Finding Big Shilei and Hana while dropping to the ground and randomly changing directions every twelve to fifteen seconds wasn't easy. I was able to sprint in roughly the right direction, but the whole time I was worried I'd be too late. I worried that, even if the big man managed to fend off the translucent blue blobby baddies, Hana would have no way to defend herself.

Fortunately, Shilei had what I didn't: access to a reliable external qi technique. Moreover, he was primarily an earth and wood qi cultivator, so even if he couldn't cultivate with the janky local qi, he could use his techniques to good effect within a pine forest. Arguably, it was about the best place for him to strut his stuff.

"Hana! Shilei!" I shouted the instant I spotted them. Then I dropped to the ground and let the spirits swoop past me and wheel back around, shrieking and chittering in frustration.

Hana and Shilei had found themselves surrounded and backed against the ruins of an ancient building - a pretty substantial one. Maybe a palace or granary or warehouse or something. Something big and mostly collapsed.

I would have thought that was about the worst place for them to be since the spirits could just go through the wall and attack them from behind - only Shilei really knew his stuff. The instant a pair of them began to emerge from the crumbling wall, he placed his palm against the old stones and the spirits froze in place, lodged in the wall and unable to move while he dealt with the ones in front of them.

Hana cowered behind the big man wielding a sizable stick and weeping as she swung, seemingly at random. She impacted one of the spirits, which budged it ever-so-slightly, so I guess they weren't totally intangible, only mostly. No wonder it felt so weird to get intersected by one of them.

Feeling the probe of a finger-tentacle against my dantian, I leapt and let the spirits zip by… they'd tried to get clever and had gone low instead of high. With a pang of terror, I realized that, if half of them went low and half went high, they'd catch me no matter what. It was only a matter of time, and if they caught me, then I was screwed. Summoning my resolve, I sprinted toward the two.

"Don't bring them here!" Shilei shouted. "Lynn! Stop!"

Yeah, that was a good point… if they were having trouble dealing with the dozen… eleven spirits. Shilei had just managed to kill one with what appeared to be a cone of summoned clay. If they were having trouble with eleven, my adding five more would only make things harder, since it wasn't like I could do anything after blowing my qi.

"What… can… I… do?" I shouted between breaths.

"Stay away! They should weaken in daylight!"

"How… long… until… then?"

He managed to shrug between a flurry of strikes and reupping the anti-spirit effect on the wall. "Seven hours?"

Fuck. I'd be lucky to make it seven minutes. Even if the spirits never got smart, my gas tank could only last maybe another hour. Which was super impressive cardio, considering that I was basically sprinting through the woods while doing burpees, but my fitness hardly mattered if I was dead a few minutes later.

I let the spirits pass me again and took off parallel to my friends - I wasn't about to let them out of my sight, even if I couldn't get close. As I watched, one of the spirits broke through the 'frozen' stone of the wall and threw itself at Shilei. Fortunately, they seemed to be more attracted to him than to Hana. Probably because he had a lot more qi and they were hangry for magical energy.

"Shilei!" I shouted, vaguely pointing in the right direction.

He reacted, but not in time, and the spirit grappled with him, its finger-tentacles plunging into his body as he screamed. Hana swung the big stick, passing right through the spirit and impacting Shilei's side with a crack - of the wood, not the big man. I don't think the stick harmed either spirit or cultivator in the slightest. Then the spirit's body lit up like a Christmas tree, which I assume meant it was stealing qi from him.

Shilei screamed again - a shout full of anger and pain… and qi. Roots shot out of the ground, whipping around like tentacles and battering the nearby spirits. The spirits chittered and shrieked, surrounding them, but unable to come close due to the spasming qi-charged roots. One of the affected trees began to tip precariously, tilting with the sound of tearing soil.

"Tree!" I shouted - as I ducked yet again to avoid incoming spirits.

With a yelp, Shilei dodged to the side, and then dodged back under the tree, because that's where poor Hana was cowering. He caught the tree with a grunt that I could hear from way back where I was. Just as he shoved her out of the way, the spirits swarmed through the gap in the root field, surrounding the helpless cultivator, their amorphous bodies flashing as they latched onto his qi.

They were going to kill Shilei, and then they were going to kill Hana, and there wasn't a thing that I could do about it… and soon enough, I was going to get caught and die, too. Part of me hoped for a deus ex machina, but I knew they didn't exist, not even in cultivator land…

And yet I felt the qi roiling within me, bucking to escape. I knew I didn't have any free qi left, and yet I felt a surge pushing from somewhere deep, somewhere beyond my dantian, perhaps from within my inner light itself. And, having no other Hail Mary to make, I pushed the energy out into the world, and it erupted into a golden light.

"Leave my friends alone!" it shrieked in an oddly familiar voice…

What. The. Fuck.

--------

A golden glowing girl flickered in front of me, her dark hair glittering like the waves of the Pacific at sunset. She stomped the ground, and blinding-bright energy surged forth, warmth pressing against me like a wave.

The spirits nearby reeled back with a chittering shriek, the gaping voids of their mouths writhing in fury and frustration. The golden qi from the girl… from Lin… blasted through them, shredding at their spectral tissue like deadly shrapnel. Several died and the rest fled into the night.

The ghosts surrounding Shilei paused in their attacks, momentarily stunned by Lin's qi attack. But they were far enough away that any injury had been minimal. A few peeled off from the swarm and rushed toward Lin and me while the rest returned their attentions to Shilei.

The big man had used the respite to shore up the remains of his usable qi, earth accreting over his fist as he swung out with a pained grunt. Several of the remaining spirits dispersed into ribbons of luminous qi waste and the others reeled back as if shoved - but their attention was still honed on the injured cultivator.

"Lin?!" I shouted at the glowing, translucent girl, half in disbelief ad half in panic. "Do you think you can do that again?"

"N-no," she muttered before her dark (yet glowing? - it was a very odd effect) eyes hardened in resolve. "That took a lot out of me, but I bet I can still kick their fucking asses!"

"Language!" I snapped.

As she took off toward Shilei, Hana, and the remaining spirits, she called over her shoulder: "I learned it from you, sis! I learned it from watching you!"

"Sis?" I murmured, not quite sure what to think. "I always wanted a little sister…"

Lin took off like a beacon in the night, glowing clouds and glimmers of sparkle trailing behind her. The spirits shifted their attention from the struggling Shilei, beady black eyes forming as they chittered in anticipation. Then Lin was upon them. She threw a big, badly-telegraphed haymaker… but the spirits didn't know any better. She struck one of them - and it hit! To her, it was like punching a solid object…

Or maybe more like punching an overinflated balloon, because the evil spirit exploded, cloudy blue qi waste shooting off into the night. The polite little 'pop' that resulted from its death was almost amusingly anticlimactic.

"Leave! My! Friends! Alone!"

Shrieking, Lin proceeded to go feral on the remaining spirits, raking at them with her spirit-y fingernails, throwing messy kicks, and stomping on the bastards when they tried to retreat into the solid ground. Finally, she stormed over to the last remaining spirit, still lodged in the wall from one of Shilei's defensive efforts. She grabbed a big handful of sprit stuff and literally dismembered the thing with her bare hands.

It probably would have been really gross if the thing had anything in the way of spirit guts. But, no, it just poofed into insubstantial waste just like the rest of them had.

"Lin!" I shouted as I rushed over to the ruined wall. "That was amazing! How did you do that?"

Lin turned to face me, a lazy, loopy smile plastered across her face. The radiant, sunlike glow surrounding her body had muted, appearing more like the yellow moon on a hazy night. She took a staggering step forward and collapsed into my arms, somehow both solid and insubstantial against me.

"Been sitting in on your lessons. Kept you dry in the rain…"

"Oh… oh! That was you?" I guess when I speculated that staying dry was a cultivator thing, I was right - little Lin had been practicing cultivation while inside my soul. And apparently she'd learned some techniques. I'll admit - I was a little bit jealous. "Um… are you ok? You're kind of… flickering out?"

She nodded sleepily. "Gonna go bedtime now," she murmured. "Nite, Lynn…"

Her form flickered and faded - and I could feel a small surge of energy somewhere deep beyond my dantian, within the inner light that was (I'm pretty sure) my soul. It told me that Lin was back there, wherever there was, recuperating from her very impressive showing. Somehow, however improbably, we'd defeated the spirits.

Then Hana tentatively peeked over the rubble of the old wall, leaning heavily on her shattered branch. "Um… Miss Lynn," she gasped in a small voice. "I think Mister Shilei is hurt…"

"Ah. Crap."

--------

Tankano Ichika, the Iron Flower of Karu, pushed herself, qi rapidly depleting. It was bad enough that she was in a low-qi zone and could only manage perhaps half the celestial qi she normally cultivated… really, she should have been thankful. The others were even worse off, their qi tied to the depleted environs of the Heaven's Abyss. Still… between her and Big Shilei, she suspected that she was at the disadvantage here.

Yes, it was bad enough that she was in a low qi zone, but now she was fighting 'empty' spirits, demonic parasites that devoured any qi that didn't have plenty of intent behind it - and they'd eventually pry even core-forged qi loose if allowed into a dantian unopposed. They were a danger to even seasoned cultivators and a junior cultivator's abject nightmare…

Ichika considered herself an experienced practitioner, but in reality she was perhaps a quarter of the way through the third domain, a prodigy with only three and a half years of cultivation under her belt but still very green compared to the elders of the ruined sect. And yet it was clear enough that they'd lost the battle against these voracious beasts long ago, an infection that had presumably spread throughout the Heaven's Abyss range.

No wonder cultivators were strongly urged not to venture into these lands. Why in heaven's name hadn't the emperor done anything about it? Surely, he had a handful of ascendant soul-realm earth cultivators who could burrow into the mountain and extinguish the demonic infestation. And yet a huge tract of empire and spirits-know how many sects had lain abandoned for literally centuries.

Of course, Ichika had more pressing things to worry about. Namely, the dozen or so spirits hot on her heels.

Ichika leapt, briefly clearing the canopy and putting some distance between herself and the spirits in pursuit. Behind herself, for many li, the forests were dotted with glowing motes, what had to be hundreds of empty spirits. Fortunately, the vast majority seemed to have lost the trail and were rooting around empty parts of the forest… probably draining the poor creatures of the wood, and maybe even the trees, for what little qi they had.

She hit the ground with a grunt, holding back on the qi that would have buffered her landing - she had precious little to waste. Ichika spun on her heels and slashed out with Red Harvest, her blade glowing a faint red as she imbued it with just enough intent to damage the spirits.

The nearest few shrieked in their cacaphonic voices, their spectral bodies rending beneath Ichika's sword. One of them even died, its blobby phantasmal innards spilling out and fading into the atmosphere as its brethren devoured it for residual qi. That was five down and… what… a dozen to go?

"Ah!" a voice cried out - her Yangutan!

Fear clutched Ichika's chest in the way that sheer exertion no longer did. She shot through the woods toward the sound, bounding off trees and dodging the clumsy lurching lunges of the spirits pursuing her. She found Yang in a nearby clearing, having just dispatched a single spirit with a qi-infused strike but struggling to fend off two more.

Exhilaration battled with worry in her chest. Two spirits? She could dispatch two distracted beasts easily enough. Ichika pushed herself diagonally, soil and branches blasting up from the sheer force of her impact against the ground, and stuck laterally with a good fraction of her remaining qi just as her Yangutan leapt backwards to avoid the spirits - a perfect setup. Her slash of silvery celestial qi pulsed through the air, eviscerating the spirits before she even touched back to the earth.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Running on fumes," Yang gasped. "But yeah… they only got a little of my qi, nothing vital…"

She nodded - that was good. If these demonic parasites managed to work their way through a cultivator's free qi and into their cultivation base, they had the potential to damage that cultivation, potentially permanently. Yang was only in the terminal second domain, battling the heavens to push through to qi refinement, but thus far unsuccessfully. Ichika was confident that her lover would join her in the third realm soon enough, and she didn't know what she would do if he was crippled by these mindless beasts.

"Ready for one last push?" She gestured over her shoulder, to where the remaining spirits had stalled their pursuit in light of their recent losses. But they were greedy, mindless things and would soon overcome whatever trepidation they felt.

Her Yangutan nodded, a small but sufficient pulse of qi arising within him. She marshalled her remaining reserves and threaded them out - now that they had a few seconds to prepare a proper welcome for their attackers, she and Yang could show them how the Tankano Clan dealt with interlopers.

With the wan moon looming overhead, half-dark and half-light, Ichika's external control was unusually precise despite the poor surroundings. She pulled on the qi of the moon itself, added her own silvery reserves into the mixture, and waited for Yang to push his 'fumes' - mostly wood- and nature-aspected qi - out to join it.

As the spirits charged, a silvery net of roots and pure shimmering energy intercepted them. Unable to stop in time, all dozen pursuers shredded themselves against the qi construct - some of them truly defeated and some simply badly injured (insofar as a spirit could be 'injured' - perhaps diminished was a better word).

Truly empty and head pounding from depletion, Ichika forced the trickle of remaining moon qi that she could control to gather around her fist. She struck out thrice in rapid succession, destroying the remaining spirits, and let out a great breath of relief.

She turned to her Yangutan and they shared equally-tired smiles.

"Let's split, my Iron Flower, before more come around to see what the commotion was about," Yang said.

Ichika darted in to steal a kiss, making Yang blush… for a man with such outward bravado, he could be adorably bashful, the brash but inexperienced seventeen-year-old boy she'd fallen for still alive and kicking beneath three years of hard-headed scruff. She took his hand in hers, and they darted through the darkness, eyes peeled for any sign of their comrades…

If there were more spirits to deal with, they were on their own, unfortunately. Ichika and her Yangutan were plum out of qi, stumbling through the darkness like a pair of first-realm novices unused to their improved bodies. Really, it was quite the opposite - without the tiny, unconscious corrections of qi energy, they'd seldom had to rely upon their bodies' base abilities and were prone to under- or overestimating the effects of their pure physical exertion.

Just as Ichika hobbled around a gnarl of root, eyes fixed in the distance rather than up close, she spotted a sign: a great flare of celestial-aspected energy, unmistakably sun qi. For a moment, she feared that Lynn had purged her entire cultivation base to fend off the spirits, but no. That was impossible. Well, not impossible, but not what the flare suggested. Lynn's personal qi, aggravatingly, possessed every aspect and no aspect. If you searched for earth, you would find it… and if you searched for heaven, you would find that, too. The brilliant idiot had somehow managed the impossible, quite probably by pure accident…

The point was, the blast was far too pure to be one of Lynn's making. And nobody in their group but Ichika and Lynn were capable of cultivating celestial qi. So who or what had it been?

Ichika pivoted on a wu… or tried to. Her foot slid a good three feet through the earth, kicking up a furrow of soil. Yang chuckled and then yelped as she yanked him along toward the source.

As she approached the spot of the flare, several injured, panicked spirits rushed past them, not even bothering to attempt an attack. That was a good sign, Ichika supposed. As they reached the great crumbled ruin of an old aqueduct, she spotted them - three of them.

Lynn knelt over the prone form of Big Shilei - Ichika could see him taking in big, gasping breaths, but that didn't mean much. It was altogether possible that her friend and protector's soul had been devoured by the things and all that was left was a hollow husk, doomed to waste away and die.

Ichika's breath caught in her chest as she overheard Lynn, clearly on the verge of tears: "I… I don't know what to do."