We each had to bring the severed head of a monster at least one small grade above our own, and all the corpses met that standard, with the giant serpent exceeding it by a large margin. However, the serpent was massive—it wouldn't fit in my storage ring as it was, even if I cast Reduce on it, as I had a fair amount of stuff stored already. The head itself might fit, but nothing much more than that.
I'd like to plop down the giant head in front of everyone just to flex, but I was wondering if it was worth it.
"Hey, can I have the corpse of this giant serpent?" Xiao Li asked as I was thinking, both of us peering down to look at it from the comfort of my flying cloud.
He held out the severed head of the cat creature as if handing it to me, still dripping blood, and I recoiled, complaining, "Hey! You'll get blood all over my... cloud..." I realised at last that this was kind of a silly complaint and kind of trailed off, but Xiao Li was the kind of guy who, when he was a little boy, would shove a frog in his sister's face. He needed to be corrected when he did pointlessly gross things.
I was about to suggest we leave the serpent here, so I was curious about why Xiao Li wanted it. I asked, "What do you want it for? It's not like we can carry the whole thing off."
He snorted, lifting his nose up, "It's full of valuable materials for alchemy, of course!"
Ah, right. I had inherited Merildwen's anti-skill in this discipline, so I rarely even bothered reading about it, except knowing about what was possible so I could know what to buy from actual alchemists. I descended my cloud, and then, when we were only ten metres or so off the ground, I absorbed it into my body completely, causing us to free fall for a second before lightly touching down around the head of the large beast. I eyed him, "How are you going to take it away?"
"Well, I was hoping you could put up some sort of illusory formation to hide us while I process the body," he suggested, glancing up, "I mean, we have a long time left here in the wilderness anyway. It's only day five!"
That was true. Not only did we have to secure the severed head of a diremonster, but we had to spend three months out here in the wilderness and survive doing so, which might be the more difficult of the two tasks. I did have a number of illusory and beguiling formations studied, as well as the tools necessary to rapidly construct them. Studying formations was a hobby that was rapidly turning into a possible career for me, especially the illusory ones.
Once I reached the Foundation Establishment realm, I reached the point where my Illusion school wizardry spells had become somewhat useless unless modified. They were really overpowered in the Qi Gathering realm, but everyone and everything had magical or spiritual senses now, and most of my illusion spells, aside from Magic Aura, were merely five-sense illusions or worse.
I studied the way Daoist illusory spells and formations worked in this world in order to incorporate that sixth sense called spiritual sense into my Illusion school spells, but it was slow going. Right now, all I could do was combine Invisibility and Magic Aura to create a true invisibility effect, but invisibility was a simple illusion—hiding something was always simpler than simulating something out of whole cloth. However, I didn't think an illusory formation of any kind was going to help Xiao Li here.
I glanced at the trail of obvious destruction that extended many kilometres in length caused by the serpent chasing me and snorted, putting my hands on my hips, "I can put an illusory formation here, but it would be too obvious with this trail of destroyed forest. It wouldn't work very well."
The majority of Daoist illusions were of the type that beguiled the mind, more like Enchantment spells rather than holograms—and they got a lot weaker when there was obviously something wrong or incongruent, like a trail of destroyed forest leading right up to your formation of illusory pristine forest. The mental dissonance between what you expected to see and what the illusion was trying to tell you that you were seeing was an obvious site of failure for any dweomer of this class, Daoist type or not.
Xiao Li looked up and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, and said, "Oh. Yeah." He thought for a bit and then nodded, "Most of the value is in the head. I'll get the heart, gallbladder and a couple of other organs out real quick, and then we can take the head away somehow."
I gritted my teeth. So we were back to carting away this huge severed head after all? While the disgusting boy dug around in the corpse of the serpent, I spent a moment to cast Reduce, then wrapped the shrunken head up in my spiritual sense and triggered the ingestion function of my storage ring, causing it to disappear with a popping sound of air rushing to fill in the vacuum.
Reduce didn't last very long, but good quality storage rings as I had generally worked on the concept of Spacetime rather than just Space, and they vastly slowed the passage of time for the items inside them, so it was kind of a cheat to store really large items. It also helped to keep meals fresh and hot, which was my primary concern most of the time.
Reducing the head from the size of a large SUV to the size of a golf cart allowed me to fit it inside my ring without shuffling things around too much. However, after doing so, Xiao Li emerged from the body of the serpent, covered in blood, and told me that I hadn't needed to bother since it would have fit entirely inside his ring—this meant that his storage ring was significantly larger than mine. I already knew his ring put items into stasis as well, so it was probably quite expensive.
I suppose that made sense. He was one of the only disciples of that Pai Wei-looking sword fanatic. While my Mistress had higher cultivation, I was just one of about two dozen direct disciples and had many, many senior sisters, so I didn't get as many goodies when I came adventuring.
After gathering up everything we were going to take, we flew about a hundred kilometres in a random direction and found a place that didn't seem to have many diremonsters living nearby to land. After that, I set up the largest illusory formation that still met my standards for subtlety, quickly flitting from place to place, setting up and adjusting the formation flags and spirit stones to power it several times.
Formation flags were standard equipment for any Formation Mistress to use in combat situations. They were very flexible and allowed you to set up any number of different formations and quickly, too, although at the cost of both efficiency and cost. The flags were expensive and would slowly break down over time when used, much faster than a standard formation plate. I had close to a thousand of them of varying elemental affinities—for this illusory formation, I used mostly neutral or yin flags. Eventually, I was satisfied and activated the formation while inside of it.
In addition to concealing us, it also functioned similarly to trapping formations, where if you walked in, you found it difficult to leave, with you always getting turned around. However, instead of trapping, this did the opposite—it just made sure you flowed around our little concealed hideout. That way, even if someone randomly came running or flying through, they would just go around us without even getting close or seeing us.
Dusting myself off after I finished setting the last formation flag, which took the form of a small obelisk a few centimetres tall, I walked back towards our campsite. Xiao Li glanced up from setting up what looked like a large portable chemistry set on some kind of roller desk that folded out into a much larger work area than I thought should be possible. He asked, "How long can this formation last?"
I shrugged, "As long as we need. I'm powering it with spirit stones, and it doesn't take much except when it is actively beguiling people or monsters. After I finalise all the features, I'll finalise it and start painting actual formation plates and switch over to using them—we could stay here the entire eighty-five days if you like."
Although it was possible to set up a second, passive Qi gathering formation to power this concealment formation more or less forever, or at least until it required maintenance, that wasn't a great idea.
Such a compound formation would disturb the local Qi flows, and although the average cultivator at our level might not be able to detect the relatively lower amount of ambient Qi, many monsters could. They had special senses specifically geared around that sort of thing in order to secure the best hibernation or nesting spots as a survival adaptation. Also, wild monsters generally had ways to detect natural treasures like spiritual fruits and odd flows in local Qi, causing either depressions or areas of high-density Qi, which were a good giveaway for these goodies.
He tapped his foot and nodded, "We have everything we need here, but let's move every few weeks. It's not only diremonsters we have to be concerned about. The other test takers might rob and murder us, too—especially if they know we already have some heads."
I frowned, as I hadn't really considered that, and I was usually the one who was the least trusting of other people between us. I just assumed that an organisation like the Sky Guards Army would have rules in place that you had to get your own head, but thinking about what they told us, that didn't seem to be the case. Otherwise, we might not have been permitted to work together. We saw a few rich young masters who had Dao Protectors with them, and I assumed they were going to be doing all or most of the work for them, too.
The "PvP" aspect was probably part of the test, I realised, with a sigh. I agreed with his assessment, "That's fine. I'll use the last few days to scout out a new location. I'm a lot more stealthier than you, I think."
Most of my stealth came from my spells, although I was still on the level of casting both Invisibility and Magic Aura as separate spells to generate a combined effect, but I also wanted to see if I could combine them into a new spell. It was plausible, although it would definitely increase from two second-level spells to a third level, at the least. I didn't think it would reach the fourth level because, unlike Greater Invisibility, it would still be dispelled in the event I took a hostile action.
Not only would I be invisible, but I was very light on my feet and could travel through this forest without making noise. My cultivation technique was based on the concept of dancing, after all, so I could step very lightly these days. I could run across snow without leaving footprints and step off a drop of morning dew, much less run through a forest without creating noise. Even before I transmigrated, I was wise in the ways of the forest, as most hunters were.
It felt a little bit weird as I had the skills to act as more of an Arcane Trickster than a wizard, given how dangerous I was at close range these days. The physical power of cultivators, even the relatively weaker ones who specialised in the spiritual cultivation of Qi instead of body cultivation, like me, made the warriors of Merildwen's world seem weaksauce. I was stronger, in absolute terms than a Hill Giant if I remembered the Strength table correctly, although I probably wouldn't have been able to utilise the strength as well as someone who was five metres tall, like a Giant. It was hard to beat the leverage a huge body gave you for performing feats of strength.
By that, I meant that a Hill Giant could easily pick up that serpent's head and throw it at someone. I had the strength to do the same thing theoretically, but I probably wouldn't be able to easily pick up that head due to my arms being shorter and not having a way to gain leverage. I was strong, but it wasn't like I had tactile telekinesis like Superman—I couldn't pick up huge objects.
I ambled over to where Xiao Li was simmering a large pot of bubbling liquid and asked, "What are you making?" I was curious but didn't want to get too close. Xiao Li claimed that if I was within arms distance of a concoction while he was making it, the quality was at least ten per cent lower even if I didn't do anything but watch. I wasn't sure I believed him because he lied like that all the time to tease me, but I couldn't definitively rule it out.
"Ink, for you," he said while sprinkling some weird powder into the witch's brew. What he was doing wasn't scientific at all; he just kind of eyed the components and even sniffed them before dropping them into the bubbling cauldron. He glanced over and said, "I got barrels worth of blood from that serpent... it makes sense to make some talisman and formation ink out of it. You can make me some talismans or something in exchange."
"Oooh," I said, suddenly interested. The serpent's cultivation was high, so ink from his blood should be of pretty good quality. Blood was a pretty common primary component of ink for both talisman artistry and creating formations. The only downside was that it would colour the resultant ink with the element that was most prominent in the creature's makeup. This limitation meant that blood was a common but not extremely common base for inks. A highly infused spiritual water, distilled, was the most common base because it could be either neutral or elementally focused like blood; it all depended on which pigments you used.
I glanced up, remembering. The serpent embodied rampant growth, and taking a delicate sniff of the concoction from ten metres away, I nodded. This was heavily Wood aspected, which was unfortunate. I didn't know a lot about wood-based talismans or formations.
"I don't know too many Foundation-level wood talismans or formations," I explained. There was a wood-based healing talisman, which was a pretty rare effect for talismans, but it didn't have anywhere near as good effect as an alchemical healing potion or pill. But... there was that one that functioned a lot like the Druid spell Vengeful Roots and Entangle, now that I thought about it. It was supposed to be pretty strong, but it had a bit of a usage restriction, as it would only work reliably outside, so I had never bothered trying to draw one.
I was a bit more confident in wood-based formations, but the most common usage for these types of formations was over a large area, like in spiritual gardens or as a reinforcement, generally combined with earth, on building walls. Considering we were currently living a murderhobo lifestyle, I didn't think we needed any permanent formations.
Although I wasn't hemmed in to only making the yin, cold and necromantic talismans or formations, as I could use speciality inks, papers or formation treasures to make up for it, the fact was that I still mostly practised those kind of formations. Well, most of the formations I practised were neutral, but when I emplaced an elementally aspected formation, for example, in killing or defensive formations, I would generally always use cold and freezing attacks as they resonated more with me, which made creating them simpler and quicker.
I wouldn't let the ink go to waste, though.
"Grandma Mei says that you should be able to upgrade my pill furnace with a Wood-Spirit-Control formation," he said absently, and I raised my eyebrows. That sounded familiar, but I'd have to check the books of formations that I brought with me. I had bought quite a few from the Dao Repository with my wealth of contribution points before I left the sect. I knew his pill furnace and most of his chemistry equipment were newly bought, but I assumed it already came with all of the appropriate formations. I'd have to take a look later.
I made a noncommittal noise, saying, "I'll look at your furnace sometime when you're not using it." I still had to repair the damage to my corpse puppet, but I was feeling lazy, so I just set up a hammock and rocked back and forth, looking up into the thick canopy above. This forest reminded me a lot of the place I found myself in this world after the teleportation mishap—only there weren't huge masses of spider webs in the tree canopy, thankfully.
I had gotten domesticated, used to the fleshpots of the big city and had forgotten the simple joys of being alone... well, mostly alone... in the middle of the wilderness. Xiao Li didn't bother me too much being around. Most of the time, he knew the concept of companionable silence and didn't try to fill gaps with meaningless chatter, as some people who were afraid of their own thoughts did... or maybe it was that he just didn't have any thoughts up there.
I sighed. There were no comely fox maidens in this forest, or at least if there were, they'd likely try to kill me, but it was peaceful, at least right here and right now. A nap might be in order, I thought.
I waved a hand and pulled my cat out of my storage ring. You really couldn't store living things in storage rings, even, no... especially the ones that put them in stasis. However, my familiar wasn't by any definition alive; he merely pretended to be fairly well. He hopped up onto me and curled up on my boob shelf, purring. Perhaps I should be a little creeped out since he wasn't really a cat, but familiars are a bit weird since you have the bone-deep knowledge that they are magically incapable of hurting you.
Instead of being concerned, I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.
I finished the last stroke of the Verdant Lifebloom Talisman and exhaled, setting my brush aside. I carefully lifted the talisman up and blew onto the still-wet ink. The Talisman Artistry books I read, as well as the teachers who taught me practical skills, called this the "Breath of Life." I wasn't so pretentious, but blowing air, mixed with a little bit of gaseous qi, did allow you to dry the ink rapidly, preventing a smudge from destroying your effort.
Peering at it and judging it as a success, I placed it into a pile of already completed, successful works. This was a genuine Foundation level talisman, and at first, I barely succeeded four times in ten. But practice made perfect, and I rarely made mistakes now if I was careful in my painting. You had to paint a talisman in one go, and you couldn't pause for more than a few seconds. That was one of the reasons that painting talismans was called artistry.
The concept and your personal understanding of the runes were more important than the mechanical skill in most cases. If you churned out identical talismans like a machine, they would work but not as well as if you put yourself more into crafting each one, even if there were minute differences from standard.
I had made over a hundred and fifty of these healing talismans in the past weeks. I thought they would be useless since they offered a much lower healing effect than alternatives, but through experimentation, we discovered that it was a mystical effect akin to the divine healing magic that Merildwen was familiar with. It also took effect instantly, whereas most alchemical healing was a gradual heal-over-time regeneration effect as you digested the medicinal effect—even strong pills functioned this way.
Ultimately, this meant that you could combine it with a healing pill or potion without worrying about alchemical toxicity, which would allow you to heal much more serious wounds by using the two items together, even if the talisman wasn't as strong individually. You couldn't just down multiple healing pills at once. You'd rapidly reach diminishing returns and thereafter experience toxic effects.
You couldn't stack a handful of these talismans either, but they just wouldn't work... you wouldn't be poisoned or negatively affected; you'd just waste them. Altogether, it was a very useful auxiliary healing item that I had yet to consider. We decided to keep some and then sell the rest when we finished and would split the proceeds.
"You've made a lot of those! Good! Make sure to keep some on you at all times," Xiao Li said from over my shoulder, and I narrowed my eyes. He had been insistent, since we had learned that they were actually useful, that I always carry these talismans on my person, claiming I was a "squishy."
It annoyed me that Xiao Li cultivated both his body and spiritual Qi, whereas I didn't have much talent for the former. As such, he had more regenerative capability than a troll and was a lot physically stronger than me to boot.
"Now, see here—" I began to complain, as I didn't like him treating me like I was made of spun glass, but I stopped as something moving fast entered the detection range of the formations I had set up. I had long since replaced the temporary formation flags with semi-permanent custom-painted formation plates, so I froze a moment and then ran over to the central control plate and placed my hand upon it.
"Someone is coming," I declared, which got Xiao Li's attention.
He walked over to join me and asked curiously, "Will they get through your formation?"
I snorted and shook my head, "I don't think so. He is injured and running for his life from..." I trailed off and waited until whatever was chasing them entered the detection range.
"—a group of four cultivators," I said, making a 'tsk' sound of disapproval. There were a group of three cultivators chasing him, along with at least one flying above in a small boat-style flying treasure.
Over the two months that we had been in this forest, we had seen signs of cultivator-on-cultivator violence, but this was our first sign of seeing it happen in real-time. Xiao Li tilted his head to the side, asking, "Should we help him? Can we help him?"
I shrugged my shoulders, "I could let him through the formation. He'd appear to just vanish from their perspective, and he'd join us here in the centre while they'd flow around it." I paused and asked hesitantly, "Should we? Perhaps they have a good reason to chase him, though?"
Xiao Li rolled his eyes, "I understand the concept that not everyone who is weak is good, nor that those who are strong are necessarily bad, but would you hunt someone down four-on-one?"
"Yes, absolutely," I said without even a moment of hesitation. I didn't have the same sense of martial arts chivalry that Xiao Li and a lot of sword cultivators had. In my opinion, if I was fighting a fair fight, then something had already gone wrong. Moreover, if I was hunting someone, then it likely meant that they were a general threat, like they were a rabid dog to put down. Fairness wouldn't enter into it at all—after all, I would feel responsible for the lives some hypothetical villain would take in the future if I let them get away by trying to be "fair."
He snorted, "Alright, fair enough. I still think we should help him."
I nodded, "Okay. I'll let him through. He looks pretty badly injured, so get some of your potions... and something to put him to sleep, too." I didn't want to sort through whether he was a good or bad person right away with his pursuers still to deal with. It would be better if he was just incapacitated while we sorted everything out.
I cautioned, "If his pursuers start a systematic search for him, they might discover our hideout here. The formation is designed to trick people who find it incidentally, not trick a determined and systematic search of the area."
Xiao Li brightened, talking mostly to himself, "If they're reasonable men and this guy they are chasing is a nar-do-well, then we can hand him over to their justice." He then paused and asked himself quietly, "Otherwise, free loot?" He nodded and asked, "What do the four chasing him look like?"
I raised an eyebrow, trying not to smile, "To me, it looks like one or two young masters in the first stage of Foundation Establishment and two potential Dao Protectors who are in the third or fourth level." Dao Protectors were basically bodyguards for rich young masters and young mistresses, and I mainly based my judgment on the way they were dressed. The two young masters were dressed extravagantly, but the two others were dressed in dark, muted, matching outfits.
To join the Sky Guards Army, you couldn't bring real, actual Dao Protectors with you. However, that didn't really stop anyone... all they did was they'd bring Dao Protectors who were at the same level who hadn't joined yet, and these Dao Protectors "took the test," too. I couldn't really complain, though, since it was the same premise that allowed Xiao Li and I to take the test together, and we had definitely done a lot better together than alone. The truth was that being rich and having guards and minions was another kind of strength, too.
As I made the adjustment, adding the newcomer to the formation's whitelist, I frowned. Hadn't I just ruminated on never taking a fair fight? Why, then, was I doing something that likely would put us into conflict with four other cultivators, two of which were a couple of small realms higher than us?
A couple of minutes later, a bedraggled-looking young man appeared in the clearing we had setled in. He was wearing traditional cultivator robes, which at one point in time were white. At the moment, they were more blood than white, and most of it was his. His wounds would have been debilitating and grievous to a normal person, but for a cultivator, they were just grievous—he could still function, mostly.
He looked around, surprised to find himself in a clearing when all of his senses were telling him that he was, until recently, ducking and dodging through the forest. Xiao Li was waiting for him, waving a friendly hand and saying, "You're safe in here, stranger!"
The boy, only looking a little older than Xiao Li himself, seemed to sag in relief before hesitating and saying worriedly, "Junior Sister..."
I was invisible, waiting on the edge of our clearing. He had already passed me, and I stepped out behind him and flexed my magical muscles, moving my hands in the somatic gestures as I spoke words to the first-level enchantment Sleep. I was upcasting it, but it also had a much better effect if you could "ambush" someone with it when they didn't see you casting, and a better effect if they were injured as well.
Altogether, he only had the briefest warnings before he slumped to the ground, enchanted in a magical slumber. Xiao Li looked at me `annoyed, and said, "You didn't have to do that. He looked friendly enough."
He had, actually, but you could never tell. "He looked like he was about to object to being saved if he couldn't help this Junior Sister of his..." I said, annoyed. I could see him, if he was anything like Xiao Li, rushing out of safety, still half-dead. It was best to head off such things at the pass. I waved a hand, "Quick, administer the sleeping potion first before he wakes up again."
Xiao Li sighed but complied. After that, we administered both healing pills and one of my new talismans, and the young man already looked a lot better, not having the pallor of a dead body anymore, with most of his heavy wounds closing up or being in the process of closing up.
"It looks like they're searching the area in that flying boat," I said, frowning. "How do you want to approach them? If I didn't make this clear, I don't like fair fights."
He chortled, "This is two on four; it's already unfair—they need more guys!" He then rubbed his chin, and it looked to me as if he was imagining having facial hair, before saying, "We can approach them, looking like easy prey. If they are righteous law-keepers, maybe we give them this guy. If they seem like they're going to attack us, then we counter-kill them! If not, then I guess we let them go?"
Well, that was more of a goal than a plan, but I nodded cautiously, "Let's talk about how we can seem like easy prey but not actually be easy prey." Although we were both quite a bit stronger than our cultivation made us appear, I didn't want to fall into the "main character" syndrome of assuming that was always the case—especially in a situation like this test, where theoretically only the personally strong took part in the first place.
The four cultivators were still searching around us by the time we settled on a plan, and we went out to meet them on top of my cloud. We circled around them to make it unclear precisely where we were arriving from, but it would still be obvious that we were nearby all along.
"Wow, their flying ship looks expensive," Xiao Li said, and I narrowed my eyes at him, causing him to hold his hands up and ask, "What?"
"It's a boat," I explained to him. It resembled a ketch, and it really did look expensive, but it was most certainly not a ship. I corrected him, "The airship that we travelled in back then was a ship; this is a boat."
He looked perplexed, "...does that matter?" he asked himself, barely audible, "...also, making it seem like you are talking through that thing is creepy."
"Shut up," I told him firmly, on that. This ran into our plan, and while I didn't think those four could hear us, especially with the magic involved in the cloud's operation stopping the relative wind from blowing us in the face, I wasn't sure, and he shouldn't suggest anything to give away our plan.
We pulled up slowly and stopped a respectful distance away. The ketch had already stopped its search pattern, and I could see all four of the cultivators gathered around the mizzenmast near the afterdeck. I wasn't even sure why it had masts since I was positive it wasn't the wind that was propelling it.
"Hello, the boat," Xiao Li hollared, giving me a side eye and emphasising the word "boat" before continuing, "Hello, Fellow Daoists! We couldn't help but notice you gentlemen searching the area, and we were a little concerned."
"What business is it yours? And it is a yacht!" one of the fancy lads yelled before another placed his arm on his shoulder and whispered a few words.
Xiao Li glanced at me and raised his eyebrows sassily, and I whispered, "Most yachts are just boats with pretensions."
The two fancy gentlemen finished their whispered conversation, and then the first one nodded and yelled back, "Apologies, Fellow Daoist! Perhaps we should move this discussion on the ground. Would you mind landing next to us?"
Xiao Li and I shared a glance. That was one of the things we were expecting if they intended to ambush us. Not only were cultivators not that great at aerial combat, unless they were highly specialised for that, at this stage, but someone with an expensive boat to protect likely wouldn't want to put it in the line of fire. Both Xiao Li and I, but especially Xiao Li, could convert it into flinders with one or two attacks, even if they missed the cultivators.
It was obviously not a Core Formation artefact, and that was really the first stage where something could be a pleasure boat and a warship. At our stage, the only durable flying artefacts were Xiao Li's swords and other obviously uncomfortable objects.
Xiao Li yelled back, "Certainly, Fellow Daoists!"
I controlled my nimbus, moving slower than it was capable of so that we could land after the four. After the four landed, they all jumped out of the boat and put a fair bit of distance between themselves, which was odd. It would be an odd pleasure boat if it didn't have built-in reduction formations. Normally, a ship that expensive could be shrunk down to fit inside the palm of your hand and then stored in your storage rings—unless it wasn't empty, of course, so I decided to keep an eye on it for either a possible ambush or treasure it contained.
Two passengers jumped off my nimbus after it hovered briefly and then lifted off, going straight up several hundred metres. One of the uniformed Daoists watched it leave but didn't comment. Autonomous flying treasures were unusual at this level, but it wasn't unheard of for them to exist, especially if the autonomous action was simple, like "get out of our way" or "return to me." It wasn't that suspicious to them; after all, they couldn't sense anyone onboard. It wasn't like my cloud had cabins people could hide in, like their ketch did.
Cultivators in our realm could communicate non-verbally with their spiritual sense, and it would be difficult to eavesdrop. However, it wouldn't be difficult to know such communication was happening, and both Xiao Li and I could see a flurry of spiritual message packets going between the group of cultivators. The art of communicating secretly using my spiritual sense was much harder, and I didn't even try.
Instead of giving myself away like that, I communicated through Message. I wasn't under the impression that it would be impossible for a cultivator to notice such a communication was happening, but it certainly didn't look like traditional spiritual sense messages, and it would likely take someone truly gifted in Qi to notice it due to it being unfamiliar. I sent, «Are you convinced? They're totally plotting on how to murder us.»
He replied, «Maybe. Let's give them a little more. If you see something more, begin the plan immediately.»
I nodded. We had made a few plans, and we were well established in our most ideal one. In that ideal plan, it was I who would "set things off" and make a spectacle of myself, with Xiao Li taking advantage of the surprise and distraction.
Xiao Li, apparently, had decided to push them a little, which I approved of. In my opinion, conflict was becoming unavoidable, and I preferred to be the one striking the first blow. He said, "You gentlemen are acting a bit suspiciously. You wouldn't happen to be about to try to ambush us, would you?"
They froze, and then one of the fancy-dressed men chuckled fakely and said, "Of course not." They totally were, with the two uniformed tough guys moving in an obvious formation, standing protectively in front of Xiao Li, protecting the fancier-dressed boys behind them.
From my vantage point, I could see a talisman appear in the hands of the quieter of the two fancy lads, and I squinted. I was holding my spiritual sense inside, so I could only use my eyes, but they were better than a hawk's these days. I recognised two runes and tentatively identified it as an attacking talisman with a lightning element—and a strong one. That was a pretty good element for ambushing someone since the attack generally arrived before you could perceive it.
While it was technically possible that he was only pulling that out in case Xiao Li got violent, I didn't believe it. They had us outnumbered and were acting very suspiciously. Not to mention, they had already hounded what appeared to be a good person near to death. That was good enough for me.
I leapt off my flying cloud, pulling it into my storage ring as I did. My cloud didn't have any autonomous functions, but if I was invisible, then it certainly appeared as if it did. My first plan was for Xiao Li to approach them alone, but he thought that would be a bit suspicious in itself. He was worried that if they saw one cultivator obviously approaching them, they would think he was really strong and would avoid a confrontation, so we used my corpse puppet, who had a strong illusion that resembled, with the hope that two cultivators might appear to be easy pickings.
I still couldn't create illusions immune to spiritual sense, but I could now easily block it, so all the puppet appeared to be was a cultivator that had some way to block spiritual sense inspections of herself, which there were many ways to accomplish.
As I fell through the air, I whispered the verbal components and made the complicated gestures for the highest-levelled ice spell I could reliably cast—Ice Storm. The moment it cast, my invisibility dropped, and a second later, all four of the enemies glanced up. It wouldn't have been possible to hide at that point anyway because the magically appearing sleet and hail stones suddenly appeared, causing roiling disturbances in the local Qi that even non-cultivators might be able to feel.
As soon as the cast was completed, I pulled out my weapon from my storage ring and followed the ice storm on the way down. Looking up at me was a mistake because as soon as they did, Xiao Li crushed a talisman in his hand which caused grasping vines to shoot rapidly out of the earth, wrapping around all four of their bodies.
This was the Nature's Embrace Talisman, which I also created quite a few of with the ink made from the great serpent's blood. It had a fair amount of restrictions in its use, but here in the wilderness? It was basically ideal. It stopped their attempts to jump out of the way of an ice storm, and more importantly, it caused the fancy lad with the lightning talisman to not be able to dodge my follow-on attack.
I swung my weapon, which was in the form of a giant halberd that almost seemed like a one-sided war axe, with all of my strength almost doubling over my body in free fall. I hit him so hard that I bisected him vertically into two clean pieces, blood spraying everywhere and causing the blade of my weapon to penetrate deeply into the ground.
The hail and sleet were hitting at the same time, with several magical pieces of ice creating what amounted to fragmentation bombs amidst their group.
I had less than a fraction of a second to decide whether or not to try to pull my weapon out, and I decided against it. Instead, I performed a move that looked more in place in ballet than combat, bending over backwards to step onto the top shaft of my weapon, using it to push backwards and accelerate myself away from the group of enemies.
I had landed behind their front-liners, but there was no reason for me to stay amongst them. I tried putting as much distance as possible between us, and that turned out to be a fortunate decision.
It wasn't the two Dao Protectors that almost killed me as they were both occupied trying to avoid getting decapitated by Xiao Li and my corpse puppet. Instead, it was the second fancy lad. He surged and flexed, looking to me kind of like a Saiyin from Dragon Ball, with gold light erupting around him, which withered the grasping vines instantly. He wasn't hampered by the icy sleet, which froze on the ground, either.
Just as I pushed off of my weapon, flinging myself rapidly backwards, a sword flew through the same space that my body was in before, the kid leaping at me with a huge burst of speed, causing me to raise my eyebrows. He looked totally enraged, like a barbarian or berserker.
I paused my reaction until I could see how he would chase or attack me. If he used a range attack, I would have to focus on defence with a spell and wouldn't be able to attack. However, instead, he leapt after me, yelling incomprehensible, angry noises.
He pushed off with a far faster velocity than I did and with a better aerodynamic profile, too. He would catch me even though we were both travelling ballistically at this point. The spell I chose was one that I used to think was terrible. It was Phantasmal Killer, and it was, along with Ice Storm, one of the few fourth-level spells I could cast reliably in combat.
In the tabletop game, it was terrible, and I never ever used it. It was a complete waste of a fourth-level spell slot, being barely better than the level-one Cause Fear. It was kind of like Witch Bolt, where it was, in theory, pretty good, but only if the enemy failed multiple saving throws, which almost never happened.
However, in reality, the strength of my offensive fear-based illusions was tied to and boosted by my own understanding of the concept of fear. Since I routinely tortured myself with both magical fear and magical pain-inducing effects, my spells were kind of hard to resist. In cultivator terms, I was pushing down upon him with my Daoheart, and today I found my enemy's heart lacking.
I saw the moment the spell hit because his rage shifted to pure panic. We were both moving backwards, from my perspective, but he had been in a much more aerodynamic profile—he literally leapt head first after me, pointing his sword at me the whole way like a human cannonball. He dropped his sword, and he twisted his body until his feet made contact with the ground, skidding to a halt.
I reached down and stopped myself with my Qi tentacles, skidding to a halt as well, and posed in an exaggerated hand-to-hand martial arts form similar to Neo from The Matrix; I even did a 'come hither' gesture, too. That gesture was meant to be a distraction, actually, but I think I didn't need to bother because the fancy-dressed man turned around, possibly to run away, only to meet my weapon flying directly at and through his chest.
When I told my Mistress that I couldn't decide on a particular weapon, she gifted me this one for my adventures. It was made of a morphic material and could shift between four similar shapes. It wasn't a true morphic weapon, as it only had the shapes of two types of spears, one huge halberd-axe and a javelin, but it was still quite cool. The trade-off was basically cost—it cost a lot, so a similarly priced normal spear was a better spear than the spear form of my weapon.
The form I had it shifted to before I used the Flying Sword Technique to send it hurtling at my enemy was a simple, leaf-bladed spear. The Flying Sword Technique was something every Foundation Establishment cultivator learned, and I was actually expecting my enemy to use it on me, sending his sword out as a ranged attack rather than leap after me. I was glad he didn't, as I wouldn't have had this opportunity to attack him.
My spear punched through right where the man's heart should be and kept going, losing almost no speed and flying to my outstretched hand. I grabbed it backwards with the blade pointed downwards, twirled it in the correct direction and stepped forward into a perfectly executed thrust into the back of the cultivator's throat, the entire leaf-shaped blade exploding out the front of his throat, where his larynx was in a bloody blossom.
While the first attack likely delivered a fatal wound, I was a belt and suspender type of lady, and who knew if this guy had some sort of contingency healing item or the like? It was better to be thorough.
I yanked the spear out, causing the man to fall to the ground. Speaking of being thorough, I shifted the spear into the half-axe halberd form and quickly decapitated my fallen enemy with one swing as soon as his body hit the sleet-slicked dirt.
I had to admit that one of the reasons I wanted the axe-like halberd form was due to the gap moe of a "petite" person like me wielding a huge weapon. However, that was only one reason—the sword may be considered to be the noblest of weapons, but that was culture and tied into the concept or Dao of the weapon. I doubted I was fated to be walking down the Dao of any weapon, but that didn't mean I didn't use them. The spear and long arms were still the kings of the battlefield, but the only disadvantage was that they were unwieldy and annoying to carry around. Considering I could store my weapon in a storage ring, that solved most of the problems.
I shifted my weapon into the javelin form and tossed it up and down in my hand. I was about to throw it at the last enemy standing, wherein I would catch it with another execution of Flying Sword to direct it into his back, but Xiao Li didn't, as it turned out, need my help. The man had Xiao Li's sword thrust into his heart as I watched.
Nodding, I shifted my weapon back into a spear and stored it in my ring. There didn't appear to be any reinforcements jumping out of the dead men's ketch, either. No, wait, that was my ketch now. Correcting myself, there didn't appear to be any stowaways waiting to ambush us upon my ketch.
I walked back up to where Xiao Li was, took direct control of the corpse puppet again, and sent it to double-check that there weren't stowaways aboard as we made loot and entire bodies disappear into our rings. This wasn't like Merildwen's world, where you couldn't put a bag of holding inside a bag of holding... here it was no problem. However, I never stored any storage objects inside my own personal space. I was a little concerned that this would be an exception, as it was gained in Merildwen's world, and I didn't want to suddenly find myself inside the Astral Plane.
"You have young master blood all over you. It actually makes you look somewhat sinister, like a blood cultivator," Xiao Li teased.
I cringed. That first guy did spray a lot. I wasn't expecting to actually bisect him, especially not in mid-air without the ground under my feet to increase the leverage of my swing, but I supposed he was the glass cannon of the group.
I considered using Prestidigitation for cleaning purposes, but that would only clean my clothes. Xiao Li gave me a good idea, though—I used the blood-essence gathering technique in that blood cultivator inheritance I found long ago to gather all of the blood off both my clothes and skin. However, instead of purifying it and pulling out the blood essence in order to absorb it, I tossed it on the ground. Cleaning oneself of blood was likely the best use for this somewhat mediocre inheritance, as I was certainly not going to pollute my Qi sea or meridians with the blood essence of some random young master.
With all of the other treasure and bodies accounted for and myself clean again, I bounded towards the ketch before sliding to a halt and saying in a surprised tone, "There's a half-dead girl inside one of the two cabins." There really was a stowaway in my ketch!
Xiao Li followed me as my puppet pulled out said girl. She might have been beautiful if she wasn't covered in wounds, her own blood and missing her entire right arm from the shoulder down. Honestly, I was surprised she was still alive with how many wounds she had.
Xiao Li glanced at me and asked, "Do you think that is the other guy's Junior Sister?"
I bit my tongue as I was about to make a Captain Obvious reference, but that would have been mean of me, and he wouldn't have even gotten the reference. Instead, I just nodded, "Probably. There are no traps or anti-theft features on this ketch. It's just an ownerless object now, so I'm gonna take it."
He nodded, pulling out a couple of pills and one of my healing talismans before bending down and attempting to stabilise the young woman's condition while I took control of the ketch.
He asked me, "You don't happen to have any spare pills to regrow a limb, do you?"
"I don't have any at all," I replied after shrinking the ketch and stuffing it into my ring. I wouldn't fly it around here, or probably for a long time, unless we travelled a really long distance. It was kind of distinctive, and I didn't want to advertise who we had just murdered.
There was a silence that was almost audible, and I blinked, turning around to see Xiao Li staring at me. Finally, he said in a tone reserved for very special children, "That seems to be a little short-sighted."
"Well, why don't you have any, then?" I retorted.
He snorted, saying exasperatedly, "Because I can grow back limbs myself!"
Oh. Yeah. I looked a little embarrassed. The truth was, those pills were a little pricey, and good spiritual doctors could duplicate their effect for about a third of the cost. The pills didn't regrow your limbs quickly, either, so they were useless in combat. I had figured that if I survived an encounter but lost my arm or leg, then I would be able to make it to a city where I could get treated there.
Had I turned into a complete city girl? It wasn't like there were spiritual doctor practices here in the woods. I rubbed the back of my neck, still embarrassed, "Maybe I'll buy a couple the next time we make it to a city. Besides, I might not have wasted one on her even if I had one. It's not like we know her—but maybe one of the young masters had a few, though. They weren't body cultivators."
He nodded and placed the girl's body onto my cloud after I brought it back out, and we hopped on, lifting off and flying directly to our hideaway.
Xiao Li jumped off as soon as we made it into the interior of the formation and sat about gathering all of his alchemy supplies and equipment, making things vanish with a wave of his hand, saying, "Let's pack up quickly. It's early, but we should reposition, just in case people or things noticed our fight."
I nodded, and put away some of my own things, and gathered up the formation plates, deactivating the concealing formation. Our other guest was still unconscious, so I dumped him onto the cloud, causing it to expand slightly so that four people could comfortably travel on it.
"Alright, let's flee the scene of the crime," I said, getting into it.
Xiao Li jumped onto the cloud and rubbed his face, "But we didn't commit any crimes!"
I wasn't so sure, but I didn't want to debate him now that we had taken down our formation. Instead, I just shrugged and caused my trusty nimbus to dart up into the air, flying to the southwest.
