Arianna looked at me with shimmering, emerald eyes filled with desperation. My body was beginning to prune from prolonged exposure to the water. Someone would come here and maybe find us, pull us out and then boom - we would turn into a lovely paste courtesy of a beast-core bomb.

This was an awful trap. An unwinnable situation. Or… was it? There was still one final beast core left in my gun belt. I looked down at my discolored, extremely damaged Dantian courtesy of Arianna’s celesteel knife.

Could I use this to my advantage, change my aura? Was it possible to change a Dantian? I thought of what I knew, thinking back of all the situations at the market. A memory came up from the depths of the mind of Ash Sparks.

. . .

A couple stood in front of the central fountain, beneath the eyes of the archangel.

A man came down on his knee and offered a girl a ring with a huge, red gemstone in it.

“Will you marry me?” He spoke. “Will you become one with me and combine our Dantians into one?”

The girl burst into tears and hugged him. “I will, Georgii! I will! I love you!!!"

The happy couple kissed.

. . .

I thought of engagement rituals, of marketplace stories of how two people in love who trusted each other entwined their auras during their wedding. I was desperate and reckless enough to try to make this work.

Arianna was looking at me through the water. I recalled the system of hand signs that the Hand gang used.

“Cultivate. No. Up. Danger.” I signed to her.

She nodded.

I closed my eyes, held my old enemy and new friend close, turned on my death-filter and started to cycle.

I projected the Pharmacist’s ghost, sending a tiny bit of him straight into Arianna’s head. I knew that a part of the cerebrum and the Wernicke's area was involved in the understanding and processing of speech and written language.

I touched the last beast core in my gun holster’s pocket that was still strapped to my thigh and slowly, carefully started to pull power from it, connecting the Pharmacist to Arianna’s brain. It was insanely difficult, but I knew where to connect what, since I had already done this with Celes and Knipz. It was just a matter of tying my ghost to Arianna.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed as I bound fractal after information fractal to Arianna’s brain, until I suddenly started to hear her thoughts.

[Gods. Gods. I don’t want to explode. I don’t want to die. Gods. Why me.] A frantic voice repeated.

[Testing. One. Two. Three.] I sent into her brain using our new connection.

[Go… what? What is happening? Are you in my head Ash?! How? What?]

[No time to explain,] I replied. [Can you do me just one favour?]

[What?!]

[Do you know how Qi-reinforced engagement/marriage works?]

[What?!] Her mental voice screeched.

[Can you... marry me?]

[WHAT?!] She wailed even louder. [WHAT THE QI-SS IS WRONG WITH YOU?!]

[Shut up and listen. Clint Potatius is likely targeting us through our Dantians. I understand that there’s some sort of an official engagement ritual that permanently disrupts the couple’s Dantians. I have a lot of holes in mine that you put there. I need you to fill them!] . . . [No pun intended.]

[Incomprehensible mad screech]

[Calm down please, I’m serious. Do you want to be vaporised by a beast core bomb? I don’t. He won’t be able to target us if we disrupt our Dantians permanently.]

[Mad laugher]

[Is that… a yes? You’re a noble, you must have been taught this bullshit, right? Bet your Grandfather already arranged someone for you?]

[Yes. YES. FinE! yoU, QI-SSING twaT. I hate YoU SO MUCH! GODS! whyYyyy…] Arianna’s voice shot up and down, finishing with a mad wail. I felt that I had broken her, driven her a bit insane with my... everything.

[hA HA ha ha ha] She sounded like the Joker. [Gods. You frrekaaing basssatrrd.] Her words lost coherence for a few seconds.

[Is that a yes on the marriage?]

[YES. I don’t want to die, damn it! I want to live! I want to build servitors that can fly into the sun! Qi-damn it all! I do have a Gods-damned marriage contract to the grandson of Allanther, the Magistrate of Eternal Flames. Grandfather Traetorius is going to murder me for this. Gods…]

[Good. Show me what to do and be quick about it. Kind of running out of beast core over here.]

[You are insane, you know that right? This is insane.]

[Welcome to the club. You wanted the Pharmacist in your head? Here you go. Enjoy.]

[Qi-ssssss you.] She hissed.

[Eh? Kiss me? This is a fake engagement, none of that biz.]

[I want to murder you so much right now, but I can’t. Damn you and your blasted friendship contract.]

[What’s another contract among friends, eh?] I giggled. [Make with the wedding wows or whatever it is. I’ll follow.]

[Sound of angry hissing]

[You’re like the worst person to be married to,] I commented. [I hope you know that I'm not doing this not because I like you or something. I like being alive, that’s all.]

[More hissing and incomprehensible sputtering]

I waited for her rage to abate.

[Grrrr… Alright. I… [Aria Anna Executor of Men and Order] do hereby gift my Dantian to [Ash Sparks at the Convergence of Deathstorm]...] Her Dantian suddenly rushed out of her body, intertwining with mine through our underwater hug.

[I, [Ash Sparks at the Convergence of Deathstorm] do hereby offer my Dantian to [Aria Anna Executor of Men and Order]...] I repeated, trying to copy whatever it was she was doing.

[I reinforce this vow with all of my Qi, until death do us part.] Arianna mentally spoke. [Let us be bound as one, let our Dantians fill each other, entwine and draw from each other in need.]

[I reinforce this vow with all of my Qi, until death do us part.] I repeated. [Let us be bound as one, let our Dantians fill each other, entwine and draw from each other in need.]

I felt it then. All of her Qi entwined around me attempting to align with mine and I tried to align all of myself to her resonance. A brilliant galactic spiral of emerald fractal stars collided with my silver-blue galaxy. Green stars ripped out, shot out from her soul, filling the empty voids in my Dantian, reshaping and twisting the parapsychological part of me from within. I responded in turn, filling the now empty spots in her Qi with my own radiance.

I pulled on the last remnant of the beast core, using it to rearrange and strengthen both of our galactic, infinite spirals of Qi.

Darkness followed.

I opened my eyes and didn’t recognize myself. My aura shined with new brilliance and the holes in it were gone!

YES! God yes! I did it! I changed my Dantian!

[You’re welcome,] A very tired voice of Arianna resounded.

[Uh. Thanks! Okay. We can come up now, k?] I pushed the shelf off us and sat upright, taking a hearty breath.

[This mental thing. Is it going to go away? Or are you stuck inside my head permanently now?]

I grinned, flickering the Pharmacist’s ghosts off. Arianna’s thoughts silenced.

“Better?” I asked.

“Better,” She sighed. “My grandfather is seriously going to murder me.”

“You’ll live. You’re engaged to me now! I protect what is mine!” I laughed jovially. It felt good to be alive.

Arianna gritted her teeth. She emerged out of the bath and put on a bathrobe that I had earlier spilled on the ground in my shelf-harvesting escapade. She turned and squinted at me, looking adorable and murderous at the same time.

“Am I a princess now too?” I grinned back at her.

“What?” She blinked.

“Do I get your last name now? Can I call myself Ash Sparks-Manning?” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“Call yourself whatever the Qiss you want,” Arianna derisively declared. “This is literally the worst day of my life and it won’t bloody end! Just when I think things are going to get better, you somehow manage to make everything a million times worse!!!”

“Look on the bright side!” I wiggled my ears.

“What Qi-ssing bright side?!” She shouted.

“You’re Arianna Manning-Sparks now!” I petted her head, putting on my own bathrobe.

“You… you…” She growled angrily. Her fist came up into the air to smack me, but then she paled and grabbed her chest, sliding down to the ground.

“I'm sorry, Kittyanne, it's a bummer... you thought that you were the smartest girl in the Gold city, but in reality you're as dumb as they come…”

“What?” My fiancee hissed from the floor.

“You’ve made a lot of choices today. Choices that worked in my favour, binding you to me further and further. You and I are going to go on more adventures after this, Kittyanne! Put a smile on that pretty face of yours because you can’t hurt me anymore!

"This world is full of idiots that don't understand what's important. High-Cultivators that will tear apart a little nobody like me. But, I’m not a nobody anymore! I'm a Manning, just like you now. I have the engagement pact in my soul to prove it!”

Arianne gasped. “You… you…”

“Stick with me, Kittyanne! Stick with me because you have no other choice! I’m going to accomplish incredible, great, fantastic things! You’ll be a part of them all! We’ll bring down the gods, you and I! Sparks-Manning! Manning-Sparks! Forever and ever! A hundred years of Sparks-Manning!” I merrily sputtered at her as my adrenaline shot sky-high.

“Manning-Sparks forever! Enduring Good! One thousand years of adventures!” I laughed and laughed as Arianna looked up at me, her eyes filled with terror. “We’re going to show all of these cultivators who’s boss! We’ll make our own firmament and then break it! We’ll reinvent the toaster, plant a coffee tree and adopt Celes! Aha ha ha ha ha!”

If you can read this text without highlighting it, this book has been stolen and re-posted without the author's permission outside of its legitimate home on: royalroad.com/fiction/46709/enduring-good

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-=[Clint Potatius, Head of the Surgeon Barbers Guild]=-

High above the city, Clint Potatius hung in the air, held aloft by large, spindly, ghostly wings. There were ten servitor rings on his fingers, six of them now dead. Four more beast cores sat in his pocket, waiting to be activated as soon as his servitors found Ash Sparks.

The problem was that his hounds couldn't find her at all. He didn’t have amazing control over the ten servitors, but he did know that the first thing he had blown up wasn’t the cursed girl. It was something else entirely - a servitor of Niel Barberman’s that was holding up a bundle of cloth. It was... unfortunate, but Clint had no way to deactivate these bombs. Once a beast core was commanded to explode, it exploded.

How did this sneaky ancient get away from him? How had she hidden her Qi-resonance so quickly?

Six archangels of Lord Boundless had come up from the city and were now staring him down.

“What? Going to rip out my soul or are you all too pansy?!” He laughed at them. He knew that they were just observers, harmless to him as long as he stayed far enough away from them. He had done this exact thing before, three hundred and seventy five years ago.

The scent of Arianna Manning was somehow gone too. There was still that other girl - Celes Rada, but she was inside the compound of the Boundless Chorus and Clint really didn’t want to bother that nest of bees unless he was certain that Ash Sparks was inside.

Far below him, in the Grand Bazar a restaurant called the Whale’s Song was now a smoking ruin. The place had a lot of servitor defences in its walls, but it was no match for the continuous bombardment of beast-core bombs.

He held onto one of his hunters in case he found Ash Sparks, while three little phantoms searched the ruins for her. Alas, he had nothing to show for it. Her Qi pattern was gone, as if it was completely wiped away from the city. Somehow one sixteen-year-old managed to elude the greatest hunter of cursed-ones in the Gold city!

Clint rotated the mystery over in his mind. How could the girl up and vanish like a fart in the wind? In his six hundred years of life he’s never lost a target like this.

A brilliant, shimmering something flashed from the cult compound, heading straight for him.

Clint turned towards the badly burned man standing on a sword.

“High-Administrator Sempiter? How can I…” He spoke.

“Cut the bullshit, Potatius.” Han spoke, his face a grotesque mask of missing skin. “You blew up my favourite restaurant. Why?”

“An ancient enemy was inside,” Clint answered. “One of the cursed-carriers.”

Han tasted the air and found that the Head of the Surgeon Barbers wasn’t lying. “I see. Did you get him?”

“Her… and no I did not. She got away from me, somehow.”

“Your Guild will pay for the damages to my city, old man.” Han spoke sternly.

“Of course... Enforcer,” Clint made a small bow. He did not consider the young Immortal upstart as someone of value. A far more dangerous, conniving, sneaky rat was still down there somewhere.

“That was six detonations, Potatius,” Han said. “You need to stop, now.”

“I still have to…” The Cursed-Hunter started to speak.

“Enough! Someone already got me… with the same vile technique! If you keep bombing the city, more people will figure out that the beast cores can become weapons of mass-destruction. I don’t want a full-out war in my city before Convergence! There is already discord and chaos in the streets! Go and search for your prey with your sword alone! I’m ordering you to stop! I will not hesitate to summon the full power of the compound against you, if need be! Make one more explosion and I will declare you an outlaw to be hunted down!"

“Fine,” Potatius replied through clenched teeth. He didn't tell Han anything of value because he didn't trust the young Immortal. Ash Sparks could have been the Enforcer's project - the cursed girl had far too much support too quickly. If Clint found evidence of this he would have to end this Administrator with the celesteel sword.

“Good,” Han sighed, scratching his burned flesh. "Lord Boundless be with you."

"And you as well, Enforcer." Clint replied and descended down to the city to resume his hunt.