I was worried. Anyone would be, after being told their heart was missing and that an evil spirit was living inside them. My mind was a mess, thoughts crashing into one another without any order. What was I even supposed to do in a situation like this?

  “Hey, Meng Rong… What happened to you?”

  I dropped to my knees beside her and checked for her pulse, fingers pressing against her wrist, then her neck. There was nothing. No faint thrum, no reassuring beat.

  “Shit.”

  No, calm down. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her carefully but urgently. “Hey, Meng Rong! Wake up! This isn’t funny. You’re scaring me!”

  She didn’t respond. Not even a twitch.

  A cold feeling crawled up my spine as I leaned closer and placed a finger beneath her nose. There was no breath. No warmth. Nothing at all.

  Did she die?

  That thought nearly made my vision go white. No, that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. The Binding Vow should still be active. The tattoo on my wrist was still there, faint but undeniable. If she was truly dead, wouldn’t something have happened? Wouldn’t the vow have reacted?

  “What should I do?” I muttered, my voice shaking despite my effort to stay composed.

  In situations like this, when everything was unfamiliar and terrifying, the best thing to do was to fall back on basics. Simple things. Things drilled into you before all the cultivation, systems, and insane supernatural nonsense entered your life.

  If someone had no pulse and wasn’t breathing, the response was CPR. That was it. No fancy tricks. No clever strategies.

  I laid her flat, tilted her head back, and hesitated only for a heartbeat. “Sorry,” I murmured, not even sure if she could hear me.

  I sealed my lips over hers and blew air into her lungs, watching her chest rise slightly before fall again. I pressed down on her chest, counting in my head, trying to remember the rhythm as best I could. Again and again, breath and compressions, breath and compressions.

  Nothing happened.

  Her body remained limp beneath my hands, her expression peaceful in a way that felt horribly wrong. No cough, no gasp, no sudden return of breath.

  I kept going anyway, refusing to stop, because stopping meant admitting something I wasn’t ready to face.

  “No, no, you can’t die now,” I muttered hoarsely as I continued the compressions. “You’re my best way back home. I can’t let you die on me.”

  At a purely practical level, letting her die here would give me an unbelievable amount of trouble later. The lord of Xincheng was one thing, but her master was another matter entirely. From what I had seen, that person was someone even the three great sects treated with extreme caution. If Meng Rong died under my watch, I doubted there would be anywhere left in this world for me to hide.

  I forced myself to keep the rhythm. Chest compression, chest compression, breath through her lips, then back to compressions again. My hands trembled, sweat dripping down my back. This was far worse than facing a spider demon head-on, because at least in a fight I knew what I was doing.

  When I pulled back to draw another breath, Meng Rong’s eyes snapped open.

  We stared at each other in silence, frozen in a moment that felt far longer than it actually was.

  Her gaze was sharp, clear, and very much alive. There was no confusion in her eyes, only cold appraisal. “Your hands,” she said flatly.

  I followed her line of sight far too slowly. My palms were pressed firmly against her chest.

  I looked back up at her face. Then back down again. Then back up. There were at least a dozen ways this could be interpreted badly, and judging by her expression, she had already chosen all of them.

  I tried to pull my hands away, but they didn’t move.

  My heart skipped a beat. They were stuck.

  Of course they were. Heaven-Silk Art.

  I had thought I had long since mastered it to the point where it responded cleanly to my intent, but panic had a way of ruining fine control. When she had sent her qi into me earlier, I had instinctively tried to imitate the sensation, to understand it, and to refine my own energy flow. Without realizing it, I had used that same “feeling” while trying to resuscitate her.

  “Hands. Off.” Meng Rong repeated, her voice colder than before.

  I needed time, just a little time to explain myself before she decided to end me on the spot. “Don’t misunderstand,” I blurted out. “It’s CPR. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It’s something we do back home to bring people back when they lose their pulse and stop breathing.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I have never heard of it,” she replied coolly. “And you should not believe strange superstitions so easily.”

  I nearly laughed from sheer disbelief. Of all the things I expected to hear today, having CPR dismissed as superstition was not one of them.

  With surprising patience, she continued, “I will not repeat myself again. Hands off.”

  Hey, what was the big deal? It wasn’t like I was directly touching your mounds…

  Of course, I couldn’t say that.

  I swallowed hard. Saying anything clever right now would probably get me killed, but saying nothing didn’t seem much safer. I tried honesty instead, because desperation had a way of stripping away bad habits. “Can you tell me more about qi?” I said quickly. “I think I made a mistake. I have this—”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  She didn’t let me finish.

  Meng Rong shoved me away with a controlled burst of force that was controlled. It wasn’t meant to injure me, but it was more than enough to make me take a step back. Of course, the Heaven-Silk Art’s hold persistently remained. As I stumbled backward, I heard fabric tear.

  Her front robe split open.

  My brain short-circuited at the sight of the twin peaks.

  “Fuck my—”

  That was as far as I got. The last thing I saw was Meng Rong’s expression, no longer cold but explosively dangerous, before the world went dark and I fainted on the spot.

  I drifted through a brief dream of the past.

  It was my old room, cramped and dim, the familiar glow of my monitor casting long shadows on the walls. I remembered the hollow excitement of having just tasted success in streaming, riding the high of YKU numbers climbing higher than I ever expected. That night, I had tried to stream something else, hoping people would follow me for ‘me’ rather than the game. The viewer count barely moved. The chat was quiet. The silence pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating, and I remembered how lonely it felt to smile into a camera that no one was really watching.

  When I opened my eyes, the loneliness hadn’t followed me.

  I was lying on Meng Rong’s lap. The scent of clean fabric and faint incense filled my senses. She had torn off part of her sleeves and used them to cover her chest, the fabric tied hastily but securely. Her expression was calm, though there was still a trace of vigilance in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said immediately, my throat dry. “I didn’t mean to. My hands—”

  “I understand,” she interrupted gently. “It’s a silk weaving art, related to spiders, isn’t it?”

  I stared at my palm. A small piece of her cloth was still stuck there, clinging stubbornly no matter how I flexed my fingers. Seeing it made my chest tighten with embarrassment all over again. I tried to sit up, but her hand pressed lightly against my shoulder, stopping me.

  “Just rest a bit more,” she said.

  I could feel her qi inside me, warm and steady, flowing in careful circuits. Whatever she was doing, it felt deliberate and restrained, as if she were afraid of touching something fragile beneath the surface.

  After a moment, she spoke again. “This is what’s going to happen. I will teach you more about how to control qi, and I will offer advice freely. I will assist you as much as I can in your cultivation and in finding your way back home, as part of our initial deal. However, I have new conditions.”

  I frowned slightly. “Why? What’s the reason for the change?”

  “Right now,” she said, “I am circulating my qi within you, and I can no longer sense the ‘evil spirit’ I spoke of earlier. That is not meant to be reassuring. This is unlike anything I have encountered before.”

  Her voice grew more serious as she continued. “My master has roamed the world hunting demons, wicked existences, and evil spirits. I accompanied him on several of those hunts. I can say this with confidence: whatever resides within you is far too dangerous to be ignored.”

  She probably meant the Yakuza Man inside me.

  “You misunderstand,” I said quickly. “He’s a good person—”

  “There is nothing to misunderstand,” she cut in, a flash of anger surfacing despite her composure. “Good or evil is not determined by intention alone.”

  I swallowed the rest of my words. I wanted to tell her that Yakuza Man had changed, that he had paid for his sins and tried to be better, but I knew how hollow that would sound to someone who judged threats by consequences rather than sentiment.

  She went on, her tone firm. “The existence within you is likely a distant ancestor or something akin to it, given that it has assumed your appearance. Spiritually, that should be impossible. Coupled with its overwhelming strength, this presents a danger not only to you, but to everyone around you. Until a solution is found, I have a responsibility to keep watch over you.”

  I stood up slowly, and this time she didn’t stop me. I brushed my hair back, forcing myself to think carefully instead of reacting emotionally.

  Her offer was tempting. Help with cultivation, guidance with qi, and genuine effort toward finding my way home were all things I desperately needed. The raised stakes meant she would be even more motivated to help me succeed. At the same time, I could already sense the invisible leash that might come with her “conditions,” restraints that could backfire on me later if I wasn’t careful.

  I met her gaze squarely. “What conditions?”

  Meng Rong stood up and brushed the grass from her rear with practiced elegance, as if she had not just dropped a revelation about an evil spirit lodged where my heart was supposed to be. Her tone was calm, almost businesslike, as she said, “At all times, you must remain in my presence. Preferably, always within my line of sight. That is all.”

  I blinked at her, waiting for the rest of it, but that was apparently the full list. Frankly, it was not that big of a deal. I could tolerate her presence, and having a powerful cultivator nearby was hardly a disadvantage. The real cost was obvious, though. It meant I would not be able to hide much of anything from her. Still, for someone who was genuinely offering to help me find my way home, it sounded like a reasonable trade.

  “Why?” I asked anyway, more out of caution than defiance.

  She folded her arms, her expression sharpening just a little. “To watch over the sealed evil spirit within you, to search for a method to exorcise it without killing you, and most importantly, to ensure it does not sway you toward the wicked path. When the time comes and a proper method is found, you must cooperate.”

  It sounded sensible. It sounded responsible. It sounded like exactly what any sane person would agree to.

  “I refuse,” I said.

  Even to my own ears, it sounded stupid. If anyone told you there was something dangerous inside your body, the natural reaction should be to get it out as soon as possible. Still, I believed I knew who the Yakuza Man really was at his core. He was a bad man, sure, but a bad man in the middle of redemption, not some mindless calamity that needed to be purged.

  Meng Rong’s brow twitched. “What part of this arrangement do you find unacceptable?”

  “The part where we exorcise the evil spirit,” I replied plainly.

  She let out a slow breath, clearly suppressing her frustration. “Fine. You may forget that part for now, but I will continue to watch over you regardless. This is non-negotiable. Otherwise, our deal ends here. Naturally, you would be compensated for your efforts so far.”

  I winced. That last part sounded suspiciously like a threat wrapped in courtesy. “What kind of compensation?” I asked.

  Her composure finally cracked. “You frustrating man,” she snapped. “I want you to think more carefully. I have been inside your spiritual core. I have faced the thing sealed within you. It is bad news.”

  I sighed, rubbing my temples. Being unreasonable was not a trait I liked to associate with myself, but neither was blind compliance. “What kind of compensation?” I repeated.

  She stared at me for a long moment before answering. “A recommendation to the Explorer Association, an organization that spans many domains and works to map the world. That should bring you closer to home, shouldn’t it?”

  Probably not. Still, it was better than wandering blindly. At the very least, sticking close to her would give me more chances to learn about this Explorer Association and how far its reach truly extended. From that perspective, it was not a terrible fallback.

  “Fine,” I said at last. “You have a deal. I accept your conditions, minus the exorcism part. If you want to get rid of the so-called evil spirit, you will have to find another way that does not require my cooperation. Also, instead of vague assistance with cultivation, I want something more tangible.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Such as?”

  “Items,” I answered without hesitation. “We still have the rest of the day, plus three more days before my spar with Dong Li. Time is tight, and I would rather not waste it. We should continue with what we came here to do.”

  I had no intention of returning to Xincheng yet. Time was gold, and every second I spent idle was a second I could have used to prepare.

  Meng Rong sighed deeply, the sound heavy with resignation. “Such an insufferable man,” she muttered. “Fine. If this is what you insist on, then you will get what you want. Come, we will spar. Combat is the most direct way to correct your flaws, and I will show you how to refine your qi control in the midst of it.”