Slowly, I climbed to my feet. Albeit a little shakily.

My eyes subconsciously fall down to the woman’s diced body.

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. There’s a lot of blood pooled around her, everywhere. Much of it is still wet and soaking the ground.

Just as I’m about to look closer at the body remains, I take a step back and look away, trying not to throw up…

My stomach had automatically had turned at the sight.

I don’t want to look at it.

…

I really don’t want to look at it.

Why is this so different for me, then when the insects had eaten those men?

… It’s because she’s a woman. Was a woman.

Even if she betrayed me, there was that last moment. That last fucking moment of pity… both infuriating and humanizing.

Fuck. I’m able to not really think of the other guys that died, because they were clearly bad people.

Or that’s what I want to tell myself.

I might have to face the actual issue… that I have a subconscious, favorable bias towards women. I’m sure that Vermillion Stripe guy had his own circumstances.

Though that’s admittedly harder to argue.

Nonetheless, I have to deal with this issue. And get out of here.

I’m sure surviving something like this… is going to cause some waves.

With my heart a little stabilized, I choose to look back at the remains.

An image flashes through my mind of a pile of diced pork. They have sliced even the bones into neat, nearly rectangular chunks.

I barely hold on to my stomach contents for the second time. Once I regain control, I reengage.

Using my scan, I investigate the situation to determine what exactly transpired here.

From what I can gather, it is clear this was a hit from the Alchemist’s Guild.

There were several stages to this assassination. The first was to see if poisons could affect me. Which were administered twice by the red-haired young woman.

Her teeth must have had some type of poison on it, and when that didn’t work, she used a talisman of sorts. That item summoned a spiritual sword covered in a poisonous aura, which was stabbed into me at high speeds. It looks like it only had the energy for one stab and injection.

The cultivator must have been waiting to see if she succeeds and when she unknowingly failed, they killed her and it was with an attack that a low tier cultivator couldn’t survive. Let alone a normal person.

… There’s always the chance that they were always planning on killing her. Which might actually be the case in this situation. Though, I suppose her speaking up must have sealed her fate.

Ultimately, it looks like she was just a poor woman, looking to get a good start in a sect. Hoping to gain the support of a powerful group.

On the other hand, the cultivator was likely someone who works with them regularly. My estimates put her cultivation level at the mid Qi Condensation tier. Seems like she could only pull off two of those attacks before exhausting all of his strength…

Which is a significant investment for a cultivator, showing the importance of the Alchemist’s Guild’s request to the cultivator.

That’s still frightening in itself, and is a good reminder that even cultivators at this first stage, not even considered true cultivators, have tricks up their sleeves that could easily end a person.

I turn my thoughts to my allies. Since there were no spiders close to me, Gong wasn’t notified of my near-death experience. Clearly a major oversight on our part.

Lin and Ai seem to be having no trouble. Additionally, Big Sis Crane’s people are nearby. Likely, they must be under direct protection.

… wait. Why didn’t I get protection?

I’ll have to keep that in mind for later. This could have been a test of sorts, or backroom deals being made.

Worst case, she stepped aside to allow it to happen.

I wouldn’t put it past Big Sis Crane to be using this to test my capabilities… or get rid of a loose end.

Especially, after I’ve already setup the demi humans and Gong for success.

The question I need to know, is what she told Gong.

… Likely that the presence of her people would draw attention. Which is a lie because of her invisible personnel. Another reason I have to be cautious in revealing my abilities.

With this on my mind, I now look down at my clearly nude body.

I’ll need to take care of this.

There are some ragged things that were once cloths nearby. Clearly unsafe, smelly, and horrendously stained. I tame quite a few bugs nearby, including spiders, filth eating insects, and anything else that can help with this. A sizable amount.

Using them, I have them clean and patch together a semi decent pair of clothes for myself.

This takes a lot longer than I thought.

The cleaning part was straightforward… since there were so many waste eating bugs with strange enzymes that broke down the cloth into fibers.

It’s rebuilding that from scratch which took forever.

Apparently, it takes a long time to do these things.

Enough time for a few homeless people to wander near the alleyway, see the blood and remains, but not me.

They immediately ‘noped’ away.

Smart decision.

This takes an hour, already eating into the time that is left, before cultivator escort leaves.

However, I end up with a nice and finely made cloth/silk pants and shirt combo. There’s also a robe with a hood and mask, to hide my identity a little better this time. Form fitting and perfect for moving and fighting around in. Only my eyes are revealed, like a bank robber's mask, without the mouth opening. It has layers in a way that allows me to take off individual pieces with a bit of work.

The downside? I feel suspicious as hell. Luckily, this is normal attire for some cultivators. Especially ones that need to hide their identity. Unsurprisingly, this is a regular thing in this world.

Since this made with spiders’ silk, it’s also absurdly durable for its weight.

It’s to the point where I’m pretty sure a knife wouldn’t go through this. Now a spiritual sword is another matter, but I think it could do well against general stabbing and slicing.

We should make something out of the ones back home… And with how crazy the spider’s abilities are now? It should be bonkers.

The clothing is quite hot, though. Luckily, I have the healing constitution. So, it’s not a problem for me. They’ll need to adjust it, though.

Great for cave temperatures, though. Ai and Lin always had to bundle up quite a bit.

Gong typically makes clothes herself, which is why I haven’t thought about it too much. She didn’t seem to go into the same level of detail with them as these spiders have.

I connect one spider to her, leaving these others for myself. I end up sending over my thoughts to Gong, through the spider connection.

She replies that she’ll give it a try.

I mention that I was attacked and nearly killed. Attempting to explain a bit of what happened.

Thankfully, I can feel genuine surprise and anger from her, but immensely glad that it failed. Then, she goes into information broker mode. Basically, asking questions and specifics about what happened. She ends with suggesting I lie low, by all means. At least until I get to the sect. To use the mask and hood. To act different.

She mentions that she’ll tell Big Sis Crane and see what she can do to stop them from taking further action. I can hear the confusion in her voice, on why she didn’t already.

Gong seems pretty confident that this will be the last that the Alchemist Guild will do, considering the situation and what will now be Big Sis Crane’s influence on the situation.

Which is something I’m not sure how to feel about.

It shows that she could have done so earlier. Further adding to my suspicion that this was allowed by her.

And that once again, Gong will stick out her neck on my behalf.

Despite my misgivings, I deeply thank her for the tips and help before disconnecting. Moving on to use my scan to check out my physical cues. I keep the spider near me from now on.

For the next 10 mins, I practice using a completely different walking style.

A tidbit I learned from my scan and vaguely remembered from my world. You can actually identify people, based on how they walk, with no other visual cues. Artificially intelligence could do this, relatively consistently by the time I had left.

The next 10 minutes is used to try different voices, until I find one that sounds believable, using my scan. A much lower toned one.

My healing constitution allows me to not completely wreck my vocal cords, though it feels quite irritating, being constantly repaired.

I might get a magnificent singing voice out of it, though. Win win.

Normally, all of these things would take much longer for me to learn, and I would try to internalize it a bit.

But even as I may be thinking calmly… I am absolutely terrified. The fear only grows as I continue to internalize what had just happened.

All of it has come back to bite me. My carelessness. How I tend to trust women in trouble.

They finally came for me. I knew it could happen. They even knew which ways to get my trust and to not use an obvious weapon. Which means they know I can react to things quickly, likely from my battle with the cultivator. They knew I was weak to women in trouble.

Hell. They may have planned that situation earlier to bait me in.

And now from this attack, they will now know that surprise attacks are effective.

Even more so, they know I have some way to come back from attacks of this level. A dangerous ability.

Whether they take that as a sign to back up and not offend someone with potentially strong enough backing to survive this… or decide to finish off a potentially dangerous foe, will be shown later.

While I refuse to not help people in need, I’ll need to turn my scan up a notch from now on. Even if it hurts.

I need to know if I’m facing someone with potential and intention to kill me.

And… even if people may get hurt, I may have to wait for a bit. To make sure I fully understand the situation.

Running into this situation headfirst almost got me killed. A quick scan of her could have revealed part of the situation.

Fuck.

I’m tired of making these mistakes, but do I really have to be paranoid about every damn thing and person?!

Sigh.

Nothing to be done about it. I guessed it when I arrived here. This is just the type of place this is.

It’s my job to change it. To make that difference, that others won’t. I just need to keep getting smarter at how I do it.

With this thought in mind, I make my scan slightly more detailed. Interpreting a little more data and feeding it into me more.

My real intuition has been getting better since using the ability in a vaguer way, and actually helps with this. Based on this, I should be able to determine potential hidden weapons.

Even more importantly, I will now be able to better recognize the threat of certain actions or weapons.

Unfortunately, this will give me quite a bit more than a headache. Continuously. It will be a while before this pain goes away from growing through it.

A necessary sacrifice.

As soon as I start the ability, a large ringing pain goes through my head. Like a person jamming a stake in my head, wiggling it back and forth.

It’s much worse than I thought.

There’s a difference between knowing how much pain there is and experiencing it.

Then choosing to fight through it.

My concentration is nearly broken, and it is difficult to focus completely. Not totally enough to disable me… but enough that my reaction speed is affected.

But the sacrifice in reaction speed is worth being able to determine that there is a threat in the first place.

Eventually, this will go away.

God… I really hope this pain eventually goes away.

I fucking hate pain. But never again with this.

I’ll need to train my pain tolerance eventually too. Another day, though.

… Much later on.

Guiltily, even this situation doesn’t make me want to go through more pain tolerance training. Other than what I’m doing now.

Nonetheless, I find myself a little more prepared to try this again. I’ve identified some weaknesses in myself. Areas to grow in. But this is not the best time to fix all of them and build my strengths. I’ll need more time for that.

My mind moves onto the next challenge.

I head out of this area, through a different alleyway. Sneaking around and using my scan the whole way.

I wasn’t caught.

Let’s see if this works.