Jing moved as a blur, her foot slamming into the chest of the leader and hurling him backwards. The man cried out as his ribs cracked beneath the blow, and he landed in a crumpled heap in the middle of the group. The bedraggled people stared at Jing, shock and fury warring on their faces.

“A practitioner!” one of them shouted.

“Kill them!” someone else screamed.

“You will pay for that!” a third voice called out.

Jing hadn’t stopped to listen. Her feet blurred as she lashed out at the nearest people. Her heel cracked into the side of one man’s head, and his eyes rolled back as he dropped to the ground, unconscious. She snapped her leg forward, slamming the ball of her foot into another man’s temple and sending him spinning out of the fight. Her attacks seemed to jar the people out of their shock, and they rushed at her, hefting their weapons.

I quickly drew in the sun’s light and channeled it into my arms and legs before lunging at the closest person. I snapped a quick jab at the man’s head, expecting him to duck or lean back, then followed it with a knee strike while he was off-balance. To my surprise, he didn’t even try to dodge or block the hit, and my fist slammed into the side of his skull with a loud crack. His head snapped backwards, which meant the knee aimed for his solar plexus caught him on his floating ribs. I felt the ribcage collapse beneath the blow, popping like sticks, and he coughed up a spray of blood as he dropped to the ground.

I didn’t stop to watch; instead, I snapped a low kick at another man’s knee. He screamed as his knee collapsed inward, and he fell hard, clutching the twisted and shattered leg with both hands. Someone swung a club at my head, and I ducked beneath it and grabbed the extended wrist. I twisted it until the arm was locked, then slammed my elbow down on the hyperextended joint, shattering it. I leaned past a spear thrust and wrapped my arm around the long weapon, locking it against my body. I slammed my knee into the attacker’s body, crumpling him around it, then spun and flipped him over my hip. I tore the spear from his hands as he fell and jammed it into his stomach. I felt the dull blade sink into his abdomen, catching on the intestines inside, then drive out his back and into the ground below.

The attackers hesitated as they saw the fury of our counterattack. One of them ran forward and swung his axe at my side, but I stepped inside the blow and rammed my fist into his trachea. I felt the bone there pop beneath my blow, and he gurgled and dropped, releasing his weapon as he clutched his shattered throat with both hands. I snatched it up; I’d never trained with an axe, but I’d chopped wood before. I treated the closest person like a tree, swinging the blade into their chest and burying it in their lung.

I turned, but the remaining attackers were backing away, their eyes wide and their faces terrified. I snatched the axe free of the man’s body and took a step forward, and the rabble turned and ran back down the slope. I tossed the weapon down and looked at Jing with a grin. To my surprise, her face wasn’t pleased; she was looking at me with displeasure and even a bit of horror.

“What?” I asked.

“Xu Xing, you have killed these men!” she told me, her voice shocked.

I looked around and shrugged. “They were going to kill us,” I reminded her. “Well, they were going to kill you eventually.”

“They were obviously intending to subdue us,” she shook her head. “They wished to claim victory over us and bring us to their Chief.”

I picked up the axe I’d just dropped. “This isn’t a weapon you use to subdue, lady. This thing’s meant for killing. If they’d all been carrying clubs, maybe, but spears and axes are meant to kill.”

“Any weapon can kill,” she said dismissively. “The true measure of skill is using it without killing.” She shook her head. “What you did – it was brutal, Xu Xing. There was no glory or honor in it.”

“You’re right,” I said flatly. “There wasn’t. This wasn’t a sparring session, Jing. These people weren’t here to help us train. They wanted to enslave us. If they caught you, the Chief would have raped you and then probably given you to his men to do the same. Eventually, you would have become their whore – or they would have killed you.”

Her face was pale as she listened to my words. “I – this is merely a test, Xu Xing. All things in this world are a test.”

“Have you ever had someone try to kill you before?” I asked bluntly.

“I have battled the beasts many times…”

“No, not an animal. A person. Has a person ever tried to genuinely harm you before?”

“I…no,” she admitted. “I have battled challengers, but…”

“Well, I’ve had plenty of people try to kill me,” I cut her off. “I know what it looks like. I can tell the difference between someone who just wants to fight, and someone who wants me dead.

“They might have wanted to capture you, at first, but once they realize what you can do, they didn’t. They wanted to murder you. When someone wants to kill you, you have two choices: run away, or kill them first. I’d rather they died than we did.”

She stared at me, then looked down at the bodies surrounding us, her face still pale. She’d obviously seen death before, but I guessed this was the first time she’d seen human death. Or kuan death, or whatever our species was called. Seeing a human die isn’t an easy thing. It’s one of the reasons soldiers and police go through so much training. The sight of their lifeless eyes, their exposed organs, the amount of blood that their bodies released; these things stay with a person. You never really get used to it, but I’d long since become numb to it. Jing hadn’t, and she didn’t have time to, know.

“Come on, they’re going to be back, and they’ll bring friends,” I told her as I heard shouting rise from the camp behind us. “We need to get out of here, find a place to hide, and hit them when they’re not expecting it.”

“N-no,” she stammered a moment later. “We should face them. It is our duty…”

“Our job is to clear them out, permanently,” I cut her off again. “We could probably scare them off, but if we do, they’ll just come back. Do you think that’s what your father wants? Or does he want us to get rid of them, permanently?”

“I…I do not know,” she admitted.

“Well, we damn well need to know before we start this.” I looked around us.

“Look, they ran down the hill and went that way,” I pointed to the cleft the fleeing people had run through. Then, I turned and pointed the opposite direction. “Let’s go this way. We can circle around them, find a quiet way into their camp, and come at them that way. If we can find their Chief, we might be able to end this all at once.”

“Yes,” she said after a moment, seeming to regain her mental balance. “I can challenge him, and when I defeat him, he will be forced to take the vermin and leave here.”

I managed not to roll my eyes. “Maybe,” I said. “Assuming that he’s as honorable as you are, that is.”

“He must be, to be a leader of these vermin. They would not follow one without honor. Why would anyone?”

I didn’t say anything, although I could think of plenty of reasons. People might follow him out of fear, or desperation, or because he took care of them. However, I had a feeling Jing wouldn’t want to hear that, so I kept it to myself.

“Do you know your way around this place?” I asked. She shook her head, and I sighed. “Fine. Follow me, then, and try to move the way I do. Get lower, and don’t bob around so much. Just watch.”

I led us down the hillside, then dropped into a crouch and moved up along the outside of the quarry, staying out of sight of the people within. I could hear more shouting from the camp. Someone was bellowing orders; I assumed that was the Chief, and that those orders were basically, ‘find them and kill them’. I supposed they might have been to bring us to him, but if those were his orders, he was an idiot. He had ample evidence that we were deadly; a smart leader wouldn’t bring anyone like that within sight of him.

I guided us away from the quarry, up into the foothills of the nearby mountain and then down into another ravine that led away from the camp. This whole area was cracked and pitted like a piece of old, dried leather. I thought that sort of thing usually happened when water ate into the rock, but the crack we moved along didn’t look like an old streambed. Plus, the ground here looked highly unstable, laced with deep cracks and crumbling stone that wobbled precariously beneath our feet. It looked like a good sneeze would bring a rockslide down on our heads in many places, and I wondered what had happened here to cause these fissures in the earth.

We walked through the ravine for fifteen minutes or so before finding a place to ascend, then I climbed out carefully and looked around. We were well above the camp, from the look of things. A field of tumbled rock and fallen boulders blocked our view of the people below – and blocked their view of us. I chose one of the larger boulders and climbed it slowly and carefully, just slipping my eyes above the boulder to peer down at the sight below. As I’d guessed, the quarry spread out below us, and the camp was a hive of activity. From this angle, I could see more of the camp, as well. The part closest to us had deeper ravines with steep, sheer walls, and apparently the vermin – I preferred to think of them as bandits – used that area as a sort of holding area for their women. The area was blocked off with a gate made of the mottled bamboo that seemed so prevalent. The sides of the ravine were shaded by awnings made of thin fabric, wide leaves, and occasional hides. It looked like the women of the camp slept and lived in a communal space beneath those awnings.

Judging from the fact that some of the women were slowly getting dressed as I watched, it also looked like they were being kept for a specific purpose. I didn’t really like that, but then, I didn’t know much about this culture, either. For all I knew, this was a common arrangement for women in the midst of an army. Of course, it was just as likely that they’d been captured and forced against their wills. Probably more likely, in fact.

“What – why are the women kept in this place?” Jing’s voice gasped from beside me.

“Do you really not know?” I asked her curiously.

“I – I do not understand…”

I did roll my eyes at that point. “If they’d caught you, Jing, that’s where you would have ended up. That’s what these people do with women, it looks like.”

“They are not people,” she said absently. “They are vermin.”

“You keep saying that, but they look like people to me.”

“They might appear to be, but they are not. Or, they were once people, but now they have become…less.” She looked at me, sighed, and slid down the boulder. I glanced out to make sure no one was looking our way, then followed.

Jing waited for me at the bottom of the boulder field, her face filled with pity. “The vermin were once as we, students on the Heavenly Path,” she said. “However, not all who step foot on the path walk it successfully.”

“So, because they didn’t make it, they’re vermin?” I asked a bit incredulously.

“No. Most who fall from the path merely cease walking it. They allow their meridians to seal shut, leave them so, and never attempt to use them again. However, some who fall from the path refuse to accept their failure. They continue to draw qi, but because they cannot purify it, it befouls their dantian and stains their spirit.”

I frowned. “Your father called it some kind of curse. The mortal curse, right?”

“Yes. If the corruption stains your soul too deeply, then you lose your tie to the spirit realms. Your spirit becomes bound to the earthly world, and when you die…you cease to exist. You leave the cycle of death and rebirth, absorbed into this unclean world.

“Those are the vermin. They are creatures who exist outside the endless cycle, doomed to the true death when their lives finally end.” Her eyes lowered. “That – that is why what you did aggrieves me so. You sent those men to their ultimate deaths. They will not be born once more on the wheel; their spirits will never have the chance to attain immortality.”

“If I hadn’t killed them, would they have been able to escape the curse?” I asked slowly.

She hesitated. “No,” she finally said. “No creature that has suffered the mortal curse has ever been cleansed of it.”

“Then all I did was send them to their fates a bit early,” I shrugged. I frowned as something occurred to me. “There seem to be an awful lot of them,” I noted. “Is this really that common?”

“They are drawn to the crystals of the quarry,” she shook her head. “None know why, but wherever the crystals can be found, so can be found the vermin.”

“So, where did they all come from?”

“The schools, I assume,” she shrugged.

“Schools?”

She frowned at me. “You come from a city. Have you not seen a cultivation school?”

“I’ve seen lots of different types of schools,” I hedged. “I don’t know if any of them were cultivation, though.”

“Well, father says that each city teaches a specific method of cultivation, and all schools in that city train their students in that single way. However, he also says that the schools shroud themselves in mystery and hide their true teachings, so perhaps you saw them and did not know them for what they were.

“In any case, father says that when a student is in danger of suffering the mortal curse, a kind teacher will send them to their next life swiftly and painlessly, while their spirit is still strong enough to escape this world. However, in the schools, this does not always happen, and a student thus afflicted is merely cast out. They inevitably fall prey to the curse and are driven from the city, as any true practitioner can feel the corruption of their souls.”

It almost sounded like killing these people was doing them a favor, but I didn’t say that to Jing. “Okay, we need a plan to deal with them,” I said, turning back to the boulder. “If you want to join me up there, just stay quiet and still. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

I slipped back up and looked around cautiously, peering beyond the women’s area to the main camp. I noticed Jing take her spot beside me, but she was staying reasonably still, so I ignored her. I half-smiled as I saw the simmering, open pots set over several of the fires. If I’d had access to my poisons from Earth, I could take out half of these people without ever having to fight them. While I was wishing, though, I figured I might as well ask for a machine gun nest – or a couple of grenades. In an enclosed space like the quarry, those would turn the raiders into red paste. I had none of those, though, so I kept looking.

The one thing I had in abundance…was rocks. There were lots of rocks, literal tons of them, all around us. As cracked and unstable as the landscape was, I could probably cause a rockfall if I worked mildly hard at it, but one that was big enough to kill the raiders would probably bury the quarry, and I doubted the old man would be happy with that. It would also likely kill the women, and I wasn’t about to start slaughtering innocents during my executions.

I glanced back down at the camp. The women. They were also a potential resource. I doubted they had any loyalty to their captors, and I was certain that they would be only too happy to get away from them. The only question was, how to use those two resources in the best possible manner…

I grinned as I saw what I was looking for. The raiders had given me another resource – one that they probably didn’t even realize was a weakness. I glanced around, memorizing the various landmarks I needed, caught Jing’s eye, then pointed down. We slid down to the base of the rocks, and I turned to one of the medium-sized ones. What I was about to try would have been pointless on Earth, but here, it might just work.

“Try this configuration of your meridians,” Sara suggested, flashing an image before me. I channeled the power as she suggested, squatted down, and put my hands on top of the small boulder. I pushed, channeling my qi not just into my hands but out into the rock as Sara’s image suggested. The heavy boulder resisted for a moment, then shifted and rolled slightly. I quickly caught it and set it back in place; I didn’t want it to roll away and alert the camp to our presence.

“What are you doing?” Jing asked me curiously.

“I’ve got an idea, Jing,” I told her with a smile. “I’m going to need your help though.”

“Of course, you will. What assistance can I provide?”

I quickly detailed my plan, and she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “There is a difficulty. What if I cannot convince the women?”

“Then we’ll have to find two of the people down there, kill them, and take their clothes,” I said. “It’ll take longer, and there’ll be less of a chance for it to work.” I shook my head. “However, I think they’ll be more than willing to help. I think they’ll be eager.”

She hesitated, and I suddenly realized what her real problem was. “Jing, these are not good people,” I told her firmly. “Think of those women down there. Those are just the ones we’re seeing. How many of them have died to those men? How many of their families were killed by them?”

“I – I am unsure,” she said after a moment.

“I know you are, but…” I stopped as another line of attack occurred to me. “Jing, you said that this is a test, right?”

“Yes. My father gives me many tests, and this is but one.”

“Maybe it’s not a test of your fighting skill or cultivation abilities,” I suggested slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe your father understands that not everyone in the world is noble and honorable, the way you are. Maybe he knows that there’s only one way to deal with these people…and he’s testing to see if you can do it.”

She frowned at me. “You suggest that this is a test of my ability to kill?”

“No. I think it’s a test of your ability to recognize that sometimes, in the world, killing is the only option. Just as you can’t tame a beast, some people can’t be redeemed or reasoned with. They can only be put down.”

She remained silent for several, long seconds. “That – I must think on that,” she said eventually. “I can make no promises, Xu Xing…”

“You have to do what you have to do, Jing. Just know that I’m going to be doing what I have to do – even if you can’t do it.”

We sat in silence as darkness slowly fell over the camp. The flickering lights of the campfires danced merrily up from the ground below, and I felt it as the stars swam into view. The moon was temporarily hidden from me, which might prove to be a problem; I didn’t recover qi as quickly from starlight as I did from moonlight. Still, I had a full pool, so it would have to do.

Jing and I parted company as she slipped off into the darkness, heading for the holding pen where the women waited. I watched from the top of the boulder as she dropped into darkness; the women apparently didn’t rate their own fire. It sounded like the alarm we’d raised was passed, at least from the soft grunting sounds rising from the women’s camp. Either that, or some of the men didn’t care about security as much as they did getting their rocks off. I suppressed a chuckle at that. Pretty soon, getting rocks off was going to be the least of their worries.

I waited for a few minutes, then started moving to the first location I’d spotted earlier. The flickering firelight below gave me just enough illumination to see what I was doing, and I began to carefully shift the rocks around me, moving aside small rocks and loosening up the heavier ones. Once that was done, I found a relatively stable spot, peered out into the camp below me, and waited.

As the minutes passed, I thought that perhaps Jing had failed – or even worse, been caught. She was supposed to incapacitate any men she found in the women’s camp, which shouldn’t have been an issue for her, at least judging from the quality of the people we’d fought before. Still, anyone could get lucky, and if someone caught her by surprise from behind…

It wasn’t worth thinking about. If that had happened, then this would go from being a calculated murder into a bloodbath, because every minute I left Jing with those men would be a minute that…

An odd movement caught my eye, and I saw a short, slim man moving surreptitiously toward the fire. The oddity was that while the person was dressed like a man, they moved like a woman. I suppressed a grin. It looked like Jing had convinced the women to go along.

“It was a good call, having her do it,” Sara agreed. “Your Charm stat isn’t exactly stellar.”

“How much does that really affect?” I asked silently, watching the woman move up to the fire, squat down, and rise a moment later. “Am I being penalized for how low the stat is, or something?”

“It’s actually the opposite. Your stats are just a way for you to internalize your abilities. Your charm stat is low because you’re not very good at convincing people to do what you want, nothing more. You can get better at it, and then your stat will go up, but for right now, you’re probably better off not trying to negotiate peace between rival nations or anything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The woman had moved away from the fire, and I saw her toss something in the air. The burning stick of wood arced up to land atop the nearest makeshift shelter. It smoked for a minute, ten burst into flame. It was just as I’d hoped; the shelters were made from an assortment of old hides, dried leaves, and crackling linen, all of which looked to be highly flammable. The flames rose and spread swiftly, engulfing the structure and leaping to the next. I saw the woman toss another smoldering piece of wood onto something nearby, but as the fires started to spread, I moved back to the rocks I’d loosened earlier.

Two solid hammerfist blows knocked the stones free, and I jumped back as the rocks began to tumble down the slope into the ravine. I’d picked the spot well; a rockslide already covered much of the ground, here, and once I’d started a second slide, all of the loose stones poured down into the ravine, blocking it off from the rest of the camp. Shouts and cries rose from the raiders below, and someone bellowed, “Rockslide!” in the distance, but I ignored the raised alarm.

I leaped down into the ravine, channeling qi into my legs and landing easily on the rocks below. “Hey!” someone near me shouted, but I spun and held my hand out toward them, pouring a blast of qi into my open palm. A brief flash lit the darkness as my Sun’s Scorching Ray technique shot out. The beam of celestial qi slammed into the man’s chest, burning a hole completely through him about the size of my hand. He gaped at me for a moment before blood erupted from the hideous wound, and he collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Other men took notice of me, but I moved through them like a whirlwind. I blocked an outflung fist, grabbed the man’s elbow, and snapped it like a twig. I turned and deflected an impossibly slow front kick aimed at my chest, stepped forward, and drove a lightning jab into the attacker’s skull, my brass knuckles crunching the bone beneath and puncturing his brain. I slammed my elbow into the side of one man’s neck, then dodged a clumsy spear thrust, tripped the spearman, and shoved the butt of his spear into and through his solar plexus into the diaphragm beneath.

Men attacked me from all sides, but I kept moving, channeling qi into every strike and tumbling my attackers into one another. It didn’t look like they’d trained to fight in tandem, and they got in one another’s way more than they threatened me. It didn’t help that I was attacking to cripple as much as kill, shattering knees, dislocating shoulders, and crumpling sternums with my blows. The fire raging around me bathed the ravine in flickering shadows, the heat growing with each second as the enclosed ravine became an oven.

Finally, I twisted a club free of an attacker’s hand, slammed it into the side of his skull, then spun and used it to crush the knee of the last man facing me. Bodies lay around me, shrouded by the flickering, orange light of the raging fires. Some whimpered in pain; others lay dead or unconscious. However, crippled and trapped with the fire, none of them would last long.

I scrambled up the wall of fallen rock and leaped out of the ravine before the flames could start to scorch my skin. I looked over at the camp and saw another wall of rock, blocking the other side of the camp. I hoped Jing was doing as well as I had, but I didn’t have time to deal with that at the moment. The flames were spreading rapidly throughout the entire camp, cutting off the center from the outer regions, and I ran toward the next landmark I’d memorized.

I didn’t have time to carefully bring down the rockslide there; instead, I slammed my fist into the ground, powering each blow with qi, until the stone crumbled beneath me. I barely managed to scramble out of the way of the falling rock; once it settled, I leaped down behind the new rock wall and began my deadly dance once more. Blood flew, men screamed, and bones cracked as I sped through the raiders. I used their own weapons against them when I could, burying spears and axe heads in their bodies, crushing skulls and limbs with clubs and heavy stones. When I couldn’t, I cracked elbows, pulverized ribs, and cracked faces with my fists, elbows, and knees. Between the fires, the screaming, and the blood, half of the raiders turned on one another in their panic. I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of these situations, and soon enough, I was surrounded once more by nothing but bodies, either dead or about to be as the flames rolled over them.

I sprung back to the top of the wall and was about to move to my next target, when a loud voice stopped me in my tracks with a curse.

“Stand and face me, foul one!” Jing’s voice rang out through the camp, and I spun to see her standing atop a stone pile, staring down at a mountain of a man. He, in turn, was looking back up at her, his face both enraged and filled with a hunger that I recognized all too well.

“Who dares enter my camp?” the man roared in a bestial voice.

“I am Jing, daughter and student to Wader-in-the-Morning-Water,” she replied proudly. “I challenge you to a duel, with the fate of your camp in the balance. Face me, or slink away from this place and never return!”

“Come to me, then, girl!” the man roared. “Once you have paid in blood and pain for what you have done tonight, you will serve me and all my men, and when we are finished, you will return to your father, broken, used, and carrying my spawn!”

The woman leaped from the rock wall, and I quickly turned and raced toward her.

“Goddammit, Jing,” I swore again, shaking my head as I ran. “Can’t follow the fucking plan, and now I have to save your dumb, noble ass!”