Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

The tree in front of Fushuai exploded as it was struck by a bolt of fire. He had avoided being its victim by a bare inch. The cultivators pursuing them were too fast. Had he been on his own, or with only Zhang Sha, they might have been able to outpace them. But the others would soon be overtaken.

"Here!" He shouted, running in an arc to bring himself between his companions and their pursuers. Two men and one woman, all wearing the red and black robes of Ash Eater inner disciples. He didn't know how they'd found them, and it wouldn't matter until this was over. Their leader dashed between the broad tree trunks of the grove, already preparing another qi technique.

Fushuai launched his gu-en like a javelin, and the man sidestepped, delaying his next attack by precious heartbeats. The staff returned to his hand, compelled by a thread of Yin, and spun to block a volley of ice darts from the woman. They would be on them in seconds.

Zhang Sha vanished and reappeared a few yards away, firing an arrow at the fire-aspected cultivator. The sect member had a shaved head and a purple scar along his jaw that tightened with the release of the technique. A gasp of red and orange incinerated the incoming missile before it could touch him.

His sisters were slower to recover. Mei Li had been humming to herself as they ran, and now that music faltered. She slid to a stop, and instead of finding a weapon, produced her flute. A bone instrument, her prized possession. Lin hid behind her, a bishou* in one hand, though it was unclear if she knew how to use it.

All three sect members veered to engage Fushuai. He was the disciple of the man who had killed the emperor. Zhang Sha was the greater threat, at least by cultivation level, but the honor and glory would not go to the one who killed a companion.

Fushuai had not spent enough time learning to manipulate the five elements to imitate true qi techniques in the heat of battle. Throwing flame against flame, or causing the tree roots to rise and grasp his foes, would have to wait for another encounter. Instead, he was devoting his energy to empowering his body and the three qi techniques inscribed in his dantian.

Moon Step made him as ephemeral as a phantom, and as difficult to catch. His staff rang against one jian, then another. A smaller man, with a shaved head and a pinched face, tried to slip behind him. He carried a guandao, so they were a match for reach, but his eagerness brought him closer than necessary. Fushuai felt his intent, and jabbed the butt of his weapon into the man's gut without looking.

An arrow embedded itself in the first cultivator's thigh, and Zhang Sha went up in a pillar of flame, only to appear beside another tree a moment later. The wills of the three sect members bore down on Fushuai; they were foundation level, all of them. He slowed, both body and spirit, fighting against their spiritual pressure as desperately as he did against their blades. The gu-en would have been knocked from his hand if not for the Threads of Still Night binding it in his grip.

A flock of birds rushed through them, as thin as gauze. Mei Li's illusions, passing with cries like ringing bells. It gave him the split second he needed to slip out of the triangle that had formed around him. He activated Circle of Mist, the domain technique pushing against their spiritual pressure, surrounding him in a sphere of shadow and cold. His limbs grew fast and light again, and he no longer felt like he was fighting underwater, but it was not without cost.

The fight had only gone on in earnest for a matter of seconds, and already he was burning through his newly expanded cord of energy. Spending his reserves like this, he couldn't have outlasted even one of the foundation cultivators, let alone all three. Their attacks were a blur, and so was his response, moving too swiftly for foresight or consideration. A cut appeared along his arm, then his side, then his leg. Another arrow whistled in only to be deflected by a jian.

Ice and flame sprang up around him, riding the edges of his opponent's blades, swooping like hunting birds. He had not landed another blow since the first against the guandao wielder. The fact that he, only at the peak of qi refinement, could hold them off at all might have been a tale worthy of a legend. But it would not save his life.

A white fox bit the female cultivator's ankle. She kicked Bai Tu away, completely unharmed, but the momentary distraction allowed him to jab his staff into her throat. With a pulse of qi, he empowered the strike with aspects of metal and earth. She made a choked sound and danced back, anger coloring her face. The scarred man snarled a sacred word, and a ring of flame sprang up around them, expanding into the forest.

He heard Mei Li's alarmed shout, the faltering of her flute, but couldn't so much as afford to glance in the direction of his sisters. The guandao thrust, and suddenly, it ended on a dozen blades instead of one. His staff whirled, touching each edge in a brief symphony of steel on steel. The blades multiplied again, and again, until it seemed the air was nothing else. He retreated, but they were faster, and points pressed into his skin in three different places, signaling the end.

Then they disappeared.

The third sect member had four arrows in his back. His technique, whatever it had been, was broken. His sect brother did not pause to help him, instead summoning a wall of flame that rolled over them in the next instant. Fushuai's staff met it, and the flames parted, but not without searing the skin from the backs of his hands. And the scarred man was already coming behind the flames, his jian aiming for the heart.

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An illusion rose between them, more birds, shattered the instant they came into being. A whip of water, Lin's doing, failed to grasp him. Neither her will nor advancement was strong enough to challenge the will of someone in foundation stage. The tip of the jian scraped along his staff to pierce his chest even as Fushuai threw himself backward, penetrating muscle and nicking his breastbone.

He closed his eyes as the scarred man lunged again. It was spirit that mattered, not sight. Metal clanged, scraped, and rang. His hands moved on their own. His body knew its purpose. Will clashed against will, and he knew his opponent was superior. He could not match his strength, and it was a near thing in speed, where his talent was greatest.

His reserves were burning with every breath.

Instead of trying to meet him strength for strength, Fushuai gave ground. He turned, allowing his opponent's force to carry him past, and snapped the length of his staff against his heel. It was a small victory, little more than a stumble, but it provided an opening for another strike. A blow to the temple staggered the sect member, and a new aura joined their contest.

Hunger. Pain. Guilt. Anguish and desire so tightly bound that they were one and the same. Fushuai let it wash over him, but the sect member was momentarily stunned. Zhang Sha appeared in the same instant and drove his skinning knife into the man's kidney.

The fires died, leaving behind a blackened circle in a silent wood. Ghosts flickered and faded around Zhang Sha, echoes of dream qi, as he wiped the blood from his blade. Fushuai looked for his sisters and found them nearby in a patch of relatively unburnt grass. Mei Li looked more ethereal than ever, her face bloodless, the flute held loosely in one hand. Lin was sweating and panting from the strain on her spirit caused by shielding them both from the flames.

The sect brothers were dead, but the woman was gone.

"Took her with an arrow after you stumped her," Zhang Sha said casually. "She ran. Shouldn't have. They might have won if she had stayed."

"Where do we go?" Mei Li demanded, lifting the hem of her robe as if it could be protected from the flakes of ash drifting around them. "They will hunt us to the ends of the earth."

Fushuai spent a breath accounting for his wounds. The stab to his chest had stopped at the bone, and the bleeding would soon stem. The damage to his hands was more severe. During the battle, he'd pushed all pain aside, and now it was coming roaring back.

Enough skin had been burned away to expose meat, tendon, and bone. Sheer agony, as if they still burned, but he held his voice steady.

"Did they see through the false trails?" He asked. His fingers were quivering, and he thought that if he let his staff go, he might never be able to pick it up again.

"They were all foundation," Zhang Sha said, kneeling beside the scarred man's body. "It's possible, but unlikely. Do you still have that ring?"

The storage ring the Ash Eater sect had loaned to him was seared into his remaining skin.

"I do."

"Get rid of it."

He called out the few items that it contained for Zhang Sha to collect in his. His master's formation flag was not something to leave behind. Then, with a sharp breath, he ripped it free. Blood had welled from the burns, enough that it was dripping onto the charred ground. They'd rushed from the sect compound and hadn't stopped running since. It had happened so quickly that he hadn't stopped to consider that the ring might be used to track them.

"I should have known," he said, inwardly cursing his foolishness. It could have cost them all their lives.

"Hah. We all could have thought better. It's done with now, and we can't be sure that the ring was the problem, but abandoning it is an acceptable loss to avoid the risk." Zhang Sha rose. "What a shame. We can't even rob them of their treasures. There's no way to know what might be used to find us again."

Lin approached, and Fushuai felt a layer of cooling water seal over his wound. Her eyes were wide open and stuck that way.

"Is it over?" She was trembling more than he was.

"No," he said. "This was just a beginning. This is why you and Mei Li should find your own way."

"I'm not leaving you."

Bai Tu snuck between them, favoring one side, and licked at some of the blood before sniffing the dead cultivator.

"You did well, little one," Fushuai told the fox, and it blinked up at him, eyes as blue as sapphires.

Zhang Sha shifted in place, his expression had gone slack. "You know, by foundation stage, a cultivator's roots are solid enough to harvest. Their meridians can be pulled out and wound in a spool."

Lin gasped, and Fushuai fixed him with a hard stare. "Those are not your words. That is the deviation."

"You think too much of me," Zhang Sha's face clouded. "Before I left my sect, they called me the Hollow Anatomist." He shook his head. "It's a simple fact. I wasn't going to gut them."

"We have to keep moving," Fushuai said, flexing his hands. The pain had only lessened by a shade, but Lin's skill had at least stopped the bleeding, and it would help him to heal. "But we need a better idea of where we are going than south."

"This isn't my territory; the best I could do is old tales."

He had his master's map, but he was not meant to open it until he reached the next stage. Wherever it led, it wasn't likely to somewhere that would make it easier to survive. Xiao Sheng had left a manual behind, and it was almost certainly guarded, or else hidden in a place no sane cultivator would venture.

Lin's delicate features were as frozen as a moth trapped under glass. She wanted to say something, but she wasn't sure she should speak. The girl kept glancing at Zhang Sha like she hoped he would disappear.

"What is it?" Fushuai asked.

"I think I know where we might go. You said you need Yin aura to advance. I read about the Coughing Valley. It's as much east as south. But there was a tribulation there that wiped out an entire nation. The death aura would be tremendous, even now."

The name sounded familiar, but with pain and exhaustion tugging at his every fiber, Fushuai couldn't place it. As long as the land was still wild, it could be what he needed, and remote enough that they weren't likely to be found.

"Then that is where we will go."