Cabbagy’s offer rang in my ears as the Howling Spirit Monkeys closed in like a gang of psychopathic street youths. I prepared myself to fight under the moonlight and to fight in the style I had come to use since I escaped the facility.

  A mixture of a street rat’s brawling instincts, a farmer’s direct use of strength, and a merchant son’s half-studied lessons. It had served me well enough, though in truth I relied on coming back from the dead rather than defeating my opponents.

  But…

  Cabbagy Style.

  What even was that?

  Was he just fucking with me?

  I didn’t have time to worry about that.

  The monkeys sprinted toward me in a ring of white fur, claws, and teeth. Their eyes did not flash with fire, they did not hoot and holler with rage — they were silent.

  These were not the tools of a demonic cultivator — or the experiment of a demonic cultivator — these were hungry spirit beasts hunting prey.

  They detected no qi from me, and so they thought I was weak.

  But they were wrong.

  Long fingers of blood stretched from my hands, each one over a foot long, until my open palms resembled gory rakes rather than gloves. The flesh of Ghost Fang, digested in my stomach and stored in my soul, now pooled around me. Strengthened by the wave of demonic qi, it was so much easier for me to control the blood. In fact, I could do more than gloves.

  The blood lifted away from my hands in whips as I struck out at the first monkey to leap toward me. My tendril clubbed its cheek and sent it sprawling.

  I spun, lashing out and striking the others with the blood flowing from my hands.

  “Heh, I was right,” Cabbagy said. “You’re strong enough, even if you still fight like shit.”

  “I do not!”

  A monkey leaped onto my face.

  I stumbled backward as it clawed at me, ripping flesh from my skull with far greater savagery than any of the creatures showed while I was under Ghost Fang’s control. I grabbed it with my bloodied fingers and ripped it in half.

  Two monkeys grabbed my ankles and yanked.

  My legs went into the splits, a tear forming in my groin as blood poured into the ground.

  “Damn, kid,” Cabbagy said with some empathy. “I’m really sorry to see that happen to you.”

  Without lips, I snarled. Blood manipulation pulled my legs together as I surged back to my feet. I lashed out with my bloody whips.

  But the monkeys were out of my range. Even with my enhanced control over my blood, I could only create whips around as long as my arm. It was exceptional compared to my earlier attempts at gloves, but it wasn’t enough to reach the monkeys that sat on their haunches watching me.

  Their eyes glinted in the moonlight like flat obsidian discs.

  I had thought they were simple, savage, and lessened by the loss of Ghost Fang, but I was wrong.

  These were spirit beasts, and they no longer shared one mind. Instead, each monkey now had its own intelligence. I had been lucky when they fought as one enemy.

  Now, I was unlucky.

  Even if I were stronger than these Qi Condensing monkeys, there were too many.

  I touched my face, feeling that my lips, tongue, and throat were all ripped out.

  “Looks like we’re at an impasse,” I said with my skeleton voice.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Cabbagy said. “Please, don’t.”

  “What?” I asked innocently.

  “You’re planning on letting them eat you and then running away once they’re full.”

  “...”

  “If you do that, they’ll eat me as well.”

  “...”

  “Kid!” Cabbagy shouted. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

  "Isn't that what a cabbage would do?" I asked him.

  "..."

  The monkeys watched all this with patient interest. Their thoughts were inscrutable. I never thought I’d miss having the spirit beasts I fought be demonically possessed.

  I could try running away, but the monkeys had me surrounded, and Cabbagy was right. There was a pretty good chance that they could overpower me and eat me, and thus eat him.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said. “But I accept your offer. Please, teach me Cabbagy Style.”

  “Call me master.”

  I ground my teeth. Maybe letting him die really wouldn’t be the worst thing, but the monkeys crawled closer, and I sighed.

  Maybe when my heart regenerated, it came back too soft?

  “Please, master, teach me your powerful Cabbagy Style.”

  The way Cabbagy rustled inside my coat was painfully smug.

  “First things first,” said Cabbagy as one of the monkeys crawled forward. “You must take a proper stance.”

  "What's that?"

  "Cabbagy Stance! Dig your feet into the ground, anchor yourself with your roots, and take on anyone who comes for you! But first, roll me over into the rubble so I can watch."

  I did as my... master... ordered. What followed was the worst fight of my life.

  Following his instructions, I twisted my feet into the ground until dirt piled around my ankles. I felt strong, stable, and utterly exposed. I also couldn't help but wonder...

  "You didn't fight like this at the village..."

  "You think you're ready to be a master at my style?"

  If I had lips, I would have bit them, but, alas...

  The monkeys didn’t come one at a time. They came in groups. Distracting me, then leaping at me from behind. They chewed at my ankles, pulled at my limbs, ducked under my blood whips, and gouged out my eyes — jokes on them about the last one, but the rest of their attacks were surprisingly effective at disabling me.

  Even using blood and bone manipulation to keep myself on my feet and fighting, I found that they were chipping away at me.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Still, that wasn’t what made the fight difficult.

  No, that was my… master.

  “Left foot slightly forward,” he scolded me as a monkey chewed at my throat. “No, your actual left! So you can lean on it, kid, not so you can trip over. Good, ok, now step and sway. You're a cabbage, not a boulder!”

  I ripped the monkey off my neck and tossed it straight behind me. The monkey sailed hard into another monkey mid-leap. Both spirit beasts splattered mid-air. I wasn’t strong enough to completely explode both of them, but their spines audibly snapped, and blood sprayed out.

  “Now duck, foolish disciple.”

  I ducked. Which didn't feel completely like a cabbage, but I suppose I was the student, and not the master.

  Another monkey leaped over me.

  There were ten left.

  I’d thought Cabbagy’s instructions were thorough before, but this was giving me a headache.

  “Use your first stance,” he said again. “Now, for the second move of my Cabbagy Style: Leafy Layered Fist. Focus on the blood, but don't just make a big glob like you've got shit hanging from your ass, put some damn effort in!"

  His crude instruction continued, and though it took more focus than usual, I pooled blood into gloves around my extended fists. The next spirit beast charged me, and I delivered a powerful punch toward its fanged maw.

  Teeth shattered under my blow.

  As much as I hated it, Cabagy’s stance kept me rooted in place. I was much more stable. Instead of using my blood manipulation to form a larger hand, he had me layer it tightly — like the leaves of a cabbage. The layers swirled over each other, and though it was the same amount of manipulated blood, the stacked presence of my manipulation meant I could deliver far more precision and far more power in my punches.

  It took more concentration, but I couldn’t argue with the results.

  Not all the monkeys charged me.

  Some watched.

  Some flung shit.

  But some charged.

  And with Cabbagy’s Leafy Layered Fist and Cabbagy Stance, I brought them down.

  “I! Hate! That! This! Works!”

  When my strikes drew blood, Cabbagy commanded that my roots seek nutrients. I did my best to steal blood and form another layer around my fists. The double level of manipulation it took to do that was incredibly difficult.

  Still, even though it made my gloves harder to wield, they were larger and tougher.

  I reduced another monkey to mush under the force of my blow, and that was the final straw.

  The remaining five monkeys rushed away into the pines.

  With no desire to chase them, and my willpower strained, I collapsed to my knees in the needles.

  I was more bone than flesh at this point. What few scraps hung off me were loose and ragged and dripping.

  “Well,” Cabbagy said. “What do you say, kid?”

  “Thanks, master,” I said with my skeleton voice as I spat out a piece of my lung.

  The blood from my fists swirled back into my body, and the excess promptly splashed onto the ground.

  There was one disturbing trickle of blood from my nose. Whether it was an injury, an aneurysm from the overuse of manipulation, or splatter from the monkey skull I'd clapped between my hands… I couldn’t tell. In any case, I sniffed it back inside my brutalized face.

  I sighed with the harsh voice of a lipless skull.

  "Do I know your Cabbagy Style now?"

  "What?" Cabbagy said with so much shock that he rolled over. "Ah ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!"

  If I wasn't a skull, I would have blushed.

  "Ok, I get it," I said.

  "Kid," Cabbagy said as he wheezed through the tears. "I don't think you get it at all! It took me my whole life as a cabbage to master my style, and even in this strange existence where I've lost my roots and my wife and I have to teach you, I am still learning."

  I sighed.

  "Fair enough," I said. "I'll keep learning then. I want to know how you shot my fingerbones out like darts."

  "Ah, yes, the fabled Silique Stab... One day, my foolish apprentice, one day... but until then..."

  "Yes?"

  "You need more nutrients! Look at you, all skin and bones. Heh heh heh."

  I couldn't help but chuckle. That was a good one. So, I went over and picked him up.

  “I’m not exactly looking forward to this next part,” I said.

  “You have it better than me, kid. My master made me eat cow shit."

  That did sound worse.

  "You've convinced me, master. Time for me to go and get all the nutrients I can, just like a good cabbage.”

  I sighed again and crawled over to the first of the fifteen monkeys lying on the ground. If I wanted to regenerate, I would need fuel.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was ravenous, and even with the fur, their qi-soaked meat did much to fill my tummy and the spiritual larder in my soul. Each beast had a crunchy piece in the center that Cabbagy called a core. The cores and even the flesh spread that strange heat through my body, but it was a meager offering compared to the wave I’d experienced in the pagoda.

  Cabbagy said it would make me stronger.

  The more spirit beast meat I devoured, the tougher my own meat would become. I’d yet to feel anything like that, but I didn’t mind if it would take a while. Once I started eating, strength wasn’t on my mind — only hunger.

  Dawn came as I slurped the last monkey’s tail down like a thick, chewy noodle full of bones.

  It was hard to say if I felt different. The consumed flesh helped supercharge my regeneration, and these monkeys had some level of cultivation, but none of them hit me with the same heat I'd felt after that wave of energy — which I positively knew was demonic qi after cross-referencing with Ghost Fang's memories — or after eating Ren Feilong's nose. That was definitely food for thought, especially if I wanted to get stronger.

  And I needed to get stronger if I was going to avoid being locked up in a facility again.

  With my body restored, and the reservoir in my soul full of blood, I wandered close to Falling Hen village. Cabbagy snored under my arm as, with some trepidation, I made my way through the pines to inspect the settlement after last night’s siege.

  ###

  I stood at the treeline’s edge and inspected Falling Hen as it sat under the morning’s rosy glow. Villagers bustled about the outside, digging away at the ramps of earth formed against their wooden walls. If they didn’t clear those away, any spirit beast could simply stroll up into their village.

  Since the monkeys were all gone, there was no doubt that something else would come along and claim the territory. I had no doubt the villagers would be fine. Even as I watched, they started singing cheerful work songs. This was not the sound of people mourning the losses of life that came from a tragic spirit beast tide.

  In the end, I wasn't sure what Qian Ling had decided about me being a demonic cultivator. Since the woods weren't crawling with members of the Shining Mountain Sect, I tentatively took it as a good sign. Still, it wouldn't do to linger and push my luck. So, deciding to let the village be, I stole away through the pines and headed north to continue my mission.

  I found a road that helped me get my bearings, and I continued along for most of the day without seeing anybody at all. We stopped around noon, with Cabbagy directing me to a glade off the beaten path where he insisted I practice the Clenched Leaves Fist against the pine trees standing there. Every time I struck a tree, I had to hit any pinecones that fell from the branches above. Since it was spring, there weren’t any pinecones, and Cabbagy berated me for not hitting hard enough.

  It was tricky to maintain the multiple layers, so maybe he was right.

  After practicing some more, we continued along, trading ideas back and forth about what to do next time I was stuck under a mountain of rubble, or if something else equally improbable — but distinctly possible — ever occurred.

  A disturbing number of his plans relied on me finding a convenient corpse to help my regeneration, but at least he helped me bounce ideas.

  It was nice to talk to Cabbagy, but I found myself missing people already.

  The only real interaction I had was at a crossroads where two farmers had stopped to converse and smoke their pipes.

  “Hello, there,” I said with a smile and a wave.

  They stared at me as though I were interrupting something deeply intimate. After it became clear they weren’t going to greet me back, I pointed down one of the roads.

  “Is that the way to the Sleeping Ruin Pass?”

  They nodded, staring at me.

  Feeling incredibly uncomfortable under their gaze, I left them alone.

  I could feel their eyes burning into me as I walked away, but they didn’t do or say anything.

  “What was that about?” I asked the road.

  “Sorry!” said the road with a smile. “I don’t know!”

  “That’s alright,” I said as I glanced back.

  “Don’t ask the road anything,” Cabbagy said disdainfully. “They don’t even know where they’re going.”

  They were still watching me, and so I trotted faster. If they were cultivators, they would have started something, but they were mortal, and I had no desire to be the instigator in a problem — even if accidentally.

  Thankfully, I saw nobody else on the road.

  The pines gave way to more varied trees and shrubs, with undergrowth filling in between the trunks and turning the uniform forest into something more tangled and wild. I suppose this must be the old border of Ghost Fang’s territory. The slopes of the mountains were visible now, looming above the trees as the road wound toward a dark fold in the peaks that could only be the Sleeping Ruin Pass.

  Night gathered at the edges of the sky as the road tilted under my feet. I spied a few flickering campfires like a string of burning beads up along the mountain slope. Feeling a little lonely and put out after my interaction with the farmers earlier, I jogged uphill toward the closest campfire.

  As I made my way up the path, I heard snoring, and my heart sank a little. It would be very rude to interrupt someone sleeping, and if another person was camping with them, we could hardly converse while someone slept nearby. Nope, there was nothing to it but for me to continue.

  Their campfire was set a little way from the road, and I glanced over as I walked past — if only to see what human companionship I missed out on.

  A monstrous green snake lay curled around a fire with a huge, bulging belly. Two tents sat behind the snake with their flaps open, revealing nobody inside. The snake’s forked tongue flickered in and out as it snored like a saw cutting wood.

  “Gasp!” said the road beneath me. “The snake must have been so confused as to how it could sleep in two tents that it passed out! Good thing it has that fire to stay warm… though how did it light the fire in the first place?”

  I looked down at the road.

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Hmmm,” the road said, so deep in thought it barely heard me.

  I ignored the road and walked over to the snake, but before I could get too close, I saw someone waving to me from the bushes. They were crouched down, almost hidden, their black robe blending in with the night.

  I stopped walking and raised an eyebrow.

  Was that…

  “Special Inspector Deng?” I whispered to myself. “What’s he doing here?”

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