Lunch with the girls was good, Yu ate a Darkness meal, fed and played with Bai, headed to darkness class, got lectured by the Aura instructor for still not having an appropriate skill, improved slightly in understanding her Qi and using her skills in the Mana class, and then went to the Skills Library to pick up the new healing skill. It was called Searching Waves and offered much more precise diagnostic capabilities than her prior skill, which was rather general and couldn’t provide high detail. The skill worked like when a single water drop falls on a calm puddle and sends waves out. Only when the waves make contact with something they return and provide details of what they run into. The skill warned that it would take a good deal of practice to understand what the different signals meant.

After a quick check, Yu found she only had 10,336 points which wasn’t enough to buy any of her planned skills. Oddly, it seemed a little high to Yu so she checked on the point summary which gave her the history of her earning and spending, and Yu saw why she had more than she thought she should when she reviewed her latest earnings. She had received 550 points from healing earlier that day. Looking for more detail, it turned out she earned 100, 300, and 150 points for the three different healings she participated in in a meaningful way.

Yu said to no one but herself, “Wow. Healers really do make out well.” That was half a month’s normal rent for a few hours of work. “What do healers spend their points on?” Yu wondered.

That brought her mind to an instruction her healing teacher assigned and Yu made a quick trip to the Wood Mountain library to pick up the book. Initiate Healing - Mixing Qi and Medicines. This would teach her how to create some of the concoctions that healers use and when to use them. It wasn’t alchemy, just herbalism and knowledge of what to use and when. In this case it was without any Qi.

Yu then headed home to find everyone asleep. Yu fed Bai again, and then went to bed with no other issues and looking forward to another hunt the following day.

***

“What do you mean you can’t say? You’re telling me he isn’t available but can’t say why. Did someone else book him or am I being blocked because of the ridiculousness that goes on around here?”

Yu’s frustration was obvious as she berated the poor disciple who was just trying to book her a flight to the forest just after sunrise the morning on her mission day.

He looked equally annoyed as he responded, “Look, I don’t know and I don’t care. If you want to go down you need to book through us and he isn’t listed here in my book.”

Yu screamed out “33.”

Annoyed, the disciple said, “Now listen here. You can’t just call out random numbers. He isn’t here today and-” The disciple stopped as Zhao Minge jogged up and said in a frustrated tone, “Finally got one for me?” Then he saw Yu and the inner sect disciple staring at him, both looking frustrated.

Then Yu turned back to the young man sitting behind the table and said, “Oh look, there he is. There must have been a tragic mistake in your book this morning. Now that you know, you should fix it.” Yu growled out that last half-sentence. Then she marched around the table and said sweetly, “Hey Zhao Minge. How’s Jin Kong?” while stalking by them both.

Zhao Minge looked between the indignant desk disciple and Yu and went after her. He had to jog to catch up to Yu’s stomping pace and then he said nervously, “He’s fine. You don’t seem very happy right now. Are you ok?”

Yu huffed and said despondently, “Nothing for you to worry about. Can you take me back to the forest?”

He nodded, his expression one of concern. She said hello to the massive eagle, gave him a pat, and then leaped on. A few minutes of silent flight later, Yu got off, thanked them both, and then ran into the forest at a sprint, furious with herself for losing her temper. She had just mouthed off to an inner sect disciple. Again! Hopefully, those meditation methods would come soon.

Yu found an isolated area, checked for nearby threats, and changed into her armor. Then she took out her map and oriented herself. She really was terrible at cartography. Having figured out where she was going, she hopefully ran to where she had found those two grade 2 beasts battling. Since she had more time, she was going to give that place a more detailed search. Sure, that battle could have been random, but it felt like too much of a coincidence to leave be.

It took about an hour of jogging to get there, and she gathered a number of herbs and beast parts while on the way. She didn’t go out of her way or anything as her intention was to focus on grade 2 beasts that trip, but if the beasts or herbs were in her view, she took them. A number of the herbs had already been taken showing that someone else had participated in the gathering quest recently.

Once Yu arrived in the area of the fight both according to her map and her memory. She started walking the area, her senses turned up. She was looking for anything out of the ordinary, listening for strange sounds and even scenting the air for something different. After spending half of an hour searching, Yu found nothing that seemed off so she shrugged and moved on. She returned to the stream, filling her ring with more meat and other parts, including a few more poison sacks. She spent more time washing up and then searching the stream but found nothing that would help her understand why it was devoid of beasts. That location was exactly the type of place beasts would go.

Yu shook her head, accepting she couldn't figure it out, and went up to the area where she fished last time and spent some time catching a few more of the shiny silver, blue and green swimmers. Getting bored of it after an hour or so, she decided to move on and head deeper towards the grade 2 beasts and closer to the grade 3 area. Three hours of hunting and gathering later, Yu ran across a red and white fox with two tails. There was a quest for this creature so she could kill it, grab the quest and get an extra bonus.

She lined up her arrow, just as she had done innumerable times before and released. The arrow flew straight and true, the fox blissfully ignorant of its own approaching demise. The arrow struck home and Yu started moving forward but came to a skidding stop when the fox didn’t fall over but looked over at her, the arrow was nowhere to be found. Then the fox seemed to waver and it blew away, as if made of smoke.

Yu nocked another arrow, crouched lower, and scanned the area. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. Grade 2 beasts couldn’t use Qi outside their bodies. Yu heard chittering to her right and she whipped her head around, readying her bow. Was that laughter? Scanning, Yu found no movement at all. Just empty forest except for the trees and what lay on the forest floor. She heard the same chittering laughter to her left and she looked that way. Again nothing. Yu started backing away slowly, one foot behind the other, continuing to scan the area, an arrow ready to be fired at the first sign of motion. Then Yu heard that damn sound behind her, and it was close. She turned around and saw, just paces away, a familiar red and white fox, but it had three tails, not two.

“Uh oh,” escaped Yu’s mouth.

As if agreeing with her words, the fox tilted its head and then it bobbed up and down once. She heard more chittering, to her right. And then to her left. Two more foxes appeared, each with three tails. Yu’s head moved back and forth between the three. As fast as she could, she drew and fired and then sent the bow to her ring and drew her swords from her back. Altogether, a single breath of air passed as she readied herself. The arrow once again flew through the fox which dissipated into thin air. The arrow struck the ground and vibrated there for a moment as the two foxes to Yu’s left and right charged her. They charged at the same height and at the same time, leaping with their mouths open, teeth bared.

Yu slid forward and swung both swords, slicing through the foxes’ bodies, which dissipated into the air, just like all the others before. Seemingly out of nowhere, Yu felt a blow to her back, the sound of claws scraping on leather easily heard in the silence of the forest. Sprawling forward, Yu shifted just in time so her shoulder and not her face hit an approaching tree. Yu spun to put the tree to her back and readied herself again.

These foxes specialized in illusion. It was clear to her that the first was a trap set exactly for disciples who, like her, thought they had found another easy grade 2 kill. The various plants on the forest floor shifted all around her and six identical foxes appeared in a half-circle, three paces from her. Obviously, not all of them were real. The question was, how many and which were true foxes? Yu reduced her focus on the mantra she used to control her senses and closed her eyes. She breathed in the smells of the forest around her and slowly rotated her head left and right. She could not trust her eyes or ears, but could the fox manipulate its smell at only grade 3? It clearly couldn’t create multiple unique illusions because all of them were absolutely identical, even down to how they fake attacked her. There! The middle of the three on the right. The smell got strong suddenly and Yu cried out as she felt a scrape of claws against her right hand. Her red leather gloves prevented any serious damage but it still stung and surprised her.

Yu flung her eyes open and swung her left sword in an arc around her. She struck nothing and was hit again from behind, causing her to tumble forward. That strike came from the left, so it had somehow circled around after the strike from the right and returned from the left.

Yu recognized the fight couldn’t continue this way. While wearing her red leather armor, she had its greater defense which in this case saved her a number of nasty wounds that would have bled and weakened her. But that defense also stopped her from using her Flame Thorns or pretty much any other skill like it because the red leather didn’t allow Fire Qi to permeate it. The same was true for her hook swords. That meant she had to use other skills. Earthen Armor wasn’t going to help more than her leathers, and none of the other Aura skills she had were usable in that situation for the same reason. So only her Mana skills were left. She’d gladly stun it with Bolt Strike but she needed to find which one of its copies was real. She could attempt to blind and deafen it with Flashing Burst but she would also be a victim, especially as it had to be so close. Melding with shadows would be useless as it was staring right at her, thus she had only two skills of any use, neither of which she had had the chance to practice.

“Just great,” she mumbled.

That mental assessment had taken a few moments in which Yu returned to having her back to the tree, closer than before. She slid her swords to their sheaths and withdrew her whip. She waited and the creature once again appeared, except nine of the foxes approached. Once again they were identical in every way—every movement, every sound was the same. Yu inhaled through her nose, keeping her eyes open, prepared for another leaping strike. The foxes growled and barked at her in unison, but Yu didn’t react. She simply inhaled again. This was her best chance.

Turning to the left, Yu released the Qi she was holding and, for just a blink, the world around her flickered. All of the Fire, Wood, Water, Earth, Lightning, and most importantly Darkness Qi within ten paces of Yu froze for two seconds as she released her Qi. All nine foxes vanished and a tenth fox, just two paces away to the left of the tree Yu had her back to, faded into existence. Just then Yu decided she was thrilled with her decision to purchase the neutral Frozen Qi skill.

Yu could have sworn that she saw shock on the fox’s canine face as she drove her hand around and down and the whip followed. The quick fox bounded up and back but Yu was not wielding a sword or spear. The hard leather braids of her whip struck the fox while it was in the air and a snap and thump sounded, followed by a yelp as the fox was stuck and driven back into the ground. Yu opened her mouth and spat a single ball of lightning at the stunned fox. It struck the beast’s side just as it rose back to its feet causing a flash and a crackling sound. The fox yelped louder and tumbled over a number of times to become still, steaming.

Yu coughed and felt a burn and the taste of blood in her mouth but ignored it as she swapped hands, sending the whip to her ring while simultaneously withdrawing the red steel dagger from her boot. She leaped at the whimpering fox and landed on it, thinking to jam her knife in its ear.

Just as Yu landed on the creature and her knife was a few finger widths from killing it, the fox flickered in her vision again and a beautiful child appeared in its place. An adorable young girl with locks of hair the red color of the fox’s fir looked up at Yu. She sniffled and looked terrified. Yu was frozen. She looked into the eyes of the terrified child and the black in their center expanded to encompass the entire globes.

Yu saw her reflection in them, and she saw a monster, a child-killer, looking back. Her hand holding the knife just barely away from the child’s ear shook. Her fingers began to open and the knife slipped free and dropped to the ground.

Suddenly the girl’s terrified face changed to one of vicious glee and she opened her mouth and lunged at Yu’s face, her teeth suddenly all sharp and three times as large. Yu gasped and fell back while holding the deformed child’s throat with her left forearm. The girl became a fox again and it was biting down at Yu, right in front of her face. Its jaws were snapping shut again and again just short of her nose, pushing closer with each drive to bite her flesh. Yu did the only thing she could think of and opened her own mouth, spitting another ball of lightning just as it opened its maw to bite.

The ball, about half of the size of her fist, transferred from Yu’s mouth into the foxes and, before it could stop itself, the fox bit down on it. A popping sound was followed by a muffled “whoomp” and the fox’s entire body started shaking uncontrollably. Yu shoved it to the side, sat up, looked around, scrambled on all fours to the knife, turned around, and lunged at the fox. Its red blade slid into the demonic beast’s ear, puncturing its brain. The fox’s shuddering continued for a few moments and then went still.

Yu rolled over and collapsed onto her back. She felt tears falling from her eyes and couldn’t understand why. Her emotions were a mess. She felt guilty yet proud—full of self-disgust but also triumphant at the same time. Wiping her face, she sat up, her knees raised and her arms resting on them. She looked at the creature, her red knife still embedded into its skull.

Exhaling a huge breath, Yu carefully retrieved her knife, cleaned it thoroughly from all the blood, flesh, and brain matter, dried it using a soft cloth, and then resheathed it in her boot. Yu stared at the beast’s carcass, thinking about dressing it. But in the end, she leaned forward and put it into her ring directly. She was just not going to risk a grade 3 beast carcass in pristine condition with her inferior tools and expertise.

Yu stood, wiped herself off, and looked up, seeing the sun was only just past its zenith. Great, she could hunt quite a bit more before the evening approached and she had to return. Yu updated her map with the location of the fox, and then looked around for any evidence of where it came from. Interestingly, the beast did not seem to bother covering its tracks.

From what she had read, the higher grade the beast, the smarter it was supposed to be. Given the way it fought, that fox was quite intelligent. Why then would it not care if it was followed? Was it a measure of confidence in its ability to deceive any predators or prey with illusion?

Either way, Yu found it only moderately difficult to follow, the footprints, broken branches, feces, and other signs of disturbance that took Yu on a circuitous route on which she found a number of herbs, but no beasts. Perhaps they were scared away by the grade 3 beast? Could it be related to the lack of beasts by the stream? So many unknowns.

Yu eventually lost the trail at the foot of a tree with a hole in it leading into blackness. She looked around, grabbed a downed branch, lit it on fire with the red stone she was given all that time ago by Grandma Huan, and slowly poked it down into the hole. Looking in, Yu found something quite surprising and it cut her hunting trip unexpectedly short.