Of Hunters and Immortals

The ichor of the spirit beast was black and viscous, clinging to the steel of Zhang Shuren's blade. Drawing a silk cloth from his spatial ring with a flicker of Qi, he cleaned it with a practised, methodical calm.

He ignored the trembling in his limbs, the exhaustion weighing down his every movement.

The corpse of the Ridge-backed Prowler lay a few paces away, its formidable bulk half-submerged in a snowdrift. It was covered in hundreds of thin, clean cuts – as well as a single, deeper, jagged wound, the one that had finally claimed the beast's life. Some would consider the wound unsightly, unbefitting of a cultivator's strike – Zhang included – but considering the beast was just barely shy of the second realm, the fact that he had managed to kill it at all soothed the sting to his pride.

He sheathed his sword, the sound a soft click in the frozen silence of the woods. The fight had been a near thing, a brutal contest of endurance that had pushed his Qi reserves to their absolute limit. It was not the clean, decisive victory he preferred. This beast had been desperate, fighting with a rabid intensity that spoke of it being hunted, or harried, for a long time.

This far south, a beast of this nature was more than an anomaly; it was an impossibility. Ridge-backed Prowlers were territorial hunters, native to the deep northern forests, well within the lands patrolled by the Ironwood Pavilion. He only recognised the beast at all because he made a point of reading up on every spirit beast the Sect had information on, no matter its native habitat – if only to know which beasts were valuable and which were too dangerous to approach.

For it to be here, it would have had to cross hundreds of miles of unfamiliar terrain, including the heavily trafficked trade roads and, most significantly, the established territory of another Sect. It made no sense. Spirit beasts, while driven by instinct, were not unintelligent. They did not abandon their hunting grounds without a compelling reason – a greater threat, a shift in the ambient Qi, or a blight upon the land.

Two days ago, upon first discovering the creature's tracks, he had sent a formal message via a sending stone, notifying the Ironwood Pavilion of the encroachment and requesting information. It was standard protocol, a matter of courtesy and mutual security between the great Sects. Information like this could help reveal potential threats before they became actual problems. Typically, the Ironwood Pavilion would dispatch an inner disciple to take care of the problem – to wipe away the shame of letting it slip past, if nothing else.

And yet, it had been two days now, and still no reply.

Unprecedented.

Unacceptable.

It had left him with something of a conundrum – technically speaking, he should have contacted the Azure Sky Sect and informed them of the matter once it became clear the Ironwood Pavilion wasn't going to clean up their own mess. Instead… he'd decided to go after the beast himself. A risk, to be sure, but as always, risk came with opportunity. The very last thing Zhang wanted was to be known as a disciple who called for help at the first sign of trouble.

Of course, he hadn't expected the beast to be quite as powerful as it was. Fortunately, he'd prevailed, though it was rather… unsettling how close it was.

In all honesty, the silence from the Ironwood Pavilion was even more unsettling than the beast itself. It was the second such instance – while passing through a larger town a week ago, he'd overheard some merchants commenting on how the Thousand Petal Grove had recalled all their travelling healers and scholars, citing an "internal matter" and ceasing all external correspondence. Now, the notoriously disciplined Ironwood Pavilion was ignoring a direct, formal inquiry regarding a breach of their territory. The great Sects were pulling inward, like turtles retreating into their shells.

Elder Yan had told him the Azure Sky Sect were sending a representative to the other sects, so the matter was out of his hands. He recalled the Elder's words before his departure; the intent for Zhang himself to be selected as the representative, which was… rather more responsibility than even Zhang wanted.

Being an envoy required a level of diplomatic subtlety and patience for political games that, while he technically possessed, he certainly didn't want to try to apply them while still an outer disciple. He was confident in his abilities, but there was a difference between confidence and arrogance.

He pushed the thought aside. The matter was out of his hands, a problem for the Elders to deliberate in their high mountain halls. His own duties were more immediate, more tangible. He mentally reviewed the list of secondary tasks he'd been assigned before leaving the Sect: survey a newly established trade route for potential spirit beast activity, deliver a sealed message to a vassal family in a nearby valley town, and assess the Qi fluctuations around an old ruin. They were trivial assignments, the kind of busywork that, while still necessary, was generally given to outer disciples to test their reliability and keep them out of trouble. Still, they were orders.

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But the Ridge-backed Prowler had changed the calculus of the entire region. An apex predator of its level, this far south, was not a trivial matter. It was a clear and present danger that superseded minor errands. His priority now had to be understanding the threat it represented. The silence from the Ironwood Pavilion meant he could expect no support or information from them. He was on his own.

As far as he could tell, he had two options. The first was to contact the Azure Sky Sect and ask for direction. It was the safe option, but that didn't make it the best one. If, for some reason, the Ridge-backed Prowler was an exception, a freak occurrence that managed to slip past the Ironwood Pavilion, then he would look like a fool, jumping at shadows.

The alternative was to gather more information himself. The risk was that if he was wrong, and the spirit beast's presence was an indication of something larger, then delaying his report could end up with him being censured. If he were right, then he would appear both competent and proactive.

His path, then, was clear.

He needed to go to Qinghe.

There were several reasons, each layering upon the last until the decision felt less like a choice and more like an inevitability. First, and most officially justifiable, Qinghe was where his target was. Outer Disciple Jiang, he knew, was chasing rumours of the Hollow Fang in the area. In truth, Zhang had been second-guessing his decision to leave collecting the rogue outer disciple for later anyway. The rumours he had planted with the servants would have had Jiang heading in that direction initially, no doubt, but Zhang hadn't quite considered what would happen next.

After all, the rumours were fabricated. What would the boy do once it became clear that his quarry wasn't in the area? If he caught a new scent in Qinghe, a fresh rumour to chase? He'd be gone, vanishing into the vast, anonymous sprawl of the northern provinces, and Zhang's simple task of retrieval would become a frustrating, months-long hunt. He refused to allow that.

Fortunately, while the rumours themselves were not genuine, they were at the very least plausible. Qinghe was well known to be a den of criminals and smugglers, left alone only because it was better to have all of the dissident elements in a single place instead of lurking in the shadows of every city. With a bit of luck, there would be a few bandit gangs in the area that Jiang could waste his time chasing down.

Zhang snorted softly to himself as he retrieved a meditation mat from his spatial storage and began the laborious task of refilling his dantian. For all he knew, the Hollow Fangs really were near Qinghe. Wouldn't that be perfectly ironic, that he accidentally sent the boy off in the right direction.

Either way, he needed to ensure Jiang didn't slip the net. It would be irritating to drag the recalcitrant disciple along with him to finish the tasks the elders had set, but better that than an extended chase.

The second reason Qinghe was his next destination was the simple fact that he had no idea how to gather the required information about the recent habits of spirit beasts himself. Qinghe wasn't officially under the protection of any of the Sects, but there were a few well-established independent cultivators that called the city home. It shouldn't be too hard to convince them to offer up any information they had – while they were certainly not at the beck and call of the Sects, they were not so powerful as to be able to ignore a request like this, even from an outer disciple.

It was hardly the kind of information anyone would bother to hide, after all.

Finally, there was a third reason, one Zhang admitted only to himself with a flicker of shame that was almost as irritating as the thought itself. He was sick of this. He was sick of the relentless cold, of sleeping on frozen ground with a rock for a pillow, of the grime under his fingernails that no amount of Qi-cleansing could seem to fully erase. He missed the quiet, ordered comfort of his quarters in the Sect, the taste of a properly cooked meal that wasn't tainted by woodsmoke, and the simple, profound luxury of a real bed. He was a cultivator and a noble's son, not a common mercenary meant for a life of endless rough travel.

The thought was unbecoming of a cultivator, he knew. A crack in the discipline he prided himself on. But it was, he felt, a forgivable one. Cultivators at the third realm and above barely needed to eat or sleep, and thus could deal with the mundanities of travel far easier than he could. By contrast, though his cultivation made things easier, he was still at the stage where he had to deal with most of the difficulties even mere mortals faced.

Not for much longer, but until he was able to advance to the third realm himself, travel would remain… unpleasant.

He sat for another hour, cycling his depleted Qi until the trembling in his limbs finally ceased and a measure of strength returned. He rose, his movements stiff but steady, and cast a somewhat resigned look at the slain beast. From his reading, he knew that the core of a Ridge-backed Prowler was earth-aligned, so it wouldn't be useful to him personally – but any spirit beast core was valuable, and after such a hard-won fight, he refused to leave without extracting everything of value.

If only the process weren't so… messy.

Still, it would fetch him a handsome price in Qinghe. He could use it to pay for a proper inn, one with silk sheets and a decent chef. With the thought buoying his mood, Zhang drew his sword once again and started the unpleasant task of carving into the spirit beast's corpse.

Qinghe awaited. And with it, the end of this undignified affair.