Besides his red and gold robes, the cultivator wore a small red hat and an expression of barely contained bloodlust.

  “Sorry, who are you?” I asked.

  “What!” he shouted. “You dare?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember…”

  “You took our rooms! We were going to pay, and then you swept in and bargained our accommodation away from us.”

  “Surely you could find more accommodation…”

  “The city is booked out with the coming auctions, you fool! We had to sleep on the streets last night! Members of the Celebration Flame Sect, reduced to living like street rats!”

  “Hey,” I said, offended. “There’s nothing wrong with street rats.”

  The man grew as bright red as his robes.

  “They’re disgusting!”

  “Oh, ho, ho,” said Cabbagy. “Those are fighting words! Come on, kid, stop handling my sack and teach this guy a lesson.”

  I frowned, but he was right.

  Sometimes it was better to do things the Cabbagy way.

  “Alright,” I said as I placed Cabbagy down beside a pile of garbage. “You don’t want to talk? Let’s punch it out! You and me! Come on!”

  The man grinned.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not getting away with things that easily.”

  “Huh?”

  In answer, he pointed a finger up and shot a stream of smoke and sparks into the sky.

  A moment later, two more figures joined him on the rooftops, staring down at me like birds of prey. One more figure appeared at each end of the alley. Five cultivators in total, all in matching robes of red and gold.

  I was completely trapped.

  “This is perfect, kid. Remember my suggestion about the witch?”

  “I’m not going to eat them!”

  The cultivators exchanged a glance at my words, but they still hopped into the alley, preparing to fight.

  “Eh,” Cabbagy said. “We’ll see.”

  Five cultivators. One me. I hadn’t really fought since the serpent, and this was my first time fighting a person since Ren Feilong. Technically, I defeated the Flawless Blade twice, but it was difficult to count that as a fight.

  So as the cultivators in red and gold robes of the Celebration Flame Sect leaped into the alley, I prepared myself and adopted the stance Cabbagy had lectured me on.

  The cultivator with the red hat and redder face leaped down at me with a yell. Smoke billowed from one fist, and flames spat from the other.

  I dodged back from his attack, but there were already people coming from behind.

  Stepping forward again, I punched, but he weaved away from me in a haze of purplish smoke. Visibility was fading, and a kick hit me from behind, causing me to stumble forward into a punch.

  This gave me way too many flashbacks to my life as a street rat. Rule one of getting into a fight in an alley: don’t.

  Rule two of getting into a fight in an alley: run.

  With cultivators coming at me from both ends, and a single cultivator standing on the building overlooking the alley, I truly had no exit.

  I did my best to block, parry, and create distance. Smoke and heat filled the tight alley as the four cultivators fighting me sent probing attacks and blasts of fire my way. None were truly dangerous, and I was able to avoid getting hit directly. Though the distinctive smell of smoldering silk told me that my fancy golden robes might not survive.

  Whatever those demonic cultivators in the facility did to me, it must have involved some kind of heaven-backed curse against clothing.

  Any of my past lives would have been terrified, but knowing I couldn’t die left me with a strange sort of apathy. Even if I thought I wouldn’t win the fight, I felt no reason not to give it my all.

  Cabbagy agreed.

  “This is perfect, kid!” Cabbagy shouted from his bag amongst the garbage. “Show them my second form!”

  I still grimaced at his words. He’d only shown me that yesterday, and I didn’t really know if I could pull it off. Still, if there was going to be a beating, I might as well go all out.

  Blood pumped through my muscles as I lashed out at the cultivators. Fire and smoke choked the alley, but I managed to clear some room.

  “Oh, you think you can fight against us?” shouted the man in the red hat. “Better for you to bow down and accept your fate!”

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  “Accept my ass!” I shouted back distractedly as I focused on Cabbagy’s second form.

  The Mustard Oil Bomb.

  When Cabbagy explained it to me, he used a lot of words and terms that made absolutely no sense, but it boiled down to this: two chemicals waited inside his leaves, and when a pest bit him, the chemicals combined to form a bitter taste. His explanation didn’t involve how I could translate that technique into my human body, but he waved that away by citing some bullshit about ‘a master’s trust in his disciple’.

  Dark shapes moved in the smoke, and I made out a spear, two swords, and a club. These Celebration Flame Sect cultivators really weren’t fucking around.

  They intended to kill me!

  The least I could do was return the favor. Well, I could try really hard to run. After all, I hadn’t killed the Flawless Blade. But — to my minds — there was a big difference between looking for a fight, and having a fight look for me.

  Blood manipulation swirled beneath my skin in the most complex, knotted working I’d ever attempted, and then the smoke cleared with a thunderous crash of red sparks, and the cultivators were upon me again.

  Advancing in Cabbagy’s Style had moved me beyond remaining rooted in the ground. A cabbage could sway in the winds, and so I moved in tight, circular movements, as though each swing of my fists or step of my feet were another leaf curling around the core of a cabbage. There was an element of evasion to the style, but it was predominantly about controlling a small space.

  Because by not moving too much, I created controlled openings.

  The cultivator in the red hat took advantage of one such opening.

  Sparks burned at his feet and propelled him forward. He thrust a spear at my shoulder, slipped the point past my sweeping arm, and sank the tip into my flesh. Beneath my golden robe, my skin was almost purple with concentrated blood. I wasn’t a cabbage, but I could approximate the bomb.

  When the speartip pierced my flesh, the cultivator let out a shout of triumph. His momentum pushed me back a foot and sent him closer to me. All the better for him to catch the spray. High-pressure blood burst from my wound in tendrils that wrapped up the length of his spear and twisted around the shaft.

  The red-hatted cultivator’s eyes widened, and he tried to jerk the spear out of my flesh. Judging from his strength, I’d put him around the 4th Stage of the Qi Condensing Realm. The other three cultivators in the alley felt around the same level. Their numbers gave them an advantage, but they weren’t stronger than me.

  Blood rushed through my muscles as the spear creaked under the force of the tendrils. I pushed forward, letting the spear slide deeper into my body as my tendrils gripped his hand. He released his weapon, trying to pull away from me with fear in his eyes.

  I lunged forward and almost grabbed a hold when a club crashed into the back of my head.

  “Get your hands off my junior brother!” shouted a Celebration Flame Sect cultivator.

  The blow briefly disabled my body, and my blood went slack.

  “Oof,” called Cabbagy from his sack. “Sounds like you need to work on your situational awareness, kid!”

  Yeah, no kidding.

  I stumbled forward as the spear slipped from my flesh, and as I regained control, I conjured more knots of blood under my skin. It wasn’t a true bomb, more like a high-pressure trap, but it was the best I could do for now.

  A dao slashed my back, and tendrils burst out to wrap around the offending saber. The dao lacked the reach of a spear, and so I managed to grab hold of the cultivator who attacked me. They let out a shriek as I spun on a foot and leaped onto them. They were wrapped up in my blood, and though the others rained fire down upon me, they couldn’t stop me from extending my teeth and taking a huge chunk out of the saber wielder's cheek.

  The sweet fire of qi-rich blood swam in my mouth and poured down my throat. This ambrosia was nothing like the monkeys!

  Smoke filled the alley, and heat flooded my body as I bit again and again at the cultivator’s face and throat. I almost forgot about the others as my body focused entirely on consuming the screaming meal in my hands.

  The club crashed into my back, bruising my muscles and snapping my spine.

  I went slack, and someone ripped the cultivator out from under me.

  “No!” I shouted with a street rat’s endless hunger, a merchant’s greed, and a farmer’s love of his field. “That’s mine!”

  There was still too much purple smoke and the smell of burning flesh and cloth. My golden robes hung in tatters, but blood swirled around my hands and lashed out from my wounds as I faced the cultivators in the alley.

  Three of them stood guard in front of the cultivator whose blood filled my belly. One had a red hat and a spear, another a club, and another used a jian.

  “Keep away from us!” shouted the cultivator with the spear. “We are of the Celebration Flame Sect! If you kill us, there will be consequences!”

  My eyes twitched as I licked my lips. There was something I was supposed to be doing. Something I should be thinking about. But all such thoughts were gone as my body processed the burning qi.

  I took a step forward, and the three cultivators backed away as their friend gurgled.

  “Give it back to me,” I hissed in three overlapping voices. “Give me my food!”

  “That’s enough,” said a quiet voice behind me.

  I turned and saw the cultivator who had been watching from above.

  He was older, appearing to be in his late thirties, but as a cultivator, that could mean he was far older. An expression of quiet disgust marred his features.

  “Let my juniors go,” he said as he held up the sack containing Cabbagy. “Or I shall destroy this.”

  Flame flickered in his fingers.

  “Kid!” Cabbagy called out from the swinging sack. “I’m too pretty to be cooked!”

  Despite the heat of the alley, cold rushed through my veins.

  “Drop him,” I said.

  “Him?” the cultivator said as they glanced at the sack. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I won’t let an insane cultivator kill my juniors.”

  “They attacked me first.”

  “Over a matter of honor. The way you have behaved is deplorable.”

  His words washed over me, and I felt nothing.

  “Put down the bag,” I said.

  He stared at me before glancing past my shoulder at the cultivators behind me.

  “Run, juniors,” he said. “I shall deal with him.”

  He tossed the sack containing Cabbagy over my head. My eyes tracked the bag, and I leaped to grab it, but an axe kick caught me in the chest and sent me crashing down into the alley floor.

  I hit the ground with a crack and watched with wide, bloodshot eyes as the junior members of the Celebration Flame Sect caught the sack containing Cabbagy, grabbed their wounded friend, and ran.

  “No!” I howled.

  “Kid! Save me!”

  Blood swirled around my hands and feet as I scrambled after them, moving more like a dog than a human, but a kick caught me in the side of the head and slammed me into the alley wall hard enough to send me through the bricks.

  Dust filled the air as I crashed into a kitchen. A cook screamed and ran, leaving pots boiling over an open fire. I blinked dust from my eyes as the older cultivator stepped through the hole my body left in the wall.

  He took in the scene with a glance before settling into a stance with his palms turned sideways like blades.

  “My name is Jiang Jian,” he said calmly. “8th Stage of the Qi Condensing Realm, Inner Disciple of the Celebration Flame Sect. You mutilated my junior. Prepare to die.”

  I pulled myself to my feet, blood leaking from my wounds and curling like tendrils. Blood swirled around my hands, forming long fingers and gauntlets that wrapped up my arms to match Jiang Jian’s flames.

  My heart slowed and stopped. My lungs drained of air. I didn’t need these organs to live, and so I shut them down as the flesh reservoir in my soul pumped blood into my body until my skin was almost black.

  The stoic Jiang Jian took a half step back at my appearance.

  “What are you?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I said simply. “But I will eat you.”

  Before he could respond, I threw myself forward with all the strength I could muster.

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