There wasn’t really any point in trying to hide. While Jiang could probably use his own stealth technique to avoid the demonic cultivator’s senses, he didn’t have the first clue about how to extend that stealth to Zhang.

  Jiang steadfastly ignored the part of his mind that urged him to ditch Zhang and take care of himself first. It was just a remnant of the corruption in the air.

  At least, that’s what he told himself.

  He shot a glance over at Zhang. The outer disciple was pale, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill, and his eyes darted around the passageway restlessly. Jiang could sense him rotating his Qi rapidly to stave off the effects of the red haze still lingering in the air, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t as effective for the disciple as it was for Jiang.

  Probably had something to do with the Pact.

  Jiang drew a slow breath, tasting copper and incense and the faint, cloying sweetness of rotting Qi. The corridor ahead widened, the walls sloping gradually outward. The Qi in the air felt heavier, thicker – pulled towards some central gravity he couldn’t yet see. His steps grew slower as the atmosphere pressed down on him, not quite a physical weight but close enough that his muscles tensed in anticipation.

  They rounded the final bend.

  The room beyond was enormous – far larger than the dimensions of the keep should have allowed. It was probably dug straight out of the mountain itself. The stone had been carved out into a circular sanctum, ringed by cracked pillars and ancient murals half-buried behind layers of grime. Once, it may have been beautiful, and in other circumstances, Jiang may have wondered why a fortress needed this kind of artwork. As it was, he had more important things to worry about than the architecture.

  Fifty men stood along the walls.

  They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. Their chests rose and fell in slow, mechanical rhythm, and their eyes—all of them—were glassy, unfocused, as if seeing nothing at all. Their Qi signatures were hollowed out, fraying, stretching thin like overdrawn thread. Every second, Jiang felt the faint tug of their life being siphoned away.

  In the centre of the room sat a man he could only assume was Gao Leng.

  The man looked younger than Jiang expected – almost normal, really – but the Qi swirling around him was anything but normal. It was thick, heavy, and wrong, a sluggish current of corrupted power flowing from the array beneath him into his body. His eyes were closed, his expression serene, as though he were meditating instead of harvesting dozens of lives.

  Off to his right sat a woman. She rested in a mirrored array – smaller, tighter, pulsing with the same flavour as the barrier that had trapped them. It took Jiang a moment to realise that the bandits along the wall were connected to her array, not Gao Leng’s, feeding into it like tributaries into a river. Her hands were steady, her breathing smooth, but Jiang could feel the keen sharpness of her attention even with her eyes closed.

  And pacing restlessly between the two arrays was a third cultivator.

  He was younger than the others, lean and sharp-featured, dressed in robes that tried too hard to look elegant but ended up looking gaudy. He stopped pacing the moment Jiang and Zhang stepped across the threshold, a sneer twisting his lips.

  “So,” the man announced, his voice echoing in the vast space. He spread his arms wide, seemingly delighted to finally have an audience. “The rats finally scurry out of the walls. You have spirit, I’ll give you that – to come this far, to witness the ascension of a new power, only to realise your own insignificance in the face of—”

  “Yun,” the woman in the array snapped without looking up. “Shut up.”

  The man, Yun, faltered, his grand speech dying in his throat. He turned to glare at her. “I am establishing dominance, Hui. It is a matter of—”

  “It is a matter of you wasting time,” she cut him off, her voice strained with the effort of maintaining the barrier. “Kill them. Now. Before they disrupt the flow.”

  Yun bristled, looking from her to Jiang and Zhang, then back to Gao Leng’s silent form. “Why am I the one doing the heavy lifting? You sit there playing with your strings while I risk my neck against unknown variables? We should combine our strength and—”

  “I am holding back two Core Formation cultivators,” Hui hissed, veins bulging on her forehead. “Do you want me to drop the barrier so you can fight them instead? No? Then do your job and kill the two strays.”

  Yun scowled, clearly unhappy with the logic but unable to refute it. He turned back to Jiang and Zhang, drawing a long, slender Jian from his waist. “Fine,” he muttered, striding forward confidently. “Come then, little disciples. Show me what tricks your masters taught you.”

  The prospect of a fight seemed to exacerbate the mental effects of the remaining red haze in the air, but in this particular case, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – if nothing else, it might help sharpen their focus.

  Unfortunately, Jiang was forced to revise his opinion a moment later as Zhang lunged forward with a shout, sword aimed directly at Yun’s chest. Clearly, the outer disciple wasn’t dealing with the effects as well as Jiang thought.

  Yun didn’t bother with a stance, simply stepping forward and meeting Zhang’s strike with a casual flick of his wrist. Steel rang against steel. Zhang was thrown back three paces, his boots skidding on the stone. Yun hadn’t even moved from his spot.

  “Crude,” Yun scoffed. “Is that all the Azure Sky Sect teaches its outer disciples? Swinging a sword like a club?”

  Jiang moved while Yun was distracted, circling wide. He drew his own sword, but he knew it was mostly for show. Even if it wasn’t for the difference in sheer strength, a few days of instruction from Li Xuan wasn’t enough to make Jiang truly dangerous with a blade. If he tried to engage Yun blade-to-blade, he’d be dead in seconds.

  Fortunately, the demonic cultivator didn’t know that, and was therefore forced to treat Jiang as a potential threat. The man tracked him with a bored expression. “At least the other one had the guts to attack,” he sneered, flicking his wrist. A wave of unseen force, a sudden displacement of air, slammed into Jiang.

  Jiang had just enough warning to throw himself backwards, moving with the force of the attack and reducing the effect as he skidded across the stone floor. The attack cracked the flagstones where he’d been standing. Wind affinity? Or just raw Qi projection? Either way, it was fast.

  Zhang was back on his feet, charging again. The ease with which his initial attack had been defeated had apparently been enough to knock some sense into him, so this time he didn’t just strike wildly; he feinted, ducked, and unleashed a flurry of rapid, precise cuts. It was good swordsmanship, even Jiang could see that. Against a peer, it would have been overwhelming.

  Against Yun, it was barely enough to survive.

  The demonic cultivator moved with a fluid, unnerving grace, parrying Zhang’s strikes with minimal effort, his sword a blur of motion. Yun was toying with him, a cat batting at a mouse before the kill. Zhang’s face was pale, sweat streaming down his temples, his teeth gritted in exertion as he struggled against both the corrupting influence in the air and his opponent in equal measure. He was fighting for his life, and he was losing.

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  Jiang lunged forward, letting his shadows coat his blade and extend his reach. Yun reacted instantly, of course, flicking his sword out with an almost negligent motion that nevertheless almost sent Jiang’s sword spinning out of his hand. It was only the fact that his shadows had extended enough to let him remain out of reach that kept him alive for the next few seconds as Yun switched targets and forced him into a desperate back-peddle.

  Zhang surged back into the fray, his sword aimed at Yun’s exposed back. Yun was forced to turn, abandoning his pursuit of Jiang to block the strike.

  For a moment, they found a rhythm. Jiang and Zhang attacked in tandem, one high, one low, one from the front, one from the flank. Jiang used his shadows to harass, to feint, to create openings where there were none. Zhang used his superior technique to press, to punish, to keep Yun’s blade occupied.

  They drove him back a step. Then two.

  Yun’s bored expression slipped, replaced by a flicker of genuine annoyance. “Enough,” he snarled.

  He stomped his foot, and a shockwave of wind blasted outward. It caught Jiang mid-lunge, throwing him back. Zhang stumbled, his guard breaking.

  Yun moved. He was inside Zhang’s reach in an instant, his jian flashing towards the disciple’s throat.

  Zhang twisted, desperate, but he was too slow to avoid the attack entirely, and the demonic cultivator’s blade cut a savage line across his chest. The outer disciple fell back, abandoning form entirely, and threw both hands forward. Jiang could sense a huge amount of Qi surging as a wall of fire erupted from his palms. It was massive, a roaring wave of orange and yellow that filled the space in front of him, engulfing Yun.

  But it was not a structured technique, and the result was thin, uncontrolled. Flashy and dramatic, certainly, but not deadly. It wouldn’t kill a second-realm cultivator. It might not even hurt him.

  But it was bright and distracting.

  Jiang didn’t hesitate – this was the best chance he was going to get. He charged straight into the fire.

  The heat washed over him, searing his skin, singeing his hair. He gritted his teeth against the pain, but that’s all it was – pain, not injury. Even at his level, the passive Qi contained in his meridians was enough to rob the attack of much of its power.

  Through the flames, he saw Yun. The cultivator had raised an arm to shield his face, annoyance rather than fear in his posture.

  Jiang threw his sword, almost absently realising that it was becoming something of a habit.

  Even blinded by the flames, Yun reacted quickly enough to parry Jiang’s blade. Confusion flickered across his face for a split second as the thrown weapon clattered across the floor. Jiang saw the realisation dawning, and knew he had maybe half a heartbeat left.

  Jiang poured every ounce of his remaining Qi into his right hand. He didn’t just form claws; he pushed, demanding more from the shadows than he ever had before. The darkness coiled around his fingers, solidified, and then… twisted.

  His fingers – or what his fingers had become – tore through robes, through flesh, through bone.

  Yun’s eyes went wide. His sword fell from nerveless fingers, clattering against the stone. His mouth opened as if to speak, to spit one last insult, but only a wet cough came out as dark blood bubbled over his lips.

  Jiang shoved the body away, breathing hard. He looked at his hand. The shadows were already dissipating, but they lingered a moment longer than usual, fighting his will to dismiss them. They looked… wrong. Jagged. Streaked with veins of angry, pulsating crimson.

  Corrupted. The thought came distant, detached.

  When he tried to let them dissolve, they resisted, clinging to the shape he’d forced them into.

  For a moment they pulled against his will.

  Jiang narrowed his eyes and pushed.

  His Qi surged, a dark tide rolling out from his core into the shadows. The red streaks fought him, writhing like worms in mud, but they were small. Local. Contained. Whatever corruption he’d taken in was nothing compared to his Pact, to the ancient thing connected to his essence.

  For a moment, Jiang could swear he felt a presence sweeping over him. A faint wingbeat echoed through his dantian.

  The resistance broke. The shadow-claws shuddered and dissolved, flowing back into his skin and the stone beneath his feet. The red threads lingered a fraction of a second longer, then were swallowed, smothered, ground down into nothing.

  They left behind a faint aftertaste in his channels – metallic, bitter – but his control felt untouched. If anything, the shadows had answered him more quickly than before.

  Something to worry about later.

  “Jiang,” Zhang rasped.

  Jiang turned. The disciple was still on his feet, somehow, though he shouldn’t have been. Blood soaked the front of his robes where Yun’s blade had cut across his chest, the wound deep enough that Jiang could see the torn edges even through the scorched cloth. Zhang’s breaths were shallow and fast, every inhale a hiss of pain.

  “You probably shouldn’t be standing up,” Jiang observed, because his brain hadn’t caught up enough to say anything more useful.

  “I’d rather die on my feet,” Zhang replied morbidly.

  “Let’s aim for not dying at all,” Jiang grunted, stepping closer to support him if needed.

  They both turned toward the remaining threat. Hui had risen from her meditative trance. Her connection to the array was still active, a web of red light pulsing around her, but her attention was now fixed on them.

  “Well, Yun was consistent in failure, if nothing else,” she commented, rising from her seated position in one smooth motion. The lines of her array flared brighter beneath her feet, and Jiang spared a moment to hope that meant it was about to break, and Mistress Bai and Li Xuan were about to charge in.

  Because otherwise they were in trouble. This woman was clearly stronger than Yun had been, and they weren’t exactly in the best shape to be starting another fight.

  She took a single step forward, drawing in breath to speak or cast or both—

  The Gao Leng sitting in the centre of the gathering array shuddered.

  His skin rippled, as if something beneath it had decided the shape was no longer acceptable. For a heartbeat, he looked wrong, too soft around the edges, and then his entire form sloughed downward in a single, horrible motion.

  What had looked like a man melted into a puddle of viscous, grey-red sludge.

  The humming of the inner array stuttered, then stabilised. The Qi flow didn’t stop. It simply stopped going into the thing that had been sitting there.

  Hui froze. “What—”

  A hand punched through her chest from behind.

  Hui’s body jerked. Blood sprayed across the array lines, hissing where it touched the glowing sigils. Jiang blinked, a fraction too slow to fully understand what he was seeing.

  The man standing behind her – the real Gao Leng – leaned in, his chin resting almost companionably on her shoulder as his hand withdrew from her chest in a slow, deliberate motion. Her heart came with it, a dark, glistening lump impaled on his fingers.

  “Forgive the theatrics,” Gao Leng said mildly. His voice was calm, completely at odds with the scene. “But I’ve been a little busy.”

  Hui’s knees buckled. She would have collapsed if he hadn’t still been holding her upright by the ruin of her chest. Her head lolled back enough that Jiang could see the shock painted across her face.

  “Why?” she gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. “I… strengthened… your formation…”

  “And you did a very good job,” Gao Leng agreed, sounding for all the world like a teacher praising a student’s homework. “Your array work was elegant, your little spot of sabotage quite subtle. If I hadn’t been expecting it, you might even have bled me dry over the course of a day or two.”

  Hui’s eyes widened. For the first time, real fear crept in. “You—”

  “Unfortunately,” Gao Leng continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “you made one small mistake. You assumed you were the only one capable of burying a seed in someone else’s work.”

  He released her.

  Hui staggered forward a step, somehow refusing to fall despite the hole in her chest. Her fingers twitched, reaching for him, for the array, for anything.

  The thing that burst out of her chest was not blood.

  Jiang flinched as a compact knot of Qi – dense, blood-red, pulsing – erupted from the wound and hung in the air for a bare second before threads of light shot down from it, burying themselves into the array beneath her feet. The formation drank it eagerly, red lines racing outwards along pre-carved channels, connecting Hui’s crumpling body to the barrier outside. The bandits lining the room, who had been fueling the array until now, collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.

  Hui finally dropped to her knees. Her face twisted, not in pain but in frustration, as if she’d miscalculated the result of a complex equation by a single digit. Her hand twitched toward Gao Leng one last time, then fell.

  Her Qi didn’t go with her.

  Most of it poured into the barrier, reinforcing it with a hungry, eager greed that made Jiang’s skin crawl. A smaller portion coiled back toward Gao Leng, wrapping around him like smoke and sinking into his channels. His presence, already oppressive, sharpened further, like a blade honed on fresh bone.

  He flexed his fingers, the heart in his hand already dissolving into mist. “There,” he said. “That should keep our guests outside from interfering for a while longer.”

  He turned to face Jiang and Zhang at last, his presence expanding to fill the room, heavy and suffocating. “Now. Let us tidy up these loose ends.”

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