He saw them move, but he did not want it to.

Ducking, bending the knees, he went under the claws and drew a crescent at his right. The blade shaved off several bloody scales and the fire went in to burn the skin.

He saw the wings flap and rise up, and he saw the large maw glittering blue and silver Qi, but he did not want it to.

He shot forward. He flew up and up, chasing after that humongous aquamarine streak of light until they met atop the clouds under the Sunlight so weak it did not pierce the mist. One blade of red he pulled out and slashed with it. The sphere shattered. The air pressure pushed the formation of the round clouds away.

Being a cultivator, he never had confidence to face battles. It had been that way. Battles did hurt people. And when it hurt at a specific place, when it impaired him from raising an arm or stretching a leg, he hated that the most. Being a cultivator, he had to be ready to face such risks. But he did not want to see it.

A three-edged claw pushed his blade down to his face. From the dark reflection of the metal Li Bo saw the sunken pale cheeks of a man not him. Not the fair face he always held and treated, nor the encouraging smile he kept to raise his courage. So pitiful he was, this dark countenance of his.

His knee sunk down, the blade pressed down on his chin, and he noticed the other set of claws rising with a boom.

How would this end, he thought. He heard no sound, of course. Every action he took was not by him but by his body, and he just watched in this non-existent mythical place that no one could explain to him. A space reserved for that cowardly side of him who did not act; who spoiled his sister, saved the weak, cared for the uncared.

This him watched him push the poisonous Qi up his dantian to his entire body, and a veil of scarlet spread out of his palms to envelope the dark blade. His reflection went away, and a thunderous whistle ascended under them. Sparks flew off the claws, the fire crackled, and the Xian roared.

As the world came back to him, and Li Bo grasped the reality, he saw a battered body rise and scream. A metallic claw half his size swiped at the Xian, and the Rocksmote did evade it, for its belly could not take that strike lightly.

‘‘Futile!‘‘

Li Bo glanced once at his friend.

From his chest grew out a flaming lotus seed and he clenched it. From his bosom rose the lifeline Qi of his, coated in poison, and he slammed it on the hilt of his dark sword.

It bloomed into the Sun, and he flew off as if he was an arrow.

‘‘ROAR!‘‘

The dragon took it heavy, flew up to divert the force, but he got in. Li Bo smashed the blade and the figure that helped him do so fell off from his vision.

His heart froze for a moment, and in the next he tore blood out of the foul beast.

‘‘ZISHEN!‘‘

His sister dove from the high clouds she ascended to gain speed, and the lance of fire in her hand pierced through the metal plate over Xian's thick skull. Sparks, a shrill whistle, and a large thud as the plate fell apart.

Li Bo shot forward, uncaring of the pain rising in his chest. ‘‘GO! FETCH HIM!‘‘

Li Huan gave him a blank stare...and she rose.

The Xian chased after her.

Something winced in his heart.

Li Bo did not cast a glance to the ground. He poured Qi upon Qi to the flying sword and filled the runes to its fill. His legs turned numb, the clouds gave way before him. One motion, one tilt of his head up.

He flew up. He chased after the swinging tail going for his sister. His hands a claw, he made another lotus blossom. The fire he clenched, and his shoulder muscles gave way.

‘‘No!‘‘

The loosened grip he regained, and the flame he rekindled. His heart turned cold, and his belly prickly. His own body started fighting against him, and he fought against it.

This was a rocksmote. He had control over his body even if it failed or broke or tore— and with that body so frail, his blade seared through the back of the Xian tens of meters away. A pillar of flame rose in his path and cut through scale and skin no matter, until it melted the plates over the Xian and its head cocked back at him.

The golden glare turned back. Wings raised, tail curled, maw open. This time it did not spare any time. One second Li Bo retracted his shoulder back, a sphere of aquamarine frost shot out of the Xian.

The sphere rolled and dove at him, freezing clouds and the very air itself, and his body did but a single tilt to the left.

Heavens trembled at the explosion of Qi. A star burst forth, a light so bright Li Bo lost his vision. Then a boom, and his footing on the sword itself weakened. Knees down, his body flew away and away, and a chill spread from his left foot up to his left eye.

One eye he pried open and saw his limbs ice. One glance back, he saw a hundred meter trail of ice falling down to the earth.

This was a Xian.

This was the helplessness of mankind before the monsters that defied nature.

‘‘AAAAAGH!‘‘

Li Huan once more delved from the sky so high and so cold with a lance of flame. She shouted at her target and did not see his figure.

Li Bo opened his mouth but his throat did not let out a voice. He glared at her to stay back, but his eyelids moved so slow they did not press on themselves quick enough. One hand he raised but no lotus bloomed.

He watched, ever so slowly, the Xian weave in the air and aim at his sister an Aquamarine ball of Qi.

Frost cackled, Li Huan dove down, and the flames in her hand sizzled.

Ten meters away from the Xian, her flames snuffed out. Her expression died, a blank stare of confusion instead of wrath. And Li Bo saw Xian move out of her way with ease.

At the moment the world lost its colors, the aquamarine sphere faded into a shower of pure Qi.

Li Huan shot down faster. Her flight sword shook and regained balance, where she retreated at lightning speed and together Li Bo and Li Huan, shivering, gazed at the dark countenance of the smiling Xian. It cast a satisfied glare down at the earth.

‘‘The deed is done, our presence is no more meaningful.‘‘

Its scaled wings glowed silver and burst forth a tempest. One clap of thunder from its flapping winds resounded and it disappeared from their eyes.

Li Bo, unmoving but unsteady, looked all around. He made two turns of his head, but still no Xian he could find. Then he saw Li Huan float over to him and saw her teary eyes and frighteningly pale cheeks. Bits of frost remained in her small eyelashes.

‘‘Senior brother...‘‘

Clouds over and around them gathered once more, as if the force they were so afraid of left and they found freedom. Faster, stronger, these white and dark fumes piled on top of each other and made a ginormous body of gray and from within left large flakes of crystal snow. The wind they bent to their will lashed against the brother and the sister, whistling, but Li Bo heard none of it.

He took a step to get on her flying sword and hugged her with his right arm. He patted her hair as she cried. From his palm he let out a transparent veil of red and warmed up her back.

The heavens gained weight and buried the faint Sunlight. The silhouette of the landscape he could no longer see except a hazy line over the horizon. But that, Li Bo did not think of much. One foot on his, the other on Li Huan‘s sword, he pushed his Qi carefully into both. Runes lit up their feet and cast shadows on their robes stained white and wet.

Their sorry figures floated down amidst the shrill winds of the brewing storm and when they came a hundred meters above the earth Li Huan let go of his robes. She wiped her nose with her sleeves and gazed down. As if an afterthought hit her, the least of the red on her cheeks went away.

‘‘Caicai...Caicai!‘‘

Her shout spread so loud yet found no answer.

‘‘Senior brother! Senior brother, go down faster! He must have-‘‘

Li Bo gave one glance her way, then looked afar. ‘‘I am searching for him. You keep your eyes open as well.‘‘

She let out a muffled ‘‘Yes.‘‘ and started glaring at every single mound there was before their eyes. Around twenty meters above, Li Bo stopped and closed his eyes.

From his stomach rose a distasteful feeling, shooting, in a straight line, up to his left eye which he pried open through the frost on the lids. The world turned purple, and he saw a red figure buried deep in the ground. But the sight was so faint, and the state of it too unstable. Like the last embers of an exhausted fire it persisted deep in cold and earth. Not the sign of a living person, but of someone giving their last breath.

Li Bo shut his left eye and opened both with trembling pupils. ‘‘Do not let out that breath!‘‘

‘‘What?‘‘

Li Bo stepped back on his sword and put one hand on his left shoulder. ‘‘I found him. Go look around for his pouch and map.‘‘

‘‘...‘‘ She muttered something, or just moved her lips, Li Bo was not sure. But she nodded and Li Huan flew away. Li Bo crashed down to the earth and started running at the place he saw.

‘‘Junior brother!‘‘ He shouted. ‘‘Junior brother!‘‘

No reply. But that was no problem. All he needed was to deliver a sound. The sign of hope, so that Zhang Cai knew he had the chance to get out of there.

‘‘Junior brother!‘‘ He said and leaped above where he was buried. The snow around seemed new, not filled in a minute or two, and also lower than the terrain around. One step he was about to smash on before Li Bo halted it mid-air.

‘‘I need to take him out safe and steady.‘‘ If he shook Zhang Cai as he was now, Li Bo was not sure he would be safe. Or if he was safe still. It was not that he did not keep the heat vision up out of efficiency, but because of worry. His heart would not take it, he knew, if that light was to flicker out on his way. Or what if it had already done so?

One hand he pushed Qi in and put on the ground. Through it a ring of warmth spread visible to the eye and a mass of steam rose in great fumes of silver. As they rose and bent in shape to the winds around them, Li Bo smelled blood amidst the nose-reddening cold. The last bits of steam rose crimson in color.

‘‘Junior...brother...‘‘

Zhang Cai lay there, a head and chest above a mass gathering of shattered rocks, the rest buried. One hand peeking out of the rubble, on his ravaged chest, and pale eyes looking to his side...his head had a gnarly gash spreading from the eyebrow to the top of the forehead. Curly brown locks of his hair slumped on both of his cheeks.

Li Bo leaped down and crouched, and he moved the rubble down and smashed the big ones in his fist until he saw the entirety of Zhang Cai above and well.

‘‘These legs...‘‘ the ankles were bent weird, and the legs themselves purple. The rest of his body had red and blue and purple all over as well, but Li Bo could not tell at a glance which was frostbite and which was a bruise. From his right hand he summoned two veils of flames more warm than hot.

He held Zhang Cai‘s head up and listened to his breath. For a few seconds he waited in silence, amidst the screaming gales whipping snow into them, where his eyes rested on the chest and the torn amateur bandaging which he knew Li Huan could not succeed to do so worse even if she wanted to. Then he had a vision of Zhang Cai and Li Huan flying in front of him from weeks back when they traveled under the setting Sun of the grassy plains, and he smiled at them and they smiled at him.

That sight struck him so harshly that Li Bo‘s hands trembled. One more second, he heard no breath, and he did not dare dirty Zhang Cai‘s body with his poisoned Qi to check.

Then amidst all the chaos and whipping he heard a faint swish.

‘‘...‘‘

And then he saw Zhang Cai‘s chest rise a tiny bit and fall that much. So unnoticeable, so small that he noticed when he could not have any other day.

‘‘Haah.‘‘ A deep sigh came from his chest. A weight so heavy, enormous, rolled down his shoulders that he felt as if he could fly with his body alone. Then he thought.

‘‘Why am I so relieved? For what reason am I relieved?‘‘

Why, indeed, since he was not someone so warm to others to bond easily, nor did he intend any time. The day he saw this boy in a similar state in that Wasteland, all he had in mind was the basic decency of a human being and a fellow cultivator. He did not think of Zhang Cai as another Wahlidian berserker or beast, nor of a vagrant which so many of them tried to reach glory and gain attention by wrecking themselves. For him, this boy three years younger was but a child.

But time had wonders of it alone, and the boy had his own twisted innocence that Li Bo could not resist to see. The help he provided was excessive on the outside. But he did not think of it that way.

Zhang Cai‘s chest rose a tad bit higher this time. Li Bo forced his half-frozen left arm to move and took out new bandages and a waterskin. He held it, warmed it up with his Qi, and poured the water on Zhang Cai. He had nothing to disinfect the wounds, nor could he do so with the state he already was. Simple cleaning of the wounds he could do and put some bandages to suppress the remaining bleeding.

‘‘Senior brother.‘‘

Li Huan‘s shadow washed over them and Li Bo looked up. A few meters above them she stood at the edge of the pitfall, grasping a pair of martial arts books ripped in two and a shredded map about to fall apart.

He looked at the torn edges, then at Li Huan who leaped beside him. She cast a fearful look at Zhang Cai, her gaze laying on his chest.

‘‘Good job.‘‘ He said. ‘‘Help me with these.‘‘

‘You sit down.‘‘ She said and stole the bandage and water from his hands.

Li Bo did not argue. He settled down beside Zhang Cai‘s head, still holding the boy‘s own up and warming his back.

‘‘I will cast a fire.‘‘ She said.

‘‘You can not achieve one so precise.‘‘

‘‘...I can.‘‘

‘‘This is no time to be proud, junior sister.‘‘

She kept her gaze on him for a few moments, then raised one palm up and cast a ball of fire more hot than warm. Yet it did not descend, remaining above them in a way that melted snow and warmed Li Bo, without touching Zhang Cai. Without any words she crouched and went back to treating Zhang Cai.

Looking at her empty gaze and slow motions, Li Bo let out a silent sigh.

‘‘What am I gonna do with this girl?‘‘