Part-Time Painter
Empty Desert, Golden Heartland, Year 235
"Hey, short stuff, you miss me?" I asked, dropping my hand on Jieyue's head.
She craned her neck to look up at me, blowing hair out of her face with a frown. "I'm not short," she said moodily. "You're just huge."
I raised my eyebrow, gesturing across the campsite at Aelia. The seven foot and change woman was securing her oversized pack, using rope to bind it into something reasonable to carry. At a guess, I'd have said the bag was large enough for both me and Jieyue to fit in it - with room to spare.
"Don't bully Aelia, you know she gets self-conscious," Jieyue shook her head.
"What?" I blinked. "No, she doesn't. How the hell would I know that?"
"You were together for like three years," she said, looking at me like it was obvious. I looked at her blankly. "Hua was right, men
are stupid," Jieyue muttered.
"How dare you insult me with the truth."
She snorted, then looked down at the ground. "Sorry," she said. "I forget about it, sometimes. That she's...gone."
I pat her head again, gently this time. "We're all getting used to it," I said, purposely keeping my gaze away from Junius. "Just watch what you say around that guy." Jieyue nodded and I continued patting her head, wondering how long until this bothered her. "But seriously, glad you're back. Was worried we'd have to go without you. You get held up with an overly yang guy?"
She muttered something under her breath that I couldn't quite catch. I gave her a brief headpat then, louder, "I had to stop at- at my family's hall. We needed to discuss things." She gave a dry laugh. "I actually used that thing you showed me."
I paused. Jieyue wasn't one to talk about her family, usually getting...
prickly at the mention of it, and I wasn't entirely sure how to react now. "Wait, are you talking about cheating?" I said. "Did you
cheat your family at dice games?"
Jieyue smiled. "Drawing straws actually, but yes." I puffed out my chest with pride, and she rolled her eyes. She took a deep breath of desert air, then straightened up and adjusted the red travel cloak around her shoulders. "Glad I'm already packed, though." She adjusted the pack on her pack. "Wasn't expecting another long trip, but we've got a long way to go this time."
Si hissed in agreement and Jieyue gave her a look I didn't catch, making the snakewoman lean away. "...right," I said.
Jieyue gave me a look over her shoulder, then looked over at Aelia- damn, she was looking this way. I tried not to look like I was staring and also tried not to look like I was avoiding her, while Jieyue waved happily at her. "Sorry about you and Aelia," she said. "She told me about it in a letter."
I snorted. Of course she did. She sure was happy to discuss my many flaws, wasn't she? I was selfish, I was childish, I didn't listen, I didn't care about what she wanted...just the worst fucking man on the planet. I was pretty bitter about it the first few months, and now I was just more bitter.
I wasn't really that bad, was I?
Instead, I said, "How the hell are you writing everybody letters but me?"
She looked up at me in confusion. "Did you learn how to read?"
"Oh, so just because I can't read, I don't deserve to get letters?" I said, scoffing.
Si hissed something quietly from the side.
I jabbed a finger at her. "You stay outta this."
Jieyue looked between the two of us. "Do you...understand her?"
I shrugged, waving one hand unsteadily. "Little bit. We took a while to go check up on the other kids by Snakeblo-" Si hissed at me in annoyance. "...by...the town, and they helped some. What? That's what it's called." Si huffed. "Look, if
you want to fill out the paperwork to get the place renamed, go right ahead. Not like anybody gives enough of a damn to contest it."
Despite being gone for so long, the bunch of snakekids had done pretty well for themselves. Part of that was I'd used a fairly substantial number of contribution points getting them food and building a decent-sized manor, then Si had arranged for some other shit kids need that I don't know about. Tutors, or some other garbage. I'd had the option of sending them to the same orphanages I came from (they were built and funded by a cultivator from the same town) but having been through them, I knew the good
and bad that went on there and I figured I might be able to spare them the worst of it.
Of course, now I realized I finally owned a house, but it was on a piece of land with no value off in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a ruined spirit mine and poisoned land nearby. Also, I'd spent less than three days in it. Wasn't that some shit.
Anyway, some of the oldest kids had taken to picking poisoned fruits from the Spiky Fruiting Hell Bushes (they were different from the Spiky Fruitless Hell Trees, but they grew in the same types of poisoned soil), and one of them had managed to cultivate to 2nd Heavenstage and had aspirations of becoming an alchemist.
"Don't change the subject," I said, tapping Jieyue on the nose with the back of a finger.
"F-fine," she said, covering her nose. "I'll write to you too. Happy?"
I grunted, instead of answering. "Honestly. I can't believe you'd write to Si first."
"What?" Jieyue frowned. "I'm not writing to-
her."
"You aren't?" I asked, looking back at Si in surprise. She had already replaced her inner layer of clothing, but had kept the himation with the hole on top for whatever reason. Cooling, maybe? "Then who the hell is?"
"Pack it up and pack it in, legionnaires," Junius said, walking over to us with a neutral-but-upset look on his face. "We have a long way to go, and I'm not wasting any time."
"Who died and made you Nascent?" I groused.
"I thought we were just going to the Peng Kingdom," Jieyue asked.
Junius gave me a brief glance, before looking to Jieyue. "We are," he said. "But we'll need to take a longer route. There's a city near the border of the Heartlands and the Mortal Kingdoms; I have supplies there I need to pick up." He pat the rope corded around his waist like a belt. "Ideally, I'd have time to get a proper new rope dart forged but it'll have to wait until after the mission is complete."
"Why the hell do you have supplies in the middle of nowhere?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I lived there," Junius said, looking at me again. I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. "
Before I became a cultivator. I know the area, and it serves as an emergency location far from most other things I could be expected to run to."
"Oh, it's a hidey-hole," I said, nodding. "Should've just said that."
Junius shrugged, and grunted something. I glanced away at the other part of the squad, Remus saying something to Aelia as she kneeled by her pack the size of a small donkey and double-checked the contents.
Si hissed something quietly as she walked closer, two sounds she'd never put together before.
Heart. Devil.
I snorted, and she wacked my elbow with her hand. I gave her a look out the corner of my eye. "You think?" She nodded, folding her arms expectantly. I sighed, running my hand through my hair. "Fuck. Might as well get this over with then."
I walked towards my giant ex-girlfriend, wondering exactly what the hell I was going to say to her. Lucky me, Remus had already wandered off to talk to Lucius who-
Who had a new puppet, this one some sort of insane combination of a pair of bulls connected to the upper half of a man. The whole thing was crafted from finely worked spiritsteel blocks studded with spirit stones, with delicately engraved bronze cabling connecting them.
"It's a wonder, isn't it?" I looked over at Aelia, the tall woman giving me a small smile as she held her pack in place. "Hi, Janus."
"Hey," I said. Now what? Fine fucking mess I've gotten myself to. Honestly, this is why you don't take life advice from a teenaged half-snake knifegirl. "Big bag." Fucking smooth, me. Good job.
"Yeah," she laughed, patting the top twice. "We're going pretty far out, and I'm starting to go through belts at a stupid rate." She reached back with one hand, pulling her thick mass of hair over one shoulder, the length of it tightly bound into-
braided into a
three-part weave. It was still as thick as my waist, but it looked…nice. "Thanks," she said.
I blinked at her in surprise-. "Did I say that out loud?"
"You do that sometimes, when you're thinking," she said.
"...I didn't know that," I said. "Since when?"
"It's fine. I thought it was cute," she said. She looked away after a second, still pulling at the braid. It-
I stopped for a moment, actually looking at Aelia for the first time in…a while. Examining her like someone I didn't know: the shift of her feet away from me, the downward gaze, the habit of the hands…she was avoiding me? She was
nervous around me?
I breathed out deeply, feeling…less worried and something like sad. "Hey, Aelia," I said. She looked up, and I held my fist out. "Good luck out there. You better come back to us in one piece. I'll kick your ass if you don't."
She looked at me in surprise, then laughed quietly before bumping my fist with her own. "That was terrible," she said, laughing louder. "But I appreciate it."
"Yeah, well," I shrugged, rubbing the back of my head with one hand. "Working on that…emotional openness thing. Somebody told me it's good to have." Aelia laughed and I smlied back, then straightened up. "I'll see ya." She nodded, and I wandered back over to Jieyue and Junius, the short girl giving me a curious look while Junius dug around in his sleeve.
"What was that about?" she asked gently.
"I have ascended to a higher state of being, Little Jieyue. My comprehension of the Dao advances beyond explanation," I said somberly.
She pouted. "Fine then, keep your secrets."
Junius gestured to the ground and threw down a wriggling blob of yellow- okay, it's
probably not what it looks like. I mean, bodily fluids from cultivators are pretty valuable as cultivation rises but…I
refuse to believe somebody nutted into an array just to make an artifact.
"A Lucky Yellow Cloud!" Jieyue said brightly, walking closer and kneeling down to look at it. The blob shook, slowly growing outwards into a puffy, rippling mound. "I've always wanted one. I didn't know you had a travel artifact, Junius."
"I didn't until recently," he said. He looked off into the distance, then back at the cloud that had grown to about knee-height. "It's not particularly high grade, so we won't get much height, but it's pretty fast over level ground. We'll follow the roads towards the Dawn Fortress for part of the way, then break off to cut across the open desert."
"Okay," Jieyue said, swinging her pack off her shoulder. The cloud had grown to about mid-thigh, so just past her waist, and was a little wider than a dinner table. "So, should we wait for you to finish expanding it before we start loading stuff on?"
Junius gave her a wry smile.
"
...you're going to expand it, right?"
==============================
"You're too goddamn comfortable up there," I groused.
Junius gave me a grin from my lap, wincing as Jieyue shifted in his. "Don't be mad 'cause I've got the squad cutie," he said.
Si hissed something from behind me, the snakewoman taking up a solid third of the Lucky Cloud to stretch out.
"She was here first, she has cute seniority," Junius said, looking over at her.
"First of all, you have no idea what she said," I started-.
Si hissed something, interrupting me.
"And
you don't encourage him. It's his damn fault we're packed in here like this."
"You know, I'm in charge of this mission, Janus," Junius said, looking back at me. "And that sounds like insubordination. You know what the punishment is for insubordination?" He frowned at me, the way he usually did recently.
"No, what?"
"No idea!" Junius chuckled.
"I hate you," I said.
"Junius-" Jieyue started
"
Commander Junius." Jieyue frowned down him. "...Leader Junius?"
She sighed. "Shouldn't we have been there by now?"
The trip had taken the better part of two weeks, where I spent more time sleeping than I had in years. Being shoved into a confined space with too many people to fit made staying awake less appealing. Shocking, I know. Thinking about how quickly I'd left behind that nightly ritual had me thinking about how quickly my life had changed from my...mortal expectations. I kept thinking of myself as that same street kid who got jumped up to rub shoulders with the qi-bending supermen, but...would that kid recognize me? In another ten years? Fifty?
A century?
Luckily, the Cloud jerked to a halt and saved me from any more turmoil. I leapt to the ground with a stretch, tossing Junius and Jiyue off me as I went.
"Janus!" Jieyue yelled, adjusting her grip on her lute.
"You're fine," I said, shading my eyes and staring out into the distance. The short hill we'd stopped on gave me enough height to see out across the plain, to the bustling city built on the edge of and into the side of a dead quarry. It was like someone scooped a big pit out of the ground with a ladle, and the city they'd built on the edge just dribbled into it until part of the wall was just coated with buildings.
"That's it," Junius said, serious again. A shame, it was nice to have the old him back for a while. "Quiet Pond City. Report says our target-"
"Why's it called Quiet Pond?" I asked, looking over at him. "This place is dry as fuck."
"The name is ironic, Janus," Jieyue said, her instrument hanging from her waist again. "Naming conventions across the Organ Meat Desert are interesting, especially outside clan lands where the level of uniformity is much lower, but most names fall into either the literal name category or the ironic name category - which is really just a sort of postmodern view of the first-"
"
Our target," Junius said loudly, not looking at either of us. "Is reported to be operating in the area. There's nothing else around here and no real settlements for a good distance out, so the best assessments put the Blood Path den as being somewhere in the area."
I nodded. "So probably somewhere in 40
li, unless we've got body cultivators on our hands."
"Or a travel artifact," Junius agreed. "But we know they're not body fanatics. They're an old bastard who got away from us the first time around, but that's why we're here now."
Jieyue took the mission report scroll from Junius, unrolling the blank sheet and making the text appear with a flash of qi. The sour-metallic scent of Bronze qi wafted outward, as the
image of our target filled in. "Who is this?" Jieyue asked, confused.
"Blood Painter," I said. "You remember when we had to
infiltrate the Azure Dragon Gang?"
Jieyue wrinkled her forehead. "In Hong Xuan? That's on the other side of the Clan. What's he doing over here?"
"If we have time, we'll find that out too," Junius said, taking the scroll back. "But dealing with the aftermath of the war means there's a bunch of shit on our plate."
I opened my mouth-
Junius pointed a finger at me with an angry glare, and I let my teeth click loudly as I shut it. "As is, our remit is actually
real fucking clear. Get in, find the bastard, beat him up, leave."
"That sounds simple enough," Jieyue said, nodding with a look to me.
I held up a hand to her to wait.
"The other shoe is that intelligence puts him at near Foundation Building. If he gets enough time to work through the city, it'll likely be too late."
"Oh no," Jieyue said.
"Yeah, I expected that," I said. "One question, though. Why did we stop all the fuckin' way out here, exactly?"
"We need a cover to get into the city," Junius said. "I don't want to risk tipping them off that we're this close."
"Undercover, huh?" I asked, pulling up my sleeves to reveal the bronze-spotted skin of my arms.
Junius glanced at them then did a double-take. "
Already?" He swore. "I can't tell if you're an ill-fated bastard or blessed. You might need to stay out of sight while we're here. Metallization would give you away instantly." He put a hand to his forehead, rubbing his shaved eyebrows with a frown. "Fuck me, kid. That's not supposed to happen in Qi Condensation."
"Yeah, I've heard," I said, pulling my sleeves back down. "So, what's our way in?"
==============================
Si had a natural technique. Strictly speaking, Si had a special constitution which
granted her a special technique and if you asked me what the difference was, I couldn't tell you. They'd named it the Thousand Myriad Snakes Physique - and I remember her hissing at the
Praefectus' assistant until they settled on that one - and basically, it let her summon snakes.
Surprise.
That was part of what let me get away with the thinly-veiled-bullshit of calling her my spirit beast. See, we can get natural techniques but generally, humans don't get special constitutions without some
seriously wild shit happening to your parents - or
with your parents. There's this legend about an old time
immortal who saw a white bull that was so handsome she...well, the details probably don't need to be said. But if you're a half-bull half-man behemoth, you should probably start eyeing the neighbour's barn with suspicion.
Anyway, Si wasn't really 'summoning' and they weren't really 'snakes'. They're more like…lies shaped like snakes and the more qi she pumped into them, the more convincing the lie was. In theory, she could pump enough qi into them to create completely natural, living ones but she tended to favour short-lived ones in huge numbers. But for this, she'd gone the other way and that was how we ended up driving a wagon pulled by the
biggest snake anyone has ever seen, whipping itself
sideways across the desert and scaring all the other wagons away.
Junius and Jieyue had presented themself as a pair of willful, freshly married youngsters who ran away from their disapproving families, and come to ply their shared trade of…snake breeding. And Si was Jieyue's huge, mute younger sister.
It wasn't the best cover story, but it got us inside the city with no questions asked.
They'd bought a house after a token amount of bargaining, rolled the wagon up to an alley (because no sane stable was renting a stall to a snake big enough to eat all the horses), and set-up shop inside. Once night fell, I dropped from underneath the wagon and got down to the busy task of doing
fuck all.
As it turns out, when Junius said 'stay out of sight', he meant 'stay inside and never let anyone see you ever'. And unfortunately, he was in charge. So inside I stayed, while Junius and Jieyue went out into the city and did I-don't-know-what but it definitely wasn't finding Blood Path cultivators.
Then we were at the end of the third month, and fuck it, I was just
so bored.
"I don't know," Junius said, watching as I wrapped a deep desert travelling shroud around myself. "Meditate or something."
"I don't believe in meditating," I said. "You think Old Gold got where he is by meditating? Have you ever
seen him meditate?" Junius opened his mouth to answer, then held his chin as he thought for a second. "It's all a fuckin' lie from the so-called 'noble families' to keep guys like you and me from getting too far from our stations."
"Please stop spreading anti-noble propaganda," Jieyue said, tiredly. She was lying on the bed against the far wall, and turned her head over to stare at me.
"You can't trick me,
Xie," I said, narrowing my eyes at her. "No matter how many eaves you hide under."
"...what?" she squinted. "Wait, do you mean pagodas?"
I pulled the hood up over my head and buckled the shroud at my shoulder, covering myself down to my feet.
Si hissed something at me, and I nodded. "I know, isn't it great? I traded some of Junius' clothes to a beggar to make sure it was authentic."
"You're joking right, Janus?" Junius asked.
"Anyway, I'll go take a look around," I said. "If anything gets demolished, you'll know where to find me."
"Janus," Junius repeated, walking towards me.
I grinned at him and backpedalled towards the window,
pointing my fingers at him and clicking my teeth before I rolled backwards over the ledge.
I twisted in the air, pushing one leg out to bounce myself off the wall of the building and over the tiny courtyard, and land in one of the narrow walkways behind the house. The air was cool, dry, and sharp. The moon was mostly hidden, its face in darkness and its light behind clouds for a brief spell. Distantly, a few faint breaths of conversation drifted to me on the night breeze and I listened for the sound of approaching footsteps- but nothing.
Amazing, almost 20 years, but the instincts came back like I hadn't missed a day.
I don't want to make it seem like my squadmates are stupid; they've gotten a lot better about this than when I first joined but like most cultivators I've met, they have a sizable blindspot towards mortals. See, most cultivators only consider other cultivators as people. Mortals
exist and if you're one of the Golden Devils or one of a handful of other groups, mortals might even be
important. But considering that mortals know things, important things, things that you might have a hard time figuring out? I've seen parents treat their kids the same way, but most people remember being children and getting up to all sorts of shit in secret.
There's a saying that even a tyrannical dragon can't suppress the local snake in its territory- shit, I'm gonna have to stop saying that one around Si. But the point is, if you want to know what's going on in a town, you don't go in from the top and start talking to the cultivators, the administrators, or the other big fucks sitting in their fancy manors. No, you go to the streets and you start making friends with the beggars.
Which was why I was dressed in a terrible pile of old rags that smelled a little bit like a sewer. Nobody would look twice at me, and while the other beggars would probably notice my smooth-as-fuck skin, reflective hair, and mouthful of teeth, nobody
else would give a damn. After all, to cultivators, I was just a mortal; and to mortals, I was just a beggar. The only problem being there
weren't any beggars.
Any city worth a damn had beggars. Some people look down on the poor and homeless, but the fact of the matter is, they provide a number of vital and essential services that no place bigger than a village could survive without. You could always rely on them to be scapegoats for a small fee, they were ready and able providers of labour for
extraordinarily competitive prices, and how could any place get by without a steady supply of beggars asking for alms to help separate the soon-to-be-poor from the savvy traveller?
No, something fucky was going on. And what were the odds there was something unrelated to the Blood Path bastards we were chasing happening in this city? So instead of my original plan of cozying up and making some roof-deprived friends, I ended up skulking down alleys, hiding in the shadows of buildings, and leaping onto nearby eaves when someone turned a corner on me.
…honestly, being a cultivator made sneaking around too easy, and I wasn't sure I liked it. I was barely even using Silent Steps Resounding to keep the roofs from breaking, and nobody even bat an eye my way. Even the night wasn't as dark anymore. Sucked.
I stayed out for a week, listening for rumours and whispers about where the city's entire set of homeless people had gone to, and eventually I caught wind of a returning caravan that was hiring people on for some kind of work out in the desert. From the sounds of it, they were moving a massive number of minor items in some kind of ancient grave. That wasn't suspicious on its own, I'd passed more than a handful of gravesites that the desert winds just happened to uncover in a random month, but the faint scent of blood qi coming from their wagon
was.
My plan was to drop down on the wagon, split it in the middle, then grab the two ringleaders while everybody freaked over the suddenly panicking horses. But Junius was in charge and he was being boring and lame, so instead we loaded up into our wagon to go searching for a pretend snake of fantastic proportions that just happened to be in the same direction these guys were going, what a coincidence.
Lame.
"Hail, travellers," one of them called after the third hour of us following along nearby.
'Morning, Dickgnawer.'
"Good morning," Jieyue responded from above the wagon, and with a reasonable degree of cheer - so about a quarter less than her normal tone.
"Seems we're travelling the same way," he replied. "Not often we have company going this direction into the desert!"
Junius laughed. "We've never come out this way ourselves!" The wagon creaked as I felt him shift his weight towards them. "We caught wind of a rare desert snake helpful to our business. Entirely mortal, of course, but should be a valuable catch if we can find the thing." He paused. "We're breeders, y'know?"
"Is that so?" the man replied doubtfully.
"Say," Junius said, in a stage whisper. "I couldn't interest you fellows in some cobra meat, could I? Excellent flavour, freshly butchered, powerful Yang energy."
"Er," the man said. "No, that's-"
"Or perhaps some wine!" Junius soldiered on. "We have powerful snake wine back in the city, we could reserve a few barrels. Made it myself, excellent for vigor, your wives will ask for seconds."
"That's-"
"Ah, we even have some high quality snakeskin clothing! Perhaps-?"
"We don't need it!" the man snapped.
"Oh, of course, my brother," Junius laughed. "Well, if you're ever in need of anything at all, I'm sure we could accommodate. Perhaps we could stop together for meals to discuss it?"
"I think I'd like to hear what they have," a muffled voice said from the back of their wagon.
"I'd take the wine for my husband," a voice added.
"A Wen, you'd need the wine
and the cobra meat for that fuddyduddy," another woman replied.
I exhaled through my nose, and settled in underneath the wagon, holding in a curse as we hit a rock and it pulverized on my head. It was going to be a long trip.
==============================
We'd pulled away after a while, letting them drift away to the horizon while Junius tracked them with some obscure eye technique. When they stopped to make camp, we did the same just to avoid creeping too close, and spent the night sat around a fire making idle-talk. Si was curled around one side of the fire for warmth, fast asleep, while Jieyue sat opposite her, maintaining her blade and instrument. I blew slow notes on my gudi, just a simple pattern of a tune as I hid us inside a thin illusion to hide the light and smoke of our flames in a tall, narrow mask of desert landscape.
A few seconds in, Jieyue joined me, tapping on the side of her lute as backing before beginning to pluck at the strings. We played for a few minutes, my basic ability carried by her skill and nuance,
the sudden song stirring my soul in ways that had nothing to do with cultivation techniques.
"Damn, you've gotten too good at that," I said when the song ended, stowing my instrument back inside my armour. "I can barely keep up, even when I'm doing the easy part
and setting the pace."
Jieyue laughed, her hands still pulling idle rhythms loose. "You're being too polite."
"Because I'm known for giving people face," I said. I reached up, running my hand through my hair. It was starting to get long and poke into the top of my vision, just enough to annoy me when I started moving. About time for a trim. "Hell, I'm still trying to figure out where you learned how to drive a wagon. Hitched to a snake, no less."
She smiled. "It's not that different from oxen. I had a lot of practice growing up."
I frowned. "With wagons? I thought you were from a cultivator family."
Jieyue froze. It was only for a second, but when she started moving again, her smile was still frozen. "My apologies. I misspoke."
I squinted at her. "And?"
"That's all," she said.
I drew my sword, pointing it at her. "The
real Jieyue would never pass up the chance to over-explain."
Junius huffed reaching over the fire to push the tip of my sword down. "Relax," he said. "And don't pout, it's unbecoming."
I resheathed my sword and- check my face, no, I'm good. "I am
not pouting."
He ignored me, staring into the flames without even a hint of a smile at the premium-quality jokes I'd just laid out for him. "Not everybody wants to talk about life before the Legions, Janus. Gotta respect that."
"I was just teasing her," I said, putting my hands behind my head and lying flat. "You guys and your mysterious lives, Gold's Fold's. Are you
all secretly the heirs to some fantastic legacy?"
Silence greeted me.
"
Seriously?"
"I'm the sixth son of a moderately wealthy mortal family line, descended from a degraded old Noble House," Junius said quietly. I sat up on my elbows, watching the bald man grab a stick and pull bits off, tossing them into the fire. "We used to have a legacy - a Bronze technique we were the keepers of, until we lost it. Split into two families, each with only a portion of it to our names. But my family, we'd become dependent on it - physically. Without it, we slowly lost the ability to even cultivate until we fell to where we are now. Few of us ever make it to the First Heavenstage and without at least that, we all die by the age of 30. I'm the longest surviving person going back at least two dozen generations."
The fire spit and crackled in the night. Finally, "Well, that's fucking
bleak. Why would you tell us that story, man?"
"Janus!" Jieyue snapped at me, while Junius just broke out laughing.
==============================
It took another two days before our marks got to their destination: an old ruined village covered in a fine layer of grime and neglect. They took the old road, the winding path zigzagging across a sturdy stretch of dry soil dotted with some species of cactus that grew up to the height of a small building. They stretched to the horizon but were far apart, meaning we had to abandon our wagon and sneak closer on foot, hidden by minor illusions and good old fashioned desert cunning.
The smell of blood qi grew stronger as we got closer to the village, but it was thin and indistinct. The remains of the Blood Path and their filthy techniques, but not our target. Sure as hell didn't look like there was a grave here either. Weird. And weird usually meant dangerous.
I pressed up against the broken wall of a small courtyard, holding myself still as I listened. I expected the silence of the dead village, maybe the quiet sounds of the two dozen mortals packed onto the wagon as they…did whatever they were here to do. Instead, I heard…faint crying and muffled shouting. What?
I drew my sword, holding the blade near the ground and angling it to look around the corner in the reflection. Coast was clear…I darted over to the next ruined building, then the next, then the- no, hold position, people? Cultivators?
Worse. Blood Pathers.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, reaching out with my qi sense. The blood qi scent on them wasn't particularly thick, and their cultivation was low. Second Heavenstage at the latest, likely newly turned maneaters up to no good. Strange, though. There were…two mortals in the ruined building with them, the wagon drivers, and they weren't currently tearing into them. That was an unusual level of restraint for a Blood Path cultivator at their level. At
any level, from what I'd seen. Most of them couldn't see beyond the next piece of meat, no matter the consequence and it was one of the reasons we could usually track the fuckers down so quickly.
These ones having enough restraint to wait? Bad news. The fact that they seemed to be shipping mortals out of town to cover their tracks was
terrible.
I slowed the circulation of my qi and suppressed my cultivation base, feeling the weight of my Bronze body as I restrained myself to a level they couldn't detect as easily. I crept closer, pasting myself against the underside of the broken window.
"-the number mandated," one of the Pathers said. "This failure will
not go unpunished."
One of the drivers snorted. "Don't put on airs just because the Master gave you his blessing first, Wen Hu. You know you'd better spin this as best as you can, or we'll
all feel his wrath on this."
"Do not antagonize me," Wen Hu replied icily. "I will rend you limb from limb without a second thought, meat."
"Rend your mother," the driver replied calmly.
There was the sound of moving furniture and flesh-hitting-flesh. "You dare?" Wen Hu spat.
"Calm down," the second Pather said. "And you, Luo Ma, mind your tongue or I'll bite it off here and now." There was the sound of an uneasy silence. "Tang Zhuo, why have you brought so few mortals?"
"There aren't any more damn mortals to get in this place," the man said, ending it with a hearty spit.
"Impossible. The city holds dozens of thousands. A paltry-"
"Yeah, but the point was to
stay low, wasn't it?" Tang Zhuo scoffed. "Well, this is best we can do like this. Unless we've got more coin to dangle in front of the bastards as bait, we've already swept all the desperate folks months ago. And with the Golden Devils being the new masters of the desert, we're gonna need more of their devil coins for that."
The second pather sighed. "Pitiable. What was the exact tally, then?"
"Thirty seven," Tang Zhuo said. "One less than the mandate, but we already had to lower the standards to even get this many."
"Such a shame, such a shame," the pather sighed again. "We'll just have to make it up, then."
"What do you meaaagh!" Tang Zuo screamed.
"Lil' Zhuo!" Luo Ma yelled. Footsteps blasted across the room and the wall shook as something slammed into it.
"Hurry back, senior brother," Wen Hu chuckled darkly. "Or there won't be a morsel left for you."
I stared down at the scene from the top of the damaged wall I'd climbed onto, one of the Pathers - Wen Hu, probably - dangling Luo Ma against the wall while his partner dragged the other unconscious driver by the ankle.
I released my grip on my cultivation, drawing both of their gazes up to me. "
Let those men alone," I called out.
"What?" Wen Hu asked.
"I said-"
"No, I heard you, just- what the fuck does that mean?"
"It means-"
"He's saying you need to let Luo Ma go," the second Pather cut me off. "Just back away slowly, leave him alone, and we'll be okay."
"That's not-"
"Like fucking
hell," Wen Hu swore, glaring at his partner, then at me. "This shit has been mouthing off to me since we were kids, and now that I finally get to put him in his piss-stained place, some random Devil thinks he can tell me what to do? This is
my meal. I
earned it."
"You know what? Just die," I sighed. I hopped forward off the ledge, kicking the wall behind me and punched forward through the air. My sword cut through the wrist at Luo Ma's neck, and I qi flooded the ground from my feet as I cushioned my landing. Thank you, Silent Steps Resounding, I was very tired of shattering the ground.
"Wha- my arm!" Wen Hu yelled.
Bronze qi flexed and bounced me into the air. I spun around, kicking the Blood Path cultivator out the ruined building and into his friend. I caught Luo Ma before he could fall and tossed him over my shoulder, then vaulted out into the open part of the village. I looked around, trying to find the two-
Oh shit, duck!
A ball of flaming red haze sailed over my head, hitting the building behind me and collapsing it into rubble- more into rubble. "You mist," I said.
The two Blood Pathers stood side by side, waving their arms as they invoked some overly complicated ritual technique. I could smell the scent of blood qi thickening as they poured their qi into it, dripping markings appearing in the air around them.
"Alright, so I only really need one of you alive," I said. "First one to raise their hand gets to see me do something cool to the other guy."
The markings grew thicker and darker, the technique drawing near to completion, but that was fine. I'd already completed mine.
"Your loss," I said, falling into the Ecstasy.
I grabbed the back of Luo Ma's shirt and lobbed him straight up into the air. He was important: best not to let the mortal die. Actually, wasn't there was a second mortal- there, abandoned by the side of the fight. Best not to let either mortal die.
I let my sword drop from my other hand, the ground already working as I willed thanks to Silent Steps, and let it bounce back up. It rotated gently forward, turning until it's blade pointed at the two Blood Pathers, and I slammed my elbow into the end.
They dropped their technique in a panic and leapt to the air to avoid the blade, but I hadn't aimed it at them to begin with.
Ecstasy of Bronze was a Foundation Building-level technique that was usable at the upper ranks of Qi Condensation, for people willing to accept minor drawbacks. You know, small things like "long-term disruptions to your ability to cultivate", "constant, enduring physical pain from overwrought bodily development", and "temporary mental breaks". And since I was already using
one technique above my cultivation level, I figured…why not two?
Crushing Bronze Patina was one of the two techniques Aelia used in combination, the offensive art that let her redirect qi she'd siphoned away with
Occluded Bronze Shield into a potent counter-attack. That was not how it was meant to be used, just a heavily restrained version due to her lower cultivation. Even after she'd taught me the basics, I still couldn't really use it either, not even the way she did. No, this wasn't the greatest trick it could manage; it was only a tribute.
My sword passed between the two of them as they leapt back and I reached out, clenching my fist like it was just in front of me.
A ghostly hand of discoloured bronze appeared in the distance, closing around the handle of the sword, and swung hard as I moved, chopping Wen Hu from hip to shoulder. I twirled my fingers and the patina hand flipped the sword gracefully, catching it underhand and impaled both halves of the man's body before driving them to the ground.
My second hand reached out and grabbed the fleeing pather around the ankle, spinning him out of his escape and into the damaged building beside him.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I let the techniques fall away, the yang meridian into my head burning as the strain of running two scuffed Foundation-level techniques took their toll on me. Still, wasn't like I could rely on Reflected Purities forever. If I couldn't crush some punk 2QC Blood Stage brats like this, that would be
much worse than the backlash.
I held my arm out and caught Luo Ma, rolling the man onto my shoulder as I walked towards the remaining Pather. I pulled my sword out the corpse as I walked, flicking the blood clean before resheathing it. "Still alive, future prisoner?"
A gob of bubbling red blood-venom flew at my eyes, and I turned sideways to let it fly past me.
"Guess that's a yes."
The Pather scurried up the far wall of the damaged building, hurling a dried, shrunken horse head at me as he dropped down the other side. I kicked a loose piece of wall in the way, the artifact coming alive with frantic neighing as ghostly horse heads broke loose and tore it apart. I hopped to the side, letting the artifact pass me by as its whipping ball of heads ripped into the ground and left a tunnel twice as deep as I was tall.
"You weren't gonna chase him?" Junius grunted, as he jumped over the wall with the pather under his arm.
"I figured you guys would have heard the fight and shown up by now," I shrugged. "Also, I saw when you ran behind the building to try and get behind them."
He looked at me with a frown as he walked closer. "Why didn't you call us
before that? The entire point of you going in first to scout is ruined if you don't share information."
"They were about to kill this guy and eat the other one," I said, patting the unconscious mortal on my shoulder. He groaned faintly. "Might be the other way around. Either way, didn't have a lot of time to waste. They're sympathizers, but y'know."
"Hm," he said, laying the Blood Pather on the ground. I expected him to nitpick me over something else, but he just nodded without looking at me. "Good work, then."
"Where're the other two?" I asked.
"Freeing the mortals," Junius said, shaking the Pather back awake. His eyes fluttered around in panic for a brief moment, before fixating on us. That was a good sign for us: if he was still reasonable enough to be afraid, we might actually get something out of interrogating him.
I let Junius handle it without comment, watching the Pather's emotion flip between fear and hunger as his partner's corpse got brought in as a prop. It was a pretty fucked up affair, to be honest, but you get used to it.
"Anything?" Jieyue asked quietly as she wandered over to me. I had taken a seat on a broken piece of wall, watching Junius from about a dozen paces instead of hovering over his shoulder.
"Some," I said, shrugging. "I stopped paying attention though, so once Junius is done-" The bald man flicked his rope dart around the Pather's neck, whipping it loose and leaving the head to roll off into the shadow of a tree. "-or now, I figure he'll tell us what's what. Anything interesting with the mortals?"
"They're all terrified," Jieyue sighed. "Bound, gagged, and crammed into low-grade spiritsteel cages. I had to get
her help to cut them out."
"'
Her'?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "She has a name, you know."
Jieyue grimaced, glancing away for a moment. "Yes.
Si-" she put extra emphasis on the name. "-cut through the cages with Fang Intent. The mortals are all rather shaken up." She shook her head, putting a hand over her face. "Some of them actually asked if this meant there wasn't any work."
"Mm," I said, watching Junius approach. "Guess getting your life saved doesn't do anything to help you with poverty. Anything?"
Junius nodded, bringing his shaved eyebrows together. "They were gathering mortals for…corpse fly farming."
"Corpse flies?"
"Farming?"
Jieyue and I looked at each other, then at Junius. He nodded. "They've apparently been feeding the things, trying to raise them to higher realms for some purpose. He wasn't clear on that part. But the description he gave of the one leading him sounds like our mark."
"How do we find him?" I asked.
"The corpse flies," Jieyue said, brightening up. "If they were planning to feed the mortals to them, they must have brought some with them. And with their breeding pattern-"
"Yeah," I nodded, cutting her off before she really built up to a proper ramble. She gave me a briefly embarrassed smile, and I just shook my head amused. We all knew how corpseflies worked, and if we'd let her go, she'd probably have ended up telling us about the history of Golden Devil sculpture and its effects on crop yields.
Again.
Corpse flies are unusual even for spirit beasts. They're true scavengers, with fragile bodies for their cultivation, short life spans, and no natural offensive or defensive techniques. The things that made them noteworthy were their ability to breed in extreme numbers, and their ability to preserve and pass on cultivation.
Most spirit beasts naturally engage in Beast Core Cultivation. They eat other beasts, absorb their innate energies, grow stronger, and eventually breakthrough. Easy peasy. But just like a man and a tiger's energies are not identical, neither are two beasts: there's always some energy lost in the process. Corpse flies? When they feed another corpse fly, they have
perfect transmission. After they lay eggs, they return to the site to die and give their cultivation to their children. And as they rise through realms, they have fewer children at a time to ensure the energy is focused to produce the strongest possible single fly to lead them. In theory, at Golden Core and above, a corpse fly would have exactly one child and they would immediately rise to the same level of cultivation after eating their parent.
And the reason I know all this shit about a random non-violent, non-predatory insect spirit beast is pretty simple: they naturally stored all their qi as blood qi.
"But what on earth could they be farming corpse flies for?" Jieyue asked thoughtfully.
"Their usual bullshit, probably," I snorted. "Eating people, stealing power, watering down wine."
"Diabolical motherfuckers," Junius said. I chuckled, then laughed harder at the still serious expression on his face. He pointed at me. "Janus, you're with me. We're finding those corpse flies and tracking these dogs down. Jieyue, you're the best wagon driver and the fastest with
Kataphraktoi. Get these mortals back to town, then get back to us with all possible speed. We'll mark our route as best as we can."
"Yes, sir." Jieyue gave a half-bow.
"Yes, sir." I repeated, bowing as sharply as I could. She rolled her eyes at me, and I gave her a glance. "Take Si as backup," I said. "Might as well play it safe." She frowned very slightly, then nodded.
Okay, I wasn't imagining that. Weird. Should remember to ask Si what she did.
==============================
"You ever think about the future? What your place will be in history? The legacy you'll leave behind?" Junius asked.
I froze, mid-crawl across a patch of muddy blood-drenched sand, and looked at him. "What?"
"Just, you know," he squirmed forward to the edge of the sand-pit, pulling himself onto the cave floor. "What the people you know will say about you, after you're gone. 'Did I live a good enough life to be missed?' and all that."
"
Junius, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"
Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask," he said, turning to look deeper into the cave. "Seems like they don't have anything other than the usual detection arrays. We should be safe now."
"Right," I said, giving him a look as I hauled myself out of the bloody quicksand and brushed the grains out of my hair. "So, you gonna expl-?"
"Let's keep moving," he said, loosing the rope he had wrapped around his waist and keeping the dart hanging from his hand. "I don't know how soon they were expecting those guys back, and I don't want to risk getting caught out in the open."
I grunted, and stretched my fingers, feeling the familiar pain that let me know my arms were still attached and circulating qi properly.
The cave was unusually clean-cut through the ground, an opening hidden behind the bend of a massive stone outcrop that stretched deep down like the throat of a giant beast.
I paused, drew my sword, and stabbed the wall. I glanced up for a moment, then resheathed my sword.
Probably should start checking it's not something's mouth before
getting into the cave.
"What madness are you doing now?" Junius asked, looking over at me.
"Cave looks weird," I said, gesturing to the deep red stone around us. "Just wanted to make sure we weren't doing something stupid."
"Doing something stupid is what we get paid for," Junius said, shaking his head.
I snorted. "Yeah, that'd be nice." He gave me a questioning look. "Getting paid, I mean."
He paused, narrowing his eyes. "Janus, we
do get paid. A flat monthly wage, and commission based on missions completed. Have you never spoken to the
Bursarius? How have you been affording all this food for the young snakes?"
"What in the everloving fuck is a
Bursarius?" He stared at me. I grabbed my head and groaned. "No. No, no, no, my
contribution points!"
He sighed and shook his head. "You can sort it out when you return. Your massive wastage won't mean much now." He took a step, then paused again to look at me. "Is this why you never paid for meals? I thought you were just cheap."
==============================
The cave continued into the ground for about two
li, before it levelled off at the opening to a massive cavern. The ancient grave wasn't just bullshit, from the massive set of stairs leading down to a broad plinth. It was about a
li on all sides, with a towering spike of carved stone in the centre. Stairs rose from the plinth on the other three sides, leading to darkened tunnels further into the depths of the grave.
"It's a cenotaph," Junius said, as we descended the staircase.
"What, you think this is an instrument?" I asked, gazing up at the structure as it loomed larger and larger overhead.
"It- No. A cenotaph is a memorial site for someone buried elsewhere." We stopped at the edge of the plint, the unmarked stone slab completely smooth and featureless. "I don't see a tribute or engraving to say who this is for."
"Think there's an array on it?" I asked.
"Unlikely," he said. "Usually, you'd trap the grave. Putting it on the cenotaph- Janus, no!"
"What?" I asked, looking back at him. "You said it was safe." I'd taken a step up onto the plinth before he'd called out to me.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I said it was
unlikely to be trapped, not that it
wasn't. Inscribing it directly would be incredibly disrespectful, but they might do it anyway, since
climbing onto it is worse!"
I looked around at the still grave, then took another step forward to no reaction. I shrugged. "Seems like we're good. You know, you used to be a lot cooler than this, old man." I walked over to the obelisk itself, touching the surface. It was cool, like metal in the shade, and polished smooth.
"Shit happened," he grouched. "And I was holding the chamberpot."
"Want to talk about it?" I asked, turning to look at him.
He stared at me without saying anything and I held his gaze, before he looked down at the plinth. I gave him a few more seconds, then continued walking around the obelisk, pausing at the sight of a
very detailed chair carved into the stone.
"After the mission," Junius called out. "I've got a bunch of Wandering Cultivation time I'm required to take. If you want to hear the whole shitty story, you're free to come with."
"Deal," I said. "I found this thing, though." I leaned around the obelisk. "Looks like-" I froze at the sight of a masked man descending the stairs we'd come down, wrapped in dark red sackcloth stitched into
workman's garb. Bright red splashes covered his limbs, constantly dripping and echoing through the cavern. "J-Junius." My throat felt like it was being crushed as I fought to breathe, sweat dripping down my neck. I raised my arm to point, fighting the tremors that racked it, the feeling of weight tying me in place.
DRIP.
He glanced behind him, and froze at the sight.
"Ho-hum," Blood Painter called out. "Only two of you? Where's the drama in that?"
The weight of his superior cultivation was heavy, blotting out my senses like a heavy spoon of cloying, condensed milk. The pressure of a Foundation Building expert pressed down on me from all directions, the urge to
run crushed on the spot knowing there was nowhere to run to. He got to the foot of the steps, walking lazily towards us, the constant dripping from his clothes making the hairs raise on my arm.
DRIP.
"Your faces are familiar to me," he said, pausing. He folded an arm across his chest, cradling his face with three fingers of the other hand. "I suppose one must always make time for their adoring fans."
"Adoring? The only thing I plan to adore is the pattern of your empty skull across the floor," I sneered.
What? Why did I say- did I just
sneer?
"No need to waste your breath or your time on this dog of a man," Junius said, forcing himself to stand straight. "I alone am enough."
No, that's- that's not how we do this. That's not how any of this works. And why the hell was I so damn
afraid?
DRIP.
And- that sound. That…was that it? The only sound-based attacks I knew of were soul-based, and there was no defending against those. He wasn't as strong as Remus, I could feel the difference, but this was even worse than
that internal disruption fuckery. How were we supposed to deal with this? Why did they send the two of us to deal with a Foundation Building son of a bitch?
No…was that the technique? Was this what it did? Doubt and fear? Fuckin'- fine, sound-based attack? I'll bring the noise.
Bronze rippled down my arm as I pulled it back over my chest, funneling Qi into Purities, and slammed my fist into the stone pillar beside me. A
metal chime echoed through the room, drowning out Blood Pather's words, but I could still feel the pangs of fear rippling through me. Hear the sound of the constant DRIP.
I drew my arm back, and
clanged it again. I shivered as the sound reverberated through my body, like it was fighting the foreign sound for a foothold, but I knew that wasn't the right note. I drew my arm back again and-
The note resounded like cool water on a hot day, my chest filling with air as I could suddenly
breathe and the sound of his technique was drowned out. I could still feel the fear, the emotion shoved into me and trying to manipulate me, but without hearing the technique to reinforce it - I could handle this.
"Good work!" Junius yelled, whipping his rope dart at the Pather.
The masked man held one hand up almost lazily, the limb still rising in time to intercept the dart and push it away from him. "You managed to disrupt my Grandiloquent Entrance," he said. "You must have some experience in Demonic Tunes. I suppose even the most humdrum of settings can provide some surprise."
Junius yanked the rope, winding the dart around the Pather's hand, and hauled himself in with a kick - but the maneater caught it in one palm, and heaved it him back towards me.
I leapt over and -
oomph! - caught Junius in both arms, sliding to a halt across the smooth stone.
"Well, I suppose I should at least put on a token performance," he said, taking a step forward onto the obelisk. "I believe you Golden Devils have something like this, don't you?" Blood qi rippled around him, gushing outwards into clumps the size of a man, and condensing into dark shapes. "However, there is no imitating the
Imperial Blood Opera."
They popped like bubbles, revealing almost two dozen
costumed figures taking their first gasps of air. They were dark red from head to toe, like shadows of blood, their clothes hypnotic with patterns of darkness that danced as they moved. Flags waved behind their backs as they spread out, wielding swords and spears, their faces shifting from exaggerated emotion to exaggerated emotion.
"Junius," I said, lowering my stance and raising both my hands in a pankration stance. "This is an absolute shitshow, and I am giving you a fucking terrible review as team leader."
"That's fair," he said, and then the shadows were on us.
==============================
Fighting across great realms is impossible. That probably sounds extreme to anyone who hasn't tried it, but that's not the best part. It's actually
more impossible the higher your cultivations are. For a Qi Condensation to fight a Foundation Building? If the Heavens opened up and granted you their blessing, you might have a chance at dying to strike them down. Maybe. If you had friends around.
For a Foundation Building to fight a Core Formation? You might think you're making progress, then they'd go "oh, no, I better start using another finger" and you realize you are
way out of your fucking depth. Kinda like
chopping down a self-healing tree.
'Why' is complicated. If you stacked cultivators against each other just based on their physical ability, the difference between a Ninth Heavenstage Qi Condensation and a fresh Foundation Building wasn't that big. They were only marginally stronger and faster, but they were already almost untouchable. That's because the biggest difference between great realms is their comprehension of the Dao, and how it becomes part of them. To hurt them or to take one of their attacks, you needed to comprehend the Dao to the same level of depth. Trying to beat them without a similar degree of comprehension was like trying to douse a fire using paintings of water.
Or at least, that's what they tell me. I don't fuckin' know. All I know is this Blood Path fucker had churned out a horde of blood-bag shadow puppets that felt like 9th Heavenstage Qi Condensation opponents to my senses, but they absorbed my attacks like they didn't matter and just kept coming.
How long had we even been fighting? It felt like days, but part of that was because the goddamn Pather was sitting on the ground and hadn't
shut up the whole fight.
"My, you Devils certainly are capable. But your poor grasp of true artistry is disheartening." Blood Painter sighed, throwing his hands up dramatically. "If only your beauty wasn't being drowned out by your gross incandescence."
"What the fuck-" I ducked a blood spear, swayed under two blood swords, and grabbed a blood shadow by the leg. I spun it into another two, battering them and forcing them to lose blood qi repairing the damage, then hurled it away. "-does that even mean?"
"He's saying you're hot," Junius grunted, avoiding two attacks. I'd noticed his cultivation base steadily climbing over the course of the fight, from the 5th Heavenstage I'd known him to be, all the way up to his current point of 8th. Either he'd been sandbagging or he was having a
really well-timed set of breakthroughs, but it's not like we had time to discuss it.
I- shit, duck the stab and go horizontal, control it into a backflip. I gave him a look.
"That's what it means! Glowing because it's hot." He spun between two blood shadows, weaving his rope around their necks as he passed. "Incandescent. Not shitting you."
"Weird time to try and pick me up," I said, booting a blood shadow running at me and splattering it against the stone pillar. It was already pulling itself back together, but the rest of the damn Opera was already closing in on me. "But flattered, I guess."
The things were almost impossible to put down. Injuring them just made them burn off some of their blood qi to repair the damage. It made them weaker but, honestly, they weren't that threatening to us from the start. Getting stabbed would probably be a bad idea but they didn't have the speed or intelligence to make that happen, which is why we'd stuck around to keep this going.
When Blood Painter's technique was working, I'd panicked because it felt like we didn't have any way to deal with a Foundation Building cultivator - even with the Hoplite Formation, three of us wasn't enough to battle across realms. But we
did have someone who could. In fact, we had two of them. We were just genius enough to send them both away and go on ahead, but if we were lucky-
"Junius! Janus!" Jieyue yelled from the top of the stairs.
"Thank the Grand Elder," Junius said, relieved. "Watch out! He has a soul technique!"
"My audience grows," Blood Painter said, standing.
"Junius?" I asked.
"We go
now," he said, turning and breaking for me. I turned and cracked the nearest blood shadow in the face and elbowed the one behind me, staggering them back. I knelt down and laced my finger together as Junius reached me, hurling him into the air and towards the steps.
"Performers do not leave the stage before their part is over," Blood Painter said harshly, pointing a finger a Junius as he flew overhead.
The ground hurled me forward before he could finish, and I grabbed him around the collar-
"Not today, shit for brains."
-spun around his neck and
slammed him into the ground.
"You really need to consider more creative insults," he said, adjusting his hand to point at me, a red smear of qi on the tip.
It exploded into a flower of blood but I'd already loosed my grip and rolled away. Stinging, biting blood ran from my arm and shoulder as I leapt backwards to the stairs and landed beside Junius, Jieyue standing in formation behind us. "I hope you're ready for this," I said. Jieyue nodded, setting her expression. I gave her a grin and she looked at me uncertainly. "What's the plan, then?"
She took a deep breath, drawing her dao with her left hand and her lute with the right. "Buy me time," she said.
"How much?" Junius asked.
"I don't know," Jieyue replied. "When it's enough, I'll tell you."
"Hold off the guy stronger than us until the only one who can hurt him is ready? Milk run," I chuckled. I was already reaching for Junius with my qi, but I felt his refusal even as his qi meshed with mine.
I gave him a questioning look.
"You lead. You have better instincts and I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up."
"Alright," I said, tapping my knuckles together as the Hoplite formed. It matched me, tapping its hands together, the spear and shield ringing out as they touched. "Then let's do this."
I threw one last look back at Jieyue- was she making a solo Hoplite? It was smaller with just her but…no, the proportions were wrong. The legs were longer and the arms thicker, unfolding from the chest like they were ready to lift the world, the four of them bristling with energy.
Wait, four?
"
Hecatoncheires," she said with a small smile, the formation reaching down to place an extra hand on her lute and dao.
Well, shit. I guess she found a way to make two two-handed tools work after all.
I turned my eyes forward again, Junius and I adjusting stances as we hefted the Hoplite's shield and pointed the spear at the Pather.
"Now this," he said. "Is drama."
He- where the fuck did he go? What? How did-
Gong.
Our shield rang like a giant bell, the two of us staggering backwards and struggling to find our footing. "What was that?" Junius asked.
"I suppose you're trying to protect this one, then?" Blood Painter said from behind us. We spun around, stabbing with our spear, but he hopped lightly to the side and we blew a hole in the stairs. "An ordinary stab? How droll."
"Say whatever you want, but you're not getting out of here alive," I told him.
He spun on his heel, holding his chin thoughtfully as he faced us. "Getting out of here? Oh dear me," he said. "Why would I leave now that the cast is finally assembled?"
"What-" We crashed down with the shield on his head, the blow dodged with a small sidestep, and we sent a spear thrust in its wake. "-the hell are you talking about?" Junius asked.
He reached up with both hands, grabbing the head of the spear, and pushed it to the side to dig into the wall beside the stairs. "A genius is always misunderstood," he sighed. "Did you really think you were capable of understanding the beauty of my Opera? That you had seen the extent of its majesty, and could escape untouched?"
Junius and I glanced at each other, nodding at the shared concern. From the sounds of it, he was saying he was just toying with us while he waited for Jieyue to show up and whether that was true or not, neither of us wanted to find out. Still, we were just buying time until-
"
Show me how it ends," Jieyue intoned, her voice echoing inside my head as it melded with the tones of her lute. It drifted through my mind, finding no purchase, as the qi searched for its target.
Blood Painter flinched, turning towards her. He took a step and we swung the shield down in his path. He leapt up but our spear was already coming, forcing him to bat the strike aside. I grinned as I heard the second line.
"
It's all right,
Show me how defenseless you really are."
Blood Painter shivered in the air, and the next spear strike caught him before he could parry it, driving him into the stairs with a loud
crack of shattering stone. At just Foundation Building, he was just as vulnerable to soul arts as anybody else and while that wore him down, it gave us the chance to just start beating the shit out of him.
"
Satisfied and empty inside."
I kept stabbing, cracking the hole in the stairs wider and wider, until the rubble blocked my view. "Think that did it?" Junius asked.
The rubble shifted, the largest chunk flying off to the other side of the room as Blood Painter rose from the hole like a hungry ghost, his sleeves torn and tattered.
"Okay, I jinxed us on that one," Junius muttered.
Blood Painter chuckled, reaching up to his sleeve and running a finger through the splatter across it. It came away wet and red, and he smeared it across his fingers, his gaze still focused on us. "Let's have a show then."
Jieyue screamed and we spun around, spear already stabbing towards her position, a second Blood Painter battering through her formation with contemptuous ease. He paused to absently catch our spear behind the point, dragging it - but the spear wasn't real, just a part of the formation. Instead, I bitchslapped him with the shield and hurled him across the room.
Jieyue leapt closer to us, one arm stained red with a stream of blood.
"I don't think it's doing enough," I said, glancing at Junius. The first Blood Painter hurled himself towards us. I caught him on the shield and shoved him back, but he flipped gracefully through the air- what's that smell?
A surge of foul blood surged over the edge of the shield, burning through the dense qi of the formation like a poison. My heart ached at the feedback, and I heard Junius wheeze beside me.
"You're right. My vote is we kill this bastard."
"Great idea. How about you back that up with a plan?"
"
The plan is that we make it the fuck up," he said, laughing widely.
I shook my head, not seeing the joke, and gestured for Jieyue to grab onto the real part of the shield before we backed off to the stone slab in the centre of the room.
The two Blood Painters landed in front of us, walking towards each other at a measured pace. He'd gotten serious and it was pushing us, but we weren't out of options yet. I glanced at Jieyue, our eyes meeting, as she struck a few more notes and sang out.
"
If you find your family, don't you cry.
In this land of make-believe, dead and dry.
The two Blood Painters raced towards us, weaving back and forth, and hurled themselves at Jieyue! We stabbed across their path, cutting them off. They split, going over and under the spear, and we swiped down the length of the spear to splatter the first one into the ground! The shield rang like a bell with the impact but he clung to its face, while Jieyue threw up her dao to catch the other Blood Painter's punch!
I spun the spear over and stabbed down, forcing that Painter back but the other one kicked off the face of the shield.
"Hot rock!" I called to Junius, already releasing all my qi. The formation broke apart around us but we were already reaching for each other again, creating a new Hoplite in position to guard her before the qi from the first had even faded from view. Blood Painter landed on the shield and hopped back, as Jieyue cut at his knees.
"You're so cold, but you feel alive.
Lay your hands on me one last time."
She turned and ran backwards to the edge of the stone platform and we followed her with a backwards hop of the Hoplite, bringing our weapons up again. There was a note of finality to that final bar, but Blood Painter didn't seem any worse off. In fact, he seemed to be channeling even more blood qi than-
Shield!
The second Blood Painter exploded into a splash of foul blood at our feet, eating into the qi of the shield. I heard a
click to the side and barely caught sight of the metal puzzle-box before we slammed the shield there. "We're stuck!" I yelled, as another one exploded behind us, and again to the front, forcing us to whip our shield around just to defend ourselves.
"Drop the Hoplite!" Junius yelled. "It's move or die!"
I swore, and the edge of the Hoplite wavered as our wills diverged. I committed to the break and we jumped into the air, another trap exploding where we'd just stood. Jieyue brought her blade up and caught a punch from Blood Painter, staggering back as the sword rang out with every parry.
"Janus!" I glanced over as Junius whipped the rope dart toward me and spun it around my arm, twisting himself in the air. "Pin him down!"
I took a breath and circulated my qi to activate my techniques, then nodded. The rope spun me around, whipping me up into the air and then snapped me at the ground full speed. Jieyue glanced up and slashed recklessly, pushing Blood Painter back a half step so she could get from underneath and I hit the stone with a thunderous boom! Blood Painter barely swayed back at the last second, and dodged my follow-up jab.
I ducked his return punch and jabbed at his kidneys, but he swayed right. Dip the claw for my face, kick at his shins - parried by his opposite hand, but punch at his wrist before he can grab my leg! We backed up a half step and I grinned, as the hands of patina behind him grabbed him around the shoulders.
He gave them a brief glance, and flexed his shoulders and qi to shatter them-
Si reared up behind him with her swords and Fang Intent gleaming, stabbing into his lungs from either side!
"Gottem."
Blood Painter winced, reaching up to grab at the swords, but Si had already withdrawn them and backed up to her hiding place on the throne carved into the pillar. He touched one of the wounds on his side and…sighed? "This is why fans can be such a headache. This is going to cause such a problem, and it was supposed to be the grand show."
"You're done, Blood Painter," I said, glancing back at Jieyue and Junius. The two of them approached cautiously, weapons ready for another trick.
"
Painter?" He scoffed. "I'm no simple slinger of coloured ink. I am a
dramatist. I create
worlds."
I ignored his ravings. "You might be able to beat us individually, but not like this. If you stay still, I can't say you'll die painlessly, but it will be quick."
"Beat you?" he chuckled, bringing his bloody hand around and holding it out in front of him. "You Devils are always so crude. Not every plot can be resolved by brandishing a weapon or throwing a punch. Not every hero must be a warrior."
"You sound like you aren't going to lay down and die quietly, so I guess the beating will continue."
"What I'm trying to tell you, young Devil, is that not all cultivators are battle cultivators." He pressed his fingers together, letting a drop of his blood fall to the stone-
Blood qi filled the underground, every surface suddenly glowing with an engraved array, each symbol the size of a needle's head. I could feel the world twisting around me, like I was suddenly standing on the wall but
which wall was changing every few seconds.
"What's happening?" I heard myself say.
"The curtain is rising," Blood Painter- Blood…Player? whispered. "The stage is set."
Darkness was closing in and I could feel sensation leaving me.
"We perform now before the throne, Devils. Consider yourself fortunate to be in such august company. The King in Blood's gaze is upon us all."
==============================
At last, my dark secret is revealed: I wrote this entire character so I could reference mid-2000s grunge/industrial rock through a supporting character. In case the Youtube link breaks, Jieyue's song is So Cold by Breaking Benjamin.
