Qigang, this is worse than we thought. I’m coming back to your house.

  Deng Mu’s dead.

  —?—

  I should have waited.

  In hindsight, it’s so obvious.

  All it would have taken are a few extra hours of waiting, and I would have received this note at home, and wouldn’t have sent Meng Yi and the others out with a threat like this out there.

  The worst part is I’d known. I hadn’t been 100% certain, but it was always clear to me that this threat is greater than it seems at first glance.

  In fact, to be perfectly honest, a part of me has been waiting for something like this to happen. It’s why I’d asked Xiuying to train me.

  Since I showed up in this strange new world, things had been too quiet. Too good. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop this whole time, and now it has.

  And despite waiting for it, I’ve still turned out to be ill-prepared.

  My strides eat up the distance back to the manor.

  At least… I think it’s the way back to the manor.

  I slow to a stop, looking around me. All I see are mountains. Rock and stone that looks the same as every other rock and stone I’ve seen.

  “Shit,” I curse with deep feeling.

  How could I have been so stupid? Running around in the mountains without taking the time to mark my path? That’s fucking elementary, for Heaven’s sake!

  Now I’m lost, with Meng Yi out there, in who knows what kind of danger and my dumb self too far away to help if she needs me.

  “Fuck!” I curse again.

  Maybe I could find a really high peak to climb? If it’s high enough, I might be able to see—what the fuck is that!?

  My qi sense recoils from the… creature that enters its range with the same visceral reflex with which one would pull away from diseased blood.

  I watch the creature as it perches on a higher bit of rock some twenty feet away, and while my eyes tell me that, but for its unsettlingly large size and overly intelligent gaze it is a perfectly ordinary looking hawk, some gut instinct in my being screams at me that there is nothing normal or ordinary about this thing.

  No, this thing is an abomination, twisted and corrupted, and the name for what corrupts it comes to me like a voice on the wind, ‘Wild Qi.’

  I’ve heard that name before. Meng Yi had mentioned it to me the day we met, talking about how my existence makes no sense to her, because things that slip between realms are always corrupted by Wild Qi, the dangerous, esoteric energy that exists in the space between worlds.

  This involves me, I realise.

  A tiny, easily ignored part of me had suspected before now that it might, but this pretty much proves it. I can’t imagine there are many Wild Qi corrupted hawks hanging around in these mountains, and the odds that one of them would go out of its way to track me down, as this one so obviously has, are infinitesimal at best.

  As though I need more proof that this whole thing has to do with me, the bird opens its mouth wide, much wider than any bird has any business being able to stretch its jaws, and regurgitates a roundish, goo-covered object that falls down, rolls, and stops right in front of me.

  Knowing what it is, but too full of morbid curiosity to stop myself, I reach out a foot and turn the object onto its backside.

  Eternally frozen in an expression of pure anguish, the face of the constable I’d paired Meng Yi with, the one who’d sworn to protect her with his life, stares sightlessly up at me.

  My blood runs cold, and up on the bit of rock it’s perched, the hawk makes a sound almost like human laughter.

  I stare up at it.

  Over twenty feet of space separate me from the bird, but that doesn’t matter.

  Covering the distance in less time than it takes to blink, my hand reaches out, and like cords of steel, my fingers wrap around its throat.

  The bird tries to screech, but no air can escape through my grasp around its neck. It beats its wings then, trying to claw at me, but its talons simply slide off my skin without effect.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Finally, in desperation, its qi, corrupt and vile, lashes out, seeking to poison and weaken me.

  Almost unbidden, my qi rises to meet it, and its foul energy evaporates before mine like morning dew in the face of the noon sun.

  The cold in my veins has turned from fear to something else, anger, icy as the cold kiss of death.

  “You are going to take me to her,” I say, an instinct I scarcely understand telling me that the creature understands me perfectly, “and if I find that she even has so much as dirt under her nails, I will do things to you and whatever controls you that will make you wish...” I pause, observing the suffocating bird curiously.

  “I don’t need to make threats, do I?” I say. “You were always going to take me to her. That’s why you came here with the constable’s head. Whatever your boss is, they’ve got some sort of beef with me… Or, maybe it’s something simpler. Maybe, with Magistrate Qin dead I’m the most powerful person around, and this is you trying to take out the biggest threat.”

  In the end, whichever it is, it doesn’t much matter. What matters is Meng Yi.

  What’s important is getting her back.

  I uncurl my fingers from around the bird’s throat, leaving it gasping and retching.

  “Take me to her,” I say.

  The bird stares at me, pure malice in its gaze.

  “Now.”

  Still with its hateful stare, the hawk shakes out its feathers and takes off, cutting through the wind with powerful beats of its wings.

  Running after it, I send a silent prayer out into the universe. ‘Please, Meng Yi. Please, be okay.’

  —?—

  Even at the speed we move, more than an hour passes without us reaching our destination, and, despite not being at all familiar with the region, it’s clear as day to me that we’re as far from civilization as I’ve ever been, in either life, and it’s at this point that I begin to wonder if this isn’t perhaps a trap.

  The thought lasts all of five seconds before I discard it.

  Of course it’s a trap. What else would it be?

  Clearly, whatever is running the show here is the stealth type of enemy. Ambushes, sneak attacks, guerrilla tactics, picking off targets of opportunity… that’s their MO.

  I’m strong. Not to brag but I’m, without doubt, the single strongest cultivator in the area. Unless Tang Shui is still hanging around for some reason anyway.

  An opponent like this is never going to face me on equal footing, of course not, they’ll find a means to drag me out somewhere, likely their home base, a place where they have all the power. Where they feel safe.

  And you know what? I’m happy for it.

  I’m beyond pissed off that they chose Meng Yi as the bait to lure me out, but I’m glad that they’re taking me to their inner sanctum as it were. Because now I can burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.

  Almost another hour passes, the weather growing colder as we range deeper into the mountains, and the number of corrupted birds leading the way more than quintupling.

  There are seven birds now, flying in a loose circle around me while still headed for wherever it is they’re taking me.

  Not all of them are hawks. In fact, I don’t think more than two of them are, although I don’t know enough about birds to identify past the one eagle now in the group.

  I know the moment we reach the place.

  Not because I pick up anything on my qi sense, but because all seven birds swoop down to surround an empty patch of rocky ground like every other.

  I come to a stop, wondering what the hell these creatures are playing at.

  I stop wondering when something like a dog from the depths of hell steps out of the empty space around which the birds have landed.

  The creature stares at me with hateful, yellow eyes, size that of a stallion and at least twice as heavy, with bulging muscles that ripple underneath its leathery, furless skin.

  It has six limbs, and the slobber that drips from its jowls hisses as it eats into the rocky ground.

  A deep, earthshaking growl reveals fangs longer than my fingers.

  Unlike the birds which all at least have the veneer of normalcy, the dog seems to be a blatant declaration of what it is. Of what their maker (because there is no way these things are natural) can do.

  This is a creature dipped to its heels in Wild Qi, and it is all the stronger for it.

  None of the corrupted creatures I’ve seen so far have a proper cultivation level, or even a proper cultivation, to be frank, but simply being in its presence alone tells me that there is an oceanwide gap between the power levels of the creepy dog and the birds.

  If I had to guess, the dog is their master’s current masterpiece, and I’m guessing it doesn’t venture far.

  In fact, this is probably the first time it has left their master’s side.

  Lucky me. I feel so honoured.

  After a few more growls, body tense like it’s burning with the barely restrained desire to pounce me, the dog turns and vanishes back through the portal it came from.

  The message is clear; follow.

  I watch the invisible portal to what is obviously a hidden realm, like the one Meng Yi lied I found. The one I supposedly lucked into a Celestial Plum within.

  I swallow, and it feels like a leaden weight sliding down my throat to settle in the pit of my stomach.

  I don’t want to go in there.

  I do not want to go in there.

  My heart begins to pound. My skin rising in goosebumps.

  I’ve been afraid since the bird delivered the constable’s head to me, but this is something different. Then I was afraid for Meng Yi. Afraid for whatever unknown horrors she might be suffering through at the hands of these vile beasts.

  Now though, the thing that I fear is… it’s…

  My hands shake where they rest by my side, fists tightly clenched. My vision sways, blood rushing so hard it damn near drowns out all thought.

  I can’t go in there.

  A second away from turning and running like the pathetic coward I am, that I’ve always been, a vision of Meng Yi’s face comes to me.

  She has on her face that all too common expression of fond exasperation she often has when dealing with me, and that simple image roots me to the spot.

  Meng Yi.

  She’s in there. And if I leave now, I abandon her.

  Pathetic and a coward I may be, but I am neither that pathetic nor am I that cowardly.

  I suck in a slow, deep breath, and with the exhale, I push out my fear.

  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So I take that step.

  The birds, still surrounding the portal, burst into laughter, loud and mocking.

  “Watch this fool,” they seem to say. “Watch how he walks to his death.”

  “Glory of The Sun,” I reply.

  Their laughter, and the screeches of agony that follow, are drowned out by solar fire.

  In seconds, their ashes are all that’s left to drift away on the wind.

  With resolute steps, I march into the hidden realm.

  Whatever comes, I decree with the confidence of an Emperor, it will BURN!