Zhang Cai watched the dawn break in silence. He was resting on his knees, receiving the orange rays of the Divine gold with his right face. His cheeks were rosy, burning, and his lips let out faint breaths much like musings. His blade laid down at his left, and his sheath at his right, and his map was laid in front of him which he kept gazing at.

His master was not that far from the Farstone Holding. Even now, his color remained blue, unmoving from that particular spot before a river parting his path. He had a faint feeling of the reason, but it remained faint. That was no conclusive answer, nor a proper thought. Knowing himself longer than his master, he knew there was a wishful attitude in him towards his master’s actions.

He did not mind it. Instead, he smiled. He rolled up the bright map and pushed it inside the spatial pouch. He took his blade from his left and raised the scabbard from his right. A sleek sound echoed as he slid it in, and he rested its tip on the earth to push himself up.

The sea bubbled behind him, washing the cliffs, and in front of him stood five people cloaked in scarlet robes. Not one feature of them could be seen, for their robes were loose and wide and wrinkly, dragging their ends through the ground.

Zhang Cai glanced at them and felt the one at the front as the strongest of the lot. Even then, they were fourth-step Glassmade, no threat to the current him. They also bore a baleful aura around them that reeked of blood.

’’I won’t kill you.’’ He said. The five of them nodded at the same time, and replied in unison, making it unclear who was of what gender.

’’We know.’’

’’I have no business with demonics.’’ he said.

’’We are aware, senior.’’

’’Then please get out of my way.’’

’’We do not obstruct you, senior.’’ They said, ’’We cannot hope to, senior.’’

Zhang Cai pulled the neckline of his robe and straightened its wrinkles. ’’Then...’’

What was he to say to them? Bid farewell? They were the same kind of the fellows that caused harm to him and Li siblings. They were the ones that poisoned Li Bo, caused him much suffering, and perhaps brought the attention of that Xian to him.

’’No, they can’t even if they want to.’’

He considered his words, and the lot of them kept their invisible gaze on him. Moments passed by in that awkward silence, where a single owl unaware of time hooted deep inside the island’s unlit darkness.

’’I don’t need to say anything, do I?’’

He certainly did not. There was no point in thinking of words to speak to them, no matter how curious he might be on some matters. He had more urgent matters to attend, a sea to ascend, and a master to chase.

He took out the sword of flight and willed his Qi to fill their runes. Both feet glued to its blunt blade, he cast a final glance at the gathering and flew up and away.

’’We pray for your safe return, senior.’’

He halted mid-air and looked back at them.

None uttered a single sound. A wave crashed at the cliffs under him, and the owl stopped its hooting.

Zhang Cai moved on. He flew over the trees of the island and went past those weird leaves at the other side of the shore. He descended the cliffs and moved over the bubbly waves. When he flew further away from the island, however, he felt a jolt go through his spine.

This queer feeling made him stop where he was. He pressed on the hilt of the blade and flew back, curious—another jolt rose and went. Bewildered, Zhang Cai gave his weight to the tip of the blade and went forward; another jolt, this striking feeling of constricting nerves spread around his body.

’’Is this the barrier’s fault?’’

He did not know what exactly caused the feeling, nor what it did. But it assured him of his decision to depart here at a moment’s notice. He would do better going over the sea than staying at the base of the demonics which he learned to never trust again.

He sped up and left the island behind him, sailing by himself across the lone sea where no creature was in sight. He saw no shadows creeping upon him this time, and for some more he did not notice any.

A few minutes passed at most when he felt sweat gathering on his back. Not little nor momentary, but a constant stream of hot beads of sweat that wet his robes. As if all pores of his body were let loose, the droplets swam down through his nape and shoulders until they stopped at his bottom.

His breath ragged, Zhang Cai stopped. He grasped his throat, caressed it, trying to suppress the fire growing from within. His vocal cords smelled of ash, his vision went hazy, and his fingers trembled alongside his shivering spine. In but a single instant he was raving in a raging fever, which halted his movements but not his mental faculties. In that frenzy, unable to understand what exactly happened, he managed to look back at the island, now a dot across the horizon, and found a moment of respite.

Then he looked back to his path and shuddered. There was something wrong with his body. Something too wrong to be chalked up as anything ordinary. It came from within, and that feeling from within told him to go back to the island. This was no pull nor call. It was a feeling apparent to him. There was nothing to misunderstand here.

He fell on his knees on the surface of the sea, rocking back and forth with the waves, and understood what it was.

It was his instinct. His gut feeling. Sixth sense, or whatever one might call it. This was no feeling of reluctance to leave the island, as a charm spell might make one think, or a passion to remain there. It was the simple intuition of a cultivator that he was in danger, and that danger was unsurmountable even with a miracle.

Zhang Cai watched his trembling fingers and clenched them. His teeth clattered against each other, his pupils shook, and when he looked at the reflection of his miserable self on the sea he saw a aquamarine scale form in the sky.

His fever died, his throat cooled, and his spine straightened. His knees, now with mighty strength, stood up and his fingers dug into his palms with fury. In but a single moment he was back on his feet, a meter over the seas.

Yet also in that single moment, a hundred meters above him, echoed the mighty roar of a silver-blue, armored Xian. The beast was coming to life above him, materializing from divine light that echoed the power of a being higher than Threshold. Its tails led way to a gigantic belly, where Zhang Cai’s pupils shrunk at the large stretching black mark, and then the head with its terrifying golden glare.

Four horns crowned atop its head, each crackling with frost, in icy-blue, and remains of a metallic plate could be seen near its long ears. Down its neck were small marks and cracked scales, flowing down to the wings so wide they cast a large shadow over Zhang Cai’s tiny figure.

Zhang Cai gulped, entire body shivering, and he grasped his dark blade. His heartbeats resounded across the shaking waves.

’’We have found you...at last.’’

Two sets of chains rounded the Xian’s hindlegs, enchanted with magic unfamiliar to Zhang Cai. Yet, he knew that magic had no hold on him or the Xian. That magic, which had purpose unknown, would not matter to anything that would happen here, at this instant.

’’Move.’’ he whispered.

’’You have cheated death twice. But no more-’’ the Xian’s entire body came to be, and the divine diamond light blinked out of existence. ’’No more, death will take you in its gentle embrace.’’

’’Pray! Pray, mortal son of the rebellious ones!’’

Zhang Cai pulled the blade out of its sheath. That was all he could do. He had fury in him, brewing so harsh that his belly churned with disgust. Yet his qi did not move. He willed it, he pulled it, he begged for it.

But it did not move. All he could do was to unsheathe a mere blade. The intense fear of this being before him paralyzed everything in him. He realized, then, that what he felt was no small matter like gut or sixth sense. It was the primal fear of mankind, who served those greater than them for hundreds of years.

He was a servant before the Xian. A mere prey before this beast.

’’Pray to our goddess Bir-gele, so that she might spare you the quickest death ever known to the slave kind!’’

A moment came to pass then, where wind screeched against his ears and the golden glare of the beast came upon him with all its force. His chest flared up with a familiar pain that should not be there.

’’...bah!’’ The Xian laughed. Its wings slapped against each other, beating down winds from the sky as it descended, and coiled itself around Zhang Cai. Its feet did not sink into the waters, but rippled against its surface. But those chains around its hind legs did sink, and they tugged at it.

Just the maw of it was three times his size, and now that it was all around him, Zhang Cai saw no sunlight. All before his sight was the silver-blue gleam of its splendid scales, its playful tail, and the few feathers at its ends that brushed his ear.

’’Move.’’

His grasp on the blade trembled.

’’Move.’’

The blade inched forward, and a loud laughter escaped from the Xian.

’’MOVE! WHY WON’T YOU MOVE!? WHY!?’’

What was this FRIGHT?

’’WHY AM I AFRAID OF A MERE BEAST?’’

’’Oh, you are such an interesting one.’’ The Xian said. ’’We have faced you at your worst, and you possessed such a gallant spirit! You, who possessed no power back then, was a sight most entertaining!’’

Its head coiled around him again, and Zhang Cai came face to face with the golden iris and the shining horns of the crown. The Xian was most amused. Its breath reeked of iron and rot.

’’So where is that will gone? You hold power, but no courage? What was that amusing sight you have shown us back then?’’

Zhang Cai gnashed his teeth.

The Xian was asking the same questions he wondered. Why was this the case?

’’Ah, you have realized, have you not?’’

The Xian took a deep sniff and raised its long neck up into the heavens to laugh. It laughed well, too merry, as if a great fortune befell on it that would not upon a century again.

’’You know, now, of your nature! You are a mere slave born of the weak lot, the dregs of Mother Nature! You, of the pitiful slavekind, have no way of conquering us! You have no way of defeating us, breaking us, destroying us—’’

Its neck snapped down and their noses touched. ’’As we have done so to your undeserving kin.’’

Zhang Cai shuddered. If all he felt until this moment was fear, then what he felt at that instant was unbounded, unchecked indignation. Frustration. Rage. Spite.

Fires of wrath enveloped his thrumming heart. His throat seared, belly blazed, his feet and hands warmed up and his face reddened. In his entire being, even in his gaze, kindled the embers of a flame about to set off. A flame so grand, so large it would burn not only his sights but him as well with his entire beings.

’’...furious, are you?’’ The Xian let out a small chuckle. The beast was quite enjoying his reactions, Zhang Cai realized, and this dampened his spirits. The momentum faded for but a moment, until he saw through many glimmering silver-blue scales an ashen mark stretching across its belly.

A wound so large and great, the Xian could not recover from it in months. A mark so splendid its memory ignited all emotions inside him buried deep within. The indignation of his left unchecked gave birth to a new kind of courage through which Zhang Cai found his Qi movable again.

His hands no longer trembled, for he gripped them so tight the hilt of his dark blade creaked under the strength. The water beneath his feet rippled as well, and the sword of flight hummed a splendid tune hailing the scene.

He was not a prey. He was not a servant. They were not the words defining him, or those around him. By the high heavens, anything the Xian spouted was no truth but mere boasting.

But he knew why he was so afraid. He knew why he felt so weak, for even that one failed to stop this beast in its tracks. But he was not helpless. He was one that faced this bastard of a worm face-first for the sake of his friend, even poisoned, and came as the winner—for if not for Zhang Cai’s life, what was the Xian looking for? If it could not get that one thing it so wished and strived, it would not be the victor.

All Zhang Cai needed, then, was to not forfeit his life.

’’I will make a soup out of your innards and give your scales to the beggars.’’

’’...Hah?’’

’’I will feed your flesh to insects below the earth and fishes down the seas.’’

’’Have you gone mad? How dare a slavekind-’’

Zhang Cai stomped down on the sword and dove into the sea.

A moment passed by where the Xian was too stunned to react, gazing into the small splash and the ripples left in Zhang Cai’s wake.

Its scaly features contorted, fangs grinding against each other, and its neck shot down into the waters. Deep inside the sea, looking through the blue scenery it saw Zhang Cai diving through the waters south. The sword beneath his feet propelled him forward, where his hands clawed at the water and pushed the sea away.

There was nothing stopping him, and this absurd development enraged the Xian. It let out a mighty roar echoing across kilometers and gathered its breath. From its open jaws rose an aquamarine sphere of frost, revolving round and round until the sea around it froze.

’’We will deliver our quest, no matter the consequence!’’

The sphere exploded forth.

A wave of frost spread across the sea and into it, raising waves in all directions. They rose dozens of meters high, the winds themselves whipped them to motion, then the cold struck.

One moment passed and the roaring waves remained solid. A mound of frost hills and slopes came to be for several hundred meters in front of the Xian.

A loud crack resounded across the scenery, where the Xian’s head snapped in its direction, and Zhang Cai leaped out of a shattered wave to dive back into the sea. He pressed on the blade again, diving a few meters down, and willed his Qi to move through his fingers.

His affinity with water helped him greatly, for with two motions of his ten fingers he could move the sea away from his path. With nothing to obstruct his way he sped up and shot for that peculiar island where no beast could enter. He had a hope there, for if he could stall the Xian for a time it would be possible to come up with a counter-attack. He had a great conviction in that.

Water was his domain, after all. It was a pretty obvious fact, but he realized it after the night on that island. He felt stronger here, in the middle of the strait, for it was the farthest from the land with the deepest seabed across its width. So he wished for it. Unlike Li Bo, who fought in a domain favoring the opponent, he might have a chance to best the Xian.

’’No, not a chance,’’ Zhang Cai shot a glare at his back, to the Xian’s cast shadow gliding right above him. ’’I will definitely destroy that bitch of a monster!’

A roar resounded behind and Zhang Chai shot upwards. He broke through the bubbling veil of water and saw the Xian rising from where he had been a moment ago, vomiting large amounts of water. Its roars came muffled for a second, but its Qi let its presence known. Across the twinkling starfield that was the world, Zhang Cai saw the Xian’s Qi, a towering colossus hundred times his own.

His pupils shrank ’’A chance? I have a chance against that?’’

A moment of doubt gave way to carelessness, and the Xian clawed at his back.

Zhang Cai slid right, rotating his body with the sword under his feet to avoid, and slashed the dark blade at the exposed scales of the Xian. Embers rose from the clash and a shrill whistle echoed, then the rebounding force sent him flying right.

He rolled across the surface of the water, grasping the dark blade to not let it fall, and found himself unable to find balance on the sword. His head slapped against the sea one last time before he stopped.

One glance down, he saw one of the runes scratched by a claw mark. He willed Qi, and the sword turned left instead of right, making him run headfirst into the incoming claws.

Zhang Cai put one hand forward. Twenty pulls of Qi bloomed forth from his palms into a flowing deep blue lotus. The Xian tore at him.

A massive impact blasted waves away from them, raining droplets over their faces, and both glared at each other with intense wrath.

Zhang Cai veiled his blade with aquamarine Qi, imitating the crimson blade of Li Bo, and stabbed forth at the Xian‘s exposed forehead.

The beast, for the first moment in their confrontation, showed fear. It retreated out of the blade‘s reach and stretched its neck around him to bite his head off.

Zhang Cai realized it instantly. He knew why it was afraid, and he did so to gauge that reaction as well.

‘‘Li Bro, you are saving me again and again.‘‘

There was no way that he could imitate Li Bo‘s crimson blade. It was a martial art of the Li Family, after all, and the precision with which Li Bo coated his sword was not something within Zhang Cai‘s reach. His own master favored body arts, fists to blades. The first one proper technique itself was the Lotus Shield.

The other, he had shelved for later, since it would take time to master.

He flew under the incoming jaw and fashioned a round moon in the air, cutting through the chin of the Xian. It flapped its wings and retreated a dozen meters away.

Using the chance, Zhang Cai cast a glance back and saw the island at most five hundred meters away. That island was his hope. It was his everything. Demonics and whatnot did not matter; as long as he reached there, as long as he found respite and a moment to learn what he had to learn, he would be able to teach this beast what it meant being of the mankind.

So he gave his best.

Zhang Cai pushed his Qi into the sword of flight, willing it left instead of right. He sped across the surface of the water, the Xian flying by his side, and they struck at each other again and again.

Claws did not reach him by a hair‘s width, cutting his curly locks one by one. The frost from its jaws he cut with his blade, and his stabs missed their marks by the twist of a neck or a tail.

Zhang Cai jumped over a frozen sphere and used Lotus Shield. A aquamarine, flowing lotus bloomed in front of him and met the headbutt of the Xian.

The four horns pierced through its veils and slammed him in the chest.

He flew away and rolled across the water, splashing waves across the way. One gaze to his back he saw himself a little further away from the island. It had realized his aim.

‘‘We will not let you!‘‘

‘‘YOU WILL!‘‘

His blade of water slashed across the sea and struck the Xian in the belly. The dragon recoiled for a moment and Zhang Cai shot back towards the island.

‘‘WEAK!‘‘

With the roar, another chilly gust washed over him. He did not need to look, for he knew what was coming for him. All he had to do was to keep looking forward.

Forward, straight, right to those rocky cliffs approaching faster and faster in his sight.

Qi surged like a mad bull behind him. A hurricane rose in all directions, waves wild in stride and high in length.

Zhang Cai let go of the sword of flight and grasped it with his left hand.

‘‘Just a little closer.‘‘

He was just over there. A few seconds would be enough.

‘‘You will not cheat death before us, ever again!‘‘

One more second would be enough—

‘‘You bas-‘‘

Zhang Cai put both swords before him and watched the sphere fly at his chest.

In half a second it was in his face. Frost flakes touched his dark nose, turning them cherry red, and in another half a second five scarlet crescents flashed before him.

His blades bore the sphere on them, cracking under pressure, and the blood-red crescents of Qi slashed the sphere into pieces. Qi deviated, waves halted, and then all went white.

The shockwave pushed him back, freezing his hands and his nose. Yet his face did not turn to ice— something pulled Zhang Cai behind the silver sheen blocking the strike. A boom sounded across the sea and a great portion of the blue expanse turned white. Hills, nay, perhaps mountains came to be before his very eyes made of ice.

The Xian flew across them, breaking each into pieces with its wings and horns, until through the debris of its own creation it roared and slammed into the barrier. Its claws slashed across the silver veil, glittering it bright, yet did it no damage. It thrashed, crashed, smashed itself on the barrier, all the while glaring into Zhang Cai‘s very being.

But it could not breach it.

Zhang Cai let out a loud laugh. He roared with laughter at the embarrassment of a Xian, who let out no wise speech but beastly shrieks of enrage. At last, when his joy died and the Xian huffed before the veil, he took a glance back.

There stood five figures cloaked in scarlet robes, no features seen, wielding chains of blood-red which tugged him back onto the island.

He could find no words to speak to them, and he did not find for an entire minute until they all spoke in unison.

‘‘It is a great fortune to see you return safe, senior.‘‘