I crashed into Jiang Jian and tackled him into the kitchen wall. Pots dented and clattered under our combined weight. He threw me away, but blood tendrils reached from my wounds and kept a hold of him. It was a large kitchen, and we tossed each other across every inch of it, grappling and wrestling as we destroyed shelves, stoves, and tiled walls. Bags of rice burst, vegetables and meat spilled, and boiling oil sloshed onto the floor. We knocked wood from the stove and sent flames licking at the walls.

  He kicked and punched, and I took his hits, using my lack of pain to get closer to him. His cultivation made him strong and fast, but with so much blood flowing through my muscles, I was more than capable of keeping up with my hydraulic capability. Everything seemed so straightforward. He was my enemy, and I would do anything to destroy him.

  He jabbed my armpit with flaming fingers and stabbed through my flesh.

  A hidden knot of blood, combined with a pocket of air stolen from my lungs, burst and sent tendrils out that pinned his arm in place.

  Using the momentum, I gripped his arm, sending blood racing down his skin and dousing his flames. I pulled myself closer, knocking him down, until my teeth were inches from his throat.

  Knowing that every second I delayed, Cabbagy got further away, sent me into a cold-minded frenzy. I couldn’t afford to be irrational. All I could do was kill this man so that I could pursue his juniors.

  His face contorted in rage as I knocked him to the floor.

  “Monster!” he shouted at me.

  “Kidnapper!” I shouted back.

  There were screams of mortals elsewhere in the building. We were in a kitchen, but I didn’t know what else lay around us.

  I didn’t care.

  My mind could only focus on eliminating the man who stood between me and my master.

  The qi-rich flesh I’d swallowed earlier was already spreading annealing heat through my body. My willpower manipulated the blood of one gauntlet and spread it across Jian Jiang’s chest, pinning him to the floor as I raised my other hand and congealed blood around my fist into a bloody hammer.

  His eyes widened, and I slammed down into his face. My blow broke his nose, and I reached for his blood to steal, but his qi repelled me. No matter. If I couldn’t steal his blood, I would simply beat it out of him.

  I punched him again and again, but his eyes flashed with light, and the fire along his arms burned incandescence. My blood flash-boiled and exploded. He escaped in the burst of steam and slipped out from under me.

  His knee hit my head while I was still on the ground, and launched me up through the ceiling. I crashed down onto the floor of a yum cha restaurant. There were dozens of wide, round tables with tablecloths that touched the floor. Attendants in yellow robes pushed carts of food between, but attendants and customers ran, screaming as Jiang Jian leaped up after me.

  He pelted me with fireballs, and each one melted my skin and singed the muscle beneath. I didn’t bother with healing, since bone manipulation would let me move anyway.

  But it wasn’t smart to take more damage than needed. I launched myself away from him, ducking between the tables as he continued to launch fireballs after me.

  It took me a second to pull more blood from my reservoir, and now I only had about a quarter of a tank left. I couldn’t let him burn away my blood again — that had been too damaging to my supplies.

  But I knew he didn’t have unlimited qi either. I believed my stamina would outlast his, but even though the restaurant was clear of mortals, I could hear them shouting for guards.

  This fight had a time limit, and I refused to let it be interrupted.

  He stopped throwing fireballs, confirming my theory about his qi, but the crackle of the flames on his arms continued. Hazy smoke drifted through the air as he stalked between the tables, trying to track me down.

  “You are a disgusting excuse for a cultivator,” he said with a snarl. “Only a fiend would use the methods you did.”

  “You attacked me!” I shouted as I darted between tables.

  A moment later, the table I’d just been hiding under exploded into flames.

  “Missed!” I shouted. “You fucking wanker!”

  “We attacked you because of your dishonor!” he shouted back. “You feigned poverty when you stole my juniors’ rooms, but then they saw you wearing opulent robes.”

  Oh. That actually broke through my icy rage.

  “I can explain that,” I said as I scurried under tables.

  He scoffed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said as he threw a fireball in the wrong direction. “Your deception will die with you.”

  I smiled to myself. He couldn’t tell where I was, but, more than that, he had the wrong idea about this. I wasn’t going to stop until he told me what I needed to know.

  His foot creaked on the ground nearby, and blood filled my intact muscles as I tossed a table at him.

  ###

  Jiang Jian was filled with righteousness as he stalked between the tables. He was hunting the man who not only deceived his juniors, but dared to attack them like an animal! Such actions could not be forgiven.

  And they would not be.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  A table flew at him, and he shattered it with a dismissive spin kick. Splinters flew away as the tablecloth tore in half. His eyes widened.

  “What the —?”

  Then the dismembered hand struck him in the neck and started throttling him.

  ###

  Chen Ai tapped her fingers on the booth at the quiet inn. The cultivator formerly known as the Flawless Blade sat opposite her. A half-drunk tea set sat between them, along with the three gifts that her senior brother received earlier that morning.

  Her nap had rejuvenated her, and after bathing and putting herself together, she emerged from her room to find that her senior brother had left a note telling her to wait.

  So, she waited.

  The cultivator formerly known as the Flawless Blade likewise read the note and decided to wait.

  Chen Ai couldn’t believe how bored — and hungover — she was.

  “Do you think we should just open them?” she asked as she gestured at the gifts.

  “Stop asking that,” the cultivator formerly known as the Flawless Blade said.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “Have you thought of a new name yet?”

  “I shall let my master decide what name — if any — I shall adopt.”

  She sighed again and took a sip of cold tea.

  “I wonder what’s keeping him?”

  ###

  I felt my hand close around Jiang Jian’s windpipe at the same time he let out a gurgle. There was no way I would be able to crush his throat — his qi-strengthened flesh felt like bamboo in my grip — but I only needed to distract him.

  As he fought for my hand, I charged at him, leaping from table to table and kicking aside plates of dumplings, string beans, tofu, ribs, and endless sauces. This was probably a great restaurant, too bad the flames were only growing higher.

  Jiang Jian gripped his throat with one hand, trying to peel my dismembered hand away, and aimed his other hand at me. A lance of white fire spat toward me.

  With a grimace, I launched myself through his fire.

  He smirked at my foolhardy move.

  I couldn’t blame him.

  He had already seen how easily he could burn my flesh. My actions probably looked like suicide to him. But you can’t act suicidal if you can’t die.

  The qi-fueled flame sent an ache through my body as my flesh melted, but it was a pale imitation of the facility’s Cleansing Flame Formation.

  In the seconds it took me to sail through the air, I was reduced to a charred and grisly skeleton. He stepped aside nimbly as I clattered to the ground.

  I remained perfectly still on the ground.

  Anyone would think I was dead.

  Jiang Jian ripped my hand from around his throat and tossed it down onto the ground beside me. He took a deep, heaving breath and sagged to his knees. Now that he thought I was dead, he let his exhaustion show.

  “What a monster,” he muttered to himself. “What an actual monster. But this is another glorious achievement for the Celebration Flame Sect. My juniors will be relieved.”

  Was he talking to himself? What an asshole.

  Still, I kept silent, because I knew what he was going to do next. My willpower and stamina always took a hit after I lost all my flesh, but I’d kept a small portion inside my soul reservoir, and I let my energy recuperate as I waited.

  The flames grew inside the building, and people shouted outside, but Jiang Jian was cool and collected as he climbed to his feet and walked over to me. Following the instincts of all cultivators, he inspected my body.

  “Doesn’t this bastard have a storage treasure?” he muttered to himself. “Don’t tell me the heavens would be so cruel that I don’t even receive a reward for killing such a fiend?”

  He lifted my arm to inspect for any spatial rings, and I struck.

  “Gotchya, bitch!”

  I sprang from the floor and wrapped around him. With no muscles, I lacked strength, but I was fast. Before he could react, my teeth sank into his throat, and I drank.

  Blood flowed into my skull and created a throat as it rapidly drained into my body. I let my regeneration bubble away, restoring my body as I slurped at his blood.

  He fought me, but I concentrated my bone and blood manipulation on keeping myself locked around him completely. Flames raced up his arms, and my flesh sizzled, but he generously provided the blood to renew me.

  The amount of blood in a human is both a lot and a little. It’s a lot when you drain someone and spread it across the floor, but it’s a little when you lose some and try to stay conscious.

  Though he was certainly a better fighter than I was, in the end, he fucked up by threatening Cabbagy. When you can’t kill someone, the only option you have is to run away. It’s a lesson he knew now, but it was too late.

  Without any fanfare — ironic considering his sect’s name — he slumped to the ground. His eyelids flickered as his skin paled, and I stood above him, completely regenerated and feeling as bright and hot as the flames he’d thrown at me. In the past ten minutes, I’d eaten more cultivator than ever before, and my mind was almost dizzy with the overwhelming surge of power it gave me.

  Even after fighting and then completely regenerating, my willpower and stamina were refreshed. My soul reservoir was only a third full, but I knew how I could fix that.

  Taking a moment to disrobe him and hang his clothes aside, I sat down and ate Jiang Jian.

  Perhaps I should have said something poignant or acted with some ceremony, but I knew there wasn’t long before the guards came, and I had to ensure that I took this opportunity while it was here.

  My body demanded I consume him, and I couldn’t deny that urge.

  So, naked, kneeling, and with my jaw dislocated to ensure I could fit more into my throat, I ripped his qi-rich flesh apart and stuffed it into my mouth. I worked in a blur, his blood spattering, but since he was dead, his qi had a weaker grip on his flesh, and I could use blood manipulation to pull his pieces down my throat and into my belly. My guts ballooned out as I did what I could to rip his carcass apart.

  In minutes, I had taken the juiciest morsels, and the heat flooding my body was almost enough to make me forget where I was, to forget about Cabbagy, Chen Ai, my disciple — even the flower and my quest.

  There was just bliss.

  But then flames licked my skin.

  “Hey?” said the flames.

  “What?”

  “Do you mind if we cook you?”

  “I mind,” I said with a burp.

  “Oh,” said the flames. “Just, you know, you make eating people look delicious, but we don’t like eating our food raw.”

  I blinked. The flames were stupid. Raw food was fine.

  I looked at the blood on my hands, and my distended belly, and the gory mess that was once Jiang Jian. The restaurant was up in flames. Since these flames had no qi, I barely felt the heat, but it wouldn’t be good to stay here and undo all the regeneration I’d just put myself through.

  I stumbled away from his bones, regretting that I couldn’t crack them for the marrow, and reached for his robes.

  Which was when the walls exploded with a shockwave of air that snuffed the flames and launched me from my feet. I flew across the restaurant and crashed into the wall before hitting the ground.

  My body lay stunned as two guards in stone wood armor stepped into the now charred, but extinguished, restaurant.

  “Damn auctions,” the first guard spat. “Always attracting troublemakers.”

  I couldn’t move, which was when I realized my neck had been twisted around by my impact with the wall. Slowly, my control returned, and I rotated my neck while remaining as quiet as possible. It would be a nightmare if the guards found me now.

  “Heh, at least it looks like one of them got what was coming,” said the second guard as she lifted the gristly bones. “Though what kind of technique could do that to someone?”

  “You’re sick,” said the first guard. “Put that shit down before you make me vomit.”

  The second guard laughed.

  “Don’t be a pansy,” she said. “Besides, witnesses said there were two fighters. One in black and red robes, and one in gold. I don’t see any… oh, here’s the black and red robes.”

  Damn.

  They walked over to the robes I’d been about to use to cover my nudity.

  “I recognize that symbol,” said the first guard. “The Celebration Flame Sect. They’ve been camped out in Flint Oak Park since all the inns are booked.”

  “You want to return the bones to them?”

  “No,” said the first guard with a retch. “You take that nasty shit to the sect bastards, I’ll deal with the restaurateur.”

  “Sounds good,” said the second guard as she vanished the bones and robes into a storage ring. “See you back at the barracks for a beer?”

  “Of course!”

  They leaped through the hole they’d made, and I lay in the silent restaurant. I’d been lucky that they hadn’t seen me, and that their senses hadn’t picked me up, but that wasn’t why I was grinning.

  No, I was happy because now I knew where the sect pricks took Cabbagy.

  You can support the story and read 25 chapters ahead on Patreon.