Fire burst from each of the talismans. In an instant, the room became a sea of flames. The seals on the bottles burned up, and the liquor within caught fire. Glass cracked and snapped. Flames licked at the wooden floor and walls.

“No!” Zui Jiu twisted free of Hui’s grasp and sprinted into the conflagration.

Hui raised a hand to his chin, quietly surveying the room from the heart of the inferno. Huh. I half-expected that to fail. After all, that’s high-realm alcohol, and high-realm glass…

…that Fen Long created, to give Senior a chance to destroy it all and turn herself away from her heart-demon. Ah. So, although it’s high-realm, it’s simultaneously weak, and easy to demolish. He didn’t want to make it hard for them to change their minds, after all. They just had to take the first step themselves.

Mmm, the more I think about it, the worse I feel about freeing Chen Wuya.

Oh well. Compared to this Senior, I much prefer Chen Wuya.

Mortal shook his head. Sectgoer, there’s a limit to being evil! Don’t sympathize with Chen Wuya! He’d beat you up too, you know! Don’t pretend he isn’t beating us up because he isn’t beating you up!

Though I guess I can see his reasoning. After all, Chen Wuya isn’t trying to stick us in vats of alcohol, Rogue commented.

In any case, Hui thought, dismissing the chat group, if I’ve guessed right, Fen Long doesn’t care if she does it or if anyone else does it. The act of destroying her liquor should create an exit. That’s how it worked for Chen Wuya, anyways… according to Chen Wuya, that is.

Hmm…

Oh well. I don’t feel guilty about destroying her alcohol. It’s not good to be so dependent on a substance. Nor is it good to capture innocent cultivators and their innocent snakes and try to flavor wine with them!

Hui rose up into the air, slowly turning. Smoke clouded the relatively small space. With a swish of his sleeve, he sent it swirling away. The entire room laid out before him. Plain wooden walls led to a plain wooden floor and a plain wooden ceiling. Simple shelves had been built into the walls, and when they filled, a veritable maze of counters and free-standing shelving had been built into the center of the room. It wound in on itself, creating an illusion of an infinite space full of alcohol, with bottles in all directions.

The fire raged higher, burning hotter. Hui’s body began to wither. He circulated life qi again, forcing it to remain at least movable. Where would Fen Long put an exit? I never saw the exit in Chen Wuya’s illusory space. Still, he isn’t trying to make it hard on the seniors, so maybe it’ll be obvious?

Even as he thought it, a door appeared in the far wall. It creaked open, offering darkness and a cool respite from the raging flames.

Hui’s eyes lit up. Unhesitatingly, he darted for the door. At last! A way out!

“No!” Zui Jiu howled.

She appeared out of the flames like a demon, trailing flames after her, bottles of liquor clasped under her arms. Hui sprinted for the door, but she moved faster. Shifting one of the liquor bottles to her other arm, she snaked out a hand and grabbed onto Hui’s shoulder.

Hui twisted, but her iron grip refused to let go. She squeezed tighter, leaning in, eyes gleaming with madness. “You’re going down with me. We burn together.”

Lifting a talisman, Hui hesitated, then pointed it at her liquor bottles. Ice spewed out of the talisman and struck the heated glass. A shiver ran through it from top to bottom, and liquor began to slowly leak out of the bottom.

Aha! The glass is weaker. Not only that, but it behaves the same as glass in my world! Apply a sudden temperature change to glass, and it’ll weaken, and maybe even shatter!

Eh, a sudden temperature change… Hui glanced at his bell, vaguely remembering the forging techniques he’d used to create it. Metal doesn’t work on the same principles, right…?

Zui Jiu let out a furious shriek, breaking Hui’s chain of thought. She cupped her hand under the bottom of the bottle to catch the drips, and in doing so, released Hui. Hui darted away, eyes locked on the door. Just a little closer. A little closer!

More and more drips broke out as the crack spread through the bottle. With a crick, a whole second line of drips bled through the surface of the glass. Frustrated, Zui Jiu gave up on trying to catch them and raised the bottle to her lips instead. In a few gulps, the entire bottle vanished.

Wiping her mouth, she threw the bottle aside and chased after Hui. “You won’t get away so easily! I might be weaker now, but I’m still strong enough to squash a bug!”

“Senior… mind that your words don’t frustrate you, later,” Hui warned her, remembering Han Qin. Really, these seniors have to stop qualifying their strength by comparing it to killing me! This small cultivator loves to be underestimated, it’s true, but I hate for seniors to decide I’ve slighted them when they fail to kill me! I’m not very strong but I’m very hard to kill. There’s no shame in failing to kill this small Hui, none at all!

“Are you saying I’m weaker than a bug?” she howled, leaping at him.

Hui sighed, defeated. Sometimes, you just can’t win. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you not to do…”

She wound a hand around his waist, her arm distorting like a snake to whirl around him and bind him up. Zhubi hissed in protest and struck as her arm passed him by. Zui Jiu cried out. She started to retract her arm, but then pressed on, twisting Hui up.

Hui stumbled to a halt, unable to beat Zui Jiu in a direct contest of strength. He looked back at her. “Senior, you’ve been bit by a snake. Are you not worried?”

“A little alcohol will fix it up,” she said brazenly, not giving a second glance at the black streaks crawling up her arm.

Hui lifted a hand to Zhubi. Zhubi coiled into his palm, and Hui threw him through the door.

“Oh, your snake got away. Isn’t that nice? You seem to like him,” she mocked. “Is it because he isn’t a clone? Is this where you sacrifice yourself? Don’t worry. Once I break out, I’ll track you all down. All of you, to the ends of the earth!”

“Mm, that’s nice,” Hui said. He glanced at the flames, then at the door. I think I can make it. I’ll only get one chance to surprise her with this, so I’ve got to make it work.

“Underestimating me? I’ll find you. Every last clone, and destroy all of them! There’s nothing you can do to—”

Hui coughed, interrupting her. “Apologies, Senior, but the most powerful sect in the region and a Wandering Immortal have already pledged to do the same to me. If you don’t mind, I fully understand what you’re trying to say, so you can simply stop there and know that I fully comprehend your intentions.”

Zui Jiu stared at him, taken aback. “Eh…”

“Ah, well, in any case, if you’d wait a few years to strike, I’d appreciate that,” Hui added, nodding. Let me take down All-Heavens Sect, first. After that, I’ll be free to dart across the lands and hide away wherever I need to go.

“You’re a weird one,” Zui Jiu said, suddenly sobered once more.

“I get that a lot,” Hui replied, laughing lightly, a little embarrassed.

Her expression hardened. “And for destroying my liquor… I don’t care who else is after you. You deserve to die!” Her grip tightened, constricting his body. Hui gasped as all the air left him. His organs cried out, squirming inside him.

Eh, well, they’re all fake anyways, so who cares?

As she squeezed tighter and tighter, Hui retracted his qi. His organs ruptured, and green liquid leaked from his skin. Her hand twisted up to his neck and snapped it, and he slumped over in her hold. Death qi exuded from his body, a tiny hint of the soul leaving the body twisted into the death qi.

Zui Jiu snorted. She turned, dragging his body into the flames. “I’ll make liquor from you, after all, and toast to your death when I finally kill your main body!”

A little black pod flew from his mouth.

Zui Jiu turned around. The arm wrapped around Hui extended again, reaching after the pod. Small fingers closed around the lotus pod.

The pod snapped open. A tiny Hui leaped out of it, shedding the pod behind him. He zipped through the air in a beam of light, flying toward the door.

“You!” Zui Jiu snarled, enraged. She threw the black pod aside and reached after him, but the time it took to throw the pod away proved too much. Hui raced through the door and vanished.

Zui Jiu’s hand reached the door, then flinched back. She stood there amidst the flames, suddenly as still as a statue. Her fingers caressed the air longingly, and yet, she didn’t move.

Her expression turned sober again, the hatred washed away. She took a step toward the door. “I could go. I could leave this all behind. Stop stewing in my sorrow and move on with my life.”

She turned, looking across the room. A single bottle stood apart from the rest, on a shelf high up the wall, hidden in a nook all of its own. A man’s body floated in the liquor, his eyes shut. Even with the preserving power of the alcohol, his body had long since began to decay, his flesh bloated and skin papery, his once-handsome face now starting to blur.

“But I’d have to leave you behind, too,” she whispered.

Behind her, with a mighty crash of glass, the heart-demon broke free of its bottle. It screamed in horror and rushed around, desperately snatching up bottles. Ignoring the flames, it charged through a burning shelf to grab a bottle, only to cry out as the top half separated from the bottom and all the liquor poured out, the glass cracked through. The heart-demon got down on its knees in the flames to lap up the liquid, desperately licking up every last drop it could, mindless of the flames eating away at its body. Zui Jiu watched it with cold eyes, then looked down at the bottles in her own arms. Slowly, she set them down.

The flames seared higher. Zui Jiu stood there in their midst, her eyes locked on the bottle high on the shelf. On and on, the flames climbed, until they licked that bottle, until the liquor began to bubble and boil. Still she stood. Rooted to the floor, she didn’t move a muscle, not even as the flames burned her own flesh to a crisp.

The door hung open. The flames climbed. All alone, Zui Jiu stood and stared.