Hao found an excuse to loosen his grip, cold steel as bright as the spirit stones touched his neck. A little more surprised than relieved, Hao whispered, “You…”

  Yao coughed twice. Gasping to catch her breath. “I’m just as surprised.” She seemed happy, a smile growing on her pale face.

  “Surely you’ve seen someone use their space ring before. Holding bags are the same in almost every way; with a strong enough soul, they can be bound. Then, the bag’s owner never has to reach into it again.”

  A strong enough soul. Soul? The action was not something new to Hao. For such a thing to be applied to normal holding bags, it was never a possibility in his head. But ever since he could, he had used the Spirit-Holding Bag in the same way. As for it being his soul that connected the bag, it was his first time hearing it. He bound the bag to himself the first time he used it. It took him a day or two to recover. Soul, perhaps that is why I can feel what is inside the bag without my senses truly touching the inside of the bag.

  “Move your hand… Stop channeling World Energy!” Yao whispered, her voice barely breaking from her lips. Her last few words snapped out fast.

  Hao looked down in her eye the best he could, lowering his head, he let her thumbnail press into his skin, “Why should I? I might be able to crack you…” His voice came out as a rumble, his stretched neck putting strain on his throat. His words stopped short. The sharp edge of the curved blade broke his outer layer of flesh.

  Yao laughed, a smirk shaped like her sword growing on her face. Just the one side of her small lips stretching up, the smile reaching her eyes. Swimming closer, Hao’s arm bent to accommodate her. “If you don’t, and I have to hurt you, I will go for Bao and Lang next.”

  I need a few more days of rest for that arm. As soon as Hao gave a little leeway in his hand, she pulled herself into him. His right arm, the one she had held to her waist, was let go for just a moment. She jumped forward, trapping more of his arm. His elbow held beneath her upper arm as their shoulders touched. Hao’s left hand didn’t come off her, moving from her neck down to her shoulder as he stifled much of the World Energy moving in waves to his fingertips. If he had to give up a part of his advantage, he wouldn’t give it all up.

  To reciprocate, she flipped her sword; the back of it was not edgeless but certainly not as sharp. It slid back and forth along his collarbone until he was held steady on the back of his neck.

  “Now that Little Brother knows I am not much older than he, he can ask me another question.”

  Hao could look around freely now, with nothing placed against the front of his neck, but Yao was no longer looking up at his face. Hao could only see the top of her head, black hair parting down the center of her scalp in a perfect line. She leaned further in, pressing her cheek against his neck. Her body was warm compared to the water. She had no scent, or it was masked by the smell of the cave and tunnels of gore that surrounded them.

  “Ask!”

  Hao winced. The sword being pulled closer to the back of his neck made him shed hairs into the water. At the same time, she sank her teeth into the muscle of his neck. It was more painful than it should have been, his legs and back tensing.

  Perhaps this was a chance to ask of Swordface, “About your sect…”

  Her voice vibrated on his neck. “A stupid question. Ask a different kind of question.”

  Hao felt a toenail scraping along his shin, he tensed again. The blue light of the spirit stones began to be drowned in a shine of red. A trickle of blood filled the pond. He tensed again when the same toenail touched his inner thigh.

  “Where are you from?”

  Yao snapped, “No, another.”

  It went on, Hao got prodded, bit, and threatened with a sword with a kiss on his neck or shoulder between each bite of him she took. Her leg further wrapped around his legs when he tried to swim back. If not for the pain and threats, Hao would find it hard to hide his blush.

  “What is your sword called? What kind of sword is it? I haven’t…”

  Yao finally pulled her head back, her leg still wrapped around his bare thigh. “Not a terrible question. Finally.” She said so, but her sword was turned in her fingers again. Her long nails clicking on the material that made the handle. The razor-sharp sword edge pressed against him.

  She smiled, a graceful storybook princess smile, her small lips smooth and crackless. Thick eyebrows knit together with arrogance and pride. “It’s called a Shamshir. It’s beautiful, is it not? The people in the villages north of my home called it a lion’s claw. The people beyond the sands just call it a saber.”

  “Two more, if you do, we can swim together a while longer, in a… peaceful manner,” she smiled.

  Beyond the sands? So I was right, wasn’t I, but she won’t say. But there is no mention of a place north of the desert. The desert is part of the north. Hao hesitated but spoke, “Your medallion, it’s an Artifact?”

  Yao’s smile vanished. “Not bad. But not quite, it’s a token of who I am, for those who respect it. And it hides my real beauty.”

  Hao kept his face the same, not letting his doubt show. But his eyes must have spoken his skeptical thoughts. “Real beauty”, any more and she could compete with the Second Elder of the Drifting Stream.

  Yao moved her head back to his shoulder, where stitches lay. She pushed up, rising in the water, leaning forward. Hao’s arm bent, creaking as she went for it. Her hand with the Shamshir, as she called it, wrapped around him as if to hug him. The sharp edge slid around to the front of his neck.

  Hao felt cold, smooth teeth. Then, with a pinch, he heard a click.

  Yao pulled her head back slowly, her back arching. The thread in her mouth followed her, unraveling as she stared into Hao’s eyes. His nostrils flared, and his eyes twitched. It didn’t hurt, not much at all, but it was the strangest sensation he had ever known.

  His stitches were pulling free from his shoulder every second, he felt a pinch and a pop, his skin breaking. He did not bleed, but the red stains on the thread floating in the water left a vanishing trail of color. A strange sense of relief and comfort took him, his skin free of the binding thread.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Her smirk returned, and it drove him mad for just a moment. “One more, ask!” Finally, she spoke again, her voice booming in the cave all over, back to square one.

  “If you wish to kill me, try already, but you might be the one to die,” Hao spoke slowly, making sure she got every word.

  Yao’s smirk grew; the words only seemed to encourage her. “Kill? I don’t want to kill you, it would be a waste, you are bursting with vitality and Yang energy, it might be worth losing an arm, or something more precious to take it. But I will only kill if I have to, little brother. Do you know that the Blue Moon Mountain uses Dual Cultivation techniques?

  Yao pulled herself closer to him again, her eyes moving in flickers around his face. “Do you know what they are? No? I will teach you before we leave this mountain, but you will lose a piece of yourself in the process. I would teach you now, but you might hurt me fighting back. I still have to make it to the end of this trail, after all.”

  Hao fought back while she spoke. He got his right hand free, moving both his hands to her neck, like a trap that got snapped. Just as soft and fragile as before.

  Yao didn’t react, only continuing her words. “We can end this for today, but Hao,” it was the first time she said his name by itself, it came out differently than how she spoke of Bao and Lang. “You have to promise to eat more of my cooking as an apology for suggesting I am old, for even thinking of it.”

  Hao knew instantly what she was talking about. Perhaps the Pangolin's stomach was a fluke, and not all her cooking was as bad as his own. Either way, it was hard to shake the taste after just the thought. The vomit-flavored pangolin stomach, and the numb buzz on his tongue and teeth after eating it.

  The two sat in silence, waiting for another to act first. If one squeezed and twitched, the other would cut. Both would die at the edge of this blue eye. Hao was tempted; he could tell she was, too.

  Just as fingers began twitching, the water began shaking. The surface is rippled. A loud rumble began traveling through them, through the entire mountain. It shook everything. Hao could feel his eyes shaking in his skull as the world began moving like a wave. It was just the mountain moving around them. Dust fell from the ceiling, and spirit stones dropped freely and plunked on water skipping across the stone. The water's surface turned from flat and smooth to spikes all around them.

  “There must be fighting, or a giant beast nearby. We must be close to our goal, little brother.” Yao spoke. She put her blade away first, the pressure of the sharp sword vanishing.

  Hao let her go after a breath. It seemed he didn’t have to kill a woman or die today. “This room is full of stalactites. We should move.” Hao said, letting Yao swim ahead of him. He followed behind, staring at her back as he washed all the saliva she had smeared on her neck and shoulder. It seems I still have a lot to learn from Meiqi.

  Hao tried to pull his heart rate down before he got out of the water, more than panic was making his heart race. Women… Meiqi did mention that beauty is the ultimate silent weapon when standing in front of another person. Manipulation, control, hiding details behind a smile, or a smirk.

  Yao blocked his way out. She seemed frozen still, but he got a petty revenge, looking up as he pushed himself out of the water.

  Lang burst into the room just as Hao was lifting his knees from the pond. Hao could see him run in from between Yao’s calves. He shouted a few things, most of them hard to understand. Hao had to move to the side to climb up. Pushing out of the water, he stood beside Yao as Lang finished his words:

  The older man’s voice strained and cracked. “We can stay a little longer, you can stay, she just needs a little rest.”

  Hao thought Yao was going to respond, but she stayed quiet. Hao took it as his chance, standing at her side, he was taller than her on land, standing side by side. He placed his hand on her head. Ruffled her hair. For a moment, he forgot he was bare, standing proud in his robeless form. I led the last plan, don’t think too highly of yourself, Yao.

  “Senior Brother, we can wait a while to see if Senior Sister opens her eyes.”

  Lang raised his hands, “Thank you, Junior Brother, thank you for staying with us a while longer.” He stood for a while thanking him, hardly noticing the room while thanking and praising, explaining what he needed to do.

  Hao turned his head, mimicking Yao’s smirk as he looked down at her. He was expecting an annoyed look on her face, anger at being treated like a child needing a head pat. Instead, Yao’s eyebrows were high, her eyes big and wide open. She slowly moved her hands up to cover her chest. There was some color growing on her cheeks, a bright rose red that flushed her forehead too.

  Hao’s hand fell off her head as she slid behind him. She hid, pulling on the skin of his back. Her acting in such a way caught him off guard. Hao gulped as his face began slipping. He nodded to Lang as the man went on, before turning and running back to his wife.

  Shaking his head, Hao went forward to his robes, Yao followed close behind, “You can go ahead, your water bag is right there, the water will warm you up. You, you…” Hao pointed as if he were trying to shoo her away.

  “No…” She grabbed her cloak, which was right next to his robe. Her head turned away as she continued, “I don’t want him to see me like this. Can you start another fire so I can dry in another chamber or tunnel?”

  Hao’s skin crawled in a way that was only half bad. After all that snapping, pinching, biting, aggression, and after the other game of what Meiqi and these weird land people called flirting, she was acting shy? More games… Worse, that shy act when Lang was here was gone when it was just Hao. She only needed one hand to hold her cloak. The other started sliding her robe off her shoulder after untying her shawl.

  “You, you, you,” Hao turned his head away after looking for a while. It took a mountain’s worth of willpower, “just use my robe top until your robes are dry. They are damp, but they will cover you.”

  Hao occupied his mind, rubbing his hand along the wall to collect some dust. As his hand turned gray, he gently colored his hair until the two tones were the same gray.

  The sound of her sopping robes hitting the dry part of the ground was like music in a strange way. Then her voice came like a bell upon the boat to the Nether Realm, “Does little brother want me?”

  Hao turned slowly, straightening his back, but his mood was killed when he saw the smirk; she had won something again, something he wasn’t so blind to. Triumph was written all over her face as she pulled the blue tattered robe loosely around herself.

  One of her fingers pushed up her bottom lip. “Want me to keep that secret?”

  Hao whispered “go,” quietly into the shaking air.

  “You will have to promise me that you will eat when I tell you to.”

  “Go,” Hao said, and she listened. He watched as Yao shrugged her shoulders. With a turn, she walked, taking her water bag with her to the tunnel to the fire down where the other two lay. The skip in her step drew a sigh from Hao.

  He kicked the bucket, grabbing his bag, the Spirit-Holding bag, its red ruby shining. Lifting it to his hip, he tied it down as tightly to his leg as he could get it. Once he got his robe top back, he would place it back on his chest. A passing thought told him to sew it inside his body so he didn’t have to part with it again. He got his pants on, the rest of his robe pieces tied around his hip with his waistband.

  Soul? Hao questioned the world and himself. Walking forward to the water as the mountain chamber shook, a spike ceiling threatening him. Leaning down, his hand went into the water, and he pulled with the Spirit-Holding Bag. There was no sound, no shake or pop, nothing; a piece of the world vanished. The water was disappearing from sight and sensation in front of him.

  All of it went inside the space of the Spirit-Holding bag, the dirt in the space sucked up the liquid while it could. He avoided the side of the Drinking-Stone; it didn’t have much interest in plain water, anyway. Done with his game, his test, he pushed it back out of the bag, and it reappeared with a cracking splash, rocking and shaking, trying to return to a normal flow. Hao did feel a weight and exhaustion while it was in the bag. Other than that, there was no resistance; if anything, the bag wanted to keep him inside, to create and make more World Energy.

  He thought on it as he turned and walked to the edge of the chamber towards the tunnel. Strong enough soul…

  The mountain shook again as he stepped into the tunnel, where fire’s glow caught his eye and three people sat in silence. He threw a palm strike, feeling the air cry on his fingers, knowing it could shatter stone. A few more days…