Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

His journey to the village was a blur of mind and movement. Every tree, branch, and shadow appeared as a deadly enemy. The Bursting Star-Lotus pill threatened to burn him hollow, and the formation flag was a boulder on his back. Processing the pill was a distraction from the oppressive aura of the flag, and the solid presence of his gu-en helped him keep his internal alchemy from disaster while he ran, so every moment was a balancing act with death to each side.

When he found the village, he did not enter.

It was worked into the flanks of the lower slopes of the mountain. Terraced gardens and fields stepped down into a simple community of mud-brick and wooden houses. A man stood watch atop one of the steeped roofs, and he didn't seem to know what to make of Fushuai, who raised his staff in a distant greeting. Fushuai crossed around the edge of the fields, moving along the highest retaining wall holding back the mountain. His pace was enough to show anyone who happened to be watching that he was a cultivator, and whether or not they thought he was a threat, they would not challenge him.

Carrying the flag meant anyone he approached would see him as a villain, so he resigned himself to meditating in solitude until the chimera appeared. His twin burdens would have made it nearly impossible to hold a meaningful conversation anyway, and the sun's glare in his eyes was enough to make him want to spit. He'd made good time, and if Mao Feng's information held true, he wouldn't have to wait for long.

Hours passed as he fought to control the fire within him, and the fall of night was a welcome relief. The two forces tearing at him did not weaken, but the darkness brought a sense of comfort. With the sun gone, he had one fewer enemy to contend with. The cool night air brushed against sweat-slicked skin, helping to keep him anchored to the physical world.

A shout came from below. Mingled with a human voice was something entirely different. It was an insectile screech, but with it an undertone of something deeper, lower, the bellow of a beast. The distraction of the formation flag limited his senses. He had missed the chimera's arrival.

Fushuai was on his feet and falling from the terrace in a breath. From stone to grass to rooftop, he found them in the space of seconds. The watcher who had spotted the chimera was leveling his bow and readying to loose. It would be useless. Their arrows could not pierce the hide of a spirit beast, but Fushuai could only respect the courage of a commoner who challenged a monster he knew he could not harm.

Wood splintered as the creature smashed through the door, bursting it with its shoulder and disappearing into the house before Fushuai could see it clearly. People were screaming, crying, even within their homes, the shrill voices rising and falling as if they were a natural background. How much of that alarm was from the arrival of the monster or from proximity to the formation flag he carried, it was impossible to say.

The man with the bow dropped it as Fushuai passed, his arrow clattering to the rooftop with a brittle tink. With the menacing aura boiling around him, they could not see him as anything other than a monster himself. To a mortal, it would seem that death was walking by. Perhaps it was, but for tonight, death had come to save them.

The back wall of the building simply burst, the chimera erupting from it and seeking higher ground. It did not carry a victim. Having sensed the flag, it retreated to assess the incoming threat rather than being trapped by it in the house. Dust rose, carrying the dry taste of old wood.

He alit onto the roof and focused on the beast before him. His heart nearly stopped when he saw it clearly, but he could not afford to pause. The cycling had to continue or the pill would kill him. Sour traces of the medicine still clung to the back of his throat, as they had all through the day.

The chimera was familiar, or parts of it were. Mao Feng had said it had the head of a wasp. But those mandibles and the oversized eyes were something he would never forget. It was the mantis.

Its body, though, was not the great, long-limbed thing he had faced in the cypress forest. That alien head had been attached to the body covered in dark fur, with hooves of rock. The darkstone goat.

Along its flanks were serrated spines, the feathers of the brightmetal hawk. This chimera had been made from the spirit beasts he hunted for their cores. He had promised Zhang Sha that he could harvest anything he liked from their carcasses, and at the time, he had only taken scarce ingredients. So either the rogue cultivator had found the bodies for himself, or Zhang Sha was that cultivator and had circled back after Fushuai left. A coincidence was too much to hope for. The murderous, unorthodox cultivator who spent mortal lives to pursue demonic arts was his sworn brother.

He could not afford anger, could not afford any emotion that might distract from the perpetual battle between the formation flag and the Bursting Star-Lotus pill. Fushuai crossed the roof, and the beast retreated up the hill toward the lowest farming terrace. It must have interpreted the killing intent as his own rather than as the effect of the cursed treasure he carried.

He chased it to the third terrace, where the mountain rose steeply. The goat's hooves had no difficulty ascending, but it stopped long enough to turn and spit flame. A red-orange orb sped toward him, and he dodged to one side. It splashed almost like a liquid and continued to burn wherever it fell, hissing as it devoured the damp grass and earth alike.

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So Zhang Sha had stolen from the toad as well, removing whatever organ had allowed it to brew fire in its belly and sewing it into this monstrosity.

With his focus divided as it was, he could not activate Moon Step. But his limbs were full of qi, warm and pulsing, and he followed the chimera almost as easily as a mountain goat himself.

The slope leveled off into a bank of trees, their boughs heavy with the rich green of summer, made almost black by the so far moonless night. The air smelled of sap and old bark, though both were now tainted with acrid smoke. The chimera rammed its shoulder into one of the trees, shattering its trunk, and its ancient crown dropped toward Fushuai.

Avoiding it was simple enough, as was dodging the burst of flame that followed an instant after. But the chimera used the flash and blaze to disappear into the dark lanes of the forest.

Here was a choice: to pursue or to remain at the village. He might be able to catch it, might be able to kill it, but it was no sure thing. What was sure was that any combat he engaged in while cycling the medicinal treasure would be a careful balancing act, the slightest tilt of which could end in his demise.

Chasing it off was no true victory. At best, he had won them a few days and, more likely, a few hours of safety, to be broken shortly after he left.

Still, they had not truly fought at all, and he was almost at his limits. It was difficult to think clearly, but he had a good sense of how much he had left to give. It required no complex calculation to know that both his burdens together were enough to make him nearly useless.

The flag's aura might weaken the chimera, make it slower, and make it hesitate. But if it realized he was not the threat he appeared to be, it might muster the strength to charge through the spiritual oppression and crush him under its hooves.

So he turned back, returning to the terrace and his meditations.

Neither Void Stirring nor Void Dilution was exactly the right tool for processing the fire that burned in his veins. The careful application of each in turn at least allowed him to keep from being consumed entirely.

He could not have drawn enough energy from the ambient aura to satisfy the formation. It was the power within the pill that allowed him to persist. Twelve threads composed the cord of the spiritual energy, and twelve threads remained. They frayed, burned, and were remade. Just as the pain from the pill was allowing him to push through the oppression of the aura, the hunger of the formation flag was keeping him from being overwhelmed by the excess energy of the cultivation treasure.

It was that tenuous balance that had allowed him to come this far. The inscription of the new techniques had reinforced the cage of energy in his belly. His dantian felt firmer than ever, a quiet confidence. That reinforcement alone was not the end of the eighth step, stabilization. Strength was not enough, nor any number of techniques. It was this balance that he had been missing. Even an unstoppable force could be stopped if it were set against another.

With this realization, a pulse was born in his center and spread outward. For a moment only, both the fire and the fear were forgotten. A moment of insight, a moment of serenity where he could see his internal alchemy at work. He was a thousand li away from forming a true core, and yet this was the road.

The pressure of the flag returned, along with the burning in his meridians, but they no longer threatened to tear him apart.

He looked up just in time to see the ball of flame hurtling toward his face. The chimera had returned. Not fully knowing what he intended to do, he raised his staff, and the fire broke against it. The heat burned away the hairs on his arm, and he felt it prickle his skin, sharp and dry. But the ball had been divided and dispersed.

The weapon Xiao Sheng had made for him carried the spiritual impression of all five elements. This chimera was only a pale imitation of the beast whose core had gone into the staff. He could not command the elements on his own, but with this weapon, he could at least command their respect.

As he rose, he split a thread of energy from the cord woven in his meridians and split it again, the divided piece empowering Moon Step and Threads of Still Night at once. Rather than be drowned in the expansion of his senses, he found that he could turn his focus forward, narrowing it into a funnel that ended on the chimera, until nothing existed outside of himself and his opponent.

It ran from him again, but he was faster now. They sped along the rise of the mountain, nearly sideways. With a sharp turn, it took them back over the ridge to where the forest beckoned. It might have lost him there, but one of the trees, ancient and angry, raised its roots to bar the creature's path. Repayment for the brother it had felled not long before.

The chimera destroyed the roots in a few seconds, and those seconds were enough for Fushuai to close the distance between them. Wielding the staff with one hand was far from ideal. He shifted his grip to its lower half and swung it overhand. The oiled cylinder swept down and struck the chimera on its back hip. Its leg buckled, and seeing that it had been caught, it turned to face him.

A part of it must have wanted to retreat, but even through the waves of silent violence that pulsed from the flag, he could feel the creature's intent pushing back.

Whatever instinct of self-preservation it had once possessed had been replaced with all-consuming hunger. It lunged, its mandibles snapping, and he circled to one side. Waving the flag with one hand, he struck it again with the other, cracking the back of its chitinous skull. Fire belched from its mouth, the heat washing over him and disintegrating one leg of his trousers.

He leapt over it, spinning the staff until it crashed down once more. The monster's hooves flashed, and he moved backward into the cover of the trees to avoid them. These ancients were not his friends, but they hated it more than they hated him.

While he slipped through the forest as easily as a breeze, the chimera burned or destroyed everything that got in its way. The forest responded with branches, roots, and thorns, seeking to slow where they could do no real harm. The air was harsh with smoke. After long minutes and many more strikes, the creature's hunger intent faltered. The fear of the formation won out, and it tried to flee.

He threw his staff, a Thread of Still Night extending with it, tangling its legs. The chimera stumbled, fell, and rolled, and he pulled the staff back with those same threads even as he sprinted to meet it.

Releasing Moon Step to restore some of his weight, he jumped and swung down, the staff shattering the top of its skull. The creature did not die immediately, moving like a drunken thing. Its random lunges, unpredictable, led to one of those steel feathers slicing across Fushuai's side. Between the aura and the pill, he did not feel the wound, finishing the creature with one more strike.

The battle ended, and he fell to his knees, letting his staff rest beside him. With one hand, he pressed the gaping gash in his side closed before returning to meditation.