Dragon's Descent [Xianxia, Reverse Cultivation]

Xiaolong strode across the hall, the distance shrinking around her until three zhang became one. Master Yuan braced himself to receive a strike from an opponent he was slowly recognizing might outmatch him, no matter the realm he aspired to.

Ocean Depths might be vast, but dragons spanned skies, seas, and everything in between.

When she reached him, Xiaolong didn't punch, kick, or unleash any of the myriad combat techniques she'd learned for interacting with lesser beings at appropriate force levels.

She placed one palm against his chest, and reached—down into his essence, past his meridians, deeper even than his dantian. She sought the root of his being, the fundamental source that had generated all the cultivation he'd achieved since, and touched that root with a feather-light caress of draconic power.

"What—" Master Yuan coughed, blood spilling from his lips, his eyes wild with confusion and an emotion that looked very much like fear.

"Hush now." Her tone was almost gentle. "I'm looking for something." The tiniest crease of frustration crossed her brow. "Stop twisting and squirming—it's making this harder to find."

He tried to strike, to summon one last technique, but she'd already mapped his meridians during their fight. When his fist drew back, the blockage of his Ren channel altered his balance. When he sought to draw power, his Zusanli channel blocked access to his lower dantian.

Point after point, meridian by meridian, her interference disrupted every technique, every move, until the sect leader could only stand and tremble beneath her touch.

"Found it," she said softly. "Hold still; this is going to be... illuminating... for both of us."

Before his confusion could become a question, her essence dove deeper into the fundamental source of his existence, tracing the threads back to their original patterns before corruption had altered them into knots.

He screamed.

Not in pain, but in something older and deeper and more primal—a sensation he'd have described as drowning if he'd been able to form coherent thoughts through the flood pouring through his awareness.

The invading power in his meridians didn't cut or burn or crush, as combat techniques all aimed to control or disable. It flowed. And its flow overwhelmed the stagnant knots in its path.

Xiaolong wasn't interested in defeating him; she was seeking to wash him clean. To take every blockage, every twisted principle, and remind it what water was meant to be.

In her search for understanding, she'd mapped the entire philosophy underlying his Black Dao cultivation. It had tried to pervert water beyond its natural expression, and she... didn't like that.

Her own journey of shedding scales had forced her to think differently about how a dragon might interact with the world. Not to crush or to dominate but to recognize and to guide, to understand the nature of things in themselves rather than simply imposing draconic principles upon them.

This reversal of their roles hadn't changed the outcome. She did not need to make the riverbed bend to the shape of her choice. Instead, she simply had to point out that the water flowing through it had forgotten the joy of following a current.

The purification process didn't need her to destroy the false teachings, only to let the water realize they were false, and to point to a truer way forward.

And when it reached those blockages, those snarls of corruption, she didn't bludgeon them away. She flowed through them. Flowed into them, until they were no longer blockages, simply water diverting from the channel of the moment, coming back together on the other side. She'd seen how it was done correctly, and it made it easier to see the same in others.

Master Yuan's eyes grew wide, his mouth opening as a thousand knots loosened.

Flow.

The surge of essence from the unblocked meridian washed away his conscious thoughts and left him gasping. But she was just beginning her work.

Unblock another channel.

Flow again, stronger, as more essence filled pathways that had been twisted into dead ends by the Black Dao cultivation techniques.

Again. And again.

Every time she unknotted a strand of the tangle the man under her touch had made of his energy, she felt a little better too. A little cleaner, a little clearer, like a mist burning off in the rising sun.

His body fell to its knees, but his eyes stayed fixed on hers. "What are you doing to me?"

Xiaolong's free hand smoothed a wrinkle on her outer robe. "Undoing a great number of bad choices. Don't resist." She put her hand back on his chest, over a different meridian this time. "They weren't your choices anyway, and they weren't making you stronger."

"What do you know of my path?" Rage colored his cheeks, and made his next words a feral hiss. "How would I get strong without taking the strength that was offered me? The power to build the strongest sect, to make Azure Waters a name no one would dare oppose?"

She sighed, the force of it blowing hair out of his face and soothing down his anger with a simple pulse of wind qi.

To think that his mind was still twisted by the false promises the corruption made, even with its grip on his soul loosened.

"You are an albatross floating in a puddle, pretending to be the vast sea," Xiaolong murmured, her fingers tapping a new meridian on his shoulder.

"But to answer that question. I imagine with hard work, talent, and the discipline you showed on the journey. This?" Her fingers tightened, her eyes darkened, and she unblocked another meridian, sending him to all fours, coughing. "This is a parasite using you to grow, feeding itself with your ambition, devouring you from inside."

She straightened and stared down her nose at the fallen master. She'd felt anger many times since coming to live among the cultivators, both on her behalf and on theirs.

This was a different emotion. Something deeper and more disturbing than those simple reactions to senseless harm inflicted on those who couldn't defend themselves. Something almost... maternal in its disgust for the corruption's destruction of the people and places under its taint.

"No longer. Flow. You will be yourself; nothing else will live within you without your consent."

Master Yuan's protest faded as she reached in to find the next knot, her dragon senses tracing the strands of corruption, and then her power sliced right through them. She felt the strain, the effort of reshaping the patterns of the human's cultivation, but the pain was fading now, with only a bare wisp of the invading presence remaining within her.

In another breath, it was gone, burned away from her veins in the shining clarity of her purpose. And in the breath after, the last of the Black Dao techniques fled from the man in front of her, leaving him panting, on hands and knees, his body full of sweat and his once-proud robes stained and ragged.

"What... what happened?" he asked, his breath coming in short gasps. "I remember... fighting. I remember—" His face paled. "I... attacked disciples. Why?"

Xiaolong glanced at him, and then shifted her attention to Elder Wei and Elder Liu. Both of the elders had been staggering back to their feet and were standing next to the three younger cultivators.

All of whom stared at her with wide eyes. All but Li Feng, who kept a dignified calm. He nodded to her.

"Master Yuan," Elder Wei said, bowing slightly, his hand still holding the discipline stick steady at his side. "You were taken over by a corrupting influence, something that has spread from the water and the spirit stones."

The sect leader's brows knit. "Impossible," he said, pulling himself unsteadily back to his feet. "My cultivation... but how?"

He shook his head and staggered forward, almost crashing to the ground. Li Feng leapt forward with preternatural speed, catching his master before the man could fall.

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"Easy, master," Li Feng said, lowering the elder to a sitting position. "Take things slowly. The hall needs some repair, and the entire sect has had quite a shock. It is a long story, and..." His eyes flickered to Xiaolong, and the faintest smile colored his lips. "It seems that the best days for Azure Waters Sect are ahead of us."

Xiaolong's shoulders relaxed.

She hadn't been entirely sure that the purification would restore Master Yuan's faculties. Her dragon senses were excellent, and her understanding of cultivation far beyond the realm of mortals, but if there had been permanent spiritual damage to his mind, he might still be left a hollow, corrupted shell of himself, a puppet on the strings of the technique that had taken him.

Master Yuan's weight sagged against Li Feng's supporting arm, his eyes tracking movement that wasn't there, seeing memories instead of the hall. "I told them... I told the elders that harmony was imprisonment. That we needed to transcend..." His voice cracked. "Why would I say that?"

"Because something else was using your mouth." Xiaolong crossed to where the three stood, her steps leaving faint prismatic traces on stone.

The corruption she'd pulled from Master Yuan's meridians still writhed in her own system, angry at being displaced, searching for new purchase.

She ignored it. Parasites always fought hardest when dying.

Elder Wei approached, his discipline rod steady despite blood seeping through his robes. "Master Yuan. Can you hear me clearly?"

"Wei Shuiyue." The sect leader's focus sharpened. "I attacked you. I attacked..." His gaze swept the ruined hall, cataloging destruction, landing on injured disciples. "Everyone. I attacked everyone."

"The corruption attacked," Elder Liu corrected, limping closer with Song Bai supporting her weight. "You were its victim before becoming its weapon."

Master Yuan's laugh emerged broken. "Semantic comfort for monstrous actions. I invited it in, Liu Qingshui. Welcomed the power it offered because I wanted—" He stopped, shame flooding features that had carried absolute authority moments before.

"Wanted what every cultivator wants," Ming Lian said quietly from where he'd propped himself against rubble. "Breakthrough. Understanding. The next realm's clarity." He met Master Yuan's eyes. "The corruption didn't create those desires. It just convinced you they required abandoning everything else."

The sect leader nodded slowly. "Corrupting my values to serve itself, and through me, corrupting our entire sect."

Elder Wei cleared his throat, posture perfect despite his wounds, demeanor grave but calm. "If the hall's purification is complete, we can discuss matters of responsibility later, once healing and assessment have been done."

Xiaolong stepped back, allowing the elder to take control of the conversation with the grace appropriate to an outsider standing on another's territory. She might have the authority of a dragon and a sect guest to intervene as needed, but these people deserved a chance to assert their own sovereignty before she assumed it belonged to her.

As the Elders and Master Yuan spoke, their voices fading to background noise, she turned her attention inward. The corruption continued to wriggle and bite, trying to establish new anchor points, to make a home for itself in the body it inhabited.

Unlike Master Yuan's essence, hers knew what didn't belong. Her draconic nature had been tolerating the invasion rather than embracing it, holding foreign energy at arm's length while she'd worked. Now she simply stopped tolerating.

For an instant, she regretted not having time to prepare a more complicated ritual, a more gentle method of purification.

But her dragon nature cared little for regret or nuance.

Power flooded outward from her core, burning away impurity without distinction. Any spiritual structure that wasn't part of her fundamental being became fuel to that cleansing flame.

The process felt less like purification and more like vomiting—inelegant, uncomfortable, but effective. Dark wisps emerged from her mouth and nostrils, dissipating into air that welcomed their return to formless potential.

She opened her eyes, drawing breath that finally filled her lungs without encountering resistance. Better. Much better. Her meridians ached from hosting invasion, but the actual corruption was—

Pain lanced through her skull. Sharp, focused pain that made earlier discomfort seem gentle by comparison. Something was emerging from her head, pushing through bone and flesh, demanding space where space didn't exist.

She raised her hands to her temples, felt the protrusions growing there. Smooth, curved, unmistakably draconic. Her horns, which she'd kept suppressed since beginning reverse cultivation, were manifesting without her permission.

"No," she said, focusing her will on forcing them back. "Absolutely not. I've maintained humanoid form for months, I'm not losing it now because of minor corruption exposure."

The horns continued growing. Small still, barely longer than her fingers, but present. Visible. Entirely too draconic for someone attempting to pass as eccentric human guest.

She concentrated harder, channeling essence toward containing the manifestation, convincing her form that horns were unnecessary decorations humans didn't appreciate.

The scales on her face and arms began fading, sinking back beneath skin that remembered how to look mortal. The prismatic shimmer in her eyes dulled to something approaching normal coloration. Even the glow tracing down her neck disappeared, leaving only ordinary flesh.

But the horns remained. Stubborn, persistent, curved slightly backward from her temples in way that would have been majestic if it wasn't currently inconvenient.

"You've got to be joking," she muttered, trying again. Focus. Will. Absolute conviction that horns were a temporary embarrassment rather than a permanent feature.

Nothing. They sat on her head like they'd always belonged there, like they had squatter's rights and intended to enforce them.

A throat clearing snapped her back to awareness.

Li Feng stared. Elder Wei and Elder Liu stared. Master Yuan, still processing his own recovery, took a moment longer to focus, and then proceeded to stare as well.

Even the injured disciples who'd been focused on their own pain found energy to stare at the honored guest who'd apparently decided partial draconic manifestation was acceptable post-combat attire.

Xiaolong composed herself, standing with poise that pretended no one had seen her fumbling to regain control of her transformation.

Song Bai broke the silence. "Are those... horns?"

"Your observational skills remain sharp despite injuries," Xiaolong replied, still examining the protrusions with mild disdain. "Yes. Horns. My inner dragon chose an inopportune moment to express itself."

She gave them a final irritated look and then lowered her hands, folding them into the formal arrangement of a polite guest acknowledging elders. "My apologies for disrupting your recovery. Please, return to discussing whatever you were discussing before these manifested."

The aftermath of the battle in the hall and Master Yuan's purification devolved quickly once the shock wore off. Elder Wei took control of the situation, ordering medical assistance and sending Song Bai to spread the word that Master Yuan was uncorrupted and no further threats should emerge from within.

Xiaolong watched from the sidelines as the cultivators set about restoring order. She'd have offered assistance, but the disciples were already scrambling, and the sect elders looked like they had a routine for this sort of problem.

Clearly, there was an entire structure here that had been established for emergency response. Better not to interfere with that.

"Xiaolong?" Li Feng's voice carried gentle amusement rather than concern. When she turned, his face held the same warm expression she was beginning to recognize as affection. "It appears our honored guest could use medical attention herself."

The light brush of his hand across hers made her realize she'd been picking at her fingernails during the lull, an anxious tic that her inner self hadn't caught before it began. The urge to pull her hand back into a safer position rose, and was immediately stifled.

They'd shared more than a casual hand touch, and it was a bit late to be getting flustered over a brief contact. Even if it did send sparks skittering up her arm like lightning made of essence and butterflies.

"Unnecessary. The corruption is expelled. The damage was minimal and healing rapidly. I'd do better to spend the time tidying my appearance and..." She sighed, the sound holding a trace of draconic growl. "Concealing these damnably stubborn horns."

Her dragon nature preened. Her human shape grumbled. Li Feng chuckled, his gaze lingering on the features that refused to sink back into mortal-seeming flesh.

"I must admit, they suit you," he commented. "And they certainly simplify future conversations regarding your true nature and capabilities."

"An efficient tool of truth." Xiaolong's fingertips traced the curved surface, its smooth texture offering no insight as to why the manifestation remained when all others faded. "I'll be pleased when I understand what triggered their emergence."

"In a sense, they're the outward sign of an inward change, are they not? You're not the same dragon who arrived here months ago." His smile deepened, the slightest glint in his eye hinting at mischief lurking. "Even if your food requests are the same."

Xiaolong returned the banter without thinking. "Ah yes, you think my spice requests an inward change. How foolish of me not to recognize the true nature of the threat facing the Azure Waters sect. Corrupted cultivation was nothing, but a request to add pepper to a dish?" She shuddered. "A threat to the fundamental harmony of existence."

"Exactly so." Li Feng managed to hold an entirely straight face. "Clearly, this is the Black Dao assault that we should have focused on from the beginning."

They laughed, and whatever strange disorientation lingered from corruption and horns and the general chaos of combat evaporated like morning fog beneath the sun's glare. The tension of battle and recovery dissolved into mirth.

In that moment, surrounded by injured disciples and a hall still smoking from techniques and shattered defenses, they were simply Xiaolong and Li Feng, a dragon and a mortal cultivator enjoying shared humor and a sense of connection that crossed all barriers of nature or rank.

When the laughter subsided, the smile remained on his lips, in his eyes, and in his voice as he offered his arm in a gesture of courtesy. "May I have the pleasure of escorting our honored guest back to her quarters? There are robes to repair, hair to rearrange, and no doubt further discussions of cuisine that will bend the world out of alignment."

Xiaolong's cheeks grew warm, another human physiological response that would make little sense in her true form.

Even as she chided her human body's involuntary responses, she placed her hand on his offered arm, accepting the courtesy and allowing him to lead her from the ruined hall to her temporary refuge in the sect's guest housing.

"I expect you to honor that conversation," she said lightly as they made their slow way up the path, avoiding areas of damage and letting Li Feng's presence reassure any lingering disciples who might mistake her horns for new threats. "Once matters have settled."