Ivor was running as fast as he possibly could. “Why was I the bait for the zombies whywasIthebaitforthezombies?! Dammit Silkpants!”

Painless let out a chuckle of schadenfreude. “Well you did organize the hunt, and you’re the only one of us with lightning resistance, so it seemed obvious that you’d be the bait.”

Ivor snapped back furiously while barely managing to hop over a lightning bolt aimed at his feet. “Why do we even need bait?! Couldn’t we just fight the zombies?!”

The rest of the group had gotten a good ways away from the zombies at this point. Silkpants sighed with satisfaction. “It’s because you woke me up at three in the morning and this is SO fucking cathartic.”

Ivor grumbled in protest. “Ass. Anyways, let’s just take these guys down. Tiger% glitchless. We need a gold split right here for a chance at getting world record, and the decoy skip is outdated. It’s frame perfect, but maybe we try the JUST FUCKING KILL THE ZOMBIES STRAT?!”

Silkpants spat at Ivor, who barely managed to duck under the spittle, which flew into a zombie’s face and blew its head off. Ivor gave him the stink eye and spoke with palpable sarcasm. “Thank you so much for the help which was definitely not life threatening in any way. God, you’re almost as bad as Painless.”

Painless spoke up at the mention of his name. “Hey, don’t compare me to him! When I go for friendly fire, I don’t miss.”

Ivor was bombarded with a hail of lightning from zombies ahead before sprinting out of a cloud of smoke that resulted from the collision. At long last, Lireh made her move. Talismans flew out of her sleeve and formed a cloud, which enveloped her before dispersing, a talisman flying toward and attaching itself to each nearby zombie. “The activation of a talisman is a type of death. It’s an end to something magnificent, although not at the same level of the miracle of life. Even in the simple act of activating a talisman there’s countless layers of profundity. Even if, like these ones, all the talisman does is explode, if you understand the true profundity of the activation it can do so, so much more. For example, it sucks in qi before activation, which can be repurposed as a qi drain attack. In addition, due to the nature of talismans, I can aspect the explosion with dying qi. In addition, I can perpetuate the existence of that qi by delaying the decay of the talisman. With that knowledge, you may understand what’s about to happen. Rigor mortis.”

Scores of zombies.froze in place. Ivor smirked as he saw what had happened. “Were you using that Dao lecture to distract the zombies in the hive mind from sensing your qi. Dying qi is super faint, too. I couldn’t sense it either. Outstanding move that one was. I think that’s a new strat. I bet it saved a few minutes.”

Painless grinned at his roommate’s cunning. “You’re shaping up to be pretty good at this. Life Reaping Art: Harvest the Helpless!”

The zombies that had frozen in place all fell to the ground, dead. The hunting party charged through unobstructed, soon leaving the danger zone outside the sect.

A few minutes of trekking through the forest later, the group came across a clearing, a valley surrounded by hills with an odd hole in the center.

Ivor was panting from all the running. “So, who goes in first? I was the bait last time, so not me. I vote Silkpants.”

A bead of sweat condensed on Silkpants’ brow. “Surely you’re joking, Daoist Treasury. I vote for Painless. He seems like he would be a good fit for a job like this.”

Lireh clapped her hands, silencing Aainless before he could reply. “Painless it is then! Get going! Don’t worry, I can always revive you if you fuck up too badly. You know the price, right?”

Painless softly mumbled in frustration. “Yeah, three beads of refined lifeblood essence. I know. How could I forget with how much you quote it to me?”

Ivor grabbed Painless by the wrist, picked him up, and threw him into the hole. Painless screamed in absolute terror. “Wait this wasn’t the plan! HELP! HELP!”

An abnormally large tiger with brilliant red and metallic blue stripes burst out of the pit aimed straight at Painless. It almost bit them, but as it was about to, a streak of crackling white energy burst out of Ivor’s right hand, which was outstretched from throwing Painless into harm’s way. The lightning struck the tiger in the side of its face, nudging it just a little off course, meaning that although it rammed into Painless and sent him spinning away, it didn’t bite him.

Painless took this opportunity. He pulled a scalpel out of his belt pouch and threw it at the airborne tiger’s neck. It struck home, but it got stuck in the tiger’s thick neck. Painless shouted out. “Harvest thread!”

Life force spilled out of the tiger and into Painless. It stopped when the tiger kicked Painless with its right hind leg, sending him flying to the ground. “This fucker just ruptured my left kidney!”

Ivor snickered, satisfied that he had paid Painless back for the scalpel earlier in the day. “I mean, you knew the risks didn’t you? This is a bona-fide qi infusion Inferno Yuan Tiger, you know? You couldn’t have expected this to be easy. Silkpants, can you stall it? Lireh, I want you to cover it with talismans and use Rigor Mortis. No need for the lecture; this thing isn’t intelligent like the COVID. Painless, you chuck knives at it and drain its life force. As for me, I’ll work with Silkpants to stall it.”

The whole rest of the group nodded in affirmation, although Painless did so somewhat reluctantly. Silkpants jumped as the tiger landed, shooting towards it and kicking it in the flank. He fell to the ground, and in doing so revealed three talismans that were behind his back. They quickly latched onto the tiger. Before Ivor could act, the tiger lit up in a shroud of blue flame. Lireh instantly activated her talismans before they burned away, but they didn’t do too much.

The tiger’s tail lashed out at Silkpants, who blocked by crossing his arms. He was skidding backward three feet, and there was a hole in his clothes revealing a serious burn. Ivor jumped to Silkpants, landing next to him and getting into a defensive stance. “I may have slightly overestimated our capabilities. This’ll be a tough one to win.”

The tiger pounced in a burst of azure fire. Ivor spit some ethereal black goo to his left before his world went slow. He had activated his liver meridian. Black blood welled up at the corners of his eyes, washing out dust and other impurities that had been building in Ivor’s eyes over the course of the day. Alright, what to do? This is a middle-grade qi infusion beast, meaning it has 500 times the peak strength of its own species at the end of the Body Tempering Realm. At present, I’d estimate that it’s about as strong as 120 tigers, based on how much qi is emanating from it. There’s no way I can take a hit from it head on. Silkpants could do it once with the agitated qi from his gallbladder meridian, but there’s a good chance he used the rest of it up with his block. I guess we’ll just have to dodge.

The tiger lost sight of Ivor and Silkpants as a cloud of reddish green gas burst from where they once were. It’s shroud of Azure flame burnt away the gas that tried to get close, but it didn’t manage to hit them. Ivor whistled in relief. “I was pretty worried right there. It’s a bit of a shame that the gas didn’t work, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.”