I raced through the darkness, making frequent use of Lightness of Being to get ahead of the group. They were sticking to the main boulevard, staying out in the open. I needed to whittle them down before they could get there, and that meant staying ahead of them, out of sight, but keeping them in sight as much as possible. I had to separate them from one another, get individuals alone where I could kill them. I wanted them to move slowly but not stop or turn back; that meant keeping them guessing about what I was doing. If they realized they were under attack, they’d either start moving defensively or just head back to their school. That was the last thing I wanted them to do.

I ran up a side street that paralleled my normal path, then slipped down an alley that connected the two streets, a narrow one between two tall buildings. I piled up some of the inevitable rubbish in the alley, then crouched behind it, waiting for the group to pass. I saw the sniffing girl first, Ling-something, I think her name was, followed closely by the two instructors. As they passed, I deliberately knocking over the pile of rubbish. The wood and garbage fell with a soft crash that still echoed loudly in the still night air, and the group froze instantly.

“What was that?” Holder asked sharply, stepping toward the dark alley and peering inside.

“It is likely just an urchin or one of the street trash,” Builder said dismissively, waving her hand unknowingly in my direction. “Nothing worth our concern, Holder-of-Green-Fire.”

“I disagree, Builder-in-Stone,” the man shook his head. “If what you say is true, then those within the alley will likely mark our passage this night. Can we afford word of our movements to spread in the city?”

Builder frowned, opening her mouth to retort, but it seemed that Holder had finally made a point she agreed with. I released a quiet sigh of relief; if they hadn’t taken the noise seriously, I was going to have to escalate things, and I didn’t want that.

“Yazhu, go dispose of the carrion in the alley, then rejoin us,” the woman ordered. “Make sure no trace of their body remains.”

“Yes, teacher,” the round, young man bowed his head to the woman, turning toward the alley as the others moved on. As he entered, he held up his hand, and a dim, orange glow spread out from it. I forced myself not to snort contemptuously; holding that light in front of his face would blind Yazhu to anything hiding in the shadows of the alley. The moon-faced man peered forward myopically, moving slowly and cautiously forward. He made it all of three steps before a lance of light shot from my hand and slammed into his face, burning through his skull and killing him instantly. I blinked in surprise; I’d expected the light to scorch and blind him, not slaughter him outright.

“He was only Metal-ranked, John,” Sara informed me. “And he didn’t have any defenses up. You’re Water-ranked, and your qi is so dense that it feels stronger than that. He didn’t stand a chance.”

I quickly grabbed his corpse and flung it over my shoulder before using my spider climb adaptation of Thorn’s Embrace to scale one of the nearby buildings. I deposited the body on the roof; if anyone came looking for the missing student, hopefully, they wouldn’t find any trace of him. I leaped another narrow alley to the next roof, running along the tops of the buildings until I was abreast of the group once more. They were still marching forward, none of them looking around in any direction, apparently supremely confident that they were invincible and untouchable. I couldn’t help but grin at that thought. People who thought they were unbeatable were my favorite marks. They never saw me coming, ever.

A young woman followed along at the back of the group, moving a few paces behind the others. I waited until the leaders turned a corner; as she passed near a wooden door, I activated Embrace of the Jungle. Tough, woody vines whipped out from the door and lashed about her head and neck. I targeted her skull and throat specifically, hoping to cut off any sounds she made as the two-inch thorns studding the vines plunged into her eyes, temples, and jugular. Apparently, though, she managed a muffled cry, because the two students closest to her whipped about, staring at her in surprise.

That moment of shock turned out to be their last. The man closer to her stiffened as a single, three-foot long thorn erupted from the vines wrapping about her and lanced directly into his heart. The other dropped to the ground, her face a mass of burned flesh as my Sun’s Scorching Ray tore through her skull. Once the first woman stopped struggling, I banished the vines and waited for a moment. Once I was certain no one was coming to investigate, I slipped down to the street and hauled the three corpses up to the rooftop nearby, ignoring the blood that soaked into my shirt and ran down my hand and arm. The hot, sticky feeling was something I’d long since gotten used to, and I barely even noticed the smell.

That probably said something bad about me, but I didn’t much care. I was doing what I had to. Four down, four to go.

As I moved to grab the last man, the one whose face I’d burnt off, I froze. “Zhenya, go see what is keeping those fools,” I heard Builder’s voice carry softly along the street.

“Yes, teacher,” a man’s voice spoke. I grimaced; I didn’t have time to move the last body, now. That Zhenya guy would catch me climbing the walls, and he’d call out an alarm right away. I still didn’t want to face four of the people by myself. I looked around and caught my bloodstained appearance, which gave me an idea. I quickly dropped to the ground and played dead, a skill I’d learned a long time ago.

Playing dead – really, believably playing dead – is an art. First of all, you can’t lay out in a nice, comfy fashion. People don’t die that way. When people die, their muscles go slack, and their limbs twist awkwardly beneath them. Second, you don’t have to keep your eyes open. People die with their eyes closed all the time; about half my marks closed their eyes as they died. However, you can’t move your eyes at all, and that’s harder than it sounds, since your eyes tend to move toward whatever you’re focusing on, and if your eyes are closed, you can’t see what’s going on around you. Third, not breathing is really hard, especially because you can’t hold your breath, or your puffed-up chest will give you away.

Contrary to myth, it’s not true that everyone shits themselves when they die, so you don’t have to crap your pants to sell the bit. It happens, but I’d only noticed it about half the time. Basically, in my experience, if someone has to go when they die, they’ll probably go. If they don’t, they won’t, at least not right away. Sometimes they’ll go a while later, though, and it can be awkward when you’re carrying a corpse on your shoulder when it suddenly pisses itself or craps right next to your ear.

Yeah, death is pretty disgusting.

All of which is why when Zhenya came around the corner and found my bloodstained ‘corpse’, lying beside the upside-down man I’d killed with a scorching ray, he saw a body with one arm twisted beneath it, legs akimbo, eyes open but not wide open, and mouth hanging slightly open. He never noticed that my half-lidded eyes were still focusing on things, and he didn’t know that I was breathing very, very shallowly – so lightly that my chest wasn’t moving. He paused for a moment, then moved cautiously closer, leaning toward my blank, unresponsive face.

He jerked backward when I moved, but he was too slow Thanks to my Lightness of Being technique, I simply moved to quickly for him to react beyond drawing in a deep breath and leaning back. Unfortunately, sucking in air also meant he sucked in a lungful of Restless Slumber powder, as I crushed the pill in my free hand and flung it into his face. His eyes rolled up, and he dropped to the ground, breathing lightly in sleep. While he slept, I slipped a pill of Qi Venom into his open mouth, then tore up his robe and used it to bind his hands and feet and gag his mouth.

I then slipped burned-face guy’s robe off him and pulled it on over my bloody clothing; I didn’t exactly look like any of the students, but if I hung back, hopefully, the remaining three wouldn’t notice. I deposited Zhenya up with his friends, moving cautiously to avoid waking him. He wasn’t going to be happy when he did awaken, though, since I laid the dead bodies of his former fellow students over him to keep him from squirming his way off the roof. I had some questions for him, and I wanted him to be alive to answer them.

I climbed back down, took a deep breath, and walked around the corner. I saw the others waiting for me, but I simply hung back and shook my head, not saying a word. Holder let out a sound of disgust.

“It is certain they went back to locate Yazhu,” the man said dryly. “He is the leader of their ridiculous group, and should harm befall him, his family would not be pleased with them.”

“Foolish children,” Builder sighed. “Zhenya, I am tempted to send you back to fetch them, but we cannot lose this trail, and we have no time to wait for you to return them to us. Follow along, but keep an eye for the idiots.”

I bowed my head in response, again staying silent. I had a little bit of talent in imitating voices, but I hadn’t heard enough of Zhenya’s to be able to even come close to faking it. I simply hung back and followed the trio until they stopped before the gates to the Amber Teardrop Society.

“The intruder passed into here, teachers,” Ling bowed low before the pair. She hesitated. “As did Bai Ren, some days ago.”

“This – this is a disaster, Builder-in-Stone,” Holder snapped. “The Inner Elders will gut us for this. The Amber Teardrop Society! They will certainly recognize what was done to Bai Ren, and this will be across the city soon…if it is not already!”

“That is not necessarily so, Holder-of-Green-Fire,” the woman shook her head, her face set but her eyes panicked. “Banisher-of-Waves’ process left the beast core with the appearance of a cultivation spiral. They may have discovered nothing…”

“Are you truly that naïve, or are you merely stating fanciful wishes?” the man said contemptuously.

“You dare speak to me like that?” the woman hissed. “I will…”

“You will what?” he cut her off with a dark laugh. “What will you do to me that compares to what we will both suffer when the Inner Elders learn of this? You know as I that any skilled physician will spot the difference, and even an unskilled one might sense something amiss with Bai Ren’s spiral. The Amber Teardrop Society assuredly knows of what we are doing, and they will no doubt soon spread that word to the Bright Ocean Sect and other schools.”

“Then we must…AIIEEE!” Builder’s next words cut off as my Sun’s Scorching Ray slammed into her face. She grabbed her face with both hands, falling backward, and Holder spun to face me, his eyes wide and alarmed.

“Zhenya!” he half-shouted. “What have you…”

He didn’t finish either before my fist smashed into his jaw. Empowered by Guardian of the Heavens and Lightness of Being, the blow shattered the man’s jaw and tumbled him backward, clutching his face and moaning in pain. I turned back to the wounded Builder, intending to finish her off, but something solid and heavy slammed into me, sending me flying. My head spun, and stars flashed in my vision as I crashed to the street. I blinked in shock as a foot-wide, perfectly round slab of rock clattered to the stone beside me before slowly dissolving to powder. Apparently, that was what struck me.

Something grabbed my feet and squeezed, almost hard enough to shatter my ankles. I swore and glanced down to see two stone fists jutting up from the street, clamping onto my feet and pinning them in place. I raised my fist and slammed it down on one of the fists, empowering the blow with qi and cracking the rocky grip. Before I could punch again, something smashed into my face, nearly knocking me unconscious and sending a couple of my teeth flying. My nose crunched beneath the blow, and my mouth filled with blood that I spat out. My vision wavered, and I felt darkness narrowing my vision.

“This is the intruder, teacher,” I heard Ling’s voice speaking as if from a distance. My brain felt sluggish and slow, but I managed to pull up enough qi to activate Flesh of the Stars. Immediately, my head began to clear, and the throbbing in my mouth and nose eased slightly. I wanted to take a restorative pill, but I knew that Builder wouldn’t give me a chance.

“This?” the woman’s mocking voice echoed in the night. “This – student? He is the one we fretted over?” She laughed disparagingly. “He will cause no issues with a beast core…”

The woman cried out again as her robes erupted in dozens of tiny, inch-long thorns – all pointed inward toward her flesh. She screeched and tore the robes away, leaving herself standing nude in the moonlight. Blood oozed from the myriad small wounds I’d torn in her skin, but the flow ceased almost instantly. I watched with my newly returned vision as her skin shifted from pale flesh to something that looked like gleaming marble.

“You will suffer long for that, child!” she hissed, moving toward me in a rush. “I will shatter your bones, pulp your organs, and make you beg…”

Sadly, Builder once again didn’t get a chance to finish her statement, though this time, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t see the blow that struck her, but suddenly, she flew through the air and slammed into the stone wall surrounding the Amber Teardrop hall with a crack of shattering stone. She dropped to her knees, and I saw blood dripping from her chin as she panted in pain.

Dancer-in-Flames stood in front of me, her chin erect and her back straight. “You are well, Xu Xing?” she asked calmly.

“Well enough,” I said, spitting out more blood as I did.

“Use one of your pills, then free yourself from your confinement while I deal with this – this filth.”

I took out a pill from my storage ring and popped it in my mouth, then fired a scorching ray at the fist clutching my leg. The stone shattered instantly, and I kicked my free leg into the other restraint, breaking it after two attempts. As I did, Builder struggled to her feet. “Master of the Amber Teardrop Society,” she began in a respectful tone. “This matter is an internal one, not a concern for your august…”

Dif blurred in the moonlight, and Builder smashed into the wall again, crumpling to the ground in a heap a moment later. “Not my concern?” the old woman asked in a deceptively mild tone. “You attack my student and threaten to corrupt him with one of your vile beast cores – and it is not my concern?”

Builder’s eyes widened, and she flung out an arm. A huge pillar of stone flew toward Dif, but the old woman simply slapped a hand onto it, and the stone shattered into dust and fell to her feet. Dif didn’t move or gesture, but a dozen inch-thick vines erupted from the stone wall. They wrapped around Builder, grabbing the woman and entwining her completely. The vines hauled her back against the wall with another loud crash, then repeated the process. When Builder struck the wall the third time, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she fell limp. Dif’s vines continued to crawl over the unconscious woman, totally enshrouding her until she looked like she was in a woody cocoon.

Dif glanced at Holder, who still lay unmoving. Apparently, my blow knocked him the fuck out, which I admit made me a little happy. She lifted her chin, and another set of vines erupted from the street, wrapping the man the same way Builder was cocooned. Finally, the old woman turned to look at Ling, and the young woman dropped to her knees.

“Please, Master of the Amber Teardrop Society,” Ling said softly. “Show mercy upon me!”

“That mercy depends on your answer to my questions, young one,” Dif said gently. “Tell me, child. Did you choose for this to be done to you?”

Ling stared at the old woman for a moment, then dropped her head. “Builder-in-Stone promised me that I would gain great power,” she said softly. “She did not say how, nor did I question. I – I wished to be strong, as she is.”

Dif nodded. “Do you know that eventually, what was done to you will turn you into one of the cursed?” she asked. The shocked and terrified look on the woman’s face answered that question right away. “No, I see that you do not. And yet, child, that is what will happen. The beast core you possess allows you to cultivate corruption, but it does not shield your spirit from its effects. I can see that you have delved deeply into your new cultivation; in mere days, as I judge it, you will be lost to the Wheel.”

The woman broke down, weeping silently for several quiet seconds. “Can – can nothing be done?” she asked after a moment.

“Yes. There is a way to free you from your fate.” Dif held up another of the inky black pills. “With this medicine, you will fall into slumber and awaken to your next turn of the Wheel.”

Ling stared at the pill. “There is no other way?” she asked quietly.

“None that I can foresee, no. Should I remove the core, your dantian will flood instantly with unfiltered, corrupted qi. That will merely hasten your journey to becoming cursed, turning it from a matter of days to hours or even minutes. You will not be able to rebuild a cultivation spiral and purify your dantian in time. I am sorry.”

Ling reached out and took the pill hesitantly, her hand trembling as she did. “I – I look forward to my rebirth, she said softly. “Thank you for this mercy, Master of the Amber Teardrop Society.” She placed the pill in her mouth and slumped to the street. Her eyes closed, and she took a deep, shuddering breath, followed by another – and then her chest fell still.

Dif looked at me, fire in her eyes as she spoke. “Were these alone?” she asked, gesturing to the twin cocoons.

“There were six more of them. I killed four before they got here and gave one a dose of Restless Slumber and Qi Venom. The last is watching my travel house, but I know where he is.”

“And are any of them – like this one?” she gestured to the fallen Ling.

“The one watching the travel house, yes.”

“You must return him to the Wheel, Xu Xing,” she said firmly. “It is the greatest mercy you can give him. Then, bring the bodies to me, as well as the one still living.” Her eyes blazed. “You say you have a plan to force Earthly Fires to act?”

“Yes. At least, I think so. We’ll need the help of at least one other group, though.”

“You shall have it.” Dif turned fiery eyes to the unmoving form of Builder-in-Stone. “Once these two tell their tale, none will deny their assistance.”

I was about to ask if they would talk, but I recalled that Dif was a frighteningly skilled alchemist. I could imagine truth serum pills that would force the pair to spill their secrets. If she seemed sure that she could get the pair to talk, I had zero doubts that she could do it. Especially after seeing her toss Builder around like a rag doll. On a whim, I analyzed the old woman and had to stop myself from swearing aloud.

Dancer-in-Flames

Level 31 Sacred Alchemist (Extraordinary)

Fire Rank

Estimated Physical Stats:

Prowess: 35 Vigor: 41 Celerity: 37 Skill: 49

“Holy shit! Is she really that strong?”

“She is, yes. Builder-in-Stone is low Sky-ranked, which is why she handled you so easily. She’s easily double your strength. Dancer-in-Flames, as best as I can estimate, is toward the high end of the Fire rank, nearly Spirit-ranked. She could fight ten practitioners of the Sky ranks without a problem.”

I refrained from shaking my head. Every time I thought I’d gotten stronger, I realized just how insignificant I really was. And Dancer-in-Flames probably wasn’t the most powerful person in the Amber Teardrop Society, which meant the society had at least one Spirit-ranked member in the city.

“I will ensure that Wader-in-the-Morning-Waters speaks to you within the day, Xu Xing,” Dif said grimly. “While you draw out the School of Earthly Fires, I will gather all who will listen. This abomination will end, and it will end soon.”