Chapter 37: Foxy Encounter and Treasures

“I am quite impressed,” the fox woman said, letting go of my chin. I had the urge to look down and away but fought against it and instead looked into her amber-slitted eyes. She clearly didn’t like me looking away from her while speaking. “I’ve seen humans who’ve attempted to cultivate their own foxfire before. Some have even gone so far as to hunt down my kind and harvest it from our corpses.”

My blood went cold at her words. Shit, shit, shit. Was I about to get killed because of my new Skill? Fuck, maybe I really should just ignore all foxes from now on. If I get out of this alive, that is.

“Others merely try to imitate us,” she continued, not sounding mad or overly focused on the harvesting comment. I did my best not to relax or react at all to that, lest she figure anything out from my reactions. “Using illusion and fire, or combinations of the two. But you’re one of the few who has so thoroughly recreated our ability. So much so that I can barely tell the difference between it and the genuine article. Remarkable, really.”

“Um, thank you?” I said when she didn’t say anything further.

The fox woman smiled at that, looking remarkably beautiful for a human-shaped spirit beast that could kill me with a thought. “I’m merely giving your skills the appreciation they deserve. It is pleasant to see one of your kind taking an appreciation for our kind's naturally superior abilities. And going so far as to emulate it. I did not think I would be able to see such a thing while following those tainted swine.”

The fox woman’s face scrunched up at her last words as if she just smelled something foul. 

I couldn’t help but focus on those last words, though. Tainted swine that she’d followed? It could be someone else, but given her words and where we were, it was very possible she was talking about Yin Tai and the others. But what did she mean by tainted? And why was she following them?

“Well, I should be off,” the fox woman said, breaking me from my musings. However, she didn’t walk off. Instead, she looked down at me with a tilted head. “Before I go, however… I suppose I should reward you for your efforts. How would you feel about that, little one?”

I held back from my instinctual rejection of her offer. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with someone as powerful and potentially dangerous as her. But, that would obviously be too rude to say aloud. So, instead, I said, “I would appreciate that. But I would not want to trouble Honored Miss.”

The fox woman smiled, this time with just a little teeth, showing off her brilliant white but sharp canines. I had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what I was thinking. “It would be no trouble at all. You went through the effort of learning to create proper Foxfire. You’ve even altered its base properties. With all that effort, you should at least learn to use it properly. Now, create some for me.”

She held out an expectant hand towards me. 

Not wanting to anger her, I didn’t hesitate and raised a hand to meet hers. Then I activated my Skill, doing my best to will the flames to not burn. There was very little chance that it could harm her, but I wasn’t going to take the chance that it somehow did, and she squashed me like a bug for the insult.

“Very good,” the fox woman said. Then something odd happened. My connection to my flame became muted. She pulled her hand back, and my flame followed. “Now, here is your reward. Just a little demonstration. You see, you conjure your Foxfire each time you desire to use it and snuff it out when you are done. However, that is merely a waste.”

The fox woman directed my flame away to some fallen branches. When the flame touched them, it shone more brightly and burned the wood. As it burned, the flames grew in size and brightness just a bit. When it was done, and the branches were gone, she pulled the flame back to me. Before it reached me, however, a piece of the flame broke off and flew over to her hand.

Before I could wonder about that too much, the rest of the flame appeared right in front of my face. I had to fight the instinct to flinch away from it.

“As you can see, you can fuel and feed your Foxfire just like any other flame,” she continued in her soft voice. “Instead of expending your Qi to create flames each time, it is much better to cultivate it like another source of Qi. Maintain it by burning your own Qi or other sources of fuel. That way, you will have a ready source of flame without having to drain your own energies.”

The Foxfire, still out of my control and in my face, started to move closer to me. I looked between it and her, but she had a calm and relaxed look on her face. Yet I couldn’t help but flinch away as it moved to fill up my whole vision.

However, before I could pull away, the flame surged towards me.

I yelped and fell back, my hand going to my face. But no pain came. Instead, the flames seemed to disappear. Yet I could still feel them. They flowed through me and settled near my stomach.

“Of course, for a human such as yourself, it might be inconvenient to have Foxfire simply follow you around,” the fox woman said, a tiny hint of amusement in her voice. If she wasn’t so much more powerful than me, I might have glared. “Luckily, Foxfire is not as simple as flames. It burns only what we wish it to burn, and since it's your own flames, it can even be stored in your body. Very convenient, is it not?”

“Yes, it is,” I said, doing my best not to let any of my annoyance show. Not that there was that much. While that face full of fire had been a dick move, what she was telling me was pretty valuable. I could use Foxfire as another reserve of energy, freeing up my Qi for my other Skills. “Thank you, Honored Miss, for enlightening me about this aspect of Foxfire.”

I bowed from the ground at that last part, a bit genuinely thankful. That didn’t mean I wasn’t really wishing she was done and would leave now. Because I very much still was.

“You’re welcome,” the fox woman said, that little bit of Foxfire she’d pulled from my flame still dancing around in her hand. Then it seemed to stop, and she grasped her hand around it, her smile growing for a second. It gave me a bad feeling. “Now, I really must be off. Make sure you cultivate your flame well, little one. I expect to see some progress when we next meet.”

Wait, what? We were going to meet again? What did she mean by that?

Before I could voice my question, the fox lady smirked again, and her form suddenly broke apart. It dissolved into small balls of foxfire that soon winked out of existence.

I just stared at the sight, confused and alarmed. Had she just been an illusion, or was that some kind of teleport technique? Why did she say we were going to meet again? Was she just going to track me down somehow? Could she do it with the flame she took? Or shit, did she implant something in me with a technique? Fuck, was I going to have to get scanned again?

Damned foxes!

I would have cursed that aloud, but I held myself back. Mainly because I had no idea if she was actually just fucking with me, and was nearby, just waiting to swat me like a fly if I bad mouth her. Instead, I took a deep breath, pushed away all the anxiety I was feeling, and moved to stand.

Whatever she’d done, I probably couldn’t handle alone. I would need more capable people to help. That meant not panicking and going back to the others. Hopefully, we’d be fine until the city and then Sun Xia would know what to do. Hopefully. Even though she was still a Qi-Gatherer, she was the strongest person I knew who would be willing to help me, so she was my best bet.

Now I just needed to get back to the ruins. Hopefully, they had a much less eventful time than me. I really didn’t want to run into any more trouble today.

—Line break—

“You should have just stayed in the formation,” Lin said, sounding a bit exasperated.

When I got back to the others, I was relieved to see that at least nothing had gone wrong with breaking into the ruins. Pan Song had already disabled whatever trap that old man had set up and was nearly done breaking into the ruins. That left me plenty of time to explain to Lin and Jianfeng what happened while he worked. 

“How was I supposed to know something like that was going to happen?” I asked, rubbing my face. Just the memory of that encounter still left me annoyed as all hell. We were in the Amberwood. Random super-powerful spirit beasts were not supposed to be just wandering around. Or following the assholes we were trying to avoid.

“Well, given your track record so far…” Jianfeng said, rubbing his chin. “Perhaps you should avoid even minorly risky choices in the future. Just in case.”

He wasn’t wrong in a sense. After all, if my luck wasn’t so absurd, I wouldn’t even be in this world. That didn’t mean I didn’t give his statement the response it deserves. I held up a fist and raised the appropriate finger. For some reason, the gesture was the same here as back on Earth.

Jianfeng just laughed at that.

“Well, there's no use worrying about it too much,” Lin said, shaking her head. “If that fox really is as powerful as you believe, then all we can do is hope the Young Miss will know what to do. Perhaps the same method they used to check you over yesterday would be enough, to make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises left on you.”

I winced at that. Both at the idea of the fox woman leaving some kind of sinister technique inside of me, and at having to spend so much time again being screened for any issues.

I also couldn’t help but put a hand to my stomach. Just in case, before I re-entered the formation, I had expelled the Foxfire there. It had been back under my control, and I simply let it dissipate outside my body. Then I made some more and tried to do the same thing she taught me. To make sure it wasn’t a trick.

It was a bit paranoid since I doubted such a powerful being needed to trick me. But I did it anyway, and I’d been able to do the same thing she’d helped me do. Now I had another flame, a bit smaller than the first, sitting calmly in the same spot.

That was probably the only good thing to come out of this. Learning how to cultivate Foxfire. 

Yet despite that, and ignoring the issue of potential hidden danger for now, I couldn’t help but wonder about one more thing the fox woman had said.

“What do you think she meant by tainted?” I asked. “And why do you think she was following Yin Tai and the others?”

Lin frowned at that, and Jianfeng rubbed his chin. 

In the end, Jianfeng was the first to voice his opinion. “It could mean any number of things. Anything from their cultivation following a path in opposition to hers, to demonic cultivation, to even just their smell. We have no way of knowing, just as we have no way of know why she was following them.”

Lin nodded at that. “Unless she said something more, it's pointless to guess. But, if we are lucky, the reason she’s following them is because she wants to eat them.” Lin gained a vicious grin at that. “At least, that’s my hope anyway.”

“Maybe…” I said, not commenting on that last part. “But what if—”

“Hey, I think I’m almost through,” Pan Song said, interrupting me and drawing all of our attention over to him. “Get ready in case there’s anything dangerous sealed within the pagoda.”

Putting my thoughts aside for the moment, I moved to stand by him along with Lin and Jianfeng. Each of us unsheathed our weapons as the formation flag in Pan Song’s hand glowed brighter and brighter. Other flags, which looked to be stabbed into an invisible barrier, also glowed with the same light.

Then, finally, it happened. The flags all brightened once more before dimming. A semi-transparent barrier appeared around the pagoda for a moment before it seemed to recede from the top very quickly and disappear.

We waited for a long moment to see if anything would happen. But there was nothing. Still, we didn’t let our guards down and waited some more.

Yet, despite our expectations, there was still nothing.

I still didn’t trust it. With my luck, the danger would probably only appear once we were inside. That was my assumption, anyway.

Of course, that wasn’t going to stop us, as we’d already come all this way. And there was treasure to be had. So eventually, we headed into the courtyard and towards the pagoda.

I was tense the whole way. My sword was out, and I was ready for anything. 

But we passed into the opened entranceway of the pagoda into the ground floor of the building with no issue. The inside was just as well preserved as the outside. It was a richly decorated room, with lots of shining polished wooden furniture. There were also many murals on the walls, as well as carvings along the wooden beams around the room. Sunlight came in through the windows, which had no glass and were empty frames.

Around the quite open room were a series of shelves, all lined with wooden crates. Each was potentially filled with something valuable, but none of us moved to check them out. Instead, we moved to the stairs after Pan Song checked there were no extra protective formations inside.

Then we moved onto the second floor, fully expecting something to spring out. But the second floor was the same.

Finally, we went up to the third floor. Which, aside from the giant hole in the ceiling and some wooden rubble lying around, was still the same.

“So, is that it?” I asked, still tense and ready for something to jump out at us. I even thought it might happen the moment I asked the question. But once again, there was only us here.

“It would seem so,” Pan Song said, eyeing the few crates that had survived on the third floor despite the open ceiling.

“Well, then, let's see just what we earned from all this,” Jianfeng said happily. He walked over to one of the crates and moved to open it. Despite how carefree he seemed, his hand was still on his sword, and his body was tense.

Yet nothing jumped out at him, and he opened the crate just fine. I walked over to see what was in it and saw that it was several ceramic-looking jars. 

“What are those?” I asked.

“Looks like storage jars for herbs,” Lin said, also taking a look. “I’ve seen similar in the Young Miss’s alchemy room and Granny’s storage as well.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“Depends on what they are,” Lin said, shrugging. “But, it does potentially make things much simpler for us. If they’re herbs, then the Young Miss will either buy them off of us or have the contacts needed to sell them all for a good price.”

“That is if all the floors hold the same type of things,” Jianfeng said, moving over to another crate and opening it up. It, too, had more ceramic jars. “Hopefully, this is just the herb storage area and the floors below have better things stored. Like spirit treasures.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Lin said, moving to another crate and opening it up. “We’ll have to check everything.”

I watched all of this, feeling just a tiny bit put off. On one hand, no surprise danger was good. Great even. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but think that I, too, could have had a surprisingly uneventful time if I had just stayed in the formation.

I sighed at that thought and shook my head. Then I started opening crates as well. There was no use crying over spilled milk. And maybe Jianfeng was right, and there would be something here that would make it all worth it. Or at least, maybe the herbs would be worth a lot.

—Line break—

It only took us about an hour to go through the various crates in the pagoda. From what we could tell, the pagoda seemed to have been a storage building. One filled with herbs on the third floor, pills on the second, and artifacts on the first.

There was also both good news and bad news.

The good news was there was a considerable amount of treasure here. Enough to make this whole thing more than worthwhile, even ignoring the boost to Pan Song’s reputation and hopefully the deterrence that would give to anyone trying to earn Qian Zhi's favor.

The bad news, which I’d been waiting for but wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated, was that there was a lot less treasure than it had seemed at first. Despite whatever preservation formations kept the intact portions of the pagoda and courtyard looking brand new, it seemed that most of the things stored away had still withered. 

It was likely because keeping a structure intact was easier than keeping spiritually powerful artifacts, pills, and herbs at full power and potency.

“That’s a bit disappointing,” I said, taking in our pile of treasure. It was much smaller than the large pile of trash next to it. Various rotted herbs, spiritually inert pills, and spiritually inert or rusted artifacts.

“That’s because you let your expectations grow too large,” Pan Song said with a small laugh and a shake of his head. He was happily playing around with some kind of metal plate. It was octagon-shaped and had a lot of symbols on it. Whatever it was, he seemed to find it fascinating. “If all of that had stayed intact, then people wouldn’t have ignored these minor ruins like they have. Even if an Array Master wasn’t available, strong enough cultivators would have been able to break in eventually with brute force. Though you might be underestimating just how valuable some of these treasures are.”

“I suppose,” I said, looking at just how focused he was on that metal plate. Was it really that amazing? What about the rest of the stuff in the pile?

“Here, maybe you’ll like this,” Jianfeng said, tossing me a small case he’d been examining.

I caught it and opened it up. Inside, on top of beautiful blue fabric, was a dagger. It was only as long as my hand and quite thin, looking like it was made for throwing instead of anything else.

I looked back at Jianfeng with a raised eyebrow. “Is this something good? Cause it just looks like a throwing knife to me.”

Jianfeng just grinned. “Put some Qi into it. You’ll need to find a technique to use it properly, but you should still be able to figure it out by yourself.”

Following his advice, I channeled some Qi into the knife. My control of my own Qi without Skills was good enough now that I could do something so simple. As my Qi filled the knife, my awareness of the Qi seemed to grow. It expanded to encompass the knife and fed into something else inside of it. Then…

It floated!

The knife floated out of the box, moving with my thoughts.

“Whoa,” I said, grinning at the sight. It was pretty cool. 

“It's a flying knife,” Jianfeng said, grinning. “A mortal-grade spirit treasure. Pretty amazing right? You should take it as your share of the spirit artifacts.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. It wasn’t a flying sword, but it was similar. And mortal-grade spirit treasures were nothing to scoff at either. Despite the name, they weren’t too common for most Qi-Gatherers to have. Especially not Early Stage Qi-Gatherers. “You don’t want it?”

“He does,” Lin cut in despite not looking at us. She’d been busy looking through a scroll that caught her interest. “He just wants the mortal-grade sword artifact he’s been trying to distract you from even more.”

Sword artifact? I looked around and realized that, yes, there was a sword. But it was hidden under some other things, and Jianfeng was standing just in front of it.

I looked at Jianfeng with a raised eyebrow. He just grinned sheepishly, and I rolled my eyes. 

The sword would probably be better for him anyway given his talent for swordsmanship. Besides, I could think of a couple of things I could do with something like a flying dagger and my Skills. I was probably also the most suited for the dagger as well. A mortal-grade treasure like this—one that could fly around—would need a lot of Qi just to use it. Something that I was the most equipped to deal with. Especially with my Qi Devouring Foxfire.

“So, should we start heading out?” I asked as Jianfeng stopped trying to hide the sword and picked it up to admire. Lin was still reading her scroll, and Pan Song was still admiring his plate thing.

“I guess not,” I muttered when no one agreed.

Since that was the case, I decided to mess around with my new dagger. It would be fun to see just what it could do. And maybe it would be better for us to stay out here just a bit longer. Getting everything properly examined and evaluated would be nice. But I was not looking forward to whatever examination I would have to go through after meeting that fox.

I hoped it wouldn’t be so bad. But something told me that that might be wishful thinking. I would have almost thought all this not worth it if it wasn’t for the advice I got for Foxfire and my new toy. Hopefully, all that would be enough for the upcoming trial.

A/n: Thanks for reading everyone! And happy new year!