I tried to remove Cabbagy from my neck, but I could no longer control my body. The traitorous vegetable tutted as he bent down and scooped up my skull, tucking me under his — my! — arm.
“What are you doing, Cabbagy? You'd better let me go!”
“I’m doing what I have to do,” he said. “I’ll save this village, so you can save Mu Min.”
Save for the few taken down by arrows, there must have been over thirty spirit beasts still on the offensive. The Howling Spirit Monkeys climbed up the wooden walls with nimble grace. There were no more arrows, since all the guards at the top were busy fighting for their lives and for the village. In mere moments, the rest of the monkeys would reach the top, and their brute Qi Condensing strength would tear the guards apart.
Even if I were undying, there was no way I could overcome that many.
Cabbagy didn’t share my concerns.
He sprang forward, moving my bones with a grace and agility I never could have replicated. As he approached the defences, he leaped off the ground from far behind where I would have tried jumping. My skeletal body sailed up through the air before landing atop the face of a monkey halfway up the wall.
The spirit beast squawked and slipped down. It fell back even further as it reached for my legs, but Cabbagy was already gone. He leaped from monkey to monkey, kicking them down to the torn ground below, and using them like stairs to climb to the top of the wall. Landing atop a monkey's neck — the beast grunted and slid a few feet down the wall — he spun at my pelvis with my arms outstretched, and sent my fingers flying out like darts.
The bone projectiles pierced the eyes of ten monkeys, sending them screeching down to the ground.
Cabbagy moved my body with well-oiled efficiency. There was no more extra strength, but the level of precision he used was beyond anything I could have even attempted.
With a gesture, my finger bones flew back to his hands, clicking into place as he leaped from monkey to monkey. They lashed at him, but none were fast enough — no, that wasn’t it.
He was never in a place for them to even touch him.
“How are you doing this?”
“Never doubt a veteran, kid.”
He delivered a savage kick to a monkey’s throat and sent it to the ground.
There were only a few left, but they’d climbed over the top of the wall. Cabbagy’s leaves tracked them, breaching the defences. He climbed higher.
“Cabbagy!” I hissed at him. “Don’t let the villagers see my bones!”
“Bah, quit your worrying, kid.”
The monkeys on the ground were recovering, and while some lay with twisted necks, around twenty were climbing their way back up the walls.
Up on the battlements, the guards fought with spears and fierce determination. They cried out in defiance, and the monkeys screamed with hungry rage.
“Destroy them, my soldiers!” Ghost Fang shouted from the statue as he watched the assault. “Break their bones and bring me the marrow!”
If I did nothing, it would be a slaughter. If I fought, I risked people noticing me for a monster.
But would I rather be seen, or have no witnesses left behind?
Cabbagy didn’t share my concerns, and so I could only place my hope in his reckless plan. He reached the top of the wall. The melee was so thick that nobody noticed him.
“Don’t you fuck me, Cabbagy!” I shouted as he kicked off a monkey’s face and launched us into a flip high above the battlements.
###
How could something so large move so fast and so silently? Qian Ling stood frozen as Ghost Fang hung there, completely blocking off the view from the pagoda balcony. He was three times taller than any person she’d ever met. His fangs were the length of her arm.
They hadn’t even noticed him wake up, yet now he was right on top of them. Did his power eclipse them so thoroughly? No, she had to be resolute.
“Two little cultivators,” his deep voice echoed through her mind. “Just when I was ready for a meal. I think I’ll taste the pale one first…”
He reached for her, almost lazily, but with terrifying speed.
Qian Ling and Mu Min responded with synchronized grace, and it felt as though everything was going in their favor…
Qian Ling leaped past the ape and spun out her qi garotte. Mu Min leaped in the other direction and grabbed the threads Qian Ling tossed her. Working in silent tandem, they pulled the thread around the ape’s neck as they leaped past him.
Perfect execution.
Ghost Fang choked as they placed all their weight on the attack. It had been timed and performed with the precision and grace of two Shining Mountain Sect inner disciples. Pride soared in Qian Ling’s chest.
She stood on the boughs of the pagoda pine, with Mu Min beside her, and both of them pulled at the cord around Ghost Fang’s neck. The demonic spirit beast would either choke or be beheaded.
The Hidden Master had been right to trust them!
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Then her qi threads snapped.
The backlash of the broken technique caused Qian Ling to stumble and fall from the branch. She was too stunned to try and catch herself. An 8th-stage Qi Condensing Cultivator would survive this fall, but it wouldn’t be nothing…
Mu Min dove after her, hand outstretched.
But Ghost Fang was faster.
Just as Mu Min was about to grab Qian Ling, Ghost Fang appeared in a blur of movement. Once more, he moved too fast and too silently for them to do anything.
His huge hands wrapped around both women. Monstrous fingers squeezed and bones crunched. Ghost Fang’s nature as a spirit beast, his higher realm of cultivation, and the demonic infection in his qi made him an absolute powerhouse.
A savage, tusked grin curled his lips as he gripped the pine with one foot and dangled there. Both cultivators hung in his hands for a second before he hurled them at the ground.
Qian Ling spun through the air. She tried to throw out a qi strand to catch herself, but she was too disorientated from her broken technique, and before she could even pull on her qi, she struck the cracked tiles. Her breath blasted out of her as pain thrummed in her body.
Mu Min hit the ground beside her, fortunately landing on her feet like a cat. Her friend summoned her dao from her storage ring and held the heavy saber with grace.
“Are you alright, Qian Ling?” she asked.
Qian Ling made a noncommittal noise as she pulled herself upright. Her leg was sore, and putting too much weight on it might cause her to collapse.
Noxious fumes leaked up from the cracked pagoda floor. The smell made Qian Ling’s head spin.
No, she wasn’t out of the fight.
“We can still do this,” she said, but even she heard the waver in her voice.
“What exactly can you do?” Ghost Fang hooted. “Tickle me?”
The massive ape laughed as he swung from branch to branch and hurled himself down to the ground like a meteor. Tiles cracked further under his weight, and the air rippled as more vapors filled the pagoda’s lowest chamber.
Pale fire burned in his eyes.
“I see a misty sword and a silver spider,” he said with a smile. “Which one will be tastier?”
Mu Min readied her saber.
“You shall eat nobody, you abomination!”
Her qi flexed out, and mist wove up out of the demonic vapors. Ghost Fang smiled and inhaled. His flaring nostrils pulled Mu Min’s technique toward his face, and he breathed it in deeply.
The pale fire in his eyes burned brighter as he waded toward the two cultivators.
Qian Ling tried to use Mu Min’s mist for cover, but the technique dissipated before it even fully formed.
A silver-furred hand reached for her, and she kicked away.
“We have to climb!” she shouted, her voice already hoarse from inhaling the vapors.
Mu Min didn’t respond, but Qian Ling saw the dark-haired cultivator leaping up the branches of the pagoda pine.
Qian Ling followed, doing everything she could to gain elevation and escape the demonic vapors. If she breathed those in for too long, she would lose her qi and then lose consciousness. Already, she would need to spend a week detoxing in the Shining Mountain Sect’s Medical Pavilion.
If she even made it out of here alive…
She discarded such thoughts. They would not serve her here. With rapid leaps, she moved from branch to branch until she reached the fifth-floor balcony. Her leg ached with every jump, and she could feel the cracked bones shifting.
While the excitement of the battle flushed through her, she knew she could keep moving. But the second she stopped, the second she really noticed the pain…
It would be over.
Ghost Fang laughed from down amongst the pine’s overgrown roots.
“You come into my home and attack me, but you run away after a couple of slaps? No, that won’t do.”
He inhaled mightily, and the vapors swirled around him. His muscles bunched as he squatted, his pale eyes fixed on Qian Ling.
She gasped when she understood his intention.
Faster than ever before, she summoned her net technique.
“Dew Catching Web!”
She spun her strands between the balcony and the pine, casting them as wide and as sharp as possible. The technique absorbed her complete attention. She could barely keep track of Ghost Fang, let alone Mu Min. There were only seconds — less — before the demonic ape arrived, and she meant to cut and snare him as much as possible.
Enlightenment brushed against her mind as she drew from her years of studying the razor spiders that lived in the mountains.
Her technique snapped into place with a flash of moonlight.
Less than a moment later, Ghost Fang's leap crashed him straight into her qi strands. The technique held — barely — and bloody lines crisscrossed Ghost Fang’s fur. The ape roared and flexed against the strands that bundled against him. His efforts only produced more blood, which seeped and steamed as it emerged at a boiling temperature due to his demonic nature.
The heat of the oozing blood made it even harder to maintain the integrity of her qi strands.
Qian Ling’s dantian plummeted as she poured everything she had into repairing the technique against the brute’s unreasonable strength.
The pale fire in his eyes burned as silver as her hair as she focused on keeping him trapped. Her hands were outstretched, fingers clawed like the legs of a spider.
The ape hung in the air, bundled by her strands, frozen in his leap toward her. She kept him in place, but his efforts were wearing her down and draining her qi.
It was a standoff, but she had no illusions that she was slowly losing.
“Just a little longer…”
Mu Min plummeted down from the top of the pagoda. Her dao stretched out before her like the beak of a steel-winged falcon. Mist wreathed around the blade and trailed her fall.
Qian Ling pulled on her technique, stretching Ghost Fang’s head forward to expose his neck. The strain sent pain pulsing through Qian Ling’s body, and she gritted her teeth so hard she felt a trickle of blood leak over her lips.
Qi flared from Mu Min.
“Misty Blade Strike!” she shouted.
She slammed down, slashing her saber deep into the muscles of Ghost Fang’s neck.
The ape shrieked as his blood splashed out.
His demonic blood.
It hissed and sprayed in a wave of steam. Mu Min leaped away, holes eaten into her robe, and her skin mottled with burns. Her blade was half slagged and red hot from the wound she delivered.
The fire in Ghost Fang’s eyes burned so hot that the flesh in his face smoked and charred.
“Enough of this,” he growled so deep the pagoda trembled.
With a flex, he shattered Qian Ling’s technique.
Qian Ling staggered as backlash raced through her body. She was almost out of qi completely, and when Ghost Fang reached for her, it took the last of her strength to leap away.
She landed on the balcony and ran along it.
Ghost Fang roared as his steaming blood dripped onto the balcony’s stone floor. Reaching down, his monstrous fingers ripped apart chunks of brick and mortar. He hurled the masonry at her like a siege weapon. Her aching muscles were strong enough to dodge the first few strikes, but when a hit shattered the balcony she stood on, she fell.
Cycling her qi, she tried to produce a strand… but couldn’t pull the technique together.
Ghost Fang wasn’t content with her falling, and he leaped after her.
Mu Min met him in the air.
Half of her face was burned from Ghost Fang’s boiling blood. One eye was sealed shut from the red swelling. She’d discarded her infected outer robe and fought only in wrappings and undergarments. It would have been scandalous if not for the murderous glint in her visible eye and the flash of the spare dao she summoned from her storage ring.
Her dao swung at Ghost Fang’s hand and severed the tips of his grasping fingers.
The ape bellowed. He kicked Mu Min, using her as a mid-air platform to leap away.
Qian Ling managed to get a thread out and caught herself on a branch. With another quick thread, she caught Mu Min’s foot. Her qi rushed through her body, but the strain was too much, and both threads snapped.
At least they had less distance to fall.
Mu Min tumbled, but righted herself before she struck the cracked ground at the base of the pine.
Qian Ling hit the ground with less grace.
Ghost Fang crashed down to the ground after them, sending a shudder through the pagoda that caused chips of masonry to rain down.
Mu Min staggered over and stood in defense of Qian Ling. Noxious fumes billowed up, but Mu Min banished them with a qi-filled gesture. The dark-haired cultivator kept her saber ready as Ghost Fang circled.
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