My echoing laughter faded as I stood at the center of the ritual. Despite the crawling demonic qi and the catatonic cabbages and my recent brush with self-discovery, I was bored.

  Sometimes, having four lives' worth of perception can make me feel extra impatient. The ritual was progressing slowly, with the minute amount of qi I’d taken from Jiang Jian burning through the sigils one by one like water moving through pipes. Cabbagy and Cabbajoe’s souls were visible when I squinted. They reached toward each other like a pale rainbow. How long would it take? An hour? An eternity?

  If only I had more qi!

  It might be the first time since waking in the facility that I had such a thought. Probably not, now that I think about it, but while meeting my past selves had put a lot of things into perspective, it had still left me rattled. In much the same way that almost getting hit by a runaway carriage left my merchant with newfound wisdom, even as my legs wobbled.

  I wanted to ask Cabbagy about it, but it felt rude to interrupt him mid-procedure. If I even could interrupt him, that is. So, I started whistling.

  The crisp, warbling sound rang out and bounced between the stone walls. To my delight, the walls glowed with specks of soft blue light. It was a crystal that responded to specific frequencies, my merchant memory told me, and it used to be quite fashionable to have trinkets made from the fragile crystal.

  The delight bubbled up into laughter, and as my cackle rang out the soft light faded. Was I perhaps laughing too much lately? As if! Nobody can laugh too much, and so I laughed more. It was while my head was thrown back and my arms were outstretched and my laughter roared up from lungs I didn’t need, that I smelled something other than blood and rotten cabbage.

  Faintly at first, and then stronger, came the floral scent of plum blossoms carried on a draft that shouldn’t be there.

  I frowned, and my laughter echoed as I opened my eyes.

  The door to the warehouse stood ajar, and there at the edge of the sigils stood five women dressed in clothes so dark their silhouettes blended with the shadows cast by the flickering candles.

  From the way their eyes locked onto me, I knew they saw nothing good about this situation, and I couldn’t blame them. What could I possibly say? Options jumbled through my mind.

  “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  No, that wouldn’t do.

  “I can explain.”

  But could I really?

  “You’re trespassing!”

  That might work, but what if this was their warehouse?

  In the end, I settled for a tried and true classic.

  “Hello,” I said with a polite bow. “Can I help you?”

  The five women continue staring with their cold eyes, and behind them, not yet through the door, stood a bulkier silhouette in the stone wood armor of the Mountain Root City guards. That was certainly not good. I wasn’t entirely familiar with the laws of Mountain Root City, but it was easy to guess that they frowned on demonic rituals.

  The last of my echoing laughter faded.

  Only the flickering sound of candles interrupted the tension of the standoff.

  My past selves crowded me to offer their advice. Well, not quite advice.

  There’s nowhere to run…

  The truth will only get us in even more trouble…

  I doubt I can bribe my way out of this situation…

  Which left only the last corner of advice.

  Kill them all.

  But they hadn’t done anything to me, so…

  Take their qi and accelerate the ritual.

  Oh.

  That was a good idea.

  But if I attacked them, then a fight would break out, and that would damage the sigils. I couldn’t allow that. Maybe we would fight, and maybe we wouldn’t, but such decisions would be better made in a different room.

  So, I stepped towards them, carefully placing my feet on the clear stone ground and avoiding the patterns of blood.

  “Stay where you are,” said one of the women in black.

  She was clearly the leader, and I stopped where I was. I met her gaze, hoping to use Ghost Fang’s gaze to get her to step back, but a stronger presence resisted me.

  Damn.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You haven’t told me what this is about?” I asked, hoping to resolve this with words.

  “What this is…” she shook her head with the first display of emotion I’d seen so far. “You’re a demonic cultivator!”

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m not.”

  “Then how do you explain this?”

  I looked around innocently.

  “Explain what?”

  She glared.

  “Now I know why the City Lord put a kill order out on you and your party.”

  Her words sent a chill through my body. My blood pumped faster in preparation.

  “You’re trying to kill my party? You shouldn’t do that.”

  She scoffed.

  “You are a sorcerer hiding behind rituals and sacrifice. The plum blossoms have nothing to fear from you?”

  The five women drew swords in one synchronized motion.

  I held up my hand.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I said. “I’ll come to you.”

  She sneered, and the five women vanished.

  My eyes met the gaze of the guard standing beyond the doorway.

  “Where’d they go?” I asked.

  In answer, five blades pierced my brain, throat, heart, spine, and groin.

  “Oh…” I gurgled.

  They were faster than I expected, completely skewering me before I could even prepare a Mustard Oil Bomb.

  Assassins.

  Once again, I cursed my inability to detect qi. With my brain and spine pierced, I couldn’t move, but I could still utter a few words.

  “Don’t break… sigils…”

  Their swords retracted, and I slumped to the ground like a sack of grain.

  The five women leaped away, their feet delicately avoiding the pattern of blood.

  “Destroy the ritual,” commanded the leader. “Cleanse this space.”

  I could only watch as the black garbed women reached into hidden pouches and produced small red flags. Even in the dark, I could read the characters on the flags.

  Dark Flame Cleansing Formation.

  “No,” I murmured as the women threw the flags like darts and embedded them in the walls.

  The soul transfer was not yet complete. If they destroyed the sigils, then Cabbagy’s soul would be lost.

  My spine clicked back together, and my brain healed as the leader stepped forward, her hand raised in a gesture to begin the incantation. My blood swirled in my body, and I spun as I rose, launching my hand away with as much speed as possible.

  My hand flew, bone, blood, and flesh manipulation guiding the appendage.

  The assassins stepped back in shock.

  “It’s an immortality ritual!” shouted one of them. “Destroy it!”

  Time crawled as fear raced through my veins.

  The leader spoke the incantation, but my hand had already struck a flag and plucked it from the wall. With one flag missing, the activation destabilized. Icy cold black flames burst from the flags and spiralled in the air for a flash of a second before vanishing.

  But the damage was done.

  Nearly half the sigils were charred, and the demonic qi in the room plummeted. The ritual was still crawling along, and Cabbagy’s soul hung in the air, but it was so destabilized that it would all collapse any moment.

  I couldn’t allow that to happen.

  With a deep breath, I drained my reservoir, pouring blood into my muscles until my skin turned as dark as those wretched flames. The assassins were faster than me. They were already preparing for my counterattack. Their cultivation must be high. Yet they were surprised, and in that half-moment it took them to understand, blood burst from my ankles and launched me forward like a firework.

  An assassin stepped forward to meet me. Her sword thrust forward, but I didn’t avoid the blade. It sank into my heart, and her eyes lit up with relief.

  The organ wasn’t even pumping.

  As my body slid down to the hilt of her jian, I released a Mustard Oil Bomb. Pressurized acid burst out into her face. She screamed as her eyes melted in her skull, but her grip on the jian remained locked out of discipline.

  I grabbed her arm with my blood gauntlets and leaped backwards as four more swords sliced where I would have been standing.

  With the shrieking assassin locked in my grip, I landed back in the center of the ritual. She struck at me, shadowy petals wrapped around her fists, and I took the punishment, holding my bones in place with manipulation as they cracked and broke. Her body was stronger than mine, probably the strongest I’d faced since my fight with the Dreaming Blade.

  But I was stronger too.

  That memory of the ritual had unlocked the knowledge of flesh manipulation. With that, Cabbagy’s instructions fell into place. The Mustard Oil Bomb technique couldn’t work with blood alone; instead, I needed to draw the acid from my stomach and pair it with air from my lungs in twin bubbles of blood. Once pierced, the pressurized air and acid combined, and the results spoke for themselves.

  But the woman I struck was still struggling. Her cultivation must have been higher than Jiang Jian’s, but her eye sockets were pools of acid, and I stabbed a finger into one and released a whipping tendril of blood. Even her strengthened body wasn’t enough to resist, and after piercing her skull, I minced her brain.

  She fell limp in my hands as her face dripped to the floor.

  “Monster…” came a whisper from the four women circling the room.

  I knew they would attack me soon. That was fine, so long as I could complete the next step first.

  Blood gauntlets extended up my arms as I pulled on the woman’s head. Her qi strengthened muscles resisted me, and so I drew on my rage. That icy cold feeling, that furious focus, I now realized was a chemical released by my brain.

  Adrenaline.

  I flooded myself with that chemical. The world slowed, and my blood-swollen muscles pulled so hard I needed to split my willpower just to stop them from tearing free of my bones. With a crack like broken stone, her head ripped free. Blood showered the area, dousing all the candles save one.

  In that dim, flickering light, I dislocated my jaw and drank from the dead assassin’s spouting throat.

  Blood and qi flowed into my reservoirs.

  The sight stopped the assassins in their tracks. Of the four of them, three glanced back at the doorway. Their fear leaked through their dark clothes. Good. They should be afraid.

  Only the leader charged without hesitation.

  I held her subordinate tightly with one hand, sucking the juices from her corpse, and I raised my other. My blood gauntlet exploded from my hand into a mess of writhing tendrils.

  The leader vanished with a concealment technique, shadows stretching in her wake.

  I didn’t know if she was evading me or preparing an ambush. Most likely both. The other assassins were emboldened, drawing throwing knives from within their robes. Still, everything moved slowly, stickily, except my mind.

  Their plan was obvious.

  The strongest assassin would keep me busy while the others peppered me with blades. They would destroy the ritual and then destroy me. The guard remained an unknown variable.

  And the ritual remained my greatest priority.

  I released the tendrils from my arm, and they splashed down to recreate sigils on the ground. The ritual stabilized, just a fraction, but it proved my plan would work.

  The assassin leader appeared in front of me with her blade thrusting toward my temple.

  I threw her subordinate at her.

  Her sword punched through the corpse and continued toward me with absolute ruthlessness.

  But the corpse was drained, and I was full. With a gesture and a smile, shadowy qi poured from my body, and I vanished.

  The leader’s eyes widened. The other assassins paused. They watched the spot where I had stood as the leader’s blade slashed through nothing but air.

  The leader twirled, her searching eyes wide, and her voice hoarse with panic.

  “Seal the exit!” she shouted. “We must kill the demon!”