Chen Ai was horrified by how quickly the expedition went to shit. The group exited the portal and emerged into Howling Blossom Valley, and in less time than it took for an incense stick to burn, a Nascent Soul realm spirit beast found them. She’d never experienced such an immense qi before. This wasn’t like the pressure of Foundation Establishment, or the overwhelming crushing weight of Core Formation, but another thing entirely.

  There was no force…

  It felt as though she were swimming in a pool that heated so slowly she didn’t realize it was boiling until it was too late. The Butcher Bird’s qi suffused the area -- she wouldn’t be surprised if the Butcher Bird’s qi was spread over the entire valley -- and her own qi was incapacitated by the powerful presence.

  She could no more face against a Nascent Soul spirit beat than she could drain a boiling lake.

  Everyone in the expedition felt the same, judging from their pale faces and tense expressions. It was almost worse that there wasn’t a crushing weight of qi pushing them to their knees, or a bloodthirsty intent driving them to despair, but this bird generated all this fear simply with its physical presence. It moved faster than she could follow, and to her spiritual senses, it seemed to be in two places at once.

  She’d thought it terrifying when the six-horned poison serpent spoke to her, but the crystalline intelligence behind every word of the Bucther Bird was both exact and alien.

  Her senior brother wasn’t one to back down in the face of danger, and she’d prayed to the heavens that he would learn his lesson and not antagonize the Butcher Bird, but that wasn’t to be. Now he was skewered on a branch, his blood blooming out into the air in grotesque suspended petals as he writhed and shrieked with agony.

  The Valley of the Howling Blossoms indeed.

  Everyone else, she knew, was sick to their stomach at the sight. This was the fearless expedition leader who’d dared to challenge tradition and embark on this suicide mission, and now it had proven to be suicide indeed. To them, he was dead.

  But, for Chen Ai, she was terrified for a different reason.

  Because she knew her senior brother was fine. If something like this could kill him, then he never would have made it to Mountain Root City. No, she was afraid that her senior brother, who spoke to the nightmare bird like it was one of his cabbages, hadn’t learned his lesson.

  Because even with one eye, he watched the bird without any fear.

  And she felt a fierce sense of pride, warring with dread, as she realized that even now her senior brother was taunting the Butcher Bird.

  The bird hopped closer to him.

  “You are too weak to look at me like that,” it said.

  The bird didn’t move, or maybe it did, she coudln’t be sure, but blood spouted from her senior brother’s shoulders and hips where his arms and legs used to be. He screamed, and the pain was so great that it almost sounded like he was laughing.

  The Butcher Bird appeared before them, hovering in the air with slow flaps of its wings that felt more performative than functional.

  “You have all trespassed into my laboratory,” it said. “And so you have volunteered yourselves as my test subjects.”

  What?

  Chen Ai’s heart thundered in her chest. There was no mistaking those clear words, but what did it mean?

  Everyone glanced at each other, trying to make sense of it, but nobody dared speak.

  Nobody except…

  “No,” croaked her senior brother as blood poured out of his body. “You won’t touch them.”

  ###

  A Foundation Establishment cultivator builds nine pillars out of qi and inscribes each one with both elemental power and understanding. Once they have nine pillars ready, with the correct moment of enlightenment, they can combine the pillars into a core of energy and enter the Core Formation stage. In this stage, the core nurtures the cultivator's soul until it can emerge and bring the cultivator into the Nascent Soul realm.

  This makes the Nascent Soul cultivator more than a purely physical being, with their every action touching on the soul of the world.

  Was this why the Butcher Bird’s strikes felt like needles digging into my flesh? Because it wasn’t just ripping off my limbs but striking deep into my soul?

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Whatever the explanation, I had forgotten what true pain felt like. That moment of shock and fire inside my cell felt so long ago, but this was a reminder. In my pain, I couldn’t control my blood, and I felt it move against my willpower like a rope sliding through my hands as it formed the Butcher Bird’s petals.

  Pain is something I can deal with, but not the Butcher Bird’s threats.

  “You have all trespassed into my laboratory, and so you have volunteered yourselves as my test subjects.”

  More than the pain, these words sent cold fear racing through my body. It seemed that my theory had been too simple. I’d suspected that there was a demonic facility hidden inside the valley, but now it looked like this entire valley was a facility, and the Butcher Bird was involved with the experiments.

  Maybe the Butcher Bird was an experiment?

  If so, it meant the demonic cultivators were far more capable and dangerous than I’d previously expected. It also meant that there was a greater level of power in the test subjects, and I wanted to gain that power.

  What would happen if I ate the Butcher Bird?

  “No,” I croaked. “You won’t touch them.”

  The Butcher Bird cocked its head at me.

  “What is wrong with you?” it asked with genuine curiosity. “You are still alive, yet too much blood has poured out. I can’t feel anything or see anything. You appear as a weak cultivator, but why aren’t you dead?”

  I said nothing.

  The bird perched on the branch and hopped closer out of curiosity. Yes, that’s it… closer you fucking chicken…

  The Butcher Bird’s eyes loomed before my face. It moved so fast I coudln’t even react!

  “You are not strong enough to grab me,” it said. “But you are interesting enough to catch my attention. I have decided that you will be my first test subject.”

  It flitted through the air.

  “You all wish to invade my laboratory and steal my samples,” it said with a shrieking voice that rang in the air like a bell. “You will steal nothing. You will earn by assisting in my experiments. If you can make it to the Temple, I shall give you whatever it is that you desire. If you fall along the way, I shall find you before you die, and I shall make of you a howling blossom.”

  The Butcher Bird perched on my shoulder. The bird was only a foot tall at the most, and it spread gray wings wide.

  “You have three days to reach the temple before I skewer you.”

  I felt a tearing sensation, and then I blurred through the air only to slam down onto terracotta bricks.

  “Oof! Is that how they say ‘hello’ where you’re from?” the bricks said.

  I was too dazed to respond.

  I was legless, armless, and ripped almost clean in half. Blood dribbled from my wounds as I formed tourniquets with my willpower and slowed the loss. I focused inwards on regeneration, and slowly my body turned from pain into reconstruction. My one eye dimly looked around. I lay in the center of a large tiled square courtyard surrounded by four spires. Everything was terracotta brick and green veins of moss with small flowers growing between the cracks. A warm wind blew, and I could see a sea of jungle fenced in by the colossal cliff walls. It seemed the temple sat atop a ziggurat that towered over the trees. High above, clouds and mist veiled the edges of the sky, and, in the distance, the myriad trees grew.

  Now that I was closer to the myriad tree, I saw that it had many bright red flowers. The tree was the size of a mountain and days away -- the dimensions of this hidden valley were a shocking revelation to me, no matter how many times my research mentioned the size.

  The Butcher Bird appeared before me and took a few hopping steps until it looked directly into my face from a few inches away.

  “Are you going to die?” it asked me.

  I glared at it with my one good eye and tried to think of something to say.

  “Fascinating,” said the Butcher Bird. “Will you tell me what makes you so special?”

  It took me a while to try and think of something to say.

  “Your mother.”

  The bird cocked its head.

  “I was an egg raised in a facility. I know very little about my mother, but none of my brood had any ability like yours. They are all dead now, yet I believe you will recover from this as though there was nothing wrong.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m bleeding out.”

  “Fascinating. Will you do it for me? Will you heal so that I can observe?”

  There was genuine curiosity there, inasmuch as I could read it in a bird.

  “What will you give me?”

  The bird cocked its head. If it were a human, it might have laughed or hit me, but it just cocked its head and stared. It knew it couldn’t kill me, and it knew I wasn’t a threat, so what would it do?

  The beak stabbed into my remaining eye faster than I could blink.

  Well, wink.

  Well, I coudln’t do either anymore.

  “Damn,” said the bricks. “Why are you testing it like this? Can’t you tell it just wants to do an experiment? You should go along with it! Look at us. We went along with things, and now we’re covered in flowers.”

  I wasn’t about to take advice from someone who was literally as thick as a brick. I used my willpower to shift my vision to my bones, and, with the vision of a skeleton, I turned to look at the bird.

  “I’ll heal for you,” I said. “I’ll show you my trick, and in return, I’d like to ask a question.”

  The Butcher Bird hopped one way, and then another.

  “You can see me.”

  I nodded slowly.

  The Butcher Bird hopped closer.

  “If you didn’t have this gift, I would have killed you.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to see this gift.”

  “I know you do.”

  “You want to know my secrets?”

  “Just one secret.”

  The bird stared at me before fluttering back. The black band around its eyes was as dark as the midnight sky, and the eyes hidden within were like holes cut in the night.

  “You have no bargaining power.”

  I smirked, and I couldn’t imagine what a ghastly sight I must be without eyes or limbs.

  “I could let myself die without showing you.”

  The bird screeched at me and shattered the bricks with raw killing intent, but that same deadly force washed over me as though it were nothing but the warm, spring breeze. It seemed my ability to remain unaffected by spiritual senses and intent remained.

  I needed to use this to my advantage to bluff the bird into helping me.

  The Butcher Bird glared at me, but I remained unfazed. It was hard without eyes.

  “If you die, I will dissect you.”

  I suppressed a smile.

  “But that won’t satisfy your curiosity,” I said. ”Will it?”

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