The spirit beast didn’t move as Jiang weighed his options. It just stood there, a slab of living stone waiting for him to make the next mistake.

  Well, if nothing else, it meant he had the initiative.

  Jiang darted forward, blade ready. His target was the curve where a muzzle should have been – while he may not be able to cut through the stone, surely getting hit in the face would at least rattle the beast, make it react somehow. This time, he tried wrapping his shadows around the blade, hoping it would improve the cutting power somehow.

  He may as well have been hitting an actual stone.

  The impact rang up his arm with a jolt like striking a bell of granite and a thin scratch appeared on the stone face. Nothing more. Worse, a moment later, he felt Qi gathering beneath his strike, reinforcing the stone and wiping away the small scratch he’d made. The shadows on his sword scattered like smoke, dissipating against the forced solidity of the stone.

  So much for that.

  He withdrew several steps, circling carefully. The beast followed him with its blank, featureless head, each footfall rumbling like distant thunder.

  Fine. New plan.

  The beast might be able to cover itself completely with stone, but it was still a living creature, which meant it needed to breathe. All he had to do was tire it out while keeping an eye out for when it retracted its protections to take a breath, then aim for the weak spots. Easier said than done, naturally, but he wasn’t without some tricks of his own.

  He inhaled, let his Qi cycle once through his meridians, and deliberately loosened his stance. He let his presence “dip,” the way Mistress Bai had described it when he’d shown her the technique, though she had said it in far more complicated terms. Her lectures had revealed something interesting – apparently, his stealth technique touched on some of the more conceptual aspects of shadows. Instead of using actual shadows to hide his presence, he tapped into the concepts of darkness and stealth to divert attention.

  He didn’t fully understand the implications, nor had he had any luck in replicating the effects in any other ways, but Mistress Bai had seemed impressed he’d managed to get it to work at all, which told him it was impressive for his level. Unfortunately, she’d also mentioned that most cultivators eventually learned some additional ways of using their affinity to sense their surroundings – such as sensing the vibrations of footsteps or detecting the movement of air as someone breathed – so it wasn’t an instant ‘win’ move.

  Still, in this case, it was enough to make the bear hesitate.

  It didn’t lose him entirely – he could tell by the faint drift of its head that it still sensed something – but the certainty was gone. Its posture loosened and it shifted its weight in a vaguely nervous way.

  Jiang moved, darting around to its flank. He slashed at the neck, shadows curling along the blade. Stone cracked but held. The strike barely grazed the surface, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to force it to expend energy, to tire itself out until it needed to take a breath.

  He slipped away before the retaliatory spike could form, striking again, this time at the base of the skull. Again the armour resisted. Again, the bear reinforced instinctively.

  The third time, the bear learned.

  A pulse of Qi rippled through its body – a warning he only recognised a second too late.

  A thunderclap cracked across the field as the bear detonated its armour, chunks of stone exploding in every direction. Jiang was pelted hard enough to feel bruises blooming instantly across his ribs and arms. A plate the size of his forearm struck his shoulder and spun him half around before dropping into the snow.

  Fortunately, he’d managed to turn with the blow enough that he wasn’t too disoriented, and he scrambled to his feet before the beast could take advantage. The bear – now stripped of its stone – stood fully exposed for the first time. Jiang could see that its fur was matted with blood and dirt, and what sections of its hide weren’t hidden as well by the fur were scarred and thick. Clearly, this was a beast that had been in some very tough fights, which was quite possibly why it had sought easier prey in the mortals.

  A monstrous lungful of air filled its chest as it huffed, inhaling deeply for the first time since it had sealed the armour over its face.

  So it did need to breathe.

  He surged forward, intending to strike before the armour formed again, but the bear recovered just as fast. Stone pooled up from beneath its paws, flowing over its limbs like a living tide. By the time he reached striking distance, the armour had already covered the important areas, though it was thinner than before.

  Still, he managed a single slash across the shoulder, cracking the layer of stone with brute force. Blood welled from the injury, but only a little. A shallow wound quickly covered as more stone flowed to reinforce the armour. Within moments, it looked like he was back to fighting a living statue.

  He leapt back out of reach, heart hammering, and reevaluated.

  His shadows had done nothing. Not even when supported by steel. And yet the beast’s own free-form manipulation was absurdly durable. That shouldn’t be possible. Mistress Bai had been very clear – free-form techniques were weaker than structured ones. Certainly, the fact that it was using stone as a base would help – stone was inherently solid, after all – but regardless, the principles should still remain relevant.

  And yet here this beast stood, using free-form manipulation to conjure armour that might as well have been forged by a craftsman.

  How?

  He stared at the beast, his mind racing, trying to fit the pieces together. He recalled Mistress Bai’s words when she’d explained how spirit beasts differed from human cultivators. A Flame-tailed Fox doesn’t need to learn techniques to breathe fire. It simply does it. Its Qi channels are formed from birth…

  It was instinct, sure, but it wasn’t just instinct. The beast’s armour wasn’t just on its body; it felt like it was part of its body. The stone flowed from its paws and clung to its fur. The beast was anchoring its Qi to itself.

  His own shadows felt strongest when they were closest to him. They weakened with distance. When he’d anchored them to his sword, it had worked... sort of. But it had been a strain. It was like trying to force the shadow to cling to an object it didn’t belong to.

  What if... what if he was the anchor?

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  He looked down at his own hand. He’d never tried it. It seemed... strange. Humans didn’t have natural weapons. Not really. But the principle…

  He created some distance from the spirit beast, which plodded after him but didn’t seem to want to launch itself again. Even if it did, he should be able to react quickly enough, which meant he could afford to split his concentration a little.

  Jiang focused, drawing his shadow up from the ground and layering it over his arm, pulling a thread of Qi from his dantian to mix with it, giving it strength. The black energy flowed around his hands, coating his arm from his elbow to the tips of his fingers.

  He tried to shape it into claws.

  The effect was immediate. It clicked.

  It was nothing like the clumsy, draining effort of his other free-form attempts. The shadow didn’t just sit on his hand; it clung to it. It snapped into the shape of five, vicious-looking black talons, each a good six inches long, and it held. It felt solid. Stable. Like an extension of his own will. It took almost no effort to maintain the shape.

  How had he never tried this?

  He flexed his fingers. The shadow-claws moved with them. He looked up at the beast. The creature had retracted the stone around its eyes and mouth to allow itself to breathe as it watched him, its head tilted in a semblance of curiosity.

  The downsides were obvious. He had no idea how to fight with claws. His reach was now pathetic. But the power, the solidity... he could feel it, humming in the darkness wrapped around his hand.

  It could be nothing, but it wasn’t like he had anything to lose by trying. Worst case scenario, he would be back to trying to wear it out.

  Unfortunately, the beast was clearly smart enough to pick up on his patterns. It had reinforced its face when he’d struck it there. He couldn’t just run up and swipe at it; it would just thicken the armour and his new claws would shatter. He had to draw its attention. Distract its defences.

  He took a steadying breath, then moved. He sprinted, not at the beast, but to the side, circling.

  As he ran, he did something that felt incredibly stupid. He drew his sword with his left hand, and with all his strength, he threw it. He hurled it, end over end, straight at the beast’s blank, stone face.

  The beast didn’t flinch. It didn’t need to. It simply shifted its Qi. Jiang felt it—a subtle, reinforcing pulse of energy flowing to its head, thickening the armour, preparing for an impact that was, frankly, not much of a threat. As expected, his sword clanged uselessly off the stone and spun away into the snow.

  But it had worked. The beast’s attention, its very Qi, was focused on the point of impact. Which meant, for a split second, its flank was weaker.

  Jiang didn’t slow. He was already lunging, his sprint carrying him past the creature’s line of sight, toward its unprotected side. He poured his Qi into his right hand, the shadow-claws darkening, hardening, the edges shimmering with a faint, dangerous light.

  He drove his hand forward, not as a punch, but as a swipe.

  His black claws met the beast’s stone armour.

  The stone plating, which had shrugged off steel arrows and even his sword, gave way. His shadow-claws tore through the rock as if it were thick, wet clay, ripping a set of deep, parallel gouges across the creature’s flank.

  It wasn’t a killing blow, not even close. But he saw dark, thick blood well up in the tracks. He’d drawn blood.

  And that was enough.

  — — —

  Wu Shaoyang had spent twelve years in the Imperial legions, and he knew the value of calm – but even after all those years, the call from the watchtower still made his stomach tighten.

  He climbed the ladder two rungs at a time despite his stiff knee. These walls were nothing compared to the city fortifications he’d once served on, but they were good enough for a village. They kept predators out and children in, and so long as they held, Shanmei still had a future. Of course, when he’d convinced the rest of the village that the walls were necessary, he’d only thought about defending against, at most, some bandits.

  Not spirit beasts and cultivators.

  Frankly, it was a miracle that the spirit bear hadn’t bothered to attack them yet – they certainly couldn’t stop it. That said, by going after their livestock and stopping them from harvesting the winter crop they were trading a quick death for a slow one.

  At the top he joined the cluster of anxious faces. The young sentry pointed toward the southern fields, where the beast was snacking on their animals. To Wu Shaoyang’s surprise, the young man wasn’t pointing at the spirit beast, but instead a lone figure jogging across the open snow.

  “Could be a traveller,” someone muttered behind him. “Or one of the men who went for help. Anyone recognise them?”

  Wu Shaoyang narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t a villager, he was sure of that instantly. It was too far away to make out the stranger’s face, but not only was the figure moving too quickly and smoothly, no one here would have the courage to jog towards the spirit beast, not anymore. It was all he could do to keep them from running away from it, and he only managed that much because he’d earned their trust over the years.

  He felt a faint flicker of hope in his chest that he tried to crush before it grew. A cultivator just happening to pass by was incredibly unlikely, and even if it did happen, they could be trading one problem for another. He’d seen cultivators attached to the legions. They fought like gods and demanded tribute like demons. Solving the beast problem might just mean inviting a far worse one to stay.

  The stranger slowed and pulled out a bow, firing two arrows in rapid succession at the beast. Both struck, which was impressive at that kind of distance, but neither did anything. If only it were that easy to wound the beast, they would have run it off days ago.

  The man didn’t seem bothered, simply tucking the bow away and drawing a sword. For a mortal to fight a beast like this in close quarters would be suicide, and everyone here knew it – which is why he wasn’t surprised when murmurs rippled along the wall.

  When the bear surged forward in that unnatural, horrifying burst of speed it had displayed once before and the stranger moved aside as lightly as stepping around a puddle, Shaoyang knew that a cultivator had come to save them.

  A wave of breathless relief swept over the villagers, but Shaoyang didn’t join them. Instead, he gripped the palisade, his knuckles white. The high, ringing skreee of steel on stone carried back to them on the wind. It was the same sound their own guards’ spears had made when they glanced off the beast’s stone armour.

  His grip didn’t loosen when the bear’s armour suddenly exploded outward – stones scattering across the field – the villagers screamed, flinched, clutched at one another. He just watched the stranger rise again almost immediately.

  He was a little confused when the cultivator threw his sword at the beast’s head, but it clearly wasn’t a random move considering how quickly the fight shifted after that. Shaoyang couldn’t follow every movement – the distance was too great, and the cultivator too quick – but he could read the rhythm. Years of watching battlefield skirmishes made the patterns stand out even when he couldn’t see the details.

  The spirit beast bellowed once, a deeper, harsher sound than before. Even from this far, the shift in tone was obvious: pain, not rage. A dozen villagers gasped at once. Shaoyang’s jaw tightened, not in fear this time, but in something closer to wary relief. If the cultivator could cause it pain, then the end wasn’t far.

  The fight accelerated from there. The cultivator’s movements grew harder to follow. One heartbeat he was at the beast’s flank, the next at its hind leg, then gone entirely from Shaoyang’s line of sight until a fresh roar marked another hit. A knot inside his chest began to unwind.

  He’d spent days preparing for the possibility that Shanmei wouldn’t survive the winter. Watching the beast stumble now, bleeding into the snow, felt like watching a noose loosen around the village’s neck.

  And then, without fanfare, it was over, the beast brought down by what looked like the cultivator punching into its head. Presumably, there was more to it, or the man would have started the fight with that move, but still, it was impressive. Unfortunately, now came the moment he’d been dreading.

  A cultivator who saved a village often expected repayment. Favours, supplies, subservience – whatever they asked, refusing was rarely an option. His hand tightened around the railing. He would give the man whatever he asked for, of course – to do otherwise was to invite death – but he just hoped the cultivator was kind enough to leave them supplies sufficient to last the winter.

  Instead, the man simply turned away.

  With the same unhurried, steady stride he’d arrived with, the cultivator jogged back across the snow, leaving the corpse – and the beast’s core, which was valuable enough by itself to guarantee the village’s survival – behind him.

  The villagers erupted behind him, half cheering, half babbling, but Shaoyang barely heard them. He kept watching the stranger’s back until the distance swallowed him.

  A man who could kill a spirit beast and walk away from a fortune without a glance…

  That was the kind of cultivator he’d hoped never to meet, and the kind he was suddenly very grateful for.