Hao jumped up, ignoring the requisite promise he had made to Yao. His legs kicked off the ground as she slid over the top of the fallen stone pillar. It had served them as cover. Crumbling beneath his fingers, he thanked it in his heart—It was just a stone, but it was the reason he was alive. Another bump in the road that veered him beyond disaster.

  He landed on the other side. The others moving around behind him, coming his way, Lang with his feet sliding. Yao was taking her time, acting regal in her step. Each of her feet moved in an annoyingly slow, even cadence. Death was just upon her—it was only because of another she was alive, yet arrogance soaked her bones afterwards.

  Out in front of them, in front of him, Bao was moving forward, feral in her eyes. Her mouth flapping, mumbling words hardly worth trying to hear. Only her husband, Lang, could understand the nonsense.

  Hao put his hand to his chest, pretending to use a holding bag. His mind sank into the Spirit-Holding bag, finding the scrap cloth, robes, and blankets of dead men. He disguised himself with haste. If Swordface was over there, and at his peak, Hao didn’t want the man to recognize him. Knowing his revenge would come in time. Hair first, he tied it all back, moving fast, leaving only a few strands blocking his forehead, falling down his back. Black and blonde-gold strands were hidden under gray dust. His face, wrapped in the clothing of corpses, was from front to back—The bridge of his nose to the bottom of his chin hidden.

  He breathed in the smell, but there was nothing, just the dust of the cave. Death didn’t smell—only decay did.

  The tail of the beast was changing its direction, coming back towards the four of them—slow this time, but with no wall for it to hit. Only a person walking forward was in its path. Bao, her spindly legs moving with unwarranted haste and a forward-pointed sword. If she were fully awake and recovered, perhaps she could have killed it. As she was now, a push from the wind could topple her like a fragile willow sapling.

  There was a strange quaking to its step—the vibrations on the ground were shallower. Its legs weren’t lifting as high. Its shell was sinking on its back. It seemed like something was pressing down on it, but no mere pressure would slow that tail to the point where it would leave just a slight bruise.

  The strike would still be enough to kill Bao. Hao didn’t know the woman well, but the thought of the woman with whom he shared reciprocated help and travel. She would turn to a red rain splattering on her husband behind her, which didn’t sit well with him. A bitter shower of blood, Hao’s stomach twisted, jaw tightening. He could imagine the screaming cries of the man at his side.

  “Your sword?” Hao said, not much of a request, his hand out in front of Yao.

  The woman complied; she had no reason not to, his promise had already been made. Whatever kind of game she wanted to play is already guaranteed. She was just climbing down from the fallen pillar that Hao leapt over. Their cover was nothing more than rubble in the making from the volley of stones.

  Hao slid his fingers around the handle as she held it up—it was not his first time holding it. Less comfortable than his spear, yet more powerful from flat pommel to tip. Taller than him if it were straight, but the curve brought it back towards him. He hadn’t swung it yet, but could see bones popping apart at their connections.

  Lang had already passed him, the man had blood pouring down his nose, it was already impressive that he managed to stay conscious, considering he spent a few seconds trapped under the cauldron—which was essentially a giant bell experiencing a constant ring. Desperation painted the man, a tense and violent World Energy unconsciously streaming from him. It made the air feel thick with warmth despite the cold stone surrounding them.

  The man wasn’t going to make it. Lang was shaken, probably having taken much of the brunt of the ringing. He would have covered Bao before himself. Admirable in a way, foolish in many others.

  Hao swallowed any lingering hesitation, there wasn’t much remaining in the first place. His toes dug into the ground, his shoes bending into small scattered rocks and stone dust. He had to get past the beast, anyway. And he didn’t dent his cauldron, saving two people, just to let one of them die.

  Breath flowed in and out, World Energy filling quiet sleeping vessels in his body. It had been only days since he felt like this, yet it felt like the dust of the cave leaving his body. He stared out, the world seeming strings for him to reach out and pluck threads to sever—he forgot the world in front of him.

  The flowing current of Seven Colored Steps, his movement technique, his breath was left behind, a steaming cloud in the air at Yao’s side, her hands still up like she was holding her sword. Hao had just taken it after all. Lang was reaching out for his wife when Hao was already beyond both of them, standing in front of Bao—The spindly woman, a shadow of cords falling apart.

  Hao stood in the path of the tail, at the very end, at its thinnest joint before the crystal tip grew to a mace-head. A clear weak point for a butcher, a dream-like spot to sever for a freak like Li Tuzai. Hao’s heart clenched—hot blood rushed, making his skin crackle. His face hidden from the world, he fought between neutrality and a smile, an evil joy pulling on the corners of his mouth. He suppressed it, emotion disappearing from him as ice washed his bones.

  He blinked, the sword raised high. Hao could see the mine, the first months, swinging a pickaxe as stone, breaking—No, shattering stone, mountain halls crumbling to his palm—at his fingertips. The World Energy swirled in his body, rushing to his arms, his fingers tingling both hot and cold. A pickaxe, not a sword, in his hands.

  As soon as Hao felt the cold wind, the tail itself became a vacuum, as even air ran from it.

  He swung down, his bones creaking—A violent rush of blood and World Energy filling his arm. At the end of it all, a beast was a beast unless it could act with awareness. This was just a beast. Sorry for the pain… Hao thought he could feel a resistance, leathery skin parting like firewood beneath the axe.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The edge of the blade slowed, gliding against the hard bone, sliding down until it touched the crux of the joint.

  Hao continued the downward swing. His arms were bending against the resistance—his left shoulder, just healed, was begging for a break, forearms trying to curve like the blade they held. A wet thunderclap shook Hao—The shamshir to Hao’s fingertip, the tail snapping apart, breaking, and jolting Hao’s entire body shook with the snapping of tendons. After the bone, he followed through, tearing through the bottom of the tail like it was old, brittle paper.

  The end of the tail exploded apart—The heavy white crystal tip sped off into the air, flying beyond Hao’s sight before he caught his breath. The upper end of the tail began curling as it passed him, spraying a flood of blood that smelled of salt and iron.

  Hao stood still, his body shaking, the reminder that a beast was a beast playing in his head. A chilling scream from the giant tortoise made his fingers loosen and re-clench the sword.

  As Bao approached the still-standing Hao, he straightened his back, holding the shamshir in one hand as his body screamed with a soreness he had not forgotten. World Energy and red Qi flooded his body through two different channels. A raw but diluted energy filled gaps in his vessels, bone, and blood, humming to a settle, resting like a second and third skin. He reached out his free hand, stepping back to stop Bao, her sword beyond his abdomen. It took one hand to stop the weakened woman.

  The other two came up from behind Bao. Yao pushed abnormal speeds, Lang wearing a face that said he wished he could move just as fast. It was silent between them while the tortoise was screaming.

  Lang took hold of Bao, and Hao handed the sword back to Yao, who gave him two side-long looks. As soon as the tortoise closed its beaked mouth, the severed tip of its tail hit a far wall, a crash fading in the distance. Yao was the one to speak, unsurprisingly.

  “Little Brother…” Her words were caught silent in the call of another voice, one half dead yet arrogant.

  Swordface shouted over at the side of the shell. “You four, I told you to get the smaller ones first!”

  Hao turned, looking at the man, his eyes opening wide at Swordface’s appearance. He was a blister on a fisherman’s hand. Once inhumanly handsome, the painting of an immortal. Now only the long black hair and sword-shaped heavy brows remained, but the rest of the face and his arms were swollen, red as a blood-shell crab. That… is the effect of the mushroom spores. Hao felt a chill at the thought, glad he wiped them from his skin everywhere he felt their heat.

  Swordface’s movements were slow, at least compared to before. He slowly raised his sword, pointing it at them, not on purpose—there was haste in his eyes, the rest of the expression unrecognizable. There was still an undeniable pressure flowing from the tip of the straight blade as it pointed at Hao.

  Hao kept himself calm, feeling a certain degree of pity for the man. The thought of challenging him now, a fleeting thought as energy flooded the blood, Swordface’s voiceless intentions obvious. A small group of people in a variety of robes stood beside him, staring at the massive beast. Each was as scared as the other.

  The tail of the beast is still rolling and coiling. Swinging around, it was only a matter of time before it came at them again.

  Half turning his head, Hao looked back at the three. “Let’s go, we are already involved, we have to get past this point either way, Lang, stay behind me, keep Bao close… Yao, we will make quick work of this smaller creature.”

  Hao kept his eye on Swordface as the man slowly moved wide around the giant black shell. Just before he lost sight of the man, Hao saw Swordface’s robotic movement. The straight sword in his hand rose, then fell in a straight line. Much like the tail but sharp, the air vanished, pulled to the slice. Another scream filled the air, echoing from the tortoise’s mouth as the sword left a scar on the shell.

  On the other side of the chamber, a series of tunnels lay on the walls, inside each at least one person, some alive, others as still as well-water.

  Warm air blew from one of the tunnels, carrying the retched stench of piss and copper. A large group of people, most of them lying down, were crying. Blood was leaking on the ground from severed limbs as others held them down. Hao noted a few, like broken dolls with hate in their eyes.

  “It looks like a resting place for the injured…” Yao mumbled just at Hao’s side, looking back at Lang, who was moving slower, Bao fighting against while being carried in his arms.

  Fewer people stood, weapons raised, to a group of smaller tortoises than wailed in pain. The beasts are not dissimilar to the large one cooing at their backs. Not much smaller, either. As tall as the people that stood against them, with long, thin spiked tails, brown shells highlighted with gray patterns. Two of the creatures roamed freely while others snipped their beaks at weapons and hands.

  “They all have spiked shells, I need a weapon.” Hao didn’t hesitate to stop for just a moment as Yao kept going forward—he took the sturdy spike of a sword in Bao’s hand. Lang didn’t react, letting him take it from the flailing woman.

  Hao caught up to the heavy-chested, thick-browed woman as she grinned. Both of her hands locked on her Shamshir, she lifted it high, showing the difference between someone who holds a sword and someone who knows how to swing one. The tortoise in front of her had a stretched-out neck. Biting into the arm of a man in yellow robes, his screams filled only one corner of the cave, his saber falling to the ground with a beak-shaped fold in the steel.

  Yao’s sword swing was a flash—there was little to no light in the stone chamber, yet it glinted. Blood sprayed from the neck as she went straight through it. Hao managed to sever the thinnest part of a tail. Yet she cut through a neck, like a fork breaking a sausage. The beast was weaker, to be fair.

  Yao continued to the next beast, close to the center of the room, ignoring the injured man.

  Hao shook his head, ignoring the sight of the man trying to rip his arm from the clenched jaw of the severed head, skin pulling like tearing fabric. He ran to another beast in the opposite direction from Yao, near the far wall from which the four originally entered the chamber. A woman was there, waving her hands in the air, her voice shaking the air.

  Hao smacked his hand into the side of its head, the little thing turning to chirp at him. Again, a heavy palm strike, World Energy flowing in water style. The beast’s blood-covered face, beak dripping with viscera, turned up at Hao as its head hit the ground, and Hao slammed the spiked-shaped sword down with his hand on its pommel. The spike drove down, the pierced skull, and the stone behind it cracked. It kicked its legs, appearing still alive, before falling flat. Its own shell is a tombstone.

  “Are you…” Hao turned to the woman he tried to save, seeing a red painting on the wall, hands raised, blood bubbled in from a mouth with nobody.

  He stared for a moment. The calls of help were deaf to him until a “JUNIOR BROTHER!” broke the air. He turned, seeing a small tail, with a crystalline mace-like head, hitting Bao in the stomach.