Swordface’s eyes were already closed. He ran through the cloud, his white robes, face, and all turned a deep orange, then he stopped still. He froze like he couldn’t move. Then, bursting from his mouth, a scream that made blood freeze.

  It was not as bad as the hot coals that burned their hands. The spores didn’t burn Hao, but they were hot, a little warmer than boiling water. Fine enough to weave through hair, and stick where it landed. Light enough to float in the air. The spores covered Swordface’s whole body, face, and neck, down the robe top, and up the pants.

  In the distance behind them both, Hao could see Hua Yi’Er still standing outside. Her hand was waving, and she was yelling something, it seemed. Fool girl, still, her worried expression made it feel like he made a decent choice. She was pulled into a tent not a second before he turned around.

  Hao took the chance while the Swordface was flailing to create distance between them once again. It was close to noon, maybe seconds off, the sun high, but shadows streaked the ground, giving eyes something to focus on, letting the world keep its color. The sun didn’t rise fast enough, as the whimper, moans, and groans of the Swordsman behind him faded slower than before. He was moving, following behind. The hot sun scorched on his already burnt face.

  When it finally came, noon. Hao had to guess where he ran. The patter of feet on the ground far behind him still followed. He tried to make his steps lighter. To be quieter, but also so his burnt foot, which dug through ash and ember, didn’t touch the already warm grass anymore than it had to.

  It shouldn’t be long, noons like this will pass soon. He wasn’t so sure about that. The season of storms would be over, the middle summer would come to an end. The late summer would begin, and the summer daughters would be born, according to Zhengqi, anyway. And when summer was over, he would have to stay in the Secret Realm until fall ends. He hoped it went that way. Some familiarity with the seasons in this place, but the Mid-Summer cave certainly didn’t follow the weather patterns outside; the realm had its own rules in that regard. To start, a shorter, harsher noon, a while after, followed by a longer, harsher storm.

  Hao thought he lost the Swordsman after another bout of harsh trampling of the ground with Seven Colored Steps, the technique gave him speed, and helped him forget the pain he was in.

  He sat and breathed, drank some rainwater, bowl after bowl. Then wrapped his wounds. He took that chewed white root, mixed it with the Ice-feline demonic beast fat, and applied it where he could reach. There was a cooling sting lasting only twenty seconds before it went numb. As the spots numbed one by one, he wrapped them with any spare cloth and bandage, clean or dirty, he had. With the pain gone, he was able to think a little more clearly. He dabbed water on his face to help with the heat and hoped for a wind, knowing none would come. The water and any sweat on his skin evaporated.

  Hao even took the chance to cultivate a little, thinking himself mad for doing so, he could have disappeared into one of the woods. But there was a tight feeling in his stomach. Something was bothering him, a lot of things were. Failure, it had been a long time. He faced both denial and rejection in the Drifting Stream Sect, he didn’t even get a proper welcome, and what was his was held from him. But failure, that hadn’t happened since the breaktide, he was younger than the other boys, but still he failed and was not given a second chance, that was the law. That day, he was declared unworthy. That day, everyone, except for his father, smiled, his mother wasn’t even allowed to attend, as they proclaimed him not a man.

  Hao failed to enter a meditative state, it was the first time such a thing happened. It always came so easily. Boil, the thought started on its own, but he finished it, “The Ocean!” His fingers dug into the ground, and he pulled up a fair chunk of the dirt, grass and grass-roots bound and twisted, kept it whole as he threw it. He wished he could see. To see how far it went, to see how much strength he had in his body.

  If I can’t throw a stone, how can I mine the Amethysts? Another thing to grind his teeth about. He hoped that the healing of a Cultivator improved along with everything else.

  He closed his eyes to cultivate again, he had to clear his head a tiny bit at least. Shake these feelings off before noon, then he would move. One last thought passed through his head before he slipped away. I would tear Pao Taoyi into a hundred pieces to see Meiqi, with her slightly gray hair and tiny waist, dance again. She moved like smoke. And with that thought, Hao found inspiration.

  *

  When noon passed, Hao stood; he had to move. His mind was sharper, and his senses fully returned to him. He knew he had to find some safe place to recover, the other camp in front of Sorrow, the mountain on the other side of the plain. Or to cave in the woods, where he journeyed from.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Before he took a step, a strange shape of a strange color grew in the distance at the corner of his eye. A man in orange, with a face swollen and blistered like a fruit, wet spots on his cheeks, and just peering through the red, puffed-up flesh, yellow eyes plucked from a painting of a devil. The figure ran right at him.

  Hao was quick to run away, indignation peeling across his skin. He knew now how much he needed to recover; he had hardly given himself proper treatment and had yet to eat. All the places he could go quickly rushed through his mind. There was only one close, but there was nothing he knew about it. His feet lifted, not hiding Seven Colored Steps in the slightest as it carried him to the tallest mountain, centered by the landscape, stretching to the sky.

  He didn’t care who was behind him, he had a guess. Well, now he knew the effects of the mushroom spores at least; he would have to be careful about their use in the future.

  The two men chased again, both injured, yet their feet didn’t pause.

  Hao approached the center mountain as clouds gathered. How he wished he could collect some more rain, he didn’t know when the next time he would be desperate for a drink would be. A token appeared in his hand, not quite ornate but delicately carved from peach wood, a fruity scent lingering.

  The people around the camp showed no interest in the two of them, the ones walking to the mountain they ran from, or the ones sitting laughing, mingling for now. All ready to run from the rain when it came. Hao avoided the camp, he didn’t need to make the situation more troublesome. Besides, his new friend Dong Lingli would be dragged into the trouble. His strange, white, glossy tent was still pitched up. It would have been better if the people they passed had not seen them in general.

  He went as wide as he could of the camp, aiming directly for the mountainside. The pass was held out in front of him. There was no clear entrance to this trial, only the story still being told by the people forced into their heads.

  Hao felt something pass over him, it was like running through a thin layer of jelly, when he looked back, there was nothing behind him. The camp and the people were gone. Just the landscape and the orange trees. He swallowed saliva, his heart doubling in weight. He was reminded of the eels like tendrils of World Energy or Spiritual Energy, one and the same, that came from the pass. The same feeling he had holding them, now licked over his entire body, like the eyes of every fish in the ocean, turned to him the moment he took a step.

  In front of him, it changed, too. Two stone pillars of poorly carved stone, both had a clear image of a Giant Feline creature, not quite a tiger, a land animal of stories, but something close. They were identical except for their color, one black, the other white, striped in the opposite shade. Both were carved to appear as if they were walking down the pillar, descending from heaven.

  Hao turned his head as he approached, and when tilted, they looked like cats; another landed animal he wasn’t sure was real. He had only seen them in pictures, rolling around. The closer he got, the more poorly carved they looked. Falling apart as if a bull had sharpened its horns on them. Unless it was made that way. Or the feline in the drawing made a portrait with its claws.

  Hao was not an artist, but he would laugh if it didn’t feel like he was wearing a needle-legged bug for a necklace, if it would just stop kicking and crawling. He scratched the back of his neck, but there was nothing.

  He walked up to the pillars, both seeming to shine, but not quite. They should have been framed as an entryway, but there was no hole in the mountain, just the mountain and the pillars. Hao cycled his World Energy before touching it, not sure what to expect. As his fingers touched the white one, he felt a flood of World Energy. Yang, white and gold and boiling, scorching, worse than any burn of fire, but a sensation he could almost enjoy. He pulled his hand back and touched the other, a cold, almost icy feeling soothing like a mother’s hug, Yin energy. He reached out and touched both at the same time, a completeness filled him for just a moment.

  A formation. Brother Lingli, is this the center of the…

  A shadow appeared, one in his mind and body, another outside. The needles on his neck felt tight. The world flashed before him, then everything was black.

  **

  Meng Hongyu felt something strange touch his sword, whatever the commoner passed through, whatever made that nasty little commoner disappear.

  He opened his swollen mouth, his lips and eyes burning. “No!” he yelled. At least, he thought he did. He got some of that awful powder in his mouth. Of course, a commoner, and one of blood other commoners looked down on, would use such a trick poison. That orange powder, he tried while the sun blasted him to get it off, but it stuck to his skin. He thought it might have grown from drinking his sweat, too. The thought made him quiver even more.

  “NO!” Was that really his voice? Was that poison going to destroy everything about this body, a perfect replica of himself? Would it be destroyed so easily? No, he wouldn’t let it. Not before he destroyed that rotten-blooded commoner. That commoner may have something to replace its value. It was a good thing he prepared a two-way bag. Once he destroyed the space-gem facet he brought with him, only the bag outside would have any value. It was a painful thought, destroying such a one-of-a-kind treasure. It made his fingers and eyes twitch.

  Meng Hongyu turned. There was a camp here. He heard of such a thing but didn’t bother coming. He sent people to collect information here. Right now, he didn’t want to look for them. Anyone with a tongue could speak. If they didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, they didn’t need it anymore.

  As he ambled forward, some answered him, others ran, but he didn’t bother chasing. He went to the pile of passes they told him about, but they didn’t smell of fruit to him; he couldn’t smell anything. An image and a voice appeared in his head. He swiveled his neck and spat, then closed his eyes. He imagined his sword with a giant moon-sized pommel, the rest of the handle and blade larger to match. The sword crashed into the world of the images, then sought out and cut the voice. A stream of smoke rose from the peach trial pass.

  “Weak witchcraft, not even close to the vile arts of those freaks from the Heaven’s Blood Sect.”

  Being reminded of Demon Cultivators and the arrogant, and worse, ambitious Heaven’s Blood Sect especially, made his jaw tighten as much as it could. Now he was really mad.

  He swung his sword in the air and addressed the rest of the camp with a shout before he entered. He made up some threats, he needed a few. His World Energy burst out of his skin, the spore burning, digging deeper into him. The pain made his voice brisker, which made the threats more effective than they already were. One or two about war, then some skinning, a gutted fish, and a phrase about a dining table decorated with fingers and eyes.

  The people that stayed outside during the tirade quivered with fear as they should, even in this body, he was Meng Hongyu, not that anyone in the south would know the birth name or, more importantly, family name.

  Then he turned and disappeared into the mountain. “If this mountain doesn’t kill you first, I will tear everything worth a spirit stone from your body while you breathe, you rot!”