I turned in a circle and saw the red eyes of spirit monkeys everywhere.

  “Mr Post?” I whispered.

  “Oh? Yes?”

  “Any idea which way I should run?”

  “Funny you should mention that! The roads and I are almost finished discussing —”

  “Bah!” Cabbagy shouted as he rolled out of my arms and into the center of the crossroads. “How dare you turn your back on such an opportunity, you young fool!”

  I didn’t want to ask, but I’ve always been curious.

  “What opportunity?”

  “Training!”

  I knew it.

  “I don’t think I can fight off a bunch of pissed off cultivator monkeys,” I whispered back to Cabbagy.

  “Sure, you can,” he said dismissively. “They’re only in the Qi Condensation realm.”

  “There’s a hundred!”

  “There’s sixteen. Seriously, kid, didn’t anybody teach you to count? Besides, you’re fine. Didn’t you notice that they haven’t attacked you yet?”

  I had noticed, but I’d been operating under the logic that whatever blessing protected me would suddenly shatter if I pointed it out.

  Despite flinching at Cabbagy’s words, nothing happened.

  “Oh, maybe they’re friendly?” I asked.

  “No such luck, I’m afraid,” Cabbagy said with a positively gleeful voice. “Those are vicious bastards.”

  “Can confirm!” Mr Post added. “Those brutes are the reason my signs don’t point anywhere.”

  “Then why haven’t they attacked?” I asked as I studied the silhouettes moving in the mist.

  “They can’t sense your qi —”

  “I don’t have any qi.”

  “Exactly, and this mist is obscuring their mundane senses.”

  I let some of the tension ease from my shoulders. Now I knew they weren’t going to attack me; the hideous red glare of their eyes actually glowed quite nicely in the mist. It reminded me of how Shadowlight City’s smokestacks caught the ruby sunlight setting over Emperor’s Emptiness Bay….

  My mouth opened slightly. I’d forgotten about Emperor’s Emptiness Bay, but now I had a sudden desire to taste the one-eyed fish stew they made there.

  This strengthened resolve came just in time.

  “Looks like the mist is thinning,” Cabbagy said with unrestrained excitement. “Get ready to fight with everything I taught you!”

  I whirled a glare onto the damned cabbage.

  “What!” I hissed. “What did you teach me?”

  “To be a man!”

  I stomped over to the cabbage to deliver a kick that would send him out into the trees. Manipulated blood coursed through my veins and muscles, and my strength surged. I would boot the damned vegetable so hard he would taste the stars!

  But the mist fell, and once more I stood in the dark pines with only the thin vestige of night to hide me.

  Sixteen pale-furred, blazing-eyed monkeys turned to me as one. Some were on the ground, and some were in the trees. They ranged from three to five feet tall, and I could tell even through their fur that they were wiry and strong. For half a moment, we stared at each other before their throats bulged.

  A malice-filled howl twisted and shuddered the air. The wall of noise hit me like a slap to the face.

  I staggered back as a wave of fur and fangs and fists fell toward me.

  “Move, kid!”

  Dirt kicked up as I leaped backwards. The monkeys glared at me as they struck the ground. More dirt flew as they charged. Blood pulsed through my muscles as I dashed away to the right, trying to avoid them like I’d just stolen a sweetcake from a market vendor.

  The monkeys flowed and sprang on all fours like a tide of rage. My heart thundered, and blood surged through my veins as I dodged again and again, but only my sudden changes in direction gave me any room to breathe.

  That room was fading.

  The first monkey got close, swinging out with a crudely formed punch. I leaned away with wide eyes and kicked at the beast’s hip. It spun off, but three more monkeys leaped forward.

  I blocked them as I moved backwards, took a glancing hit, and dashed away.

  Each of the Howling Spirit Monkeys was as fast as the supposed young master I’d fought earlier that day.

  If they got too close, I could block and redirect most of their attacks. Actually, it was easier than fighting the young master. Maybe I’d judged him too harshly… or these monkeys were just far stupider than he was.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  There was a predictability to their movements, as though the wild beasts had half-learned a few punches and kicks and insisted on using them over and over.

  Unfortunately, what they lacked in technique, they made up for in numbers.

  Sixteen was a lot.

  Some monkeys kept up the pursuit on the ground, but others darted through the trees, going wide to flank me. It wouldn’t be long before I was completely encircled, and I doubted I could fight them all off at once.

  I needed to change up my strategy.

  Pushing blood through muscles, I sprinted away in a straight line to create as much distance as possible.

  Once separated, I raised my thumb to my teeth. With a quick bite, I pierced the skin before repeating with my other thumb. Once both hands were bleeding, I focused on forming my gloves. It was much harder to do this while I was actively running across the uneven forest floor. I couldn’t just splash blood over my hands since my control could only extend to thin ribbons -- almost like suspended veins -- and I needed to weave them into the proper shape around my hands.

  But as I ran, I needed to keep my sense of direction. After all, the only reason I’d delayed at the crossroads was to avoid getting lost.

  I dodged between the pines and pushed my legs as hard as they could go, but finally, I formed my gloves.

  They had a dark sheen to them that hadn’t been there before, a weight like holding a gold coin in my hand. It must have been from that cultivator I — accidentally — ate. My strengthened blood flexed and flowed around my fists as I faced the monkeys pursuing me.

  “Come on then!” I shouted. “Let’s go bananas!”

  “That’s the spirit!” Cabbagy shouted from his hiding spot back at the crossroads. “Show them what a real man can do!”

  “Do be careful!” said Mr Post.

  I ignored them as I pumped my muscles even fuller with blood. My skin grew taut under the pressure. My bones vibrated. I felt as though I might explode if I didn’t move.

  So I moved.

  The lead monkey was a big bastard who had outsprinted his fellows. He charged on all fours with fangs bared, and was only a few feet away when I attacked. His glowing red eyes widened in surprise, and he tried to straighten out into a flying kick, but he was too slow.

  My punch caught him straight in the nose. The monkey’s momentum only slammed him harder into my fist. Blood spurted from the beast’s broken nose as bone crunched under my glove’s swirling pressure.

  And I felt something brush against the edge of my manipulation. Something inviting…

  I grinned as I discovered a delightful property of my blood control — it extended beyond myself.

  The monkey struck the ground, and I leaped on top, seizing the opportunity and punching it in the face as the rest of the troop closed in on our location. I thrust my gloved knuckles deep into the monkey’s face, and with all my willpower, I pulled on the blood leaking out of his face.

  With a sensation like drinking from a stream, blood flowed out of the beast and into my glove.

  I couldn’t drain much -- something inside the beast held onto the living blood with fierce jealousy -- but I could drain some.

  The monkey below me screeched as the glove around my fist grew bigger with every punch. He scratched at me, but I pinned him with one arm while striking with the other. With a final, devastating blow, I finished the beast and stood as the other fifteen monkeys approached.

  I clapped my hands together, spreading the stolen blood between my gloves. Though they were no longer mere gloves, but now a pair of bloody gauntlets extending up past my forearm.

  Either the stolen blood or the heat of the moment made it easier for me to control the larger amount of blood, but I didn’t have time to figure it out as the monkeys leaped at me.

  I swung.

  When my fists connected, I sent monkeys flying with blows like a kick from a horse. They darted around me, climbing trees so they could drop down from above. I dodged what I could and took what hits I must. A pair of monkeys engaged me, their punches and claws striking in rapid fire, but they fell back after a strike from my gauntlets ripped blood from their flesh.

  “Duck, kid!”

  I dropped to the ground as a large monkey sailed past where my head would have been less than a second ago. She was big, with obvious muscles under her white fur, and hit the ground with a grunt. I clawed at her face and ripped her eye free before she scrambled away.

  More monkeys came, but I kept fighting.

  Howls and shrieks and crunching thuds echoed out through the trees.

  Every wound I caused became a gory mess, and soon the monkeys had red matted fur to match their eyes as they circled me.

  Steam billowed up from their huffing breaths as they circled me, knowing better than to come in close, but refusing to disengage.

  Only the first monkey I’d pinned to the ground was dead, but most of the others limped.

  I wasn’t any better.

  When a mob of monkeys with grasping fingers, toes, tails, and maws jumps you, injury is inevitable. I bled from many places, unable to spare the willpower to keep my wounds closed. My shoulder was dislocated, and my left ear was missing, but I felt no pain and stood as straight as I had when I started the fight.

  I think my unflinching expression and the fact that I wasn’t dead gave the monkeys as much pause as the pain I’d inflicted. There was a wariness, but it felt like a razor-thin margin of peace.

  My blood control wavered, threatening to snap — I hadn’t pushed my willpower this hard before. The gauntlets were larger and heavier than any I’d worn before. Monkey blood seemed similar to my own, but it wasn’t mine — and it was taxing to command.

  At least the fight had brought us back to the crossroads.

  “They’re leery of you,” Cabbagy said. “If you take the fight to them now, they’ll scatter.”

  “They better,” I said.

  “Go for the one with the missing eye.”

  I spied the large monkey who’d swooped for my head. Her burning, one-eyed stare told me she hadn’t forgiven the injury. Though I suppose all the monkeys had the same, fiery expression, only with two eyes.

  “That’s the biggest monkey left,” I hissed at Cabbagy.

  “Exactly.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Whatever you say, kid, but put some pageantry into it.”

  I knew what he meant, and I hated that he was right.

  With a flex of my willpower, I used blood to pull my dislocated shoulder back into place. The crack was almost as satisfying as having full use of my limb again.

  The monkeys flinched back from the noise, but when nothing happened, they crept closer to me. I could feel the mounting tension. It was only seconds before they decided to swarm me again, and this time, their sheer numbers would probably drive me down. I was pretty sure they couldn’t maim me to death, but I really wasn’t excited to find out what happened when something ate me.

  So, I pointed at the largest monkey.

  Her one remaining eye widened with alarm, and she almost glanced over her shoulder, but I was already charging with a shout on my lips. The other monkeys howled like the crowd around a fighting pit as the large one-eyed monkey bared her fangs.

  I bared fangs of my own and leaped.

  The large monkey twisted away, but I landed on top of her and we rolled to the ground. She fought me, thrashing with the strength of three men, but I held tight with my swirling gauntlets and sank my extended fangs deep into her neck.

  Blood burst up into my throat, and I drank with a greed I’d never experienced.

  Taste exploded across my tongue like nectar as her blood flowed into me and through me.