relieved breath that came to an abrupt stop when her master continued.

“Although, I think I’d like to meet this man, this Judgment’s Gale.”