Dai Hang wanted to slap Ye Bin for uttering such nonsense. He wanted to shout at his martial brother to stop being so damned ridiculous. He did neither, because he saw it too. Call it fear, imagination, or insanity, but somewhere in the creases, in the mold, in the blood stains, there was a face.
“We’re stressed,” Ye Bin said, her quiet voice softly insisting upon reason. “We are seeing shapes as though we are looking at the dancing smoke of an elder’s techniques. This is just a rotten cabbage. No more, and no less.”
They all stared, as though collective will could make her words a reality.
“You saw that man’s terrible techniques,” said He Yan. “Who knows what this cabbage truly is? If it is a cabbage at all?”
“Perhaps it is a treasure?” Dai Hang ventured, his mind turning, as it always did, to wealth. “He fought as though we’d stolen his child, and with everyone gathering for the auction, who knows what kinds of strange treasures have been collected in this city?”
“Jiang Jian will know what it is,” Ye Bin said. “If it is anything at all. We should focus on recovering our qi and preparing for the auction. What happened to Cao Wu is a tragedy, but we mustn’t let it distract us from the mission.”
They all nodded, swayed by the quiet wisdom in her words, and one by one they closed their eyes and cultivated — except Dai Heng. He hadn’t lost that much qi in the fight, nor had he spent much qi tending to Cao Wu. He’d been called selfish before, but, in reality, he was a survivor.
While his companions practiced their breathing techniques, he stared down at the rotten cabbage and, horribly, it stared back. It drew in his eyes, and it took a moment for him to hear the commotion in the park. Shouting came from tents nearby, and Dai Hang tore his gaze away from the rotten vegetable.
“There you are!” shouted a voice that sent cold racing through Dai Hang’s spine. “Give me back my cabbage!”
Dai Hang’s heart raced, and, for a moment, he couldn’t believe what he saw. The deceiver stomped toward their campsite with two cultivators at his back. But if he were here, that could only mean…
“No…”
“Jiang Jian has fallen,” He Yan whispered sorrowfully.
“We’re dead,” Ye Bin said.
Jiang Jian was the strongest of them. If the deceiver defeated him, then how could the three of them hope to win a fight?
“No,” Dai Hang muttered as he reached for his spear with trembling fingers. “No, this can’t be the end. We are of the Celebration Flame Sect, and our flames burn bright and strong. We can’t back down now!”
His martial companions nodded as they reached for their club and jian.
“Sorry, kids,” said the cabbage. “You’re fucked.”
Dai Heng blinked. Had the…? No. He shook his head. Stress made him think the rotting vegetable spoke to him, but that was impossible. The only voices he heard came from the approaching deceiver, his frightened sect mates, and the cultivators camped nearby who were watching the oncoming fight with martial glee.
There were so many people gathering to watch the fight, for dozens of colorful tents were spread underneath the flint oaks, and this gave Dai Heng an idea to even the odds…
###
Despite the frigid wrath in my mind, I felt a fire in my blood as I stormed through the tents in Flint Oak Park. We’d passed through the area where merchants had camped — doing our best to avoid being recognized by anyone who was delayed by our destruction of the southern bridge — and entered the area where cultivators were camping. Chen Ai told me that the qi here was thicker, and I took her at her word.
In all honesty, there were far more cultivators gathered than I had expected, even given how thick with pedestrians the city’s streets had been leading up to the auction. If I weren’t so angry, my mortal memories would have driven me away from this place as though it were on fire. It was almost fortunate that my lack of qi sense meant I couldn’t tell how powerful these groups were, but I imagined they couldn’t be particularly powerful if they were camped out in a park rather than inside an inn. Though they watched with interest, none stopped us as we made our way toward the red and gold tents of the Celebration Flame Sect.
Three of the cultivators who had attacked me stood with their weapons ready: a man with a club, a woman with a jian, and the red-hatted man with a spear.
“Is that them, master?” my disciple asked.
“Yes,” I said with a growl.
“Allow me to take care of them for you,” he said.
My eye twitched. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse to let him fight for me. I wanted to feel their blood splashing on my face, but perhaps letting him fight would prevent anyone from seeing how… demonic… I could be.
Chen Ai must have read this emotion in my face because she stepped forward.
“We take one each,” she said.
My disciple glanced at me for confirmation before nodding.
“As you say.”
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We stopped when there were about a hundred paces of soft grass between us and the Celebration Flame Sect. A ring of perhaps a hundred cultivators watched eagerly. There was a riot of colors in the sect robes and the drabber robes of the wandering cultivators, all of them standing out like bright plumaged birds against the backdrop of tall limestone oaks.
Tension filled the air between us.
“I could slice their throats from here,” my disciple said from my left. “A single swing would take them out.”
“We must appear honorable,” Chen Ai cautioned. “With so many bystanders, if our motives are misunderstood, there is a chance we could be attacked.”
My disciple scoffed, but he didn’t refute her words. On the way to the park, he’d explained his condition to me, and though I knew he was skilled and powerful, the pallid color of his skin told me that he was not the force of nature I’d encountered in the Sleeping Ruin Pass.
Chen Ai stood to my right, her back straight with the mountainous strength of her Ox Bloodline, but though her hand rested on her jian, there was still the faintest tremble. She’d yet to draw her blade in my presence.
If this went wrong, could any of us fight our way out of such a crowd? I knew I would survive, but what of my companions? What of Cabbagy?
With concentrated effort, I swallowed my rage enough to speak.
“You stole from me!” I said, and my accusation sliced through the air toward them. “Give me back what you took!”
There were murmurs from the onlookers, but I ignored them and kept my focus on the three members of the Celebration Flame Sect.
“What happened to Jiang Jian?” called back the man in the red hat.
The fire in my heart swelled at the mention of that man’s name.
“I killed him.”
Chen Ai and my disciple glanced at me as the murmuring stopped. Perhaps some of the onlookers knew of the man I killed, or perhaps they just acknowledged the seriousness of the moment. Though clearly outraged by this fact, the Celebration Flame Sect members were speechless, and so I seized the momentum.
“Give me back what you took and I will spare you.”
“You don’t need to do that, master.”
“I agree, senior brother. It is more honor than thieves deserve.”
I couldn’t refute their words. My whole body cried out to bathe in the blood of my enemies, to gorge myself on their qi-rich flesh, to stoke the flames in my soul until they burned the heavens… but I wasn’t here for revenge.
I was here to retrieve Cabbagy.
“You have one minute,” I shouted. “Before I come over there and take back what you stole, as well as your lives!”
“That was much more intimidating, master.”
“I agree, senior brother.”
Even to my own ears, I sounded like a righteous cultivator, for better or for worse.
###
The ultimatum was delivered, and the seconds passed, each one thudding like a drum in Dai Heng’s mind.
“What kind of madman would do all of this over a cabbage?” he muttered.
“We should give it back,” He Yan said. “Jiang Jian has fallen, and there is no need for us to die.”
“We should fight them,” Ye Bin argued as he placed his fist in his hand. “We must avenge our senior brother and uphold the honor of our sect.”
Dai Heng saw the logic in each argument, but he believed there was a third option. One that would help with his ultimate goal: survival.
The seconds ticked down as his sect mates looked to him. He was the one who began this, and they would follow his lead. Their trust in him was strong, and he would not let them down. Before the minute was over, he spoke.
“My name is Dai Heng of the Dai family!” he shouted to the assembled cultivators. “My family is amongst the wealthiest in the eastern Black Tiger Kingdom, and I swear on our honor that any cultivator here who fights with us against these vicious thugs shall receive a thousand silver coins for their efforts! If you kill one of these three, then you shall receive three thousand silver coins!”
A hush swept through the onlookers. The deceiver and his companions were stunned.
“What are you doing?” He Yan whispered. “That is not honorable.”
Dai Heng laughed.
“Who cares about honor right now?” he whispered back.
“This will only end in disaster.”
“Is that so?”
Dai Heng was right to feel smug, for one by one, groups of cultivators stepped forth from the ring of bystanders with eyes full of greed and fists full of qi.
###
Song Shuai spun his spear with anticipation. His yellow robes flickered as he bounced from foot to foot. Lightning crackled the length of his white handled weapon and made his long hair stand on end. So far, the only exciting part of this trip had been the pseudo-camping in Flint Oak Park. He refused to believe that this excursion was anything but a punishment, for the elders of the Furious Fulmination Sect had always disliked how much he fought amongst the other disciples. How else was someone supposed to bridge the gap from 9th Stage Qi Condensing to Foundation Establishment if not through combat?
“Join me,” he said to the two weaker disciples who were technically his minders. “This trip is about to get interesting.”
###
Their robes were drab as pigeon feathers, and their faces bland as congee, but the group of seven men and women was as dangerous as a spiked pit in the mist. The outriders of the Mu Clan would not pass this opportunity to earn money, nor test their mettle against cultivators.
Though they were all Body Tempering cultivators, with only their leader being in the early stages of Qi Condensing, they outnumbered their foes significantly. For them, the calculation was simple.
“We shall join,” they said without emotion.
###
Sun Meng of the Winter’s Heart Sect glanced at her martial sisters in their robes of snow white and frozen blue. Together, they were five of the strongest in the outer sect, with all of them being above the middle of the Qi Condensing Realm. They’d come from the Blue Serpent Kingdom to the north of the border and so far had been most displeased by this backwater kingdom.
“What do you think?” she asked, though she knew already how they would answer.
“We shall follow senior sister’s lead,” they answered with icy smiles.
“Good,” she said softly, before calling out. “The Snow Sisters of the Winter’s Heart Sect shall answer the call of the righteous!”
###
Three groups of cultivators stepped out of the crowd. Fifteen of them to join the three whom I had come here to fight. My companions and I stood back to back as our opponents slowly formed a loose ring to encircle us. The rest of the onlookers remained in the distance, though I couldn’t ignore them, as any one of them might join in at any time.
“This is why I hate nobles,” Chen Ai muttered.
“Don’t worry,” my disciple said with a smirk. “None of them stands a chance against master.”
“I’m not worried about him!”
“I must retrieve Cabbagy,” I said to my companions. “I’ll help as soon as I can, but will you watch my back?”
“Of course, master. None shall interfere with your mission.”
“Heh,” Chen Ai said with a shake of her horns. “I owe you my life, don’t I?”
My heart soared at their words of affirmation. Pride in them, and in our relationship, surged through my blood as I used blood manipulation to empower my muscles. The fire in my flesh roared with a lion’s emotion, and I felt a sensation in my mind like a door opening as I stepped toward the Celebration Flame Sect.
The heat in my body was overwhelming. I couldn’t contain it, but I didn’t need to.
Flames burst from my hands. I was shocked, but my street rat memories quickly understood what I had stolen. They helped me recover enough to seize the fire, guiding it up my arms to form blazing armor that reduced my robe’s sleeves to ash.
I’d seen this not an hour ago: Jiang Jian’s technique.
The heat in my heart was the qi I stole from his flesh. What was his was now mine. I saw the shocked recognition in the eyes of the Celebration Flame Sect cultivators, and I rejoiced. Now, truly, they understood.
They fucked up, and nothing would save them from me.
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